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

(1980: 30). In addition to De Vogüé, Dubois (1970) distinguished three types of what he
called „normative acts‟: (a) monastic rules that describe the „spirit and main principles‟; (b)
customaries which convey details pertaining to the practice of everyday life; (c) institutions
such as canonical, liturgical and disciplinary directives.
The late-fourth-century Rule of Augustine is generally considered to be the first
western monastic rule and, according to De Vogüé, one of the three „mother rules‟ alongside
Basil and Benedict. 26 Nevertheless, its literary progenitors cannot be ignored and it was
certainly not a creation ex nihilo. If the basic idea of a monastic rule is defined as that of a
preceptive text, then it is essential to acknowledge an entire cornucopia of literature which,
although not monastic rules per se, were nevertheless texts that were important in the process
of the normativization of western monastic practice (Burton-Christie 1993; Chitty 1995).
Amongst these texts could be included literature as diverse as the many writings of
Evagrius Ponticus (Sinkewicz 2003), Palladius‟ Lausiac History, Jerome‟s correspondence
with Eustochium, Cassian‟s Institutions and many writings by figures such as Augustine, who
besides his own monastic rule also wrote his De opere monachorum to impart teachings of
suitable behaviour for monks. Indeed, so important was Athanasius‟ hagiographic Life of
Saint Antony that Gregory of Nazianus called it “ηνπ κνλαδηρνπ βηνπ λνκνζεζίαλ ἐλ πιάζκαηη
δηεγήζεσο”. 27 Even though these texts may not be monastic rules in an explicit sense, they
would still have had the power to inspire and guide their readers and so, despite being
26 Note also Sheldrake (2007: 50), “monasticism has been dominated by three Rules, St. Basil in
Eastern Christianity, and St. Augustine and St Benedict in the West [...] The so-called Rule of St.
Augustine is the earliest western Rule”.
27 Oratio 21.5.
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