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 di