Thus the House of Sayn was one of the richest in
Germany.
The aged monk and the youthful Countess were distant relatives, but he
regarded her as a daughter, and her affection was given to him as to a
father, in other than the spiritual sense.
In his youth Ambrose the Benedictine, because of his eloquence in
discourse, and also on account of his aristocratic rank, officiated at
the court in Frankfort. Later, he became spiritual and temporal adviser
to that great prelate, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the Archbishop,
being guardian of the Countess von Sayn, sent Father Ambrose to the
castle of his ancestor to look after the affairs of Sayn, both religious
and material. Under his gentle rule the great wealth of his House
increased, although he, the cause of prosperity, had no share in the
riches he produced, for, as has been written of the Benedictines:
"It was as teachers of ... scientific agriculture, as drainers of fens
and morasses, as clearers of forests, as makers of roads, as tillers of
the reclaimed soil, as architects of durable and even stately buildings,
as exhibiting a visible type of orderly government, as establishing the
superiority of peace over war as the normal condition of life, as
students in the library which the rule set up in every monastery, as the
masters in schools open not merely to their own postulants but to the
children of secular families also, that they won their high place in
history as benefactors of mankind.
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