SOURCE: A preface to The Rule of Saint Benedict, edited and translated by Justin McCann, The Newman Press, 1952, pp. vii-xxiv.

In the following excerpt from his preface to The Rule of Saint Benedict, McCann recounts the early history of the Rule and discusses issues surrounding its language and textual history.

Saint Benedict lived and worked in central Italy in the first half of the sixth century, the approximate date of his death being A.D. 547. His life began and ended with periods of devastating war, during which Italy was gravely disorganized; but at its centre, under the masterful rule of Theodoric (493-526), it knew some thirty years of peace. Yet this period too, though free from the alarms and excursions of war, was not one in which the arts of peace flourished greatly, so that we cannot be surprised that the slender chronicles of the time contain no...