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768 25. monasticism
customs enforced elsewhere. 77 Certainly, there are accounts of an ordered
liturgy, common and regular meals (for some monks at least, two a day),
and abbatial authority. Eugendus tried to control the gifts that the community
received and the troubled visitors that flocked to its gates. Yet his dying
requests referred in only a general way to the ‘institutes of the fathers’. He
prayed alone in the cemetery or under a favourite tree. His monks travelled,
even to Rome, in search of relics. He allotted tasks in the community
according to the talents of individual monks, exercising that insight into the
character of each subject that was typical of the old charismatic masters of
the Egyptian desert. In some ways, therefore, this coenobitic hero was not
so very different from Leunianus of Vienne, living in the solitude of a cell,
yet ‘ruling monks’ and supervising a nearby convent. 78
The prestige of Lérins and its satellites reached a peak in the career and
writings of Caesarius of Arles (died 543). His monastic formation included
a period at Lérins; and, after becoming bishop in a.d. 503, he wrote a Regula
monachorum and longer and more informative Statuta sanctarum virginum. 79
One has to be cautious about the meaning he attached to regula. Its constant
conjunction with other words – institutio regulæ, discretio et regula –
reminds us that the regula itself was still regarded as part of a wider tradition
– ‘canonical scripture and the books of the ancient fathers’. 80 His
written prescriptions are larded like sermons with exhortations to virtue,
and reflect upon attitude as much as behaviour. 81 The authority of the
abbot or abbess was by now well-established, but balanced by the delegated
duties of a præpositus and subject to the influence of seniores. Caesarius
envisaged a fully coenobitic regime, with none of the privacy associated
with the cells of the laura; and again there is an emphasis on stabilitas loci.
Women are specifically catered for. Extra care is taken to protect their
seclusion. In contrast to their male counterparts, they will pray more than
they work (although they also copied books). The bulk of Caesarius’ Rules
is devoted to fasting and liturgy. The latter, by his day, had reached a high
degree of detailed sophistication, with variations from season to season
and a complex succession of antiphonal and unison psalmody, interspersed
with readings. Overshadowing this regime was the bishop himself (a
significant resolution of debates in the previous century); but his authority
77 De Vogüé (1982) ii.452 discusses possible connections between the so-called Regula orientalis and
Condat under Lupicinus and Eugendus.
78 Stability: V. Eug. 126. Rebuilding and its results: 162, 170 (refutato archmandritarum orientalium instari,
ed. Martine (1968), 422), 173. Monastic regime: 129f., 131, 151, 171. External relations: 147, 172. Death:
177. His prayer: 129, 153f. Travelling monks: 153f. Charismatic insight: 149. Leunianus: 128.
79 Note that the numeration and nomenclature of PL lxvii.1099–104, 1107–20 are not always used
by more recent and more reliable editors.
80 Statuta 26 (Et quamvis), 30 (Ad cellarium), 35 (at Matri quæ), 47 (Te vero); Recapitulatio, 62 (Et licet), 72
(Vos tamen, PL tandem). Compare regulari sceptro in Greg. Tur. V. pat. xvi.1, ed. 275.
81 Reg. mon. ed. G. Morin (Maredsous 1942) 151:8f.; 152:8f. (PL 13, 19). See especially Sermons 233–6.
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