Chapter IV. Origin of the medal of St. Benedict

It would be impossible to say at what precise period the faithful began to make use of the medal which we have just described; 1 all we can do is to state the circumstances which caused it to become so widely spread in the Church, and elicited for it the express approbation of the Holy See.

In the year 1647, at Nattremberg in Bavaria, certain witches, who were accused of having exercised their spells to the injury of the people of the neighbourhood, were put into prison by the authorities. In the examination which they were put to at their trial, they confessed that their superstitious practices had never been able to produce any effect wherever there was an image of the holy cross, either hung up or hidden underground. They added that they had never been able to exercise any power over the monastery of

1 It is a mistake to understand, as some have done, this verse of the hymn on St Benedict, composed by Paul the Deacon, ALther pluit numismata , as expressing a much higher antiquity for our medal than we have mentioned in the text. These words are nothing more than an allusion to the miracle related by St. Gregory the Great in the Life of St. Benedict, chap, xxvii.

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Metten, and this circumstance had made them feel sure that the house was protected by* the cross. The magistrates questioned the Benedictine monks of Metten upon this subject. Search was made in the monastery, and their attention was at length fixed upon several representations of the holy cross painted on the walls, and together with the cross were found the letters which we have been describing. These paintings were very ancient, but for years they had been passed by without notice. How, then, were the letters to be explained ? No one in the house knew what they meant, and yet they alone could explain the reason of these crosses having been painted in this particular manner.

After many previous researches, they came to examine a manuscript belonging to the library of the monastery. It was an Evangeliarium or book of the Gospels, remarkable for its binding, which was inlaid with relics and precious stones. On the first page were written thirteen verses, telling the reader that this book was written and thus ornamented by order of Abbot Peter in the year 1415. At the end of this manuscript there was the book of Rabanus Maurus, On the Cross , and several pen-and-ink drawings made by one of the monks of Metten, who had concealed his name. One of these drawings represented St. Benedict in a monk’s cowl, and holding in his right hand a staff, the end of which was formed into a cross. On the staff was written this verse : —

Crux Sacra sit M. Lux. N. Draco sit michi Dux.

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The holy Patriarch was holding in his left hand a tanner, on which were inscribed these two other lines : —

Vade RETRO SATHANA NUGt. SUADE M. VANA.

Sunt mala oue libas ipse venena bibas . 1

So that at the beginning of the fifteenth cefitury, St. Benedict was represented holding a cross, and the verses the initials of which are now found on the medal, were known even at that time. These verses must have been at this period regarded as an object of special devotion, since the painting of the cross on the walls of the Metten monastery was encircled with their initial letters. At the same time, it is evident that the reason of these crosses having been placed on the walls had been lost sight of, and that the rich Evangeliarium , which we have just described from Dom Bernard Pez, had been almost forgotten, until an unexpected circumstance induced the monks to search in it for an explanation of the mysterious letters. We cannot be surprised at this carelessness, if we remember the vicissitudes through which the monasteries of Germany had passed for upwards of a century, owing to the religious and political disturbances, which had taken place in that country, and which had caused the suppression of so many of the monasteries, leaving the remainder in a wretched and precarious state.

But here the question presents itself, When was the

1 The description of the Metten manuscript was published, in the year 1721, by the learned Dom' Bernard Pez in the first volume of his “Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus,” in which he has given an engraving of the drawing in question.

B practice first introduced of representing St. Benedict with the holy cross? In answer, we may fairly quote, as some kind of origin to this practice, the very characteristic facts which we have already given from the Lives of SS. Placid and Maurus, those first founders of the traditions of the Benedictine Order. From these instances we learn how both of these saints performed their miracles by associating to the power of the holy cross, the merits of their master St. Benedict. But we may also find a further clue to this question in the fact related in the Life of Pope St. Leo the Ninth, who governed the Church from 1049 to 1054.

This holy Pontiff was born in the year 1002. His name was Bruno, and during his childhood he was put under the care of Berthold, Bishop of Toul. Being on a visit to some relations at the castle of Eginsheim, he was sleeping one night — it was between Saturday and Sunday — in the room which had been allotted to him. During his sleep, a frightful toad came and crept on his face. It put one of its forefeet on his ear and the other under his chin, and then, violently pressing his face, began to suck his flesh. The pressure and pain awoke Bruno. Alarmed at the danger to which he was exposed, he immediately rose from his bed, and with his hand knocked away from his ear the horrid reptile, which the moonlight enabled him to see. He immediately began to scream with fright, and several servants were soon in his room with lights; but the venomous reptile had disappeared. They searched for it in every corner of the room, but to no

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purpose, so that they were inclined to look upon the whole matter as a mere imagination of the boy. Be this as it may, the consequences were cruel realities, for Bruno immediately felt his face, throat and breast begin to be inflamed, and he was soon reduced to an extremely dangerous state.

For two months did his afflicted parents sit by his bedside, expecting every day to be his last. But at length, God, who destined him to become the pillar of his Church, put an end to their anxiety by restoring him to health. For eight days he had been speechless, when on a sudden, whilst perfectly awake, he saw a shining ladder which seemed to go from his bed, and then passing through the window of his room reached up to heaven. A venerable old man, clothed in the monastic habit, and encircled with a brilliant light, descended by this ladder. He held in his right hand a cross, which was fastened to the end of a long staff. Coming close up to the sick man, he put his left hand on the ladder, and with his right placed the cross which he was carrying on Bruno's face, and afterwards on the other parts which were inflamed. This touch caused the venom to issue through an opening which was then and there formed near the ear. The old man then departed by the same way by which he had come, leaving the sick man with the certainty of his recovery.

Bruno lost no time in calling his attendant, Adalberon, who was a cleric : he made him sit on his bed, and related to him the joyful visit which he had just received. The sadness which had overwhelmed the family was changed into an extreme joy, and in a few days the wound was healed and Bruno restored to perfect health. Ever after he loved to recount this miraculous event, and the Archdeacon Wibert, to whom we are indebted for this history, assures us that the Pontiff was convinced that the venerable old man who had cured him by the touch of the holy cross, was the glorious Patriarch, St. Benedict . 1

Such are the facts as we find them related in the Acts of St. Leo the Ninth, given by Dom Mabillon in his Sixth Benedictine Century. This history forces us to make two equally natural conjectures. First, the reason of Bruno’s recognising St. Benedict in the venerable figure which appeared to him with a cross in his hand, was because it was the custom of those times to represent the holy Legislator as bearing this sign of our redemption ; and secondly, the event which we have here related, having happened to a man whose influence in the Church was so great, and who entertained such warm gratitude towards the holy Patriarch who had healed him by the cross, must have confirmed, and perhaps even originated, in Germany more particularly, where St. Leo the Ninth passed the greater part of his life, the custom of making the cross an emblem of St. Benedict, since it was the instrument whereby he worked so many wonders. The manuscript of the Metten monastery is a monument which bears witness to such being the case, and the verses which surrounded the effigy of the holy Patriarch were not merely the manual

1 Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancte Benedicti saeculum vi.

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labour of the anonymous writer, but a venerable formula, which was famous even then, since the initial letters of each word in the verses were found painted, in several parts of the same monastery, round the image of the cross, and this too so long before, that in the year 1647 the monks were not able to explain what the letters meant.

The affair of Nattremberg roused the devotion of the country towards St. Benedict and his cross. In order to secure to the faithful the protection granted by Heaven to those who venerate the sacred cross unitedly with the holy Patriarch of the Western Monks, certain pious persons began to multiply and distribute, wherever they could, the august symbols which are found on the medal. To the figure of the cross and the effigy of St. Benedict, they added the letters which had been explained by the Metten manuscript. From Germany, where the medal was first struck off, it was soon propagated into every part of Catholic Europe, and was looked upon by the faithful as a sure protection against the infernal spirits. St. Vincent of Paul, who died in 1660, seems to have known this medal, for his sisters of charity have always worn it attached to their beads, and for many years it was only made, at least in France, for them.