After this period of hermit life, he began his labors in behalf of the monastery proper. In that mountainous region he established, in succession, twelve cloisters, each with twelve monks and a superior, himself holding the oversight of all. The persecution of an unworthy priest caused him, however, to leave Subiaco, and retire to a wild but picturesque mountain district in the Neapolitan province upon the boundaries of Samnium and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Christianity by his preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difficulties, founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of Monte Cassino,[6] the alma mater and capital of his order. Here he labored fourteen years till his death. Although never ordained to the priesthood, his life there was rather that of a missionary and apostle than of a solitary. He cultivated the soil, fed the poor, healed the sick, preached to the neighboring population, directed the young monks, who in increasing numbers flocked to him, and organized the monastic life upon a fixed method or rule, which he himself conscientiously observed. His power over the hearts and the veneration in which he was held is illustrated by the visit of Jotila, in 542, the barbarian king, the victor of the Romans and master of Italy, who threw himself on his face before the saint, accepted his reproof and exhortations, asked his blessing, and left a better man, but fell, after ten years' reign, as Benedict had predicted, in a great battle with the Graeco-Roman army under Narses. Benedict died, after partaking of the holy communion, praying, in standing posture at the foot of the altar, on the 21st of March, 543, and was buried by the side of his sister, Scholastica, who had established a nunnery near Monte Cassino, and died a few weeks before him. They met only once a year on the side of the mountain for prayer and pious conversation. On the day of his departure two monks saw in a vision a shining pathway of stars leading from Monte Cassino to heaven, and heard a voice that said by this road Benedict, the well beloved of God, had ascended to heaven.[7] His biographer, Pope Gregory I., in the second book of his Dialogues, ascribes to him miraculous prophecies and healings, and even a raising of the dead.[8] With reference to his want of secular culture and his spiritual knowledge, he calls him a learned ignorant and an unlettered sage.[9] At all events he possessed the genius of a lawgiver, and holds the first place among the founders of monastic orders, though his person and life are much less interesting than those of a Bernard of Clairvaux, a Francis of Assisi, and an Ignatius of Loyola.