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

their monastic rules were not written in this high register does not mean that this language
would have been perceived as somehow „incorrect or „bad‟ Latin. The problem of using
terms such as „standard‟ versus „non-standard‟ is that they are multivalent; any author, or
indeed speaker in general, will have as many standards of language as audience. In essence,
whether a language is standard or not is entirely in the expectations and abilities of the
recipient. Take, for example, the opening lines of Apuleius‟s novel, The Golden Ass:
“At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram auresque tuas benivolas
lepido susurro permulceam — modo si papyrum Aegyptiam argutia Nilotici calami
inscriptam non spreveris inspicere — figuras fortunasque hominum in alias imagines
conversas et in se rursus mutuo nexu refectas ut mireris [...] En ecce praefamur veniam,
siquid exotici ac forensis sermonis rudis locutor offendero. Iam haec equidem ipsa vocis
immutatio desultoriae scientiae stilo quem accessimus respondet”.
Apuleius here makes reference to his sermo Milesius, to the Egyptian way of telling
stories and to his exotic speech. Yet despite the apologia, Apuleius highlights well that the
only reason it might sound strange is because it is not written in the register expected by the
listeners (exotici ac forensis sermonis).
If the idea of language „standard‟ is too vague for academic study, then the idea of
„register‟ is not. When early Christian authors use the various adjectives to describe their
language, they are roughly synonymous: simplex, plebeius, pedestrius, humilis etc. These
hint not at what might have once been called a „vulgar‟ language, but rather one that remains
unaffected by a heavily adorned literary style, widely intelligible and therefore more
reflective of the spoken language than other, more unnaturally manipulated, texts. A couple
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