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

made up until the tenth century (Trask 1997: 13). Nevertheless, Christianity existed in the
Ebro Valley from an early date and a bishopric in Pamplona dating from 589 suggests that
there must have been Basque-speaking Christians during the Visigothic period (Larrea 1996).
Therefore, similar to the situation that faced Irenaeus, it cannot be taken for granted that any
audience would have been able to understand a Latin text, even if they could read the letters.
It is known that at least some Christian literature was available in languages other than
Latin. The best example of this is Gothic from the Bible of Wulfila, but there is nothing to
suggest that anything similar existed for Celtic and Basque. Indeed, there is no surviving
evidence of anything written in Gothic from Visigothic Iberia. This was a problem noted by
Lane Fox (1985), who even places the difficulties of the spoken language before those of the
written word in early Christianity: “in Christianity‟s spread, the relevant question […] is not
whether Christians exploited all possible literary languages for their Scripture, but whether
they were hampered by ignorance of spoken dialects in their missionary work” (ibid.: 284).
In light of these potential linguistic contexts, and also of relevance for audiences who
potentially were not able to engage with a text through reading it personally, it is important to
focus on aspects of audience experience of early Christian texts that do not rely on any
literate ability, or even ability to understand the language itself: a manuscript does not
necessarily have to be read in order to influence. Petrucci (1995), speaking about books in
the sixth and seventh centuries, commented that: “the book itself had gradually been
transformed from an instrument of writing and reading, into an object of adoration and a
jewel-box of mysteries, not to be used directly and thus closed” (ibid.: 29). Hurtado (2006)
contributes another important point regarding the mere presence of written texts: “indeed,
perhaps especially for those unable to decipher them, texts can hold a certain, almost
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