The seventh-century Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to pursue eternal salvation.

The book provides a critical edition and translation of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines and a roadmap for such a new history revolving around various aspects of monastic discipline, such as the agency of the community, the role of enclosure, authority and obedience, space and boundaries, confession and penance, sleep and silence, excommunication and expulsion.

Albrecht Diem, Associate Professor of Late Antique and Early Medieval History at Syracuse University.

Table des matières :

The book consists of two sections. The first is a critical edition and translation of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines, a seventh-century Frankish monastic rule for nuns, along with the short treatise De accedendo ad Deum, which most likely formed a part of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines.

The second section is a study on the transformations and diversification of monastic theology, concepts of communal life and monastic discipline in the early medieval period. It revolves around the Regula cuisudam ad uirgines in its historical and intertextual context.

The study is divided four parts that are related to the four key words of the title of the book (Community, Space, Discipline, and Salvation). Each part consists of a chapter that makes an argument about the place of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines in intertextual contexts and a chapter that applies these arguments in a historical inquiry.

Introduction

Section I: Edition and Translation of the Regua cuiusdam ad uirgines

Section II: Study

Part I: Community
Chapter 1: Quidam pater – quaedam mater? The Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines and its author
Chapter 2: The dying nuns of Faremoutiers: the regula in action

Part II : Space

Chapter 3 The Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines, a supplement to Caesarius’ Rule for Nuns?
Chapter 4: Enclosure re-opened: Caesarius, Jonas, and the invention of sacred space

Part III: Discipline

Chapter 5: The Regula Benedicti in seventh-century Francia
Chapter 6: The Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines and its context

Part IV: Salvation

Chapter 7: De accedendo ad Deum – a lost chapter of the Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines?
Chapter 8: Prompto corde orandum: the theological program of De accedendo

Conclusion
Three appendices
Bibliography of manuscripts, sources, and literature
Index uerborum

Informations pratiques :

Albrecht Diem, The Pursuit of Salvation. Community, Space, and Discipline in Early Medieval Monasticism, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021 (Disciplina Monastica, 13). 687 p., 1 colour ill., 3 b/w tables, 210 x 270 mm, 2021
ISBN: 978-2-503-58960-2. Prix : 145 euros.

Source : Brepols