Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

monk’s relationship with God, or his own internal spirituality, and the monk’s
relationship with others and behaviour in the community, respectively. The major
influences on Columbanus’ rules were two-fold. Firstly, Columbanus had been trained as
a monk at Bangor in Ireland, but, as Jane Stevenson suggests, the variety of different
practices in Ireland makes the task of discovering which rule was used at any given
monastery a difficult one. 182 Indeed, Columbanus’ rules are the earliest evidence for
practices in the monasteries of Ireland. 183 Columbanus shared his second major influence
with Caesarius: the teachings of the Eastern monastic fathers, in particular as filtered
through the Conlationes and Institutiones of Cassian.
The most notable aspect of the rules themselves must be their severity. Monks
were expected to attend eight offices a day, one every three hours, and Stevenson
surmises that in the winter the office of matins (performed at 3 a.m.) might have lasted as
long as two and a half hours. 184 At mealtimes, monks who spilt their food or drink were
to lie with arms outstretched during the singing of twelve psalms. 185 Gossiping might be
punished with fifty blows or with the imposition of silence. 186 Disobedience would result
on two days with only water and one loaf of bread to eat. 187 In addition, the monks were
expected to confess their faults several times a day, ‘before meals or entering bed or
whenever it is possible’. 188 It was this austere but undoubtedly charismatic figure Flavia
and Waldelen had visited to ask him to pray for a child. Columbanus agreed, on condition
that their son should be consecrated to God. 189 ‘Donatus’, the child given by God, would
not have existed, as family legend must continually have reminded him, without the
combination of his mother’s piety and the charisma of Columbanus.
There was yet a third strand to Donatus’ monastic heritage, and that was the rule
of Benedict of Nursia. De Vogüé has calculated the number of times each older rule has
182
Stevenson, ‘The Monastic Rules of Columbanus’, 205-6.
183
Ibid., 207.
184
Ibid., 210.
185
Columbanus, Regula coenobialis, cap. 3. Ed. and tr. Walker, Sancti Columbani Opera, 146.
186
Reg. coen. Cap. 4.
187
Reg. coen. Cap. 10.
188
‘…ante mensam sive ante lectorum introitum aut quandocumque fuerit facile…’ Reg. coen. Cap.1.
189
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani 1.20. MGH Script. rer. germ. in usu schol. 197.
112