Seven centuries later, another saint, father of the most numerous monastic family which the church has produced after that of S. Benedict, S. Francis of Assisi, came to visit that wild site, which was worthy to rival the bare Tuscan rock, where the stigmata of the passion were imprinted on himself. He prostrated himself before the thicket of thorns which had been a triumphal bed to the masculine virtue of the patriarch of the monks, and after having bathed with his tears the soil of that glorious battle-field, he planted there two rose trees. The roses of S. Francis grew, and have survived the Benedictine briers. This garden, twice sanctified, still occupies a sort of triangular plateau, which projects upon the side of the rock, a little before and beneath the grotto which sheltered S. Benedict. The eye, confined on all sides by rocks, can survey freely only the azure of heaven. It is the last of those sacred places visited and venerated in the celebrated and unique monastery of the Iagro Speco, which forms a series of sanctuaries, built one over the other, backed by the mountain which Benedict has immortalized. Such was the hard and savage cradle of the monastic order in the West. It was from this tomb, where the delicate son of the last patricians of Rome buried himself alive, that the definite form of monastic life--that is to say, the perfection of Christian life--was born. The solitude of the young anchorite was not long respected. The faithful in the neighbourhood, who brought him food for the body, asked the bread of life in return. The monks of a neighbouring monastery, situated near Vico Varo, obtained, by dint of importunity, his consent to become their ruler, but, soon disgusted by his austerity, they endeavoured to poison him. He made the sign of the cross over the vessel which contained the poison, and it broke as if it had been struck with a stone. He left these unworthy monks, to re-enter joyfully his beloved cavern, and to live by himself alone. But it was in vain: he soon found himself surrounded by such a multitude of disciples, that, to give them a shelter, he was compelled to found in the neighbourhood of his retreat twelve monasteries, each inhabited by twelve monks. He kept some with him, in order to direct them himself, and was thus finally raised to be the superior of a numerous community of cenobites.