Saint Benedict's Rule from St. Gall

Saint Benedict's Rule from St. Gall

The copy of the Regula Sancti Benedicti that is found in the St. Gallen Abbey Library occupies an extraordinary position in the tradition of Saint Benedict (480–540) as well as in the textual tradition under Charlemagne (747–814). It is also connected with the reform efforts of Benedict of Aniane (747–821), a Benedictine monk and monastic reformer who had a lasting impact on religious practices in the Carolingian Empire, for which he is sometimes called the Second Benedict. Two monks from Reichenau named Grimald and Tatto encountered the Rule ca. 817 while at Kornelimünster Abbey, which was founded by Benedict of Aniane on the Inde River near Aachen in 814 at the behest of Emperor Louis the Pious (778 – 20 June 840). It was there that they copied, true to syllable and letter, St. Benedict’s text at the behest of Reginbert, librarian at Reichenau. That codex was copied shortly thereafter in the scriptorium of St. Gall, thus yielding the codex at hand.
In the following centuries, more biblical texts as well as glosses in Latin and German in particular were inserted between the lines. Similarly, drawings from an unskilled hand were added in the margins. Nonetheless, the manuscript is a precious witness to the formative years of the Benedictines. The text is written 18 lines per page with most parts written in a heavy Alemannic miniscule and a fourth in Carolingian miniscule. On the whole, it is clearly and uniformly written, although the size of the script is not always even.

The Founder of Western Monasticism

In 516 Benedict of Nursia wrote the original Rule of Saint Benedict as a book of precepts for monks living in a community under an abbot who serves as a spiritual father. The Rule provides a relatively moderate path between the individual and the institution and this moderation is largely the reason for its popularity. However, Saint Benedict did not actually establish an order and did not create a hierarchy beyond the individual institutions. Even after the Benedictines became an official monastic order at the end of the Middle Ages, they continued to operate as a collection of autonomous monasteries known today as the Benedictine Confederation.