Vie chrétienne et culture dans l'Espagne du VIIe au Xe siècles by Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz

Abstract

Vie chretienne et culture dans l'Espagne du VII au X siecles. By Manuel C. Diaz y Diaz. Variorum Collected Studies Series. (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1992. Pp. x, 292.) Among specialists in late antique and early medieval Spain, the author of this collection of articles is without equal in his knowledge of the Latin literature and manuscripts originating in the Iberian peninsula. He is the author of the standard handbook, Index scriptorum latinorum medii aevi hispanorum, with its list of late antique and medieval Latin works written in Spain, together with manuscripts in which they appear, and such fundamental manuscript studies as Libros y librerias en la Rioja Altomedeval. The collection of essays under review, written in Spanish, French, and English, represents a small but important selection of his work dealing with Christian life and literature in the Visigothic and early Mozarabic periods in Spain. Three of the articles in English were translated for inclusion in the now defunct periodical, Classical Folio, an enterprise fostered by the late Jesuit scholar, Joseph M.-F. Marique, to provide those without Spanish with the works of such eminent scholars as Diaz. The articles in the collection are grouped mainly around three themes: liturgical, monastic, and miscellaneous. The liturgical articles can be subdivided into those on the Old Spanish or Mozarabic liturgy and those on the ancient Spanish passionaria and the festival orationale. Diaz's treatment of the Latin and literary aspects of liturgical texts is of particular interest because few specialists in medieval liturgy consider their subject in this way. Noteworthy is his conclusion that the literary complexity of the liturgical texts suggests that they were intended to be understood and appreciated not so much by the 'people' as by an elite clerical class. Among the articles on monasticism, perhaps the most important are those on the manuscript tradition of the Regula Isidori. Here Diaz outlines the various early and interpolated forms of the Regula and their use and transmission outside of Spain, especially by the Visigothic counsellor of Louis the Pious, Benedict of Aniane, whose renowned manuscript from Trier is now kept in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Further, Diaz deals with the interesting problem to what extent the survival of the rule was actual or literary as new monastic rules, such as the Benedictine, came to the Iberian peninsula. …