Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

canonical lives: ‘utrum canonicam an regularem vitam ducere vellent’. 149 The nuns reply
unanimously that they would prefer to follow a monastic life, whereupon Odilia
persuades them that a monastic rule would hinder the provision of water in the
inaccessible monastery of Hohenbourg, and they would be blamed by their successors,
‘maledictionem a successoribus nostris incurrere’. It seems to her, therefore, that they
should retain their canonical habits, to which the nuns of Hohenbourg and Niedermunster
agree, and this was still the life followed there when the vita was composed, ‘usque
hodie’. 150 A decision of this nature being addressed within a vita is of importance on
several levels. It is a justification of the present community’s life when such things were
evidently perceived to matter; more than that, its inclusion shows the issue to be of such
importance that it is appropriate and necessary to play it out among the holy dead as well
as through normative texts and in practice.
As a counterweight to such issues of institutional allegiance, however, the vast
majority of evidence for the dedicated lives of women in the ninth century reflects rather
continuities with that of preceding centuries. An immediate snapshot of such continuities
is provided by a stone epitaph for a ‘Dei virgo’, Frodeberta. 151 Located in the village of
Estoublon in Provence, the inscription, which is still in good condition, reads HIC
REQUIS//CIT IN PA//CE BONE//MEMORIE// FRODEBER//TA DEI VIR//GO
FIL[I]A// AGHILBER//TO OBIIT VII// KALENDAS IHANUARIAS ANNO// PRIMO
IMPERAN//[TE] DOMNO LODO//[VIC]O INDICTI//ONE PRIMMA. 152 In this regard
at least little had changed since the days of Caesarius.
Also familiar were issues of economic survival. In a capitulary of 822-4, Pippin I
of Aquitaine set down a number of measures to protect the economic wellbeing and
149 Ibid, 46.
150 See also M. Parisse, ‘Les chanoinesses dans l’Empire germanique (IXe – XIe siècles)’ Francia 6 (1978)
107-28, at112-3, for further discussion of this episode.
151 R. Favreau and J. Michaud (eds.), Corpus des inscriptions de la France médiévale XIV: Alpes-
Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var (CNRS, 1974), 86-7.
152 The dating clause is confused, as the first year of Louis the Pious’ reign as emperor was 814, which was
in the eighth indiction, not the first. Another possibility is Louis the Blind of Provence 880-928 (Emperor
901-905).
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