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

This can be compared with two typical paragraphs from his monastic rule: 286
―Monasterii autem munitio tantum ianuam extrinsecus habeat, unumque posticum, per quem
eatur ad hortum. Uilla sane longe remota debet esse a monasterio, ne uicinius posita aut
laboris inferat periculum, aut famam inficiat dignitatis. Cellulae fratribus iuxta ecclesiam
constituantur, ut possint properare quantocius ad officium.
Locus autem aegrotantium remotus erit a basilica, uel cellulis fratrum, ut nulla inquietudine
uel clamoribus impediantur. Cellarium monachorum iuxta coenaculum esse oportet, ut secus
positum sine mora mensis ministerium praebeatur. Hortulus sane intra monasterium sit
inclusus, quatenus, dum intus monachi operantur, nulla occasione exterius euagentur‖.
There are clearly differences here, most notably in syntax and vocabulary. In the
monastic rule, transitive verbs are normally side-by-side with their subject and there is a lack
of schemes such as hyperbaton that might otherwise distort sentence structure. However, in
the Laus Spaniae the word order is fluid, subjects are not next to their verbs and adjectives do
not immediately qualify their nouns. In its vocabulary the Laus Spaniae also uses words
typical of Classical Latin poetry, which certainly in Isidore‟s time would have been
archaicising: saltus („forest‟), amnis („river‟), eleus („Olympian‟), zephyrus („the west wind‟)
and uolucer („bird‟). All of these are words drawn from a poetic vocabulary, normal in
writers such as Virgil or Ovid but not associated with lower-register language. 287
Fructuosus has not bequeathed the quantity of texts to modern scholars as Isidore, but a
section from his letter to Braulius of Zaragoza is useful: 288
286 Rule of Isidore 1.2.
287 For a discussion of the poetic lexicon in Latin, see Coleman (1999b: 51-63).
288 Epistula ad Bralionem 2.
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