Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

humility that she had yet endured. More importantly, Caesarius’ comment reveals that
while he was welcome to offer advice, Caesaria was the driving force behind this
community both practically and spiritually, and had the authority to ask her bishop to stay
away, an authority which he in turn acknowledged. Vereor reflects a fascinating point of
balance between brother and sister, bishop and nun. Caesaria’s spiritual and practical
authority, acknowledged here by Caesarius, would form part of the bedrock on which the
Regula virginum would be built.
ii) Regula virginum
The textual history and transmission of the Regula virginum is more complex than
perceptions of it as a single monolithic work would suggest, and inseparable from the
physical foundation of the monastery. Moreover, this section will also suggest that the
abbesses and nuns of the opening decades of the monastery’s existence were of vital
importance in establishing a final, stable version of the Rule, insofar as this could ever be
possible for a document in continual use. Far from being the work of a bishop writing in
isolation, the collaborative process of uniting written monastic tradition with
contemporary experience will be emphasised.
The Vita Caesarii provides the information that Caesaria and the first nuns
entered the monastery of St John according to ‘its original rule’. 147 The Regula itself
speaks of the newness of the enterprise in its praefatio: ‘we have set down spiritual and
holy counsels for you as to how you shall live in the monastery... as you know I have
laboured in the constructing of a monastery for you’. 148 Clearly, Caesarius perceived the
foundation of the monastery, the composition and delivery of the rule, and the entry of
the nuns as elements of the same process.
The editors of the Regula, Dom Morin in the 1930s and Adalbert de Vogüé in the
1980s, have established that the rule consisted of three parts: the ‘original’ rule, chapters
147 V.Caes I, 35.
148 RV Praefatio. Unless otherwise stated, all English translations are taken from McCarthy, The Rule for
Nuns, 170-204.
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