Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

the festival of St Genesius of Arles; 172 this is an abridgement of an earlier sermon, which
further describes slaves laden with their mistresses’ drinking cups, and beautifully
dressed girls wearing jewellery. 173
Although Dom Cyrille Lambot considered Caesarius’ use of complete enclosure
to be an innovation, failing to find precedents in any previous Rule, other examples did
exist. 174 The parallels between himself and Caesaria, and Pachomius and his sister, had
probably already struck Caesarius. Pachomius had founded a monastery in the Egyptian
desert and eventually had to create a monastery for women to house those who followed
him, over which he set his sister. The vitae of Pachomius reveal the claustration of
women, illustrated by the description of their funerals: the second Greek vita describes
how the sisters had to leave the body of their dead sister outside their monastery for the
monks to collect and carry to the burial site. 175 The Regula virginum may not even be the
first example of complete claustration for women in the west. As discussed previously,
the vita patrum Jurensium describes the monastery of La Balme, again built for the sister
of the founders, Romanus and Lupicinus, where observance of claustration was so
stringent that once inside the nuns were never seen again until their coffins were taken for
burial. 176 While the relative dating of these two texts may be problematic, practices at
Balma may show that the idea of the necessity of cloistering nuns was developing
elsewhere in Gaul concurrently.
Caesarius’ rule was a conscious effort to separate the dedicated women of St John
from the secular world. Women entered the community to become part of a powerhouse
of prayer, centred on the ordo Caesarius also provided, in which interference from the
172
Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs MGH SSRM 1.1 484-561; trans. R. Van Dam (Liverpool, 1988)
cap. 68, 91.
173
Sermo seu narratio de miraculo s. Genesii, PL 50: 1273-76, cited in Klingshirn, Caesarius, 60.
174
C. Lambot, ‘Le prototype des monastères cloîtrés des femmes: l’Abbaye Saint-Jean d’Arles (VIe siècle)’
Revue Liturgique et Monastique 23 (1938) 169-174, discussed in de Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 71.
175
The main source of information on Pachomius is his ‘Bohairic life’: see L.-T. Lefort S. Pachomii vita
bohairice scripta CSCO 89 (Louvain, 1925, rpt. 1953). See also A. Veilleux (ed.) Pachomian koinonia.
Vol. 1, The life of Saint Pachomius and his disciples (Kalamazoo, 1980). Discussed at greater length in de
Vogüé, Oeuvres pour les moniales, 71-2.
176
‘quaecumque uirginum illic causa abrenuntiationis intrasset, foris non uideretur ulterius, nisi extrema
transitus causa deportaretur ad cymiterium’ in Vita S. Romani, ed. Martine, Vie des Pères du Jura, 266-8.
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