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

1.4.2 The Epistle
Firstly, the problem of the epistle. Whilst none of the surviving monastic rules
contain anything more than a substantial preface, it is possible that Leander was seeking to
imitate an otherwise unattested tradition of „epistolary rules‟: Isidore of Seville informs his
readers of Osius, the mid-fourth-century bishop of Cordoba, who had written a letter to his
sister called the De laude uirginitatis, 30 and also of Severus, the late-sixth-century bishop of
Malaga, who had composed something similar (a libellus) to his sister. 31 Unfortunately, both
of these works have now been lost, but the idea should not be dismissed that Leander knew
about these texts and was influenced by them. There was certainly nothing novel in Leander
writing about virginity, a topic that already had an established literary presence amongst the
Church Fathers; Ambrose in particular had written various works specifically for his sister on
the topic and Jerome‟s ascetic correspondence with Paula and Esutochium is well-known
(Adkin 2003). However, if the De institutione uirignum can be established as a monastic
rule, then it would place it as one of the first monastic rules to be written solely with nuns in
mind, rather than an adaption or companion to one written for monks.
The first important observation is that the epistle is very clearly intended for a sole
recipient, indicated in the first line by Leander‟s invocation “soror charissima Florentina”;
the constant repetition throughout of the personal pronoun tu and its associated
morphological forms means that its readership was, in the first instance, Florentina herself.
The high-register of language it is written in also presumes an educated reader, who would
30 De uiris illustribus 5.
31 De uiris inlustribus 43.
16