The Rule of Benedict

Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 AD - 543 AD) founded twelve monasteries, the best known of which was his first monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy. Benedict wrote a set of rules governing his monks, the Rule of Saint Benedict, one of the more influential documents in Western Civilization. Benedict was canonized a saint in 1220.


Carolinne White was born in London and read Classics and Modern Languages at St.Hugh's College, Oxford. She wrote a doctoral thesis on Christian ideas of friendship in the fourth century, published in 1992. After 2 years spent teaching Latin at UNISA in Pretoria, she returned to Oxford where she worked on the supplement to the Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon and taught Patristic and Medieval Latin. She now divides her time between work as an assistant editor on the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, translation work, and her four children. Her publications include a translation of the correspondence between Jerome and Augustine (1990), Early Christian Lives (published by Penguin in 1998), and an anthology of Early Christian Latin poetry in translation (2000).