Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

CHAPTER 2
‘Transmisi exemplar de regula’:
The early circulation of Caesarius’ monastic writing in changing landscapes of
dedication
Caesarius of Arles’ earnest hope, when he composed the Recapitulatio to the
Regula virginum, was that nothing in the rule would be changed: ‘I beseech you before
God and his angels that nothing in it be subjected to further change nor be taken away.’ 1
After an extended period of trial and error, he considered the rule to be a perfect fit for
the community at St John, and the community, guided by the rule, to be the ideal symbol
of the Christian city of Arles. However, the elements of the rule were themselves not set
in stone. From Caesarius himself onwards, monastic authors drew on the Regula as a
source of guidelines for later foundations, for both men and women. In these later rules,
Caesarius’ rule for nuns was usually only one element among several. Each author put
together a ‘new’ rule, albeit largely a patchwork of extracts from previous normative
texts, to suit each new monastic house. Rules were transmitted to different locations
without necessarily leading to a wholesale adoption of the practices maintained at the
monasteries where they originated. This was a monastic landscape of individual houses
making selections from older rules. In the case of the Regula virginum specifically, it did
not imply a spreading movement of Arlesian practice.
In this way, knowledge of Caesarius’ writings for dedicated women – and men, as
we shall see – spread to other monastic houses in Provence and further afield, most
notably to the former queen Radegund’s foundation of Holy Cross in Poitiers. Yet
Caesarius was far from being the only influence on monastic life in Gaul in the sixth and
early seventh centuries. The Irish monk Columbanus arrived in Gaul in around 590, and
he and his followers founded several monasteries in north-eastern Gaul. A third influence
on Gallic monasticism in this period was that of the Rule of Benedict of Nursia, which
was composed in Italy in c.540. For the founders of monasteries in the later sixth and
1 Regula virginum [RV] 48: ‘Et ideo coram deo et angelis eius contestamur, ut nihil ibi ultra mutetur aut
minuatur’. Morin II, 115.
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