An Introduction to the Letter of Caesaria of Arles to Radegund of Poitiers, by Hope Williard

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Readings and Resources (freely available online)

Joan M. Ferrante, ‘Caesaria, abbess of Arles’, Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters. New York: Columbia University, 2014.
Professor Ferrante’s translation of Caesaria’s letter to Radegund.
Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250, with beautiful illustrations of Radegund’s life, has been fully digitized and is available online.
Erin T. Dailey, ‘Misremembering St. Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Benjamin Pohl et al. (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 117–40.

Discussion Questions

What were the possibilities and limitations of monastic life for early medieval women?
What might this letter tell us about Merovingian women’s literacy?
What is asceticism? How is it depicted in this letter?

Bibliography (available as e-books through library subscriptions)

Angelo Di Berardino, ed. Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers’ Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994-2013), pp. 1:407 (biography of Caesaria) and 3:374 (biography of Radegund).
Jo Ann McNarama and John E. Halborg, with E. Gordon Whately, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 112-8.

Further Reading (available online through library subscriptions)

Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250).” The Art Bulletin 72: 3 (1990), pp. 414–435.
Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poiters’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 25-59.

To Cite This Page

Merovingian Gaul – Middle Ages for Educators