Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

770 25. monasticism
were soon endowed with fields and woodland, came under the influence of
royal patronage, and spawned their own dependent foundations. 88 Cassian
and Martin are mentioned still. 89 In Gregory’s anecdotes we see at one and
the same time the development of a rich monastic culture along the reaches
of the Loire and the lasting influence of the Rhône communities, reaching
into areas further north. Economic conditions are faithfully recorded.
Gardens provided for immediate needs; but cereal crops were also grown,
and ascetics worked on the land of others. 90 In a couple of instances, a
more rural monastery and the nearby village appear to have been almost
intertwined, both in close association with the local church. 91 Such vignettes
provide us with a more secure image of varied monastic practice in
the sixth-century west (for we shall discover parallels in Benedict’s Italy),
and modify the rigid impression we might gain from the hopeful prescriptions
of church councils (presided over, of course, by bishops eager to
maintain a disciplined conformity and to assert their pastoral rights). 92
Both the tone and the motive of those conciliar decrees remind us that
the Gallic church in the sixth century, in ascetic matters as in others, was in
need of reform. A weary sense of decline, characteristic of the period generally
in both east and west, is evident in many of the specifically ascetic
sources we have examined; and we need not attribute it always to outraged
conservatism or tremulous eschatology. Gregory himself, albeit a bishop
with little experience of monasticism in his own life, and not unsusceptible
to the advantages of local eminence or royal patronage, had an honest
enough sense of the room for improvement. Yet the crucial pressure, in
the case of specifically monastic reform, came from outside the Frankish
kingdoms, and is exemplified most obviously in the career of the Irishman
Columbanus. Born in the 540s, he arrived in Gaul just as Gregory was completing
his Histories. After travelling in the Loire region (providing further
88 V. pat. xii. See also the account of Martius, xiv, with subordinate præpositus.
89 V. pat. xx.3, following the suggestion of James (1985) 157. Compare possible dependence on
Martin – post magistri dogmata, ed. B. Krusch; 330 – Gloria 56.
90 V. pat. x.1 (garden and hired labour), xviii.2 (corn and a mill); Gloria 23 (where the attractiveness
of the garden is also stressed), 81 (bees), 96. 91 Gloria 22f., 56.
92 The council of Orleans (a.d. 511) set the tone for the coming century: ‘Abbots should think of
themselves, in the interests of religious humility, as subject to the authority of bishops; and, if in any
matter they act in breach of the rule, the bishops should correct them’ (canon 19, ed. C. de Clerq Concilia
Galliae, A.511–A. 695 (CCSL 148a) 1963, 10). See also Épaone (a.d. 517), canon 19 (episcopal control
over succession); Orleans (a.d. 533), canon 21 (vague subjection to episcopal præcepta); Arles (a.d. 554),
canons 2 and 3 (fairly broad); Tours (a.d. 567), canon 17 (excommunication; but note that canon 7
required the bishop to act in co-operation with other abbots); Narbonne (a.d. 589), canon 6 (against
harbouring criminals); and Auxerre (late sixth century), canons 23–6 (various specific controls). Few
councils in sixth-century Gaul concerned themselves with the internal discipline of monastic communities.
The council of Tours (a.d. 567) was unusual in insisting on a common dormitory (rather than
individual or shared cells), and drew up rules for fasting (canons 15 and 18). If, on the other hand, a
monk withdrew from a community – ‘to build himself a cell’, for example: a practice viewed with
caution, but allowed for – then he exposed himself to direct episcopal control: Orleans (a.d. 511), canon
22.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008