The Author of the Rule

IN the opening lines of his prologue, Grimlaicus, author of the Regula solitariorum, says that he is writing a rule for coenobitic solitaries [‘regulam solitariorum, videlicet coenobitarum’] at the suggestion of one who has that same name, ‘my dear father in Christ … Grimlaicus the venerable priest’ [‘dilectissimo patri in Christo … Grimlaico venerabili sacerdoti’]. Grimlaicus's remarks in the prologue, as well as his complete familiarity with the physical and spiritual circumstances of the life of an inclusus, make it clear that he had lived such a life himself for a good while. Just as clear is Grimlaicus's thorough familiarity with the Rule of St Benedict, surely the fruit of years lived in a community that observed it. Grimlaicus ingeniously modifies this most communitarian of rules to fit the situation of enclosed solitaries, always drawing on its good sense and time-tested moderation.

Who was Grimlaicus? Although Karl Suso Frank acknowledges that the rule's author cannot be positively identified, he conjectures that Grimlaicus may have written his rule after the time of Robert, bishop of Metz and abbot of Gorze, who died in 917. Réginald Grégoire also associates Grimlaicus with the monastery of Gorze in the diocese of Metz. Metz does seem a likely location, since in chapters 1 and 63, Grimlaicus praises Arnulf, bishop of Metz (d. 640) and twice cites the Rule for Canons of Amalarius of Metz (d. 850) in chapter 41. We can make an informed guess that Grimlaicus was a monk of a monastery in or near Metz who composed his rule for solitaries in the first quarter of the tenth century.

Grimlaicus is careful to say what sort of solitaries he is legislating for: not anchorites, that is to say hermits who dwell all by themselves, but rather solitaries who dwell in the midst of a coenobium and follow the common horarium, but who live in quarters sealed off from almost all physical and visual contact with others. The cell's situation within the monastic enclosure is simply stated, but the relationship between the solitary's observance and that of the community is more difficult to determine, as we shall see.