Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

The Vatican manuscript is evidently a compendium of works of guidance for
monks, with individual texts ranging in date from Athanasius (d. 373) to Alcuin (735-
804). The inclusion of a number of Alcuin’s writings serves to provide a terminus post
quem for the date of the production of the manuscript. This is a collection of shorter texts
rather than regulae: a body of work that could be used to supplement the teachings of the
Benedictine rule in the monastery of Fleury. However, as Mostert suggests, the
manuscript was almost certainly not copied either at the same time, or by the same scribe,
although almost certainly in the same scriptorium. 85 There is a large clue to this in the
placement of Caesarius’ works in the manuscript. This is in general an organised,
coherent collection: works by the same author are grouped together. The exception to this
is Caesarius, whose writings are now in two distinct and separate groups in the
manuscript: the first, ff. 60r-66, of three sermons; the second, ff. 120-139v, of his
writings to religious women. One may imagine a first set of extracts and complete texts
of monastic guidance being gathered together, organised and copied; indeed, the work
immediately following Caesarius’ Sermo CCXXXVIII, the anonymous De electis omnia
reliquentibus, continues directly on from the sermon on the same folio. A second set of
similar guidelines, Mostert’s section of ff. 75-150, perhaps written slightly later or by a
different scribe in the same scriptorium, was subsequently added to the manuscript.
Given that this second section, commencing with the De contemptoribus mundi of Isidore
of Seville, appears somewhat less weathered than the first section, it may be that a
slightly later date of production is indicated. Thus, Caesarius’ work appears in two
groups in the manuscript.
The question that concerns us here, however, is the relationship between the
group of Caesarian texts for women and the remainder of the manuscript. The consistent
script between this and the rest of the manuscript, and the lack of weathering at the start
of the Caesarian material, indicate that these texts did not themselves physically circulate
as a separate booklet. However, their grouping, and above all the fact that they all
concern dedicated women, in contrast to the texts in the rest of the manuscript, suggest
85 Mostert, The Library of Fleury, 258.
148