Benedictines
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary [1]
An order of monks who professed to follow the rules of St. Benedict. They were obliged to perform their devotions seven times in twenty-four hours. They were obliged always to go two and two together. Every day in Lent they fasted till six in the evening, and abated of their usual time in sleeping, eating, &c.
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. They founded the metropolitan church of Canterbury, and all the cathedrals that were afterwards erected. the order has produced a vast number of eminent men.
Their Alcuinus formed the university of Paris; their Dionysius Exiguus perfected the ecclesiastical computation; their Guido invented the scale of music; and their Sylvester the organ.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [2]
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [3]
The order of monks founded by St. Benedict and following his rule, the cradle of which was the celebrated monastery of Monte Casino, near Naples, an institution which reckoned among its members a large body of eminent men, who in their day rendered immense service to both literature and science, and were, in fact, the only learned class of the Middle Ages; spent their time in diligently transcribing manuscripts, and thus preserving for posterity the classic literature of Greece and Rome.
