Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

While canons such as these may reflect previous legislation and older conceptions
of the problems associated with female monastic life, Charlemagne’s legislation also
reflects new priorities. By far the greatest proportion of articles referring to abbesses do
so as part of discussions of the responsibilities of the leading members of Carolingian
society: counts, bishops, abbots and abbesses, all having a role in the re-formation of a
Christian society. This was made particularly clear in the programmatic capitulary of 802.
Charlemagne’s first requirement was that these groups should be in accord with each
other, so that ‘always, everywhere, a just judgment on a matter may be effected because
of them and among them.’ 22 On this foundation, counts, bishops and monasteries should
offer protection to the poor, widows, orphans and pilgrims, in order to secure
Charlemagne’s passage to eternal life. 23 Charlemagne’s legislation thus reflects a tension
between, on the one hand, a clear recognition of the place of abbesses within society, as
keepers of the peace, upholders of the law, responsible lords, and members of aristocratic
society and a perception of the more longstanding problems associated with women
religious.
Such prescriptive sources as these can only shed a partial light on religious
women during the reign of Charlemagne, and it is to Charlemagne’s sister Gisela, in the
absence of other documented Deo devotae, that we must return. As the abbess of Chelles,
much of Charlemagne’s legislation was directly applicable to her, and yet it is evident
that she was not bound by the requirement of the capitulary of Herstal that she remain
always at Chelles; 24 indeed, the activities of Gisela and other abbesses may have lain
behind the later canon of Chalons that recognised their need to leave the monastery. As
another court poet, Theodulf, puts it,
If the king’s most holy sister should happen to be there
let her give kisses to her brother and he to her.
Let her restrain her great joy with a tranquil expression
22
Capitulare missorum generale (802), can. I. MGH Capit. I, 92.
23
Can. V.
24
Capit. Harist. (779), can. III. MGH Capit. I, 47.
219