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

thesis is in some senses a wide ranging conspectus of issues, the end result is the first in-
depth English-language study of the Visigothic monastic rules, and so a more holistic
approach was therefore felt to be appropriate.
The thesis is also unashamedly centred on the Iberian Peninsula, an approach that
carries with it both advantages and disadvantages. Collins (2002: vii-x; see also Hillgarth
1985a; Bowes & Kulikowski 2005: 1-26) provided an accurate account of the problems that
face historians of Iberia, and many of the same problems apply to this study. Historiography
has become much kinder to the region, and the most recent academic generations have
produced a milieu of work focussing on the Late Antique and early medieval period
(Thompson 2002; Barbero & Loring 2005; Wickham 2005 and 2009; see also Ferreiro 1988,
2006). Nevertheless, the region has received less attention in scholarship concerning its post-
Roman literary output in particular when compared to Gaul or Italy, for example, despite
being one of the most productive. 6 The reasons for this are complex. Spain‟s political
aperture over thirty years ago did little to attract it to university syllabi, and still today
relatively few universities offer ancient or medieval Spanish or Portuguese history courses. 7
Many students also lack the necessary linguistic skills, and Spain‟s nationalist tendencies,
moreover, are often reflected in its academic practice. Thus, Catalan scholars often study
6 Raby (1927: 125-131), for example, dedicated whole chapters to the poets of Gaul, Africa and Italy
of the seventh century, and yet the Iberian writers are relegated to only six pages. Indeed, it was not
until 2006 that an English translation of Isidore‟s Etymologies appeared, despite being one of the most
important and influential works of the Middle Ages (Barney et al. 2006). Curtius (1997: 450-457)
provides a noteworthy exception.
7 The situation could be compared to the study of Eastern Europe, a region where, despite only being
ten years or so behind Spain in its political aperture, the post-Solidarity academic landscape of
western academia is generally little changed from its Communist-period predecessor outside of
specialised centres of Slavonic studies (Davies 2006).
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