Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

CHAPTER 3
The Manuscript Caesarius:
Transmission and Gender in the Early Middle Ages
Earlier chapters of this study have demonstrated the impossibility of separating
the production of normative texts – in this case, Caesarius of Arles’ Regula virginum –
from the practical contexts in which they were produced. This approach has also shown
that the ‘normative texts’ of the period were not only confined to regulae, but also
included letters, such as Vereor, and hagiography, such as Baudonivia’s vita Radegundis.
This chapter takes a fresh approach to studying the circulation and use of a text.
By examining the manuscript transmission of Caesarius’ writings, the Regula virginum
and Vereor, it is possible to gain a new understanding about how and by whom
Caesarius’ writings for dedicated women were circulated. This in turn has considerable
ramifications for women’s dedicated life as a whole, as it indicates a landscape of
dedication in which a far wider variety of normative texts than simply regulae was made
use of.
The circulation of the Regula virginum after the sixth century
While the use of the Regula virginum in the sixth and seventh centuries is
reasonably accessible to trace in terms of textual borrowing by other rules, attempting to
follow the manuscript dissemination of the Regula before its ninth-century reappearance
is a more difficult task. Only three manuscripts of the rule survive, although there is good
knowledge of a fourth; of these, not one dates from before the ninth century. Yet
consideration of these manuscripts is essential for providing some indication of the
circulation of the text in the intervening period.
The earliest extant copy of the Regula virginum is found in Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, ms. Clm 28118, a manuscript dating to the first quarter of the ninth
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