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

for example, attracted a conuersus called Saturnino “from faraway lands”. His hut, where he
lived as hermit, was later burnt down by a forest fire, stoked in part by the dry manure left on
the round by the animals used by people to come and visit him. 110 One must also question
how isolated such communities really were when a certain monk called John was decapitated
by a possessed local peasant (rusticus) whilst praying in a monastery. 111 There is no
indication that it was particularly difficult for the peasant to gain access to the community. In
another tale, a layman called Basil went to a monastery to visit the monk Saturnino,
mentioned above, because of a medical problem with his hand. 112
As a Christian institution, moreover, monasteries could not exist unchecked by the
wider Church authorities, a situation which could quickly lead to heresy; this was a situation,
in fact, that had been the complaint made by the opening chapters of the Common Rule. The
role of the various Church councils for which Visigothic Iberia is famous for has been studied
recently (Stocking 2000; also Vives 1963), and it is clear that these gatherings sought, in
some cases, to regulate monastic life. These councils were made up primarily of bishops,
who, since the Council of Chalcedon in 451, had been given authority over monasteries. The
First Council of Barcelona in 540 reaffirmed this for a Visigothic audience, 113 whilst the third
canon of the Council of Lerida in 546 stated that monastic rules had to be approved by a
bishop. 114 Indeed, in medieval historiography, abbatial authority is a position that is often
synonymous with episcopal authority, a notion that is often upheld even in the early medieval
110 Valerius of Bierzo Replicatio 7.
111 Valerius of Bierzo Replicatio 14.
112 Valerius of Bierzo Replicatio 12.
113 Canon 10, “De monachis uero id obseruari praecipimus quod synodus Chalcedonensis constituit‖.
114 “ubi congregatio non colligitur uel regula ab episcopo non constituitur, ea a diocesana lege
audeat segregare”.
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