Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

steadfastly according to the holy rule [of Benedict] until the end’. 123 Additionally, all
clerics were forbidden to wear lay dress and from hunting with dogs. There was to be a
clear separation from lay society for those dedicated to religion, who for Boniface formed
the vanguard of his missionary efforts east of the Rhine.
The impacts of Boniface’s efforts to reinvigorate the Christianity of the Franks
generally, and on dedicated women in particular, are not easy to detect. Few manuscripts
of the text of the decrees of these church councils are extant, and those that do exist do
not appear to reflect a dissemination far beyond the north and east of Francia. The edicts
of the Concilia Germanicum and Liftinense are preserved in the same manuscripts; seven
date to the tenth century or earlier, of which two are now in Vatican libraries and five in
German collections. 124 The deliberations of the council of Soissons were circulated as a
capitulary of Pippin III; three ninth- and tenth-century manuscripts survive, in Rome and
Paris. 125 These previously belonged to the cathedral libraries of St Peter in Beauvais and
St Martin in Mainz, and the abbey of St Vincent in Metz.
By 755, the canons of the Council of Verneuil show that Boniface’s desire to
reform all Frankish monasteries as Benedictine institutions was proving difficult to fulfill.
The council decided to introduce stringent penalties for non-compliance. Communities
that failed to observe the rule could be excommunicated; individual recalcitrant nuns
could be imprisoned, although no equivalent sanction is listed for reluctant monks. 126
However, the council did not take the final step of stipulating a single type of institution
in which dedicated women should live. Its third measure concerning them was to decree
that women who had veiled themselves or monks who had tonsured themselves were to
join a community, ‘sub ordine regulari’, or to live under the supervision of a bishop, ‘sub
ordine canonica.’ 127 One of the major implications of this legislation must be the
123
Conc. Suess, 3: Ut ordo monachorum vel ancillarum Dei secundum regula sancta stabiles
permaneant…
124
For these manuscripts, see H. Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta :
Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse (Munich, 1995), 1080.
125
For these manuscripts, see Mordek, Bibliotheca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta 1080.
126
Conc. Vernense, can. 6, MGH Capit. I, 34; see also Wemple Women in Frankish Society, 166.
127 Ibid., can. 11.
203