Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

CHAPTER 4
Dedicated Women, Monasteries and Reform in the Eighth Century
In the opening chapters of this study, we have seen a dynamic monastic world of
innovation and adaptation. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Caesarius’ writings for
dedicated women spread, and with them went (among other things) ideas of claustration
and the most suitable ways of organising a monastery. Yet as the previous chapter has
demonstrated, Caesarius’ influence went far deeper than the practicalities of dedicated
life. Equally as popular were his writings on the ethos of dedication: his letter Vereor,
which found resonances among both female and male religious audiences, and his
sermons, which in their written form were much longer-lived and reached a far greater
audience than merely the communities in Arles for which they were originally intended.
However, the study of the manuscript transmission of Caesarius’ writings also
reveals a period fairly lacking in direct evidence of their circulation. After references to
the use of the Regula ad Virgines in the sixth and seventh centuries, for instance, the first
subsequent witness to its existence is its appearance in the manuscript of Benedict of
Aniane’s Codex regularum in the early ninth century. This leaves a gap, broadly
spanning the eighth century, for which there is very little evidence for the use of
Caesarius’ works.
The aim of this penultimate chapter is to some extent to find a means of bridging
the apparent gap between the ‘peaks’ of monastic foundation and textual composition of
the sixth and seventh centuries, and the subsequent reform-related re-emergence of
interest in monastic writings in the ninth. At first glance, sources show very few new
foundations being made in the eighth century. Jane Schulenburg, in her statistical survey
of monastic foundations from 500 to 1100, illustrates this in stark numerical terms. 1 Her
study brings out a vibrant picture of seventh-century foundation, largely those connected
with the missions of such luminaries as Columbanus, Eligius, Philibert and Amandus in
1 J.T. Schulenburg, ‘Women’s monastic communities: Patterns of expansion and decline’ Signs 14:2 (1989)
261-92.
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