Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

of involvement in religious life, have proved a fruitful area of research. 28 The publication
in 1992 of a collection of Frankish women’s vitae in translation – Sainted Women of the
Dark Ages – typifies the fascination of this material, and has made it accessible to a far
wider readership. 29
However, the study of both early medieval regulae and early medieval women
has suffered from one major deficiency: an over-reliance on nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century printed editions of texts, and a lack of engagement with the
manuscripts that transmit the texts. Such editions succeeded in their aim of ironing out all
the discrepancies between different recensions, and arriving at an ‘authoritative’ version,
but it has become increasingly apparent that such editions obscure, for instance,
variations between manuscripts from different geographical, chronological and gendered
backgrounds, all of which may vitally enhance understanding of their contents and the
way in which they were perceived at the time. Over the last two decades, several works
have begun to reject the comfortable tyranny of the printed edition, in favour of returning
to the evidence of the manuscripts themselves. This has been especially the case among
discussions of medieval chronicles and annals. In Anglo-Saxon studies, the importance of
the different manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is now reflected by a seventeen-
volume edition of its constituent manuscripts. 30 Frankish histories are represented by
Rosamond McKitterick’s work on the Royal Frankish Annals. 31 In other spheres, Martin
Heinzelmann and Joseph-Claude Poulin’s study on the Vita Genovefae has set new
standards for the analysis of the manuscripts of a saint’s life. 32 This type of study has not
yet made a sizeable impression upon monastic studies, and the present study
demonstrates how valuable such an approach may be.
28 J.T. Schulenburg, ‘Sexism and the celestial gynaeceum – from 500 to 1200’, Journal of Medieval History
4 (1978) 117-133. For a useful example of such a study of late antique women, see K. Cooper, The Virgin
and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass: 1996).
29 J.A. McNamara and J.E. Halborg with E.G. Whatley, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Duke: Durham
and London, 1992).
30 D. Dumville and S. Keynes (general eds.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition
(Cambridge, 1983-).
31 R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004).
32 M. Heinzelmann and J.-C. Poulin, Les vies anciennes de sainte Geneviève de Paris (Paris, 1986).
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