Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Caesaria’s experience can also be detected in Caesarius’ discussion of the
separation of work and prayer. The monastery at Marseille was governed by a simple
injunction against talking or working during prayer, repeated by Caesarius, ‘while the
psalms are being chanted, it is not permissible to do any talking or to work’. 188 It may be
that the sort of ‘work’ nuns might have done - embroidery, mending, and so on - was
sometimes performed during prayer. For Caesarius, such tasks would constitute a
disruption to the nuns’ main task of intercession. It is in the requirement for a daily
period of woolworking, however, that Caesaria’s previous life experience can be seen.
Such activity was most useful to a group of women who were expected to make their own
clothes. 189 It also reflected the most praised occupation of the Roman matron; here the
nuns’ gender brought with it stereotypes of activity that survived the formation of a new
religious environment. 190 This is one instance of an activity which Caesaria and her
companions had always undertaken in whatever form their existing community had
taken; here Caesarius constructed his written text around his sister’s life, and not the
other way round. Overall, Caesaria’s experiences and needs shaped both the physical
construction of the monastery of St John and the writing of the rule for the community of
nuns that grew within it. The importance that near-contemporary sources attributed to her
serves only to underline further the collaboration between brother and sister in the
foundation of St John. This process of co-production would be furthered and
strengthened by Caesaria II, whose career is examined next.
Early adaptations: the Recapitulatio
As noted previously, Doms de Vogüé and Courreau have suggested that the
Regula virginum was composed in stages over an extended period of time, a process
188 RV 10.
189 RV 16.
190 One early example of praise for Roman women who stayed at home weaving is the funeral eulogy for a
certain ‘Furia’, dating to the first century BC: ‘Why should I mention your domestic virtues: your loyalty,
obedience, affability, reasonableness, industry in working in wool, religion without superstition, sobriety of
attire, modesty of appearance?’ Cited in E. Amt (ed.) Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe (New York,
1993), at 29.
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