A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01 — Voltaire — John Shaqi
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01
Voltaire · en
St. Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux, in 1115 had likewise had it
revealed to him that all who received the monastic habit from his hand
should be saved. Nevertheless, Pope Urban II., having, in a bull dated
1092, given to the abbey of Mount Cassino the title of _chief of all
monasteries_, because from that spot the venerable religion of the
monastic order had flowed from the bosom of Benedict as from a celestial
spring, the Emperor Lothario continued this prerogative by a charter of
the year 1137, which gave to the monastery of Mount Cassino the
pre-eminence in power and glory over all the monasteries which were or
might be founded throughout the world, and called upon all the abbots
and monks in Christendom to honor and reverence it.
Paschal II., in a bull of the year 1113, addressed to the abbot of Mount
Cassino, expresses himself thus: "We decree that you, as likewise all
your successors, shall, as being superior to all abbots, be allowed to
sit in every assembly of bishops or princes; and that in all judgments
you shall give your opinion before any other of your order." The abbot
of Cluni having also dared to call himself _the abbot of abbots_, the
pope's chancellor decided, in a council held at Rome in 1112, that this
distinction belonged to the abbot of Mount Cassino. He of Cluni
contented himself with the title of _cardinal abbot_, which he
afterwards obtained from Calixtus II., and which the abbot of _The
Trinity_ of Vendôme and some others have since assumed.
Pope John XX., in 1326 granted to the abbot of Mount Cassino the title
of bishop, and he continued to discharge the episcopal functions until
1367; but Urban V., having then thought proper to deprive him of that
dignity, he now simply entitles himself _Patriarch of the Holy
Religion, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Mount Cassino, Chancellor and
Grand Chaplain of the Holy Roman Empire, Abbot of Abbots, Chief of the
Benedictine Hierarchy, Chancellor Collateral of the Kingdom of Sicily,
Count and Governor of the Campagna and of the maritime province, Prince
of Peace._
He lives, with a part of his officers, at San-Germano, a little town at
the foot of Mount Cassino, in a spacious house, where all passengers,
from the pope down to the meanest beggar, are received, lodged, fed, and
treated according to their rank. The abbot each day visits all his
guests, who sometimes amount to three hundred. In 1538, St. Ignatius
shared his hospitality, but he was lodged in a house on Mount Cassino,
six hundred paces west of the abbey. There he composed his celebrated
Institute--whence a Dominican, in a work entitled, "The Turtle-Dove of
the Soul," says: "Ignatius dwelt for twelve months on this mountain of
contemplation, and, like another Moses, framed those second tables of
religious laws which are inferior in nothing to the first."