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

such Nuns' Rules appearing in the same Riojan milieu of the mid-tenth century, and (ii) the positive
testimony of Salvus' disciple, the Albeldensian scribe Vigila, who in his Vita Salvi abbatis not only
approximates the actual title by describing his master's work as "sacris uirginibus regularem libellum"
but further implies its Benedictine base when he characterizes it as "eloquio nitidum et rei ueritate
prespicuum", words strongly reminiscent of those St Gregory uses of RB: "discretione praecipuam,
sermone luculentam" (Dial., II, 36). The very production of this Rule subsumes the rise of a
Benedictine-inspired hostility towards the regula mixta of the old Hispanic observance. So too the
strictly unilateral Burgalese Formula, in silently departing from the prescription of Ordo XVIII that the
abbot submit to the bishop "placitum suum tarn pro se quam pro subditis", implies a rejection of the
binary pactum--thus constituting still another testimony to the amalgamation of the two traditions on a
Benedictine base.
141. Cf. Serrano, Cartulario de San Pedro de Arlanza, 14-17 (no. IV), 29-30 (no. IX).