Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

The most remarkable fact about this manuscript was the presence of a monogram in two
places in the rule; at the end of the ‘original’ rule (chapter 47), and at the end of the
recapitulatio (chapter 73). 8 After an initial attribution to a certain ‘Deuterius’, Morin
identified this as belonging to Teridius, nephew of Caesarius, and it seems likely that just
as Teridius sent a copy of the rule for monks to Auxerre, so he sent a copy of the rule for
nuns to Autun. 9 The distribution of the text to Autun may well have occurred in around
561-2, when bishop Syagrius of Autun (530-602) was in contact with Teridius himself
and abbess Liliola of St John. 10 Although Syagrius’ sole recorded foundation of a
monastery for women was not until c. 589, when he founded the female community of
Notre-Dame with queen Brunhild, the responsibility of bishops to oversee the religious
women of their diocese may have driven him to approach an established community to
obtain a ready-written text. 11 If this is true, the manuscript extant until the 1940s would
have been a faithful copy of this document.
However, even when Morin studied the manuscript in the early 1930s, it was
mutilated and incomplete. 12 It was then composed of twenty-six folios, containing the end
of the ‘original’ rule (the end of cap. 43 to cap 47), the main body of the recapitulatio
(caps. 48-65), the ordo for meals (cap. 71) and the summary, conclusion and Episcopal
subscriptions (caps. 72-3). Caesarius’ co-signatories were Simplicius, bishop of Senez;
Cyprianus of Toulon and Firminus of Uzès (these two also wrote the vita Caesarii);
Severus, Lupercianus, and Montanus, whose sees are unknown; lastly, Iohannes can be
identified as the bishop of Fréjus from the subscriptions to the canons of the synod of
Arles (524). 13 There is no record of a council in 534 at which these bishops may have
8 De Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 140.
9 G. Morin, ‘Le monogramme d’un Deuterius au bas de la Règle de Saint Césaire’ Revue Bénédictine 46
(1934) 410-413; de Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 140.
10 De Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 140.
11 GC IV:479; see also I. Wood, ‘A Prelude to Columbanus: the Monastic Achievement in the Burgundian
Territories’ in H.B. Clarke and M. Brennan, Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (Oxford, 1981) 3-
31, at 12. The general responsibility of bishops for monasteries in their dioceses is expressed by, for
example, canons XXVII and LVIII of the councils of Agde (506) and canon X of the council of Epaon
(517), which decree that bishops shall decide if new foundations may be made in the diocese (C. Munier
(ed.) Concilia Galliae CCSL 148 (Turnhout, 1963).
12 G. Morin, ‘Problèmes relatifs à la Règle de saint Césaire d’Arles pour les moniales’ Revue Bénédictine
44 (1932) 5-20, at 9.
13 Arles, 524. MGH Conc. I, 38.
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