The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

nouerunt”; 237 “sed inter utrosque foueantur quousque quantulumcumque regulam cognoscant
et semper instruantur ut siue sint pueri siue puellae, monasterio prouecentur ubi habitare
futuri erant [...] et ipsi infantes suum habeant decanum qui plus de eis intelligit, ut regulam
super eos obseruet; et ab eo semper admoneantur ne aliquid absque regula faciant aut
loquantur”. 238 Elsewhere, the Rule of Fructuosus suggests a more general reading of
monastic rules: “ter per omnem hebdomadam [...] regulae patrum legendae”. 239 As such, the
monastic rules make it clear that a monk was required to understand the rules of the
monastery. However, beyond suggesting that monks were to know them, they offer little to
explain explicitly how the monastic rules might have been used.
Interestingly, activity surrounding written texts seems to have been focussed primarily
on their reception, rather than their creation, since there is no explicit evidence in the
monastic rules for a scriptorium, or the activity of writing. This is despite the fact that
scriptoria were known to have existed in early medieval monasteries. Cassiodorus, for
example, mentions a scriptorium at his monastery in Vivarium, 240 whilst Jerome suggested
that selling the products of a scriptorium could bring in revenue to a monastery. Braulius
also suggests that he has access to a monastic scriptorium in one of his letters, after sending a
Frominianus a commentary with adnotationes in the margin (Abad Leόn 1999: 291). In
addition, it was seen above how Valerius of Bierzo makes various references to the copying
of written texts, as well as original writing.
237 Rule of Isidore 7.
238 Common Rule 6.
239 Rule of Fructuosus 20.
240 De Institutione Diuinarum Litterarum 30.
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