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

Any observation on the theme of defining a textual genre must necessarily recognise
the concept of genre itself to be fluid, whose reception is entirely dependent upon audience
reception and context (Frow 2006: 1-5). As such, only rarely is it possible to speak of fixed
boundaries of a genre (Fowler 1979 and 2002; Miller 1994). In addition, these boundaries
are often fixed no more by ancient constraints than by modern ones: “if genres are confined
to the classes of texts that have been historically perceived as such, their classification is
inevitably bound to the ideology of a society that chooses to encode only certain forms as
genres […] genre is thus the site of a constant renegotiation between fixed canons and
historical pressures, systems and individuals” (Rajan & Wright 1998: 1). This is even more
so the case for Christian literature, which “saw different forms used as vehicles for a single
given tradition of Christian argument” (Young 2004b: 254). Nevertheless, the key to a genre
is convention and so it is only right to look for textual aspects of the monastic rules that both
set them apart from other works, as well as homogenise them to some extent with each other.
It is from this point of view that the study begins: “the study of genre has to be founded on
the study of convention” (Frye 1957: 96).
The most prominent figure in monastic studies of the twentieth century, de Vogüé, has
to date been the most vociferous scholar in defining a monastic rule (1977; also useful are his
1985 and 1989). De Vogüé proposed a literary schema constituting eight generations of texts
that he classed as monastic rules, beginning with what he termed the „mother rules‟ of
Pachomius, Basil and Augustine. The subsequent generations were organised
chronologically and end with the eighth generation in the seventh century, comprising the
Rule of Fructuosus, the Rule of Donatus and the Rule of Waldebert. Elsewhere, he further
distinguished that “les règles peuvent se répartir approximativement en trois groupes, suivant
quelles donnent la priorité à la vie commune, à la consecratión personelle ou à l‟obéissance”
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