INTRODUCTORY NOTES - Saint Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict [1931]
Edition used:
The Rule of St. Benedict, translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke (London: S.P.C.K., 1931).
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INTRODUCTORY NOTES
In preparing for the press this English rendering of the holy rule, originally made from texts based on the textus receptus, advantage has been taken of the opportunity to incorporate several minor emendations which Dom Cuthbert’s edition of the text, published in 1927, has shown to be necessary.
Of late years there has been an increasing demand for an English translation sufficiently idiomatic to be read easily, yet sufficiently literal to be accurate. The issue of this translation is an attempt to supply what is demanded.
Here it will be sufficient to mention that the period he adorned was the end of the fifth century and the first half of the sixth, when Italy was suffering from barbarian invasions; that before the completion of his education—as we might say just before the normal time for taking his degree—he betook himself to the cave at Subiaco to live as a hermit; that for three years his solitude was not broken into seriously, but that at the end of that time he felt constrained to instruct the groups of devout men who had gathered round him; and that with them he eventually migrated to Monte Cassino and there wrote for them that rule that has had no equal in influence and fame.
When St. Benedict refers to Psalms by their numbers—e.g., in Chapter XII.—he uses the Greek-Latin, not the Hebrew-English, system of numbering. Psalms i. to viii. and Psalms cxlviii. to cl. correspond in both systems, each to each; but Psalm ix. in the Greek-Latin system comprises both ix. and x. of the Hebrew-English; thereafter Psalms x. to cxlv. of the Greek-Latin are Psalms xi. to cxlvi. of the Hebrew-English, except that Psalm cxiii. of the Greek-Latin comprises both cxiv. and cxv. of the Hebrew-English, while Psalm cxvi. of the Hebrew-English comprises both cxiv. and cxv. of the Greek-Latin. Psalm cxlvi. of the Greek-Latin consists of the first eleven verses only of Psalm cxlvii. in the Hebrew-English system, the remaining nine verses being Psalm cxlvii. in the Greek-Latin system; and thus it comes about that the last three psalms of the psalter—Psalms cxlviii. to cl.—are similarly numbered in both systems, as already stated.
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