Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

thought and purity of heart. 91 Chapter 25 of the Regula Benedicti is accompanied by the
entirety of chapter 22 of Caesarius’ rule followed by the three Dicta Caesariae. The
earliest manuscript of the Concordia confirms that this time Benedict did know the
identity and gender of the author. 92 Obviously on this basis it cannot be claimed that
Benedict viewed the writings of male and female religious with equal enthusiasm. But
neither was the gender of the writer so great an obstacle that the abbess’ writings could
not be used at all or had to be attributed to Caesarius.
Of course, the connection of these texts to Caesarius raises its own questions.
Benedict’s antiquarianism, suggested by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill in terms of the Codex,
might further imply that having acquired such a large dossier of material from Arles,
most of which written by or based on the writings of Caesarius, Benedict wanted to use
as many of the items as he could. 93 This in turn returns us yet again to the issue of
Caesarius’ own standing among the Carolingians. Can the relatively large extent to which
his rule for nuns was used be indicative of anything more than Benedict’s regard for him,
as opposed to a gauge of the standing in which texts written for women were held in
general?
In comparison with the Codex, some general observations can be made. Works
intended for women are used to an even smaller degree, but to an extent this can be
explained by the different purposes each text had: the Codex was a collection, a summary
of monastic life made for Benedict’s own use in order to assess the merits and faults of
the past before moving on; the Concordia was the textual basis of that moving on,
centred around the regula Benedicti, which in turn affected the other texts that could be
used. One possible explanation for this must be that the use of texts written for men
reflects a concern on the part of Benedict only with the reform and monastic standards of
monks, and this will be explored in the remainder of this chapter. For the present,
however, this conclusion is not so straightforward to draw. Benedict came from a male
monastic environment; these were the rules with which he was familiar. In addition,
91 De Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 418-439 (O Profundum); 470-5 (Dicta Caesariae).
92 P. Bonnerue, Benedicti Anianensis Concordia Regularum CCCM 168 (Turnhout, 1999), 92.
93 Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 230.
236