Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

which, as we have seen, allowed for the experience and knowledge of Caesaria to play a
large role in the formation of its tenets. Yet even after the death of Caesaria, around 525,
the rule continued to evolve. 191 The fact that, for a period of some decades, the Regula
was not a stable or fixed text should not surprise us. Caesarius was conscious of the
newness of what he was trying to write; without being able to see the effects of any set of
guidelines on the community he wished to create, he would be unable to assess the parts
of his rule that were most important, those that were sound, and those which were simply
unworkable. This was crucial, whether or not the rule was intended solely for the nuns of
St John, or whether Caesarius’ ultimate aim was the wider dissemination of his material,
a question which will be returned to throughout this study. Caesarius wanted to get
coenobitic life for women ‘right’, because only then would the community function as he
needed it to from the wider perspective of symbolising the Christian life of the city of
Arles.
At the beginning of the 530s, therefore, some twenty years after he had first given
a rule to Caesaria I, the sexagenarian Caesarius composed the final, tried-and-tested
version of the rule, which he described as its Recapitulatio. In his introduction to the new
guidelines, Caesarius acknowledged that the role of experience had been paramount:
Although, with God’s favour, at the beginning of the foundation of the
monastery we framed a rule for you, nevertheless afterwards through
many changes in it we added and deleted things. After examining and
testing what you can carry out, we have now settled upon what is in
harmony with reason and possibility and sanctity. In so far as we have
been able to determine by diligent experiment, the rule has been so
moderated under God’s inspiration that with the help of God you can
keep it in entirety... For this reason we wish that whatever we wrote
previously be void. 192
191 The dates of death of Caesaria I and beginning of the abbacy of Caesaria II are tentative; see de Vogüé,
Oeuvres pour les moniales, 440-1.
192 RV 48-49.
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