[1] The historical development of Hispanic monasticism in the Early Middle Ages can no longer be envisaged as the relatively simple, straightforward story it appeared in the 17th century to its first major chroniclers, Prudencio de Sandoval, Antonio de Yepes and Gregorio de Argaiz. ⁽¹⁾ In recent decades the need has become increasingly urgent to advance beyond the older simplistic accounts and to perceive that in the last century of Roman Hispania, under the Suevic and Visigothic monarchies, and in the first four hundred years of the Reconquista, the Iberian Peninsula in this as in other fields displays marked regional diversities, striking originality of institutions, and a tenacious adherence to indigenous patterns that until the days of the Leonese-Castilian king-emperors Fernando I and Alfonso VI set it apart from the main stream of ultra-Pyrenean, typically 'European', cenobitic evolution.
 
In the traditional conception there existed below the Pyrenees down to the eventual triumph of full Benedictinism a single vigorous ascetic movement, thoroughly orthodox by proto-monastic standards, which could be studied in the canons of the Romano-Visigothic councils, the ordines of the Hispanic Rite, the eclectically used codices regularum of both eastern and western Rules (to which those of Sts Leander and Isidore of Seville and of St Fructuosus of Braga came to be added), and the Vitae sanctorum and ascetic writings produced by the Suevic and Visigothic Churches. ⁽²⁾ To be sure, the point at which the autochthonous cenobitism succumbed to the code of Monte Cassino was disputed. Many, especially the older, scholars sought to fix the date as early as possible, on the assumption that well before 711 the great majority of peninsular abbeys were already authentically Benedictine. Others, more soundly, [2] pointed to the abundant evidence showing that the indigenous non-Benedictine tradition of the late Visigothic period not only survived the disaster of the Islamic invasion but long flourished in both Muslim and Christian Spain, until its archaic spirituality and observances inevitably and without noticeable resistance gave way to the exclusive observance of the Regula Benedicti (henceforth RB ) as universally established above the Pyrenees.
 
This latter view, still widely current, is by no means wholly mistaken or superseded; but at two vital points it requires drastic correction. One of these, on which the following pages will touch only marginally, is the belief in a relatively early Hispanic reception of RB, for it is now certain from the pioneer essays of Antonio de Siles (1832) and Dom Beda Plaine (1899), the authoritative works of Dom Justo Pérez de Urbel, and the recent major investigations of José Mattoso and Antonio Linage Conde, that before 711 no true Benedictine communities existed anywhere in the Peninsula, although the Rule itself apparently circulated there in the 7th century. ⁽³⁾ Spain and Portugal constitute in fact one of the last major subdivisions of early medieval Europe to abandon the regula mixta of the codices regularum for the sole observance of the Montecassinese code; and whatever the precise roles we ultimately assign in this transformation to the Carolingian reformism of Benedict of Aniane, the latter's enthusiastic Catalan partisans, the influence of the Cluniacs under Sancho el Mayor, Fernando el Magno and Alfonso VI, and the Franco-Hispanic or afrancesado bishops of the 11th century, it now has to be recognized that west of the Hispanic Mark the Benedictine victory was a slow, stubbornly resisted process which profoundly affected, along very diverse chronological and regional lines, the religious and cultural history of the Alta Reconquista.

The other aspect of the subject, no less complex and even more controversial, bears upon the question whether the indigenous cenobitism was not itself deeply divided for centuries, both before and after 711, between two contrasting and in part hostile traditions, one of orthodox type, similar in spirituality and institutional organization to that characteristic of the pre-Benedictine West, the other a constitutionally quite different movement, originally Galaico-Portuguese in provenance, which came to be deeply rooted in central and western Iberia during the first centuries of the Reconquista and which can be described, for comparative purposes and without theological implications, as heterodox. This second peninsular ascetic tradition, along with the thesis of the remarkable duality of Hispanic cenobitism prior to the ultimate establishment of Benedictinism, is the subject of the slim but authentically path-breaking volume published in 1907 at Stuttgart by Dom Ildefons Herwegen of Maria Laach Abbey, then still a young student but already displaying the talents and scholarship he was later to devote as abbot to historical science and the modern liturgical movement. The work, entitled Das Pactum des hl. Fruktuosus van Braga: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte dês suevischwestgotischen Mönchtums und seines Rechtes, was reprinted in 1965 and remains one of the truly fundamental contributions to the study of early medieval Luso-Hispanic monastic history, ⁽⁴⁾ although in recent [3] years its contentions have been increasingly challenged and have become the subject of lively debate.
 
What the German Benedictine modestly styled a Beitrag has in fact resulted in a renewed scrutiny of. long known monastic writings and other documentation of the Visigothic and post-Visigothic eras, a search for new or previously neglected texts, and, above all, a major effort to resolve the complex problematics of the genesis, lines of diffusion and comparative significance of the two rival pre-Benedictine Hispanic traditions, the orthodox Visigothic and the Luso-Gallegan heterodox. Since some leading authorities deny the very existence of this duality before or after 711, this has given rise to sharply conflicting interpretations and drawn into the discussion such Spanish and Portuguese specialists as Pérez de Urbel, Mário Martins, Anscari Mundo, Manuel Díaz y Díaz, José Orlandis, Ramón Abadal i de Vinyals, Antonio Linage Conde, José Mattoso, and others, and from outside Iberian soil Maur Cocheril, Claude Barlow, and the present writer.
 
The controversy has done much to enrich and deepen our whole understanding of early Hispanic monachism, but it is fair to say that on the central issues no notable degree of consensus has yet been reached. The following pages propose to consider, therefore, although inevitably much more summarily than the many complexities of the theme make desirable, the chief points in dispute; to defend the validity of certain of Herwegen's more fundamental contentions; and to call attention to some hitherto ignored or misunderstood aspects of the Luso-Gallegan tradition that are central to its correct understanding both before and after the year 711. Such a survey, if it does not bring the warring camps closer together, may at least encourage renewed investigation into the authentic role of the pactual tradition in the monastic history of the Hispanic Middle Ages.

We shall commence by reviewing the major issues raised in the historiography of the subject between 1907 and the present.
 
In his book Herwegen depicts the Hispanic monastic pactum as a written juridical act of threefold purpose: as Gründungsformel, it recorded the foundation of the ascetic society (of men or women or, as commonly in the peninsular adhesion to paleo-monastic practice, of both); as Professformel , it contained the formal commitment of the religious to the ascetic life; and as Wahlinstrument, it declared their choice of governor, the abbot or abbess. ⁽⁵⁾ Unlike the individual profession act which in the orthodox tradition the monk submitted at his reception with the pledge of stabilitas, conuersio morum, and obedientia without reservation (in a manner which, according to Herwegen, St Benedict saw as analogous to the unilateral oath taken by the Roman army recruit enlisting for military service), ⁽⁶⁾ the pactual profession was a communal [4] instrument, contained in a single diploma which all the religious jointly subscribed, with the names of those subsequently received being added as occasion arose. Addressed to a named abbot or abbess, it created a specifically personal bond: the monks made a binding submission (traditio) of their persons to their superior but at the same time retained the extraordinary right in carefully stipulated circumstances to reject the abbatial authority when this was exercised arbitrarily or unjustly. For this inherently conditional relationship Herwegen found the model in the political oath (Untertaneneid ) which he believed the Visigoths took at the coronation of their king, when they promised fidelity only so long as he ruled equitably under law. ⁽⁷⁾ Thus, the Luso-Gallegan monastic pactum, as its very phraseology confirmed, embodied the substitution of Germanic juridical concepts for the Roman law principles of normal monasticism, and brought into being a peculiarly bilateral or synallagmatic contractual cenobial polity, in sharp contrast with that founded upon the canonical monarchical abbatiate. ⁽⁸⁾

The oldest, and after 711 most widely adopted, form of the pactum appeared to be that appended as a model formula to the terminal chapter (20) of the Regula (monastica) communis (henceforth RCom ), a work traditionally ascribed to the metropolitan St Fructuosus of Braga-Dumio (653/4-ca. 665), which Herwegen identified as in fact a collection of decrees promulgated by Luso-Gallegan abbatial synods that met under the presidency of this monk-prelate (episcopus sub regula). ⁽⁹⁾ It was possible therefore to assign the introduction of the Germanicized collective profession instrument to this notable propagator of the ascetic gospel in the Iberian northwest in the middle 7th century, when Gallaecia as in the Roman and Suevic epochs still extended well below the river Miño to the northern bank of the Duero.  

Furthermore, since pactualism was to survive after 711 as a prominent feature of the Hispanic cenobitism of the Alta Reconquista, it was possible to trace its evolution through extant specimens and the rubrics of the monastic ordines of the Hispanic Rite. From published and manuscript sources Herwegen was in fact able to assemble six pactual texts -- five associated with known communities, the sixth the model formula [5] Mabillon had secured from a lost codex of St-Honorat de Lérins; ⁽¹⁰⁾ and by classifying these in three categories according to the extent of their linguistic, prescriptive and juridical divergence from the prototypal 'Fructuosan' pactum, (henceforth RComP) he was able to chart the successive stages of approximation to Benedictine norms until in the course of the 11 th century the then long anachronistic usage disappeared before the full acceptance below the Pyrenees of orthodox Benedictinism. ⁽¹¹⁾  

Herwegen's book, although only slowly recognized in Spain and Portugal, met there with general favor, so that from the 1930s such authoritative historical accounts of early medieval Hispanic monasticism as those of García Villada, Pérez de Urbel and Mário Martins fully accepted its conclusions. ⁽¹²⁾ Then, in 1951, I myself, on the basis of additional pacta unknown or inaccessible in 1907 to Herwegen, published in the Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal a paper entitled "Gallegan Monastic Pactualism in the Repopulation of Castile". This undertook to interpret the history of pactualism not from Herwegen's exclusively juridico-institutional viewpoint but in terms of its place in the frontier colonization of Castile and the Rioja between the ninth and eleventh centuries. ⁽¹³⁾ I called attention to the fact that after 711 the heterodox tradition could be documented only from two widely separated subdivisions of medieval Spain, the Galaico-Portuguese west and the Castello-Riojan east, with no discoverable traces occurring in the Cantabrians-to-Duero heartland of the Asturo-Leonese state, among the Mozarabic abbeys of Islamic Spania, or in the new foundations transplanted to León and Castile by refugee monks from the Muslim south. On Herwegen's premise, which I accepted, of the Gallegan origin of pactual monasticism, the extant pacta of the Galaico-Portuguese west, although few in number, seemed to offer no special problem; but to account for the surprising emergence of the heterodox tradition beyond León in the multiplying foundations of Castile and the Rioja, I conjectured that when, as the chronicles tell us, Alfonso I (739-757) evacuated the inhabitants of Braga, Lugo, Astorga and other Luso-Gallegan districts, monks familiar with the pactual polity must have carried it eastwards to Liébana, Asturias de Trasmiera and Bardulia, i.e., the birthplaces of Castile. From these districts their successors would have spread it in a variety of forms, including the Lérins or (as I preferred to call it) Burgalese Formula, southwards into the new foundations of the late ninth and tenth centuries below Burgos and in the Rioja. On the whole, my contentions were in harmony with Herwegen's primarily institutional exposition; but for the first time they related pactualism to the general historical problem of Reconquest expansion, posited a key role for the Gallegan monastic element in the making of primitive Castile, and called attention to a little appreciated phenomenon, a synthesis of pactual monasticism and Carolingian Reform Benedictinism that was widespread in the colonial monastic foundations of Castile and trans-Ebro Navarre during the Early Reconquest.  

[6] Since 1951, however, the views of both Herwegen and myself have come under sharp attack. In 1956 that able student of early western monasticism, Anscari Mundó, in a paper presented to the IV Settimana at Spoleto of the Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, ⁽¹⁴⁾ took strong exception to the thesis that pactualism originated in seventh-century Galicia, arguing that, on the contrary, before 711 all Hispanic monasticism was pactual, since as early as the commencement of the fourth century canon 13 of the Council of Elvira, in speaking of women taking the veil in public ceremony, alludes to their pactum uirginitatis . ⁽¹⁵⁾ This could be demonstrated even more convincingly from that type of pactum which Herwegen had denominated the Formula of Lérins and placed in his third group as of ostensibly late composition and, in its markedly pro-abbatial quasi-Benedictine unilaterality, radically furthest removed from the compact of the Regula communis. According to Mundó, this text in fact antedated that of Galicia, being ascribable, if not to the hand of St Isidore of Seville himself, at least to the heavily pactual ambiente of Visigothic Andalusia in the first third of the seventh century. In this light, the 'Fructuosan' pactum would represent simply a Gallegan adaptation of an institutional form everywhere employed in Romano-Visigothic cenobitism, a regional variant of Romano-Visigothic monastic pan-pactualism. In 1954-5 this hypothesis appeared to find further corroboration from the claim of Abadal i de Vinyals to have discovered pactualism of Visigothic origin among the newly planted Catalan abbeys of the Spanish Mark in the ninth century. ⁽¹⁶⁾  

Then in 1963 there commenced a much more comprehensive and formidable assault upon what might be called the Herwegen-Bishko position, launched this time by the leading authority in the field of pre-12th-century Spanish monastic history, Dom Justo Pérez de Urbel, author of the standard Los monjes españoles de la Edad Media, and of numerous other works on early medieval Hispanic cenobitism and on the rise of Castile. In four different articles appearing between 1963 and 1971 in the journals Revista portuguesa de história, Bracara Augusta, Ciudad de Dios and Yermo (the latter three for the most part repeating or amplifying points presented in the first of the four), ⁽¹⁷⁾ Fray Justo flatly rejected Herwegen's and my views, presenting a case in which he stressed three principal counter-arguments, as follows:  

    (1) all pre-711 Hispanic monasticism was pactual, as Mundó contends, and as can be firmly established from canon 13 of Elvira; St Leander's reference in his so-called Regula to the pactum cum Christo of his sister, the nun Florentina; ⁽¹⁸⁾ the Isidorian, or at least Baetic, provenance of the Formula of Lérins; the model profession act (pactum uel placitum ) included as no. 45 in the Formulae Visigothicae [7] edited by Zeumer; ⁽¹⁹⁾ the variant pactum known as the Consensoria monachorum ; ⁽²⁰⁾ the pactual rubrics found in the Liber ordinum of the Hispanic (or Mozarabic) Rite; ⁽²¹⁾ and of course RComP.  

    (2) the type of pactum associated with St Fructuosus and Galicia must be seen as an institutional innovation brought to the Iberian northwest in the mid-7th century by this converted Visigothic noble who had previously been indoctrinated in the monastic life at Palencia, i.e, outside Galicia and in the region extending from Valladolid to Burgos and Soria that is known to have been heavily settled by the Goths at the time of the conquest. Fructuosan pactual monasticism must therefore reflect the strongly Germanic juridical, social and political mores of Visigothic abbeys and conuersi the latter heartland of Castile; and this explains why, when St Fructuosus subsequently introduced this Visigothic system into the Romano-Suevic society of Galicia, he met with only limited success in overcoming the stiff opposition of the pseudomonachi and priests recorded in RCom 1-2.  

    (3) the efflorescence of pactualism in the Castilian-Riojan east of the 9th and 10th centuries can be attributed, not to any hypothetical transplant from Galicia, but to the presence in primitive Castile of Visigothic pactual monks from the region between Valladolid and Soria, who had fled straight north before the Islamic invasion and taken refuge in Santander, Liébana and Bardulia. From here after 711 the pactum moved vertically southwards along with the new monastic foundations of the Castilian frontier repoblación below Burgos and in the Rioja, while largely unsuccessful efforts were also made by Castilian churchmen to plant it once again in the Galicia and Portugal of the Alta Reconquista, from which it had long disappeared.  

In these three propositions Fray Justo can be said to champion a distinctly Visigothic-Castilian revisionism that even more than Mundó's pre-711 pan-pactualism stands in radical contradiction to the conclusions reached by Herwegen and me. It is a thesis that, although accepted by Fernández Conde in his monograph on the Asturian Church, ⁽²²⁾ has failed to persuade Mattoso, who believes in an unbroken descent of Portuguese pactualism from the abbeys of St Fructuosus; or Orlandis, who cites but does not follow Pérez de Urbel in his several studies of the 'Congregación dumiense'; or Sá Bravo in this writer's introductory discourse to his two tomes on Gallegan monachism. ⁽²³⁾ Above all, it is flatly rejected by Linage Conde who, in reconstructing the process of Benedictine displacement of the old Hispanic cenobitism, found himself necessarily compelled to reckon with the genesis and stubborn persistence of the pactual tradition. This eminent scholar aligns himself firmly against the doctrines of both Pérez de Urbel and Mundó, accepting Herwegen's case for the pactum as a [8] Luso-Gallegan creation, although he is rightly sceptical of assigning its actual authorship to St Fructuosus himself; and on the transmission of the pactual tradition after 711 from Galicia to the cenobia of primitive Castile, as on the identification of the Burgalesa Formula, he adopts the views I expressed in 1951. ⁽²⁴⁾  

As for myself, I am convinced that Fray Justo's earnest campaign to depict the Hispanic monastic pactum as of extra-Gallegan Gothic provenance and to explain its emergence in the Alta Reconquista as the exclusive achievement of Castilian monks, is totally misguided. All three of his contentions, as summarized above, appear to me to incorporate basic confusions that make it impossible to determine the true place of the pactual tradition in Luso-Hispanic cenobitic history both before 711 and in the later repoblación of Galicia-Portugal and Castile-Rioja during the first centuries of the Reconquista. And since the revisionist doctrine, although questioned, has not yet been subjected to critical examination, it is imperative to marshal the principal objections against acceptance of the pan-pactual and Visigothic-Castilian hypotheses of both Pérez de Urbel and Mundó.

Let me first challenge emphatically the claims of Mundó and Pérez de Urbel that before 711 all Hispanic cenobitism was constitutionally pactual. This generalization, as Linage Conde has also observed, ⁽²⁵⁾ stems from failure to observe a simple semantic distinction. True enough, our monastic sources for Romano-Visigothic cenobitism commonly employ pactum or its synonymous alternative placitum for what outside the Peninsula would be called professio or petitio; but in canon 13 of Elvira and St Leander's De institutione uirginum , precisely as in St Isidore's Regula monachorum (henceforth RI ) 4, 2, ⁽²⁶⁾ these terms designate only the normal individual profession of orthodox monastic usage.

When Isidore parallels the abandonment of civil life for the ascetic society to enlistment in the Roman army, he notes that military recruits are not enrolled for service "nisi ante in tabulis conferantur", ⁽²⁷⁾ and this reference to official tabulae or muster lists might be taken to correspond to the placing of the names of conuersi in a collective profession pact -- a point, however, not made by either Mundó or Pérez de Urbel, despite their views on the Isidorian authorship of the Burgalese Formula. Yet it is certain that in this passage Isidore's language in fact connotes only an individual professio , for at the same time he also declares that "omnis conuersus non est recipiendus in monasterio nisi prius ipse scripto se spoponderit permansurum... nisi prius professione uerbi aut scripti teneantur [conuersi], in numerum societatemque seruorum Christi transire non possunt." Here the scriptum or professio uerbi aut scripti [9] can only mean an individual oral or written promise of stabilitas and submission of person, in diplomatic form doubtless something comparable to No. 45 of the Formulae Visigothicae , where the promise is to be made directly by the conuersus to the bishop, a point not made explicit in the Isidorian code. ⁽²⁸⁾ It is highly significant that this formula, the very existence of which refutes the proponents of Visigothic pan-pactualism, was known to the composer of RComP, as Herwegen observes; ⁽²⁹⁾ and that while incorporating into his collective text its provisions on recovery of fugitiui, he deliberately discarded its clauses on individual profession and submission to the diocesan ordinary. Formula 45, finally, is especially conclusive since it forms part of a collection of legal instruments assembled by a Cordobese notary between 613 and 621, ⁽³⁰⁾ and thus circulated in the very same epoch and province that produced the Isidorian Regula itself.  

As a principal basis of their pan-pactual theory, Mundó and Pérez de Urbel seek to prove that certain pactual or quasi-pactual testimonies dating from the earlier centuries of the Reconquista actually originated before 711 in regions of the Visigothic kingdom other than Galicia. In this connection they adduce, as traceable to an Isidorian ambiente in 7th-century Andalusia, the distinctive type of pactum in the form of a model instrument which was published in 1703 by Mabillon. ⁽³¹⁾ This came from a now lost 'codex Liriensis vetustissimus', which that scholar believed was associated with the abbey of St-Honorat de Lérins and is now known to have been preserved as late as 1679 at Narbonne. This is the pactum which Herwegen, who reprints it from Mabillon, christened the Formula of Lérins, which I style the Formula of Burgos or Burgalese Formula, and of which Díaz y Díaz has provided a more accurate text. ⁽³²⁾ Mundó, relying on the fact that in the codex it stood just before the index and chapters of RI, and on Mabillon's misleading statement that the Isidorian code was here prefaced by the dedicatory inscription sanctis fratribus in cenobio Honorianensi constitutis that is found in certain MSS of the interpolated version, ⁽³³⁾ concluded that both pact and Rule were of the same Isidorian provenance and perhaps were originally designed for the use of a 7th-century Andalusian monastery located not far from Seville at Fregenal de la Sierra, in modern Extremadura. ⁽³⁴⁾  

These deductions, despite their endorsement by Pérez de Urbel, appear unacceptable. If the mere prefixing of a pactum to RI warrants identifying St Isidore as its composer, then we should also have to assign to him, against all probability, the Consensoria monachorum (henceforth CM) which stands in several Hispanic codices regularum as c. 25 of his Rule, although this collective covenant directly contradicts (precisely as does that of the Lérins codex) the Saint's explicit requirement in RI 4, 2 (cf. supra) of the orthodox individual profession act, and indeed is so radically collective and egalitarian a document as to have induced Dom Donatien De Bruyne in 1909 to wrench it from its actual mid-7th-century Gallegan context and attribute it to heretical Priscillianist circles of the 5th century. ⁽³⁵⁾ In any event, whatever the significance of the codicological inscription certain MSS of RI preserve to a cenobium Honorianense -- and this is most unlikely to designate a house at Fregenal and may [10] possibly refer, as Meyvaert has suggested, only to St-Honorat de Lérins -- it is now certain that this toponym did not occur in the lost codex ⁽³⁶⁾ and therefore cannot be attached to the pactual Formula.  

We now possess much better understanding of the nature of the vanished Lerinensian MS than Mabillon provides or was available to Herwegen, thanks to recent intense interest in the Narbonne-Spanish family (Φ) of codices of the interpolated RB, since its folia had included also a version of the H text of the code of Monte Cassino. ⁽³⁷⁾ The information furnished by Paul Meyvaert from his examination in the Bibliothèque Nationale of the very notes (H4) taken in 1679 by the Maurist Dom Claude Estiennot that were used by Mabillon as a base for his remarks and publication of the Formula, has made it possible for Díaz y Díaz to formulate several hypotheses as to the origin and date of the MS. For the present inquiry the most relevant of these is that it must have been a codex regularum, written in Visigothic letter, and resembling in content the oldest portions of Escorialensis a.I.13, the collection of Rules copied by the nun Leodegundia in Castile at the commencement of the 10th century. This might seem to suggest a similar date for the Lérins codex; in fact Díaz y Díaz, drawing on paleographical clues contained in the Estiennot notes, proposes the late 8th or early 9th century, a time when many other Hispanic MSS are known to have crossed the Pyrenees into the monastic centers of southern Gaul. ⁽³⁸⁾ This in turn would impose for the composition of the Formula a terminus ante quem of ca. 800 and indeed for all practical purposes throw it back into the Visigothic era, thus serving to corroborate -- particularly if the codex is regarded as an extra-Gallegan production -- the Mundó-Pérez de Urbel position on pan-pactualism before 711.  

But is so early an allocation for the Lérins codex justifiable ? Without challenging the acknowledged paleographical and codicological expertise of Díaz y Díaz in these matters, I believe that no definitive conclusion can be achieved without also taking into account other factors, historical and juridical, that tend strongly to place the Burgalese Formula in the late 9th or 10th century, i.e., a century or more after the era proposed by the Spanish scholar. It is worth noting that Benedict of Aniane, so well provided in southern Aquitaine ca. 800 with Hispanic monastic Rules and related ascetic texts, including some of quite restricted circulation, such as the De genere monachorum of the Vierzan monk Valerius (ca. 685), displays no knowledge whatever of this Formula, as he does of RComP and CM, in his Codex regularum and Concordia regularum ; and this makes it highly probable that it was not yet in use below the Pyrenees. ⁽³⁹⁾ Herwegen places this Formula in his third class as furthest removed from RComP in terms of general abandonment of the exact language of the latter, approximation to the norm of the Benedictine professio , and above all the non-contractual, unilateral submission (traditio ) of the monks (still acting as a body, however) to their elected abbot. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ All this [11] in his opinion, as in mine, points to a stage of pactualism posterior to that found in the first and second juridical groups.  

Particularly indicative of a date later than ca. 800 is the testimony of the actually used specimens of the Formula which I encountered when searching the diplomatic collections, archival and published, for my study of 1951 on the diffusion of Gallegan pactualism in Castile ( Study III in this volume). These were four in number, all connected with Castilian or Riojan monasteries of the 10th century: San Pedro y San Pablo in ualle qui uocitur Azadina (921), San Juan de Tabladillo (931), San Julián de Villagonzalo Pedernales (959), and San Martín de Modúbar (975). ⁽⁴¹⁾ While the site of the first of these abbeys is uncertain, despite Pérez de Urbel's highly questionable identification of it with San Pedro de Cardeña, ⁽⁴²⁾ it can certainly be placed in Castile or the Rioja; the other three can all be seen as lying to the south of Burgos, in the suburbium of that ancient Castilian town, and as products of the monastic colonization that accompanied the repoblación of this entire comarca in the 10th century -- hence my proposal that the Formula be called Burgalese rather than the historically meaningless 'of Lérins'. Such popularity is firm evidence that this juridically late type of pactum was circulating in the communities of women as well as of men at this time between Burgos and the Duero and as far east as the Rioja. In none of these four cases could an exclusive observance of RI be supposed, while in two, Tabladillo and Modúbar, that of RB was visible in their documentation.  

Thus, the historical and juridical signs all indicate that the Burgalese Formula was a product of the Castilian frontier of the late 9th or early 10th century, a chronology which is at least a century later than that conjectured by Díaz y Díaz but does not seem to present any insuperable paleographical problems and has the merit of coinciding with the production of the codex regularum of Leodegundia. ⁽⁴³⁾ It can therefore in all probability be seen as a new, relatively late, phase in the evolution of the Hispanic pactual tradition, the creation of that confluence of paleo-pactual and Carolingian Benedictine observances which precedes the mono-regular adoption of RB in the Castello-Riojan zone of this epoch. In short, I here exchange position with Mundó, Pírez de Urbel and Díaz y Díaz: they champion a Visigothic solution prior to 711, I a Castilian one but of ca. 900, which can now also appeal to the conclusions reached by Linage Conde. ⁽⁴⁴⁾  

A second unconvincing witness on behalf of alleged Visigothic pan-pactualism is to be found in the more or less casual suggestion of Ramón Abadal i de Vinyals that certain Catalan monastic charters, specifically those drawn up by the monks at the establishment of such new abbeys as Sant Vicenç de Gerri (807), San Esteban de Servàs (833), Sant Andreu de Eixalada (854) and Sant Germà de Cuixà (879), resemble the terminal pactum of RCom. Abadal did not undertake to prove that these pergaminos were based upon a Visigothic model or to explain how the supposed Gallegan prototype or the 'Regla de sant Frutuós' (i.e., RCom), which he believed these monks may well have observed, reached the Tarraconensis before 711, or at any rate by 800; [12] but his remarks encouraged Fray Justo to posit a pactual background in the Hispanic Mark dating from the days of the Toletan monarchy. ⁽⁴⁵⁾  

A most effective rebuttal of Abadal's unwise adhesion to the untenable doctrine of Visigothic pan-pactualism and consequent misinterpretation of the Catalan foundational charters, was published in 1977 by Dr Linage Conde, who agrees entirely with my own scepticism regarding the survival in 9th-century Catalonia of a pactualism comparable to that found in Galicia by ca. 675. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Meanwhile, three years previously, Abadal's case for a pactual presence in the northeast had been given much further supportive elaboration by A. García Sanz in a substantial paper which throws useful light on various juridico-institutional features of 9th-century cenobitism in the Hispanic Mark but which fails to convince by reason of its basic confusions. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Although rightly rejecting Abadal's appeal to a 'Fructuosan' solution, García Sanz accepts without question Mundó's fallacious attribution of pactualism to all Visigothic monasteries, including those he imagines devoted to mono-regular use of the Isidorian Rule. At the same time he strangely makes no effort to ascertain whether the monastic ambiente of the Tarraconensis and Septimania before 711 provides any evidence of his hypothetical Visigothic substratum for Pyrenean pactualism in the 9th century; nor does he consider the possibly Aquitanian descent of his foundational charters. In any case, his argument rests too largely upon questionable exegesis of the monastic and liturgical meaning of 'pactum' within the context of its broad employment in Visigothic secular and canon law.  

This is not the occasion to undertake the needed detailed refutation of the pactual theses of the Catalan school. For the moment let it suffice to remark that it cannot be said that their validity is confirmed by the diplomas adduced. These texts, drawn up by groups of founding monks with their abbots, appear to use 'pactum' in its conventional Romano-Visigothic sense of any sort of legal agreement between contracting parties, whether lay or religious; they stipulate no synallagmatic exchange of rights and obligations between abbot and subjects; and in phraseology, ascetic ideology, and constitutional and disciplinary aspects they plainly have nothing in common with the authentic Gallegan pactum. These are documents that, while undoubtedly meriting further study as examples of collective Eigenklöster in which the patroni are the founding monks themselves, display no visible relationship with the pactual texts of Galicia or Castile, not even with such an instrument of roughly parallel purpose as CM, where once again the divergence in language and institutional content is so complete as to underscore the totally different origin and character of the Catalan foundation acts.  

A much more formidable case can be made for a third of Pérez de Urbel's contentions, namely, that the appearance of the pactum in the monastic ordines of the Hispanic (or Mozarabic) Rite proves its general adoption in the Visigothic epoch. For if these texts contained in our extant liturgical codices of the 11th and 12th centuries descend directly from the observance of the Romano-Visigothic Church -- and Férotin, [13] Herwegen and Fray Justo are in agreement that the monastic sections of this Rite antedate 711 ⁽⁴⁸⁾ -- then it would seem necessary to acknowledge that well before the overthrow of the Toletan state the collective-contractual profession instrument was in use throughout the Peninsula and not exclusively in Galicia. This is a crucial question that cannot be dismissed, as Linage Conde tends to suggest at various points, ⁽⁴⁹⁾ as largely relating to merely verbal reminiscences of regional origin. What has to be decided is whether our relatively late MSS of the Rite preserve unchanged the ancient monastic uses of Visigothic cenobitism or whether the ordines have been interpolated or adapted to suit the circumstances of the post-Visigothic Church in the four centuries before total peninsular acceptance of RB and the Roman ordinal. 

Many years ago I argued -- and am still of this opinion -- for the textual fluidity after 711 of at least the monastic sections of the Hispanic Liber ordinum, ⁽⁵⁰⁾ a thesis that has received support from so acknowledged an authority on this Rite as Dom Louis Brou, ⁽⁵¹⁾ but has yet to result in the long overdue abandonment of the traditional belief in the immutability of the 'Mozarabic' liturgy from Roman times on. As usual, the texts obstruct easy generalization, compelling us to distinguish first of all between the prescriptions intended for women being admitted to the religious life and those applicable exclusively to men. Of the several ordines concerned with the profession of women, the two of direct pertinence here are XXII. Ordo uel benedictio ad uelandas Deo uotas and XXVIIII. Ordo conuersorum conuersarumque . ⁽⁵²⁾ These prescribe the conduct of the ceremony by a bishop or priest, and make no mention either in text or rubric of a profession instrument, whether individual or collective. In contrast, the final section of ordo XXVIIII , which unlike the earlier segments that are specifically intended for both sexes ("tam uiris quam feminis") deals only with the passage of the male conuersus from novitiate to final reception, explicitly requires enrollment by the abbot in the community's pactum: "monacus uero in cenobio, quum hunc predictum ordinem primitus susceperit, ita ut stabilitatem professionis sue per adnotationem sui nominis firmet, hic ordo seruabitur: Postquam enim Ad accendentes communicauerit, tota iam explicita missa, accedit in choro ad abbatem, et roborate proprio nomine in pactionis libello per manum abbatis, ⁽⁵³⁾ suscipiunt eum deducendum ad altare presbiter et diaconus." Then, following the versicle Suscipe me, Domine, and the Gloria and Kyrie, the monk "posito super altare testamenti libello, prosternit se ante altare", while the priest prays Suscipe queso, Domine , etc.  

[14] To this inclusion in the masculine rite of a pactum that is manifestly communal, a libellus in which the subscription of each conuersus is inserted at his reception, and which contrasts with the absence of any similar provision in the case of nuns, there is an exact parallel in the rubrics of the ordines for the consecration (ordinatio ) of abbesses and abbots. In the former case, XXIII . Ordo ad ordinandam abbatissam , the officiating bishop presents the abbess with the Liber regule (observe use of singular) and the baculum of her office; no mention is made of the pactum. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ But in Ordo XVIII. Ordo in ordinatione abbatis , the bishop first bestows the symbolic staminia, pedules and sucelli ; then the abbot-consecrand delivers to him "placitum suum tam pro se quam pro subditis de honestate uite regularis"; and only then does the bishop present him with the baculum and Liber regularum (observe use of plural). ⁽⁵⁵⁾  

There are several major questions here. First, how to explain the silence of these ordines regarding the pactum in the case of women? and is this a telling argument against the claims for pan-pactualism before 711? Férotin, the editor of the Liber ordinum, whom Herwegen follows on this subject, believed that down to the 11th century the Hispanic Church maintained for the profession of nuns and consecration of abbesses a closer adhesion to Roman law principles and forms than was true in the case of the rubrics for men, where he allowed for the work of revisers under Visigothic influence in the 7th century. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ This might seem to imply that the pactum remained unknown in communities of women. But against this is the abundant evidence of the pacta surviving from communities of female religious, such as that of Eufrasia from San Mamés de Ura (930) or of Urraca from San Julián de Villagonzalo de Pedernales (959); ⁽⁵⁷⁾ the many subscriptions of women to the pacta of double communities, as in the cases of the Argilegus pactum from San Pedro y San Pablo de Naroba (818) or the Sabaricus pactum from an unknown Castilian cenobium (ante 931); ⁽⁵⁸⁾ and, as conclusive proof of specifically liturgical character, the Rule for nuns produced in the Rioja between 950 and 962, the Libellus a regula sancti Benedicti subtractus of Abbot Salvus of San Martín de Albelda, which contains a reception rite providing for the insertion ( adnotatio) of the nun's name in the community's pactum by herself, or, if she is illiterate, by the abbess. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

If the otherwise inexplicable absence of pactual references from the feminine rites of the Liber ordinum is thus one clear sign of late textual change, the contamination of the same texts by RB points to the same conclusion. Férotin, Herwegen and others admit that the monastic ordines of the Hispanic liturgy have undergone Benedictinization in language and procedure, ⁽⁶⁰⁾ but unlike these older scholars, with our much superior understanding of the manner of penetration into ultra-Catalan Spain of the code of Monte Cassino, we can now advance this phenomenon from the 7th century to the late 9th and the two following centuries. It thus becomes plain that in their extant form the rubrics governing the profession of women and consecration of abbesses (the prayers are another matter) represent rubrical revisions made in this later period when, in conformity no doubt with episcopal promotion of RB in communities of women, the old pactual references which [15] the texts must once have contained were purged from the Castilian and Riojan ordinals in favor of the individual profession act and its liturgical submission according to the orthodox Benedictine pattern. The mono-regular exclusivism suggested in the feminine Ordo XXIII, which cites the Liber regule, as against the Liber regularum of the masculine Ordo XVIII, provides further corroboration of this same trend, just as does the very appearance in the mid-tenth-century of the Salvan Libellus , where despite the retention of pactualism the Benedictine concept of mono-regular observance has triumphed over the codex regularum .

All this looks as if we have good reason to suppose that the ordines relating to women earlier contained much the same provisions relating to the communal pactum and its submission to abbot or bishop as is found in those for men; and this brings us inevitably to the key question, the dating of the introduction of pactualism into the Hispanic liturgy. Here for lack of codicological material we are compelled to proceed by inference. We have no Libri ordinum copied in Asturias, León or Mozarabic Spania, regions where in my view the pactual tradition never replaced the Visigothic; or, regrettably, for Galicia-Portugal, where it did, especially above the river Miño, and where rubrics similar to those of the masculine ones of the Castello-Riojan liturgical codices might be expected.  

We are left then with three possibilities:  

    (a) the Castello-Riojan pactual rubrics for conuersi and abbots, as formerly also for deouotae and abbatissae , derive in unbroken descent from a peninsular pactual tradition which before 711 found expression in all the liturgical books of the national Toletan Rite. Against this is the testimony of the non-liturgical sources to the a-pactual character of Visigothic monasticism outside Galicia, and the total lack of pacta or pactual allusions in the diplomatic documentation of Asturias-León, Navarre above the Ebro, and the Hispanic Mark.  

    or (b) the pactualism of the ordines dates from the 7th century but stems from interpolated redactions which were made in the liturgical MSS of Visigothic Galicia alone by St Fructuosus or his immediate successors; subsequently, these texts, like the pactum itself, were carried by refugee monks from the environs of Braga to extreme eastern Asturias and primitive Castile. This is a possible solution but probably counter-indicated by the absence in the masculine rubrics of other expectable 7th-century Gallegan symptoms -- e.g., interest in the episcopus sub regula -- and by the emphasis placed upon the authority of the bishop as such, particularly in the consecration of abbots.  

    or (c) the pactual rubrics, but not the actual texts of the ordines, contain Castello-Riojan interpolations dating from the centuries of the Alta Reconquista, and these attest the intrusion into the originally non-pactual Visigothic Liber ordinum of the dominant monastic observance of the region from which our extant codices come, Castile and the Rioja. Presumably, the same would be true of Galicia-Portugal for which we lack comparable MSS. It is this third alternative that I find the most persuasive, in view of the demonstrable fluidity of the liturgical books after 711, the ubiquity of pactualism in the Castello-Riojan zone, and the copying in this same region of our late codices of the Liber ordinum .  

On some such basis I would envisage the following sequence in the history of the rubrics of the Hispanic monastic ordines: (i) before 711, no pactual content, except possibly in Galicia; (ii) after 711, a pactualization of both masculine and feminine rubrics, due either to early Gallegan influence or, more probably, to the effects of the Castilian adhesion to pactualism between the 8th and 10th centuries; (iii) the elimination of the pactum, probably in the late 10th or early llth centuries, under [16] episcopal and Benedictine pressure, from the rites relating to female religious; (iv) the survival of pactualism in the masculine rubrics of the ordinals of 11th and 12th century Castile and La Rioja.  

Whatever the validity of this reconstruction, it can at least be insisted at this point that, in themselves and without adequate demonstration of their immutability before and after 711, the extant liturgical books cannot be used to prove the pactual character of all Visigothic monasticism. The solution must be sought on other grounds, and here we can draw upon the plentiful positive testimony that places the genesis of the pactual tradition in Visigothic Galicia, and its subsequent survival to ca. 1100 in the Galaico-Portuguese and Castello-Riojan borderlands of the Asturo-Leonese kingdom.
 

It is one of the chief defects of the thesis of Visigothic pan-pactualism that it fails to explain why this heterodox species of cenobitic constitutionalism should ever have arisen before 711 in the Iberian peninsula or allegedly have found there such primacy over orthodox monastic practice. To be sure, Pérez de Urbel adduces the Visigoths, but since he apparently does not mean to contradict Mundó's Romano-Baetic premise, it must be that he assumes for the northern meseta a radically Germanicized version of a pactual polity already existent to the south. All of this lies largely, as we have observed, in the realms of fantasy and speculation. What our documentation decisively affirms is, first, that in Galicia alone, and there only after ca. 650, did there emerge not merely one but several varieties of collective profession and foundation instrument -- the so-called 'Fructuosan' pactum, the Consensoria monachorum, and the conditio sacramenti or iuramentum of RCom 1; and, secondly, that pactualism is found nowhere outside of Galicia until the first centuries of the Reconquista, when it appears also in Castile and the Rioja as well as finding new life in Galicia itself and comital Portugal.

It is indeed impossible to take seriously Pérez de Urbel's claim that in its 'Fructuosan' form the Hispanic pactual tradition stems from otherwise unknown and undocumentable cenobia supposedly existing before 711 in the zone of heavy Visigothic settlement between Valladolid and Soria. ⁽⁶¹⁾ This affirmation rests solely on the inference that (i) because many early Castilian houses of the Reconquista were pactual, they must have had direct Visigothic antecedents in the same area; and (ii) because the RComP (ostensibly) employs linguistic and legal concepts that are recognizably Germanic, it can only have been developed to meet the needs of markedly non-Romanized communities among the northern Visigoths that were the immediate forerunners of those of primitive Castile. As against Herwegen's premise, that since the pactum first appears within the Galaico-Minhotan boundaries of the fallen kingdom of the Sueves (indubitably Germans, indeed far less Romanized ones than the Visigoths), its origins were Suevic or broadly speaking, Suevo-Visigothic, ⁽⁶²⁾ Fray Justo emphasizes that St Fructuosus (whom he regards as responsible for the introduction of pactualism into Galicia) must have brought the heterodox observance with him from Palencia, in the heavily Germanicized district of the Campi Gothici, the original area of his [17] indoctrination in the ascetic life. ⁽⁶³⁾ This would mean that Gallegan pactualism began with the Saint's initial Bierzan foundation of Santos Justo y Pastor de Compludo and thence spread into other monasteries of the province established by him or under his influence. 

Any such assumptions however are definitely refuted by the fact that no pactual formula is mentioned in or attached to the Regula monachorum (henceforth RFr) which Fructuosus composed for his Complutensian proto-abbey (ca. 630-35, as I believe). While this Rule in c. 22 mentions a pactum in connection with reception, this designates, as Herwegen long ago showed, the conventional individual profession act; and Linage Conde, who justly notes the rigid adherence to the spirituality and practices of oriental monasticism characteristic of this code, has also reached the same conclusion. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Thus, if we can justifiably associate the Saint at all with the emergence of the pactual tradition in Galicia, it can only be on the extremely dubious premise that he was responsible for the very latest chapters of the final redaction of RCom, where the true collective contract finds mention for the first time (c. 18 ad finem), and is also, in model form, appended to c. 20 as RComP. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ If so, we can at best suppose that he encountered in Galicia an already existent pactualism, or there became himself its inventor; but on neither assumption can he be proved to have transported it with him from the Visigothic east.

But to explain the Gallegan break with orthodox monastic organizational principles, it is necessary above all to advance beyond the superficial recourse to Romanist vs. Germanicist genetics so dear to 19th-century historical thought, and to examine the forces and conditions affecting monastic life in Galicia in the century antecedent to the Islamic invasion. Since I have in preparation a comprehensive re-interpretation of the monastic apostolate of St Fructuosus, and the bitter conflict of monasticism and episcopate in the province out of which the pactual tradition arose, it is possible here only to summarize certain principal conclusions to which this inquiry has led me.

At the start we must again pay tribute to Herwegen for insisting that the pactual problem cannot be solved in isolation from two other distinctive components of the monasticism of Visigothic Galicia which it subsumes and which are linked to it in the chapters of RCom: the monk-bishop or episcopus sub regula; and the governing and legislating body of abbots and (surely also) abbesses, known as the Sancta Communis [18] Regula. Thus, not one, but a triad, of inter-related Gallegan peculiarities requires to be explained, and the origins of these are neither identical nor chronologically concomitant.

Herwegen identified the episcopus sub regula as the prelate we find ruling conjointly the monastic see of Dumio and the metropolitan church of Braga; and since 1907 it has been debated whether this combination of monastic and episcopal offices reached Spain through contacts with the Celtic Christianity of Britain, Ireland and Brittany or else came directly from its original homeland in the Byzantine East. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ On the first assumption, much has been made of the presence in northeastern Galicia by at least 572 of the Celtic see of Britonia (near Mondoñedo), which is described in the 6th-century Suevic Parochiale , edited and analyzed by David, as ecclesia Britoniae cum monasterio Maximi. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Yet a monastery affiliated with a bishopric, perhaps even as closely as in the case of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral abbeys, is not the impression we receive of the monasterium Dumiense, where there is no hint of the typical Celtic subordination of episcopal to abbatial authority; where the bishop, so far as our texts allow us to speak, never called himself abbot; and where the diocese was plainly based not on a tribal or other secular territorial circumscription but, being completely devoid of parochiae , was comprised solely of the monastic domain and its resident familia . ⁽⁶⁸⁾ While the head of the see of Britonia consistently and conventionally styles himself in conciliar subscriptions episcopus ecclesiae Britoniae , ⁽⁶⁹⁾ the monk-prelate of Dumio is known to others and appears in the acta as episcopus monasterii Dumiensis, a significant structural distinction, uniquely applied in the history of the Suevic and Visigothic Churches to a prelate living under the monastic observance as episcopus sub regula (the other phrase attached to him), but in no sense sub abbate. In any event, the remote Celtic center at Britonia, normally isolated from the Bracaran comarca except for the rare provincial synods, is most unlikely to have exerted upon either Dumio or Braga the decisive influence that the defenders of the Celtic thesis have ascribed to it. 

A more promising direction in which to seek the root of this oldest of the three inter-related components of the original pactual tradition is the Byzantine East. For this solution the key figure is the Pannonian monk Martin, the Apostle to the Sueves, an accomplished scholar in Greek as well as Latin, who before arriving in Galicia ca. 550 had sojourned in the monasteries of the Holy Land. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ St Martin's advent [19] coincides so closely with the years when the Eastern Empire of Justinian, already controlling much of southern Hispania, would have been eager to attract the then still Arian Sueves into a Catholic alliance against the common Visigothic foe at Toledo, that it is difficult not to assess this apostolate as somehow connected with Constantinople. ⁽⁷¹⁾ Certainly it was as a Byzantine monk that St Martin made Dumio an abbey-see along lines possibly familiar in the eastern Mediterranean homelands of monasticism; and who, after becoming metropolitan of Braga in the converted Suevic Church ca. 569, kept both bishoprics in his hands and set the pattern of the double see under a monk-prelate that was to be continued by his successors down to 585-6, when Leovigild's conquest of Galicia and the gothicization of the Suevic Church effected by this king and his son Reccared led to the complete separation of Dumio from the metropolitical capital. ⁽⁷²⁾  

For pactual history it is crucial that when, some three-quarters of a century later, St Fructuosus became monk-bishop of Dumio (653/4) and metropolitan of Braga (656), he revived the old Martinian union of the two sees and once again connected the leadership of the Gallegan Church with the abbey-see which was now the cult center of the Suevic Apostle. ⁽⁷³⁾ No less important, he seems to have sought to spread the combination of monastic and episcopal offices to certain other abbeys of his own foundation; ⁽⁷⁴⁾ and there is some reason to think that when King Wamba, a decade after the death of Fructuosus, sought to introduce this same concept into the neighboring province of Lusitania, and thus in 681 earned the fierce condemnation of the bishops of XII Toledo, ⁽⁷⁵⁾ he was promoting a monasticized as against a secular episcopate. In such terms alone can we understand the major role RComP assigns to the episcopus qui sub regula uiuit in the disciplining of abbots, an episcopus who [20] was not, as Herwegen thought, exclusively associated with Dumio-Braga but could be found elsewhere in the province in abbey-sees of Dumian type. ⁽⁷⁶⁾

Another principal element in the Fructuosan system is the Sancta Communis Regula, the supreme assembly of abbots and abbesses which stood at the head of the federation of cenobia established by Fructuosus and his disciples, and other houses attracted to the organization, and which under the presidency of the monk-metropolitan of Braga promulgated ordinances of general application to all the member communities. ⁽⁷⁷⁾ Orlandis believes that this supreme body descends from an abbatial synod of the Martinian era, ⁽⁷⁸⁾ thus (I would stress) constituting like the reunion of Braga and Dumio further evidence of Fructuosus' deliberate emulation of his great prececessor of the Suevic era. Whether or not this is so, the important thing is that at some point after 656 the Sancta Communis Regula must have been consulted on the adoption of the pactual constitution and have given its consent to this heterodox polity, a step that would seem to have been taken some years after the death (ca. 665) of Fructuosus, who cannot therefore have been the author of RComP. In other words, although the pactum appears in c. 17 of RCom as something already well established, and is not introduced as are some other fundamental decisions with the quasi-conciliar formula Placuit sanctae communi regulae, ⁽⁷⁹⁾ it must be viewed as the product of learned discussion and formal legislative action by an educated monastic leadership, not as an illiterate barbarization of the Roman legal principles of orthodox cenobitism. Once this is appreciated, we can move away from sterile debate over the supposed victory of Germanicism and undertake to identify the true forces moving the Fructuosan monastic federation, with its monasticized episcopate and synodal government, towards the creation of the pactual constitution that has been so variously explained by its modern interpreters.

Two paramount features of Gallegan monastic life in the second half of the 7th century are central to any such investigation. One is the powerful wave of popular enthusiasm for the ascetic gospel generated in the province by the charismatic preaching and example of Fructuosus, an almost too successful apostolate, since the rapid multiplication of converts and monasteries, and the widespread pressures for a monasticized clergy, exceeded the capacity of the Fructuosan leadership to control this response or imbue it, except imperfectly, with genuine understanding of proto-cenobitic spirituality and organization. The new movement seems to have appealed particularly to one vital sector of the provincial society, the owners of the small and medium-sized uillulae and uillae that dotted the Galaico-Minhotan countryside. ⁽⁸⁰⁾ Together with their wives, children and the conscripted slaves ( serui) of their domains who were constrained to take up the ascetic life, these rural proprietors were unmistakably the principal source of potential conuersi and benefactors for all the monasteries of Galicia, especially in view of the legal inability of the unfree peasantry to become monks without patronal approval or compulsion. These men must be carefully distinguished from the principes terrae, the magnates whom the authors of RCom regard with hostile eyes, ⁽⁸¹⁾ and also from the group of Visigothic royal officials [21] and aristocratic ladies who in Fructuosas' own lifetime were drawn from Toledo and elsewhere by his renown and to whom his Vita pays transparently excessive attention. ⁽⁸²⁾ The small proprietors in contrast were men of overwhelmingly Celtic, Roman and Suevic stock, not Visigoths, for in the century since Leovigild's conquest of the Suevic kingdom in 585 there had been no perceptible Visigothic migration to the northwest. ⁽⁸³⁾ They came from a rural world in which individual rights tended to be attached to the land, which itself, although in individual hands, was so subject to deeply embedded familial rights of inheritance as to be not easily alienable, in the full Roman sense, even to God and his saints. The result, so contrary to the monastic ideal of poverty, can be seen in the strong sense of ownership, inseparable from the contribution the conuersi made at their reception, that survived among these proprietarian monks. This is the outlook that finds its fullest expression in the violent individualism, weak abbatiate and inherent instability of two distinctive types of heterodox monastic communities, other than the 'Fructuosan', that find reflection in the documents of the age. These are, first, the ascetic societies condemned in RCom 1 as "falso nomine monasteria", which were organized by such rural proprietors as uicini on the basis of a sacramenti conditio or iuramentum; and, secondly, those based upon the radically contractual and egalitarian Consensoria monachorum, a far more heterodox constitution than RComP, yet one that finds acceptance in the codices regularum in attachment to the Basilian or Isidorian Rules. ⁽⁸⁴⁾ These proprietarian monasteries, to be cited henceforth as respectively vicinal and consensorial, should be looked upon, as we have suggested, as a kind of monasterio propio where the founding monks were in effect the resident patroni.  

There can be no doubt that the very existence and widespread popularity of these middle-class, proprietarian, contractualist monasteries made them formidable competitors to the houses under the Sancta Communis Regula, while at the same time threatening to draw these towards similar modification and secularization of paleo-monastic patterns. The violent assault contained in RCom 1 upon such pseudo-monasteria is proof enough; but we are fortunate to have also an informative contemporary source that allows us to gauge the impact of vicinalism and consensorialism, the little sketch of Gallegan monastic history written, probably ca. 685, by the Bierzan abbot Valerius. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ In the MSS this text bears the title De genere monachorum (DGM) but this looks like an early scribal error for De septimo genere monachorum, since the evident aim is to extend St Isidore of Seville's catalogue of the six different kinds of [22] monks by adding a seventh - -"peius prioribus"-- to be found in the Galicia of the writer's own day. ⁽⁸⁶⁾ Here we learn that after Fructuosus's death the abbeys associated with his name were so hard hit by failure to attract new recruits that they were compelled to conscript into their ranks children and the less able-bodied adults from their own patrimonial familiae; and that in consequence these monasteries had become filled with compulsory converts who lacked all true vocation for the ascetic life and used their now elevated position to acquire material wealth -- the same charge, incidentally, RCom 1-2 brings against the vicinal pseudomonasteria. Valerius, to be sure, characteristically inclines throughout his works to rhetorical exaggeration and violent denunciation, and it is just possible that he is speaking here only of the Bierzo rather than of all Galicia, so that his dismal picture must be received with due caution. Yet what he says confirms other signs that within two decades after its founder's death, the Fructuosan federation did face a critical shortage of conuersi due in large part to the flow of small proprietor postulants to the vicinal and consensorial cenobia and the flight of whom these and other non-Fructuosan houses sheltered against their rightful abbots.  

The second paramount factor behind the rise of 'Fructuosan' pactualism, no less decisive, is the disruptive conflict from mid-century on between the monasteries presided over by the monk-metropolitans of Dumio-Braga, and the Gallegan secular hierarchy and clergy, who sought to foster their own non-Fructuosan cenobitism by encouraging not only the vicinal but also the presbyteral abbeys vehemently condemned in RCom. In the initial stages of this poorly studied struggle St Fructuosus himself plainly played the leading role, as any scrutiny of the dramatic circumstances under which, with the powerful backing of King Recceswinth, he came to replace the bishop Riccimir at Dumio (653/4) and the metropolitan Potamius at Braga (656), quickly reveals. ⁽⁸⁷⁾ The intense hostility these episodes attest between the reformist, monasticizing Fructuosan wing of the Gallegan Church and its secular, anti-Fructuosan counterpart unquestionably continued to the end of the Visigothic monarchy, and has left numerous traces in our sources, not least in the language of RCom, which uses the startling term (c. 20) nostra ecclesia to distinguish its supporters from the monks and clergy loyal to the secular episcopate, while it accuses the vicinal communities of being responsible for haeresis et schisma et granais per monasterio controuersia. The same deep resentment towards the opposing camp underlies the savage attack in RCom 1 upon presbyteral monasteries, i.e., the apparently numerous cenobia created by presbyteri saeculares , who transformed their parish churches into tiny monasteries where the rector, assuming the office of abbot, could claim to be sub regula . This metamorphosis RCom assails as an insincere means of appeasing popular demand for a monastic ministry, adopted in order to assure the continuance of the charities of the faithful.

In all these instances the immediate target appears as monastic; but beyond this the real enemy is unmistakably the Gallegan secular Church, its bishops and clerics, and their influential allies, the principes terrae or high nobles. Just how this conflict fits into the larger picture of ecclesiastical and political breakdown throughout Visigothic Spain in its final apocalyptic decades has yet to be determined; but it certainly offers an illuminating regional instance of one kind of internal trouble that preceded the end.

In this strife-torn ambiente of intra-monastic and secular-regular polarization in later 7th-century Galicia, how are we to understand the adoption by the federated monasteries of the Sancta Communis Regula of the 'Fructuosan' pactum? Two [23] intimately dependent lines of explanation suggest themselves. From at least 656, when its leader came into possession of the supreme ecclesiastical office in the province, the Fructuosan cenobitic movement would have been under compulsion to find an alternative to the secular bishop in the exercise of authority, as defined by the canons of Chalcedon and IV Toledo, over his diocesan monasteries, while at the same time avoiding the danger, acute under 7th-century conditions, that complete exemption from external control might result in serious abuses and tyrannical rule on the part of abbots. If the provincial authority of the monk-metropolitan of Dumio-Braga, the synods of the Sancta Communis Regula, and the local episcopi sub regula were available, these were hardly sufficient: the first two were too exalted, too remote, for handling local issues; the sub regula bishops probably too few and of impugnable status. The alternative was to re-formulate the monastic polity structurally so as to insure a firm degree of limitation upon the abbot by securing in advance his written acceptance of a constitutional-contractual relationship with his subditi as regards the rights and duties of each. To safeguard this compact the monks were therefore allowed to initiate external intervention against abbatial despotism, that is, they were given the right to appeal to other monasteries or, alternatively, to an episcopus sub regula acting conjointly with the catholicus ecclesiae defensor comes -- an illuminating example of the cooperation of Fructuosan and royal agencies. In either case, the episcopus saecularis is excluded; in the 7th century the monasteries of the pactual tradition stand completely outside the normal episcopal visitation and installation of abbots.  

This is one side of the story; the other is the increasing pressure from the rival forms of monasticism that by ca. 675-85 confronted the Sancta Communis Regula with the urgent necessity of moving beyond the ruinous dependence upon conscription of the children and physically handicapped adults of the patrimonies to some formula that would attract the numerous conuersi emerging from the lower landowning strata of provincial society. For this purpose also the contractual polity was a sheer necessity, for the multiplication of vicinal and consensorial communities proved the widespread popularity among these classes of such adaptations of monastic orthodoxy to the indigenous mores as favored looser organizational structure and relaxation of the sternly rigorist discipline of the Fructuosan Regula monachorum . In this light the 'Fructuosan' pactum, which has been assessed by Herwegen and other modern students primarily in terms of its departure from traditional norms, looks very much like an attempt to meet the enemy halfway, a compromise between two extremes which it successfully avoided: an orthodox cenobitism inseparable from secular episcopal control and exploitation, and an egalitarian vicinalism with its weak abbatiate and inescapable instability.  

Was this an ill-advised surrender to expediency, a debasement of paleomonastic spirituality and an acceptance of barbarizing forms of social and juridical association in an only superficially coated-over Germanic Genossenschaft? I do not believe so. Certainly Herwegen's emphasis, manifestly first suggested to him by his teacher Stutz, ⁽⁸⁸⁾ upon the basic Germanism of RComP and its post-711 adaptations, demands much more qualified definition than it has yet received, although scepticism on this point has been growing. ⁽⁸⁹⁾ Nor can credence be given to the claim that the model for the [24] Gallegan pactum is to be found in the oath the Visigoths took to a new king, pledging him an obedience conditional upon his ruling justly and under law; this hypothesis of Herwegen, although endorsed by Martins, Pérez de Urbel and Esteves, among others, offers at best a remote analogy to the pactual abbey. ⁽⁹⁰⁾ Since 1907 more sophisticated studies of the Toletan constitution have made clear the relative insignificance of this oath, its late appearance (mid-7th century) and strongly Roman and ecclesiastical origin, while they discount the extent to which Germanic Widerstandsrechte were based upon contractual assumptions. ⁽⁹¹⁾ Furthermore, as P. D. King observes, there is no counterpart in the political sphere to the monks' appeal against arbitrary rule to the regular bishop and count.  

Still, it is evident that in vicinalism and contractualism, at least, we behold monasticism conforming itself to the dominant mores of the Gallegan countryside in the 7th century. The precise nature of this background remains, however, to be determined. The landowning classes below the high provincial nobility were a mixed society of Celtic, Roman and Suevic elements, of whose law and institutions we know painfully little as yet. Many complex questions urgently call for exploration before the roots of Gallegan monastic contractualism can be uncovered. To evaluate the allegedly Germanic phraseology and assumptions of RComP , we badly need a thorough study by specialists of the vocabulary, syntax and mentality of the whole range of literary and diplomatic texts produced in the Galaico-Portuguese region between the 5th and 11th centuries. That familial concepts of property were so strong that they affected not only vicinalism and consensorialism but also drove 18 to prohibit, in extraordinary fashion, all benefactions by conuersi to the monastery of their reception, is plain enough. But what incomprehension of corporative organization, and of personal and collective monastic ideals of poverty, underlies the instability of the houses of uicini and consentientes ? Surely, if we are to seek analogies, we should look to the forces that in the Spain of this period were finding expression in the relations between commendati and their patronus or, at a somewhat later date, between the members of the medieval benefactoria or behetría , particularly in the form known as the incommuniatio or incomuniação that is found in the Luso-Gallegan homeland of the pactum. ⁽⁹²⁾  

But, to conclude this portion of our inquiry, what we must keep in mind is the underlying orthodoxy of the 'Fructuosan' pactum, the authentic basis of its circulation under the drastically changed conditions of the Alta Reconquista. We can see this in its protection of stabilitas, obedience, discipline, and properly directed abbatial power in contrast with the latitudinarian permissiveness which the Gallegan secular episcopate [25] was willing to allow in the monasteries of uicini and consentientes. If the pactum bestows anti-abbatial Widerstandsrechte, yet the pactual abbot remains a strong governor, capable of imposing corporal punishment and of pursuing deserters with the full cooperation of comites, iudices and saiones . His monks make to him a traditio of their persons, but while they retain the right to challenge his arbitrary behavior, they cannot do so as individuals but only through action by the community as a whole. The pactual treaty was not, as with its more extreme rivals, a partnership of monks (Genossenschaftsvertrag), but a covenant between the corporate community of subditi and its constitutional monarch ( Gesamtuntertanenvertrag ). Finally, and above all, in the panorama of western and Iberian monasticism, it was a local solution to problems peculiarly Gallegan; and its success is to be judged not alone by what it accomplished in the final decades of the Visigothic province but even more by its tenacious survival after 711, when during the long difficult centuries of monastic recovery it enjoyed a central place in the religious life of two of the most institutionally and culturally fruitful regions of medieval Christian Iberia, Galicia-Portugal and Castile-Rioja.
 

At this point, before turning to the pactualism of the Alta Reconquista, there needs to be considered one largely ignored feature of 'Fructuosan' instrument of the 7th century upon which the comparable diplomas of succeeding centuries throw considerable light. Both RComP and its various more or less closely related adaptations after 711 have been studied by Herwegen and later students in terms of strictly monachal acts, addressed by the subditi to their abbot and terminating with their subscriptions. But what provision did the system make for what would seem to be no less juridically necessary in a bilateral contract, the abbot's own promise to serve under the terms stipulated? Herwegen apparently assumed that such an abbatial commitment was implicit in his texts and therefore never sought to explain why the abbot's own name normally does not appear among the subscribants to what he saw as primarily a foundational charter.  

This is a difficulty that disappears once we perceive that, by the commencement of the 9th century at least, evidence survives to show that the 'Fructuosan' pactum from the very beginning actually consisted of not one, but two, distinct yet inseparably linked parts or subpacta: one the well-known covenant of the monks, the pactum monachorum; the other, the abbot's own declaration, a pactum abbatis or abbatiale. Taken together, both texts constitute what we may call the double, or, preferably, so as to avoid all confusion with double monasteries and double traditiones , the binary pactum.

The principal characteristics of such a combined instrument can most readily be isolated in the early, exceptionally complete case of the Liébanese abbey of San Pedro y San Pablo de Naroba, one of the oldest known eastern centers of the transplanted Gallegan pactualism of the Alta Reconquista. The extant pactual preserved from this house was first drawn up in 818 and remained in use through the terms of three successive abbots down to ca. 825-35. An unusually large document of some 42.5 x 35 cms., it survives in a copy of the 12th century, so carefully made in a good Visigothic hand as to give the strong impression of being a faithful, almost [26] photographic, facsimile of the lost original. ⁽⁹³⁾ What we have here in fact are not merely two but five associated texts, all unknown to Herwegen and first published in 1944 by Sánchez Albornoz and a year later by Pérez de Urbel. Of these only one, which stands first in the series, is the pactum monachorum by which the monks and nuns of this double community promise to observe the ascetic life under the abbot Argilegus; as might be expected in such an act only a century removed from those circulating in the monasteries of Visigothic Galicia, this follows relatively closely the language and provisions of RComP , although with certain highly informative adaptations and omissions.

At the close of the monachal pactum the date "sub die pridie kalendas martias discurrente era DCCCLVI" is carefully recorded; but this is not followed, as might be expected, by the subscriptions of the religious. Instead, after a short space, there commences in the name of the abbot Argilegus a "confirmatio uel compromissio" by which the community's governor bestows upon it various of his properties. This is to all intents and purposes the abbatial counterpart to the self-submission of the monks, the pactum abbatis under which by implication Argilegus assumes office in accordance with the stipulations made in the monachal pactum; although undated it must have been drawn up at the same time as the latter. Then follows in the pergamino a third text, also without date but evidently issued simultaneously with its two predecessors, which takes the form of a donation made "in hunc pacto uel traditione" by the abbot's kinsman Sisbertus, who bestows upon Naroba and its religious one-fourth of his landed properties and movables. This charter, although confirming other testimony to the familial character of the structure and primitive endowment of the abbey, is of secondary interest; more important is the fact that following its eschatocol we finally reach the subscriptions of the twelve monks and nuns who composed the subter notati of the pactum monachorum, each cast in the form "in hoc pacto manu mea.( Sig.) feci". This terminal list of names constitutes the bond that ties together the first and second pieces, the pacta or strictly subpacta , i.e., the two fundamental, inseparable parts of the full synallagmatic contract that is the legal basis of the new monastic society. 

The two undated remaining pieces of the Naroban pergamino must have been composed between 825 and 835, following Argilegus' death at some point in that decade. One of these, the fourth text of the entire pentad, is the pactum abbatiale of the second abbot, Arias, who calls himself Argilegus' cognatus and makes a "traditio uel confirmatio" to the house similar to that of his predecessor in 818. In this case, however, in addition to the cession of lands, there is also an explicit traditio of his person ("trado me et omnia mea ereditate") by the abbot to the monastery and the fratres. The subscriptions of the latter follow, thirteen in number, all masculine, and each following the formula "in hoc pacto manu mea ( Sig.) feci". Finally, no. 5 of the series contains a traditio of his person and goods by Arias' nephew Adefonsus, directed this time both to the monastery "et tibi tio et abbati meo Ariani". This text, validated in the words "in hoc pacto manu mea ( Sig. ) feci et coram testibus roborabi", continues with the subscriptions of four other religious, all masculine, and in each case except the last employing the same phrase, "in hoc pacto manu mea (Sig.) feci".  

[27] It is not necessary to relate here the specific history of the Naroban monastery to this group of pactual texts, the underlying Gallegan character of which in the 9th century is so strongly indicated by the relative fidelity of the pactum monachorum to RComP; but certain points of broad interest for the pactual tradition as a whole should be noted. One has to do with the procedure followed in the pactual monasteries after an abbot's demise. Herwegen thought that with each new abbot the monastic pactum, which he regarded as an Abtwahlinstrument as well as a Professformel , had to be drawn up anew. Here however we have proof that this was not necessarily so; it was in fact not the initial perpetual commitment of the monks to the ascetic life that required reformulation, but the assumption of office by one abbot succeeding another as the second of the contracting parties (in the case of Santos Pedro y Pablo, Arias after Argilegus). The subscriptions following the Arias privilegio, all different from those terminating the Argilegus triad, indicate that names already attached to the original binary pactum carried over without repetition into the regime of the next abbot, while those of conuersi admitted after the latter's succession were attached to his abbatial pactum, manifestly on the assumption that these monks, although committing themselves to precisely the same traditio and promises as in the foundational monachal pactum, should make their profession to the abbot ruling at the time. The four additional names placed "in hoc pacto" after the diploma of Adefonsus may also imply that in due course this nephew of Arias assumed the abbatiate, or conceivably they may have been added before Abbot Arias's death in the only space available. 

From the Naroban pentad, as from other cases presently to be cited, it is evident also that at least after 711 (and no doubt before) the pactual system was frequently associated with familially possessed or endowed monasterios propios where a dynastic abbatial succession based upon consanguinity within the founding clan was normal and maintained by the readiness of an abbot's kinsman to take over his office either from outside the community (as apparently with Arias), or from within the ranks of the abbey's monks (as possibly with Adefonsus). In neither case can there have been any free election by the religious; under such circumstances Herwegen's Abtwahlinstrument would have been no more than the legal expression of a predetermined choice. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ Note should also be taken here of the early transformation of San Pedro y San Pablo from a double into a masculine community, possibly a sign of episcopal intervention.  

There are other conclusions to be drawn concerning the binary pactum, but before attempting to do so it will be useful to list all the examples discovered in a preliminary search, so as to make clear that the procedure at Naroba is typical of the pactual tradition in both Galicia-Portugal and Castile-Rioja. Certain of the entries that follow have long been known to students of Asturo-Leonese diplomatics; but their true nature has been concealed, either by later medieval copyists who inscribed the monastic and abbatial subpacta in the tumbos as successive, separately rubricked documents (despite their probably original normal occurrence in a single pergamino or pactionis libellus), or by the similar practice of modern editors. 

I shall catalogue these pacta chronologically by house, since the location and date of the pactual monastery is historically more pertinent than the abbot's name; but those involving successive rulers of the same community will be entered separately for [28] purposes of reference. Future scrutiny of the precise origins of these monasteries and of the provenance of their founding fathers can be expected to throw light upon the lines of pactual diffusion.

Provisional List of Identifiable Binary Pacta

1. 818, 28 February. San Pedro y San Pablo de Naroba (Liébana; modern prov. Santander, at or near Venta de Naroba, a few kms. south of Potes). Extant binary pactum with his monks of the abbot Argilegus; discussed immediately above.  

2. Ca. 825-35. San Pedro y San Pablo de Naroba. Extant binary pactum of Abbot Arias with his monks; discussed immediately above.  

3. 856? 876? Santa Eulalia de Búbal (Galicia; where the road running north from Orense to Chantada crosses the río Búbal). ⁽⁹⁵⁾ The binary covenant from this house, preserved in the Tumbo de Celanova and first published by Emilio Sáez, consists of: the "placitum uel pactum" addressed to the abbot-presbyter Absalom by five religious, including one woman and three clerics, a text belonging to an entirely different tradition from that of RComP and looking very much like what we might expect to have been used in the small presbyteral monasteries of the late Visigothic Galicia depicted in so unfavorable a spiritual (but not, be it noted, constitutional) light in RCom 2. Between the monachal pactum and the subscriptions of the members of the community stands, exactly as in the Naroban binary instrument, the pactum abbatiale of Abbot Absalom himself, surrendering his person, and his share in the monastery and its books and ornamenta, together with all his lands and livestock, to "uobis fratribus meis" and the monastery of Santa Eulalia. This second part of the text includes at the end the words "qui in hanc placitum uel pactum regule roboratus fuerit" and Absalom's own subscription "in hac placitum regule quem fratribus meis trado et mihi placuit." Then, once again as in the case of the Argilegus binary act, there now follow the names of the religious, who subscribe in the form "in hac (or hoc) placitum regule.. .manu mea (Sig. )", thus serving to bind together the two juridically inseparable halves of the full binary pactum.  

4. 871, 5 June: Santa María de Mezonzo (Galicia; p. j. de Arzúa, ayunt. de Vilasantar, northeast of Santiago in the upper valley of the río Tambre). ⁽⁹⁶⁾ The Tumbo de Celanova contains for this house in immediate juxtaposition: (i) fols. 24^r-24^v, the pactum abbatiale of the abbot Fulgaredus, in which, along with his brother, the [29] presbyter Pedro, and his sister, the deouota Berildi, he bestows various possessions upon the monastery; and (ii) fols. 24 ^v -25 ^r , the "pactum simul et placitum" addressed to Abbot Fulgaredus by his subject monks and nuns, which does not follow except for certain verbal reminiscences the pattern of RComP. Together the two acts comprise the binary pactum and were probably incorporated in a single original pergamino.  

5. Ca. 900 (?). Santa María de Mezonzo. The binary pactum of the abbot Vimara, apparently Fulgaredus' successor, which is cited in 955 by Vimara's nephew, the abbot Gudesindus of this house, in a diploma of the Tumbo de San Salvador de Sobrado . ⁽⁹⁷⁾ This text contains our most explicit depiction of the actual drafting and function of a binary pactum: "Defunctusque ipse Fulcaredus abba et frater eius Petrus presbyter reliquerunt eam (i.e., the church-monastery) ad suprinos uel fratres suos atque sorores secundum in pactum resonant, isti sunt Ildefonsus presbyter, Iubandus presbyter, Fromaldus presbyter, Petrus presbyter, Uisterla diaconus, Sisamirus diaconus uel ceteri fratres atque sorores ibidem commanentes et stantes in ipsum iam prefatum locum absque abbate. Et accessit illis spontanea uoluntas ut eligerent sibi ipsos Uimaram abbatem qui de illorum erat progenie et neptus ipsius Reterici abbatis. Et iterum Uimara abbas fecit suum pactum in eius nomine et tradiderunt se ei et omnia illorum secundum eis regula docuit et in eorum testamento resonat. Et fuerunt omnes a seculo migrati in eius iure et reliquerunt ei omnia sua secundum pactum rouorauerant. Defunctus uero ipse Uimara abbas reliquit ipsam uillam et ipsam ecclesiam simul et pactos atque testamentos et cartas uel omnia sua possidenda ad suprinum suum Gundesindum abbatem, etc."  

6. 907, 18 March. Santiago 'de Mortalones' (?) (Galicia, prov. Lugo). ⁽⁹⁸⁾ Binary pactum between the presbyter Sisericus and the "fratres uel sorores" of this house. This consists of an abbatial traditio of self ("trado corpus meum") and property to the community, followed by the corresponding corporative traditio of the religious (none of whose subscriptions survive), which commences: "Et nos omnes qui sumus in loco isto tecum congregati... tibi abbati nostro tradimus propria uoluntate nostram omnino facultatem... simul et nostras personas, etc." The monachal section towards its end recalls the language of RComP, although it does not approach this model closely. 

7. 930, 27 January. San Mamés de Ura (Castile, prov. Burgos, p. j. Lerma; tothe south of the capital on the río Ura, the modern Mataviejas, a southern affluent of the Arlanza). ⁽⁹⁹⁾ The only extant binary pactum so far known involving an abbess, it contains (i) the pactum of the nuns (in all probability this was a community of women exclusively) which is addressed to "domna et matre nostra Eufrasia", and as of adapted RComP type was assigned by Herwegen to his second group; (ii) the corresponding pactum abbatissae in the form of a traditio of herself and her possessions to God and San Mames made by the abbess Eufrasia: "et hinc sancte regule consensi, trado me et [30] me ipsam corpus simul et animam meam Deo et sancte Mametis cum omni rebus meis quiquid michi accidit de parentum meorum hereditate"; and (iii) a donation of 27 January 930 in which the condes Fernán González and Sancha bestow upon San Mamés their church of Santa Eugenia in the valley of the río Ura, with all its appurtenances. Herwegen (p. 15), noting the absence of subscriptions after (i) and regarding (ii) and (iii) as completely separate diplomas, denies that the date given in the comital donation was also that of (i). But the fact is, (i) and (ii) belong inseparably together as components of a binary pactum, to which, either at the foundation of the house or at an installation of a new abbess, the condes of Castile attached their dated benefaction, almost certainly issued at the same time as one of these contingencies. It is true that in the 18th-century copy now at Silos the subscriptions have been omitted from all three pieces, even those of the witnesses to that of the condes ; but that these texts were originally contained in a single pergamino , which remained in use as the constitutional basis of the nunnery, is strongly indicated by the fact that subsequently King Sancho I of León (956-965) and Count Fernán González (920-970) added their confirmations; and these are followed by more subscriptions including those of the abbess Maria, and of a nun Auria who declares "in hoc pacto manu mea signum feci". ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾  

8. 1045, 21 September. São Salvador de Vacariça (Portugal; Beira Litoral, concelho of Mealhada, some 20kms. due north of Coimbra). ⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Three diplomas, found at different points in the Livro Preto of the see of Coimbra but all of identical date and rightly printed together by Herculano, belong to this solitary known Portuguese binary pactum. Although formulated between the monks of Vacariça and their abbot Tudeildus, in language and juridical content it actually represents the pactualism found at this abbot's more northern house of São Salvador de Leça (near Porto), itself a product of the Galaico-Portuguese pactual movement of the 9th and 10th centuries; see Study IV in this volume for full discussion of this interesting case. Many of the questions these documents raise have been ably treated by Mattoso. ⁽¹⁰²⁾  

The foregoing series of binary pacta, however incomplete, should suffice to establish the basic twofold content of the pactum of Gallegan type, a characteristic that in all probability dates from its genesis in the second half of the 7th century, to judge from the general conservatism of phraseology and contractual content that marks the evolution of the pactual tradition, the relatively early occurrence (9th century) of specimens from both Castile and Galicia-Portugal, and the fairly high proportion of binary cases in the total corpus of extant or traceable monastic pacta. From the very emergence of the pactual tradition in the northwest such an arrangement would have been a logical necessity, since in contrast with the consensus, sacramenti conditio or iuramentum of the consensorial-vicinal societies, the pactual house based itself on a treaty between the subditi as a corporate group and their powerful abbot-patronus. It is true that RCom does not provide at its close a formula for the abbot as it does for the monks (RComP). This lack is readily comprehensible when we perceive that the abbatiale did not attempt to re-state the terms of association found in the monachale , [31] but was simply a formal transfer to the corporate community of its ruler's person and possessions, which required no more than the standard carta traditionis et donationis .  

The paramount question raised by the binary pactum is the meaning of its central element, the reciprocal or double traditio, by which the monks, acting as a corpus (since, as we have noted, the monastic contract is between the community and its head), and the abbot place themselves in turn in each other's power. If the confirmatio uel compromissio of Argilegus in 818 does not mention the traditio sui of this abbot, that of his successor Arias explicitly does; and we may safely assume that this usage was common in not only Naroba but other early pactual houses of Liébana, Asturias de Trasmiera and Bardulia. For Galicia the example of Santa Eulalia de Búbal (ca. 876?) proves that the binary instrument circulated in this region also, certainly after 711. Nor need we hesitate to recognize that it is once more the binary pactum that is the subject of the rubric of Ordo XVIII of the Liber ordinum , ⁽¹⁰³⁾ which requires the abbot at his consecration to deliver to the presiding bishop the "placitum suum tam pro se quam pro subditis de honestate uite regularis", even if the episcopal intervention in this rite may indicate an interpolation in the liturgical text after 711, when the secular bishop succeeded in imposing his authority on pactual circles. Neither for abbot nor monks, moreover, did the reciprocal traditio signify the simple traditio animae to God, normal in orthodox observance, but a genuine traditio corporis which entailed for the monks permanent personal subjection to the abbatial patrocimum , and for the abbot a corresponding subjection to the power of his united subjects. How are we to understand this curious relationship of mutual subordination?  

In his extensive monograph dealing with Hispanic ecclesiastical familiaritas in the Middle Ages, José Orlandis touches only marginally on this problem, ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ since his focus is primarily fixed upon laics attached to churches and monasteries who remain laymen, such as donadeos, clientes, commendati , and the like; and he does little to examine those drawn into the religious life as conuersi by the kind of adscriptio cellae -- or, more strictly, potestati abbatiali -- practised in late Visigothic Galicia. ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ Yet it is this latter peculiar type of traditio that is linked to the pactual system; and there can be little doubt that if the widespread instabilitas of in the monasticism of the province was partly responsible for its introduction, a principal reason was the incorporation by ca. 675 into the abbeys of the Sancta Communis Regula of large numbers of unwilling or very imperfectly converted laics -- the children and physically handicapped adults of the patrimonies whose conscription was deplored by Valerius in the DGM, the whole families of men, women and children depicted in RCom 6, ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ the old men and penitent criminals of RCom 8 and 19. There is no mistaking the fact that the abbot's rights of punishment and of pursuit and recovery of fugitives bulk very large in RComP; and we know that the flight of mancipia was a major social preoccupation of the Visigothic code in the 7th century, reflected in the numerous severe laws on such runaways. ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ If ecclesiastical practice required manumission of slaves as a prerequisite to their entering the monastic life, it is no less true that both the [32] Hispanic Councils and secular legislation recognized that emancipation of serui was definitely sub modo, not only revocable but imposing upon the liberti a permanent obligation of obsequium and services to their patron. ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ A traditio corporis could also of course be voluntary; but in either case it is evident, as the texts themselves repeatedly affirm, that under the pactual concept of the conditio religiosa all conuersi became the personal subditi of the abbatial pater-patronus . This is a status of individual subordination and helplessness utterly different from that of the consentienles and uicini of the egalitarian -- and therefore highly unstable -- rival communities, one very far from that retention of personal freedom and individual rights that Herwegen attributed to his idealized, allegedly Germanic, pactual society.  

As for the other, the abbatial, side of the binary traditio, we have already seen that, once the monasteries of the Fructuosan federation had rejected the normal canonical visitation and disciplinary rights of the secular bishop over the cenobia of his diocese, it was indispensable for them to find an alternative, local mechanism for proceeding against abuses of power by an abbot or abbess, and that this took the form of entrusting to the monastic community as a whole the right to reprove its governor and, if necessary, to select the external agents who would cooperate in his correction or removal.  

In short, whatever influences of Germanic, Roman or canon law we may wish to attribute to the language, form and content of the Gallegan pactum with its reciprocal traditio, these were at best secondary elements in its inspiration. The truly decisive factor was the necessity faced by the Sancta Communis Regula of enforcing stabilitas and obedientia among unwilling or restless conuersi . This meant insistence upon a strong abbatiate; but since the latter, freed from the hated authority of the secular bishop, posed its own threat, the community's governor was made subject under the binary pactum to the cenobitic body politic, the ever present guarantor against tyranny or arbitrary contravention of the regulae patrum.
 

Whatever views we cherish regarding the genesis and diffusion of monastic pactualism in the Visigothic era, we are nevertheless obliged to account for its survival and expansion after 711 in two, and only two, widely separated subdivisions of the Asturo-Leonese kingdom, the Galaico-Portuguese west and the Castello-Riojan east. Each of these regions imposes its own problems; we shall commence with those of the much more poorly recognized Atlantic zone.  

For Pérez de Urbel, pactualism appears so insignificant a factor in the monastic colonization of Galicia and Portugal between the 8th and 11th centuries that he can dismiss the few instances known to him as either chance archaic survivals of Visigothic-Mozarabic transmission (which, he believes, would account for the pactum of Vacariça of 1045), or as the result of deliberate but largely unsuccessful efforts to introduce the system into the northwest from Castile (i.e., the case of Mezonzo, which Fray Justo links to the promotional activity of Bishop Sisnando I of Compostela, ca. 869-ca. 920, [33] originally a monk of Liébana). ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ In the Benedictine scholar's own words: "los monasterios [gallegos] pueden contarse por millares; los pactos son únicamente cuatro... No hay motivo para considerar a Galicia como una tierra pactual." ⁽¹¹⁰⁾  

This judgment, which must be pronounced indefensible, derives from my own erroneous statement in 1951, that from the only four (as I then supposed) cases of western pacta monachorum there could be inferred an extremely restricted circulation of this instrument after 711 in the land of its birth. ⁽¹¹¹⁾ Since 1951, however, although no new pacta as such have come to light, it has become increasingly manifest that the diplomas of the monastic houses of Galicia, and to a perceptibly lesser extent, of Portugal, contain a number of direct references to pacta now lost or still awaiting rescue from the archives; and that these prove extensive use of the old constitutional contract in many abbeys or their dependencies, including such famous centers as San Salvador de Celanova, San Salvador de Sobrado, ⁽¹¹²⁾ San Julián de Samos, San Esteban de Ribas de Sil, São Salvador de Guimarães, and others. Thus the view to which I gave circulation in 1951 must be totally reversed: it can now be averred that the pactual tradition was virtually as firmly established in Galicia as in Castile, although in view of the non-pactual strains in the earlier monastic history of the northwest I am not prepared to follow Dom Maximino Arias in his sweeping generalization that all pre-Benedictine Gallegan monasticism was pactual. ⁽¹¹³⁾  

The evidence for the revisionist position is best presented in the form of a preliminary catalogue of Galaico-Portuguese cenobia with which extant or firmly attested lost pacta can be associated; and it will be useful to incorporate in it at the same time the key diplomatic passages that confirm this observance and often illumine its place in the history of the house in question.  

Provisional List of Gallegan and Portuguese Pacta

1. ca. 850-875. Santa Leocadia de Castañeda (prov. León, in the Bierzo, south of Villamartín on the left bank of the Upper Sil). ⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Attested as pactual by the restoration charter of Bishop Gennadius of Astorga (8 January 916): "fuit a sanctis et electis patribus Valentino et Moysi abbatibus coenobio constructo a quibus et loca [34] prius fuit cepta, et uixerunt ibidem tamdiu illis uita comes fuit... sicut et alia loca quae ab eis excepta sancti Cipriani, ubi dicunt Farum, etiam et ibi reconditae sunt sanctae Marinae reliquiae in Vugueza. Post fundationem itaque sanctorum patrum cecidit eadem loca sancta in diusisione uaria per fratrum negligentiam. Tum aliquanti ex fratribus per superbiam furarunt pactum seu testamentum et tradiderunt ipsum Indisclo episcopo; at ille curam suam gerens non priorum optimorum fratrum nee coenobii uitam sequens, ut potuit, cuncta contraxit sibi in episcopio habens. Post mortem tamen ejus Ranulfus episcopus subcedens, inuentum testamentum quem ille suus decesor reliquerat ad negligentiam, adduxit illud in secularia causa, etc." ⁽¹¹⁵⁾  

2. 856? 876? Santa Eulalia de Búbal. The extent binary pactum of the abbot-presbyter Absalom. No. 3, above; cf. note 95 on the more probable later date.  

3. 871. Santa María de Mezonzo. The extant binary pactum of the abbot Fulgaredus. No. 4, above.  

4. 898. San Verísimo de Arcos de Furco (feligresía , prov. Pontevedra, ayunt. Baños de Cuntís, to the northeast of Villagarcía and below the rio Ulla). ⁽¹¹⁶⁾ Fragmentary terminus of a monachal pactum addressed to the abbot Adulfus, which, besides an incomplete promise of submission and the date, records six of men and women in such form as: "Tructesindus pr(e)s(byter) hanc pactum uel placitum a me factum manu mea... Fradegunda deouota uobis abbati meo domino Addaulfo sicut me iam dudum uobis et ecclesie sancti Verissimi tradidi cum omnia mea.. .trado et manu mea titulum placiti et pacti subscribo."  

5. 904, 24 May. San Martín de Rosende (prov. Lugo, p. j. and ayunt.Sarria, in the valley of the Miño between Páramo and Barbadelo). ⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Pactum of Abbot Visclafredus, mentioned in his extensive donation to this house, with the implication that he was continuing the practice of his predecessors Abbots Natalis, Visclamundus and T(r)asimirus: "in uilla que dicitur Ranosindi... confero ibidem ad ecclesie uestre... omne familie ecclesiam de omne parentum uel aborum meorum uel de priorum abbatorum nostrorum domni Natalis abba, domni Uisclamondi abba, domni Tasmiri et aliis plurimis qui in pactum recule sunt testati post partem ecclesie nostre sancte (p. 31)... Siquis tamen ab hoc cenobii uel pactum regule discipline... uagaberit, sit exoneratus ab omni dono ecclesie sancte, etc. (p. 33)...(.. .)rious presbiter in hoc pactum recule ubi me trado cum omnia ad ecclesiam...(... fredus presbiter in pactum) recule ubi me trado cum omnia mea (Sig.) (p. 34)." The subscriptions of the religious here have the form of traditiones , which implies that this text is juridically part of a binary pactum; there is no corresponding traditio of himself by Visclafredus, but there may originally have been a libellus pactionis containing the pacta abbatialia of the three predecessors with whom Visclafredus was associating himself, and the foundational pactum monachorum.  

6. 907, 18 March. Santiago 'de Mortalones' (prov. Lugo, near Samos). The binary pactum of Abbot Sisericus and his religious. No. 6, above.  

[35] 7. 916, 1 September. San Ciprián de Pinza (prov. Orense, just south of the capital at modern San Ciprián de Viana del Bollo). ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Pactum cited by the founder and probable first abbot, the presbyter Julian, in his charter of donation: "et donationem decerno ut quidquid sacerdos uel religiososque Deo [in] hunc locum per pactum et placidum Regule dicati an pauperibus se tradiderunt deserbiendum sub manu abbatis uel senioris, sit illis hec omnia comuniter, etc."  

8. 921, 12 October. San Esteban de Ribas de Sil (prov. Orense, some 15 kms. northeast of the capital, on the south bank of the Sil). ⁽¹¹⁹⁾ This abbey's pactual character is inferrable from the fact that the approval given its restoration by the real privilegio of Ordoño II of this date was granted at the joint request of Count Gutier Menéndez (the father of San Rosendo of Celanova and Mondoñedo) and of the first abbot Franquila, who in 936 was also to found San Salvador de Celanova as a pactual house (cf. no. 15, below).  

9. 922. 1 August. San Julián de Samos (prov. Lugo, p. j. Sarria, ayunt. Samos). ⁽¹²⁰⁾ The real privilegio of this date of Ordoño II may be open to suspicion as to the accuracy of its chronicle of the early history of the abbey, but at least its redactor was familiar with the existence there of the pactum, which is noticed at two points: "post obitum uero eius [Ophilonis abbatis] iterum uero fratres qui usque nunc conmorantes fuerunt ac si pertranseuntes ob quod omnes ipsos testamentos pactos uel dotes monasterii eglesie eiusdem non inuenerunt, eo quod ut arbitramus deperierunt aut illi eos furauerunt, etc."; and farther on, "omnia trado ... et donatione decerno ut quisquís sacerdos uel religiosorumque Deo in hunc locum per pactum uel placidum regule ditati an pauperes se tradiderint deseruiendum sub manu abbatis uel senioris sint illis hec omnia supra(dicta) comunia, etc."  

10. ante 927. Santa María de Loyo (prov. Lugo, close to the capital, between the rivers Loyo and Miño). ⁽¹²¹⁾ Pactum of Abbot Quintila, cited in the historical expositio of the episcopal and abbatial charter of restoration of this house, dated 23 December 927: "quidam uir religiosus et Deo deuotus, nomine Quintilane abbate, adprehendit [36] locum antiquum monasterii olim nomine fundatum... et collegit in eodem contionem religiosorum regulari sub tramite degentium... quibus sub federe pacti cunctis manentibus diuinitum euenit consilium, etc."  

11. 903? 928? Santa Eulalia "in uilla domini Didaci" (on the Miño within the suburbium of Lugo). ⁽¹²²⁾ The pactum is mentioned in the charter by which the deacon Vermudus gives this house various uillas: "habeant fratres et sorores cleros atque domesticos qui in uita sancta perseuerauerint post pacto ipsius ecclesie."  

12. 947, 7 August. Santa Marina de Paradela (prov. La Coruña, p. j. Estrada, on the río Ulla). ⁽¹²³⁾ A private act of the presbyter Letimius, addressed to the fratres et sorores of this monastery, which styles itself "pactum uel placitum". The imperfectly legible phraseology, as reproduced by López Ferreiro, recalls RComP: "pro salute animarum nostrarum qualiter iuste et pie, caste et sobrie uiuamus in hoc seculo et quidquid annuntiare uel imperare iusseris pro salute anime nostre humiliter adimpleamus, nihil nobis proprium uindicantes sed omnia quicquid uisi sumus abere, etc."  

13. ante 955. Santa María de Mezonzo. Pactum of Abbot Vimara, probably of the same type as that of Fulgaredus (no. 2, above), as mentioned in the diploma of 955 of Abbot Gundesindus. Binary pactual list, above, no. 5. 

14. ante 959. San Salvador de Celanova (prov. Orense, p. j. Celanova, ca. 22kms. due south of the provincial capital). ⁽¹²⁴⁾ Pactum of the abbot San Rosendo, later bishop of Mondoñedo (presumably modeled after that of his predecessor Franquila, the first abbot of this house founded in 936); mentioned in the agreement on rents made in 959 between Goia, Videla, Vico, Rudila and Oveco, and their children, and Abbot Rosendo: "ista uilla sancte Eolalie de testam[en]tos sancti Petri de Lemos unde uos fratres hereditarios habeatis et traditos in pactos regule in monasterio Cellenoue, etc."  

15. 959. São Salvador de Guimarães (prov. Minho, to the southeast of Braga). ⁽¹²⁵⁾ Pactum cited in the foundation charter by which the Portuguese noblewoman Dona Mumadona Dias bestows numerous vilas, lands and other goods upon those who "in hunc locum sub manu abbatis et census regule fuerint Domino seruientes et in pactum roborati."  

[37] 16. ca. 977. San Salvador de Celanova. Pactum of the abbot Manila, mentioned in a diploma of 1002 ⁽¹²⁶⁾ which refers to the last year of San Rosendo's life (977): "Ipse (Rudesindus) prius per se in manibus eius pro patre spiritale accepit et post eum reliqua turba fratrum et omnium monachorum sub dicionem pactum regule abbatem domnum Manillanem constituit atque elegit."  

17. 1045. São Salvador de Vacariça. Extant binary pactum of the abbot Tudeildus. Binary list, above, no. 9.  

The preceding catalogue can surely be enlarged by more extended search of the archives and printed materials, but it will serve to make patent the emphatic diffusion in the northwest of the pactual tradition. If we take into account the probability of similar usage in the dependencies and neighboring communities of the houses listed, it looks as if by the middle 9th century, at the very time the pactum was enjoying widespread reception in the new foundations of an expanding primitive Castile, it found equal popularity in the monastic repoblación of Galicia and, in some degree also, across the Miño in Portugal.  

This is a phenomenon hardly explicable in terms of uninterrupted direct descent from the ancient Fructuosan cenobia of Visigothic Galicia. Without venturing here into the still unresolved debate over continuity or discontinuity of settlement in the westernmost districts of the 'desierto del Duero', with which the names of Herculano, Pierre David, Sánchez Albornoz, da Costa and others are linked, ⁽¹²⁷⁾ we can deduce with some confidence that the Galaico-Portuguese pactualism visible to us from the second half of the 9th century stems most immediately from centers located not around Dumio and Braga but in the extreme north and northeast comarcas of Galicia close to the borders of the kingdom of Asturias. Here its presence is most plausibly explained as being due to monks and nuns from both sides of the Miño who found refuge there, either at the time of the first Islamic irruption or, more probably, ca. 740-50, during Alfonso I's evacuation of the inhabitants of Entre-Douro-e-Minho. The impression we receive is of an early nucleus in the basin of the upper Sil and in the Bierzo, with a subsequent spread westward and southwestward along the valleys of the Tambre, the Búbal, the lower Sil, and the Miño itself.  

Across the Miño, however, and as far south as Coimbra and the banks of the Mondego, the picture is much less clear, despite the two pioneering studies of Prof. Mattoso -- his essay on the survival of the 'Fructuosan' tradition in Portugal after 711, and the admirable volume on the abbeys of the diocese of Porto between 1000 and 1200, the era of transition from pre-Benedictine to Benedictine observance. ⁽¹²⁸⁾ In both these works he contends that the Portuguese cenobitism of the Alta Reconquista, which the dip