Mr. Anne-Marie, I think the best way to respond to your letter is to send you this tape. I'm going to try to tape the lectures that I give to the novices and see if that will be sufficient for you. I find it a little difficult just to speak into a tape by myself because there's no dynamics, and maybe this is one way that we can go about it. So this will begin today, and we will see how it will work. What I have in mind, Mike, is this week to give you some sort of a general introduction to the rule of Benedict and to monastic history, because I don't know for sure what your background is and how much you know of monastic history. Have you done any studies at all in monastic history? I've read through, not totally, but parts of that Knowles book.

[01:04]

The literal Christian monasticism? Uh-huh. In some of our college courses, especially like art history and history of ideals. What about in church history, did you have any? In church history, yes. One of the things, before I forget it, what I want you to do this week, and as soon as possible, I want you to read the whole Rule of Benedict through. Just read it. Don't stop. Just read it personally. It won't take you very long. But, you know, in the Division, there's what we call, what I, what the Rule of Benedict calls, the three readings of the Rule. And I think there's a very quick initial reading, and then Fr. Dominic will go in more detail, and then at the end maybe you'll have a third reading. So I would like for you this week to start tonight and read as quickly as possible, just so you get an overall picture. Have you already done this? Well, do you want me just the text? The Rule of Benedict, right, just the text. I want you to read from the prologue to the end, so you get a general picture, because one of the things that we want to do this week is look at the general outline, so that later on you know where things are, where they are about.

[02:16]

I figured that we have four periods this week, so today maybe we'll take a look at a real brief background of monastic history, just to see the things in perspective. And then, if we have time, or tomorrow we'll go into the manuscript tradition of the rule, and the authenticity of the rule, because I think this is an important question and it's good to get that out of the way. probably a little brief look at the rule of the Master and the rule of Benedict, because as you get more deeply into the rule of Benedict, you're going to get more and more into the rule of the Master. Father Dominic, I think, uses a lot in his exegesis. So it'd be good to get this introduction to that, and then we'll take a look at the structure of the rule of Benedict. Okay?

[03:18]

Sounds good. And then when we get later on, during the year I take pre-monastic, pre-Benedictine sources, and then we'll go into things like, we'll go all the way back to Qumran, Syrian monasticism, Anthony, the Lausiac history, John Cash and things of that sort. We'll see how far we get, but that's what the type of thing we'll do during the year. And then there will be readings. We'll have you read a copy and make reports too. Okay? So as we go through this, Mike, we'll try to make it as informal as possible. And so anytime you have questions or observations, just stop and The first thing is, I think, this general context of monastic history. A couple years ago I was asked to give a one-hour lecture on monasticism in the medieval history course in the seminary, and I tried to show the context of this monastic history, but it was really a flaw, because I didn't know what they wanted.

[04:37]

But this is the type of thing I think is necessary for the context of understanding the Rule and its historical context. And that's what we'll be doing this year, is looking at the pre-Benedictine sources to see the context of the Rule of Benedict. The most important thing to remember about the Rule is that it is a historical document, and that this document is the document by which we live. And this document was written, as we'll see later on, probably in the 6th century. And it had a great influence, especially from the 6th to the 12th century in Europe. These are called the monastic ages. Then, of course, with the 12th century reform, you have the Cistercian reform and the continuance of the monastic ages. But because it's a historical document, we have to understand the historical context. And this means a cultural context, a political context, a sociological context.

[05:41]

Now, a lot of this I won't go into. I highly recommend to your reading this year such things as Don Justin McCann's little book called St. Benedict, the Man and His Work. Do you have a copy of that? I've read that. That's very excellent. Now, there's a problem with a life of the rule of Benedict. It's whether you can write a life, because they all use the dialogues, and eventually we'll probably talk about the dialogues. Another very fine book to sort of give you a historical feel for the Rule of Benedict, well, there's two of them, Dom John Chapman, St. Benedict in the Sixth Century, which is a very sort of technical thing, because he relates prescriptions in the Rule of Benedict to the canonical prescriptions and the ecclesiastical and civil canonical prescriptions of the 6th century, and tries to show that how it is cohesive with this doctrine in the 6th century.

[06:42]

So that's a very fine book. And another one is Cardinal Ildefon Schuster, Saint Benedict and His Times. We have all of these in the library. Cardinal Schuster is interesting, but it's sort of fantastic in a way. He uses the dialogues almost as a historical document. And then he goes to prove the historical context from which these flew afloat. And from that point of view, it's very good, because it shows the historical background. So I highly recommend them to you. There are other lives of Benedict. Abbott Herrigan has one. But I would recommend Chapman and Schuster, especially, to get this historical, political, and sociological background. One of the important reasons for studying the background of the rule is in order to interpret the rule of Benedict, because a historical document is interpreted in the context in which it's written.

[07:46]

And so we have to study the historical background to give a proper interpretation, and also to evaluate it in the light of our own time. One of the things I think that we have to note is that monastic life in the 6th century is only part of a continuum. For instance, if we look at, say, from 500 BC up until the year 2000, we notice that around the time of Christ we have Qumran, which we'll go into a little later. Now, even before that, around 500, say, for instance, in the 7th century before Christ, you have Buddhism, which is a type of Oriental monasticism. And we'll see that this Oriental monasticism probably had an influence in Syrian monasticism, which comes shortly after Qumran in the 3rd century.

[08:48]

But the Syrian church begins very early, and we'll take a look at the Syrian church after we take a look at Qumran, because Bobus, who has done studies on it, says that Syrian monasticism probably is related directly to the ascetics of Qumran. which is a very interesting thesis, which helps us see something about the origins of Christian monasticism. Then we find, as we go on down the timeline, between the 3rd century and, say, the 6th century, there's an awful lot of activity, especially in Egypt and in Syria, in Cappadocia, and then in Italy. We have Anthony born around 250, Pocomius around 300, then Basil, and Augustine, Cassian, and we get up to... right before Benedict, the rule of a master, and then Benedict somewhere between 527 and 550.

[09:52]

Then after Benedict, if we continue this timeline, we get Benedict of Anion in the 9th century, and Cluny in the 10th century, the Cistercian reform in the 11th, 12th century, and then there's not a whole lot except for the origin of the monastic federations in the 14th and 15th century. Father Pius will probably try to take all of this historical thing from the rule of Benedict later on, if he hasn't done it already. You've had that course. You've had that already. And then, see, you come down to the modern or the romantic revival in the 19th century with Solem and Boren, and then to the 20th century. But the real area of flowering in monasticism is between the 3rd and the 6th century, and that's the context in which the Rūpa-Venga has to be seen, in that particular flowering.

[10:54]

So to understand what we would call medieval monasticism, we've got to understand its sources, its ideals, and its goals. Since it's a historical phenomena, people have tried to interpret this phenomena, and I suppose you're sort of aware of various interpretations. I'd like to ask you now, for instance, what is your interpretation of the origin of monasticism? From what you've read, why is there such a thing as Christian monasticism? Well, from what I've gathered in the reading and everything, especially... Who was it? It was a book on Benedict Norter, but it seems that this is something that comes out of man. I mean, it's just the fact that monasticism is found elsewhere besides Christianity. Right. For instance, in Buddhism or in the Orient. It arises that a person would want to give this special type of dedication.

[12:03]

What is this special type of dedication? Life within a community, life following a pattern with a definite goal. Well, I find that the idea of fleeing from the world in one sense good and in another sense wrong. Do you find any interpreters sort of emphasizing this idea of fleeing from the world from what you've read? Yeah. In the sense that the world is really an evil place, which I find it hard to agree with. Do you recall in your studies of church history any sort of explanation for this monastic movement in the fourth century? There's something turning around the back of my head. Why did these people start going into the desert?

[13:05]

Well, at this time, I just wonder if this could have anything to do with it. Well, the Church now was established. All right. You have the Peace of Constantine in 312. And things began to... the heightened experience of Christianity that was being lived during the persecutions was no longer there. All right. The admittance to Christianity was much more lax. That perhaps... Christianity wasn't being lived to the, you know, with the death stone. The purity that it should be. That it was lived in the early ages. Would you say that this is the general interpretation you've read in your history books and in monastic sources? I think this seems to be what's, and what I can recall of having read, that this was put forward as a pretty strong idea, because just the fact that there wasn't that much in the very, very beginning. Well, we'll go more deeply into this, and this is one of the reasons we're going to be studying the sources, to take a look at some of these interpretations and theories.

[14:16]

The theory that you have is one that you find in many historians, and, well, as you see, I'll be very critical of that particular theory. Well, like I say, I think it's something that arises out of man himself, just the fact that it's found elsewhere besides Christianity. one can be one answer or one contributing factor. One of the things that we're going to have to try to explain, I suppose, is why this fluorescence of monasticism in the Church in the 3rd and 4th century. What are the reasons? Now, we're not going to hit that directly, but I think as we go along we'll see some explanation why, at that particular time, they can speak of the origins of Christian monasticism, although this, in some ways, is an untrue way of saying it. But because this is a historical phenomena, we'll find that there are various interpretations for the phenomena.

[15:18]

For instance, you could have a theological interpretation for this phenomena, or even a philosophical, as you say, well, it's part of man, and therefore, if it's part of man, this is what you would call a philosophical interpretation. or even a sociological. Why in the structure of society does man form these kind of groups? So the sociologists have done an awful lot with monasticism. Or you could even have a political interpretation. In other words, man joined together for a political force, and we find that monasticism has often been a political force. For instance, the medieval monasticism could be interpreted politically as part of a feudal estate. We could even talk about an economic interpretation. It's a way of survival, a way of acquiring goods, or a cultural interpretation. Now, I would like to caution you at this point, as we begin,

[16:20]

that a method of interpretation must always beware of a priori prejudices that we that this is one of the reasons we're going to be stressing the sources to look and see what the sources say about monasticism and not what a sociologist has interpreted it as, or what Marx, an economist, would say, but what the sources themselves will say about the origins of monasticism. And so we have to avoid imposing categories of a particular discipline just arbitrarily, either sociological, even theological, philosophical categories. And that's why I think it's very essential to read and study the documents, because they articulate at a historical moment the phenomena that is going on. Now, granted that a historian can look at things in a broader scope than these particular documents and put these things into a larger picture, but my point is that the historian must never do violence to the historical witnesses.

[17:28]

And one of the things I suggest, I suppose, and one of my pressures is that many of the people who interpret monasticism have never read the sources. and I don't find in the sources foundation for some of their interpretations. Let's take an example, which we'll come back to later on, and we'll keep cropping up, and that is to see monasticism as a protest movement. Maybe you've heard of this interpretation that, well, you've mentioned it in a way, that monasticism was a protest against the laxity of the Church after Constantine's peace. And so this is a This is a theory that is put out that, for instance, I suppose Bonhoeffer would fall into this particular category. There's another theory about protest that says that Monasticism is a protest against the clericalization of the Church, because at this time you find with the Peace of Constantine the Church becoming very clericalized, very hierarchical, structured.

[18:37]

And so monasticism being a lay movement and a charismatic movement was in protest against this institutionalization of the Church. Sociologists in many ways tend to this theory. In the book are The Periodical Horizon in 1970. I don't know if you know that periodic or not. It's a very fine cultural magazine. We get it in the seminary library. There's a little article by Arnold Toynbee called The Desert Hermits. And this whole volume of volume 12, 1970, has to do with the protest against reason throughout history in our own age, with the hippie movements and all of this sort of transcendental religion and even magic, etc. And then he shows also throughout in past ages this was the same thing.

[19:38]

And so he says that Anthony and Bocomius were an example of a protest against the reason or the philosophy of the third century after Christ. And so he calls monasticism sort of a protest against reason. It's not a rational way of approaching things. It's more of an affective thing. Another interpretation is that monasticism was a substitute for martyrdom. See, with the Peace of Constantine, a good Christian could no longer be martyred. So instead of being martyred, he decided to become a monk, because the chances for martyrdom were finished. Another interpretation is that monasticism is the Christianization of Greek philosophy, so that it is merely Platonism or Pythagoreanism with a Christian veneer. And this was a very popular thesis around the turn of the century. Now, I'm not going to make too many comments on these various theories, but it seems to me that my study of the sources and the documents

[20:45]

leads me to believe that these interpretations are both simplistic and unilateral. However, there's some foundation for all of them. But we'll take a look more closely at them as we go along. Okay so far? Yeah. It's a historical fact that the rule of Benedict became the norm for Western monasticism and molded the European monastic ages from the 6th to the 12th century. But during these early centuries, from the 6th to the 9th century, we really can't call monasticism specifically Benedictine. It's what you call the age of the mixed rules. You have, for instance, the rule of Augustine in Vogue, the rule of Columbanus, Caesarius of Aros, Feraiolus, oh, just many rules. And that's just, it's amazing, the monastic rules, especially around the 5th and 6th century. And from the 6th to the 9th century, a monastery may, for instance, live by the rule of Kolambanas, for instance, Bobil in northern Italy.

[21:54]

And then it became acquainted with the rule of Benedict. Well, instead of doing away with the rule of Columbanus, it combined the two rules. And we find many monasteries then living by three rules, the rule of Augustine, the rule of Benedict, and then Columbanus or Caesareus or somebody else. And it's only with Benedict of Anion, in the 9th century, that we find the predominance of the rule of Benedict. This was imposed upon the empire because it was a Roman rule, and Charlemagne and Louis the Pious had this sort of penchant towards Romanization. And then it was decided, very interestingly and sort of arbitrarily, that monks would be those who follow the rule of Benedict, and clerics, regular, would be those who follow the rule of Augustine. See, up until that time, people who followed the rule of Augustine were considered monks. And after that time, no longer. So you see, it's sort of an arbitrary thing to decide who's a monk and who's not.

[22:55]

With regard to the manuscript, tradition of the rule which we'll take a look at. Now a little bit more in detail. The earliest manuscript that we have is a 7th century manuscript from Oxford, England. And that's the earliest Benedictine manuscript. The best manuscript we have is a 9th century manuscript which is in the library of St. Gall in Switzerland. And it's known as 914. And you will be talking about this 914. The author of the Rule of Benedict, as we'll see, was born in Italy or lived in Italy in the middle 6th century and wrote his Rule there. We'll also want to look later on, then, at the Rule of Benedict in the context of the history before the 6th century. Now, these centuries before the Rule of Benedict are filled with monastic documents, with biographies, histories, spiritual theologies, sayings, and travel logs.

[24:07]

And we'll take a look at these various monastic documents. Another thing we'll be looking at later on is the Mediterranean basin and this flowering of monasticism between the 3rd and the 6th century. So with that brief sort of introduction, what I'd like to do now is go to the problem of the manuscript tradition of the Rule of Benedict and the authenticity. We'll probably today only get through the manuscript tradition. Take a look at this sthema, which is from Hanzlick's critical edition of the Rule. Now, if you notice in this sthema, Hanzlick, see, puts the Rule of the Master after the Rule of Benedict. Now, I'm going to disagree with that as we go along. And he's changed his position since then.

[25:09]

But you notice here that he says that the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict are both related to the Rule of Leron, which is an unknown document. But notice this heavy preponderance of manuscripts in the Rule of Benedict, whereas the Rule of the Master has only three or four manuscripts. And this is only the better manuscripts that he studies. See, only up until 1400 is it? And these are all the handwritten manuscripts. And it's interesting that the Rule of Benedict has more manuscripts that have been preserved for us than any other document in the West except the Bible. So we can see how important this was. Now, he studied most of these manuscripts to try to come up with a critical text. I would mention to you that with regard to the Rule of Benedict, Right now, the best Latin text would be Dave O'Gway's Latin text, which just came out.

[26:10]

It's a six-volume commentary, and two volumes are the text, and the third volume is a very critical apparatus of variant readings, and then three volumes of commentary. Hamstick, from whom this came, is a pretty good critical text, too. It came out in about 1960. And then there are other Latin texts. For instance, this translation of the Rule of Genocide by Bernard Basil Bolton is translated from the text by Abbott Cuthbert Butler, which she, in 1929, put out a critical practical edition of the rule. And also McCann's text is pretty much Abbott Butler's text with some variations. And that's one of the good things about McCann's edition of the Rule, because it has the Latin and the English. I suppose that's the text that you have. Did you get it, McCann? I believe it is. Yeah. It's Latin on one side and English on the other.

[27:12]

Oh, wait, no. He didn't have any of those left. I've got that. I can't remember exactly whose it is. It's got a heavy, heavy commentary on it. It's an orange cover? That's Basel's deity. Well, we'll have to see if we can't find you on the can, because that's the text I pretty much use. But, well, I don't treat the rule that much in detail, so it might not be that important. But when we take a look at the manuscript tradition, The reason we're concerned with the manuscript, as I mentioned, is because we're talking about a historical document. We live by a historical document, and this document has a history. It has its origin, it has its diffusion, and its use. And we can see by the many manuscripts that it was used quite a bit. Now, we do not have the manuscript of Benedict, presuming the traditional thesis that Benedict was the man from Nursia who wrote the rule at Monte Cassino.

[28:20]

As I mentioned, the earliest manuscript is this 8th century manuscript, written about 700, and in England, and today is found in the Oxford Library. But this is not what we would call a pure text. And on this stemma, it's considered O. That's the letter that is usually given, O, so you can see where it fits into the pattern. And that's the earliest extant manuscript. Now, the earliest manuscript of what we would call the authentic text is Sangyal 914. and we'll take a look at what we mean by the interpolated text and the authentic text. Now, as I mentioned, there are thousands of manuscripts, second only to the Bible, and the manuscripts are divided into three categories or classes, and the division is based on the Latin, which is used in the text itself.

[29:23]

You have what we call the authentic or pure text, the interpolated or revised text, and the accepted or vulgate text. Now we want to take a look at each one of those. You can take a look at this too, it will help as we go through. The Omega text is considered the autograph, written between 527 and 540. But you see, that's not in existence anymore. Now, what happened to that? The tradition is that in 577, Monte Cassino was destroyed by the Lombards. And the autograph, or at least an exact copy of the autograph, was taken to Rome and placed in the papal archives at the Lateran. Now, this is a tradition. We know that there was early in Rome the rule of Benedict. and stemming from the Lateran archives or the Lateran library.

[30:27]

The tradition says it is the autograph that was taken there at the destruction in 577, so within the same century, 25 years after Benedict's death. Then Monte Cassino was in ruins for 150 years, and in 741 Monte Cassino was restored. And then the autograph was sent back to Abbot Petronix by Pope Zachary. So 150 years later, this autograph was sent back to Monte Cassino. In 833, Cassino was invaded by the Saracens, and the monks had to flee to Teano, which is near Capua, which is down near Naples, and they took the autograph with them, the one that had come back from Rome. Then in 896, there was a fire at Teano, and it destroyed the monastery and the library.

[31:29]

So the autograph was destroyed in that fire. There is a man by the name Paul the Deacon who wrote the first commentary of the Rule of Benedict around the year 800, and he records that he actually saw the autograph while he was still at Montecassino before the Saracens came in 833. How do we get to this good copy of the autograph, which we call Alpha, or Sangalis 940? This is the oldest extant manuscript, which is in direct line with the autograph. This one here. In 787, so the autograph is back at Monte Cassino now. Charlemagne had an exact copy of the autograph made, which was resting at Cassino, and sent to him at A la Chapelle, because he wanted to impose this on his empire.

[32:29]

He wanted to make this the exemplar of the rule of Benedict for all of the monasteries of his empire. And so he had this copy made and brought to A la Chapelle, Aquis Granum. In 817, two monks from Reichenau in Switzerland, by the name of Grimald and Tato, went to Éla-Chapelle and copied this copy of the autograph. And that's what we call alpha. It's either the copy made by Grimald and Tato, or an exact copy of the copy that they made. Manicassino has a different interpretation now, and you'll see here on the stemma that the Manicassino things are usually 775 and 174 different numbers, and you notice they're not in what Hansik puts over here in the authentic texts.

[33:32]

Now Manicassino maintains that their texts are the authentic texts, but according to the better studies, they don't directly depend upon the autograph. So we see that little section over here, on your right hand over here, is what we would call the authentic text tradition. Notice it's rather small. Now we've come to what we call the interpolated or the revised text, and that's going to be from Sigma here, that whole big family in here. That's the interpolated or revised text. When critical studies of the Rule of Benedict first began in 1880 or something like that, it was noticed that the manuscripts fell into two main sections because of the Latin used. One class was made up of text which employed vulgar or colloquial Latin. And the other class had a more perfect or correct Latin, more classical Latin.

[34:38]

For instance, the vulgar or colloquial Latin text began with the word, OBSCULTA, listen, and the more classical began with OSCULTA. So one of the things they began calling this was the OBS and the OWS, the OBSCULTA text and the OSCULTA text. Now, at first, scholars thought that both of these texts, the good Latin and the bad Latin, came from Benedict, that he wrote poor Latin for the people he was talking to, and then because he was such a scholar, he wrote the better Latin because he couldn't stand his poor Latin. But then it was discovered that this is not the case, but rather that the original text of Benedict is the vulgar Latin. And what happened was that already very early, and so even by 700, because the Oxford manuscript belongs to the interpolated text in a more classical Latin, already by 700, you have this development of a more classical text, and probably dating even towards the end of the 6th century.

[35:48]

So very early, you find people correcting the Latin of the Rule of Benedict into more classical Latin. And this family then becomes the Sigma family. And this Sigma is no longer in existence, of course. Now, the best or the most famous of the manuscripts for that family is the Oxford Manuscript. It would be interesting to say that this rule in England was the one used at Canterbury and possibly brought by Augustine from Gregory. But the problem with that is that modern studies have shown that Gregory the Great cannot be considered a Benedictine, though he may have known the rule of Benedict. And probably Augustine of Canterbury, therefore, was not a Benedictine. And it's doubtful whether this rule

[36:51]

dates back as far as Augustine of Canterbury. It was 597 or something like that, I think, he went to England. So anyhow, we know it's in England, and it was probably written in Canterbury, and so Canterbury is a very ancient monastic center. But this is not from Augustine. A number of important texts come up here, what we call the the little delta text. This is the rule of Donatus, and Donatus made a collage of the rule of Benedict, the rule of Columban, and the rule of Caesarius of Aros. So already we see very early this sort of collage of rules. Here it is, here is Iran, even before the, isn't that a delta there? Yeah, yeah. Now, how do we come to the accepted or received, or what we would call the vulgate text, which would be in between the interpolated text and the classical text, I mean the authentic text?

[38:05]

Charlemagne hoped to take his exemplar at A la Chapelle and make it the single copy or the authentic copy of his rule. So he imposed it. And so you find here in this section Benedict of Anya through Benedict of Anya. What happened, however, is that in correcting the interpolated text, in light of the A. La Chapelle text, a new family of texts arose. Because you can imagine a person writing, if you have a scriptorium, and they're reading the text so that you can write ten copies at the same time. The scribe is writing along, and he's very familiar with the interpolated text. And he hears this other text being read aloud. He says, oh, that can't possibly be right. And so he corrects what he hears with what he knows and comes up with a third text.

[39:14]

And that's where you get this third family of texts. It's somewhere in between the vulgar Latin of the autograph, and the classical Latin of the interpolated text. And this then became the received text, or revised text, or the corrected text. The interpolated text corrected in light of the authentic text. When we talk about the Latin of the Rule of Benedict, we notice that the classes of the Rule are divided up according to the Latin. As the Rule of Benedict was circulated, its Latin was revised and amended so that the text tradition, as we see, was split in two. Now remember that the Rule of Benedict is written in the 6th century, and it's six centuries and away from Cicero. So it has a vocabulary, a grammar, and a syntax which are those of the vulgar Latin of the 6th century, and not classical Latin.

[40:23]

Another thing to note about the Latin of the Rule of Benedict is that The rule is not uniform. There is a different type of Latin, for instance, in the beginning, in the prologue, in the doctrinal sections, than there is, for instance, in the Divine Office and in other places. For instance, the Divine Office is a block from chapter 8 to 20, and in that section of the Rule of Benedict, the vulgarisms or colloquialisms abound, much more than anywhere else. And this is interesting because, as we will see, chapter 8 to 20 is definitely the hand of the author of the Rule of Benedict, whereas the first part of the Rule he copies from the Rule of the Master. And here the Latin in that section where he copies from the Master is much more patristic Latin, and Christian Latin, and not so vulgar as it is in chapter 8 to 20. But in the 8 to 20, which is definitely from the author of the rule, because it's different in the rule of the Master, here the vulgarisms abound, which is a very interesting phenomenon.

[41:34]

And so, with this question of the Latin and the various textual traditions in the manuscripts, we come to the next major question, and that is, can we determine just when the Rule of Benedict was actually written, Where was it written, and by whom was it written? And that's the question that we call the authenticity of the Rule of Benedict. And that's what we'll wait and look at tomorrow. Are there any observations you have from this I think this is developing those three different groupings. I find them very interesting. Do you see the importance of this understanding of a manuscript tradition? Yeah. For instance, as you remember in the Monastic Institute, the question of conversatio and conversio, the authentic

[42:45]

manuscript would have conversatio in all places. Or you get into these others and they would have conversio. So it's little things like that are going to make the difference. Now there's not any tremendous difference of things, but there's few little things which will make a difference in interpretation. And that's why it's important to study the manuscripts to try to come up with the original text, if you can. And by studying the original text, or if you can find the original text, then it's going to be easier to localize it and to date it, because of the type of language that is used. And that's what we'll take a look at in the authenticity of the rule. Okay?

[43:34]

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