SILVESTRINES, or SYLVESTRINES  , an order of monks under the Benedictine rule, founded 1231 by St Silvester Gozzolini . He was born at Osimo near Ancona and held a canonry there . About 1227 he resigned it to lead an austere eremitical life . Disciples came to him, and in 1231 he built a monastery at Montefano . The rule was the Benedictine, but as regards poverty in external things, far stricter than the Benedictine . The order was approved in 1247 by Innocent IV., and at Silvester's death in 1267 there were eleven Silvestrine monasteries . At a later date there were 56, mostly in Umbria, Tuscany and the March of Ancona . In 1907 there were nine Silvestrine houses, one in Rome, and about 6o choir monks . Since 1855 they 1 A communication to Eichhorn on the Paris MS. of the Syro-Hexaplar version of IV . Kings formed the basis of a paper in the latter's Repertorium, vol. vii . (1780) . This was de Sacy's literary debut .

It was followed by

text and translation of the letters of the Samaritans to Jos . Scaliger (ibid. vol. xiii., 1783) and by a series of essays on Arabian and Persian history in the Recueil of the Academy of Inscriptions and in the Notices et extraits . School gardens and school farms have been widely introduced, while bee-keeping is taught in over 50 schools . Owing to the efforts of the zemstvos (local councils), sanitation is well looked after . Agri-culture is the principal occupation . Out of the total area the peasant village communities hold 40%, private owners 20%, the imperial domains 5 %, and the towns and the crown o.6% . The area under forests amounts to 30% of the whole and over 5o% is under cultivation . The peasants are rapidly buying land in considerable quantities . Most of their allotments (more than 76%) are cultivated, and besides what they own they rent over 500,000 acres from private owners . The principal crops are wheat, rye, oats, barley and potatoes . Good breeds of horses are kept, and considerable numbers are exported . Fishing (sturgeon) is carried on in the Volga and the Sura, timber trade in the N. and shipbuilding on the Sura .

Domestic trades give employment to over 15,000 persons; carts, sledges, wheels and all sorts of wooden wares are made in the villages, as also

felt goods, boots, gloves, caps, handkerchiefs, ropes and fishing-nets, all extensively exported . The factories employ less than 20,000 persons . They comprise mainly cloth mills, flour-mills and distilleries, with tanneries, glass, oil and starch works, There are 82 fairs, the most important of which are held at Simbirsk, Syzran and Karsun . There is a considerable export trade in grain, °mostly rye, and in flour . have had a house and a mission in Ceylon . The order has no history . The habit is blue . See Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux (1718), vi. c . 21; Max Heimbucher, Orden u . Kongregationen (1907), i . § 3o; Wetzer u . Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed .

2) . (E . C .