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

egularum for the sole observance of the Montecassinese code; and whatever the precise roles we
ultimately assign in this transformation to the Carolingian reformism of Benedict of Aniane, the latter's
enthusiastic Catalan partisans, the influence of the Cluniacs under Sancho el Mayor, Fernando el
Magno and Alfonso VI, and the Franco-Hispanic or afrancesado bishops of the 11th century, it now has
to be recognized that west of the Hispanic Mark the Benedictine victory was a slow, stubbornly resisted
process which profoundly affected, along very diverse chronological and regional lines, the religious
and cultural history of the Alta Reconquista.
The other aspect of the subject, no less complex and even more controversial, bears upon the question
whether the indigenous cenobitism was not itself deeply divided for centuries, both before and after
711, between two contrasting and in part hostile traditions, one of orthodox type, similar in spirituality
and institutional organization to that characteristic of the pre-Benedictine West, the other a
constitutionally quite different movement, originally Galaico-Portuguese in provenance, which came to
be deeply rooted in central and western Iberia during the first centuries of the Reconquista and which
can be described, for comparative purposes and without theological implications, as heterodox. This
second peninsular ascetic tradition, along with the thesis of the remarkable duality of Hispanic
cenobitism prior to the ultimate establishment of Benedictinism, is the subject of the slim but
authentically path-breaking volume published in 1907 at Stuttgart by Dom Ildefons Herwegen of Maria
Laach Abbey, then still a young student but already displaying the talents and scholarship he was later
to devote as abbot to historical science and the modern liturgical movement. The work, entitled Das
Pactum des hl. Fruktuosus van Braga: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte dês suevischwestgotischen
Mönchtums und seines Rechtes, was reprinted in 1965 and remains one of the truly fundamental
contributions to the study of early medieval Luso-Hispanic monastic history, (4) although in recent [3]
years its contentions have been increasingly challenged and have become the subject of lively debate.
What the German Benedictine modestly styled a Beitrag has in fact resulted in a renewed scrutiny of.
long known monastic writings and other documentation of the Visigothic and post-Visigothic eras, a
search for new or previously neglected texts, and, above all, a major effort to resolve the complex
problematics of the genesis, lines of diffusion and comparative significance of the two rival pre-
Benedictine Hispanic traditions, the orthodox Visigothic and the Luso-Gallegan heterodox. Since some
leading authorities deny the very existence of this duality before or after 711, this has given rise to
sharply conflicting interpretations and drawn into the discussion such Spanish and Portuguese
specialists as Pérez de Urbel, Mário Martins, Anscari Mundo, Manuel Díaz y Díaz, José Orlandis,
Ramón Abadal i de Vinyals, Antonio Linage Conde, José Mattoso, and others, and from outside Iberian
soil Maur Cocheril, Claude Barlow, and the present writer.
The controversy has done much to enrich and deepen our whole understanding of early Hispanic
monachism, but it is fair to say that on the central issues no notable degree of consensus has yet been
reached. The following pages propose to consider, therefore, although inevitably much more summarily
than the many complexities of the theme make desirable, the chief points in dispute; to defend the
validity of certain of Herwegen's more fundamental contentions; and to call attention to some hitherto
ignored or misunderstood aspects of the Luso-Gallegan tradition that are central to its correct
understanding both before and after the year 711. Such a survey, if it does not bring the warring camps
closer together, may at least encourage renewed investigation into the authentic role of the pactual
tradition in the monastic history of the Hispanic Middle Ages.