Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

that Benedict did not exert himself to enquire at female establishments regarding the rule
they used, or of his disapproval of the rules that he did find in use. As previous chapters
of this study have shown, moreover, the use of texts that were not regulae was likely to
have been significant, as were guidelines transmitted orally between dedicated women or
between such women and the bishops that oversaw their lives.
However, further consideration of the composition of the Codex, and of the nature
of female religious life itself, may shed some light on the ideological and practical
contexts in which Benedict was working. The contents of the Codex divide roughly into
three. Discounting the rule of Benedict, the first third is made up of patristic texts such as
the rule of Jerome, the second third mainly of rules for monks from the sixth and seventh
centuries, and the last part is formed of the rules for nuns. Clearly a differentiation was
being made. All of the feminine rules are placed in a group at the end of the work, with
the works of two authors – the rules for monks and nuns of Columbanus and Aurelian –
being separated in order to do so. 72 This may suggest that they were seen as being of
lesser importance or relevance. However, if the patristic texts, perceived as the
foundations of monastic life and therefore necessary as a guarantee of orthodoxy, are
removed from the equation, the relative number of texts starts to look considerably less
unbalanced, perhaps twelve rather than thirty against six. There is still a difference, and
the contention must be that this can be accounted for by considering the nature of female
monasticism in preceding centuries. Women who lived in smaller houses, perhaps
supervised directly by a bishop, would have both less need of, and less access to,
normative written texts than did men. One could even posit that Caesarius’ rule had been
so successful in circulation and adaptation that subsequent rules had been deemed
unnecessary. It is therefore not surprising that there would simply be fewer rules for
women in existence.
Consideration of Benedict’s sources returns us to the wider issues of Benedict’s
use of texts aimed at women. Among those is audience: it seems probable that Benedict
72 In Bouillet’s re-established order these are the rules of Caesarius, Aurelian, the letter of ‘John’ to virgins,
Donatus, the Regula cuiusdam, and Columbanus.
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