Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

particular virtue or practice of monastic life, which Jonas considers first, and those that
are concerned with warning nuns about the sins which might befall them, which broadly
occupy the second half of the collection. A good example of the former is that of
Sisetrude, the first miracle in the collection. 237 Given forty days’ warning of her
impending death, she spent the time in fasting, tearful prayer and vigils, and asked the
‘mother’ and the other nuns to pray with her: prayer was considered to be both an interior
and a shared activity. She died to the accompaniment of an angelic choir. Jonas makes
the moral of this particular tale quite clear: it was ‘the first of the encouragements that it
pleased the Lord to give to the servants in this monastery’ in order that they should
‘aspire with their entire soul to the perfection of the religious life’. 238 Another story of a
glorious death concerns Ercantrude, who was afflicted with physical suffering towards
the end of her life. 239 This she bore with patience, humility, piety, sweetness and charity.
The encouragement of these examples was, however, matched by the warnings
given by other stories. Sometimes the two could be combined: in the case of Ercantrude,
one of the sisters attending her deathbed was driven to confess to being too occupied with
the world. 240 The reluctance to break worldly bonds is also a theme in those stories whose
moral is more specifically one of warning. Beractruda, for instance, died after confessing
to eating secretly in her room, a sign of making insufficient effort to follow monastic
precepts. 241 The clearest example of this is that of two separate groups of would-be
escapees. Two recent entrants, tempted by the devil, failed to escape after becoming as
heavy as lead once outside: confession to the abbess was the end of the matter. Not so
fortunate were the second group, who left and decided to return but could not then find
the way back. As the devil had denied them the ability to confess, they died in torment,
and their tombs were later found to have been burnt out. 242 These tales suggest a
monastery whose nuns were not all there of their own free will, which is unsurprising
given the family context of monasticism explored above. Not every girl or woman had a
237 VCD II:11.
238 Ibid: ‘Hanc primam huius coenobii exhortationem Dominus famulabus suis voluit demonstrare, ut
caeterae quae superstites essent, omni intentione ad cultum religionis aspirarent’.
239 VCD II:13.
240 VCD II:13.
241 VCD II:22.
242 VCD II.19.
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