One power still remained to the emperor himself (in the seventh century it was transferred to the exarch)--that of confirming the election of the pope. Narses seated Pelagius on the papal throne; but when one as mighty as the "eunuch general" arose in Gregory the Great, the power of the exarchate passed, slowly but surely, into the hands of the papacy. The changes of rulers in Italy, the policies of the falling Goths and of the rising Roman Empire, found their completion in the effects of the Lombard invasion. But before this there were thirty years of growth for the Church, and the growth was due very largely to a new force, though for a while it remained below the surface. It was the power of the monastic life, realised anew by the genius and holiness of S. Benedict of Nursia. {35} [Sidenote: The work of S. Benedict.] Born about 480, of noble parentage, he gave himself from early years to serve God "in the desert." At about the age of fifteen he is spoken of by his biographer, the great S. Gregory, in words which might form the motto of his life, as "sapienter indoctus." First, a solitary at Subiaco; then the unwilling abbat of a neighbouring monastery, whose monks endeavoured to kill him; then again living "by himself in the sight of Him who seeth all things"; at last, in 529, he founded in Campania the monastery of Monte Cassino, the mother of all the revived monasticism of the Middle Age. [Sidenote: His rule.] The monastery of Monte Cassino became a pattern of the religious life. S. Benedict was a wise and statesmanlike ruler, to whom men came with confidence from every rank and every race, to be his disciples, or to place their boys under him for instruction. The rule which he drew up was as potent in the ecclesiastical world as was the code of Justinian in the civil. It had its bases in the root ideas of obedience, simplicity, and labour. "Never to depart from the governance of God" was his primary maxim to his monks; and a monastery was to be a "school of the Lord's service" and a "workshop of the spiritual art." The beginning of all was to be prayer. "Inprimis ut quidquid agendum inchoas bonum, a Deo perfici instantissima oratione deposcas." And though absolute power was left, without appeal, in the hands of the abbat, and the rule of the whole house was to be "nullus in monasterio proprii sequatur cordis voluntatem," yet great individual liberty was left to each monk in the direction of his own religious {36} life. Everyone, he knew, had "his own gift of God"--some could fast more than others; some could spend more time in silent prayer and meditation; and none could do any good, he knew, however strict their outer rule, without daily enlightenment from God. There was place in his scheme for those whose work was chiefly manual, those who reclaimed uncultivated lands and turned the wilderness into a garden of the Lord, and for those who spent long hours in contemplation and prayer. The