Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

at the same time, or if, having received the Regula, the community there made an effort
to acquire texts from other monasteries which explored the same ethos, or indeed St John
itself.
The third manuscript of the Regula virginum is in some ways the strongest piece
of evidence for the continuation or renewal of interest in the text. It now forms part of
Bamberg, Königliche Bibliothek, ms. Lit. 142, which was transcribed at the end of the
tenth century for the monastery of Niedermünster in Regensburg during the abbacy of the
‘reform abbess’ Uta (990-1025), and, as Morin notes, may have formed part of a spiritual
and material regeneration of the monastery under duchess Judith and her son Henry II of
Bavaria (951-995). 16 The association of the Regula virginum with a drive for renewal is
particularly striking given that the first half of the manuscript is composed of the Regula
Benedicti adapted for women, the archetypal document of monastic correctness in this
period. F. 65r carries a depiction of Caesarius giving a copy of his Rule to a pair of nuns,
perhaps those of Niedermünster, beneath the description in gold minuscule ‘S(an)c(tu)s
c(a)esarius commendans ius monachab(us)’. 17 On the book which the figure of Caesarius
hands to the nuns is written ‘Om(ne)s unanimit(er) et concorditer vivite’ [‘Let all live in
unanimity and concord’, RV 21]. While an apt recommendation for any religious
community to abide by, this instruction also resonates particularly in a community which
seems to have used two monastic rules together: the rules themselves should (and could)
coexist in harmony. 18
16 Morin, ‘Problèmes’, 9-10. Details of the manuscript are in F. Leitschuh (ed.) Katalog der Handschriften
der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Bamberg. I (Wiesbaden, 1966) 292-4. On the dating of the manuscript with
regard to the abbacy of abbess Uta, see J. Gerchow and P. Marx (eds.) Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus
Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Munich, 2005) 186-7. De Vogüé, Oeuvres monastiques, 129, states that
the manuscript was only produced after the death of Uta, who had died 10-15 years previously. However, a
miniature of Uta on f. 163 would suggest that it was at least in part under her auspices that the manuscript
was produced.
17 Bamberg ms. Lit. 142, f. 65r. See particularly Gerchow and Marx, Krone und Schleier, 186-7.
18 Although see Gude Suckale-Redlefson’s comments on the likelihood of such an aristocratic community
adjusting well to a stricter rule, Gerchow and Marx, Krone und Schleier, 186. In her opinion, such
difficulties may have formed the context for the removal of the manuscript to Emperor Henry II’s new
foundation for men, St Michael, in Bamberg, where the text was subsequently amended to be suitable for a
male community.
133