SOURCE: "The Text-History of the Rule" and "The Contents of the Rule" in Saint Benedict, Sheed and Ward, 1937, pp. 117-46.

[In the following excerpt, McCann offers a textual history of the Rule of St. Benedict and summarizes its principal statements on the structure of Benedictine monastic life.]

Scripsit monachorum regulam discretione praecipuam, sermone luculentam

(Dial. II, 36)

There are two standard modem editions of the Latin text of the Rule, those of Abbot Butler (2nd ed., 1927) and Dom Benno Linderbauer (1928). Dom Linderbauer's is a critical text with full apparatus; it gives St. Benedict's text as nearly as it can be determined and with none but orthographical changes. For the scholar who desires an exact text and to be fully informed regarding the manuscript evidence, this is the only edition of the Rule. Dom Linderbauer published earlier (1922) a philological commentary. The Rule is an important monument of Late Latin, and this commentary explains it carefully throughout with reference to the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of that form of the language. Dom Linderbauer's two books are essential for a student of the Rule.

Abbot Butler's edition of the text is a 'critico-practical' one. It also is based on a full study of the manuscripts; it contains a valuable introduction, very full indication of sources, select variant readings and important appendices; but the text is a revised one. The more serious irregularities of St. Benedict's Latin, as judged by the standards of normal Latin, are corrected, so that the text may be more serviceable for liturgical use. Since there is no full apparatus, it becomes necessary to turn to Linderbauer's text in order to determine what St. Benedict actually wrote. For the general reader who wishes to understand the Rule and to appreciate St. Benedict's use of his sources, this is the best edition.' Its text has already been adopted as their official text by several of the Benedictine Congregations and bids fair to obtain general currency as the modem Textus Receptus of the Rule.

Both Butler and Linderbauer in their introductions give an account of the history of the text with references to all the pertinent literature, which references need not be repeated here. But we should not fail to mention the name of Ludwig Traube,² the greatest of modem palaeographers, whose Text-History of the Rule (1st ed., 1898) effected a revolution in the study of the text comparable to the revolution effected by Copernicus in astronomy. Practically all modern work on the text derives from and depends on his. In the preface to his book Traube affirms that the Rule is one of the few ancient texts—he ranks it with the Vulgate and the collections of the Canon Law—which have a text-history in the fullest sense of that phrase. The manuscripts are so abundant, the internal and external evidence so copious, that it is possible to trace the history of the Rule with much exactitude back to the time of its first writing. The story is a unique one and of great interest; we propose therefore to summarize it here.

To begin with, it is a curious fact but a true one, that the Rule though issued in innumerable editions, of greater or less value, was not subjected to an exact critical study until the late nineteenth century. No thorough examination of all the manuscript evidence was made and no scientific interpretation of the conflicting tradition attempted before the year 1880, when Dom Edmund Schmidt of Metten published his Regula S. Benedicti juxta antiquissimos codices cognita. Dom Schmidt was in a true sense a pioneer. After him came a series of scholars: Traube, Plenkers, Morin, Butler, Linderbauer, carrying forward the work which he had begun. As a result of their work it is possible now to speak with some certainty of the true text of the Rule and of its history. Let us set forth succinctly the results which have been attained.

St. Benedict did not write his Rule, so to say, at one sitting; the Rule itself falls into independent sections and it bears evident traces of revision and addition. We should regard it, not as a code of law that was first devised as a whole by the legislator and then imposed on his disciples, but as the redaction of rules that had been in practice long before they were codified.³ It is most probable, for instance, that the long section regarding the Divine Office existed separately as the liturgical regime of St. Benedict's monasteries from the earliest date. So also the section on faults and their punishment, which the Germans call the Strafkodex, forms a self-contained unity and probably had had an independent existence. The last seven chapters of the Rule would seem to be an addition, and the prologue was probably written last of all. At what date did St. Benedict put together the whole Rule, with its prologue and seventy-three chapters, as we have it now? We cannot say, but can only surmise that he did the work at Monte Cassino and towards the end of his life. Abbot Chapman, in his St. Benedict and the Sixth Century, argued from the traces of the Rule which he considered that he had found in contemporary documents, that the Rule was composed about the year 525; but the argument is of uncertain quality and will not bear close examination. To take but one point: he found plain echoes of the Rule of St. Benedict in the Rule of St. Caesarius of Arles, of which the probable date is 534, and argued that St. Caesarius had St. Benedict's Rule before him when writing his own. But the texts of Caesarius which were available to him were bad ones, containing much interpolation of late date from the Benedictine Rule. And as to the genuine resemblances between the two Rules, not due to such interpolation, Dom Morin agrees decisively with Abbot Butler that St. Benedict used St. Caesarius and not vice versa.⁴ Which conclusion, if we could rely on the date given for the Rule of St. Caesarius, would manifestly place St. Benedict's work after 534. However, the evidence which we possess does not, in fact, allow us to give a precise date for the composition of the Rule and we must be content to suppose that it was written, in the form in which we have it, well on in the first half of the sixth century, without attempting greater exactitude.

St. Gregory describes St. Benedict when he fled from the world as scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus (consciously ignorant and wisely unlearned). He had in fact abruptly broken off his schooling, and these words may fairly be interpreted as a graceful apology for the saint's lack of a full literary training. It is quite clear from the pages of the Rule itself that St. Benedict subsequently acquired a considerable measure of monastic learning, for the Rule contains abundant evidence of wide and fruitful study; but it is clear also from the same Rule that he did not take pains to acquire, or at least to use, any very correct literary form. For the Rule is written in that Late Latin of his period which departs considerably in grammar and syntax from the standards of classical Latin. A man who can write: Post quibus lectionibus sequantur ex ordine alii sex psalmi cum antiphonas and many similar sentences, is not concerned to write correct Latin, but is adapting himself to the usage of his time. In doing so St. Benedict doubtless consulted the convenience of his immediate disciples, but he left behind him a text which inevitably attracted the hand of the corrector. In fact the subsequent history of the Rule was largely determined by its original character.

For it would appear that at once, in the next generation after his death, the disciples of St. Benedict began to edit the text of their founder. There survives in some manuscripts a verse prologue to the Rule which is of doubtful import but would seem to attach the name of Simplicius, the third abbot of Monte Cassino (about 560), to such an edition, and Traube accepts this as fact. However that may be, a revised edition of the Rule did appear in the sixth century and had a wide Vogue, practically supplanting the original text. This revised edition is represented, for instance by Oxoniensis, the oldest of all extant manuscripts, which was probably written at Canterbury about the year 700. So by that year there were in existence two distinct forms of text, the original of St. Benedict and the early revised version (also called the 'interpolated text'). In the course of the eighth century there came into existence a third form of text, a mixture of the other two with 'improvements' of its own. This is known as the Textus Receptus, the received test or vulgate of the Rule. It was a text from which all difficulties of grammar and syntax had been removed and the whole redressed in a fair Latin. It is sufficiently true to say that some such vulgate text of the Rule has been the current text among Benedictines until the present century.

But, meanwhile, what were the fortunes of St. Benedict's original text? Monte Cassino was sacked by the Lombards about the year 581 and the monks fled to Rome, taking with them, says Paul the Deacon, 'the book of the holy rule which the aforesaid father had written, some other books, the weight for bread and the measure for wine, and what furniture they could get away'.⁵ It is the conviction of most scholars that Paul in this passage intends not just a copy of the Rule, but the autograph itself. This autograph was taken to the Lateran monastery and from that probably passed into the papal library. For, when Paul comes to narrate the history of the restoration of Monte Cassino under Abbot Petronax (717-47) he records that Pope Zachary 'gave him many helps, namely books of Holy Scripture and other things useful for a monastery, and moreover, of his fatherly love granted him the rule which the blessed father Benedict wrote with his own holy hands' (vi. 40). The precious autograph thus returned to Monte Cassino and stayed there until the year 883 when the monastery was attacked by the Saracens and the community fled to Teano near Capua, taking the autograph with them. The monastery of Teano was destroyed by fire in the year 896 and the autograph with it. But the Cassinese monks evidently, and naturally, possessed copies, for there are extant still at Monte Cassino manuscripts of the tenth and later centuries which though by no means free from other influences are judged to derive their descent from this source. Yet, strangely enough, it is not to these Cassinese manuscripts, but to a German manuscript, that we must go for a faithful copy of the autograph.

It happened in this way. The Emperor Charlemagne, as a promoter of learning, set a high value on correct texts. He was anxious also to regulate the monasteries of his empire. In the course of his Italian campaign in the winter of 786-7 he visited Monte Cassino and doubtless there saw the autograph of the Rule with his own eyes. Shortly after his return to Aachen, in the summer of 787, he wrote to Abbot Theodemar of Monte Cassino and asked him for a faithful copy of the autograph. Abbot Theodemar sent him the copy with a covering letter written by Paul the Deacon. That letter contains this sentence: 'Behold, according to your order we have transcribed the rule of our blessed father from the very codex which he wrote with his own holy hands and have sent it to you.' That is the first stage: Charlemagne has obtained a copy of the autograph to serve as the standard for the text of the Rule in the monasteries of his empire. The next stage was the dissemination of this text among these monasteries. Many copies were made from this standard text and began to supersede that revised text which had hitherto reigned supreme. The royal copy has perished but some of the copies of it remain, and of these copies—grandchildren so to say of the original—one stands out above the rest for its completeness and accuracy and for its precisely-known history. This is Sangallensis 914, transcribed at the beginning of the ninth century for the Abbey of Reichenau. Its history is as follows:

Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious, held a synod at Aachen in the year 817 which ordained that the Rule of St. Benedict should be observed in all the monasteries of the empire, and made regulations for its exact observance. As part of this monastic policy Louis established the great reforming abbot, St. Benedict of Aniane, in a special monastery near Aachen which should set the standard of observance for all other monasteries. It was provided also that inspectors should visit these monasteries to see that the emperor's wishes were being carried out. In order to comply with these regulations, Haito, abbot of Reichenau and bishop of Basle, sent two young monks of his abbey, by name Grimalt and Tatto, to Aachen to be instructed in the standard observance. The librarian of Reichenau, by name Reginbert, took advantage of their visit to ask the two emissaries to make him an exact transcript of the imperial copy of St. Benedict's Rule. Grimalt and Tatto fulfilled his commission with great fidelity. They made a very careful transcript and dispatched the copy to Reichenau with a letter to their 'most excellent and most beloved master, Reginbert' in the course of which they speak thus: 'Behold, we have sent you the rule of the great teacher Saint Benedict, which your heart has always with intense longing desired to have. Our copy lacks nothing, we believe, of the sentences and syllables and even of the letters that were set down by the aforesaid father; for it has been copied from that exemplar which was copied from the very codex which the blessed father took care to write with his own sacred hands for the welfare of many souls.' They add that they have supplied in the margin the readings of other texts corrected by 'modern masters', wishing their abbey to have both the original text and the current revision. Such is the very precise history of Sangallensis 914. It may be observed upon this history that the position of the Rule among ancient books is thus a unique one; of no other ancient book have we a copy which is separated from the original by only one intermediary. The text of Sangallensis 914 has been printed in a diplomatic edition by Dom Morin.⁶ The manuscript itself bears out the claim made for it by its scribes; it is accepted by the critics as a very faithful copy and as the necessary basis of any edition of the text of the Rule. But this is not to say that Sangallensis is free from all error; its scribes were very careful, but they were human and have made a few obvious mistakes. Moreover, the manuscript has suffered a little in the course of the centuries. However, Sangallensis 914 does not stand alone; there are other representatives of the Carolingian tradition. And, besides these, there are the Cassinese manuscripts and the ancient representatives of the early revised version. Taking Sangallensis as his basis and using these other manuscripts to control and correct its text, the modem editor is able to reproduce St. Benedict's Rule, as he himself wrote it, with reasonable certainty.

Constituenda est ergo nobis dominici scola
 servitii
(Reg. Prol.)

'Besides the many marvels which made Benedict famous', says St. Gregory, 'he was eminent also for his teaching. For he wrote a Rule for monks which is remarkable for its discretion and lucidity. And if anyone wishes to know his character and life more precisely, he may find in the ordinances of that Rule a complete account of his practice, for the holy man cannot have taught otherwise than as he lived' (ch. 36). In these words the biographer draws our attention to that which is certainly the most authentic source for our knowledge of the work of St. Benedict.

The famous Rule for Monks has come down to us in many ancient manuscripts. The oldest of these, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was probably written by the Benedictines of Canterbury at the beginning of the eighth century, that is to say about a century after St. Augustine and his companions brought the knowledge of the monastic rule to this island along with the knowledge of the faith, and a century and a half after St. Benedict. The Venerable Bede was then living his life of fruitful monastic and literary labour in his peaceful Northumbrian monastery. Scholars have examined this and many other manuscripts and determined the pure text, over against the interpolated version which seems almost as ancient as the other, so that some have thought that St. Benedict issued two editions of the Rule. But, in speaking of this variety of text, we do not wish to give the impression that the variations are very great in number or substance. Only in one passage—the conclusion of the prologue—is there a considerable and substantial difference between the two traditions, and there the 'interpolated text' has abbreviated and not enlarged the original. We have already spoken of the history of the text as written elaborately by the palaeographer Traube and discussed by many scholars. There is no doubt about the authenticity of the Rule.

What were St. Benedict's sources? He is familiar of course with the Scriptures and with the writings of those whom he calls the holy Catholic Fathers. He quotes St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Cyprian, St. Leo. He displays an extensive acquaintance with monastic literature, including the Rules of St. Basil, St. Pachomius, St. Macarius of Alexandria, St. Orsiesius and other anonymous rules. He knew the lives of Eastern monks and their recorded sayings. But his chief debt is to the writings of Abbot John Cassian of Marseilles, who collected in his Institutes and Conferences a copious body of monastic theory and practice. St. Benedict used his sources industriously—he is very occasionally content to reproduce them verbally—but the Rule, though its composite character is plain, is not, for all that, an unoriginal patchwork. It is a complete whole, a structure with a genuine unity. A considerable portion may be borrowed from earlier writers, but the presiding spirit, the wisdom, sobriety and moderation which run through the whole, these are St. Benedict's own.⁷

When was the Rule written? For this, as we have said already, no definite date can be assigned. It is believed—and the belief is very probable—that the saint did not compose his Rule at one time or in one effort. Portions of it may have been formulated even at Subiaco. There are sections such as the chapter on the 'Instruments of Good Works', and that on the 'Twelve degrees of Humility', which may very likely have existed independently, as useful summaries for purposes of instruction. Probably also the considerable section which deals with faults and their correction had a similar separate existence. And the liturgical cursus was doubtless custom long before it was set down as law. Indeed we must suppose that the whole Rule is the result of experience, of the application of old monastic principle and precept to the purpose which St. Benedict sought to realize, conditioned by the circumstances of locality and temperament. The Rule was lived before it was codified. It is supposed that the saint drew up the Rule, as we now possess it, at Monte Cassino and towards the end of his life, when he was about sixty years old and had had some forty years' practical experience of the life and government of monks. As we have it now it consists of a Prologue and seventy-three chapters. Of these chapters the last seven would appear to be an addition by St. Benedict to his first codification, and it is probable that the Prologue was written last.

The seventy-three chapters of the Rule cannot be made to conform to a clear-cut, logical sequence; indeed it would seem at first sight that St. Benedict did not attempt any logical order, but set his chapters down haphazard. However, it will be found that they fall into groups, united by similarity of subject. After the Prologue there come three chapters which characterize the form of life which he is instituting and provide its main constitution, in the chapter on the abbot, and the chapter on calling the brethren to Council. Then there follow four chapters of fundamental spiritual instruction (4-7). After that we have eleven chapters on the Divine Office (8-18), ending with one on the proper method of assisting at the Office (19) and another on prayer in general (20). After two chapters (21, 22) of particular ordinances (on Deans and Sleep) we have a large section devoted to the methods of correcting faults (23-30), of which the legislator has more to say later (43-6). With Chapter 31 we resume particular ordinances for the life of the monastery (31-42, 47-57). The fifty-eighth chapter begins a section of the Rule which deals with admission into the monastery (58-61). Then we have chapters on the priests of the monastery, the order of the community, the appointment of the abbot, of the prior and gate-keeper. The last seven chapters, which are considered to be later than the rest, deal with certain particular points, and the Rule ends with an exhortation to zeal.

The abbot is the corner-stone of St. Benedict's monastic edifice. The polity which he creates might be described epigrammatically as 'autocracy tempered by religion', but the epigram would be misleading. A more accurate description would speak of paternal government. Roman law gave the father of a family very large authority over the members of his household. The government of the family was concentrated in his hands, and in the times of the Republic his power was so absolute that he could even inflict the punishment of death. By the imperial legislation, and especially by that of the early Christian emperors, the patria potestas was curtailed. Yet it remained considerable. Law and custom gave the father a status and an authority to which there is no parallel in modern times. St. Benedict conceived the abbot as exercising an authority which is similar to that of a Roman father. He has a paramount authority; but he must exercise it according to the law of God and the Rule, with the counsel of his monks, with prudence and equity, firmness and discretion, and with a constant sense of his accountability. The officials of the monastery are appointed by him and removed at his pleasure, while his own authority is for life. The whole life of the monastery hinges upon him, and there is no part of its activity but the direction and regulation of it appertains to him, though he may give others a delegated authority. The Rule recommends him to summon the comrnunity to advise him, but he is not bound by their advice. 'As often as any important business has to be done in the monastery let the abbot call together the whole community and himself set forth the matter. And, having heard the advice of the brethren, let him take counsel with himself and then do what he shall judge to be most expedient' (ch. 3), In the same way the paterfamilias of a Roman family might summon the members of the family to a judicium domesticum before exercising his supreme authority. For less important matters the abbot is advised to seek the advice of the senior monks.

St. Benedict has no qualms about entrusting this absolute power to one man. He is content to remind the abbot constantly of the responsibility of his position, of the account which he will have to render. For the rest this paternal authority seems to him the most natural thing in the world. And indeed it was entirely according to monastic precedent and contemporary secular practice. St. Benedict probably thought very little about the problem of authority, and it is even doubtful whether he was alive to the parallel between the authority of the abbot and the authority of the paterfamilias. He accepted the absolute abbot as he accepted many other elements of monastic tradition. Moreover, the secular government of his day was conceived in the same fashion. Therefore his institution would seem to his contemporaries natural and almost inevitable. And if abbot and monks were faithful to their ideals and lived up to the standard which St. Benedict requires of them, if the abbot were always such a wise and prudent ruler as the saint envisages, then certainly the system would be ideal. But, as in secular government, so here, it has been found that absolute authority is dangerous both for ruler and ruled. Benedictinism has in this point modified the Rule of its founder. The councils which St. Benedict prescribes now enjoy a legal status, and besides the consultative voice have also in important matters a right of veto.

The provisions of the Rule regarding the method of the abbot's appointment have given rise to much discussion, for they contain elements which seem strange to us in our more ordered times, when all is precisely regulated by long custom and definite law. It is quite clear, however, that St. Benedict expected the abbot to be chosen normally by the community and from among the community, as is now the standard practice. But this choice appears to fall short of a definitive election, for he provides for the case where the majority of a lax community might choose a too complaisant abbot, and in such a case he wishes the choice of the 'healthier' minority to prevail, by the intervention of external authority. He says expressly that if the community should even unanimously elect an unworthy abbot, he would wish the bishop of the diocese, or neighbouring abbots, or even devout layfolk to intervene to prevent such a consummation and to 'set a worthy steward over the house of God'. The history of the time—as revealed, for instance, in St. Gregory's correspondence—shows plainly that such a provision was not unnecessary. The lax monks of Vicovaro, who would have poisoned the saint when he tried to reform them, are not by any means a figment of the imagination.⁸

Besides the abbot, the chief officials of the monastery are the prior, deans, cellarer, novice-master, guest-master, infirmarian. St. Benedict would have them appointed by the abbot, and hold their authority in entire dependence on him. The chapter on the prior—an official whom St. Benedict does not care for—is instructive on this point. The saint speaks with vehemence of the evils that arise when the prior is appointed by external authority. Such a one is tempted to think himself the abbot's equal, for he has been appointed by the same authority, and there ensues a state of rivalry and dissension which is disastrous for the monastery. The saint is prepared to do without a prior altogether, and to entrust the subordinate governance of the monastery to deans. These decani had charge of ten monks each, over whom they were to exercise constant supervision under the general control of the abbot. The cellarer—to whom also a whole chapter is devoted—has charge of the material side of the monastery life. St. Benedict requires much of him. 'As cellarer of the monastery let there be chosen out of the community a man who is prudent, of mature character, temperate, not a great eater, not proud, not headstrong, not rough-spoken, not lazy, not wasteful, but a God-fearing man who may be like a father to the whole community' (ch. 31). He has to be a prudent manager, but also a kindly, affable man, whose ministration shall be acceptable to his brethren. And he must ever keep a religious sense of his responsibility. So too with regard to the other officials, St. Benedict requires such character and qualities as shall enable them to fulfil their duties to the corporal and spiritual benefit of those under their charge.

After the constitution of the monastery and careful provision for its administration, it is important to consider the sanctions with which the legislator supports his legal structure. The Rule is quite full and explicit on this point, devoting as many as twelve chapters to the subject of faults against the monastic discipline and their punishment, besides incidental references to the 'discipline of the Rule'. St. Benedict recognizes two main divisions of faults, slight and grave. The second class admits of degrees, running from the faults which submit to treatment up to those which resist all efforts to amend them and are to be cured only by expulsion from the community. We may classify the penalties recognized by St. Benedict as of three kinds, verbal rebuke, corporal punishment, spiritual punishment, with the fourth and extreme measure of expulsion. Verbal rebuke will be the natural preliminary in every case; in most cases it will perhaps suffice, and St. Benedict provides for its threefold application before sterner measures are called into play. Corporal punishment, under which we may include everything from small acts of humiliation to actual bodily stripes, operates throughout the whole range of faults, for its severer forms may be the only way of influencing those upon whom spiritual penalties have no effect. Spiritual punishment is excommunication, that is to say isolation from the life of the community in its common exercises. It may operate in the refectory only, or both in refectory and in oratory. This penalty comes into effect when rebuke has failed and when the offender is amenable to spiritual punishment. Its milder form, excommunication from the common meal, is the penalty for lighter faults, the double excommunication being reserved for grave offences. When all these measures have failed, St. Benedict bids the abbot resort to prayer—'his own prayers and those of all the brethren, that God, who can do all things, may effect the cure of the sick brother'. But if prayer too fails, then the abbot must use the 'knife of amputation' and expel the refractory brother 'lest one diseased sheep contaminate the whole flock'. Boys are to have special treatment, the normal punishments for them being fasting and the rod.

It would probably be a mistake to infer, from the prominence given in the Rule to this subject of the punishment of faults, that offences against the monastic discipline were very numerous and that the abbot and his officials were continually occupied in the business of correction. It is true that characters were ruder then and that Christianity and civilization have combined to produce an improvement in social behaviour, perhaps not without some loss of native vigour and spontaneity. There may have been some barbarians in the community at Monte Cassino. But we should remember at the same time that the faults dealt with are offences against monastic discipline, various degrees of disobedience to the law of the monastery, not offences against the law of God, except indirectly. The punishments prescribed are the natural safeguard of the monastic community, if it would preserve itself from dissolution. Therefore we find that St. Benedict is constantly severe on grumblers—he will not have 'murmuring' at any price—and that the worst offender, for whom expulsion is decreed, is one in whom disobedience has passed into absolute and obstinate mutiny.

In the first sentence of the Rule the saint speaks of obedience; to obedience he devotes a whole chapter; it is frequently referred to elsewhere; it is part of the vow taken by the novice; it is to be exercised in an heroic degree. There is no mistaking his meaning. He conceived the monk's life as the service of God by obedience to the monastic rule. The monk has to see God's will in the ordinances of his superiors. He has to realize the absolute surrender that is expressed in Our Lord's words: 'I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.' By this surrender and only so shall he achieve sanctity. Such surrender, it may be, is uncongenial to modern notions of the autonomy of the individual, but objection to it is generally based on a fundamental misunderstanding. It must be remembered that it is an obedience freely chosen and accepted, and further, that it is exercised within the ambit of a well-defined spiritual system, and as a means towards a definite spiritual end. It is an instrument which the individual elects to use, not for the destruction of his individual liberty, but for its strengthening, for the development of his spiritual life to a point that it would otherwise be unable to attain.

In fact, the purpose of all the ordinances of the Rule is the same, the purification of the soul and the development of its true life. The monk's aim is spiritual perfection. To this prayer and work, obedience, silence, fasting and every element of the monastic code are directed. Of prayer and work sufficient has been said already. Of silence it need only be said that St. Benedict does not seek to impose it in an absolute manner but allows some social intercourse. Of fasting, while recognizing the undoubted austerity of St. Benedict's regime, we may point out that, judged by the standard of contemporary monastic tradition, it is moderate. His regulations as to the normal allowance of food and drink are again austere in our eyes, but generous even to the point of laxity when judged by Eastern standards. A sentence that occurs in the chapter on the measure of drink deserves to be quoted as displaying the prudence and discretion of the saint, and also what seems like gentle himour: 'We do indeed read', he says, referring to the Book of the Sayings of Eastern monks, 'that wine is no drink for monks; but, since, nowadays monks cannot be persuaded of this, let us at least agree upon this, that we drink temperately and not to satiety' (ch. 40). And he allows his disciples a sufficient daily measure of wine.

The last considerable section of the Rule to claim attention may be said to be the first in order of historical incidence, the section, that is, which deals with the conditions and method of admittance into the monastic community. Four chapters (58-61) deal severally with four classes of postulants: the 58th with the ordinary applicant, the 59th with oblates, the 60th with priests, the 61st with monks. The last two, if they are granted admittance, receive it on simple terms: they accept the life and promise stability in it. The oblates are young boys who are not of an age to make their own profession; they are offered by their parents and this offering is regarded as a valid contract. The custom was common and ordinary then, but it has long fallen into desuetude. There remains the main class of ordinary adult postulants.

Their trial begins at the very gate of the monastery. We read in the life of Paul the Simple that St. Antony kept him waiting several days outside the door of his cell in order to test his resolution. In the same way St. Benedict ordains that no easy admittance shall be granted to the postulant. 'If such a one, therefore, persevere in his knocking, and if it be seen after four or five days that he bears patiently his harsh treatment and the difficulty of admission and persists in his petition, then let admittance be granted to him.' After a few days in the guest-house he enters the novitiate and is put under the care of the novice-master, a senior monk 'skilled in winning souls', who is to 'watch over him with the utmost care and to consider anxiously whether he truly seeks God, and is zealous for the Work of God, for obedience and for humiliations'. The difficulties, the dura et aspera, of the monastic life have to be put plainly before him. For twelve months his trial continues, and the Rule is formally read to him three times during this period with the monition: 'Behold the law under which you wish to serve; if you can observe it, enter; if you cannot, freely depart.' If he persevere to the end, then he shall be received into the community; but he is told that it is 'decreed by the law of the Rule that he is no longer free to leave the monastery or to withdraw his neck from under the yoke of the Rule, which it was open to him, during that prolonged deliberation, either to refuse or to accept'. Then St. Benedict proceeds to arrange the ceremony of the profession. The novice has to make a public avowal of his purpose, in the oratory before the community. He makes a formal promise of stability, discipline of life, and obedience. This promise is not oral only; the monk must present a document embodying his promise and, having signed it, place it upon the altar. Then with his brethren he chants three times the sacrificial words of the psalm: Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam: et non confundas me ab exspectatione mea (Ps. cxviii, 16). Finally he begs the prayers of all, and thenceforward is reckoned as a member of the community.

This solemn ceremony, so carefully conceived both spiritually and juridically, with the preliminary year of prudent trial, shows the master-hand, the wisdom and spiritual insight of the Roman and the saint. It has remained through all the centuries the form of the Benedictine initiation, and has served as a type for many subsequent religious foundations. In one respect only has it suffered substantial modification: the Benedictine does not now take perpetual vows until he has spent four years of life in the monastery, one as a novice and three under temporary vows. The vows themselves deserve special notice.

St. Benedict's ritual for the profession ceremony distinguishes between the novice's verbal promise and the formal document which embodied that promise. At the present day—and such has been the practice for centuries—this document is itself the formula of the vows and the novice pronounces his vows by reciting it. But that was not the ancient practice; there were two distinct things, a short formula of the vows used by the novice and the longer petition embodying the same vows. Moreover, the manner in which the novice makes his promise has changed. Since the eighth century that promise has been made in the form of a direct statement of the vows: 'I promise stability, etc.' But this was probably not the method of the sixth century. Abbot Herwegen⁹ has shown good reason for the view that the earliest form of profession followed the method of that standard contract in the Roman law, the stipulatio. This was a contract made by oral question and answer according to fixed verbal forms. (There is a good example of its method in the ritual for Baptism.) Now there is an ancient ritual for the Benedictine profession which is conceived in this manner. It is found in a ninth-century manuscript which derives from the diocese of Albi, and it was in that diocese that the first Benedictine monastery of Gaul was founded, at Altaripa. Traube¹⁰ prints a letter which the founder of the monastery, by name Venerandus, sent to the bishop of Albi about the year 625 along with a copy of the Rule of 'Saint Benedict, Roman abbot' (sancti Benedicti abbatis Romensis), bidding him see that the monks of Altaripa followed that Rule without the least deviation. It cannot now be proved that the ritual of which we are speaking goes back to the foundation of Altaripa and the early seventh century, but the supposition is very plausible, both from the use of the ancient technique of the stipulatio and from the occurrence of the word conversatio in the correct primitive form. Leaving out eight words which Abbot Herwegen regards as a characteristic Frankish addition to the Roman simplicity of the original, we here give this profession ritual:

Suscipiendus in oratorio frater coram omnibus sic interrogatur: Promittis de stabilitate tua et conversatione morum tuorum et obedientia coram Deo et sanctis ejus?

Ipse novitius respondeat sic: Promitto.

Credis ut, si aliquando aliter feceris, a Domino putas te damnandum quem irrides?

Et ipse respondeat: Credo.

However, this form of profession went out of use at a very early date and the Benedictine has since recited his vows in the form of a direct statement. Following the text of the Rule he vows 'stability, conversion of life" and obedience'. By the promise of stability he binds himself to permanence in the community of his profession. St. Benedict was keenly alive to the value of stability, which had been impressed upon him by the spectacle of the loose lives led by the roving monks of his time, the Gyrovagues, whom he castigates in his first chapter. He therefore exacts a precise promise of stability from his monks and from stranger monks or priests who wish to join his community. They shall promise to abide steadfastly in the monastery until death. Such was his meaning. In modem Benedictine practice stability in the monastery is generally extended to stability in the community and sometimes even to stability in the congregation. The effect is that a monk, though normally living in the actual monastery in which he pronounces his vows, may dwell in a dependency of that monastery or even in another monastery of the same congregation.

The second vow, of conversion of life, is a very general one. We propose to discuss it fully in the next chapter. For the present it will be sufficient to say that the monk in taking it promises to discipline his life according to the monastic programme. It is the most comprehensive of the three vows. Stability and obedience are particular conditions of the cenobitic life as St. Benedict conceived and regulated it; the second vow embraces the whole complex of the precepts and counsels which are involved in the profession of the monastic life.

The third vow, of obedience, like the first, emphasizes an element which St. Benedict regarded as essential to his monastic institute, but which had not always been considered necessary to the monk. The hermit has no occasion to exercise obedience, and the depraved Sarabaite will have none of it. 'Their law is their own good pleasure: whatever they think of or choose to do, that they call holy; what they like not, that they regard as unlawful.' Thus it may be said that stability and obedience represent St. Benedict's criticism of contemporary monachism and are his reaction against its chief faults. They are to be characteristic of his cenobitical institute, to form the differentia distinguishing it from other forms of monachism and from degradations of monachism. On the other hand, the vow of conversion of life is the general monastic vow.

Notes

¹ That is, for the reader who has Latin. There are several English versions, but I do not know of one that takes account of the latest textual work. I have ventured to make such a version which will be published immediately by Stanbrook Abbey (Worcester).

² Traube died in 1907 before he could issue the second edition of his book. The editor of that edition (Plenkers) has no doubt but that Traube would have brought his work to even greater perfection in a new edition, 'doch dessen hat uns der unerbittliche Tod beraubt'.

³ It is Abbot Chapman's striking thesis that St. Benedict wrote his Rule at the instance of Pope Hormisdas (514-23) to provide a single, clear code for Western monachism. It is a very attractive thesis. He is able to point out very justly that codification was then the order of the day; he shows reason to believe that St. Benedict's phraseology copies the style of the canons; he is right in maintaining that the Rule is a well-ordered code of monastic law and was designed for use in other monasteries. On the other hand, any positive evidence for the thesis is lacking, and the actual history of the slow diffusion of the Rule would seem to conflict with it. It may be, too, that it is something of an anachronism to suppose that the conception of a unitary monachism was then present to the minds of monks or Pope. Certainly Rome attempted no general regulation of the institute until long afterwards. However, the age of Hormisdas is separated as by a gulf from the period which follows. The disastrous Gothic War baulked many projects and interrupted the continuity of ecclesiastical life and culture in Italy in the most decisive fashion. I hesitate, therefore, to dismiss the thesis as no more than a brilliant fancy.

⁴ See Morin: S. Caesarii Arelatensis Episcopi Regula Sanctarum Virginum (Bonn, 1933), p. 2. Abbot Chapman required an early date for his chief thesis.

⁵Historia Langobardorum, IV, 17.

⁶Regulae S. Benedicti traditio codicum manu scriptorum Casinensium (Monte Cassino, 1900).

⁷ Much was written in the years 1929-31 about a short, anonymous rule which has been generally known as the 'Second Rule of St. Augustine' (Migne, P.L., XXXII, 1499-52) but of which the more correct title is 'Of the Order of the Monastery' (De Ordine Monasterii). Dom Lambot first directed attention to it in the Revue Liturgique et Monastique (XIV, 1929, pp. 331-57), describing it as a precursor of the Benedictine Rule. It had not previously attracted much notice, and Abbot Chapman dismisses it as an 'abstract of St. Benedict'. Dom Donatien De Bruyne pursued Dom Lambot's work in the Revue Bénédictine (XLII, 1930, pp. 316-42), giving an accurate text of the De Ordine Monasterii and arguing vigorously for the opinion that it was St. Benedict's first Rule, written by him at Subiaco. The discussion would appear to have been settled decisively by Dom Germain Morin in the same review (XLIII, 1931, pp. 145-52). He puts the document well before St. Benedict, about the year 440, and believes that it was composed in southern Italy under African (Augustinian) influence. He suggests as a possible author an exiled African bishop, by name Gaudiosus, who founded a monastery at Naples about the year 440. The document is of great interest in regard to the monachism of Cassiodorus (see Chapter XII) for in its true text (the Migne text is faulty) it shows the same liturgical horarium as was used by Cassiodorus.

⁸ See the letter of Venerandus (p. 231) for an illustration of the jurisdiction which the Rule expects the bishop to exercise in a monastery. The community normally chooses, the bishop always appoints the abbot. This is implied in St. Benedict's words about the prior.

⁹Geschichte der benediktinischen Professformel (1912), pp. 38-9.

¹⁰Textgeschichte der Regula S. Benedicti (1910), p. 88.

¹¹ The form conversio morum is still in use and we translate that.