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

The monastic rules also display a general unity in their overall structural composition.
Each one is made up of relatively short chapters, rarely exceeding a few paragraphs; each
could be read comfortably within an assembly, especially if this were out loud to a group; and
the organisation means that it would have been relatively simple to refer to individual
chapters if necessary, an especially useful feature in the mixed-rule codex that was to become
popular in early medieval monasteries. This organisation is common throughout all the
twenty-five or so surviving rules from antiquity. With regard to the Visigothic monastic
rules, the content finds little in the way of major deviations between the three texts, with
expected topics such as fasting, prayer, work, reading, sleeping, travelling, eating and social
customs being the shared norm.
What, then, makes a monastic rule? De Vogüé proposed the following: “leaving aside
directories written for individuals [...] we shall consider only the documents which are written
for monastic communities, and among those we shall retain only those which have a certain
legislative character, excluding those texts which are simply hortative or descriptive” (1977:
175). Essentially, this is correct, but it is possible to delineate more clearly its definition
using the literary model proposed above. There are various core features that a text must
satisfy. First, it must be preceptive in nature, outlining at least to some extent pragmatic
matters regarding the day-to-day activities of a monk. Second, it must refer to a monastic
community, understood to signify a cenobitic community of men or women, or both, under
the authority of an abbot or abbess. Third, the overall form of the text should comprise
continuous prose divided into short chapters; quotations, sayings and „yes or no‟-style
literature do not qualify. These three tenets serve to offer a basic outline of the genre.
Naturally, beyond this monastic rules will differ amongst themselves; some contain far more
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