Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

whole in the mid-seventh century may, Wood suggests, may be discernable from an
inventory of monasteries copied for bishop Caldeoldus of Vienne. 197 Clarus himself
placed his mother into the monastery of St Blandina, which according to the vita had
twenty-five residents at the time. Certainly, the existence of dedicated women in the city
from the early sixth century is attested by the presence of Fuscina; in turn, these figures
would suggest a fairly long-standing tradition of communal life in the city, which
suggests a further context for the apparently exclusively familial existence of the bishop’s
sister Fuscina. Communal and individual establishments for living out a dedicated life co-
existed.
There is evidence of monastic life, for both men and women, in several cities
prior to the arrival of Columbanus. The houses in Arles, the foundations of Romanus and
Lupicinus in the Jura and the foundations in Vienne were joined by an early royal
foundation for men, Sigismund of Burgundy’s monastery at Agaune, which he made in
515 in honour of the Theban legion. 198 Syagrius, bishop of Autun (561-602) founded a
monastery for women dedicated to St Mary and two for men. 199 At queen Brunhild’s
request, these were given papal privileges. However, for many medieval and modern
writers, Columbanus’ influence was all important; increasing the number of foundations,
and transforming the declining religious life of the sixth century into the basis for the
triumph of ‘orthodox’ Benedictine monasticism under the Carolingians. 200 The existing
and ongoing foundations in the areas in which Columbanus worked disprove this
teleology, and as will be seen in Chapter 5, laid no such basis for a Benedictine reform,
which was only intermittently successful.
197
Vita Clari, AASS Jan I, 55-6; For bishop Caldeoldus, see AASS Jan 1, 975. See also Wood, ‘A Prelude
to Columbanus’, 8-10.
198
Vita sanctorum abbatum acaunensium MGH SSRM VII 329-336. See also Wood, ‘A Prelude to
Columbanus’, 14-16.
199
I. Wood, ‘Jonas, the Merovingians, and Pope Honorius: Diplomata and the Vita Columbani’, A.C.
Murray (ed.) After Rome’s Fall: narrators and sources of early medieval history (Toronto, 1998) 99-120, at
113.
200
See in particular P. Riché, ‘Columbanus, his Followers and the Merovingian Church’, in H.B. Clarke
and M. Brennan, Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (Oxford, 1981), 59-72.
115