Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

However, the use of Caesarius’ text itself demonstrates how useful his ideas were
perceived to be – to a probable male audience - at the moment the Liber scintillarum was
composed. In Rochais’ words, ‘C’est un exemple de ce qu’un homme d’Église croyait
utile de faire à la fin du VIIe siècle pour s’édifier lui-même et instruire de leurs devoirs
chrétiens ses frères, ou les fidèles à lui confiés’. 131 The transmission of Defensor’s work
at the very least spread awareness of Caesarius’ writing on spiritual issues, both within
monasteries and, possibly, among a lay audience. 132
We are perhaps on more productive ground with a consideration of the extant
manuscripts of the masculine recension of Vereor. There are at least nine copies of the
masculine version of Vereor extant, ranging in date from the ninth to the thirteenth
centuries. 133 The two most recent editors of Caesarius’ collected works, Germain Morin
and Adalbert de Vogüé, vary in the selection of codices used in their editions. Both aimed
only to produce an edition of the feminine recension of Vereor; they each selected
manuscripts, including those that contained the ‘male version’ of Vereor, the Sermo ad
quosdam germanos as scribes usually entitled it, that would best fit their twentieth-
century ideas of a text aimed at women. While acknowledging the greater number of
manuscripts containing the text in its masculine form, Morin’s edition of Vereor does not
discuss any of them in detail (an omission rectified to some extent in his later edition of
131 Rochais Defensor de Ligugé, 15-6. For discussion of the audience of the Liber, see 26.
132 However, it must be noted that a recent study of ‘German-insular’ manuscripts casts a somewhat
different light on the production of the Liber scintillarum. Felice Lifshitz, Demonstrating Gun(t)za, at 74-5,
notes that the editor of the Liber, Henri Rochais, based his edition on Würzburg M.p.th.f. 13, the oldest
witness of the florilegium. Lifshitz notes that in preparing his edition, Rochais took no account of the fact
that a woman named Gun(t)za had twice signed her name on the manuscript. His attribution of the
florilegium to a ‘Defensor monk of Ligugé’ was made on the basis of prologues naming ‘Defensor’, found
in thirty-two manuscripts of the eleventh century or later. Of course, the appearance of a woman’s name on
a manuscript does not constitute proof that she, rather than ‘Defensor’, was the original compiler. It does
suggest that the community of which she was a part found such a text useful. It also suggests an element of
caution in accepting Rochais’ attribution of the text to an individual first named four centuries after the
production of the text.
133 The best discussion of the manuscripts for the Sermo is provided in G. Morin (ed.) Caesarius
Arelatensis. Sermones 2 vols. CCSL 103, 104 (Turnhout, 1953). Note that Morin omits two manuscripts
containing the Sermo ad quosdam germanos: Grenoble, Bibl. Munic., ms. 306 and Milan, Bibl. Ambros.,
ms. C.79 Sup., both dating from the twelfth century.
163