Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

virginum had penetrated as far as the location of this monastery, and that Caesarius’
Regula monachorum had not. This suggests that the circulation of the rule for nuns was
much wider than Caesarius’ own rule for monks.
c) Ferreolus of Uzès, Regula
Moving slightly north-west from Arles takes us to the location of the third sixth-
century borrowing from the Regula virginum. Ferreolus, the bishop of Uzès from 553 to
his death in 581, composed a rule for the monastery of Ferreolac, named for the third-
century martyr of Vienne, which he founded in the diocese of Die. 163 As with the reguli
Aureliani and Tarnantensis, it survives only in Benedict of Aniane’s collection of
monastic texts, now Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, ms. Clm 28118. Neither is
knowledge of Ferreolus himself particularly wide. Gregory of Tours recalled a man
‘given to intellectual pursuits... he had composed a number of volumes of letters, in the
style of Sidonius, one might say.’ 164 Ferreolus’ literary activities, although not extant,
suggest a bishop in the tradition of Caesarius and of Avitus of Vienne, making use of a
formal late antique education in the service of his episcopal responsibilities. Indeed, there
may have been a personal link, albeit somewhat tenuous, between Caesarius and
Ferreolus. A seventh-century vita describes Ferreolus as disciple and successor to bishop
Firminus, co-signatory of the Regula virginum and biographer of Caesarius. 165 In yet
another parallel with the earlier bishop-authors, the sister of Ferreolus, Tarsicia, (whose
vita is, unusually, far easier to find than her brother’s) spent most of her life as a hermit in
the Rouergue, near Rodez. 166 Ferreolus’ main claim to fame was in the eyes of the
Pippinid family, who wished to trace their ancestry to the Gallo-Roman senatorial class
and therefore searched for a connection to Ferreolus. As Ian Wood has pointed out, the
link by marriage to the family of Ferreolus, described in the early ninth-century
163
A. de Vogüé, Les Règles Monastiques Anciens’, 56. The rule is at PL 66:959-976. See also V. Desprez,
‘La ‘Regula Ferrioli’. Texte critique’, Revue Mabillon 60 (1982), 117-48; for a French translation, V.
Desprez, Règles Monastiques d’Occident, 287-339.
164
Historiae VI:7, MGH SSRM I,1 266-267 ; tr. Thorpe, 337.
165
Desprez, Règles Monastiques d’Occident, 289. The present study has been unable to locate an edition of
this vita.
166
Genealogia B. Arnulphi. AASS Jan 15, 1068-9; BHL 696.
106