Excerpt from
The Rule of St. Benedict Library
Primary and Secondary Sources
Scott Rains
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.

Preface
The Rule of St. Benedict is a foundational document in the history of Western Christianity. It serves as a bridge between the patristic Eastern tradition and the emerging European tradition of the sixth century. Scholarship on the Rule has matured to produce a well-defined research methodology and an exhaustively researched corpus of literature. The Rule of St. Benedict Library: Primary and Secondary Sources unites the Rule with some of this well-defined research.

The Logos Library System™ allows the user to link two or more works together and simultaneously scroll through the texts, side by side; search for topics using simple menu commands; link to related paragraphs, footnotes, and Bible verses throughout the text with ease; add bookmarks and notes to assist in personal study; and print search results for personal study. Skillfully used, this software will reveal previously undiscovered relationships in the included texts and suggest new, fruitful avenues for further study.

The works on The Rule of Benedict Library were chosen as core, essential texts to the study of Benedict's Rule. They include:

RB 1980: THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT IN LATIN AND ENGLISH WITH NOTES

This compendium of scholarship on Benedictine monasticism and the Rule of St. Benedict for monks is the foremost single-volume resource for serious study of the teaching and tradition of St. Benedict of Nursia. RB 1980, copyright 1981 by The Liturgical Press, was edited by Timothy Fry, O.S.B., together with associate editors Imogene Baker, O.S.B., Timothy Horner, O.S.B., Augusta Raabe, O.S.B., and Mark Sheridan, O.S.B. Published in print to celebrate the fifteen hundredth anniversary of the date traditionally held to be the birth of Benedict, it includes a historical overview, essays on core monastic concepts, and the Rule in Dom Jean Neufville's critical Latin edition and in a contemporary English translation. It also includes a thematic index and concordances linking the Rule to Scripture, patristic, and other ancient works.

RB 1980 is presented in its entirety on this CD-ROM. This allows the exhaustive annotation and comprehensive indices of RB 1980 to serve as the navigational centerpiece of The Rule of St. Benedict Library: Primary and Secondary Sources. All footnotes, indexes, and concordance entries are hypertext linked, often to the full text reference provided by the other works included on this CD-ROM. Instantaneous access to citations and the ability to add new citation links and notes are some of the unique features The Rule of St. Benedict Library adds to RB 1980. The Logos Library System™ allows for the creation of new indices within the Rule and new concordances between any works in the Library. Text may be cut and pasted to a text editor for reports and articles.

BENEDICT'S RULE: A TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY, BY TERRENCE KARDONG
A new English translation of and a complete commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict provides The Rule of St. Benedict Library with both a complement and an update to the scholarship presented in RB 1980. Written by author/scholar Terrence Kardong, O.S.B., of Assumption Abbey and published by The Liturgical Press in 1996, Benedict's Rule digests the work of the world's foremost Rule scholars and makes their research available for the first time to English-speaking readers.

Kardong's work appears as two separate titles on this CD: Benedict's Rule: A Translation and Benedict's Rule: A Commentary. The translation is the author's own interpretation of the Latin text of RB 1980. By opening both the translation and the commentary side-by-side, the user can scroll through the translation and automatically be taken to the corresponding commentary.

EARLY MONASTIC RULES: THE RULES OF THE FATHERS AND THE REGULA ORIENTALIS

This treasury of early Western monastic thought, which is no longer available in the print edition, contains five rules from the tradition that produced the Rule of St. Benedict. These rules reveal the early evolution of cenobitic monasticism in the West. As such, they help document the appropriation of the original general of Christian cenobitic monastic literature—the Rules of Basil, Pachomius, and Augustine—to a new setting and circumstance.

Three of the rules precede Benedict's Rule. These are "The Rule of the Holy Fathers Serapion, Macarius, Paphnutius, and Another Macarius," "The Second Rule of the Fathers," and "The Rule of Macarius." The Third Rule of the Fathers and the Regula orientalis are contemporary with the Rule of St. Benedict. Presented here, in Latin and English, as a component of The Rule of St. Benedict Library, this volume is enhanced by its integration into the sophisticated, customizable critical apparatus provided by the Logos Library System™. Early Monastic Rules, together with the Rule of the Master, offer the reader the resources to systematically study this earliest strata of Western cenobitism.

THE RULE OF THE MASTER

Of all the Christian monastic literature available to Benedict, it is the Rule of the Master which left the strongest impact on the shape and structure of Benedict's Rule. This volume presents the Rule of the Master in both Adalbert de Vogüé's critical Latin edition and Luke Eberle's English translation.

For those wishing to study this rule in its own right, the ability here to rapidly access, annotate, and search this text is a significant feature. The inclusion of this volume allows for an unprecedented ease of use of RB 1980's table of correspondences between the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict when, for example, tracing the impact of the Master on Benedict's thought.

THE ROMAN PSALTER

THE VULGATE AND THE NRSV
Scholarship indicates that Benedict had access to the Vulgate Latin Bible. The Rule of St. Benedict Library includes this work, as well as the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

A LIFE-GI VING WAY: A COMMENTARY ON THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT, BY ESTHER DE WAAL
A Life-Giving Way is a guide to life and prayer written for lay people by a lay person. Crafted with the same attention to scholarship that is evident in the other titles in the collection, Esther de Waal has written an accessible commentary offering an excellent introduction to the Rule of St. Benedict. De Waal is able to draw on her study of the Benedictine tradition and its influence on Anglicanism and to share a wisdom perspective born of her own experience living in Canterbury and introducing ecumenical groups around the world to Benedictine practice. Originally published as a companion volume to the Rule of St. Benedict, this commentary is presented here fully hyperlinked to the Rule and the other titles in The Rule of Benedict Library.