Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

visitors were women, who ‘... shall never enter the monastery, for it is a reserved place’. 40
These gender-specific regulations reveal a much more active concern over the contact of
female religious with the outside world. In part, this no doubt reflects patristic attitudes
towards the sexual fallibility of women; as Jerome gleefully pointed out, ‘Diana went out
and was ravished... unless you avoid the eyes of young men, you shall depart from my
[i.e., Jesus’] bridal chamber and shall feed the goats which shall be placed on the left
hand’. 41
In Caesarius’ case, however, it also stemmed from his particular need for the
community of St John to be a source of spiritual power within and for the city of Arles, a
need which did not apply to the foundations living according to his rule for monks. While
gendered double standards did apply, in this case they were also linked to a practical (if
otherworldly) need. Caesarius’ use of his writings for women to compose the Regula
monachorum was his last major writing effort. Yet their use and circulation did not end
with his death in 542. In particular, the next generation of the Caesarii wrote their own
texts for dedicated women that drew upon the Regula virginum and Vereor. It is to them
that we now turn.
Early adaptation: Teridius, agent and author
The figure of Teridius, described as the distributor of the rule for monks in the
Paris manuscript, is clearly of central importance, and his activities in circulation form
the next ripple outwards of Caesarius’ writings for dedicated women. He was Caesarius’
nephew and provisor or steward of the monastery of St John. A stone tablet, discovered
in 1868 in the Alyscamps cemetery, near the church of St-Pierre-de-Mouleyrès in Arles,
appears to be the epitaph of Teridius. 42 The inscription now reads
40 Reg. Mon. 11: ‘Mulieres in monasterio numquam ingrediantur, quia in remoto loco est.’
41 Jerome, Epist. 22 (‘Ad Eustochium’) cited by J.T. Schulenburg, ‘Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects
on the Female Monastic Experience (ca. 500-1100): Patterns of expansion and decline’ Signs 14:2 (1989)
261-92, at 273.
42 CIL XII:969. For further details, see J. Guyon and M. Heijmans (eds.), D’un monde à l’autre: Naissance
d’une Chrétienté en Provence, IVe – VIe siècle (Arles, 2002), 211.
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