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

the Late Antique and early medieval worlds. In itself, then, any review of such topics could
be considered a positive action and even if readers do not agree with the conclusions of this
thesis, the attention drawn to the monastic rules as previously neglected evidence has by and
large satisfied at least one of its aims. With regard to questions of literacy, the most
important conclusion was that monastic lectio is best understood as a term with far wider
connotations than simply „reading‟. It seems clear that lectio and a culture based on written
sources was an important part of Visigothic monastic life, but also that textual culture
included large elements of oral recitation and aural reception.
Building on the theme of „textual communities‟, it is also clear that a Visigothic monk
need not be literate in order to take part in literate culture. This is not only because the idea
of lectio encompasses far wider activities than simple solitary reading, but also because the
manner in which the monastic rules were written means that any hearer or reader is exposed
to the literary sensibilities of the period. Whilst it is true that the monastic rules are technical
texts and written in a low register of language, this does not mean that there are not literary
influences at play, the direct result of the education of their authors and the place of the
monastic rules in the development of Latin literature more generally; as such, the very act of
hearing the text would have exposed the reader to this culture, whether they were aware of it
or not. It also emphasises the fact that these texts are part of a literary history and
contemporary culture that belong to a much wider landscape, and to remove them from this
landscape is to fail to understand them fully.
Turning from one kind of language of the literary variety to another of the linguistic
variety, it should be clear that there are still many questions that need answering. Perhaps the
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