“It was amidst these noble recollections, this solemn nature, and upon that predestinated height, that the patriarch of the monks of the West founded the capital of the monastic order. He found paganism still surviving there. Two hundred years after Constantine, in the heart of Christendom, and so near Rome, there still existed a very ancient temple of Apollo and a sacred wood, where a multitude of peasants sacrificed to the gods and demons. Benedict preached the faith of Christ to these forgotten people; he persuaded them to cut down the wood, to overthrow the temple and the idol.” On the ruins of this temple he built two chapels, and higher up the mountain, in 529, laid the foundation of his famous monastery. Fourteen years afterward he died in the church of this monastery, standing with his arms stretched out in prayer. “ St. Bennet,” says Butler, Lives of the Saints , III 235, “calls his Order a school in which men learn how to serve God; and his life was to his disciples a perfect model for their imitation, and a transcript of his rule. Being chosen by God, like another Moses, to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of miracles and prophecy.