The Pactual Tradition in Hispanic Monasticism - The Library of ...

IV
At this point, before turning to the pactualism of the Alta Reconquista, there needs to be considered one
largely ignored feature of 'Fructuosan' instrument of the 7th century upon which the comparable
diplomas of succeeding centuries throw considerable light. Both RComP and its various more or less
closely related adaptations after 711 have been studied by Herwegen and later students in terms of
strictly monachal acts, addressed by the subditi to their abbot and terminating with their subscriptions.
But what provision did the system make for what would seem to be no less juridically necessary in a
bilateral contract, the abbot's own promise to serve under the terms stipulated? Herwegen apparently
assumed that such an abbatial commitment was implicit in his texts and therefore never sought to
explain why the abbot's own name normally does not appear among the subscribants to what he saw as
primarily a foundational charter.
This is a difficulty that disappears once we perceive that, by the commencement of the 9th century at
least, evidence survives to show that the 'Fructuosan' pactum from the very beginning actually
consisted of not one, but two, distinct yet inseparably linked parts or subpacta: one the well-known
covenant of the monks, the pactum monachorum; the other, the abbot's own declaration, a pactum
abbatis or abbatiale. Taken together, both texts constitute what we may call the double, or, preferably,
so as to avoid all confusion with double monasteries and double traditiones , the binary pactum.
The principal characteristics of such a combined instrument can most readily be isolated in the early,
exceptionally complete case of the Liébanese abbey of San Pedro y San Pablo de Naroba, one of the
oldest known eastern centers of the transplanted Gallegan pactualism of the Alta Reconquista. The
extant pactual preserved from this house was first drawn up in 818 and remained in use through the
terms of three successive abbots down to ca. 825-35. An unusually large document of some 42.5 x 35
cms., it survives in a copy of the 12th century, so carefully made in a good Visigothic hand as to give
the strong impression of being a faithful, almost [26] photographic, facsimile of the lost original. (93)
What we have here in fact are not merely two but five associated texts, all unknown to Herwegen and
first published in 1944 by Sánchez Albornoz and a year later by Pérez de Urbel. Of these only one,
which stands first in the series, is the pactum monachorum by which the monks and nuns of this double
community promise to observe the ascetic life under the abbot Argilegus; as might be expected in such
an act only a century removed from those circulating in the monasteries of Visigothic Galicia, this
follows relatively closely the language and provisions of RComP , although with certain highly
informative adaptations and omissions.
At the close of the monachal pactum the date "sub die pridie kalendas martias discurrente era
DCCCLVI" is carefully recorded; but this is not followed, as might be expected, by the subscriptions of
the religious. Instead, after a short space, there commences in the name of the abbot Argilegus a
"confirmatio uel compromissio" by which the community's governor bestows upon it various of his
properties. This is to all intents and purposes the abbatial counterpart to the self-submission of the
monks, the pactum abbatis under which by implication Argilegus assumes office in accordance with
the stipulations made in the monachal pactum; although undated it must have been drawn up at the
same time as the latter. Then follows in the pergamino a third text, also without date but evidently
issued simultaneously with its two predecessors, which takes the form of a donation made "in hunc
pacto uel traditione" by the abbot's kinsman Sisbertus, who bestows upon Naroba and its religious onefourth
of his landed properties and movables. This charter, although confirming other testimony to the
familial character of the structure and primitive endowment of the abbey, is of secondary interest; more
important is the fact that following its eschatocol we finally reach the subscriptions of the twelve
monks and nuns who composed the subter notati of the pactum monachorum, each cast in the form "in
hoc pacto manu mea.( Sig.) feci". This terminal list of names constitutes the bond that ties together the
first and second pieces, the pacta or strictly subpacta , i.e., the two fundamental, inseparable parts of