Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

island of Lérins. On leaving home he had entered the community there, in 488/9. 160 The
monks at Lérins clearly used written rules but their authorship and background remain
uncertain. De Vogüé has suggested that at least two rules may have been used there: the
regula sanctorum patrum was the original rule composed by Honoratus, founder of the
monastery and subsequently bishop of Arles, and the regula Macarii was in use while
Caesarius in residence. 161 Both are echoed by elements in the Regula virginum. As
Klingshirn notes, their importance for Caesarius’ own writings lies in the fact that they
shift emphasis from the ‘eastern’ model of monasticism’s ideal, later articulated by
Cassian, of the individual monk’s pursuit of perfection, to what would become the
prevailing ‘western’ ideal of the perfection of the common life. Instead of a personal
retreat, Klingshirn suggests, the monastery became a model for the world. 162
Caesarius lived the monastic life with enthusiasm. He was elected cellarer, but
was deposed when the other monks complained that he was withholding too much food
and drink from them, forcing them to live a harder life than was necessary. 163 In self-
imposed penance, he redoubled his own asceticism, and ‘so afflicted himself by his
constant desire for reading, singing psalms, praying, and keeping vigils that finally, by an
excess of asceticism, he brought it about that his feeble young body, which should
properly have been coddled rather than weakened, was bent and broken’. 164 Caesarius’
consequent need to recuperate saw him travel to the nearby city of Arles, where he was
ordained as a priest by the then bishop, Aeonius, probably a distant relative. 165 As the
authors of his vita state, however, ‘he remained a monk in humility, charity, obedience
and asceticism’. 166
160
Klingshirn, Caesarius, 11.
161
A. de Vogüé (ed. and trans.) Les Règles des Saints Pères 2 vols., SC 297, 298 (Paris, 1982); discussion
in Klingshirn, Caesarius, 24-26.
162
Klingshirn, Caesarius, 26.
163
V.Caes I, 6.
164
V.Caes. I, 6.
165
V.Caes. I, 10. Caesarius’ departure for Arles can only be dated to between 495 and 499: Klingshirn,
Caesarius, 31.
166 V. Caes. I, 11.
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