RB 1980- The Rule Of St Benedict

by Saint Benedict

  The best witness to this “autograph,” however, has been otherwise preserved. Fortunately, it was copied a century before its destruction. This came about because Charlemagne, on his visit to Montecassino in 787, had apparently seen the famous codex. The emperor was interested in obtaining authentic copies of texts, as he did in other instances, and he asked that an exact copy be made and sent to him. The letter from Theodomar, actually written by Paul the Deacon, is the covering letter sent with the manuscript, which was probably copied under the supervision of Paul. It repeats that the copy was made from the codex “which he [Benedict] wrote with his own holy hands.”47

  This copy sent to Aachen became the standard text of the Rule (Normalexemplar) for purposes of the Carolingian monastic reform, which involved adoption of the Rule of St. Benedict and observance of the statutes promulgated by Benedict of Aniane during the reign of Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, at the Synod of Aachen in 817. The abbot of Reichenau sent two of his monks, Grimalt and Tatto, to Aachen to be instructed in the principles of the reform at the royal monastery, probably around 820. At the request of their librarian, Reginbert, they made an exact copy of the normative codex kept at Aachen, as they explain in their letter to him: “It has been copied from that exemplar which was copied from the very codex that the blessed Father took care to write with his own sacred hands.”48 The copy the two monks made is thought to be the codex into which their letter is bound, the famous manuscript Sangallensis 914, or Codex A, the principal representative of the obsculta text.

  Grimalt and Tatto took their copy back to Reichenau with them. Tatto subsequently became abbot of Reichenau, and Grimalt became abbot of St. Gall in 840. It is believed, therefore, that Codex A, which is still at St. Gall and paleographically is of early ninth-century origin, was brought there by Grimalt when he became abbot. Others, however, believe that the copy remained at Reichenau and later perished, and that Sangallensis 914 is a copy of it that Grimalt had made for St. Gall.49

  In any case, Sangallensis 914 is only two, or at most three, steps removed from the Cassinese manuscript that Montecassino got from the Pope around 750 and that was then believed to be St. Benedict’s autograph. Internal evidence confirms this: it is in Carolingian script of the early ninth century, and Traube produced abundant evidence to support his contention that it contained the “pure” text, whereas the ausculta text, despite the greater antiquity of its witnesses, shows signs of extensive correction and normalization. Traube accordingly called it the “interpolated” text (commonly referred to as the “revised” text).

  The thesis of Traube that the obsculta text-type is the oldest and has the best claim to represent the original has won the assent of almost all subsequent scholars. Attempts to weaken the authority of Sangallensis 91450 have been refuted both by further paleographical studies and by philological analysis of the type of Latin the manuscript represents: it correctly preserves forms that were current in the sixth century but not acceptable in the ninth. The scribes were therefore faithful in copying what lay before them, even though it did not conform to their own tastes.51

  On the other hand, Traube’s historical reconstruction is open to more serious questioning, and in fact was never accepted in its entirety by everyone. Some of the steps in his reasoning are really surmises for which there is no clear historical evidence. It is by no means certain that the codex saved from the Lombard invasion was really the autograph, or that this manuscript was taken to Rome, or that it is identical with the one Pope Zachary sent to Petronax. The supposition that the Lateran monastery constituted a link between the community of Benedict and the Montecassino of the eighth century is only a conjecture that cannot be substantiated by any historical evidence. It is not mentioned by Paul the Deacon; it first appears with Leo of Ostia in the twelfth century. Some have also questioned the authenticity of the letter to Charlemagne, but there seems to be no compelling reason to deny this.52 The letter of Grimalt and Tatto also appears to be authentic, though it has been questioned whether the copy to which it refers is actually the manuscript in which it is now bound.53

  What is beyond any doubt is that Montecassino, in the eighth century, possessed a codex (the Urexemplar) that was believed to be the autograph and that was known to have come from Pope Zachary. We do not know where the papal library got it. If it was brought to Rome by the refugees from Cassino in the late sixth century, as has been conjectured but cannot be proved, this still does not mean that it was the autograph. But the codex must have been of early date and must have represented a text-tradition stemming from central Italy. We are certain that the St. Gall codex gives us a faithful image of the Urexemplar, for the chain of evidence that links it through Charlemagne’s Aachen copy is firm and direct; we can therefore reconstruct with reasonable assurance the text of Pope Zachary’s manuscript, allowing for some inevitable errors in copying. The same text-type can be recognized to some extent in other manuscripts of the Cassinese tradition, which must have descended from ancestors with a similar text, though much contamination from other traditions has occurred.

  The internal analysis of Sangallensis 914 shows that the type of text it represents has the best claim among all surviving witnesses to represent the earliest ascertainable form of the text; in a whole series of cases it can be shown convincingly that the reading of Sangallensis, supported by other codices of the same tradition, is authentic, while that of Oxoniensis and other representatives of the interpolated text is secondary. The marginal readings of Codex A, which present variants from other text traditions and were copied directly from the Aachen Normalexemplar, are almost certainly derived from the Italian Urexemplar and are most probably the work of Paul the Deacon. Moreover, linguistic analysis of the Latinity of Codex A has established that its language is that of sixth-century Italy, whereas the ausculta tradition is the result of normalization.54

  The critical editions of the twentieth century have followed Traube’s principles. First among them was that of Cuthbert Butler, monk and later abbot of Downside, which appeared in 1912.55 Because it was intended for practical use, Butler normalized the grammatical irregularities, but provided a text based on sound textual criticism and did valuable pioneer work in the investigation of the sources of the RB. Bruno Linderbauer, a monk of Metten, provided a more accurate text, accompanied by a philological commentary, in 1922,56 and added a fuller apparatus than Butler’s in a 1928 edition.57 Other useful Latin editions were published by Anselmo Lentini of Montecassino in 1947, with Italian translation and commentary;58 by Justin McCann of Ampleforth in 1952,59 with English translation and notes; and by Gregorio Penco of Finalpia in 1958, the first to indicate the RM parallels and include the readings of RM manuscripts in the apparatus, together with an Italian translation and a commentary on the common and parallel passages.60

  The task of preparing the definitive edition of the RB, which was to reconstruct the original text as well as trace the entire history of the text tradition, was entrusted by the Vienna Academy to Heribert Plenkers, a pupil of Traube’s. After thirty years of work, in which he came increasingly to see the complexity of the problems, Plenkers died in 1931 without completing it.61 Subsequently, in 1951, the assignment was undertaken by Rudolph Hanslik, who produced his Vienna Corpus edition in 1960.62 Hanslik collated some three hundred manuscripts and retained sixty-three for his edition. Though criticized for its methodology and its many errors63 (some of which have been corrected in the second edition of 1977), this edition contains the fullest apparatus so far assembled and provides excellent tools for study in its carefully constructed indices.

  The most recent edition is that of Jean Neufville of Pierre-qui-Vire, which appeared in 1972. This edition has limited the apparatus to the readings of codices A and O, with their corrections and marginal notations, but a separate volume provides the complete text of the three principal manuscripts of the RM and some twenty-five manuscripts of the RB for all of RB Prol. and chapters 1–7; for selected passages of RB 8–73, the text
from the same twenty-five manuscripts is given. The edition is the first to adopt the priority of the RM as a working principle for the establishment of the text. It is furnished with a French translation, notes and extensive commentary based on the same working hypothesis, all by Adalbert de Vogüé of Pierre-qui-Vire.64

  The definitive edition has not yet appeared, and no one today believes that it is imminent. Though it is relatively easy, thanks to the excellence of Codex A, to construct an accurate text (the texts of modern critical editions differ in relatively few places), the task of reconstructing the history of the text’s transmission is enormously complex. The abundance of the manuscript tradition and the amount of contamination that has taken place are almost unique. The origin of the interpolated or ausculta text remains a mystery. Do the manuscripts of this class, which have a short version of the Prologue, ending at verse 39, go back to a common archetype, as Traube thought, or did they result from gradual normalization and corruption in the course of transmission? Traube attributed this text-form to a recension made by Simplicius, the third abbot of Montecassino; Hanslik seeks its origins at Rome. In any case, the interpolated text was circulating at a very early date in the seventh century and probably began in Italy. The manuscript tradition has not yet been sufficiently studied to clarify this and other obscure points.

  In recent times a new objection has arisen to the pre-eminence given the obsculta text.65 In Codex E of the RM, the passage parallel to the RB’s Prologue 40-50 occurs at the end of chapter 1, on the kinds of monks. Now this happens to be the same section that is missing in the short form of the RB’s prologue, which occurs in the ausculta text-form. Those who believe that Codex E represents an early form of the RM have therefore seen this as a vestige of a primitive form of the Rule. Hence the ausculta text, with its short prologue, would have descended from a primitive state of the rule and would have priority over the obsculta or “pure” text, which would be the descendant of a later recension. This view does not attempt to destroy the value of the A-text as witness to the final redaction of the RB nor to contend that the O-text is superior to it, but would seek the origin of the O-text in an earlier recension, thereby proposing a new solution to the problem of the origin of the ausculta text—a solution that is in some ways a return to the position of Schmidt. This would of course involve a rehabilitation of some of the “interpolated” readings. The problem is also connected to the long-debated question whether there was an earlier recension of the RB that lacked chapters 67–73.

  The recent debate about the RB, therefore, has further increased the complexity of the problem of the textual transmission and made it clear that the time has not yet come for a definitive edition.

  A significant achievement in recent editions of the RB is the general agreement reached on the division of the text into verses. The chapter divisions, whether or not they go back to the author of the Rule, appear in all the manuscripts as far back as we can penetrate. The introduction of verse divisions analogous to those of the Bible, however, seems to date only from the seventeenth century, and no standard system was established until very recent times. In 1947 Anselmo Lentini’s edition of the RB included a verse division that he had carefully worked out on the basis of sound principles. An authority on the prose rhythm of the RB, Lentini used the natural rhythm of the clausulae as his principal criterion for versification, along with the meaning of the phrases, and the principle that more than one biblical citation should never be included in a single verse. His system was adopted in the Latin editions of Montserrat (1954; 19682),66 Penco (1958), Hanslik (1960), Steidle (1964; 19772),67 and Neufville-de Vogüé (1972), and in numerous vernacular editions. In his 1964 critical edition of the RM, de Vogüé provided an analogous versification of the RM based upon, and conforming to, Lentini’s division of the RB.

  This system is extraordinarily useful, especially for making references to particular passages, and it is fortunate that its adoption by the major critical editions has ensured its standardization and permanency. Anyone who has attempted to track down citations by page and line number of a particular edition (especially if it is an edition to which one does not have access!) will appreciate this contribution. It is also helpful in bringing out the rhythmic pattern of the text, thereby facilitating its public reading and enhancing its intelligibility. In view of these obvious advantages, it is astonishing that so far not a single English version of the RB, even those published in the past few years, has included the verse numbers. The present translation is the first to employ them in the English-speaking world.

  The first translation of the RB made in England, so far as we know, was produced by St. Ethelwold, one of the leaders of the tenth-century reform, at Abingdon about 960.68 The Anglo-Saxon text is preserved in a tenth-century bilingual codex of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, formerly at Bury St. Edmunds, in which the translation of each chapter is appended to the Latin text, as well as in other manuscripts, sometimes in interlinear form. Since the invention of printing, there have been countless English translations and editions. Until recently, however, the available editions were invariably translated from the textus receptus and are therefore full of incorrect readings. They were generally also done in an archaizing kind of “Bible English,” which often had all the defects of this kind of language with little of its beauty.

  Two modern translations have succeeded to some extent in producing a more contemporary English: one by Leonard Doyle, an American, published in 1948;69 the other by Basil Bolton of Ealing Abbey, London, in 1970.70 Both translated from Butler’s text. From a scholarly viewpoint, the most satisfactory text is the Latin-English edition by Justin McCann of Ampleforth in 1952; the introduction and notes are well-informed, though now somewhat dated, and the Latin text is constructed with an understanding of the textual problems, but the translation, while careful and intelligent, adopts an archaism that is stultifying. As noted above, none of these editions contains the verse numbers. The present Latin text and translation are therefore intended to satisfy a pressing need in the English-speaking world.

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  1 See J. Palanque “St. Jerome and the Barbarians” A Monument to St. Jerome, ed. F. X. Murphy (New York: Sheed and Ward 1952).

  2 P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: Univ. of California 1969) pp. 287–298.

  3 C. Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius (1898; rpt. Hildesheim: G. Ohms Verlag 1967) 1. 58–69.

  4 H. van Cranenburgh, La vie latine de saint Pachôme traduite du grec par Denys le Petit, Subsidia Hagiographica 46 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes 1969).

  5 C. Battle, Die “Adhortationes Sanctorum Patrum” im lateinischen Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens 31 (Münster: Aschendorff 1972).

  6. J. O’Sullivan, The Writings of Salvian the Presbyter, FC 4 (New York: Cima 1974).

  7 L. Bieler, Eugippius: Life of St. Severin, FC 55 (Washington: Catholic Univ. Press 1965).

  8 L. Jones, An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings by Cassiodorus Senator (1946; New York: Norton paperback 1969).

  9 P. Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, 6th through 8th Centuries (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press 1976); E. S. Duckett, Gateway to the Middle Ages: Italy (1938; Ann Arbor paperback 1961); P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press 1969).

  10 See J. Leclercq “Monasticism and St. Benedict” MS 1 (1963) 9–23.

  11 Critical edition with extensive introduction, notes and verbal concordance, the latter by J.-M. Clément, J. Neufville and D. Demeslay, in A. de Vogüé, La Règle du Maître, SC 105–106–107 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf 1964–65). Diplomatic edition of the two Paris manuscripts in H. Vanderhoven and F. Masai, La Règle du Maître (Brussels: Éditions “Érasme” 1953). English translation of the rule and an abridged version of de Vogüé’s introduction in L. Eberle and C. Philippi, The Rule of the Master (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications 1977).

/>   12 The best account in English of the early stages of the controversy is that of D. Knowles “The Regula Magistri and the Rule of St. Benedict” Great Historical Enterprises and Problems in Monastic History (London: Nelson 1963) pp. 137–195. See also G. Penco “Origine e sviluppi della questione della ‘Regula Magistri’” Antonius Magnus Eremita 356–1956, StA 38 (Rome: Herder 1956) pp. 283–306; and B. Jaspert, Die Regula Benedicti-Regula Magistri Kontroverse, RBS Supplementa 3 (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg 1975). A complete bibliography of the question up to 1970 was published by B. Jaspert, Regula Magistri, Regula Benedicti: Bibliographie ihrer Erforschung 1938–1970, Subsidia Monastica 1 (Publicaciones de l’Abadia de Montserrat 1971), excerpted from SM 13 (1971) 129–171. From 1971 on, the current bibliography is listed regularly in the annual publication Regulae Benedicti Studia.

  13 The best overall study of Gregory is still, despite its age, the work of F. Homes Dudden, Gregory the Great: His Place in History and Thought. 2 vols. (1905; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell 1967). See also C. Dagens, Saint Grégoire le Grand. Culture et expérience chrétienne (Paris: Études Augustiniennes 1977).

  14 English translation by O. Zimmermann, St. Gregory the Great: Dialogues, FC 39 (New York: FC Inc. 1959). The best edition of the Dialogues, with abundant annotation and indices and an extensive introduction, is the recent work of A. de Vogüé, with French translation by P. Antin, Grégoire le Grand: Dialogues, SC 251,260,265 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf 1978, 1979, 1980).

  15 A. de Vogüé “Benoît, modèle de vie spirituelle d’après le Deuxième Livre des Dialogues de saint Grégoire” CollCist 38 (1976) 147–157; M. Doucet “Pédagogie et théologie dans la ‘Vie de saint Benoît’ par saint Grégoire le Grand” CollCist 38 (1976) 158–173.