Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

foundation of religious houses had become a commendable activity for a bishop. The
silence of the circumstances of the writing of the regula Tarnantensis extends to its
author and his motivations; regrettably the rule as preserved by Benedict of Aniane
contains no explanatory preface. Ferreolus made his foundation on his own land, which
happened to be in another bishop’s diocese. Its accompanying rule carefully records some
of the negotiations that occurred around the foundation. The fact that Ferreolus made the
foundation on his own land, however, does suggest that a personal desire (and of course,
the availability of the property itself) to do so, rather than episcopal strategy, lay behind
it. In that sense Ferreolus’ foundation has much in common with Radegund’s monastery
of Holy Cross, in that both were made in some regard according to the personal desires
and for the personal benefit of their founder. However, this may be too simplistic an
interpretation. It may also rely too much on traditionally gendered readings of the act of
foundation. How far, for instance, was Radegund’s foundation just as much a political act
as Aurelian’s, or as responsive to the perceived spiritual needs of her community as
Caesarius’? Radegund had a personal involvement in Holy Cross in a way in which
Caesarius and Aurelian were not involved in their foundations, but her personal desire for
claustration should not, as is the case in so many historiographical narratives of
foundations by and for women, be taken to imply the absence of other, wider
motivations. 177
Seventh-century change? Donatus of Besançon, Columbanus, and Faremoutiers
The third ripple outwards from the writing of the Regula virginum did not occur
until the middle of the seventh century, when Donatus, the bishop of Besançon (626-
658), composed a monastic rule for his mother Flavia, and her community of
Jussamoutier. 178 Donatus, however, did not solely look to the Arles rule when thinking
177 An overtly political context for Radegund’s foundation has been advanced, that Radegund’s religious
life was a lifelong act of expiation for Chlothar having murdered her brother at the same time as taking her
prisoner, acts described in Radegund’s poem on the Thuringian war: see Y. Labande-Mailfert, ‘Les débuts
de Sainte-Croix’, in E.-R. Labande et al, Histoire de l’abbaye de Sainte-Croix de Poitiers. Quatorze siècles
de vie monastique (Mémoires de la société des Antiquitaires de l’Ouest 4e sér., 19 (1986-7), 21-60, at 32.
178 Donatus of Besançon, Regula virginum PL 87: 273-298. See also A. de Vogüé, ‘La Règle de Donat pour
l’abbesse Gauthstrude. Texte critique et synopse des sources’, Benedictina 25 (1978) 219-313. J.A.
109