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

opus quod faciat, ut non uacet”. 243 The Rule of Isidore, for example, makes it clear that not
all converts were able to declare their devotion in writing, when it compares the recruitment
of a monk with the recruitment of a soldier: “Sicut enim ii qui ad saecularem promouentur
militiam in legionem non transeunt nisi antea in tabulis conferantur, ita et ii qui in
spiritualibus castris caelesti militae sunt signandi nisi prius professione uerbi aut scripti
teneantur in numerum societatemque seruorum Christi transire non possunt”. 244 In its
chiding of some conversational material, the Common Rule mentions the claim to be able to
read and write as being something that was boasted about by monks: “et quasi nihil a Deo
acceperint de propriis uiribus extollentur, et cum laudatores non inueniunt ipsi sibi in suis
laudibus prosiliunt […] alius de legendo, alius de scribendo”. 245 Also, in one of the
sentences from the pactum, quoted above, there is reference to monks who may not be able to
sign their name, and so have to leave a mark (signum) instead: “Haec sunt nomina qui manu
sua unusquisque subscriptionem uel signum in hoc pacto fecit”.
In themselves, these pieces of evidence do not necessarily imply that illiteracy was
widespread: there is far more evidence in the monastic rules of activity relating to a literate
culture than an illiterate one. However, it seems a sensible assumption that postulants would
have constituted a range of literate ability. On the one hand, there could have been postulants
who represented extremes of the scale, such as high literate abilities or perhaps none at all; on
the other hand, those in between, ranging from basic pragmatic literate abilities and onwards.
In such a scenario, even if one could adopt an idealistic approach, whereby there existed
some kind of internal educational structure for new converts, perhaps during the novitiate, it
would nevertheless take some time before all converts were of a reading ability sufficient to
243 Rule of Benedict 48.
244 Rule of Isidore 4.2.
245 Common Rule 13.
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