Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

would not have contemplated writing about a non-enclosed lifestyle for religious women
after the promulgation of the Regula virginum, and thus an early date for the letter is
indicated.
At whatever point the letter was written, it seems highly probable that it began to
be circulated to other communities soon after it was composed, in a similar manner to
Avitus of Vienne’s Consolatoria de castitatis laude. Caesarius’ apparent plea for
discretion to Caesaria, ‘Out of consideration for my rusticity and modesty reread my
exhortation (such as it is) secretly, and do not give it to anyone else, so that the ears of
cultivated persons might not be struck by the harshness of my most uncultivated speech’,
is very similar to that of Avitus, albeit for different reasons. 131 Although there are no
copies of the letter extant from this early stage, the manuscript tradition of Vereor is the
most diverse of all of the Caesarian texts. Briefly, it is transmitted in both genders; unlike
the Regula, the masculine variant, known to later copyists as the Sermo ad quosdam
germanos, is the same as the feminine, with only the necessary grammatical alterations
made. However, like the rule, portions of the text of Vereor found their way into a variety
of later works, culminating in the reforming documents of Benedict of Aniane.
Morin used three manuscripts to establish the text, ignoring the ‘masculine’ text
as he did so. Tours, ms. Bibl. Munic. 617, which also contained the Regula, was lost
during the Second World War. The two remaining versions, redactions of the women’s
text, bear striking similarities in terms of content, and will be discussed in greater detail
in subsequent chapters. The earliest extant complete text of Vereor is found in Vatican,
ms. Reg. Lat. 140, a compendium of texts relevant to monastic life produced at the
beginning of the ninth century at the monastery of St Benedict of Fleury-sur-Loire. 132 It is
also contained in Toulouse, Bibl. Munic. 162, a manuscript which dates from the twelfth
century. This latter manuscript is an extraordinarily varied collection of texts, ranging
from Jerome’s letters to a recipe for bitumen for the purposes of lining a well. 133 The
provenance of the manuscript is largely unknown, although a later hand notes that it
131 Vereor 1, tr. Klingshirn, Life, Testament, Letters, 129.
132 M. Mostert, The Library of Fleury: a provisional list of manuscripts (Hilversum, 1989) 258.
133 CGM VII in 4-o, 93-5.
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