Johannes Trithemius. In Regulam d. Benedicti...commentarius (Commentary on the Rule of Benedict).
Valenciennes: Johannes Vervliet, 1608.
Also known as De regimine claustralium (On the Discipline of the Cloistered Life).

8vo. [16] + 840 pages. 166 x 103 mm.  Stamped pigskin binding over wooden boards, with clasps (one missing).

Trithemius’ is one of the great commentaries on the Rule of Benedict, joining a tradition that extends back to the first commentaries produced during the Carolingian monastic reform in the ninth century. He wrote it in 1486, early in his career, interpreting Benedict in a way that would encourage learning in the cloister. This learning, however, was to be explicitly Christian, for commenting on RB 4.55 (“listen readily to holy reading”), he laments: “Today we see ecclesiastical simplicity spurned, and the dicta of Aristotle preferred to the writings of Jerome... no word is recited that Philosophy did not transmit.” On the other hand, Trithemius himself was eclectic in his own book collecting and reading, as this exhibit makes clear.

The first extant printed edition dates from 1604 (in the Opera pia et spiritualia shown elsewhere in this exhibit). This printing from 1608 is the first separate edition. Our copy was part of the trove of 1062 books that arrived from the Bavarian monastery of Ottobeuren in September 1877.

Saint John’s Rare Book Collection.