Presentation given at the University of Rio de Janeiro, 13th April 2017, funded by Santander Universities.

1. 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

2. 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
territoryChurch of Santa Lucia de Trampal, Cáceres

3. 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 honourable
reputation. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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 Regula
Monastica

7. 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.”

8. 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.”

9. 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”

10. 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)”

12. 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.”

13. 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.”

14. 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 […].”

15. Leander of Seville, De institutione
virginum 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

16. Leander of Seville, De institutione
virginum 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”.

17. 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”

18. 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.’

19. 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’