Social Plurality and Monastic Diversity in Late Antique Hispania (Sixth to Eighth Century)

Abstract

[En] Now that the world’s time has begun to wane and is almost up, charity becomes cold, the most brutal forms of iniquity gain force, and the flame of ever unappeasable and voracious human ambition rekindles, and the devil’s most maddening and covetous atrocity grows bolder. In these sacred places there are ever fewer chosen individuals who willingly embrace the Lord. And, so that these monasteries do not become abandoned ruins, they take pig-keepers from their own slaves and humpbacks from their own herds and youth from their properties, whom they tonsure against their will so that they may attend them in their religious services, and who are given a certain education at monasteries and are falsely called monks.