The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

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HISTORY OF THE POPES.
election of Pius V. saw the death of the celebrated ascetic
Louis of Blois (Blosius), who had brought his abbey of Liessies
in Hainaulfi to a very flourishing condition, and who was
himself a zealous supporter of the Jesuits and their work.
The union of the Benedictine abbeys in the diocese of Constance
was decided upon at a meeting of the abbots at Ravensburg
in 1568, but at first had to endure much opposition from the
bishops. =* In Switzerland the abbeys gradually began to
recover from the injuries inflicted upon them by the religious
innovations ;
at Einsiedeln, Abbot Eichhorn won for himself
the name of second founder of that ancient centre of learning
by his services to the economic improvement of the abbey,
and his zeal for monastic discipHne.^ At St. Gall, where
Protestantism had even made its way among the monks,
Cardinal Borromeo, when he visited it in 1570, found in the
abbot, Othmar Kunz, a man who was full of good intentions
to bring about a better state of affairs ;5 Pius V. sent him a
brief to encourage him and urge him forward.^ The abbot
1 Opera omnia, Louvain, 1568, Antwerp, 1632 (in the latter at
p. xxxvii-lxxxvi his biography). Cf. Ziegelbauer, IV., 144 ;
HuRTER, Nomenclator, IIP., 133 seqq.
2 O. Manarei de rebus See. lesu commentarius, 18.
3 ScHMiEDER, loc. cit., 8i. For the visitation of convents made
by Commendone cf. Vol. XVIII. of this work.
* Meier von Knonau in Allgeni. Deutsche Biographie, V., 730.
* Borromeo, September 30, 1570, in Reinhardt-Steffens,
Doc. I., 12.
« ScHMiEDER, loc. cit., 82. Mayer, Konzil von Trient, II., 155.
How much he had it at heart that the Benedictines should be
united in a congregation appears froni the attitude of Pius V,
towards the monastery of Farfa and the German monks there,
Cf. ScHMlDLiN in Hist. Jahrbuch, XXIV. (1903). 258 seqq. Already
under Julius III. a reform had been attempted at Farfa by the
Jesuit Bobadilla (a thing which has escaped the notice of Schmid-
hn). For the state of the monastery cf. Polanco, Vita Ignatii,
IV., 133 : " Fere viginti monachi germani ibi versabantur, qui
et vivebant, et ut ipse [Bobadilla] scribit, bibebant germanice ;
et eos ad arctiorem vitae rationem traducere nihil alius esse, quani
vel sepelire eos, vel dimittere." Cardinal Alessandro Farnese on