PREFACE.

The text on this page is enclosed within a red double-line rectangular border. There are two handwritten cross marks (+) in the left margin.

+This book is divided into two parts; the first is subdivided into four treatises, and each treatise is divided into chapters. Of the 22 chapters that form this first part, we only possess six, or 144 pages. For the other 16 chapters, see p. VIII. The second part is complete and contains 14 chapters or 341 pages.

The six chapters of the first part speak of the monastic life, detachment from the world, the common life, the solitary life, and its battles. The chapters of the second part treat of faith, hope, perfect charity toward God and toward neighbor, poverty and self-abnegation, virginity and chastity, fasting and mortification, prayer, the divine office, the Mass, thanksgiving after Communion, reading and vigils, penance, humility, obedience, patience, the presence of God, and vigilance.

+At pages 145—146, the words mashkna u-maslya tabernacle and prayer and maslya u-mashkna prayer and tabernacle are confused and taken for one another.

The calligraphy of this manuscript is very beautiful, and the orthography is generally quite exact. However, we have had to correct certain inaccuracies and render some words in conformity with the rules followed today. We have often signaled these cases at the bottom of the pages.

We were obliged to vocalize the entire work from beginning to end; the diacritical points are not placed in a regular manner, nor are the punctuation marks. Sometimes one cannot distinguish them, nor know if a point belongs to the word of the line above or the word of the line below. This work was all the more arduous as there is no other copy that allows the difficulty to be resolved.