Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

outside merely interrupted the ‘workings’. As Marilyn Dunn has pointed out, the female
community of St John was eminently suitable to undertake liturgical intercession as
Caesarius had based it on psalmody and prayer rather than private or public masses,
actions open only to men. 177 Even when working, the sisters were enjoined to ‘let not
meditation on the word of God and the prayer of the heart cease’. 178 As noted above,
Caesarius’ vision for the community of St John made it just one part of his overarching
plans for the Christian city of Arles. In practical terms, the city had already come under
attack once in Caesarius’ episcopate, in 507; it had been ruled by both Visigoths and
Ostrogoths. 179 Even more pressing was the prospect of judgement and condemnation in
the afterlife, a topic which lies at the heart of his sermons. 180 The constant stream of
prayer rising from the heart of the city to God would counterbalance the sins of its people
at the same time as offering a measure of protection for them. 181 This interpretation of St
John’s function in the city of Arles suggests a slight modification of Klingshirn’s view
that early western monasteries were seen as models for their wider communities. Rather
than acting as a model for the behaviour of the citizens of Arles, the monastery acted as a
symbol of Caesarius’ hopes for the salvation of the city’s inhabitants. As founder of the
community, Caesarius could plausibly make himself one of the objects of this
intercession: ‘[I] beg by your holy prayers to have me made a companion of your
journey; so that when you happily enter the kingdom with the holy and wise virgins, you
may, by your suffrages, obtain for me that I remain not outside with the foolish’. 182
Against this background of a rethinking of female dedicated life driven by
Caesarius’ hopes for his city, and based on his knowledge of earlier texts, where lies the
scope for viewing the creation of the Regula virginum as a collaborative exercise in
which the nuns of St John were fully involved? The mark of experience is a difficult one
to detect, and even harder to ascribe to one sibling rather than the other. If experience,
177
M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism (Blackwell, 2000), 99.
178
RV 20.
179
See Klingshirn, Caesarius, 69-71; 104-113.
180
See in particular sermons V, XIV, XVIII, XXXI and CXXXVII.
181
Dunn, Monasticism, 98-107.
182
RV, praefatio. The theme of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt. 12:1-13) was one that Caesarius used on
numerous occasions, and he composed two sermons of the subject: nos. CLV and CLVI. For their
manuscript circulation, see Chapter 3.
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