SOURCE: "The Text-History of the Rule" and "The Contents of the Rule" in Saint Benedict, Sheed and Ward, 1937, pp. 117-46.

In the following excerpt, McCann offers a textual history of the Rule of St. Benedict and summarizes its principal statements on the structure of Benedictine monastic life.

Scripsit monachorum regulam discretione praecipuam, sermone luculentam

(Dial. II, 36)

There are two standard modem editions of the Latin text of the Rule, those of Abbot Butler (2nd ed., 1927) and Dom Benno Linderbauer (1928). Dom Linderbauer's is a critical text with full apparatus; it gives St. Benedict's text as nearly as it can be determined and with none but orthographical changes. For the scholar who desires an exact text and to be fully informed regarding the manuscript evidence, this is the only edition of the Rule. Dom Linderbauer published earlier (1922) a philological commentary. The Rule is an important monument of Late Latin, and...