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

3.10 Visigothic Monasteries as Textual Communities
Given the evidence presented in the monastic rules, two important factors need to be
taken into account. First, Visigothic monasteries can be interpreted as „textual communities‟,
a phrase popularised by Stock (1983). Although Stock was referring to much later medieval
communities, the term nevertheless has significance for this study. It signifies, at its most
simple level, a community where written texts occupy a central role in the quotidian
existence of its members. However, importantly this need not imply necessarily that all
members of that community are capable of reading, but rather require this ability only from a
few key members of the group: “what was essential to a textual community was not a written
version of a text, although that was sometimes present, but an individual who, having
mastered it, then utilized it for reforming a group‟s thought and action” (Stock 1983: 90). As
such, “their „literacy‟, then, was not predicated on being able to read, but in their willingness
to assign authority to texts and their ability to interpret the messages contained therein”
(Briggs 2000: 405).
This is a notion that has attracted interest for the study of communities in both Late
Antiquity and the medieval period (Haines-Eitzen 2009). The early medieval evidence also
demonstrates that participation in textual culture did not require literacy. A famous example
is that of Pope Gregory I, who describes the following story of a man called Servulus: 261
“Nequaquam litteras nouerat, sed scripturae sacrae sibimet codices emerat, et religiosos
quosque in hospitalitatem suscipiens, hos coram se studiose legere faciebat. Factumque est ut
261 Dialogues 4.14.
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