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]

After some natural hesitation on the part of the Bishop, she was made a Deaconess—a term applying to anyone who, without belonging to any special order, was under the protection of the Church.[11] She devoted herself to the relief of every kind of distress, bodily and spiritual; and at length the desire came to her to provide permanently for the men and women who came to her for help. So, on an estate which she owned at Poitiers, she founded a nunnery dedicated to the Holy Name, and, probably at the same time, the house for men, separated from the convent by the town wall and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was in S. Mary's that Rhadagund was buried and after her death, her name was added to the dedication. Beside this evidence of association between the two houses, the only other is the correspondence of Rhadagund and the Abbess Agnes with the poet Fortunatus, who was probably a monk of S. Mary's. He certainly seems to have been the director and counsellor of the nuns, and to have been often engaged in business for them; but he did not live in the same house with them for in one of his letters he laments the fact. His letters and verses addressed to the two women throw a strong light on the friendship, and real affection which existed among the three friends. He says that he will work day and night for Rhadagund, draw the water, tend the vines and the garden, cook, wash dishes, anything, rather than that she should do the heavy and menial work of the house. He begs the abbess Agnes to talk often of him with the sisters that he may feel more really that she is his mother. He sends gifts of flowers for their sanctuary, and baskets which he has plaited; and with a basket of violets he sends the following charming verses.[12] (I give a translation which must necessarily be inadequate.)

"If the season had yielded me white lilies, according to its wont, or red roses with sweet smelling savour, I had plucked them from the countryside, or from the turf of my little garden, and had sent them, small gifts for great ladies! But since I lack the first, I e'en pay the second, for he presents roses in the eyes of love, who offers only violets. Yet, these violets I send are, among perfumed herbs, of noble stock, and with equal grace breathe in their royal purple, while fragrance with beauty vies to steep their petals. May you, likewise, both have each charm that these possess, and may the perfume of your future reward be a glory that blooms everlastingly."

The nuns of Ste. Croix, too, seem not to have been lacking in generosity. Fortunatus frequently thanks them for gifts of eggs, fruit, milk, etc.; and on one occasion he receives more dishes than one servant could carry. He must have stood in some official relation to Rhadagund, for such freedom of intercourse to be possible; and if his verses sometimes suggest the courtier rather than the monk, it must be remembered that they are the work of a poet who had first been a friend of princes and was among the most fashionable men of letters of his day in Ravenna; and that they are addressed to a woman who was, after all, a queen.

In 587 Rhadagund died and Bishop Gregory of Tours tells how greatly she was mourned by the whole community, and how some 200 women crowded round her bier, bewailing their loss. One of them, the nun Baudonivia, several years afterwards, cannot, she says, even speak of the death of Rhadagund without being choked with sobs.[13]

It will be seen from these examples, that in all probability, the origin of the double monastery need not be sought, as has been supposed, in Ireland, since it seems to have been known in Gaul before S. Columbanus and his Irish disciples landed there and preached a great religious revival, at the end of the C6. Indeed, though there are scattered notices in the lives of the Irish saints, which seem to suggest that there were double monasteries in Ireland in very early times, there is no definite evidence until the description in Cogitosus's "Life of S. Bridget," of one at Kildare, probably in the C8. The monasteries actually founded by S. Columbanus himself, were all for men.

On the other hand, the double monastery seems always to have flourished wherever the fervour of the Irish missionaries penetrated. Perhaps, as Montalembert[14] suggests, the ideal atmosphere of divine simplicity and single-mindedness which characterised them, was particularly favorable to the growth of such an institution.

S. Columbanus dedicated Burgundofara, or Fara, as a child, to the religious life; and she afterwards founded the monastery of Brie to the south-east of Paris, which we learn from Jonas, who was a monk there, and from Bede, was a double monastery.

It is clear that this house was one of those ruled by an abbess, for Jonas says that no distinction was recognised between the sexes, and that the abbess treated both