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

modern histories” (ibid.: 191). Indeed, scholarship might have demonstrated Sittl‟s Africitas
argument to be unpersuasive, but the notion of the tumor is nevertheless sound and merits
discussion.
Examples of the tumor are to be found in the monastic rules: “circa omnes quoque
servans iustitiam, contra nullum liuore odii inardescens”; 397 “torporem somni atque
pigritiam fugiat‖; 398 “liuore quoque invidiae de fraternis profectibus nequaquam
tabescat”; 399 “qui graviter peccasse noscuntur, graui seueritate coerceantur”; 400 “sub
praetextu infirmitatis nihil peculiare habendum est, ne lateat libido cupiditatis sub languoris
specie”; 401 “et non Christi amore prouocati a populi uulgo incitati”; 402 “ipsi uero infirmi
tanta sollicitudine admoneantur, ut de ore eorum nec quantuluscumque uel leuis sermo
murmurationis procedat”; 403 “ne fortasse aliquis aduersus aliquem odio liuoris
stimuletur”. 404
The employment of the tumor as a literary technique is fairly widespread in Isidore‟s
writings in particular. He was an author who had demonstrated his interest in the synonym in
both his De differentibus uerbiis and his Etymologiae, and Fontaine (1983: 284) considered
its use to be a “signature isidorienne typique: celle du style ‗synonymique‘ que le Moyen Age
397 Rule of Isidore 2.3.
398 Rule of Isidore 3.4.
399 Rule of Isidore 3.4.
400 Rule of Isidore 17.3.
401 Rule of Isidore 22.3.
402 Common Rule 2.
403 Common Rule 7.
404 Common Rule 13.
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