Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l'antiquité, Première partie: Le monachisme latin, Tome XI: La Gaule franque et l'Espagne wisigothique (VIe-VIIe siècle) (review)

This is the eleventh volume of Adalbert de Vogüé's monumental history of le monachisme Latin (the twelfth volume has also now appeared). Its completion marked as well his sixtieth anniversary (in 2004) as a Benedictine monk. It is an histoire littéraire only in the special sense of textual analysis and rather less a study of Rules and Lives as literary forms. This means that there is more narrative précis than historical reflection; but one values, of course, the authoritative judgment about interweavings and dependencies, and the author consistently identifies, in relation to much more than regulae, both the pathways and the mechanics of transmission. De Vogüé has become in our time so towering a figure in the historiography of late antique and early medieval monasticism that we can forget his genius for clear summary, for essays both precise and sympathetic, informed always by what one might term his lateral wisdom.

This volume covers the period between the great pioneers (Pachomius, Cassian, and Benedict) and the Carolingian age. It focuses, in other words, on a period marked especially by the Irish and the confluence of their culture with both Gallic and Italian traditions. The regulae in particular were the instruments that mediated the earliest patterns of organization to men living in rather different circumstances. It is always striking how loyally these "middle-phase" rule-writers remembered their own forebears. So the Regula Donati bears witness to the way Caesarius had begun to inject specifically feminine elements into his own broader heritage and Columbanus, with his interest in confession, regularized more fully the notion of obedience. Similar shifts can be observed in Jonas of Bobbio's Life of John of Réomé.

Of two major components of the book, the first concerns precisely Jonas of Bobbio and Columbanus (chapters 3–5). De Vogüé is surely right in suggesting that Jonas's portrait of Columbanus himself was less important, in terms of histoire littéraire, than his account of what followed Columbanus's death. He regards the triumph of the Irish as at least coterminous with, if not the explanation of, the "decline" of the Lérins tradition—that is, the Lérins tradition as conceived of by de Vogüé himself: still a problematic interpretation. It is also convincing to suggest that we are witnessing here (in Jonas) a challenge to the influence of Gregory the Great and of the Benedictine legacy that the Carolingians would so ardently revive.

That makes all the more apposite the second major section, the Spanish, beginning with Leander of Seville (well known, of course, to Gregory). It would probably have been useful to note more clearly that Leander was operating in circumstances marked not only by the definitive adhesion of the Visigoths to Catholic orthodoxy but also by their close if volatile relations with the Franks. When we come to Leander's brother, Isidore, we see a firm allegiance to the legacy of Augustine (and his contemporaries) rather more than to Benedict; and Isidore betrays a clear sense that Spain might not yet be ready for the detailed discipline of the sixth century. De Vogüé is skillful in his appropriate reference to what we might call Isidore's monastic temper, evident even in the Sententiae; but he also provides a very full analysis of the Regula monachorum.

The concluding emphasis of the book, therefore, is invaluable, since Spain, in relation to monasticism as to so much else, is a neglected bridge between late antiquity and the high Middle Ages. De Vogüé's treatment is centered, not surprisingly, on Fructuosus of Braga; but he provides excellent reflections in chapter 8, "Le Monachisme espagnol à l...