These notes are intended to be nothing more than a brief summary of Père Mandonnet’s excellent and exhaustive treatise on the origins of the Rule of Saint Augustine, extending over a hundred pages and forming part of the monumental work entitled Saint Dominique, L’Idée, L’Homme et L’Oeuvre, published in 1938 (two years after his death) by his disciples and assistants Père Humbert Vicaire and Père Reginald Ladner, in two volumes. This work, with the exception of five valuable études critiques, has recently been translated into English by Sister Mary Benedicta Larkin, O.P., of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, U.S.A. As unfortunately these essays which occupy eighty-two pages of the original book have not been listed by the translator, but only referred to numerically, their titles are here given for the guidance of those who cannot have access to the French edition :—(1) The Chronology of Saint Dominic’s Life between 1205 and 12107, by Vicaire; (2) Cardinal James de Vitry’s account of the Preacher-Canons of Bologna, by Mandonnet; (3) Paul of Hungary’s Summa de Poenitentia, by Mandonnet; (4) The Constitutions of the Order between 1220 and 1227, by Vicaire; (5) The Beginnings of the Order of Penance, by Mandonnet. Admittedly these studies are technical and do not all touch directly on Saint Dominic and his work, but Vicaire’s first study, not a very lengthy one, could have been included in the translation with much profit.

The Rule of Saint Augustine, as universally known to-day, is prefixed to the Book of the Dominican Constitutions, and is incorporated in the Institutions of many other religious Orders.