Abstract

This essay explores how writers on monasticism from the Visigothic period in Iberia (mainly the seventh century) conceived of the relationship between ascetic formation and the spatial organization of their communities. It suggests that, in addition to articulating a strong sense of opposition between the monastery and ‘the world’, writers such as Isidore of Seville and Fructuosus of Braga devised strategies for managing interaction between the monastery and its surroundings. They also had a good sense of how space might be organized within the monastery to further the ascetic formation of the monks and nuns as members of a community. Finally, I suggest that writings about ascetic formation provide interesting models for thinking more generally about processes of identity formulation and dissemination in late antiquity and the early medieval period.