Source genre: Monastic Rules

Monastic rules determined and fixed the guidelines for the common life of monks and nuns within their monastery or convent. The manuscript illustrated at the left shows the beginning of the epilogue of the Rule of St. Benedict (Regula Benedicti), which is named for Benedict of Nursia. He lived first as a hermit and in 529 founded the monastery of Monte Cassino The Rule of the Benedictines that grew out of this monastic foundation was the model for new monastic communities in Latin Christendom for many centuries.

The Rule of St. Benedict consists of a prologue, 73 chapters and an epilogue. The content concerns the behaviour, rights, duties and hierarchy of the monks among themselves, and provides for the orderly administration of the monastery. The Rule requires a regular alternation between mental and physical work, which allowed for a certain economic independence for the monasteries and allowed for the regular copying of texts. Monasteries such as the former Benedictine house of St. Gall, became central repositories and transmitters of ancient and western culture: a large number of manuscripts were copied by their scribes and thus were preserved there (and nowhere else) for posterity.

While the Rule of St. Benedict was set as the obligatory norm by Charlemagne for all monastic communities, the monasteries themselves were already by the time of the Investiture Contest striving for more independence. Those aspirations gave rise to changes in the interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict, which emphasized intellectual work more than manual labour. The scholarly analysis of primary sources has to reckon with the possibility that even when there is continuity in the transmission of a text or texts over many centuries, that same text can be interpreted very differently by succeeding generations at any given time.

The manuscript shown at the left also illustrates the forces of change that can affect the transmission of texts. In 577 the monastery was plundered. The oldest version of the Rule of Benedict was saved, and Charlemagne later had many copies made from it. The oldest surviving copies of the Rule descends from this line of transmission, the co-called textus purus(pure text), for example Codex 914 at St. Gall. It was only in the 19th century that it was noticed that in addition to the textus purus there was another line of transmission, of which this manuscript is an example. Compare the manuscripts. You will see that the section intial 'A' is different. Scholars often are confronted with different lines of textual transmission that must be compared critically.