Formative Spaces: Making female ascetics in early medieval Iberia

Jamie Wood

University of Lincoln

Isidore of Seville gives his De fide Catholic contra Iudaeos to his sister, Florentina

Formative Spaces• Explores relationship

between organisation of space and training of monks and nuns in 6th

& 7th century Iberia

• Analyses connection between monastic foundation and the exploitation/ control of territory

Church of Santa Lucia de Trampal, Cáceres

Texts and physical spaces“The walls of the monastery will have one main entrance, with an additional small back entrance that leads into the garden. Any settlement must ideally be distant from the monastery, in case if it were near then it might bring the distress of danger or taint the monastery’s honourablereputation. The cells of the monks should be located next to the church so that they can go as quickly as possible to Divine Office.”

Plan of Santa Lucia de TrampalIsidore of Seville, Monastic Rule, chapter 1

Project sources and method

Compares two source groups from the provinces of Baetica and Gallaecia, ca. 500-ca. 700:

1. Archaeological reports on excavated sites

2. Iberian monastic rules and advice texts to ascetics

Visigothic-era monasticism

Gallaecia

• Martin of Braga in 2nd

half of 6th C

• Fructuosus of Braga in mid-7th C

Baetica

• Isidore of Seville and family in late 6th and early 7th C

Outline

• Isidore of Seville’s Regula

• Other writings by Isidore

• Leander of Seville’s Institutione virginum

Valenciennes Bibliothèque municipale Ms. 288 f. 1r. (includes Isidore’s RegulaMonastica

Isidore, Regula, ch. 1

“Firstly, most dear brothers, your monastery will possess extraordinary diligence in the cloister, so that the monastic enclosures reflect the strength of its watch; for our enemy the Devil, like a roaring lion, circles with an open mouth, seeking every one of us whom he might devour. The walls of the monastery will have one main entrance, with an additional small back entrance that leads into the garden. Any settlement must ideally be distant from the monastery, in case if it were near then it might bring the distress of danger or taint the monastery’s honorable reputation.”

Isidore, Regula

• Ch. 4: “It is not fitting for anyone to be received into the community unless their humility and patience have been firstly proved whilst still not a member.”

Isidore, Regula

• Ch. 9: “the doors of the monastery will be bolt shut and neither will any stranger dare to be present, lest their presence impede the brotherly silence”

Ch. 18: “are prohibited from leaving the places where they were placed until their time of punishment is over”

Ch. 16: “immersed in an abyss of frequent and most serious sins (gravius vitium)”

Isidore, Regula, ch. 19

• “with the help of reclusion, he might be subject to open or hidden vice, and fall especially into vainglory or the fame of worldly repute”

• “life under observation […] any vice in anyone it can be cured whilst it is not hidden. If there is indeed any virtue, it can assist others through its imitation, since whilst the others consider the examples of their humility, they are instructed.”

Isidore, De ecclesiasticis officiis II.17“In a similar fashion there are also coenobia for women who are solicitously and chastely serving God. These, segregated in their little dwellings [habiticulae] and remote from the men as far away as possible, are nevertheless joined to them in devoted love of sanctity and pursuit of virtue. No young man has access to them, not any of the old men, even if they are most serious and proven, except up to the vestibule [vestibulum], for the purpose of bringing the necessary things that they lack. Individual women who are most serious and proven are placed in charge of these coenobia, expert and prepared not only in instituting and ordering manners of living but also in teaching minds. By weaving they also exercise and sustain the body, and they provide this clothing to the monks who are men, bringing back from each of them whatever their means of providing their living is.”

Second Council of Seville, canon 11

“Far be it indeed that we should wish monks to be familiar intimates with virgins of Christ, a thing shameful even to say […].”

Leander of Seville, De institutionevirginum et contemptu mundi, ch. 25

“you will profit from associating with many and, by seeing their virtues, you will become a virtuous nun.”

Gregory the Great dedicates his Moralia in Job to Leander

Leander of Seville, De institutionevirginum et contemptu mundi

• Ch. 31: “you must not look back like Lot’s wife; lest by your bad example you are made a lesson for the improvement of other nuns; and let the others see in you what they should avoid in themselves.”

• Ch. 24: “If a nun uses the same things that people in the world use, it seems likely that she should do the things done by people in the world”.

Leander, De institutione virginum et contemptu mundi

• Ch. 2: “The sex of a man and of a woman is different, but, if they are brought together, the result will be what is provoked by the law of nature”

• Ch. 3: “a recent sight or a physical vision returns these forms to her memory, and by seeing them she learns them so thoroughly that, no matter how brief the period that such an image has delighted her mind, what she has seen with her own eyes will return again in the sleep”

Leander, De institutione virginum et contemptu mundi, ch. 16

‘when reading the Old Testament, do not marvel at the marriages of those days, but reflect upon the large numbers of their children; nor upon the eating of meat and bloody sacrifices, crimes expiated by the death of the flesh, nor that one man was permitted to marry many wives. For what is not permitted now was permitted then, and just as marriages were permitted by law, so also was virginity preached in the Gospel. […] All that you read in the Old Testament, you should interpret in a spiritual sense, although it did actually happen; you must gather the meaning of spiritual knowledge from the truth of history. [….] Pay no attention to the Canticle of Canticles as it comes to your ears, for it invites the carnal pleasure of love on earth, but, figuratively, it also represents the Body of Christ and the love of the Church. The ancients quite rightly forbade the reading of the Heptateuch and the Canticle of Canticles by those with their minds on the flesh, lest they become dissolved in excitement to lust and pleasure because they did not know the spiritual interpretation.’

Life of Fructuosus, ch. 15

• 'men along with their sons joined the congregation of monks and their wives along with their daughters entered the holy company of women’

• 'with his spiritual teachings [...] in order that she might obtain this gift from the Lord'

• Fructuosus 'ordered a small dwelling place (mansiuncula) be built for her in a wood in this same wilderness'

• 'She applied herself so diligently to her spiritual studies and [...] news of her and her praise spread far and wide’