The Life and Writings of Reginald of St. Augustine's Canterbury

Abstract

The monastic poet and musician Reginald, or Renauld de la Faye, was born probably around 1030 AD in the French villa of Faye-la-Vineuse in the northeastern region of Poitou, in the Duchy of Aquitaine. Sometime in the early 1090s the Frenchman Reginald was established at the abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury where as a master of music and verse he wrote hymns, dedicatory poems and letters to his friends as well as his greatest legacy, a versified life of the hermit saint Malchus which he wrote, corrected and enlarged probably between the years 1096 to 1107. Generally speaking, Reginald belongs to that group of continental religious men who came to England in the years and decades following the Conquest; some who, like Lanfranc and his colleagues and Anselm from Bec, were elected to positions of importance among England’s abbeys and cathedrals, some who like Gilbert Crispin were students of Anselm at Bec and others, like Goscelin of St. Bertin, who were invited to England by noted ecclesiasts to compose the lives of English saints. The connections between Poitou and Normandy and Norman England are many, as Beech has demonstrated. Altogether, Reginald’s life and writings were products of the age of the Gregorian Reform which had swept southern and central France in the 11th century; but they also reflect the particular circumstances of Post-Conquest Norman Canterbury where as a consequence of the industries of Lanfranc changes were being felt in the daily life and habits of the black monks living among the ancient abbeys and cathedrals of England. Though during his years in England Reginald as a Frenchman was an outsider to the old English community at Canterbury, represented by such men as Osbern of Christ Church, his writings and musical interests can nevertheless be seen to be representative of a new and initial wave of French tastes in both English literature and music. Although almost completely French in origin and inspiration, Reginald’s writings as well as his life, straddling two worlds brought together in Post-Conquest England, predict and foreshadow the cultural transformations of Anglo-Norman literature written in England during the 12th and 13th centuries.