the life of the monks. What is in any case essential, however, is that in the text the exposition of the rule is inseparable from that of the life.
1.4. Starting with Wittgenstein, contemporary thought and more recently
philosophers of law have sought to define a peculiar type of norms, the norms
called constitutive, which do not prescribe a certain act or regulate a preexisting
state of things, but themselves bring into being the action or state of things. The
examples Wittgenstein uses are chess pieces, which do not exist before the game,
but are constituted by the rules of the game (“The pawn is the sum of the rules
for its moves”; Wittgenstein 2, pp. 325–26/327). It is obvious that the execution
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of a rule of this type, which does not limit itself to prescribing to an agent a cer-
tain conduct but produces this conduct, becomes extremely problematic.
Paraphrasing the scholastic saying forma dat esse rei (“form gives being to
the thing”), one could state here that norma dat esse rei (“norm gives being to the thing”; Conte, p. 526). A form of life would thus be the collection of constitutive rules that define it. But can one say in this sense that the monk, like the
pawn in chess, is defined by the sum of the prescriptions according to which he
lives? Could one not rather say with greater truth exactly the opposite, that it
is the monk’s form of life that creates his rules? Perhaps both theses are true, on
the condition that we specify that rules and life enter here into a zone of indif-
ference, in which—as there is no longer the very possibility of distinguishing
them—they allow a third thing to appear, which the Franciscans, albeit without
succeeding in defining it with precision, will call “use,” as we will see.
In reality, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, the very idea of a constitutive
rule implies that the common representation according to which the problem of
the rule would consist simply in the application of a general principle to an indi-
vidual case—that is, according to the Kantian model of determinate judgment,
in a merely logical operation—is neutralized. The cenobitic project, by shifting
the ethical problem from the level of the relation between norm and action to
that of form of life, seems to call into question the very dichotomy of rule and
life, universal and particular, necessity and liberty, through which we are used to
comprehending ethics.
2
Orality and Writing
2.1. It is from this perspective that we will now seek to interrogate the
nature of the rules starting from their textual structure, as it appears
in the earliest rules and in particular the Rule of the Master, a text which has
received special attention from scholars due to its influence on the Benedictine
rule. It has been observed that in the earliest monastic literature, the often anon-
ymous authors seem to more or less consciously introduce a complex relation-
ship and almost a tension between orality and writing, in light of which one has
been able to speak of a “fictitious orality” (Frank, p. 55). Already in the archetype
of Basil, the introduction of the Regulae fusius tractatae opens by referring to
a “gathering” ( synelēlythamen, “we gathered together”), whose participants, in-
tending to “live according to piety” ( tou biou tou kat’ eusebeian), propose getting to know what can guide them toward salvation ( mathein ta ton pros sōtērian;
Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae, preface). That it is a matter of a veritable staging is proven by the fact that the text proceeds to evoke an indeterminate but opportune place and time, in which it must be supposed that they pronounced
(and later put in writing) the questions and answers that make up the rule (“the
present is the most opportune time and this place provides quiet and complete
freedom from external disturbances”; ibid.).
The opening of the Rule of the Four Fathers refers in an analogous way to
an encounter and conversation among the four protagonists in order to “de-
termine the manner and the rule of the life of the brothers” ( Sedentibus nobis
in unum—“While we were sitting together”— qualiter fratrum conversationem
vel regulam vitae ordinare possimus; Vogüé 1, pp. 180/17). And in the second
discourse, that of Macarius, the father refers explicitly to the fact that the rule
was put into writing while the conversation was unfolding: quoniam fratrum
insignia virtutum . . . superius conscripta praevenerunt (“since the marks of the
brothers’ virtues . . . have already been written down”; ibid., pp. 180/19). With
singular artifice and through an expert staging of orality, the text refers to its
own writing.
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In the Second Rule of the Fathers, if the staging seems to be the same ( Residentibus nobis in unum . . . ), the tension between orality and writing changes, since it is now expressly a matter of conscribere vel ordinare regulam, quae in monasterio
teneatur ad profectum fratrum, “putting in writing and setting in order a rule that might be kept in the monastery for the progress of the brothers” (pp. 274/33).
Once the goal of the session is explicitly that of writing down the rule, the pos-
sibility is opened of a semantic oscillation that allows us to read the term regula, not only in the sense of “way of life” (as it was in the incipit of the Rule of the
Four Fathers), but also in that of a “written text.”
In the Third Rule of the Fathers (which according to Vogüé is the work of a
bishop), the passage from orality to writing has already taken place and it is thus
a matter not so much of writing the rule but of reading it: “When we convened
together with our brothers in the name of the Lord, it seemed good that at the
very first the rule and institutes of the Fathers be read in order [ regula et instituta patrum per ordinem legerenter]” (pp. 532/53). The rule is already a written text that therefore can and must be read, above all to the convert who asks to enter into
the monastery (“it seemed appropriate that when someone wants to be converted
from the world to the monastery, the rule be read to him when he enters”; ibid.).
With the Benedictine rule we arrive at the end of the tension between
orality and writing that had animated the rules of the Fathers, from which it
perhaps derives. The rule is already solely a text, which the last chapter desig-
nates as regula descripta ( regulam hanc descripsimus . . . hanc minimam regulam descriptam . . . perfice; chap. 73; Pricoco, pp. 270–72). While the conscribere of the early rules evoked a text dictated from the living voice of the Fathers and
extracted and transcribed from the monks’ very life, describere is the technical
term for the scribe who copies from another text. According to a custom that, as
we have seen, first becomes obligatory in the Carolingian era, the rule is always
regula descripta, in which the tension between orality and writing as much as
that between the subjective and objective meanings of the syntagma regula vitae
is already stifled.
2.2. What is the meaning of this dialectic that, at least up to St. Benedict,
the text of the rules establishes between orality and writing? Why do the rules
stage their writing as obstinately as their reading? It is not simply a matter of t
he
rhetorical construction of a fictitious orality, nor only of showing (as is almost
certainly the case), through the interplay between orality and writing, the rule
in the act of being constructed as a text and acquiring its authority by passing
from the rule-form of life to the rule-text. What is in question here seems to be
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the constitution of the special status of the text of the rule, which is not only a
written text or simply an oral discourse and whose basis does not coincide with
the transcription of a vital practice or, conversely, with the practical execution of
a written rule. The rule, that is to say, stages something that is not exhausted in
either of these dimensions, but finds its truth precisely and solely in the tension
that it installs between them. Neither written word nor living voice, the rule
constantly moves between these polarities, in search of an ideal of the perfect
common life that is precisely meant to define.
From this perspective, the Rule of the Master offers some exemplary cues.
Already the prologue, pushing the paradigm of fictitious orality to the point
of paroxysm, erases and renders almost indiscernible the boundaries between
orality and writing. It opens with an apostrophe, whose structure is perhaps
so grammatically complicated that the interpreters, while also pointing out its
peculiarity, have preferred to ignore it:
O homo, primo tibi qui legis, deinde et tibi qui me auscultas discentem, dimitte
alia modo quae cogitas et me tibi loquentem et per os meum deum te conveni-
entem cognosce [O man, (I say) first of all to you (the dative tibi seems to imply dico) who read (me), and then you who are listening to me as I speak, dismiss
now other thoughts and realize that I am speaking to you and that through my
words God is instructing you].” (Vogüé 2, 1, pp. 288/92)
Who is speaking here? Whether it is a matter, as seems most likely, of the rule
itself or, as Vogüé seems to think, of its author, in any case the relation between
orality and writing here is truly inextricable. On the one hand, the primordial-
ity of writing is beyond question from the moment the text speaks to a reader
( tibi qui legis) and in the following lines refers deictically to itself as a written document: “You, therefore, who hear me speaking, listen through what is written here [ per hanc scripturam] to what is being said to you not by my mouth
but by God.” On the other hand, however, the written text, which is put in
some way en abîme within itself, speaks and refers, curiously enough, not only
to a reader but also to an auditor ( deinde et tibi qui me auscultas dicentem). And a little earlier, the one who in speaking had nevertheless presupposed a reader
presents himself as the one who will read aloud “what is here written” ( hanc
scripturam quam tibi lecturus sum; ibid., pp. 292/93, evidently referring to the
text of the rule).
If the identity of the apostrophizer, divided as it is between writing and speak-
ing, is truly indiscernible, no less problematic is that of the one who is apostro-
phized as homo. He too is split, in fact, into a reader and a listener, apparently
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finding his unity only as an addressee of “this writing” and “this rule” ( haec regula; ibid.), which he must faithfully observe.
2.3. There is, nonetheless, in the text of the rule, a passage that seems to
contain the key to all these enigmas and that, in addition, permits us to define
the proper basis and nature of the rule. I am referring to chapter 24, whose title
reads De ebdomadario lectore ad mensas (The Weekly Reader in the Refectory).
The rule says that in every season, in summer as in winter, “whether the meal
is at the sixth or the ninth hour, each of the deans of all the deaneries will do
the reading at table for a week at a time” from the text of the rule (ibid., 2, pp.
122/177). As the text specifies further down, it is a matter of a lectio continua, that is of a reading that is taken up again every day from the point where it was
interrupted: “Every day he [the reader] reads this rule [ regulam hanc], marking
the place to which he reads day after day, so that it is read in daily sequence
[ sequenter cottidie] yet in its entirety, and thus in successive weeks the reading of it can be finished and started over again” (pp. 126/178–79). The rule specifies
the way in which the reader will assume his function (“this brother who is to
read presents himself by saying aloud: ‘Please, my lords, pray for me because I
am entering upon my week of reading at table’”; pp. 124/178), and how he must
read, without hurrying ( non urguendo) and in such a way that the listeners can
understand clearly what the rule commands them to do.
One must thus imagine that there will necessarily be a moment when the
reader, having reached chapter 24, will read the passage that enjoins him to
read the rule every day. What will happen at that moment? In reading the other
passages of the rule, the reader executes the precept of the reading, but does
not actualize what the text enjoins him to do in that moment. In this case,
however, the reading and putting into action of the rule coincide without re-
mainder. By reading the rule that prescribes to him the reading of the rule, the
reader performatively executes the rule ipso facto. His lectio realizes, that is to say, the exemplary instance of an enunciation of the rule that coincides with its
execution, of an observance that is rendered indiscernible from the command
that it obeys.
The dialectic between orality and writing is perfected here: there is a written
text, but in reality it only lives through the reading that is made of it. And the
rule suggests as much further down, when it defines, in a significant interpola-
tion, the daily reading of the rule as an in usu mittere ( nam cum cottidie in usu ipsa regula mittitur, ex notitia melius observatur, “even though the Rule itself is daily put into use, knowledge of it leads to better observance”; pp. 130/180). The
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rule presupposes a precedence of writing, but what is at stake is a writing that
is inert in itself, which must be “put into use” by its reading. This is confirmed
some pages later, where it recommends that the traveling monk do the reading
and, if he cannot, have recourse to meditatio, to recitation from memory, “in
order to give the rule its due each day” ( ut cottidie regulae reddat quod suum est; pp. 268/223). Lectio and meditatio belong constitutively to the rule and define its status.
3
The Rule as a Liturgical Text
3.1. Lectio has been an essential part of the Christian liturgy since its
origins. Today it is generally acknowledged that it derives from the
practice of the (most likely sung) reading of the Torah ( qeri’at Torah) in the synagogue. Two of the earliest testimonies to this reading, whose origin the tradi-
tion traces back to Moses (Deut. 31:10–11: “Every seventh year, in the scheduled
year of remission, during the festival of booths, when all Israel comes to appear
before the lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this
law before all Israel in their hearing”), are in the New Testament. The first (Acts
13:15) shows Paul attending th
e reading of the law ( anagnosis tou nomou) with his
companions in the synagogue of Antioch, where he is later invited to comment
on the passage read (“After the reading of the law and the prophets, the officials
of the synagogue sent them a message, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word
of exhortation for the people, give it’”). In the second (Luke 4:16–21), it is Jesus
himself who is to perform the reading in the synagogue of Nazareth and com-
ment on it:
He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood
up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled
the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has
sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he
rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all
in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
These two testimonies show that the text of the Torah was read in the synagogue
already at the time of Jesus, perhaps already divided (as we know from later
sources) into parachot (pericopes); that beyond the Pentateuch, passages from the
prophets (called haftarot) were also read; and that the reading was followed by a
homiletical commentary ( derashah), of which Paul and Jesus offer us an example.
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The reading of the Torah gradually assumes the form of a lectio continua,
which in Palestine was articulated according to a triennial cycle that began the
first or second Sabbath of the month of Nisan. In Babylon, the length was one
year, with a beginning after the Feast of Tabernacles (Werner, p. 89). The read-
ing of the prophets was not continual, however, but consisted each time of an
isolated passage chosen to correspond to the passage from the Torah that was
read that day.
The Church followed the example of the synagogue by instituting readings
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