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

iuxta modum suum plene sacram scripturam disceret, cum, sicut dixi, litteras funditus
ignoraret. Studebat semper in dolore gratias agere, hymnis Deo et laudibus diebus ac
noctibus uacare”.
Stock himself stated that a textual community used texts “to structure the internal
behaviour of the group‟s members and to provide solidarity against the outside world [...] the
text itself was re-performed orally, and as a consequence, interaction by word of mouth could
take place as a superstructure of an agreed meaning” (1983: 90). Such a scenario is perfectly
applicable to the Visigothic monasteries, where written texts constituted a core feature of
daily life but where it cannot be imagined that all monks would have been able to engage
with them on a literate level. Indeed, the sources clearly show that written texts were
important to monasteries and it has already been made clear that Visigothic society of all
levels was not alien to written culture.
The second factor that needs to be taken into account is the nature of monastic lectio.
Colombas (1975: 349) is at ease to say: “no perseguía la lectio divina un fin científico o
literario, ni era tenida por una actividad puramente intelectual. Los monjes más simples, con
tal que supieran leer, podían y debían aplicarse a ella”. This is all very well, but what about
those monks who did not know how to read? The answer to this lies in the definition of
lectio as being a „reading‟ in the wider sense of the word, and beyond this as being of a
specifically Christian type. The Latin legere was often related to meditari during antiquity,
and within the Christian orbit, lectio was similarly not always an academic pursuit but one of
a meditative nature. The concept of reading in the works of Augustine, for example, has been
the subject of some discussion and similar conclusions have been reached (Stock 2001).
Indeed, it is important that modern scholars do not distance themselves from the fact that
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