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• Preface
• Introductory Notes
• Note On the History of the Text
• Here Beginneth the Prologue to a Rule For Monasteries
• Here Beginneth the Text of the Rule
• Chapter I: Concerning the Different Kinds of Monks
• Chapter II: What Kind of Man an Abbot Ought to Be
• Chapter III: Concerning the Calling of the Brethren to Council
• Chapter IV: What Are the Instruments of Good Works
• Chapter V: Concerning Obedience
• Chapter VI: Concerning Silence
• Chapter VII: Concerning Humility
• Chapter VIII: Concerning the Divine Office At Night
• Chapter IX: How Many Psalms Are to Be Said At the Night Hours
• Chapter X: How Night Praise Is to Be Accomplished In Summer Time
• Chapter XI: How Night Office Is to Be Said On Lord’s Days
• Chapter XII: How the Office of Lauds Is to Be Sung
• Chapter XIII: How Lauds Are to Be Said On Ferias
• Chapter XIV: How Night Office Is to Be Said On the Feasts of Saints
• Chapter XV: In Which Seasons Alleluia Is to Be Said
• Chapter XVI: How the Work of God Is to Be Carried Out During the Day
• Chapter XVII: How Many Psalms Are to Be Sung At These Hours
• Chapter XVIII: In What Order the Psalms Themselves Are to Be Said
• Chapter XIX: Concerning the Discipline of Saying Office
• Chapter XX: Concerning Reverence In Prayer
• Chapter XXI: Concerning the Deans of the Monastery
• Chapter XXII: How the Monks Are to Sleep
• Chapter XXIII: Concerning Excommunication For Offences
• Chapter XXIV: What the Measure of Excommunication Should Be
• Chapter XXV: Concerning Graver Faults
• Chapter XXVI: Concerning Those Who Without the Orders of the Abbot Consort With the Excommunicate
• Chapter XXVII: How Solicitous the Abbot Should Be For the Excommunicate
• Chapter XXVIII: Concerning Those Who Shall Not Have Amended Though Somewhat Often Corrected
• Chapter XXIX: If Brethren Who Go Out From the Monastery Ought to Be Received Back Again
• Chapter XXX: Concerning the Younger Boys, How They Are to Be Corrected
• Chapter XXXI: Concerning the Cellarer of the Monastery, What Sort of a Person He Should Be
• Chapter XXXII: Concerning the Iron Tools and Other Things Belonging to the Monastery
• Chapter XXXIII: Whether Monks Ought to Have Anything of Their Own
• Chapter XXXIV: Whether All Ought to Receive Necessaries Equally
• Chapter XXXV: Concerning the Weekly Kitcheners
• Chapter XXXVI: Concerning the Sick and Infirm Brethren
• Chapter XXXVII: Concerning the Old and Infants
• Chapter XXXVIII: Concerning the Weekly Reader
• Chapter XXXIX: Concerning the Quantity of Foods
• Chapter Xl: Concerning the Quantity of Drink
• Chapter Xli: At What Hours the Brethren Ought to Have Their Meals
• Chapter Xlii: That No One Talk After Compline
• Chapter Xliii: Concerning Those Who Come Late to the Work of God Or to Table
• Chapter Xliv: Concerning Such As Are Excommunicated, How They May Make Satisfaction
• Chapter Xlv: Concerning Those Who Make Mistakes In the Oratory
• Chapter Xlvi: Concerning Those Who Do Amiss In Any Other Matters
• Chapter Xlvii: of Notifying the Hour of the Work of God
• Chapter Xlviii: Concerning the Daily Manual Work
• Chapter Xlix: Concerning the Observance of Lent
• Chapter L: Concerning Brethren Who Are Working At a Distance From the Oratory, Or Are On the Road
• Chapter Li: Concerning Brethren Who Do Not Go Far Away
• Chapter Lii: of the Oratory of the Monastery
• Chapter Liii: of How Guests Are to Be Received
• Chapter Liv: If a Monk Ought to Receive Letters Or Tokens
• Chapter Lv: Concerning the Brethren’s Clothes and Shoes
• Chapter Lvi: Concerning the Abbot’s Table
• Chapter Lvii: Concerning Artificers In the Monastery
• Chapter Lviii: Concerning the Discipline of Those to Be Received As Brethren
• Chapter Lix: Concerning Noblemen’s Sons and Poor Men’s Sons Who Are Offered
• Chapter Lx: Concerning Priests Who By Chance Shall Wish to Live In the Monastery
• Chapter Lxi: Concerning Monks Who Are Strangers, How They Should Be Received
• Chapter Lxii: Concerning the Priests of the Monastery
• Chapter Lxiii: Concerning the Order of the Community
• Chapter Lxiv: Concerning the Election of an Abbot
• Chapter Lxv: Concerning the Provost of the Monastery
• Chapter Lxvi: Concerning the Porter of the Monastery
• Chapter Lxvii: Concerning Brethren Sent On a Journey
• Chapter Lxviii: If Impossibilities Be Enjoined Upon a Brother
• Chapter Lxix: That In the Monastery One Presume Not to Constitute Himself the Patron of Another
• Chapter Lxx: That No One Presume to Strike Another Unlawfully
• Chapter Lxxi: That the Brethren Be Obedient Among Themselves
• Chapter Lxxii: Concerning the Good Zeal Which Monks Ought to Have
• Chapter Lxxiii: Concerning This, Namely That Not Every Observance of Righteousness Is Laid Down In This Rule
• Other Pax Books

The reader is referred to The Cambridge Medieval History* for a brief but comprehensive survey of early monasticism, together with a suggestive explanation of how and why St. Benedict became the father of Western monasticism; and for a bibliography† that would prove a useful guide to a comprehensive study of the life of St. Benedict and of the circumstances in which he compiled the holy rule.

St. Benedict wrote his rule, as Dom Cuthbert Butler observes,* “in the language of the people, in a Latin already decadent and slipping into new forms: whence it appears that exact constructions of words and grammatical concordances were little observed.” Any treatise so written in the mid-sixth century would certainly have been copied with emendations by scribes desiring to adorn as well as transcribe the text on which they were engaged. If this was the case with treatises meant for individual study, much more was it the case when the text in question was a rule to be read aloud daily in chapter house and refectory, where the “solecisms” and “barbarisms” of a fluid Latin would be likely to strike the ear. Hence, as a matter of fact, there soon arose a textus reseptus of the rule of St. Benedict, from which the early printed editions were drawn later. This has continued in use to the present day; and that although early manuscripts afforded texts whose relationship with St. Benedict’s own words was much closer.

CHAPTER LXXIII

CONCERNING THIS, NAMELY THAT NOT EVERY OBSERVANCE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS LAID DOWN IN THIS RULE

Now we have written out this rule in order that by observing it in our monasteries we may show ourselves to have, to some degree, integrity of life, or the beginning at least of conversion. For the rest, for those who hasten to the perfection of conversion, there are the teachings of the holy fathers, the observing of which brings a man to the height of perfection: and indeed what page or what text of the divine authority of the Old and the New Testament is not an unerring rule of human life? Or what book of the holy catholic fathers does not re-echo this, that by a straight course we may come to our Creator? Moreover also the conferences of the fathers and their institutes and their lives and also the rule of our holy father Basil, what else are they but store houses of the virtues of good-living and obedient monks? But to us, indolent, ill-living and negligent, belong shame and confusion. Whosoever therefore thou art who dost hasten to the heavenly country, fully carry out, Christ helping thee, this most elementary rule that we have written out; and then at last thou shalt come, God protecting thee, to the loftier heights of doctrine and of virtue which we have mentioned above.

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[* ] Vol. i., cap. xviii.

[† ] At the end of that vol.

[* ]Sancti Benedicti Regula Monasteriorum, Editionem Critico-Practicam adornavit D. Cuthbertus Butler. Friburgi Brisgoviæ. 1927. Herder and Co.