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Received: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:25:13 AM EDT
From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: TMR 12.04.14 Venarde, The Rule of Saint Benedict (Bruce)
Venarde, Bruce L., ed. and trans. <i>The Rule of Saint Benedict</i>.
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 6. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2011. Pp. xxi, 278. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-674-05304-5.
Reviewed by Scott G. Bruce
University of Colorado at Boulder
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Monastic historians rejoice! Bruce Venarde's new facing-page Latin-
English text of <i>The Rule of Benedict</i> (hereafter RB) is an
attractive and affordable volume that will surely interest anyone
whose research touches on the history of medieval cenobitism.
Published as part of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (hereafter
DOML), an exciting new series that presents Latin, Greek and Old
English texts from the Middle Ages accompanied by modern English
translations, this book is a very useful reference work for scholars
and general readers alike. [1] A new Latin-English version of the RB
is long overdue. The venerable seven-volume Latin edition by Adalbert
de Vogüé in the Source chrétiennes series has been the industry
standard since its publication in 1972. [2] In 1980, a team of
Benedictine monks published the <i>RB 1980</i>, which reproduced the
Latin text of de Vogüé alongside a very readable English translation.
While this work is still in print, it never found traction among
scholars, who universally prefer the Source chrétiennes edition, in
part because of its voluminous commentary. [3] More recently, Penguin
Books has published a translation of the RB by Carolinne White, which
has become and will likely remain the version of choice for those with
no Latin, primarily because it is relatively inexpensive. [4]
Venarde's new book is not intended to replace the critical edition of
de Vogüé, but it does make an original and worthwhile contribution to
the study of the RB in Latin that complements the towering
achievements of that great monastic scholar, who died this past autumn
at the age of 86.
One of the weaknesses of some of the initial offerings in the DOML
series is the brevity of their introductions; it is very difficult for
most authors to distill the textual history and cultural significance
of their particular text in twenty pages or less. Not so for Venarde.
In fifteen pages that wed concision and clarity, he offers a learned
<i>Einführung</i> to Benedict of Nursia, the fabled sixth-century
author of the RB; the rise of cenobitic monasticism in late antiquity
that provides the backdrop to the composition of the rule; the
character of the RB as a guide to monastic life; and the reception of
the RB in the Carolingian period. This last section is particularly
important because Venarde's book presents us with three Carolingian
texts: an early ninth-century copy of the RB preserved in a manuscript
in the library of St. Gall in Switzerland (St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek
Cod. Sang. 914, hereafter SG 914); and two letters found in the same
manuscript that allow us to trace the tradition surrounding the claims
of its extraordinary provenance. It is here as well that Venarde lays
out why he has chosen this particular copy of the RB as the
centerpiece of his volume and how he has gone about translating it.
Venarde's choice for the Latin text of the RB is both intriguing and
ingenious. Rather than relying on the critical edition of de Vogüé, as
the editors of the <i>RB 1980</i> had done, he has elected instead to
reproduce the text of a Carolingian exemplar of the RB preserved in SG
914. [5] This is not the earliest manuscript witness to the RB; that
distinction belongs to Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hatton 48, which
was produced in England during Bede's lifetime. SG 914 is significant
because Carolingian monks believed that it was a copy of a copy of an
autograph manuscript composed in the sixth century by Benedict
himself. While the story is dubious, SG 914 does preserve a very early
exemplar of the RB. In Venarde's words, "it is generally believed to
be the best witness to Benedict's original language" (xvii). Leaving
aside the veracity of the story, how do we know so much about the text
of RB in SG 914? Two letters from the Carolingian period together tell
the tale. The story goes that Pope Zachary (741-752) sent many gifts
to the newly refounded abbey of Monte Cassino, including a manuscript
of the RB thought to have been the work of Benedict himself. While
visiting Monte Cassino in 787, Charlemagne observed this ancient codex
and requested that the monks transcribe it for him and send it to
Aachen. It arrived in the North accompanied by a letter of
authentication from Paul the Deacon, in which he declared: "[B]ehold,
we have sent you the Rule of that same blessed father copied from the
very book that he wrote with his own hands" (233). Four decades later,
around 820, two monks from Reichenau named Tatto and Grimaldus visited
the imperial abbey of Inde, near Aachen, where this manuscript of the
RB was kept. In a letter brimming with giddiness, they reported to
their brethren that they were able to make a copy of this book,
working from "the exemplar copied from the very manuscript that the
blessed father took pains to write for the health of many souls"
(245). It is their transcription of the RB that survives in SG 914,
accompanied by these two letters and other texts relevant to the
monastic reforms of the early ninth century.
Whether or not these stories are true, the Latin text of the RB in SG
914 has a decidedly colloquial tone that leaves the reader with the
strong impression of eavesdropping on a conversation in progress. This
is not the polished Latin of school exercises or the baroque Latin of
poetic conceit; it is "a rough-and-ready Latin idiom of the early
Middle Ages" (xix). Venarde's translation follows the original text
very closely and often captures this conversational feel. To take but
one example, in the first chapters of the RB, where the tone is
especially urgent, Benedict challenges his disciples to recognize that
the evil that they do is always of their own making. Venarde's
rendering of <i>sibi reputet</i> as "own up to it" captures the moment
perfectly (35). The translation is a pleasure to read from start to
finish. In two cases, Venarde has left obscure Latin words
untranslated--<i>senpectae</i> (107) and <i>hemina</i> (141)--and has
qualified their possible meanings in notes. Some may argue that this
breaks the flow of the text for the reader, but I prefer this kind of
transparency on the part of a translator to an educated guess that
glosses over the difficulty of rendering ambiguous words. Only very
rarely does the translation miss the mark and these are typically
matters of personal preference rather than a misunderstanding of the
Latin on Venarde's part. For instance, the translation of <i>Et bene
extructi fraterna ex acie</i> as "well trained among a band of
brothers" (17) brought to mind a popular HBO series. White's "well-
armed, they go out from the ranks of the brothers" captures the sense
of <i>ex acie</i> a bit more clearly without the modern resonance. [6]
Similarly, the translation of <i>intelligivilem aetatem</i> as "age of
reason" (205) carries the unintended evocation of the Enlightenment;
"age of discernment" or White's "age of discretion" are probably
preferable in this case. There is only one instance where Venarde
fudges a very idiosyncratic phrase and he is not alone in doing so.
When Benedict condemns <i>risum moventia</i>, he is probably not
referring to "wisecracks" (43) in particular. White's translation of
this phrase as "anything said to make others laugh" is a bit closer to
the mark, but both translations miss the literal sense of
<i>moventia</i>, that is, anything that moves others to laugh. [7]
Early medieval monks were surprisingly ambivalent with respect to the
expression of mirth. Laughter is typically not a sinful act unless it
becomes raucous, unbridled, uncontrollable. It is probably for this
reason that the lexicon of hand-signs used by the monks of Hirsau in
the eleventh century grouped the signs for laughter, sneeze and
vomiting together, creating a taxonomy of irrepressible and disruptive
motions. [8] I found only one typo--"my" for "may" (123)--which a
future edition can remedy.
The two Carolingian letters that accompany the RB in this edition are
well worth reading for the light that they throw on the reception of
this venerable text in the age of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.
Paul the Deacon's letter is very sensitive to the fact that there had
been liturgical developments and other changes in custom since the
time of Benedict that put some of the directives in the RB at odds
with Roman practice in the late eighth century, and he spends the
better part of his missive explaining the discrepancies. Although much
shorter, the letter of Grimaldus and Tatto is equally instructive
because it shows the two monks attempting to reconcile different
readings in the text of the RB. As they transcribed the text that they
believed to be descended from Benedict's autograph copy, they took
pains to collate "from other copies corrected by later scholars words
that the aforementioned father did not, according to what many affirm
was accepted practice [in his day], include in the text of <i>his</i>
rule, and we carefully inserted those words in the adjacent page
margin, marked by two points [:]" (245). In short, as Venarde notes,
"they created something unusual for their times, a basic critical
edition in which the text is that of Benedict and subsequent
alterations are noted in the margin" (250). The critical apparatus of
these enterprising monks is not included in Venarde's text--
understandably so, as it would have been a nightmare to format them.
This book is a very welcome contribution to medieval monastic
scholarship. While Venarde's volume will not replace the critical
edition of de Vogüé as the standard research tool for historians and
will probably not supplant White's translation in an undergraduate
setting, it does the meritorious service of providing scholars and
advanced students alike with ready access to an ancient witness to the
Latin text of the RB accompanied by an accurate modern translation.
Moreover, the companion letters provide important insight not only
into the early medieval tradition of Benedict's "autograph"
manuscript, but also into the reception of the RB more generally in
the Carolingian period. This book should be within arm's reach of any
medieval historian whose research treats the history of Christian
monasticism.
--------
Notes:
1. On the DOML series, see my recent review of <i>The Vulgate Bible,
Volume II, Parts A and B: The Historical Books: Douay-Rheims
Translation</i>, ed. Swift Edgar, DOML 4 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2011) published in <i>The Medieval Review</i> on 27
February 2012 at http://hdl.handle.net/2022/14220.
2. <i>La règle de saint Benoît</i>, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé, 7 vols.
Source chrétiennes 181-187 (Paris, 1971-1972). Some scholars still
favor the Latin edition of Rudolf Hanslick published in the <i>Corpus
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum</i>, vol. 50 (Vienna, 1960), but
Hanslick's edition does not include a translation and lacks the
extensive commentary that makes de Vogüé's work so useful.
3. <i>RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English</i>, ed.
Timothy Fry et al. (Collegeville, MN, 1981). The long introduction to
the <i>RB 1980</i> has not aged well. In her review of the book,
Caroline Bynum noted that, for all of its virtues, its presentation of
the history of monasticism was static and weak and on the whole it was
"sometimes couched in a kind of awkward, lifeless prose one fears will
issue from a committee." For her full review, see <i>Speculum</i> 57
(1982): 607-609.
4. <i>The Rule of St. Benedict</i>, trans. Carolinne White (New York,
2008).
5. The Stiftsbibliothek, St. Gallen, has made hundreds of its
Carolingian manuscripts available on-line, including this one at:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0914.
6. <i>The Rule of St. Benedict</i>, trans. White, 11.
7. <i>The Rule of St. Benedict</i>, trans. White, 21.
8. Scott G. Bruce, <i>Silence and Sign Language in Medieval
Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition, c. 900-1200</i> (Cambridge, 2007),
122.
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