Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

oth more restrictive attitudes towards women in aristocratic society, and from the fact
that as devotion and the round of prayer came to centre increasingly on the mass, the
foundation of male monasteries came to be preferred. 8
While this analysis is persuasive, it does not account for those women who did
not embark on such relatively high-profile monastic adventures but confined themselves
to a quieter life of dedication, perhaps on a family estate. As Alain Dubreucq has argued,
such smaller foundations ‘ne constituent pas réellement un monastère’. 9 Although an
argument for the existence of such individual deo devotae cannot be made from silence,
their presence is suggested by continuing references to them in a variety of sources. Both
the Penitentials of Bobbio (700x725) and of Paris (c.750) prescribe penitence for sexual
activity with a nun or deo devota (Bobbio)/ deo decata (Paris). 10
Indeed, statistical surveys pay little attention to another type of source: the
evidence provided by conciliar activity. The councils which were held under the auspices
of Boniface in the 740s, and subsequent councils, had as their clear intention the
eradication of what were deemed to be unsuitable ways for dedicated men and women to
live and to comport themselves. These decrees can therefore shed some light on the ways
in which religious women were living. Most importantly, they attest to the continuing
existence of dedicated women who lived outside monasteries; the very women, indeed,
who are invisible to the statistical eye, but among whom the booklet of Caesarian
writings would have found a ready audience.
The first of these councils was the Concilium Germanicum, held in 742, and
overseen by Boniface and Carloman. 11 Here, the sixth canon refers to dedicated religious.
If a monk (servus Dei) or a nun (ancilla Christi) committed fornication, they would be
made to do penitence on bread and water. This canon, however, makes separate reference
8 Gaillard, ‘Les fondations d’abbayes féminins dans le nord’, 11.
9 A. Dubreucq ‘Le monachisme féminin dans le nord de la Gaule à l’époque carolingienne’ in Les
Religieuses dans le cloître et dans le monde des origines à nos jours: Actes du Deuxième Colloque
International du C.E.R.C.O.R., Poitiers, 29 septembre - 2 octobre 1988 (Poitiers, 1994) 55-71, at 57.
10 Penitential of Bobbio cap.13; Penitential of Paris cap. 8, cited in E. Santinelli, Des femmes éplorées? : les
veuves dans la société aristocratique du haut Moyen Âge (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2003), 161.
11 The exact location of the council is unknown, other than being in Austrasia.
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