Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Circulation of Caesarius’ works: Vereor
The feminine recension of Vereor is, as we have seen, part of a Caesarian
‘booklet’ in the two manuscripts considered above. Two further manuscripts (of which
only one is still extant) also contained this text in combination with a different
constellation of works. The first, Tours, Bibl. Munic., ms. 617, dating to the late tenth or
eleventh century, has been discussed above (at 130-3) in the context of the dissemination
of the Regula virginum. This manuscript contained both the Regula virginum and Vereor,
bringing to the fore the possibility of multiple layers of circulation. However, if it is
correct that this manuscript was a copy of a very early one sent by Teridius, it is more
likely that both texts would have been sent to Autun to facilitate new religious institutions
there. The second, which now lacks the beginning of the letter and was therefore not
substantially used by Morin or de Vogüé, is Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, ms.
M.p.th.o.1. This manuscript, which dates to the mid-eighth century, has been associated
with an unidentified women’s community east of the middle Rhine. 113 It contains a partial
(mutilated) copy of Vereor, a selection from the Regula Magistri addressed to
venerabiles filiae, and ten sermons to monks, attributed to Caesarius but now considered
the work of both Caesarius and Eusebius Gallicanus. 114 Felice Lifshitz argues that this
manuscript ‘was clearly prepared for a female religious community’. 115 This was a
deliberate collection of the works of Caesarius, with the addition of an extract from the
rule of the Master. As Lifshitz notes, such a collection would be particularly suitable for a
community of women; the emphasis laid by Caesarius on the ability of nuns to read and
write ‘was presumably part of the arsenal of texts which female religious and their allies
invoked to justify the women’s claims to financial and educational resources’. 116 Perhaps
more importantly, the creation of such a collection suggests a context for the Caesarian
‘booklet’ of texts in Vatican Reg. Lat. 140 and Toulouse 162. A female community might
have made such a collection or had it made for them. Where would such a collection have
113 F. Lifshitz, ‘Demonstrating Gun(t)za: women, manuscripts, and the question of historical ‘proof’’, in W.
Pohl and P. Herold (eds.) Vom Nutzen des Schreibens: Soziales Gedächtnis, Herrschaft und Besitz im
Mittelalter (Vienna, 2002) 67-96, at 78-80.
114 Ibid., 79. These are sermons XXXIX, VI, XL, XLI, and XLIV of Eusebius Gallicanus, and sermons
CCXXXIII, CCXXXV, CCXXXVI, CCXXXIV and CLV of Caesarius.
115 Ibid., 79.
116 Ibid., 80.
159