Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Emmeram in Regensburg, 131 and the contents would suggest a connection with one or
both of the two female communities in Regensburg, Ober- and Niedermünster,
particularly since both were communities of canonesses and Obermünster was founded as
a female counterpart to the neighbouring St Emmeram. 132 The third, Paris, BN, ms. Lat.
1534, containing both the Institutio sanctimonialium and the Institutio canonicorum, was
possibly the Instructio sacri Concilii Aquisgrani celebrati an. Domini 816 mentioned in
the twelfth century catalogue of the cathedral library of Carcassonne. 133 The fourth
manuscript, Paris, BN, ms. Lat. 1568, has been dated to the second half of the ninth
century but its provenance is unknown. It contains selections from the council of Aachen
alongside those from earlier church councils, from Ancyra (314) onwards. 134 The
geographical distribution of the manuscripts is wide, but is numerically too small a
sample to draw conclusions as to whether copies were indeed circulated from Aachen or
were the subject of specific requests. This begs the unanswerable question of why so few
copies of the Institutio sanctimonialium are extant, particularly since there remain at least
seventy-three manuscripts of the Institutio canonicorum, of which at least eighteen date
from the ninth century. 135 In terms of assessing impact, the small number may be less
significant than it appears, since knowledge of the text had spread to England by the early
eleventh century: Wulfstan made use of both the Institutiones canonicorum and
sanctimonialium in his Institutes of Polity, deriving his knowledge of the latter from
Amalarius of Metz’ Regula sanctimonialium. 136 It may be possible to speculate that due
to the relative numbers of male and female houses, there were always likely to be fewer
copies of the version for nuns. Following traditions of dedicated women living in small
institutions, those distributing the Institutio worked on the basis that women’s access to
the text would be mediated, probably orally or via letter, through the presence of their
bishop.
131
MGH Conc. II:I, 422; A. Werminghoff , ‘Die Beschlüsse des Aachener Conzils im Jahre 816’ Neues
Archiv 27 (1902) 606-675, 634ff.
132
Schilp, Norm und Wirklichkeit 104. See also www.datenmatrix.de/projekte/hdbg/kloster/index_extern.
shtml.
133 Ibid., 104.
134 Ibid., 105.
135 Ibid., 310-12.
136 S. Foot, Veiled Women, 107-9.
246