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The Ascetic Works of Saint Basil: Author’s Preface and Introduction

W. K. L. Clarke

V. Rufinus’ Latin Version

In 897 Rufinus returned from the East to Italy. Urseius, abbot of Pinetum near Ravenna, asked for information about Eastern monasteries. In response Rufinus translated Basil’s Rules. His version will be found in Migne P.L. citi. 485-554. He refers in Hist. Feel. 11. to this translation. Here is the letter prefixed to the version.

“Very glad was I to enter your monastery, dear brother Urseius, when I arrived from Eastern parts and desired once more the accustomed companionship of the brethren. It was situated upon the narrow ridge of a sandy causeway, and was lapped on both sides by the waves of the shifting sea. The place hidden below was indicated from a distance only by a few pine trees, by which it is known to the world by the fair name of Pinetum.

1 This is a puzzling passage. The first part is fairly clear: “quod superpositum angusto arenosi tramitis dorso hinc atque hinc passiui et incerti maris unda circumluit.” The boundaries of the sea are constantly shifting on this coast. The monastery is on the highest part of a

[Plan of the monastery of Pinetum omitted here: see the printed edition, pp. 28–29.]

Professor J. H. Baxter, who has kindly helped me in this note, writes as follows: “The only reconciliation of the two (superpositum and the “place hidden below ’) would be through reading subterpositum (not in LS. but known in later Latin and likely to be changed by scribes through ignorance). The plan would then be—

“We were specially delighted because you did not, as the custom of some is, ask anxiously about the places or wealth of the East, but you demanded to know what was the practice of the servants of God there, what were their virtues, and what rules were observed in the monasteries. In reply to your request, anxious not to give an exposition unworthy I do not say of myself but of the dignity of the subject, I produced the Monastic Rules of Saint Basil, bishop of Cappadocia, a man of great fame for his faith and works and every kind of sanctity. These Rules he gave in reply to the questions of the monks as a sort of sacred case-law. Admiring his definitions and decrees, you eagerly asked me to translate this work into Latin, promising me that through all the monasteries of the West, if these holy and spiritual rules of a holy and spiritual man became known, the total progress of the servants of God which would come from the observance of such precepts would bring me some grace or reward as a result of their merits or prayers. I gave my services, then, to the best of my ability.... Let it be your duty to provide other monasteries also with copies that all monasteries may live after the pattern of Cappadocia and with the same, not diverse, rules and observances.”

The Rules in Rufinus¹ version are a conflation of the 55 Longer and 313 Shorter Rules to make one book of 203 Rules. Of the Longer Rules Rufinus uses 1-24 (omitting 11-13, and 20); he then proceeds to the Shorter Rules, 121 of which he omits entirely, including 69 out of the last 100. Throughout he paraphrases and abbreviates freely. He found the Longer Rules in the same order as that of our modern editions. Apparently the Shorter Rules also were in the same order, and Rufinus made a half-hearted effort to arrange them better.²

Rufinus’ version is important as the channel through which St. Basil’s Rules reached St. Benedict. Some of the special features of the Rules, for example double monasteries and confession to laymen, are also features of Celtic monasticism. If the Basilian Rules really became known “throughout the monasteries of the West ’ during the fourth century, no further explanation of these features need be sought. But the investigation of this problem is outside the scope of the present book.

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