SOURCE: A preface to The Rule of Saint Benedict, edited and translated by Justin McCann, The Newman Press, 1952, pp. vii-xxiv.

[In the following excerpt from his preface to The Rule of Saint Benedict, McCann recounts the early history of the Rule and discusses issues surrounding its language and textual history.]

Saint Benedict lived and worked in central Italy in the first half of the sixth century, the approximate date of his death being A.D. 547. His life began and ended with periods of devastating war, during which Italy was gravely disorganized; but at its centre, under the masterful rule of Theodoric (493-526), it knew some thirty years of peace. Yet this period too, though free from the alarms and excursions of war, was not one in which the arts of peace flourished greatly, so that we cannot be surprised that the slender chronicles of the time contain no record of the Saint's life and work. It is not until nearly fifty years after his death that we have any record of him, i.e. until the year 594 and the Dialogues of Pope St Gregory the Great. However, this record, when it came, was certainly an appreciative one, and it contains an item which is of particular interest and value to an editor of the Holy Rule. Here is the important piece of information that St Gregory gives his deacon:

I should like, Peter, to tell you much more about this venerable abbot; but I purposely pass over some of his deeds, for I hasten to get on to the lives of others. Yet I would not have you ignorant of this, that Benedict was eminent, not only for the many miracles that made him famous, but also for his teaching. In fact, he wrote a Rule for Monks, which is of conspicuous discretion and is written in a lucid style. If anyone wishes to know Benedict's character and life more precisely, he may find a complete account of his principles and practice in the ordinances of that Rule; for the Saint cannot have taught otherwise than as he lived (11 36).

Such is the testimony of the greatest of all the disciples of the Rule, who introduced it into that monastery of his whence came the apostles of the English people, who commended it regularly in his letters, and whose advocacy it was that set the Rule upon the career which resulted in its becoming the monastic code of Western Europe.

1. Date of Composition of the Rule

When did St Benedict compose his Rule? He would have felt the need of some code of law from the very beginning, as soon as he had accepted the task of organizing community life, that is to say, at Subiaco and in the earliest years of the sixth century. It is necessary to suppose, for instance, that his first communities had a definite horarium for the Divine Office, for study, and for manual work, that they had officials and a discipline of punishments for breaches of monastic rule, etc. It is probable, therefore, that the corresponding chapters of the Rule were established, at least in substance, as early as this. In fact, it seems very reasonable to suppose that St Benedict composed his Rule, so to say, "as he went along", adding from year to year the conclusions suggested by experience and by his monastic reading, and in this gradual way constructing finally a complete code of monastic observance. The Rule itself contains various indications which support such a theory of progressive composition. Although there is, of course, a fundamental continuity of subject-matter, yet there are not a few chapters which occur in a somewhat haphazard fashion and according to no easily recognizable plan. In contrast with these are several compact groups of chapters, held together in so close and self-contained a manner by their unity of subject, as to suggest strongly that they had previously enjoyed an independent existence. The chief groups of this sort are the eight chapters on faults and their punishment (the Strajkodex, as the Germans call it) and the eleven chapters which determine the substance and ritual of the Divine Office. This latter group of chapters is noteworthy for the abundance of its "vulgarisms", i.e. the forms and usages of popular Latin, a circumstance which would persuade us—a thing otherwise likely—that it is the most primitive portion of the Rule. Opposed to these compact groups are the numerous chapters which occur in an accidental fashion and have in some cases the air of postscripts or supplements. There is a postscript of this sort in connexion with the important matter of the abbot and his necessary qualities. The topic is dealt with professedly in the second chapter, but is resumed and supplemented, towards the end of the Rule, in the sixty-fourth. There is a specially interesting indication in the sixty-sixth chapter, which ends with a sentence that is plainly a terminal one, marking the final point of one draft of the Rule. Then there came a second draft, with seven additional chapters. And so the work was completed. We may guess that this consummation was reached towards the end of the Saint's life, perhaps in the decade 530-40. And then the Rule left St Benedict's hands to be launched sooner or later upon the world of western monachism. It was welcomed, for western monachism needed just such a Rule. It may perhaps be construed as a proof of the sincerity of the welcome that it took the form, at a very early date, of a comprehensive revision of the Rule's latinity.

2. The Latinity of the Rule

St Benedict's Rule is a Late Latin document. When the Saint wrote it, it was six centuries from Cicero's day, and during those six centuries the Latin spoken by the people of Italy had suffered inevitable changes. Even in the classical period there had been a distinction between literary Latin and the Latin of everyday use, a distinction that was naturally much greater among the uneducated populace. By the time of St Benedict the language of the people of Italy—Vulgar Latin, as it is called—differed widely in vocabulary, grammar, and syntax from Classical Latin. So strong and general was this linguistic movement that it did not stop with the speech of the people but exerted its influence upon the writers of the period, an influence which can be traced quite clearly in the ancient versions of the Scriptures and in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Even such a practised latinist as St Augustine—not in his formal treatises but in his popular sermons—employs forms and constructions which derive from Vulgar Latin. It was a further step when writers who were addressing themselves to a practical purpose and were not concerned to study literary correctness, admitted not merely the sporadic influence of Vulgar Latin but a generous measure of its characteristic usages. St Benedict was one of those who took that step.

It is not that he was unacquainted with that more regular Latin which is employed by those Fathers of the Church who were his constant reading. There are, indeed, tracts of his Rule in which he writes just such a Latin. Yet it would seem certain that both he himself and his disciples were more at home with the Vulgar Latin of their time. When St Gregory the Great is describing the Saint's flight from the world, he speaks of him as "knowingly ignorant and wisely unlearned". He had, in fact, abruptly broken off his schooling, and we may fairly read into those words a graceful apology for the Saint's lack of a full literary training. So, although in the Prologue and in his doctrinal chapters generally he uses a Latin which has only a small admixture of "vulgarisms", there are other chapters—and especially the chapters that regulate the Divine Office—in which these vulgarisms abound.

The Latin of the Rule is, in fact, not a rigidly self-consistent Latin, of uniform texture throughout, but a Latin which, so to say, oscillates between Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin. But that, again, is characteristic of the documents of Late Latin.… St Benedict wrote largely in the transitional Latin of his day; six centuries further on and he would doubtless have written in something like modem Italian. We do not condemn and outlaw Italian as nothing more than a corruption of Classical Latin; have we much better right to condemn Late Latin? A classical reader will inevitably not be entirely comfortable with St Benedict's Latin; but I should like to persuade him that Late Latin has an interest and value of its own. If it be too much to expect him to join the philologists and venerate the Rule precisely for its latinity, he may be asked to abstain from too severe reprobation.

It has been said already that the Rule, when launched upon the world, was welcomed and yet suffered a revision of its latinity. In some relatively more cultured circle, perhaps of monastic Gaul, the Latin of the Rule was taken in hand, revised and amended, and a text produced which had a very wide Vogue. Thus, almost at the beginning of its history, the text-tradition of the Rule was split into two. The most ancient manuscripts bear unmistakable witness to this phenomenon of the Great Divide. Henceforth there were two quite distinct texts which are known as (1) the pure or authentic text; (2) the interpolated or revised text. I propose now to speak successively of these two texts.

3. The Authentic Text

The seventh century saw the propagation of Benedictine monachism in the countries of Westem Europe, a movement which gained rapidly in momentum until there existed innumerable monasteries following the Rule of St Benedict. For the service of these monasteries there were made many copies of the Rule, so that there is scarcely any ancient text—the Scriptures apart—which is represented by such an abundance of manuscripts. From an early date there was formed a sort of vulgate of the Rule, a generally received text, and from the tenth century down to quite recent times this Vulgate Text dominated the monastic scene, being everywhere received without question as the true text.

The first editor to give the text of the Rule a full examination in the light of the most ancient manuscripts was Dom Edmund Schmidt of the Abbey of Metten.¹ His examination led him to the discovery that the most ancient manuscripts fell into two distinct classes: that in more than two hundred places one group of manuscripts agreed upon one and the same reading, while the other group with similar unanimity agreed upon a different reading. He discovered, in fact, the phenomenon which we have called the Great Divide. His explanation of this phenomenon was that St Benedict himself had issued two editions of his Rule. He recognized that the text which is characterized by vulgar forms and usages was the better text and regarded it as the second edition; but he was disposed to attribute the vulgarisms partly to the copyists. In his manual edition of 1892—of which I have a copy before me—he removes most of these vulgarisms from his text.

A later, and most important, critical student of the text was the palaeographer, Ludwig Traube (d. 1907). Building upon Dom Schmidt's work but carrying through a more searching investigation, he interpreted the relation of the two texts in an altogether different fashion. Dom Schmidt was right in giving the preference to the text characterized by vulgarisms, but wrong in regarding these vulgarisms as interpolations; they were from St Benedict's hand. He was wrong also in conceiving the other text as St Benedict's "first edition". This was the text where the interpolator had been at work. It was a revised and amended text; it was made at a very early date, perhaps as early as the end of St Benedict's century; but it was definitely none of his work. These conclusions of Traube's, based upon a careful confrontation of twenty-five crucial passages, have won general acceptance among scholars.²

For our earliest witness to the authentic text we have to go, not to manuscripts of the Rule itself, but to the Regula Magistri, and to the early commentators, Abbot Smaragdus of St Mihiel and Paul the Deacon of Monte Cassino (both c.800). The earliest extant manuscript of this text is of about the year 820 and is the famous "Sangallensis 914". Alongside Sangallensis are "sister" manuscripts, of like origin and approximately the same date, one at Vienna, two at Munich, one (if not more) at Monte Cassino.³

Paul the Deacon tells us, in his History of the Lombards (IV 17), that when Monte Cassino was sacked by those invaders (c.580) and the monks fled to Rome, they took with them "the book of the holy rule which the aforesaid father had written", by which Paul means St Benedict's autograph. When he comes to record the eighth-century restoration of Monte Cassino, he tells us that Pope Zachary presented to Abbot Petronax "the rule which the blessed father Benedict wrote with his own holy hands" (VI 40). In the year 787 Paul was instrumental in sending to the Emperor Charlemagne, at the latter's request, an exact copy of the Rule, which he describes (in the covering letter) as having been made "from the very codex which Benedict wrote with his own holy hands".

It cannot be maintained with absolute confidence that Paul the Deacon was right in his belief that Monte Cassino possessed in his time St Benedict's autograph; the possibilities of error in this matter are too many. It would appear safer to regard the Monte Cassino copy as no more than an ancient and important manuscript of the Rule. It was the exemplar from which was made Charlemagne's copy (kept at Aachen), and the latter copy (now lost) was the exemplar of Sangallensis 914 and of its sister manuscripts. Among these copies of the Aachen exemplar Sangallensis stands out from the rest for its completeness and for the care taken by its scribes to make their transcript accurate. So, in Sangallensis and its fellows, we have a small group of ninth-century manuscripts which testify to the Authentic Text. It is upon the witness of these manuscripts that the modern editors rely in order to construct their presentation of that text.

4. The Revised Text

At a very early date there appeared in the West a text of the Rule in which St Benedict's latinity had been revised and corrected. Our earliest witness to the existence of this Revised Text is the Regula Donati, a rule for nuns composed in the middle of the seventh century which embodies some portions of St Benedict's Rule. Our earliest manuscript of the same text is Oxoniensis, the most ancient of all extant MSS. of the Rule, written in England about the year 700. This revised edition obtained so wide a Vogule as practically to supplant the original text in general monastic usage. I have already offered an explanation of the revision and have suggested that the work was perhaps done in Gaul. On the whole it was not done badly; but—as will appear in the Notes—there were some mistakes made, both of omission and of commission.

Yet we should beware of dismissing the Revised Text as of no value. For the Authentic Text—apart from external witnesses—we have a series of manuscripts which derive for the most part from the Aachen exemplar. (It is a matter of dispute whether the important Cassinese manuscript "K" derives from the same source or is an independent witness.) Much turns, therefore, on the accuracy of that exemplar. Scholars are prepared to admit that the Cassinese scribe who copied it may have had difficulty in reading, and may in places have misread, the ancient manuscript from which he made his copy. And all scribes are fallible. So we may not treat Sangallensis and its fellow-copies of the Aachen exemplar as infallibly right. But, in the Revised Text, despite its revised character, we have an ancient witness to an independent tradition of the text. It is at least possible that this witness may on occasion be able to give us valuable assistance.

The Revised Text, as it appears in the earliest manuscripts, has about it a uniformity and consistency which have persuaded scholars that the revision was a single effort and perhaps the work of a single hand. On the basis of some verses that appear in certain ancient manuscripts, Traube argued that the work was done by Simplicius, third abbot of Monte Cassino, a view which has failed to win acceptance. The interesting suggestion has been advanced that the English St Benet Biscop was the author of the revision. But, although the Venerable Bede portrays St Benet Biscop as a lover of books and an assiduous collector of monastic customs, he is far from portraying him as a scholar or attributing to him any literary activity. However, the suggestion may perhaps be accepted as indicating a likely locality for the revision. St Benet Biscop learnt his monachism in the great monastic centre of Lérins, and it is in just such a centre that the work may very well have been done.⁴

Tatto and Grimalt, monks of Reichenau, who copying the Aachen exemplar produced Sangallensis, besides taking infinite pains to make their copy exact, went to the trouble also of reporting the readings of what they called the "modem masters". In these notes of theirs we have many, though not all, of the characteristic readings of the Revised Text; and we have some readings of later date than the original revision.…

5. The Vulgate Text

Charlemagne had hoped, by means of the Aachen exemplar, to provide the monasteries of his empire with a single, and absolutely authentic text of the Holy Rule. The hope was not, in fact, fulfilled, for the reason that Vulgar Latin was little at home in transalpine regions. In the Germanic countries, it had no sort of appeal; in Gaul—and in Spain also—the people were engaged in developing Latin on lines of their own. Nevertheless, the dissemination of copies of the Authentic Text did have some effect. The Revised Text, hitherto everywhere current, was in some degree corrected by means of it, so that from the tenth century onwards the monastic world is found to be agreed upon a uniform text of the Rule which may be described as a mixture of the Authentic and Revised texts with some "improvements" of its own. And so, with the production of this Vulgate Text (otherwise known as the Textus Receptus), the development terminated. Down to quite recent times, this Vulgate occupied the field unchallenged. If any reader should desire to consult it, he may find it in Abbot Delatte's excellent modern Commentary on the Rule (Eng. trans. 1921, 1950).

6. Modern Editions of the Rule

The first modern editor to make use of the critical work that has been mentioned was Abbot Cuthbert Butler (Downside, d. 1934) in his Editio critico-practica (1912; 2nd, fully-revised, edition 1927; re-impression 1936).

As indicated by the title, and announced in the Proem, the text is one that has been considerably emended, in order to make it more suitable for use in choir. When this emendation consists only in the removal of vulgarisms and their replacement by correct forms, the editor does not consider it necessary to say anything more about it, so that there are chapters where one may walk unawares over a good deal of "made ground". However, for textual matters of greater importance, there are footnotes to the text and (at the end) twenty-two pages of Lectiones Selectae. A very valuable, and largely original, aspect of Abbot Butler's edition is his comprehensive indication of St Benedict's sources. Limitations of space having compelled me to forgo any similar indication, I would ask leave to refer the interested reader to the editions of Abbot Butler and Dom Linderbauer.

The second modern editor of the Rule, Dom Benno Linderbauer (Metten, d. 1928), published at Bonn a few months before his death his S. Benedicti Regula Monasteriorum, which, though not yet the perfect edition that scholars hope for, is certainly a very useful one. Dom Linderbauer reproduces the Authentic Text with great fidelity and furnishes his text with a convenient apparatus criticus. This apparatus might with benefit have been fuller, yet is of great value. But this book is not his only service to the Rule. Six years previously he published a text accompanied by an elaborate philological commentary, based upon a comprehensive study of Late Latin and its literary remains. This is his S. Benedicti Regula Monachorum herausgegeben undphilologisch erklärt (Metten, 1922). I had better say at this point that I have used this valuable book assiduously, so that my translation and notes are constantly indebted to Dom Linderbauer's expert knowledge of Late Latin usage.

There have been two recent editions of the Rule, neither of which is based upon a fresh survey of the manuscript evidence. The edition of Dom Gregory Arroyo (Silos, 1947) is content to reprint Abbot Butler's text. The other edition (Maredsous, 1946) is by Dom Philibert Schmitz, who agrees closely with Dom Linderbauer but differs from him in this, that he removes the vulgarisms to his footnotes, replacing them by easier readings. The resulting text is an admirably practical one.

7. The Rule of the Master

I may be expected to say something in this Preface about a debate affecting the Rule which has been carried on since the year 1938 and is still continuing.⁵ The debate revolves around an anonymous monastic rule, of uncertain date, which goes by the name of Regula Magistri, "The Rule of the Master". (There is a convenient text in Migne, P.L. 88; but a new edition from the manuscripts is much needed.) These are the rival positions of the parties to the debate:

1. The Regula Magistri is prior to St Benedict's Rule and is its source.
2. The Regula Magistri is posterior to St Benedict's Rule, from which it has borrowed freely.

The Regula Magistri gets its current title from the literary technique adopted by its author. His chapter-titles regularly ask a question and the exposition which follows is presented as "the Lord's answer through the Master": Respondet Dominus per Magistrum. (Dom Cappuyns shows reason for the belief that the true title of this rule is Regula Sanctorum Patrum.) The Rule is nearly three times as long as St Benedict's; but the crucial point is this, that very nearly the whole of St Benedict's Rule is embodied in it, either in verbal transcript or by paraphrase and allusion. Every part of the Rule is clearly represented save the last seven chapters.

It is only in the last few years, i.e. since 1938, that much notice has been taken of the Regula Magistri or much importance attached to it. Before 1938 it was common form among scholars—from the seventeenth-century Maurists to Linderbauer—to dismiss it as a somewhat crude paraphrase of St Benedict's Rule. The Maurist editor (Dom Hugh Menard), noticing the passages borrowed by the author from St Benedict, finds that they contrast strikingly with the "rude and scabrous style" of the remainder of the document. Having studied the Regula Magistri a good deal, and having subjected parts of it to the test of translation, I have much sympathy with this judgement. The Master commands, and appears to enjoy displaying, an extensive vocabulary, which includes many unusual words of a semi-barbarous character. This circumstance alone makes him difficult to read; but his syntax often increases the difficulty. And then there is the distinct oddity of many of his regulations.

As has been said already, this debate is not yet concluded. Although, for myself, I believe that the Master's Rule is the work of a later writer, working upon the text of the Regula Monachorum, yet I do not wish to press this view upon my readers. What I should like to do is to persuade them that in any case—whatever be the issue of the debate—the Master's Rule has in regard of St Benedict's a twofold value: (1) When the exact relationship of the two Rules to each other has been determined, new light may be thrown upon the early history of St Benedict's Rule; (2) and, even now, before that relationship has been determined, the Master's Rule cannot fail to assist us in the interpretation of St Benedict's. I conceive, in fact, that it may be mobilized for our benefit and employed to illustrate and explain some passages of the Benedictine Rule.

Notes

¹Regula S. Benedicti juxta antiquissimos codices cognita, Metten, 1880.

² Traube's decisive work was done in his Textgeschichte der Regula S. Benedicti, Munich, 1898. There was a second edition in 1910, edited by Plenkers.

³ An accurate edition of Sangallensis 914, with a careful collation of many Cassinese MSS., was published in 1900 under the title: Regulae S. Benedicti traditio codicum Casinensium a praestantissimo teste usque repetita, codice Sangallensi 914. This book was predominantly the work of that accomplished scholar, Dom Germain Morin. I have used it much and found it of the greatest service.

⁴ Early in the seventh century the monks of St Columbanus (at Luxeuil and elsewhere) began to make use of St Benedict's Rule. It is possible that we owe the revision to them.

⁵ The debate originated in the researches of a French Benedictine, Dom A. Genestout, engaged upon a new edition of the Rule. It has aroused much interest and produced a large crop of articles in various continental Reviews. Among the best of these are the contributions of Abbot Bernard Capelle of Mont César (Louvain). Of great interest are two recent contributions by monks of the same abbey: Dom M. Cappuyns and Dom F. Vandenbroucke. These essays maintain the view that the author of the Regula Magistri is none other than Cassiodorus, St Benedict's contemporary, and that Cassiodorus based his work upon a primitive text of the Holy Rule. The present writer entered the lists in 1939 and 1940, with two articles in the Downside Review. He has recently surveyed the problem and its significance with an article in the Ampleforth Journal for May 1950. Part of what is said here is taken from that article. If any reader should desire to have a bibliography of the debate, I would refer him to Dom Cappuyns's article (already mentioned) in the Mont César periodical Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale, xv, 1948, pp. 209-68. In a footnote at the beginning, there is an alphabetical list of every contribution to the debate from its beginning down to the middle of 1948. Since that date there have been further items. Of these I mention only: Dom P. Blanchard, "La Règle du Maître et la Règle de Saint Benoît", Revue Bénédictine, 1950, pp. 25-64. It is the conclusion of this closely-reasoned essay that the Rule of the Master belongs to the middle of the seventh century and was probably compiled at Bobbio.