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Dialogues · Introduction 1:12Gregory the DialogistSome four or five years after the death of Boethius, Benedict of Nursia founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino, about 529. Here in 543, fourteen years later, he died. Even in the west, Benedict was naturally not without precursors; such as Martin of Tours, Cassianus of Marseilles, Cesarius of Arles, Equitius, who, "by reason of his great holiness of life, was the father and governor of many abbeys in the province of Valeria," and some others; but it was more especially the work of the great Italian monk, |xxii whose face Dante so ardently desired to behold unveiled in Paradise, to elevate this western monastic life into a system, with fixed laws and an ideal, like the object of hope according to the scholastic definition, "arduous but not impossible of attainment." The famous rule, the Regula Sancti Benedicti, which he wrote and promulgated from Monte Cassino (based, in part, upon the eastern rule of St. Basil), for all its apparent simplicity, is one of the few great constructive works of the sixth century. Although, from the standpoint of the Divina Commedia, Dante makes the Saint declare that his regola remained on earth solely to waste the parchment on which it was written, per danno delle carte, it became the norm according to which generations of men and women throughout the western world devoted themselves to the highest spiritual life, and became "kindled by that heat which gives birth to flowers and holy fruits."Book 5 24:1592Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandSt. Martin of Tours, 48, 141, 259.Book 5 24:2270Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England302 There is much that is legendary in the account of St. Ninias, and Bede only professes to give the tradition. He was a Briton, probably a native of Strathclyde. He studied at Rome and received episcopal consecration there; came under the influence of St. Martin of Tours, to whom he afterwards dedicated his church in Galloway, and returned as a missionary to Britain. His preaching led to the conversion of the Picts of Galloway and those to whom Bede alludes here as situated to the south of the Grampians. Irish tradition, difficult to reconcile with Bede's statement that he was buried at Whitern, tells that he spent the last years of his life in Ireland and founded a church at Leinster. He was commemorated there on September 16th, under the name of Moinenn. The traditional date of his death, September 16th, 432, has no authority.