Early Double Monasteries: A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914Stoney, Constance
History
Early Double Monasteries: A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914
Stoney, Constance
Monasticism and religious orders; Speeches, addresses, etc.
It is here, then, that another brother and sister figure as the founders
of a double monastery. S. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles,[6] persuaded his
sister Caesaria to leave Marseilles, where she was in a convent, and
join him at Arles to preside over the women who had gathered there to
live under his guidance; and the rule which he afterwards wrote for
these nuns is the first Western rule for nuns, and was afterwards
followed in many double monasteries.[7] He arranged it, as he himself
says, according to the teachings of the fathers of the Church. He
stipulates that all joining the community shall, on their entry,
renounce all claims to outside property. Only those women are to enter
who accept the rule of their own accord and are prepared to live in
perfect equality and without servants. Much attention is paid in the
rule to the instruction of the nuns; they were to devote considerable
time to music, as being an art through which God could fittingly be
praised; to be taught reading and writing; to practice cooking, and
weaving both of Church vestments and their own clothing.
They were to attend to the sick and infirm, and above all they were not
to quarrel. They were not entirely cut off from the outside world, since
they were permitted to entertain women from other convents; but, says
the Rule, "Dinners and entertainments shall not be provided for
churchmen, laymen and friends." We have only indirect evidence that
Arles was a double monastery. The confusion, for example in Caesarius's
will between his two foundations of S. John's and S. Mary's, resolves
itself, if we suppose that the monks were at the one, and the nuns at
the other, and that they associated in the great church in the
monastery, described by the authors of the Life of S. Caesarius, as
being dedicated to S. Mary, S. John and S. Martin.[8] Such an
arrangement was common in later double monasteries.
Another famous C6 monastery in Gaul now supposed to have been double was
that of S. Rhadagund at Poitiers about 566.[9] S. Rhadagund was married
to King Clothair against her will, and their life together was a series
of quarrels. She was so devoted to charitable work, we are told, that
she often annoyed the King by keeping him waiting at meals, left him
whenever possible and behaved in such a way that the king declared that
he was married to a nun rather than a queen. Finally the murder of her
young brother, at the instigation of the king, determined her to leave
the court, and flying to the protection of Bishop Medardus, she
demanded to be consecrated a nun.[10]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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