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

The term also has an advantage in the sense that it captures to a large extent the
contemporary Zeitgeist. Christian authors were often well aware that they were writing
within a new literary tradition, which boasted new and altered genres and canons from the
pagan one; this fact that could prove a source of both great pride and great distress. Indeed,
Christian self-definition had been an important part of the Church since the very beginning,
and use of the term Christian Latin reflects better a contemporary dichotomy and
consciousness of new literary adventures. However, there is no evidence for a conscious
recognition from authors of the Late Antique and post-Roman world that they were writing in
a „late‟ stage of their language, in the same way that Chaucer would not have thought himself
to be writing in „Middle‟ English, rather than Old or Modern English.
Out of the traditional potential terms used to describe the language of the monastic
rules, then, Vulgar Latin has been rejected outright. Similarly, Late Latin and post-Classical
Latin have been shown to present too many difficulties in their definition and implications to
be a valid term of description. Christian Latin would seem to be the most suitable for such a
purpose. The term works well for literary studies; the authors of the monastic rules and,
presumably, their audience, were all Christian. However, not everybody who was exposed to
literary texts in the Visigothic period would have necessarily been so. Christian Latin also
works less well for some works, written by Christians, which are distinctly classicisizing and
include few or no features that would be identifiable as Christian. The difficulties presented
by such a term as Late Latin should not suggest that some sort of division is not feasible;
evidently, the Latin of later periods is different, on various levels, to the Latin of the earlier
Classical authors. As such, the term later Latin is preferred. This term is not itself without
polemic, but does serve to confront the principle issue of an invalid „end-stage‟ implication
and any derogatory image that has come to be associated with it. Perhaps the most important
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