"The Chapter is assembled; the vocal mothers, whom I have just
consulted once again, and who are deliberating, have decided that
Mother Crucifixion should be interred according to her wish, under our
altar. Only think. Father Fauvent, if miracles were to take place here!
What a glory in God for the community! Miracles issue from tombs."
"But, Reverend Mother, supposing the Sanitary Commissioner--"
"Saint Benedict II., in a matter of burial, resisted Constantine
Pogonatus."
"Still the Inspector--"
"Chonodemairus, one of the seven German kings who entered Gaul during
the empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of monks to
be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar."
"But the Inspector of the Prefecture--"
"The world is as nothing in presence of the cross. Martin, eleventh
general of the Carthusians, gave his order this device, _Stat crux dam
volvitur orbis._"
"Amen!" Fauchelevent said, who imperturbably got out of the scrape in
that way whenever he heard Latin.
Any audience suffices for a person who has been a long time silent. On
the day when Gymnastoras, the rhetorician, left prison, with a great
many dilemmas and syllogisms inside him, he stopped before the first
tree he came to, harangued it, and made mighty efforts to convince
it. The prioress, whose tongue was usually stopped by the dam of
silence, and whose reservoir was over-full, rose and exclaimed with the
loquacity of a raised sluice,--
"I have on my right hand Benedict, and on my left Bernard. Who is
Bernard? The first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a
blessed spot for having witnessed his birth. His father's name was
Técelin, his mother's Alèthe; he began with Citeaux to end with
Clairvaux; he was ordained abbot by William de Champeaux, Bishop of
Châlons sur Saône; he had seven hundred novices, and founded one
hundred and sixty monasteries; he over-threw Abeilard at the Council of
Sens in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, as well as an
errant sect called the Apostolicals; he confounded Arnold of Brescia,
crushed the monk Raoul, the Jew-killer, led the Council of Reims in
1148, condemned Gilbert de la Porée, Bishop of Poitiers, and Éon de
l'Étoile, settled the disputes of the princes, enlightened King Louis
the young, advised Pope Eugene III., regulated the temple, preached
the Crusade, and performed two hundred and fifty miracles in his life,
and as many as thirty-seven in one day. Who is Benedict? He is the
patriarch of Monte Cassino; he is the second founder of the claustral
Holiness, the Basil of the West. His order has produced fourteen popes,
two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, one thousand six hundred
archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve
empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six
hundred canonized saints, and still exists after one thousand four
hundred years. On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the Sanitary
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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