Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

monastery to face examination on charges of sheltering the royal fugitive. In addition to
creating one of the most dramatic moments in the narrative, this highlights attitudes to the
permanent enclosure so strongly enforced by Caesarius. On the one hand, it is evident
that neither the king nor local officials saw the monastery’s rule as a particular bar to
gaining access to Rusticula. One such, Audoald, a follower of the local governor
Ricomer, tried to strike Rusticula with a sword. 118 Clearly, Caesarius’ prohibitions on
entry to the community were not a sufficient deterrent. On the other hand, both Rusticula
and her nuns clung to the requirements of enclosure as a defence against the summons to
answer the charges against her. The governor of the city, Nymfidius, had to be persuaded
to go to the monastery and ask her to come out voluntarily, suggesting that lay optimates
had no authority to remove her by force, even if they themselves felt able to go in. After
seven days’ imprisonment at an unnamed monastery in Arles, for which an obvious
possible location must be Aurelian’s foundation of St Mary, Rusticula was taken to
Clothar. In the meantime, bishop Domnolus of Vienne interceded for her, possibly at the
synod of Paris in 614. 119 As Riché notes, the theme of this synod was the defence of the
rights of the Church against abuses of royal power. 120 This episode is a sharp reminder of
the place of abbesses and their monasteries within the wider church. It is easy to perceive
female communities as being on the fringes of the church, concerned only with their own
activities: indeed, the surviving rules, typically written by a bishop for a named
individual woman, can foster that impression. 121 Domnolus’ intervention underlines both
a general awareness of female communities and the fact that they were perceived to be an
integral part of the body of the Church.
The long description of Rusticula’s death provides a strong insight into the
expected role of the abbess in the monastery. At seventy-seven, Rusticula had been
abbess for fifty-nine years; in that time, it is likely that most nuns would have known no
118 For Ricomer’s status, see SWDA, 127, n. 30.
119 Riché, ‘La Vita S. Rusticulae’, 374. See also O. Pontal, Die Synoden im Merowingerreich (Paderborn,
1986), at 183, for Domnolus’ presence at the council.
120 Riché, ‘La Vita S. Rusticulae’, 374.
121 The obvious examples are Caesarius himself, Leander of Seville, and Donatus of Besançon.
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