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

3.4 “In nomine Patria et Filea et Spiritua Sancta”: Literacy and Linguistic Contexts
To talk meaningfully of any kind of literacy, ancient, medieval or, Visigothic, is made
more difficult by the chronology and variety of cultures that are included under such banners;
the uniformity of nomenclature should not give an impression of a uniformity of culture.
Indeed, seventh-century Iberia was a kaleidoscope of cultures. An important issue arising
from this must be that of language use, even amongst those who were converted to
Christianity. Indeed, the quotation that begins this section, apparently reflective of an
incorrect baptismal formula overheard by the eighth-century St. Virgil, is used often to show
that even early medieval priests could not be presumed to possess a perfect knowledge of
Latin.
Late Antique and early medieval language use, and its relationship with the written
word, is a complex issue. Throughout this period in Western Europe, for example, Latin-
speaking Christianity was approached by many as a foreign-language religion: Irenaeus in the
second century complained about the need to speak Celtic to his congregation, and it can
hardly be expected that the same people would study at home with Latin scripture. 171 Later
on during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, moreover, the presence of both
Germanic and Latin dialects must be taken into account. For example, the monk Notker of
St. Gall was a native Germanic speaker (Thorpe 1969: 23). Although Notker wrote in Latin,
there were converts in the eastern regions of the Empire who could not have done so. Early
Irish and Anglo-Saxon Christianities are further examples where a Latin culture existed
alongside a linguistically native one. In some cases, then, Latin literacy and the use of texts
written in Latin must be seen in a different, and even more complex, context than in cultures
where the spoken language constituted a collection of idiolects of the same language.
171 Contra hareses 1.3
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