Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

and overturned by savage barbarians’. 123 Part of Caesarius’ desolation at seeing his
monastery destroyed may have stemmed from the knowledge that those same beams were
part of the engines attacking his city. However, it does not seem that Caesaria or the other
nuns were living on site at this stage. The absence of outraged descriptions of attacks on
the nuns themselves, or of miracles associated with potentially violent assault, suggests
that they were not physically affected.
For his second attempt, Caesarius chose a new site immediately inside the south-
east corner of the city walls, adjacent to the former cathedral and thus itself a holy site of
long standing. The monastery of St John was complete by 512, the date of the
presentation of his rule to the community. The community of nuns left behind extremely
valuable physical testimony of their lives, for what can seem otherwise to be an almost
entirely textual existence. Marc Heijmans has hypothesised that the funerary church of
the monastery, St Mary, may have been located on the site of the twelfth-century ruins of
St-Césaire-le-Vieux in the present day Alyscamps cemetery. 124 An undateable lapidary
inscription found on this site may commemorate one of the nuns: HIC IN PACE
[requie]ESCIT D[eu?]M TH[eodora?] SACRA D[e]O PV[ella] VIXIT ANNOS ...... 125
There are at least fourteen similar inscriptions from the same site, although none makes
mention of any religious dedication. 126 In any case, however, this was clearly a large and
significant community.
Focusing on both Caesaria and her more famous brother opens the way to
important conclusions, despite the lack of hard evidence for the life of the abbess. And
yet, considering the process of monastic foundation from a bottom-up rather than a top-
down perspective helps to provide a stimulating context for the works written for the
community of St John in this period, particularly the letter Vereor and the Regula
virginum itself. As the following section will argue, far from being the passive recipients
123 V.Caes 1, 28, tr. Klingshirn, Life, Testament, Letters, 23.
124 M. Heijmans, ‘La topographie de la ville d’Arles’ 163-4; see also M. Heijmans and C. Sintès,
‘L’évolution de la topographie de l’Arles antique. Un état de la question’, Gallia 51 (1994) 135-170.
125 CIL XII, no. 963. My thanks are due to Marc Heijmans, CNRS, for further discussion of this inscription
and its relationship to the site. The more tentative elements of his transcription are shown by question
marks.
126 CIL XII, nos. 834; 941; 948; 950; 951; 952; 954; 955; 957; 961; 962; 963; 970; Le Blant, NR 162.
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