Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

the properties held by bishops either in the right of their own families or those of their
bishoprics. 206 However, this sense of a new direction for Gallic monasticism can be
exaggerated. Undoubtedly Columbanus provided a context and direction for the spiritual
impulses of families such as Burgundofara’s, but this may have found an outlet in any
case. It is worth reiterating the paucity of source material for the north of Gaul in this
period; the fact that fewer foundations were recorded in this area should not be taken as a
certain indicator that a monastic desert existed there before the Irish monk’s arrival. 207
Against this background, too much reliance can be placed on Jonas’ version of events, as
one of the few sources that has survived. His portrayal of a number of northern
Burgundian aristocratic families creating a monastic ‘movement’ solely under the
auspices of Columbanus is evidently intended to demonstrate the spirituality and
authority of Columbanus himself, rather than to record the pressures and impulses behind
a few monastic foundations.
However, it is worth spending some time examining the strategic involvement of
the king and his immediate family. Kings had been associated with new monasteries
before – one need only think of Childebert’s assistance with Aurelian’s foundation in
Arles, Clothar’s support for Radegund’s monastery of Holy Cross in the late 550s, or of
Childebert’s foundation of St Medard in Soissons, in 557. In the seventh century, kings
granted land to individuals for the purpose of founding monasteries, but with different
strategic ends in view. Political power was increasingly in the hands of those holding
lands in the countryside rather than controlling interests in the cities. Royal methods of
controlling those interests had themselves to be based around the control of landed
estates. As Wood suggests, this had echoes of Anglo-Saxon rather than Gallo- Roman
practice. 208 Dagobert (612-639) gave lands at Solignac to Eligius, and the estate of Rebais
to Dado. 209 Childeric (king of Austrasia 657-675, and of Neustria-Burgundy 673-675)
endowed Amandus with Nant, and with his wife Chimnechildis endowed him with
206 For this north-south divide in Burgundy, see Wood, ‘A Prelude to Columbanus’, 13. For a more general
overview, F. Prinz, ‘Columbanus, the Frankish Nobility and the Territories East of the Rhine’, in H.B.
Clarke and M. Brennan, Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (Oxford, 1981), 73-87, at 75-6.
207 I. Wood The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (Longman: London, 1994), 185.
208 I. Wood, ‘The Vita Columbani and Merovingian Hagiography’, Peritia 1 (1982) 63-80, at 76-7.
209 Vita Eligii I.15, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SSRM IV, 663-742.
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