[In the following essay, Ward investigates accounts and changing conceptions of the miracles associated with St. Benedict.]

'One day when the brethren of this monastery were quarreling, one of them met St Benedict outside the door and the saint immediately gave him this command: "Go and tell the brethren that they give me no rest. I am leaving this house and let them know that I shall not return until I bring from Aquitaine a man who shall be after my own heart." "¹ The place is the abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire at Fleury; the man from Aquitaine Odo of Cluny, the reforming abbot called in to deal with that turbulent house; and when the monk met St Benedict in the cloister, the father of monasticism had been dead for about four hundred years. It is a story with many layers of interest, and one which provides an entrance into the later tradition about St Benedict of Nursia. Here there is a monastery being refounded in France after the Norse invasions, a rough, undisciplined group who, as the writer says, 'had been scattered far and wide through fear of the enemy,' and were 'now united in body but divided in heart. The turbulence of society is reflected in the cloister and the level of comprehension of the monks is further illustrated by the fact that when they were told that St Benedict had left them, 'they did not have recourse to prayers and tears … but getting on their horses they rode hither and thither to find him and bring him back by force.' John of Salerno, the writer of this life of Odo of Cluny, scorns such a literal reaction; he is a monk of the spiritualizing tradition of Gregory the Great himself, and he tells the story as a vivid image of the place of St Benedict as the peace-maker within the community of monks, 'those who choose the narrow way … so that not living by their own will and obeying their own desires and passions, but walking by anothers judgement and orders, they dwell in monasteries and desire to have an abbot over them.'² But the reaction of the monks was not by any means unusual in tenth century Europe; the location of the saints was taken very literally indeed, and the relationship men made with them differed little if at all from their human relationships. If a great lord withdrew his patronage, it was only reasonable to go and force him to return to his duties if you could.

But what was St Benedict, the father of monks, the advocatus monachorum to do with Fleury anyway? What has Odo of Cluny to say in the matter? Why start so far away from St Benedict's own monastery in Italy, when he himself seems to have left it so rarely? Cluny, Fleury, Monte Cassino: one of the links between them is undoubtedly the miracles of St Benedict, that tradition of signs and wonders which is there in the first account by Saint Gregory the Great and continues for many centuries elsewhere. I propose to examine briefly some miracles connected with the name of St Benedict in order to see what insight can be gained from such material.

First of all there are the miracles of St Benedict which are related by St Gregory in the second book of the Dialogues. These claim to be miracles connected with the life of St Benedict; they are presented as his res gesta, what St Benedict did when he was alive. Now there are two aspects for comment here about such an account. The first is the purpose of the account; it was specifically written for the edification and encouragement of the reader; the second is that it is not a biography but a hagiography. These are stories which above all link the saint with the scriptural tradition of sanctity; the miracles validate St Benedict, they place him in the main stream of christian witness: 'I will tell you about the miracles of the venerable man Benedict, in praise of the Redeemer.'³ So we find that St Benedict brings water from the rock, like Moses; he makes iron float like Elisha; he causes Marus to walk on the water like St Peter; ravens who feed him recall the feeding of Elijah in the wilderness; like David, he grieves at the death of an enemy. He possesses, comments Peter, the interlocutor in the Dialogues, 'the spirit of all the just'; but St Gregory as the narrator corrects him, 'Benedict' he says 'possessed the spirit of one man only, the Saviour, who fills the hearts of the faithful.'⁴ Such miracles are related for a specific purpose; they are not the accidental deeds of a good man, they are the miracles of a saint. They link him with the wonders God showed through his predecessors, as an authentic saint of God, and above all, as St Gregory says, they give to his life the only test of christian sanctity, the likeness to Christ.

The miracles of St Benedict in the Dialogues of St Gregory can be discussed in many ways, but this hagiographical dimension is fundamental to them. They are not primarily intended as an account of the actions of the man Benedict (though that is not to say that they weren't). They are about holiness of life in a christian context. They are, for instance, about man restored to his right relationship in control of the natural world—a broken dish mended, a man walking on water, a thunderstorm obedient to a woman's prayers. They are about insight so profound that it pierces the clouds that divide men from one another, so that they are known for what they are, and a servant cannot be mistaken for a king, nor can Exhilaratus take even a sip of wine undetected. It is about that understanding of the vision of God that sees the whole of creation in a ray of the sun. And it is about the battle with the demons, a fight so central to the monastic life that it becomes visible in images and sounds: the demons shout and rage, they even sit on a stone to prevent it from forming part of the house of God; like a dragon coiled round the monastery, the devil lay outside the walls, and the sight of him was shock treatment enough for any monk who turned away in discouragement.

I do not wish to be misunderstood here. I am not saying that these stories are literary fictions of no consequence. I mean that the truth they embody and are designed to convey are more subtle and important than a simplistic reading of the narrative suggests. The images used to denote Christian sanctity are loaded with resonance and meaning and they are equally at the disposal of writer, of observers, and of the saints themselves. This is not an easy point to make clear but it has something to do with the fact that one apprehends realities through the images at ones disposal and not otherwise. We need a way of perceiving in order to see, and especially we need a way of writing in order to convey our understanding. To say that an image is a type, that it is there in similar stories, that it is found in previous accounts, does not mean that it can be dismissed, as if we had found out the writer in the act of copying from his neighbour in class; the resonances, the previous meaning, the allusion, is precisely what the writer wishes us to discover. The images are a lens, a telescope through which we view reality in its long perspective. For instance when the death of St Benedict is described in terms of light, brightness, and a road towards the east, this echoes not only his own vision of 'the whole world gathered in a single ray of light,'⁵ it also contains all the echoes of heaven in the Scriptures, and most of all the stories of the resurrection of Christ, as it is meant to do. This man, they tell us, is dead and alive unto God in Christ: 'the tomb of Christ who is risen, the glory of Jesus' resurrection' still exists as the gate and entrance into heaven and the images tell us far more than any amount of argument can.

St Gregory presents St Benedict as the vir dei, the man of God before all else. It is an ideal of holiness set in a scriptural pattern and it is presented for edification: imitation of virtues, not amazement at wonders is Gregory's purpose. The miracles of St Benedict are the climax of St Gregory's description of the true christian man, whose virtues have made him so like Christ that the wonders and signs of the life of the new Adam flow again in the world through his life and actions.

Later, the second book of the Dialogues became in itself one of the great patterns for accounts of sanctity. Again and again in the Middle Ages saints' lives are modelled on either the Life of St Benedict, or the Life of St Antony, or the Life of St Martin. They become authenticating patterns, just as they themselves found authentication in the scriptures. For instance, when St Anselm strikes water from the rock at Liberi, his biographer has in mind not only Moses but also St Benedict;⁶ when iron floats at Monte Cassino, the reference is to both Elijah and to St Benedict.⁷ Odo of Cluny delivered from an accident at sea, recalls to his biographer 'what Peter and Paul and then our father Benedict had previously merited.'⁸ The curious habit of receiving food from birds afflicted not only Elijah and Benedict but their successors, such as Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The first account of St Benedict then is no simple record of events, but a highly sophisticated piece of theological writing.

But what became of this image of St Benedict in later accounts of him, above all in stories told after his death? For the Middle Ages had no doubt that a saint continues his work after his death; he is in fact more alive unto God and therefore more powerful and more accessible to men. The long tradition of northern Europe centres on the graves of the dead, on their relics, their dead bodies. Devotion in the early Middle Ages north of the Mediterranean could be called almost exclusively a thaumaturgy of the dead. Now the dead have one advantage over the living which gives them at once a popularity which is unique: they are dead, and they cannot answer back. If you consult a Simon Stylites, or an Antony, or a Macarius, you encounter a living person, whose replies are his own and not shaped by your predilections. You say, 'Father, speak a word to me' and you may be disconcerned, to say the least, by a reply listing your most private and secret faults and suggesting some practical remedies: 'Poemen said to Isaac, "Let go of a small part of your righteousness and in a few days you will be at peace."⁹ 'Blessed Symeon said to Batacos, "for what reasons have you come here?" Batacos said, "I hope to transact business and bow before the feet of your holiness." "Wretched man," replied Symeon, "you don't mention that you are really here to act against Gelasios the man of God; go and ask to pardon at once." '¹⁰

St Benedict himself had not always in his lifetime been a comfort to his petitioners: 'he warned them to curb their sharp tongues and added that he would have them excommunicated if they did not."'¹¹ But go to the tomb of a dead saint and you have a quite different kind of freedom. You shape your requests, and by and large you hear the reply that your mind and imagination suggests to you. The stories of the posthumous miracles of the saints may reflect some aspects of the original tradition created around the living man, but ninety-nine percent of the time they reflect nothing of the kind. They are the reflection of an age, the record of the needs, sorrows, ambitions and ideals of each generation, each person, who experiences the contact with the dead. As such these collected stories of the miracles of the saints provide historical material of an unparalleled value. It is not the part of a historian, of course, to assess the supernatural value or content of such tales; but what he has to accept is the value given to them by medieval men and the vital role they actually played in their world. Once that is said, there are in these records glimpses of that person who is so rarely heard of as to be virtually unknown and inaudible, the medieval man in the street, or rather, the medieval monk in his cloister, since it was the monks who were the guardians of the relics and the recorders of the miracles. One does not expect to find out anything at all about St Benedict from such records; but one can see in a bewildering kaleidoscope of material what generation after generation made of him.

Let us look at two such records. First there are the Miracles of St Benedict, written under that title by Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, in the second half of the eleventh century in Italy at St Benedict's own monastery. The account is in three books, and in form it follows the pattern of the Dialogues of St Gregory; there is an interlocutor, Theophilus in place of Peter, who encourages the discourse with his questions and comments. The intention of the writer is similar to that of St Gregory: to show the action of God among contemporaries for the encouragement of faith.¹² As well as the similarity in form and intention between the two accounts, there are close parallels between the content and even the phrases. The second book of the Dialogues provided an exemplar for the work by Desiderius, thus creating a continuity between the early tradition and the later one. But the content is very different when taken as a whole. Few of the stories turn out to be about St Benedict at all: there are far more instances of supernatural rewards and punishments meted out to monks and their neighbours. The monastic practices of fasting, obedience, humility, simplicity, stability, are rewarded; demons are rebuked; and enemies of the monastery receive severe and dramatic punishments for their crimes. In two cases only are there accounts of men cured of illness at the tomb of St Benedict: a boy visiting the abbey with his father is cured of insanity by lying all night before the altar of St Benedict;¹³ the nephew of a monk of the house, Theoderic, was paralyzed and cured after praying before the altar of St Benedict and also having had the relics of St Maur placed on his chest.¹⁴ The stories recorded in the last book by Desiderius hardly concern either St Benedict or the monastery, but are set in Rome and are connected with the reforms of Pope Gregory VII. What can be discovered from this account, then, is first, the interest in the tradition of St Benedict by an eleventh century abbot and his desire to show that St Benedict's protection and power are still at work in his monastery; secondly, a shift in interest from St Benedict as the father of monks to St Benedict as the protector of his own monastery at Monte Cassino; thirdly, a curious lack of miracles actually performed by St Benedict in connection with the tomb where St Gregory says he was buried. This is not a collection of posthumous shrine miracles in any ordinary sense of the term, and perhaps this was because the claim of Monte Cassino to exclusive rights in the body of St Benedict had been challenged.

This brings us at once to a very difficult question indeed: where is the body of St Benedict? Monte Cassino assumed that St Benedict was buried there, as St Gregory says, and that he either never went away or if he did at least some of him returned. But the abbey of Fleury claimed, and still claims with startling perseverance, that they once stole the body of the saint and took it to France and kept it there. It is still a debatable question. For the purpose of this paper, it is what each side said and claimed that matters—not, note, what each side really believed, because it would be a mistake to think medieval men, least of all monks, were deceived by their own reasoning. To summarize the rival claims: the body of St Benedict was said to have been stolen from its sepulchre at Monte Cassino by the monk Aigulf sent by Mummoldus, second abbot of Fleury, at the end of the eighth century. Desiderius does not allude to this, either to deny or admit it, nor does he use a quotation from the Dialogues of St Gregory which would have fitted the case: 'the holy martyrs can perform outstanding miracles where their bodies rest; but… in places where their bodies do not actually lie buried, … they must perform still greater miracles.¹⁵ The theft is, however, mentioned in Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards; and it forms the basis of the History of the Translation by Adrevald of Fleury. It was necessary at Fleury to emphasize the point that these were really the relics of St Benedict, and throughout the Fleury collection this recurs: in the story of the translation, the first book by Adrevald, there is a story about quidam "someone", who warned the pope in a dream that the relics were being stolen from Italy.¹⁶ The legal question of the ownership of the relics is mentioned in two chapters of Adrevald's first book of miracles, where he describes a request from the pope for their return; Fleury is represented as having no counter-claim, and therefore being ready to surrender the body. Adrevald says it was St Benedict himself who refused to go back—he came to Fleury propria sponte and will not leave it unless he chooses to do so.¹⁷ Another vision recorded by Andrew of Fleury at the end of the eleventh century continues the theme of the favour of St Benedict towards Fleury, but here it is also said that St Benedict shares his favours equally with Fleury and Monte Cassino: Richard, abbot of Monte Cassino, is said to have had a vision of St Benedict assuring him that this was so.¹⁸

The account written by Adrevald is an instance of a theme familiar in the ninth and tenth centuries of pius furtus. Adrevald had to show that the relics taken to Fleury were genuine; this meant that he had to show equally clearly that they were stolen. Phrases like 'by divine revelation' or 'St Benedict wills it' are the only justification for keeping what was taken; there is no attempt to show that the relics were in any way the legal property of Fleury. To have the body was all important, and the next most important thing was to show that it worked. It was genuine because it was really taken from its original shrine, and Monte Cassino was shown to admit this even in its counter-claims. It was also genuine because it worked miracles. The remainder of the books of miracles of St Benedict at Fleury are the assertion of just this claim; where the miracle collection is, there is the body—at Fleury and not at Monte Cassino.

At Fleury the tradition of the miracles of St Benedict underwent a further change. The book of miracles of St Benedict at Fleury covers two and a half centuries and comes from the hands of five different writers, each with his own style, interests, and background. They reflect changes in culture, secular as well as monastic, to an amazing degree and, not surprisingly, they say virtually nothing about St Benedict.

The possible qualification to this is that there was an indirect concern at Fleury to present a continuation with the tradition of the miracles of St Benedict as recorded in the Dialogues of St Gregory. In the abbey church at Fleury there are carvings on some of the pillars from the twelfth century and earlier. They show scenes from the miracles of St Benedict as recorded by St Gregory: St Benedict fed by a raven, tempted by a devil, holding his Rule, and finally shown giving his blessing to the family of the carver, the monk Hugh de St Marie, who was also the writer of the last book of miracles. It is an amazing piece of propaganda by which the standard, authentic miracles of St Benedict are transferred visually to Fleury. Over the lintel of a door a scene is carved of the translation of the relics and the first cures at the shrine, a suggestion of continuity which is permanent and vivid and beyond argument.

Another visual aid at the abbey shows another side of the change in location perhaps even more radically. The carvings say, St Benedict is here; there is an unbroken tradition from his life until this moment and this place. In the excavations under the high altar the first place where the shrine of the supposed relics was placed has been uncovered. Around it, facing towards it, are stone sarcophagi of the ninth century containing the bodies of local magnates, determined to be as close as possible to this great friend of God at the resurrection, when they were certain to need all the help they could get. This practical concern with Dies illa, dies ira led these men, who, if the miracle-books are to be believed, were no great friends of the abbey during their lives, to take this final step to secure the saint's intercession in the next world:

'what shall I, frail man, be pleading,
who for me be interceeding
when the just are mercy needing?'

The coffins provide a very firm statement about the position St Benedict had come to hold in the countryside of the Loire.

St Benedict is seen, therefore, as the intercessor for Fleury and its dependants. The carvings and the coffins tell the same story and the miracles fill in the details. Each writer presents St Benedict in different situations but in each story the image has a remarkable consistency: he is now no longer the father of monks, the abbot of a monastery, but the lord of his domains, the patron of a house and its inmates, responsible for them, as they are also responsible to him. The stories contain a wealth of detail therefore about monks and lay people living near the abbey, and their relationship to it. In the first book of miracles, for instance, written by Adrevald about 878/9, soon after the translation of the relics, the overwhelming impression is of a violent society, of small knights at war with one another, to whom the possessions of the abbey are fair game in a continual struggle for land and loot. In seven instances, the stories show the anger of St Benedict falling upon those who attacked the monastery, in four instances his protection is extended towards its inmates. What is interesting for the historian is to trace the dynamics of power, the aggression and defence pattern in this small part of tenth-century Europe. What is the significance of this anger of a saint? Who sees him as active and what does this mean in society? When Rohan, count of Orleons, for instance, attacks the lands of Fleury in a small piece of ground ajoining his own property, he is acting according to obvious methods for obvious ends; what defense does a monastery have? It needs to protect and consolidate lands just as much as the count, and it has at its disposal a force more potent than any army of knights: when the count falls ill, the abbey, through the writer Adrevald who records the sequence of events, sees the attack and the illness as cause and effect: St Benedict, he says, has acted mysteriously to defend his own and punish aggressors.¹⁹ The relics of the saint are recognized as possessing mysterious but incalculable powers and in each incident where this supernatural sanction is asserted to have acted, the abbey is that much more secure. Imagination can be a more forceful shield than swords. The most notable characteristic of St Benedict at Fleury is that he proves his presence there by miracles; and the social situation in which the abbey exists determines that those miracles shall be above all acts of power and ferocity. Adrevald explicitly compares the relationship between St Benedict and Fleury with the covenant between Jehovah and Israel in which devotion is repayed by protection and the destruction of enemies. It was a covenant of mutual help and dependance, in which the monks were by no means always submissive. The monk Christian, the sacristan, guarded the shrine of the saint with energy, and when some treasures were stolen from it he confronted St Benedict with displeasure: 'Believe me, father Benedict,' he said, 'if you do not see to it that those bracelets are returned to me, I will never light another candle to you.'²⁰ A strange transformation for Saint Benedict, 'beloved of the Lord.'

After a long gap occasioned by the disturbances of the tenth century and the Norse invasions, Aimon of Fleury wrote two more books of the miracles of St Benedict. Odo of Cluny had taken control of the abbey and under his successor, Abbo, Fleury knew sufficient security for monastic life and learning to emerge. Aimon was a child-oblate, coming from a noble family in the Périgord, and he proved to be an able writer. Beginning in 1000, he records instances of miracles connected with the body of St Benedict at Fleury; again there is the firm assertion that the saint is really there by the proof of his miracles in that place. And what, beyond that central fact, emerges in these stories? In nine instances punishment falls upon the enemies of the abbey; the local knights have by no means learned their lesson, nor have conditions become much more peaceable than when Adrevald wrote; Fleury and its lands are still a focus for hostility and attack, and the assertion of the power of St Benedict must still be made. Rainald, Gerard of Limoges, Herbert of Sully, Romuald of Chartres, pass through these pages, with their attempts to acquire monastic property and the penalty this brings upon them. The point the writer is making is that St Benedict is tutor loci, the protector of that place, a violent saint with unlimited power who will repay attacks on what is his by supernatural retribution. Once the ills that happen to these men have been linked with their inroads on the abbey lands, a powerful piece of propaganda is in existance and it is at least meant as a deterrent. It needed only a few instances of misfortunes to befall those who trespassed against the abbey and its patron for the power of St Benedict to become an established feature of social life in the valley of the Loire. Romuald, a citizen from Chartres, let his pigs root in the part of a forest belonging to Fleury; he resisted the orders of the monks, even appealed to the bishop of Orleans: it was not his fault that the pigs had strayed. But he fell ill with a fever and was dead by daybreak. The monks were not slow to point to this as condemnation by their saint: 'Lo,' they said, 'the decree of the most just Judge has fallen upon him.'²¹ So we find the name of St Benedict taken up as a war-cry in local fights: when, for instance, Adhemar of Chabannais fought with a friend of the abbey, Boso of Poitou, Boso's men were quick to use the name of the saint: 'they shouted the name of St Benedict to the heavens; the whole valley echoed with it and the woods threw back the name Benedict.'²² A woman who lived near the abbey entertained a travelling knight who was ignorant of the powers at her disposal, and when he stole one of her geese she could rest assured in the protection of 'the most holy Benedict who has jurisdiction over this whole countryside.' Needless to say, the knight fell from his horse and sustained lasting injuries, which in turn increased respect for the saint.²³ The monks themselves were particularly alert to the responsibility St Benedict had for them, and when one of them was insulted and called a fool he felt justly aggrieved with his saint: 'Most holy Benedict, my lord, are you then sound asleep that you let one of your sons be insulted thus?'²⁴

St Benedict has become in the imagination of local society a power to be reckoned with; a terror to the enemies of the abbey, a strong protector of its monks. It is a further stage in the projection of local needs and values onto the saint. It is a development from the original image of St Benedict at Fleury. There is, however, another element in these stories of Aimon. As well as marauding knights and cunning monks, there are pilgrims—men, women, and children—who come to the shrine to pray to St Benedict and offer gifts, rich gifts very often and eventually enough to rebuild the church. The pilgrims are also presented in the stories as the people of St Benedict; his protective power extends from his own monks to them, and at times his power is displayed in curing their diseases. Moreover, another element in these stories is significant: St Benedict is not the only saint who works miracles now at Fleury; at his side stands St Mary, the lady of Fleury, lending him her assistance in at least half the miracles recorded by Aimon. It is a common phenomenon of the times: St Mary moves into the centre of medieval devotion from this time onwards, and eventually miracles which were once attributed to the prayers of saints such as St Benedict were not only shared with her but transferred totally to her. But here it is of particular interest for Fleury, since it is in contrast to the early exclusive claim that St Benedict alone worked wonders there. Perhaps the suggestion is that his place at Fleury is now well-established and no longer needs quite such exclusive emphasis.

Aimon wished to continue this record but was deflected to writing the Lives of the Abbots of Fleury. The work of recording the miracles of St Benedict was taken up by another monk of Fleury, Andrew. He began in 1043 and was still writing in 1056. He was the son of a local noble family and entered Fleury under the abbot Gauzelin. The four books of miracles which he wrote are in a style notably more ornate than that of his predecessors, a symptom of the times as well as a reflection of his own interests. Again, the preponderance of miracles are those of vengeance: knights die suddenly after pillaging the lands of the abbey; serfs become paralyzed when they work on festivals; the serf Stabilis who ran away from the abbey and lived as free man in the town for several years is summoned in a dream by his lord, St Benedict, and returns to his former serfdom.²⁵ Litigation over monastic property results in punishments by the saint not only of the ones who bring the cases but for the lawyers involved in opposition to the monks. St Benedict is still shown as having a care for his own people, and for the pilgrims: in time of plague, his relics are taken in procession over the countryside as a pledge of his power to deliver his own. Several of the sick are reported as receiving healing by prayer at his shrine. And the stories are no longer confined to Fleury: St Benedict is now venerated in Spain and Aquitaine, and pilgrims come from there to give thanks to him at Fleury, thus continuing to focus veneration for St Benedict there.

The next writer to take up the tale of violence in high places is the monk-poet Ralph of Tortaire, who was born in 1063 and became a monk at Fleury. He recorded eighteen miracles of vengeance, thirteen instances of protection and favour, and three cures at the shrine. Ralph is a lively and enterprising writer, and in his stories there are instances of the power of the saint exercised against animals—dogs, pigs, and peacocks. The increasing interest in miracles connected with the sacraments is illustrated here, too: a dying man is miraculously enabled to recover sufficiently to make his confession, by prayer to St Benedict. Ralph feels compelled, as none of his predecessors did, to explain the miracles of vengeance in theological terms: for our profit, for the chastisement of our souls, for our eternal benefit, he says; not at all how the earlier writers thought about it. For them punishment had a more practical and immediate value. But the old theme of St Benedict as a stern patron is still prominent: in his first chapter, Ralph ascribes the death of Eudes, the brother of King Henry, to his contempt for the possessions of the abbey.²⁶ The sick were still cured by the relics of the saint, but equally those who attacked his lands or worked on his feast day or molested his people were punished. Warinus, for instance, a peasant on the lands of the abbey, was attacked by a knight, Hugh Bidulf, and had his arm broken; he complained to St Benedict before his shrine: 'My lord, St Benedict, I am your slave; you are my lord. This arm which is broken then belongs to you. I would not complain if you had broken it yourself, but why should Hugh Bidulf be allowed to do it?'²⁷ Belinus, another servant of the abbey, turned to the saint in illness saying, 'if foreigners can secure my lord's favour, how much more should he care for me, since he is my lord according to law and they only come here from a far country?'²⁸ The powers of St Benedict continue, then, into the eleventh century; what has changed is the increase in foreigners, pilgrims, who now seem to have first claim on the saint, so that one of the saint's own people has to remind himself that he also can appeal to him.

The last miracles in the collection were recorded by the monk of Hugh of St Mary, who added eleven miracles in 1118. The collection ends there, either from a break in the manuscript or in reality. There is a marked difference in these stories from their predecessors: apart from the first miracle, which is an account of the deliverance of a captive, they are all cures of pilgrims. They happened at the shrine, and are recorded in detail, with names, dates, diseases, and the manner of the cure. One instance from Hugh's record will show how similar these were to cures at other healing shrines and how different from the usual miracles of St Benedict which were best described thus: 'This punishment was deserved, since he had opposed the friend of Christ with all the pride of his heart, and was laid low because of his sin.'²⁹

A woman from the town, who was called Hosanna, on that same night [the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1114] lay prostrate before the altar, holding out her arm and hand which were in need of healing. For a grievous sickness had taken all the strength from both and she could not even flex her fingers. When she had prayed earnestly, she found that she was cured and felt no pain at all.³⁰

By 1118 the miracles of St Benedict had achieved their primary purpose of focusing devotion to St Benedict on the place where his body was buried at Fleury. How strong this centralization was can be further illustrated by reference to the veneration of the monks of Cluny for St Benedict. This was primarily focused on his shrine at Fleury. Relations between Cluny and Monte Cassino were, in the eleventh century, cordial: Hugh of Cluny visited Monte Cassino in 1083 and established a confraternity between the two abbeys,³¹ Peter Damian visited and admired the life at both monasteries.³² But nevertheless, the veneration of the Cluniacs for St Benedict's relics was focused on Fleury. The feast of the translation of the body of St Benedict to Fleury was celebrated at Cluny in the eleventh century³³ and Peter the Venerable supplied a new hymn for it in the twelfth, acclaiming the wonders surrounding the body of the Italian saint in his new shrine in Gaul:

Claris coniubila Gallia cantibus
Laetaris Benedicti patris ossibus
Felix quae gremio condita proprio
Servas membra celebria.

Miris Italiae fulserat actibus
Gallos irradiat corpore mortuus
Signis ad tumuim crebrius emicat
Illustrans patriam novam.³⁴

The vital contact between the two monasteries had been made long before, when Odo of Cluny became abbot of Fleury. John of Salerno says, as we have seen, that Odo was called, elected, and pre-ordained to be abbot of Fleury by St Benedict himself. During Odo's abbacy, St Benedict appeared in visions, supporting his reforms, and he appeared also to Odo himself while he was keeping vigil at Fleury 'before the body of the saint.'³⁵ It also seems from this account of St Odo that the body of St Benedict had been removed from Fleury during the Norse invasions and was restored, amid miracles, at this time. This complete acceptance of Fleury as the miracle-working shrine of St Benedict containing his body by the monks of Cluny is a strong indication of the triumph of the propanganda of Fleury through the records of miracles there.

While these miracles do not add directly to our knowledge of St Benedict, they hold up a mirror to an age with exceptional clarity. They point perhaps towards another fact about the place of the saints in history. We have for some years been demythologizers of the saints; if their legends are found to be unrelated to the facts of an edifying life, we dismiss them from the kalendar and from consideration, even when they are such major figures as St George and St Christopher. But the tradition about St Benedict indicates something further for consideration: the stories told about a saint after his death can have a more creative role in the lives of others than any plain historical facts about his life. Of course, with St Benedict there is always the fact to be borne in mind that his major contribution to civilization is that unique document of the human spirit, The Rule. But in addition, the legends, miracles, and stories provide not a dead weight of fanciful but outdated tradition, but a record of a living current of human experience, continually alive and infinitely varied. The texture of life is as varied as we care to make it, and for the monk especially one strand in it can still be the deeds of St Benedict.

Notes

¹ John of Salerno, Life of St Odo of Cluny, Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, 51E-2A; ed. Marrier and Duchesne (Paris, 1618).

²Rule of St Benedict, ch. 5; ed. Justin McCann (London, 1952).

³ St Gregory the Great, Dialogues Bk. 1, p. 70; ed. U. Moricca (Rome, 1934).

⁴ Ibid., Bk. 11, p. 93.

⁵ Ibid., Bk. 11, p. 129.

⁶ Eadmer, Life of St Anselm Bk. 11, cap. xxxi; ed. R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1962).

⁷ Desiderius, Dialogi di Miraculis Sancti Benedicti, Bk. II, cap. 6; ed. G. Schwartz and A. Hofmeister (MGH XXXII, 1934).

⁸Life of St Odo, 48A.

⁹Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo-Oxford, 1975) 157.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 39.

¹¹Dialogues, Bk. 11, p. 109.

¹² Desiderius' Dialogi, Prologue, p. 1117.

¹³ Ibid., p. 1134.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 1135.

¹⁵ Gregory, Dialogues, Bk. II, p. 134.

¹⁶Les Miracles de S Benoit écrits par Adrewald, Aimon, André, Raoul Tortaire et Hugues de Sainte Marie, Cap. 1, Histoire de la Translation de Saint Benoit, viii, pp. 28-9; ed. E de Certain (Paris, 1858).

¹⁷ Ibid., Bk. 1, cap. xvii, pp. 40-46.

¹⁸ Ibid., Bk. VII, cap. xv, pp. 273-4.

¹⁹ Ibid., Bk. 1, cap. xix, p. 46.

²⁰ Ibid., Bk. 1, cap. xxv, pp. 56-60.

²¹ Ibid., Bk. 11, cap. viii, pp. 109-10.

²² Ibid., Bk. 111, cap. v, pp. 135-42.

²³ Ibid., Bk. 11, cap. xiv, pp. 116-17.

²⁴ Ibid., Bk. III, cap viii, pp. 148-50.

²⁵ Ibid., bk. VI, cap ii, pp. 218-20.

²⁶ Ibid., Bk. VIII, cap. i, pp. 277-78.

²⁷ Ibid., Bk. VIII, cap. xlvi, pp. 353-54.

²⁸ Ibid., Bk. VIII, cap. xxxix, pp. 342-44.

²⁹ Ibid., Bk. IV, cap. iv, pp. 179.

³⁰ Ibid., Bk. IX, cap. xi, pp. 370-71.

³¹Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, MGH SS VII, p. 741.

³² Peter Damian, 'Sermon for the Vigil of St Benedict,' PL. 144.

³³ Udalric, Consuetudines Cluniacensis, i, 34; PL. 149:637.

³⁴ Peter the Venerable, Letters; ed. G. Constable, (Harvard, 1967), vol. i, p. 320.

³⁵Life of St Odo, p. 53 D and E.