Though there were many good points in monachism, the Fathers were not slow to point out its defects. Chrysostom lamented that Christian virtue which ought to dwell in cities had fled into deserts. Vigilantius observed, "If all Christian men shut themselves up in cloisters and withdrew into deserts, who shall preach the Gospel and call sinners to repentance?" There was one Roman monk named Jovinian, sometimes called a prototype of Luther, and obviously before his time, who was uncompromising in his denunciations of the whole system. "There is," he said, "one and the same Divine life springing from fellowship with the Redeemer, in which all genuine Christians share, and a higher stage cannot exist." But in spite of all cavils the system held its ground down to the time of Luther. As Neander remarks: "The more the monks occupied themselves with their temptations, instead of looking from themselves to the Lord, so much the more those temptations increased, many of which they could easily have overcome if they had been willing to forget themselves in an activity of a calling that would have laid under requisition all the powers of their nature; on which account they felt the need of occupying by manual labour, such as basket-making and other handicrafts, the senses and lower powers of their nature." ST. BENEDICT AT MONTE CASSINO (A.D. 528). St. Benedict was born in 480, and gave a fresh impetus to monkish communities and devised better laws. After some experience in other places, he selected one of the heights of the Apennines for the great capital of the monastery orders--namely, Monte Cassino. He combined agriculture and woodcutting with exercises of piety, and introduced a more severe system of discipline. Many young nobles flocked to take up their abode. They acted as missionaries and almsmen to the poor. After fourteen years' presiding over the monastery, he had a last interview with his sister Scholastica, whom he survived forty days. A violent fever seized him, and he ordered his sister's tomb to be opened for him, and himself to be carried to the chapel of John the Baptist. Then, supported by his disciples, he insisted on standing and receiving the holy _viaticum_, and extending his arms and uttering his prayers, he died standing like a sentinel at his post. His influence lasted a thousand years; his relics were carefully guarded and taken to France. In the eleventh century one of his bones was sent from France to Monte Cassino, and there received with great enthusiasm. THE REFORMERS OF MONKERY (A.D. 528-1226).