foundation · 512 · Arles
Caesarius was formed at Lérins, became bishop of Arles about 502, and held the most important see in southern Gaul for forty years through Visigothic, Ostrogothic and Frankish rule, twice arrested on suspicion by kings who could not place his loyalty. He is remembered for two things. The first is the Second Council of Orange in 529, which he presided over and which settled the grace question for the Latin west along Augustinian lines — the argument Prosper had gone to Rome about a century earlier, at seed 182, finally closed. The second is the Regula virginum, written for the house he built at Arles for his sister Caesaria: the first rule in the west composed for women, imposing strict enclosure and, unusually for any rule of the period, requiring that every woman in the house be able to read, with two hours a day set aside for it. He also preached constantly and plainly, kept his sermons short on purpose, and had them written down so other clergy could deliver them — a great many of the sermons that circulated under Augustine's name in the middle ages are in fact his.
Who wrote the first monastic rule in the west for women?
He did, for his own sister, and it required all of them to read.