84 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINSome of the major urban monasteries, such as Agali at Toledo and
Cauliana at Merida, are known from literary sources, but although
the possible situations of both of these have been the subject of
antiquarian conjecture, no excavation has revealed their actual sites.
The location of those rural monasteries that are encountered in the
sources is usually equally uncertain.
A relative lack of hagiography, as in contemporary Lombard Italy,
makes the task of studying Visigothic monasticism much harder. For
the sixth century there is only Braulio's Life of Saint Aemilian, which
gives some glimpses of ascetic life in the Rioja. The Lives of the Fathers
of Merida, written c. 630, contains some references to monastic prac-
tices in that city in the mid sixth century, whilst for the seventh
century proper the only work of monastic hagiography is the anony-
mous Life of Saint Fructuosus, probably composed in the 690s. This
recounts features of the career of the most famous founder of mon-
asteries in Visigothic Spain.
Fructuosus, a member of the Gothic nobility, spent much of his
early life in founding communities in two regions, the Bierzo on the
frontiers of Galicia, and in the south around Cadiz. He subsequently
became Bishop of Braga and Metropolitan of Galicia c.656. For his
principal northern monastery, at Compludo, he wrote an extant rule
of remarkable severity: his monks were required to reveal all their
thoughts, visions and dreams to their superiors, and the prior, second
in charge to the abbot, was instructed 'silently to pass the bed of each
one' as they were going to sleep, so that 'by observing the actions of
each more closely, he may learn how to treat the character and merits
of each'. This inspection was repeated before the monks were awoken
for their midnight prayers. They were forbidden to look at each other
or anyone else. Certain offences were punished by flogging and im-
prisonment within the monastery on a diet of six ounces of bread a
day and 'a small amount of water'. Such confinements could last for
three or six months.^55
This rule is more purely practical than, say, that of St Benedict
(c. 525), in that it restricts itself to the making of regulations for the
leading of the common life and omits any more general considera-
tions as to the ends of that life. But the obligations laid upon the
officers of the monastery show that they were expected to lead by
example, and to be even more rigorous than their charges in self-
discipline and the carrying out of their duties. However, it is hard to
escape the impression of unnerving surveillance that pervades this