Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

appears not to have played so large a part in the ecclesiastical affairs of the eighth
century. In the context of female religious life, no new burst of enthusiasm for making
foundations revealed itself. There is indeed no evidence for any new female monastic
foundations in the eighth century in the region south of the Loire. As has been underlined
more than once, it is difficult to make categorical statements about the state of affairs in
southern Gaul in almost any field of discussion, due to the much smaller range of
surviving sources. Magnou-Nortier ascribes this to the twin destructive impulses of the
sixteenth-century wars of religion and the eighteenth-century Revolution. 20 It may be
particularly apposite to bear in mind, therefore, the partial nature of the evidence that
exists for female dedicated life in the area; the evidence offered by councils, in particular,
can only be taken as an indication of dedicated life in the north of the Frankish kingdoms.
Our point of departure for the south should be, of course, Caesarius’ foundation in
Arles. Here, however, the issue of lack of evidence immediately arises. The fate of St
John during the eighth century is uncertain, and a search for manuscripts possibly written
in the scriptoria of the city in this period has proved fruitless. The only community for
which some eighth-century evidence does exist is Holy Cross of Poitiers. The perilous
existence of eighth-century religious communities in general may be illustrated by the
plight of the nuns of Holy Cross, who were forced to flee to one of their dependent
priories at Jard, on the Vendée coast, following Viking raids in 732. 21 Disruptions such as
this may support Wood’s supposition of a decline in scribal activity. However, such
dramatic episodes do not seem to have had long-term repercussions for Holy Cross. Here,
the nuns continued to be commemorated in stone. In 1860, the abbé Auber discovered the
epitaph of the deo devota Mumlenau close to the tomb of Radegund in the crypt of the
church in Poitiers. 22 The stone, now in two pieces, has fairly large lacunae:
20
E. Magnou-Nortier, ‘Formes féminins de vie consacrée dans les pays du Midi jusqu’au début du XIIe
siècle’, La femme dans la vie réligieuse du Languedoc (XIIIe – XIVe siècles). Cahiers de Fanjeaux 23
(Toulouse, 1988) 193-216, at 203.
21
J. Verdon, ‘Recherches sur les monastères féminins dans la France du sud aux IXe – Xie siècles’ Annales
du Midi 88 (1976) 117-138, at 120.
22
R. Favreau and J. Michaud (eds.) Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale I: Poitiers (CNRS,
1974)
178