The Life of St. Benedict by Gregory the Great: Translation and Commentary [Paperback]

Terrence G. Kardong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2009

In his classic Second Book of Dialogues, Pope Gregory the Great lionizes Saint Benedict as hero and casts him predominantly in the role of miracle worker. Yet in his Rule, Benedict comes across more as a practical community organizer and premier spiritual father. In this volume, Terrence Kardong offers a fresh take on Gregory the Great's classic. He alternates between translated sections of the Dialogues and his own commentary. Crisp and direct, and infused with his wry and ever-present sense of humor, Kardong's writing is sure to build up the spiritual life of readers and, equally important, to make them love St. Benedict.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Terrence Kardong, OSB, has gifted us with a fresh new translation of and commentary on Gregory's Life of Benedict as depicted in the Dialogues. The commentary is interspersed throughout the book, following sections he has just translated. The net effect of this methodology is to create a much more rounded, continuous biography, rather than simply proceeding from Gregory's rather sketchy and sometimes dubious rendition. The author balances Gregory's Benedict with what we know from current scholarship. Father Terrence, master of the anecdote, displays once again his uncanny ability to express the profound with elegant simplicity. He has been able in this book to interweave the credible from Gregory with the believable of Benedict, as he reveals himself in his own Rule. The result, as always from Terrence's pen, is both readable and reliable, as well as entertaining and enjoyable." --Fr. John Crean, OblSB, PhD, Coeditor of MAGISTRA: A Journal of Women's Spirituality in History

Review

"Entering into the spirit of the Dialogues, Fr. Terrence offers us a lucid translation and a sensible commentary that explores the meaning of this spiritual classic. His vast knowledge allows him to link the text both to the Scriptures and to the spiritual tradition. His typical enthusiasm underlines the importance of St. Benedict's spiritual development. Finally Fr. Terrence's clarity makes this work accessible to anyone interested in the spiritual life."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Liturgical Pr (March 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814632629
• ISBN-13: 978-0814632628
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ignore, deny...marginalize!, March 20, 2011

By 

Kate - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Life of St. Benedict by Gregory the Great: Translation and Commentary (Paperback)

At first glance the choice of eminent American Benedictine commentator Fr Terrence Kardong as author for a new translation and commentary on the Life of St Benedict is an odd one.

He did after all, decline altogether to draw on the Life as means of illuminating the Rule in his own commentary on the Rule of St Benedict.

And in 2004 he authored an article in Cistercian Studies Quarterly endorsing the Francis Clark's conspiracy theory to the effect that the Life was in fact a fake.

Clark's work, to the extent that it ever had any credibility (which is doubtful), has now been comprehensively debunked, as Kardong acknowledges in this book. So is this work then, offered by way of atonement? Sadly, no.

Having tried first ignoring, and then dismissing altogether, the value of the Life, Fr Kardong now embarks on a third means of marginalizing the importance of what has traditionally been regarded as one of the foundational documents of the Benedictine Order.

The reasons for his dislike of the text are not hidden: as the introduction makes clear, he hates its miracles. And, also dislikes, one gathers from the commentary, the rather 'rigid' approach to the interpretation of the Rule that those miracles support.

Even while acknowledging in places that the historicity of the Life is hard to reject given St Gregory's careful citation of his sources and provision of corroborating detail, Kardong treats the work as literature, not history.

Take for example his discussion of St Benedict's decision to abandon his studies in Rome. Although Kardong mentions some of the recent studies on St Anthony's learning, he fails altogether to draw out the distinctions made at the time between the completion of the classical curriculum and choice of other less formal but more Christianized forms of learning. Neither does he make any mention of the decay in systems of study that Benedict's contemporaries Boethius and Cassiodorus both attempted to counter in different ways. Nor does he provide any context on the well documented moral decay of contemporary Rome that St Gregory tells us prompted the decision to leave the city.

Surely the greatest problem with this commentary though, is that Kardong fails altogether to see the providential dimension of St Benedict's life.

Instead of a symbolic move from the hidden cave and depths of the valley of Subiaco to the light shining out from Montecassino that St Gregory suggests for example (and the current Pope has also pointed to), the move is portrayed purely in terms of the moral and spiritual growth of the saint.

There is nothing unusual about Fr Kardong's approach to the Life. The miracles that dominate the Life of St Benedict by St Gregory the Great have been regarded with suspicion ever since rationalism and modernism became fashionable in the nineteenth century. And this work is entirely consistent with the marginalization of the person of St Benedict, in the context of a reductionist view of history that sees it as something altogether separate from God's plan for his Church, that has been a consistent feature of American Benedictine thought in particular over the last forty years.

Still, it is disappointing to see this hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity continuing to be perpetuated at a time when Pope Benedict XVI is urging the recovery of the Church's patrimony.

Benedictine oblates and others committed to the hermeneutic of continuity in the Church would do well to look to the older biographies of St Benedict and translations of this work rather than to this one.

But if you too hate miracles, this is the version of the text for you...

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very useful, December 5, 2010

By 

C. J. Skamarakas (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Life of St. Benedict by Gregory the Great: Translation and Commentary (Paperback)

Brief, lucid translation of Gregory the Great's biography of Benedict, to which the author adds many explanations that help cut through Gregory's hagiography.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life of St. Benedict, October 1, 2010

By 

Kathy B - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Life of St. Benedict by Gregory the Great: Translation and Commentary (Paperback)

This is the only information we have on St. Benedict. This work is an outstanding example of writing on Saints, in the early Church, by Fathers of the Church. The style aims to provide inspiration and this book does!