Benedict of Aniane, The Emperor’s Monk: Ardo’s Life (review)

This is a small but not insignificant book. There is the foreword “The Second Benedict: A Review of Recent Scholarship” (on St. Benedict and on Ardo’s Life of Benedict, pp.1–26), the “Translator’s Introduction” (pp. 27–51), acknowledgments (pp. 53–55), an “Editor’s Note” (pp. 57–58), the Life of Benedict of Aniane (pp. 59–109), and finally “A Short Index of Names” (pp. 111–12).

The “Editor’s Note” (p. 57) states that Cabaniss’s translation was first published in England in 1979 and included in the collection Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, 1995).

The foreword presents in succinct form modern and especially European scholarship on Benedict himself and on Ardo’s Life. It assesses and nuances some of the translator’s views against those of other scholars (pp. 20–21). It illustrates how research can profitably look again at the manuscript tradition and printed versions of texts so as to evaluate these in view of their models, sources, and historical influence, and pose old and new questions about texts and earlier scholarly assessments of them. There is, for example, a question as to whether there was a shorter version of Ardo’s Life as published by Dom Hugo Ménard in his Concordia regularum auctore S. Benedicto Anianae abbate (Paris, 1638). Pierre Bonnerue, in his introduction to Ardon’s Vie de Benoît d’Aniane (Bégrolles en Mauges, 2001) (see n. 32, p. 8), has presented good reasons for asserting that the shorter version is Ardo’s original and that revisions resulting in the longer text here translated are from two centuries later. The question is still unresolved.

The foreword is particularly useful for busy nonspecialists in the area, among them many monks and nuns. It can help the latter maintain awareness of current research into the often complex history of monasticism and of the monastic charism they have inherited, are living out in the multifaceted contexts (social, ecclesial, geopolitical, economic, and so forth) of their own monastic communities, and are passing on to a new generation. The book heightens awareness of the many efforts at monastic reform before Cîteaux. Monastics must regularly ask themselves: What are we here for?

The “Translator’s Introduction,” published with the translation in 1979 (see n.67, p.46), remains a competent presentation of Ardo’s Life, drawing on the writer’s detailed knowledge of Carolingian matters.

Ardo’s Life is composed of a preface and forty-four chapters, including three chapters of letters from the monks of Inden to Ardo requesting him to write Benedict’s life; from Benedict to George, abbot of Aniane and Benedict’s successor; and from Benedict to Archbishop Nibridius. The authenticity especially of chapter 30—an account of the life of William of Gellone—is debated. Cabaniss regarded it as an interpolation (but see pp. 20–21).

Unfortunately, there are a few errors: “s” slipped into “et” in Ardo, qui et Smaragdus (p. 24); VIIIX should be VIII–X (p. 8); and Ariane should be Aniane (pp. 20, 25).