“In order to find the recollection of Dante more present than in the cells, and even in the chamber of the inscription, I went out at night, and sat upon a stone a little above the monastery. The moon was not visible, being still hidden by the immense peaks; but I could see some of the less elevated summits struck by her first glimmerings. The chants of the monks came up to me through the darkness, and mingled with the bleating of a kid lost in the mountains. I saw through the window of the choir a white monk prostrate in prayer. I thought that perhaps Dante had sat upon that stone, that he had contemplated those rocks, that moon, and heard those chants always the same, like the sky and the mountains.”

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This hermitage, according to Butler, Lives of the Saints , II 212, was founded by the blessed Ludolf, about twenty years before Peter Damiano came to it. ↩