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

ones: “Cum interea ubicunque in factis suis malis ac uerbis deprehensi fuerint, uel quoquo
modo innotuerint, sub generali nomine monachorum propositum blasphematur”. 22 The
various Visigothic Church Councils also frequently make allusion to problems that can occur
within the monastic profession. The Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, for example, says that
monks were prone to try and escape back into the secular world, 23 whilst the First Council of
Braga in 561 states that some co-inhabited with women. 24 More generally, the need for a
monastic rule should be seen as a shift in cenobitic life from what Carruthers (1998: 1)
highlighted as orthopraxy to orthodoxy, i.e. a change from the devotional practice of seeking
to emulate the acts of a leader or group of founders to one on reproducing the experience
through texts. No longer did Christian literature have a need to be principally protreptic,
seeking to convert its listeners (Cook 1994). Instead, the need was to teach the monk how to
live their lives so as to achieve the ascetic ideal. In this way, the creation of the monastic rule
should be seen as being concomitant with an institutionalisation of practice.
1.3 Defining a Monastic Rule
Monastic rules were just one of the many nascent literary forms that were patronised
by early Christianity; García de la Fuente (1994: 325-351) has provided a useful synthesis of
both new genres and those existing genres that were adapted to Christian needs. Within this
development it has long been established that practices associated particularly with
asceticism gave rise to various literary adventures (Gould 1993; Caner 2002; Harmless 2004),
22 De ecclesiasticiis officiis 2.7.
23 52, “Nonnulli monachorum egredeuntes a monasterio non solum ad saeculum reuertuntur, sed
etiam et uxores accipiunt”.
24 15, “Si quis clericorum uel monachorum praeter matrem aut germanam uel thiam uel quae proxima
sibi consanguinitate iunguntur alias aliquas quasi adoptiuas faeminas secum retinent et cum ipsis
cohabitant, sicut Priscilliani secta docuit, anathema sit”.
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