At one time the Order is said to have had no less than 37,000 monasteries; in the Fifteenth Century 15,107 are enumerated, of which the Reformation abolished a great many. In England, at the Dissolution under Henry there were (as given by Tanner, Notitia Monustica, 1695) 113 abbeys and priories for monks, and 73 houses of Benedictine nuns. They now have less than a score in that country. In the United States the Order was introduced in lS46, by a colony from the famous Abbey of Metten. in Bavaria, Saint Vincent's Priory, Latrobe. Westmoreland County. Pa.. made an abbey in 1855, being the first foundation. In the older days the most important monasteries for wealth, possessions, and patronage of art and literature were in Italy, Monte Cassino. Cava de' Tirreni. Farfa, Bobbio. Nonantula, and Subiaco; in Germany, Fulda, Corvei, Saint Gall. Dirsau, and Reiche nau; in France. Saint-Denis. Saint-Martin of Tours, Corhie, Fontanelle, Saint - Bkiigne of Dijon; in England. Jarrow and Wearmouth. Be fore the Reformation many of the mitred abbots in the last-named country sat in the House of Lords with the bishops. The abbot of Saint Augustine's, Canterbury, was the first to obtain these rights of pontificalia from Pope Alexander II., in 1063. See ABBOT.
For the history of the Order. consult the An vales Ordinis S. Benedicti and .4 eta Sanetoram
Ordinis 8. Benedicti already referred to; Reyner, Apostolatas Benedictinorum in Anglia (Douai, 1626) the Bullarium Cassinensc (2 vols., fol.. Venice, 1650) Tassin, Histoirc de la Congrega tion de Saint-Maur (Paris, 1770) ; Crdn•ca del orden de ,van Benito CT vols., fol.. Sala(nanca, 1609-15) Montalembert, Monks of the West (Eng. trans. by Gasquet. London. 1895. 6 vols.) ; Taunton, The English Black Monks of the Order of Saint Benedict (London, 1897) Dantier, Etudes stir les Th'nedletins (Paris, 1864) ; Les monasteres benedictins de Mahe (Paris, 1866). For the artistic side, see more particularly Schlosser, Die abendliindisehe lilosteranlage des f ridicren • .11 ittelal ters (Vienna, 1889) ; Lenoir, L'arch it eel are monastique (Paris, 1852) ; Sprin ger. Klosterlcben tint' Klosterkunst (Bonn, 1886). The methods of the monastic schools for all branches of art except architecture are best recorded in the interesting technical manual of the Eleventh Century called Dircrsarunt Artiton Schedula, by a monk named Theophilus. Many contemporary annals of the monasteries are pub lished in the Mon amenta Germania' Historica of Pertz, and in Muratori's Scriptores Rerun? Itoiicarnet. For a vivid picture of life in an English monastery, see Carlyle, Past and Present.