La chronologie radegondienne : un enseignement sur la conception de la vocation à la fin de l’Antiquité en Gaule

Abstract

There are few general studies about Radegund’s life, a Merovingian saint whom we have yet one of the largest numbers of contemporary sources (Vitæ by Venantius Fortunatus and an nun named Baudonivia, a poem by Venantius Fortunatus, various accounts from Gregory of Tours). Moreover, these studies were destinated to the general public or to devotion. Specialized studies about an aspect of the saint’s life, are quite numerous, but extremely unequal value, and few discussed the chronological problems posed by the sources, or when they did, they offered solutions inconclusive as unfounded. So, when these sources have been utilised, it has led to questionable interpretations. The work we are publishing today want to base the radegundian chronology on a reasoned and comprehensive approach that could be used for future works. As a case in point, we have applied our findings to a particular topic: saint Radegund’s vocation. Indeed, Vitæ sanctorum, have often depicted the vocation of the saints as an evidence and as a path which led them straight on to the Heaven. The Vitæ Radegundis are no exception. However, once set, the chronology of saint Radegund’s life, shows clearly that answering to her vocation was a long, tortuous and painful path: indeed, the study of sources suggests that saint Radegund asked to be consecrated on a sudden impulse, between 541 and 545, after she had heard about the murder of her brother by her husband, king Chlotar I. Despite that, she only decided to join the cloister shortly before 25th December 559, because her husband wanted to get her back, after she has been living between fifteen and nineteen years in the royal villa of Saix, south of Tours. By suggesting the contrary, her biographers have attempted to account for a reality whose meaning certainly escaped them, as themselves fully agreed with the common discourse saying that the vocation was an obvious path opened only to those who have been consecrated.