been held concerning the applicability of the principles and spirit of the Rule of Saint Benedict to the secular working environment. Reforms During the more than 1500 years of their existence, the Benedictines have not been immune to periods of laxity and decline, often following periods of greater prosperity and an attendant relaxing of discipline. In such times, dynamic Benedictines have often led reform movements to return to a stricter observance of both the letter and spirit of the Rule of St Benedict, at least as they understood it. Examples include the Camaldolese, the Cistercians, the Trappists (a reform of the Cistercians), and the Sylvestrines. Secular significance Charlemagne had Benedict's Rule copied and distributed to encourage monks throughout western Europe to follow it as a standard. Beyond its religious influences, the Rule of St Benedict was one of the most important written works to shape medieval Europe, embodying the ideas of a written constitution and the rule of law. It also incorporated a degree of democracy in a non-democratic society, and dignified manual labor. Popular legend A popular legend claims that the Rule of Saint Benedict contains the following passage: The bulk of the passage is excerpted (with chance errors) from a translation of chapter 61 of Benedict's Rule found in the book Select historical documents of the Middle Ages (1892), translated and edited by Ernest Flagg Henderson, and reprinted in 1907 in The Library of Original Sources, Vol. IV, edited by Oliver J. Thatcher. The version above, first published in Hubbard's Little Journeys (1908), omits a part of the passage which enjoins the monastery, given good behaviour, to accept the guest as a permanent resident. The words "gossipy and contumaceous" replace the original "lavish or vicious"; and the words following "he must depart" were originally "lest, by sympathy with him, others also become contaminated." No language corresponding to the last sentence about "two stout monks" appears in the Rule, though it is a popular myth that it does, with several reputable publications (and more than one church, and at least one Benedictine organization) repeating and propagating the error. At least one of the sources cited attributes the passage to a mythical Chapter 74; the Rule of St Benedict contains only 73 chapters. An early source for the quotation is the University of California, Berkeley faculty club, which has, for years, posted a version of the above passage on its