Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

make profession of the Benedictine rule, are to live regulariter, which in this context
suggests the clear upholding of doctrines described in the rule itself. The second are
women living canonice, who are exhorted to stay in their cloisters (in claustris suis). This
makes some sense of clause sixty-one of the council of Chalons-sur-Saône, discussing
sanctimoniales who live in their own homes. It appears that women living canonically
may have had their own properties inside a ‘cloister’. However, the differences between
such women cannot be overstated, as the council itself clearly considered them to be
mere variations on the same theme. As at the councils of Arles and Tours, another clause
– here, clause twenty, concerning the location and building of monasteries – considers
monastic women to belong to the same basic category. As before, the phrase used is
monasterii canonicorum…et monachorum similiterque puellarum. 53 Evidently, different
styles of male community need to be mentioned separately; female communities did not,
even if they could in some circumstances be sub-divided. The evidence of these councils,
in addition to providing valuable insights into the condition of and attitudes towards
dedicated women and their lifestyles, reiterates the point that for early ninth-century
legislators, correctness of behaviour was a more important aspect of dedicated life than
the precise form religious women’s lives took.
Reform under Louis the Pious: Benedict of Aniane
Charlemagne died on 28 th January 814, and his son Louis, until now king of
Aquitaine, arrived in Aachen to take up the reigns of the empire. 54 He brought with him
the men who had helped him to govern in Aquitaine: his son-in-law Bego, who became
count of Paris; his chancellor Helisachar, who retained that office until 817, and
Benedict, the abbot of Aniane, who had already initiated a reform of the monasteries in
Aquitaine according to the rule of Benedict of Nursia. 55 Benedict had entered monastic
life at Saint-Seine l’Abbaye. Finding his new home unreceptive to his desire to a more
53
Mainz (813), can. XX.
54
On Louis the Pious, see P. Godman and R. Collins (eds.) Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the
Reign of Louis the Pious (Oxford, 1990).
55
P. Bonnerue Benedicti Anianensis Concordia Regularum CCCM 168 (Turnhout, 1999), 44.
227