Pope St. Gregory, of whom some account is given on his festival, (see MARCH 12,) wrote the life and miracles of St. Benedict.[38] This work of many chapters relates how Benedict dispossessed a certain clerk of the devil; how he miraculously discovered the hiding of a flagon of wine; how in a scarcity two hundred bushels of meal were miraculously brought to his monastery; how a boy marvellously cast out of his grave, was miraculously kept in it by St. Benedict putting the host on his body; how a glass bottle cast down on the stones was not broken; how an empty tun was filled with oil by his prayers; how he gave another monk a slap in the face and drove the devil out of him; how he saw the soul of his sister in form of a dove; how he foretold his own death; how he performed miracles too many to be here related; all which, however, may be seen in the said life of St. Benedict, by the said pope St. Gregory, who it will be remembered is called by way of distinction St. Gregory _the Great_. St. Benedict founded the order of monks under his name. A reader who desires to be acquainted with its rules may consult Mr. Fosbroke’s “British Monachism,” who remarks, that monkery is an institution founded upon the first principles of religious virtue, wrongly understood and wrongly directed. He then proceeds to remark, that, “If man be endowed with various qualities, in order to be severely punished for using them, God is made the tempter of vice, and his works foolish. If voluntary confinement, vegetable eating, perpetual praying, wearing coarse clothing, and mere automatical action through respiration, be the standard of excellence, then the best man is only a barrel organ set to psalm-tunes.” CHRONOLOGY. 1556. Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, was burnt for heresy at Oxford, between Baliol college and St. Mary’s church.