The Rule of Saint Benedict ed. by Bruce L. Venarde (review)
- The Rule of Saint Benedict ed. by Bruce L. Venarde
Under the auspices of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, Bruce L. Venarde has given us a parallel-text Latin and English version of the Rule of St. Benedict. The general aim of the library is to produce facing-page translations and to create, in the words of the publisher, “accessible modern translations based on the latest research by leading figures in the field.” How does this volume match up to these stated objectives?
The most problematic element here is the “latest research” element, as twenty or so pages of introduction plus “Notes on the Texts” are not really enough to bring us fully up to date. Venarde’s summary of the transmission of the text of the Benedictine Rule in the early Middle Ages correctly highlights its popularity in areas of northern Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries. The translation and edition, however, are based on St. Gallen MS 914, which no longer enjoys the iconic status it once held in the history of textual transmission. Although Venarde follows Eugène Manning’s view that this version does bring us close to what Benedict wrote, it would have been better to explain all this in a little more detail. The sections on the virtues of the Rule [End Page 116] itself do not seem to take into account the latest views on its strengths and the reasons for its survival and popularity in the areas that he mentions. Venarde’s inclusion of two translations of Carolingian texts relevant to the understanding of the Rule in the Empire for which it became the gold standard of monastic observance looks like a nice touch, but as the footnotes reveal, there is debate over the authenticity of one of them—the Letter to Charlemagne attributed to Paul the Deacon.
What of the actual translation? This reviewer compared it with RB 1980, edited by Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN, 1981). Traditionalists will like the way in which the Venarde version opens with “Listen carefully, my son, to the teachings of a master and incline the ear of your heart” (p. 3). But they might also cherish RB 1980’s concluding chapter that offers “this little rule that we have written for beginners” (p. 95) as opposed to Venarde’s “this little Rule sketched as a beginning” (p. xviii) for “hanc minimam inchoationis regulam descriptam”—even if the latter may be closer to the Latin. Whatever one’s taste, however, this is an eminently readable rendering.
