Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

personne, does not include ‘Mumlenau’ itself, she does list ‘Mumma’, ‘Momola’,
‘Mummolus’ and ‘Mummolenus’. 33 From this, Favreau and Michaud deduce a Germanic
origin for the name, which seems a reasonable supposition.
Magnou-Nortier suggests further reasons for the apparent lack of enthusiasm for
founding religious communities. Firstly, Roman law specified that women could not
formally dedicate themselves until they were aged forty, and she suggests that the
stronger hold of Roman laws and customs in the south meant that women would be likely
to adhere to such a regulation. 34 However, this argument is difficult to sustain given that
one of the most famous abbesses in the south, Rusticula of St John, entered the
community as a child and became abbess at the age of eighteen, and this, even in the
seventh century. 35 She further suggests that it would have been very much harder to hold
out against family pressure to marry until the age of forty. Strong family bonds further
ensured that women were not so able or willing to leave their parental households, with
the result that women from southern Gaul tended to stay much closer to their families and
adopt lives as informal Deo devotae within their own family households. 36 It is evident,
however, that Magnou-Nortier’s definition of what constituted a religious community is a
fairly narrow one; she is interested only in those sizeable communities for which good
evidence of a formal date of foundation exists. This must be the reason for her apparently
contradictory conclusions with regard to southern families, in that they both discouraged
and encouraged their daughters to dedicate themselves to God. Large-scale formal
foundations were discouraged; informal dedication within family networks was
encouraged. Even then, however, the earliest and only example that Magnou-Nortier can
put forward is that of Emenana (Immena), placed at the head of a foundation made by her
parents for the good of their souls, in 823. 37 With the exception of foundations such as
33
M-T. Morlet Les noms de personne sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe siècle 3 vols.
(Paris, 1968-) I, 121.
34
Magnou-Nortier, ‘Formes féminins de vie consacrée’, 201.
35
See Chapter Two, 94-5.
36
Magnou-Nortier, ‘Formes féminins de vie consacrée’ 195, 201.
37
Magnou-Nortier, ‘Formes féminins de vie consacrée’ 204-5. For a much fuller discussion of the
circumstances of Immena’s foundation and career, see J. Martindale, ‘The nun Immena and the foundation
of the abbey of Beaulieu: a woman’s prospects in the Carolingian Church’ Studies in Church History 27
(1990) 27-42, and Chapter Five, below, 248-9.
180