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

quieto”; 386 “pius enim et oblectabilis, humilis atque modestia esse debet affectus
monachi”; 387 “sermone et colloquio castigetur”; 388 “iuniores senes et corpore non nimium
inbecilles ex se ipsos ministros religant, qui tam senioribus reliquis quam etiam et aegrotis
uicissim ministrant et languetibus suo obsequio pietatis et beniuolentiae opus inpendanti”; 389
“ipsi fures et latrones Dominca uoce adtestantur”; 390 “sed cum aliqua occasio pro aliquo a
suo abate monasterii distringendi aut emendandi accesserit, continuo in superbiam surgit, et
acediae spiritu inflatus, monasterium fugiens derelinquit”; 391 “omnes decani a suis
praepositis admoneantur ut cuncti fratres a minimo usque ad maximum diebus Dominicis in
monasterio uno loco congregentur”. 392
4.9.2 Synonyms and Learned / Unlearned Vocabulary
There is, perhaps, another reason why synonyms would be employed beyond a purely
stylistic reason, namely that since a monastic rule is a didactic text, they might be used to for
reasons of linguistic clarity. Politzer recognised the „mushrooming‟ of synonyms and
concluded that this may have been representative of a learned and unlearned vocabulary, and
following this, evidence of Latin-Romance bilingualism (1961: 487). Thus, the author opines
some examples of synonymy to exist within two different linguistic registers, one high and
one low. The writings of Wright can be useful here, who defined a learned word as those that
“appear to be exceptions to the general regularities of phonetic change: they have not evolved
as much as phonetically analogous words usually did” (1982: 4). As such, they are lexical
386 Rule of Fructuosus 1.
387 Rule of Fructuous 8.
388 Rule of Fructuosus 14.
389 Rule of Fructuosus 23.
390 Common Rule 2.
391 Common Rule 4.
392 Common Rule 13.
148