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at meals, but were obliged to attend to the reading of the Scriptures : they all slept in the same dormitory, but not two in a bed : they lay in their clothes: for small faults they were shut out from meals: for greater, they were debarred religious commerce, and excluded from the chapel: incorrigible offenders were excluded from the monasteries* Every monk had two coats, two cowls, a table book, a knife, a needle, and a handkerchief; and the furniture of his bed was a mat, a blanket, a rug and a pillow. The time when this order came into England is well known; for to it the English owe their conversion from idolatry. In 596, Pope Gregory sent hither Augustine, prior of the monastery of St. AndVew at Rome, with several other Benedictin monks. St. Augustine became Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Benedictins founded several monasteries in England, as also the metropolitan church of Canterbury, and all the cathedrals that were afterwards erected. Pope John XXII. who died in 1354, after an exact enquiry, found, that, since the first rise of the order, there had been of it twenty-four Popes, near 200 Cardinals, 7,000 Archbishops, 15,000 Bishops, 15,000 Abbots of renown, above 4,000 Saints, and upwards of 37,000 Monasteries. There have been likewise of this order twenty emperors and ten empresses, forty-seven kings, and above fifty queens, twenty sons of emperors, and forty-eight sons of kings, about 100 princesses, daughters of kings and emperors, besides dukes, marquisses, earls, countesses, &c. innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of eminent authors and other learned men. Their Rabanus set up the school of Germany, Their Alcuinus founded the university of Paris. Their Dionysius Exiguus perfected the ecclesiastical computation. Their Guido invented the scale of music, and their Sylvester the organ. They boast to have produced Anselmus, Ildephonsus, Venerable Bede. &c, There are nuns likewise who follow the order of St. Benedict; among whom those who call themselves mitigated, eat flesh three times a week, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays ; the others observe the rule of St. Benedict in its rigour, and eat no flesh unless they are sick.
BENEDICTION. A solemn act of blessing performed by the Bishops and Priests of the Church, In the Jewish