Commentary on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict by Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster (review)

Reviewed by: Commentary on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict by Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster Hugh Feiss O. S. B. Commentary on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict by Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster, trans. A Monk (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2023. Pp. xxviii, 318. Paperback, 22. 95. ISBN 978-1-621-38899-9). There are three parties responsible for this book. The first is Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, who was born in Rome in 1880 and died in his archdiocese of Milan in 1954. He went to high school at St. Paul Outside the Walls and became a monk there in 1898. He earned doctorates in philosophy and theology, and was elected abbot of the monastery in 1918. He was a scholar, who among other works published five volumes of notes of liturgical history and personal reflection, appearing in English as The Sacramentary. He was End Page 233 appointed Archbishop of Milan in 1929 and was made a cardinal that same year. He saw some good in the Fascist party early and supported the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, but he condemned the German annexation of Austria and the introduction of antisemitic laws. He tried to get Mussolini to conclude a peace. He was beatified in 1996. The second party is the Angelico Press. Their list of titles includes nicely printed paperback editions of venerable Catholic books whose copyright has expired, Christian esoterica, and books critical of Vatican II. The third party is "A Monk, " otherwise unidentified, who has carefully translated the second, 1945 edition of Schuster's work and added some helpful explanatory and corrective notes. Whoever A Monk is, he writes good English and knows Italian well. In this book Schuster offered spiritual commentary on the RB, to counter tyrannical, godless, and militaristic fascism, and with the hope that Benedictines could help restore a shattered Europe. He greatly admired the Imitation of Christ, which he thought was written by a Benedictine abbot. He mentioned the idea that the RB drew upon the Rule of the Master but did not explore it. He frequently refers to Benedict's sources, drawing on the references in Cuthbert Butler's edition of 1912. He believed that Benedict spent time in a monastery in Rome and that the popes of Benedict's time wished to make the RB the norm for monks in Italy. He gives arguments to show that Benedict was a priest. Perhaps half of the volume is devoted to the Latin text of the Rule of Benedict used by Schuster (based on MS Sangallensis 914, beginning "Obsculta") and A Monk's translation of it. The rest is commentary, which has at least three layers: a spiritual commentary reflecting a relatively strict application of the Rule, such as Schuster seems to have experienced and applied it at St Paul Outside-the-Walls; historical notes about sources and terminology; and finally, anecdotes about important monastic figures, such as Dom Delatte, Bl. Placido Riccardi, Bl. Giuseppe Benedetto Desmet, and Rosendo Salvado. I enjoyed the anecdotes most; I learned from the historical notes but would not trust them without checking the sources; and I was often edified by Schuster's spiritual commentary, reflecting conscientious and heartfelt living of observant Benedictine life as he experienced in Italy in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Schuster tells us why he wrote his commentary. It is not so clear why A Monk spent so much effort in translating it, or why Angelico Press published it. Presumably they admired the version of Benedictine life that it celebrates. That way of life and the world End Page 234 in which it flourished seems very distant now, but Schuster himself is a tribute to what it could accomplish in a man who gave himself wholeheartedly to it. Hugh Feiss O. S. B. Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID Copyright © 2024 American Benedictine Review, Inc