Whether in various kinds of social observance, in religious practices, or in the received physical environment or in the use and interpretation of inherited artefacts, memory is a constant process of modification, of selection, of forgetting.1
In the early modern period, the Mozarabic rite was a form of living memory, a venerable tradition that was both a historical repository of religious group identity and a commemorative practice continuously evoking the past of Christians in Toledo. This chapter explores cultural practices of reception that endowed the rite with layered meanings. Ongoing memory of the Mozarabic rite also entailed the acts of modification, selection, and forgetting described by David McKitterick in the epigraph above. Interpreting the Mozarabic Chapel as a memorial site, I situate its frescoes depicting the conquest of Oran in relation to narrative accounts of the military campaign. I then turn to the biography of Cisneros by Eugenio de Robles (the Compendio) and the early seventeenth-century poems that accompanied both the biography in print and the separately published chapters on the Mozarabic rite. The final part of the chapter addresses the memory of the rite in eighteenth-century Toledo and the symbolism of Archbishop Lorenzanaâs publication of the rite in Mexico.
By founding the Mozarabic Chapel in his cathedral and endowing the perpetual celebration of the rite there, Cisneros created a living memorial for a liturgy that the Mozarabic community had long observed only outside the cathedral. To that end, while the celebration of the rite in the parishes was limited to certain feast days, Cisneros made it more regular in the cathedral. Both the chapel and the Mozarabic rite itself act as nodes of associated meaning of the kind Pierre Nora called lieux de mémoire, that is, sites of memory.2 The concept of lieux de mémoire derives from the rhetorical loci (âplacesâ) that are essential vectors in the classical theory of memory, the imagined points in the mindâwhether places, objects or ideasâto which significant memories are connected and which thus become âsymbolic element[s] of the memorial heritage of any community.â3 Another useful framework for interpreting the Mozarabic Chapel as a memorial structure is Aleida Assmannâs theorization of cultural memory, particularly her distinction between the canon as âactively circulated memory that keeps the past presentâ and archive as âthe passively stored memory that preserves the past past.â4 These terms aptly describe the chapelâs recollection of the Mozarabic rite in the chapel and the preservation of the legacy of Cisneros, for the celebration of the rite there brought to mind not only the Mozarabs of Toledo but also, and equally, Cisneros himself as founder.5
Cisneros features prominently in the chapelâs monumental wall paintings depicting the siege of Oran, which he financed and led in 1509. Commissioned by the cardinal, the frescoes were executed in the years around 1514 by the Hispano-Flemish painter Juan de Borgoña (Fig. 3.1).6 With its pictorial representations, the Mozarabic Chapel fresco both contains and generates communal memory in which images of Cisneros and the conquest of Oran converge with the daily observance of the rite.
The conquest of Oran was part of a new crusading endeavor envisioned by the Catholic Monarchs for the conversion of Muslims overseas, extending to lands abroad the eschatological justifications that had driven the conquest of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The taking of Granada in 1492, seen as a step towards the universal monarchy of the eschaton, is described in apocalyptic terms in the liturgical office composed by the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera.7 Expeditions to the coast of North Africa were intended to create a foundation for further expansion into the Mediterranean with the ultimate aim that Ferdinand would be crowned king of Jerusalem (a title he had claimed in 1504) and proclaim a universal empire.8 Spanish political theorists in the sixteenth century asserted that Spainâs monarchy, allied with the Church, constituted the final empire, a transcendent universal monarchy that would last until the Second Coming of Christ. This political theology was based on interpretations of prophetic books of the Bible and on the tenet that the Spanish monarchy was the only true heir to the Roman Empire.9 Cisneros supported the messianic conviction of Pedro Navarro and others in Ferdinandâs circle according to which the North African conquest was the beginning of a crusade to retake Jerusalem and convert all of humanity to Christianity.10
Figure 3.1
Juan de Borgoña, central panel of The Conquest of Oran, fresco, c.1514, Mozarabic Chapel, Toledo Cathedral
Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photo
The thematic choice of the conquest of Oran to decorate the Mozarabic Chapel signaled the wider meaning of Cisnerosâs triumph in a way that would have seemed logical to his contemporaries: just as the conquest of Toledo in 1085 had enabled subsequent victories, leading ultimately to the capitulation of Granada, so too the new military campaigns in Africa would empower the Spanish kingdom to repel the Ottoman threat and culminate in a Christian conquest of the Mediterranean. The image of the North African campaign added meaning to the celebration of the Old Hispanic rite by setting it within a wider chronological frame and underlining its place in the history of conflict between Christians and Muslims. In this way, the frescoes provided a visual accompaniment to the celebration of the rite associated with Christians who had been released from Muslim rule by a king of Castile and León.
Still, the painted scenes decorating the Mozarabic Chapel would seem to have no evident connection to the rite celebrated there. What did the capture of a coastal trading post in North Africa have to do with the restoration of the ancestral Christian liturgy of Toledo? The answer is in the memorial function of the chapel, which was intended to be as much a monument to Cisneros and his conquest of Oran as a place for the celebration of the Mozarabic rite.
The pairing of liturgical restoration and the figuration of imperial expansion in the chapel was a strategy of self-fashioning that presented these two endeavors as central to the cardinalâs legacy. The most influential expression of the cardinalâs identity was in the written word, particularly in the form of print culture. Before turning to the frescoes, then, we analyze the textual accounts that provide the most salient context for the visual depiction of the conquest.
1 Textual Accounts of the Campaign
Accounts of the expeditions to Oran and Tripoli circulated in 1509â10 in the form of letters, some of which were widely circulated through subsequent publication. These documents, which are partly private and partly public in nature, became instruments of propaganda about the African campaign and the crusade that it aimed to prepare. That correspondence about the campaigns was viewed as a coherent corpus is clear from a sixteenth-century manuscript that presents a collection of five of the most significant letters, copied together and arranged in chronological order.11 The first letter, penned by the royal chronicler Fernando del Pulgar on the occasion of Pedro Navarroâs departure with Cisneros for Africa, is infused with humanist imagery.12 The second letter is a brief private note from Cisneros to his vicar, Antonio GarcÃa de Villalpando. In it, Cisneros introduces the third letter, a longer communication sent to Villalpando by Cisnerosâs chaplain, the Franciscan Juan de Cazalla.13 The fourth letter, from King Ferdinand to Cisneros, describes the conquest of Tripoli in July 1510.14 The fifth and final letter in the series was written by the grand master of Rhodes to Ferdinand. It cites the kingâs wish to continue the conquest of Africa as far as Egypt.15 Taken together (which may well be how some contemporaries read them), the five letters do two things of interest to us: in addition to narrating events, they illustrate the imbricated relationships between clergy and monarchy that enabled Cisneros to undertake military campaigns.
The letter from Juan de Cazalla provides the earliest description of Cisnerosâs arrival before the battle, an event depicted in the central panel of the chapel frescoes: riding a mule and preceded by a cross, the cardinal blessed the forces and enjoined them to begin the battle (Fig. 3.1, at right). According to Cazalla, Cisneros was the first to enter the city after its fall.16 With such reporting Cazallaâs letter held testimonial primacy, serving as a source not only for Borgoñaâs painting but also for written versions of the narrative in the biographies of Cisneros by Alvar Gómez de Castro, Eugenio de Robles, and Pedro de Aranda Quintanilla y Mendoza. Many epistolary accounts of the conquest of Oran, along with diverse poems, were diffused in the printed broadsides or chapbooks known as pliegos sueltos poeticos.17 These brief and often ephemeral publications form an important corpus of early modern popular literature. According to Vincenç Beltrán, while the earliest pliegos (published before 1510) were mostly associated with the court, its politics, and its devotional culture, romances (strophic ballads) became more common in the pliegos between 1510 and 1516.18 The pliegos about Oran, which belong to the first stage described by Beltrán, constitute early examples of the relaciones de sucesos, narratives of current or recent events that were published both in prose and in verse and that made for effective propaganda due to their accessible style and format.19 A few decades later, pliegos celebrated major events in the reign of Emperor Charles V, including his coronation, his victories, and his peace treaties with France.20
Cazallaâs letter has its own propagandistic elements. At the time of the conquest of Oran, the letter relates, miraculous occurrences were said to have helped the Castilians win the day, including the appearance of a cross that Cazalla claimed to have seen upon arrival:
The first thing I saw in the land of Africa was a cross, and I said then to those who were with me: âIn this sign we shall conquer,â as I had preached on the feast of the Cross before we departed, and they had said that we were going to Africa in search of the Cross.21
This passage alludes pithily to a well-known story about the emperor Constantine. According to the Life of Constantine by Eusebius of Caesarea, before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 the emperor saw a cross of light in the sky accompanied by the words âIn this sign you shall conquer,â leading him to have the Christian chi-rho symbol painted on his soldiersâ shields. In the interpretations of Eusebius and the Latin historian Lactantius, the vision and the victory that followed it inspired Constantineâs conversion to Christianity. Cazallaâs letter approximates Lactantiusâs well-known Latin rendition of the phrase (In hoc signo vinces).22
To contemporary readers, the implications of Cazallaâs allusion would have been clear: aligning Constantineâs victory at the Milvian Bridge with the conquest of Oran framed the African campaign as the inauguration of a new era in which Christianity would triumph. By âgoing to Africa in search of the cross,â Cazalla situated the military campaign in North Africa within the ongoing effort to undertake a new crusade promoted by the Catholic Monarchs. Cazalla reinforced the connection between past and present even further by mentioning his own preaching on the Feast of the Cross before the departure of the expedition. The feast, on 3Â May, commemorated the discovery of the True Cross in Jerusalem in 326 by Helena, the mother of Constantine. Quoting the words of Constantine and alluding directly to the Finding of the Cross, Cazallaâs letter imbued his account of the Oran campaign with the religious authority of the first Christian emperor.
The letter of Cazalla was a major source for one of the first literary tributes to the conquest, MartÃn de Herreraâs poem Historias de la Divinal Victoria de Orán.23 True to the plural in its title, the Historias is a compound text. Its 2,500 lines comprise multiple sections that represent diverse genres of popular literatureâpanegyric, devotional poetry, vernacular biblical poetry, sacred history, and the short pastoral plays known as eclogues. Only one section of the long poem actually tells the story of the conquest of Oran, after recounting in a hagiographical vein the career of Cisneros up to that time.24 The third part of the text is about the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70â¯AD, an event which for Herrera and his contemporaries prefigured the conquest of Oran. The editor of the Historias, Pédro Cátedra, describes the eschatological interpretation of the conquest of Oran that Herreraâs readers shared:
Decades of eschatological drive converge, like a whirlwind, in the vortex of the victory of Oran and in the messianic and providential figure of Cisneros. The taking of Oran is the gateway to a new era and the beginning of the path to a mission sacred to Christianity, the conquest of Jerusalem, which would reinstate the kingdom of Christ on earth before the final Revelation in which the Triumph of Eternity would appear.25
Cátedra argues that there was not only a typological relationship between the conquest of Oran and the destruction of Jerusalem but also a connection between them in the church year: in Toledo, the annual remembrance of the conquest of Oran was on Pentecost Sunday while the liturgical commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem took place on the ninth Sunday after Pentecost.26 Several references in the text to well-known chants reinforce the effect of meaningful resonances associated with specific feast days of symbolic importance. In the poemâs prologue Herrera reports that the news of the conquest arrived on Pentecost at the hour of the Divine Office when the responsory Spiritus domini was sung.27 Cátedra shows the association between the liturgy of Pentecost and the psalm verse Exurgat deus et dissipentur inimici eius (âLet God arise, and let his enemies be scattered,â Psalm 67:2), which tops the frontispiece of the sole edition of the Historias.28 The Marian antiphon Sub tuum presidium (âUnder your protectionâ) appears below a woodcut of the Virgin and Child facing the frontispiece, implying the Virginâs patronage of the conquest.
Contemporaries deployed a variety of references in articulating their view of the conquest of Oran as auguring victory in future expeditions and triumph in the Holy Land. In one passage, Herrera directly addresses the âpreachers of the holy crusade,â admonishing them to âraise their voices like trumpetsâ to announce the indulgences for crusaders and to instruct the religious orders to âpray in the same manner as when Oran was conquered, because their prayers will accomplish more than we do at war.â29 Herrera imagines the Christians of the East united in obedience to Rome to assist in the crusade, with the help of armed forces supplied by the Aragonese kingdom of Naples, the Hospitallers (on Rhodes), and the forces of Ferdinand in Oran:
And if they were enlightened to be obedient to Rome, joined with them we would certainly be doubled against the forces of Mohammed; but even if all nine of these nations strike from Naples and Rhodes and Oran, we will make short work of those dogs.
Y si fuessen illuminadospara obdecer a Roma,nós con ellos ayuntadosbien serÃamos dobladoscontra estos de Mahoma;pero aunque huelguen todasaquestas naciones nuevedende Nápoles y Rodasy Orán haremos bodasdestos canes muy en breve.30
Thus Herrera evokes the newly conquered Oran as one of the points of departure for a new crusade in which Eastern and Western Christians would take up common cause against Muslims.
In addition to its hagiographical and liturgical echoes, the composition of Herreraâs Historias reflects the influence of multiple literary genres, including epic. The author compares Cisneros to Aeneas, establishing the cardinal as a heroic follower of that ancient hero who passed through North Africa. Aeneas knew he was on his way to found Rome, and Cisneros thought he was on the way to conquering Jerusalem. What they had in common was their realization of a divine design through their actions.31
In 1509â10, the same period as the publication of Herreraâs Historias and the letters of Cisneros and Cazalla, other letters with reports of the battle were printed. Such cartas are a genre of history writing. One of them, the Carta de la gran victoria y presa de Orán, printed in Barcelona in 1509, was part of a multimedia ensemble, illustrated by a woodcut of the city of Oran and accompanying villancicos that cast the expedition as one phase of a crusade. Poetry and letters about the conquest of Oran, some of them verse panegyrics to Cisneros, reached a large audience, and did so often through print in the form of pliegos.32 Thus, poetry and print culture were significant vectors of transmission for propaganda about the conquest and its place in the framework of the crusading idea.
2 Oran and Cisneros
Cisneros supported the Oran expedition as a personal crusade, funding it generously from the coffers of the Toledo archbishopric. Appointed by Ferdinand of Aragon as general captain of the campaign, the archbishop, now a Roman cardinal, assumed the burdens of military sponsorship ordinarily associated with secular rulers, covering nearly all the costs of the campaignâfrom the salaries of the soldiers and shipmen to the maintenance of the fleet and the purchase of supplies. As compensation, Oran would become a permanent part of the archdiocese of Toledo and would remain under Cisnerosâs administrative jurisdiction until the vast financial outlay was reimbursed. The king provided the ships for the expedition, though he had balked at the enormous cost of the enterprise.33 Some idea of the financial burden that Cisneros took on and the impediments he had to surmount can be gleaned from a letter to the cathedral canon Diego López de Ayala which the archbishop wrote from his residence at Alcalá on 1 September 1508, almost nine months before the expedition to Oran. He was already deeply ensconced in the practical logistics of organizing soldiers, recruiting mercenaries, and obtaining provisions.34
Figure 3.2
Juan de Borgoña, musicians welcoming Cardinal Cisneros, detail of The Conquest of Oran, fresco, c.1514, Mozarabic Chapel, Toledo Cathedral
Photo: Toledo Cathedral / Iberfoto / Bridgeman Images
The mural paintings of the conquest of Oran render these details on the imposing scale of a monumental surface. In the first panel, Cisneros is shown disembarking from a ship, raising the fingers of one hand in a gesture of blessing to the combatants (Fig. 3.2, at right). He is assisted by a soldier, accompanied by a fellow Franciscan, and preceded by a chaplain. In the central scene (Fig. 3.1), Cisneros approaches the city on a mule behind a cohort of armed soldiers marching under a standard which prominently displays his coat of arms. All these elements of the visual narrative correspond to the descriptions in eyewitness accounts of the conquest, such as Cazallaâs letter, that were penned soon after the victory.
Several elements of the frescoes emphasize the munificence and leading role of Cisneros in the military campaign. His coat of arms appears over the central fresco, thereby situating Oran literally under his aegis and marking the conquest as one of his signal achievements.35 The fact that his garment possesses the brightest and most saturated hue draws attention to his figure, as does the fact that he is pictured wearing a galero, the red, wide-brimmed hat of a cardinal mentioned by Gómez de Castro in his biography of Cisneros: âIn memory of this restoration, a cenotaph was erected in honor of the restorer in the middle of the chapel; hanging over it is the scarlet hat that is the sign of the Cardinalate.â36 The galero, the official hat that cardinals received from the pope at the time of their investiture, was purely symbolic when Borgoña painted the Mozarabic Chapel frescoes. By the late fifteenth century the headgear of cardinals had become the red cap known as the biretta, and the galero was thereafter reserved for use on important occasions, when it was carried (but not worn) as a symbol of the cardinalâs high office.37 As Carol Richardson notes, cardinals were set apart by the colors, cloth, and dye used in their richly tinted garments. During masses celebrated by the pope, cardinal bishops wore the rochet, a white lace-trimmed tunic designated for the highest clergy.38 The image of Cisneros wearing the galero as well as the rochet stresses his ecclesiastical dignity and heightens the ceremonial quality of his processional arrival in Oran. What the frescoes do not show is the absence of Cisneros from the battle itself. On the day of the siege, in consideration of his age, poor health, and ecclesiastical dignity, Pedro Navarro sent him to the nearby garrison of Mazalquivir, where the cardinal prayed for victory while Navarro led the forces. Mazalquivir (Mers el Kébir) had been captured in 1505 by soldiers sponsored by Cisneros.39
Seemingly anecdotal details endow Juan de Borgoñaâs scenes with a degree of historical verisimilitude. A group of military musicians welcomes the disembarking cardinal with trumpets, fife, and drum (Fig. 3.2, at left). On the opposite wall, as Cisneros leaves Oran, captives stand in a neighboring ship with their hands bound, perhaps on their way to accompany him in a display of war booty. (Fig. 3.3). The smallest figures, their hands tied in front of them rather than behind their backs, may represent children who were less of a threat to their captors.
The frescoes did not include some of the most widely noted aspects of the conquest, however. While descriptions of the battle and its aftermath mention thousands of corpses that littered every corner of the conquered city, such casualties are largely absent from Borgoñaâs composition. An exception is the single prone figure in the lower left corner of the central lunette (Fig. 3.1). His short breeches and darker skin tone contrast with the dress and appearance of the advancing soldiers. The fallen manâwho, we can infer, is meant to represent the many who died while defending the cityâappears at the opposite end of the scene from the mounted cardinal (Fig. 3.1, at lower right), their respective positions in the foreground of the lower register mirroring each other with striking symmetry. With their detailed rendering of recent events and multiple appearances of Cisneros at key moments in the narrative, the frescoes are an effective form of propaganda and may also have provided justification for the enormous cost of the campaign, which the cardinal financed from the coffers of his singularly wealthy archbishopric.
Figure 3.3
Juan de Borgoña, captives in ship, detail of The Conquest of Oran, fresco, c.1514, Mozarabic Chapel, Toledo Cathedral
Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photo
Other, more subtle differences can be discerned between the portrayal of events in the frescoes and the historical reality of the siege. The painterâs depiction of the conflict, which follows the textual sources, reinforces the conventional understanding of the victories in the Maghreb as logical outcomes of the Castilian forcesâ overwhelming military superiority. However, the victory at Oran, like others in the period, was prepared in advance by negotiations that had been carried out onsite by mediators whose intervention hastened the capitulation of local authorities. Such diplomacy âfrom belowâ, which was common in the Mediterranean region, was a decisive factor in the outcome of the attack on Oran and in conflicts initiated by Castilians elsewhere in the Maghreb.40 The crucial importance of go-betweens explains the extraordinary ease with which victory was attained, as attested by eyewitnesses. Cisneros himself wrote in his much-cited letter that it was achieved âmore by miracle than by force of armsâ (más por misterio que por fuerça de armas).41 Early accounts note that the North African soldiers defending Oran in battle near the port were unable to take refuge within the city because all the gates were suddenly closed to them, and they could not scale the walls, which sealed their fate and that of the city as a whole. As Escribano-Paéz points out, Alvar Gómez de Castro, in his 1569 biography of Cisneros, attributed the exclusion of the defending soldiers to a decision made in Oran to collaborate with the invading army.42 Gómez de Castro, for his part, alluded to intrigues on the ground before the battleânegotiations by mediators, including the Venetian clergyman Juan Rena.43 Thus the remarkable speed of the victory, cited by Cisneros in his letter, was as much the result of earlier actions undertaken by intermediaries as it was a consequence of the siege itself. The depiction of the campaign in the frescoes, like the textual accounts on which it was based, constitutes a partial vision that simplifies the nature of the event for the purposes of rhetorical effect.
As we have seen, descriptions of the conquest were available in print, including Cisnerosâs missive, which was printed in Toledo in the same year.44 Such texts were likely to have been sources for iconography of the frescoes, which therefore would have appeared to be authentic witnesses of the conquest. The same air of authenticity extended to various amplifications of Cisnerosâs role in Oran. Where viewers saw him approaching the city on a mule they could have perceived echoes of the adventus, an ancient imperial tradition of a rulerâs triumphal entry into a city. The adventus was also the model for the biblical account of Christâs entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey. In many cities in medieval and early modern Europe, rituals of entry were performed with elaborate ceremonial. An instance close in place and time to the production of the Mozarabic Chapel frescoes is Ferdinand of Aragonâs entry into Valladolid in 1513.45 One obvious antecedent for Cisnerosâs entry into Oran was the triumphal entry of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, into Granada, capital of the newly conquered Nasrid kingdom, in 1492. On this occasion, thanks were given to the Virgin Mary and Santiago for the victory.46 The associations of these saints with military victories over Muslims also guided Cisnerosâs dedication of two mosques in Oran to Santa MarÃa de la Victoria and to Santiago respectively on 20Â May.
On 24 May Cisneros returned to Cartagena so as to report to the court and continue preparations for the ongoing crusade in North Africa, according to Cazalla. In fact, however, Cisneros left Oran because of disagreements with Navarro, whom the king later replaced with Fernández de Córdoba.47 The cardinalâs departure from the conquered city just four days after the battle was widely criticized, then defended with official justifications, and Cisneros sent numerous missives from Cartagena in an effort to gain control over narratives of the conquest.48 Thereafter, he dedicated considerable correspondence to the administration of the new presidio in Oran, which he claimed for the archbishopric of Toledo on the basis of the agreement reached previously with King Ferdinand. Just as there were disparities between the frescoesâ triumphal visual presentation of the conquest and the textual narratives, there were, likewise, tensions between the public accounts of the campaign and Cisnerosâs intentions.
3 Oran and the Mozarabic Rite
The commission of the frescoes for the very space of the Mozarabic riteâs performance in Toledo Cathedral shows that Cisneros perceived a connection between the rite and the conquest of Oran. Putting the two projects on permanent display in the chapel created a lasting thematic bond between them as twin manifestations of the cardinalâs patronage. This linkage was noted inâand perpetuated byâearly modern descriptions of the chapel. The writing of Eugenio de Robles provides a key example while at the same time underscoring the decisive role played by Borgoñaâs frescoes in fixing the pair in memory.
Even a chapter title in Roblesâs Compendio suggests that the relationship between the chapel and the battle was perceived as intrinsic: âOn the foundation of the unique and singular Chapel of Corpus Christi, which they call [that] of the Mozarabs, of the holy church of Toledo: and the conquest of the city of Oran by our most illustrious Cardinal.â49 In this part of the biography we follow Robles on a guided tour as he accounts for each part of the Mozarabic Chapel and catalogues the objects in it, beginning with an iron gate bearing the arms of Cisneros.50 It is then through a description of the chapel and its wall painting that Robles approaches the archbishopâs North African conquest. When the writer finally arrives at the fresco depicting Oran, he transcribes the lengthy Latin titulus (inscription) that appears below the painting. Although the Latin text is no longer visible today, a transcription of it in the Compendio enables us to read it as one of the early accounts of the conquest.51
The titulus, which provides a textual a narrative for the frescoes, began with a lengthy passage (following the convention of citing the regnal year) dating the conquest to the sixth year of the reign of Pope Julius II and situating it in the reign of Joanna of Castile, whose father Ferdinand the Catholic was regent of Aragon and the two Sicilies [e.g. Sicily and Naples] in 1509.52 The remainder of the titulus recounts the stages of the campaign with Cisneros as protagonist. I paraphrase: the archbishop departed from the port of Cartagena with a vast fleet of ships, arriving in two days (on 18 May) in Mazalquivir, where they stayed overnight; the following day, after the battle, the invading forces expelled the enemy, entered Oran, and raised âthe standard of the Christiansâ on the city walls; once all the gates were opened, âall the faithfulâ entered and killed four thousand of the enemy, taking the citadel within four hours.
The titulus concludes the account with an invocation of the divinity: âOnly thirty of ours were lost, by the will of God, who lives completed in the Trinity and rules eternally. Amen.â53 The text frames the conquest as the triumph of Christian faithful over unspecified enemies, interpreting the extended campaign of Spanish imperial expansion along the North African coast as a holy war in the manner of a crusade. As Eva Botella-Ordinas notes, âSpanish imperial ideologyâs main argument was theological.â This insight helps us see the titulusâreproduced and disseminated by the Compendioânot only as a narrative inscription but also as an instrument of empire.54
Following his transcription of the Latin text, Robles translates into Castilian only the dating clause, then reviews the circumstances surrounding the campaign: hesitant to undertake a costly military action, Ferdinand of Aragon turned to Cisneros, who agreed to support the initiative to serve God and the king, and even to spill his own blood.55 Robles dwells at length on the provisions and forces required for the expedition, listing in order the precise numbers and types of ships, soldiers, weapons, and foodstuffs as well as horsesâall evidence of the archbishopâs generosity and careful planning.
Roblesâs account turns from historical description of the expedition to exegesis of its religious symbolism. The late setting of the sun on the day of the battle, for instance, is taken as an instance of biblical typology, demonstrating that God granted âour Cardinal and Captain of his Church the privilege that the Old Testament accorded to another valorous captain of his people, the Jew Joshua.â56 In construing these events as auspicious, Robles followed established tradition: celestial signs, omens, and other phenomena deemed miraculous are tropes in writing on the first four Crusades.57 Roblesâs account details the cardinalâs role in sacralizing the battle by means of liturgical and other ritual elements. For example, after they disembarked, priests and members of religious orders sang the hymn Vexilla regis, which begins with the words âthe Kingâs banners.â58 This processional hymn by the late-antique poet Venantius Fortunatus was typically sung during the liturgical procession of the Cross on Good Friday. Fortunatus wrote it in 569 for the solemn procession accompanying a relic of the True Cross (sent by the emperor Justinian, r. 527â565) as it entered the city of Poitiers, where it would be kept in the monastery founded by Saint Radegund.59 In the context of Roblesâs account, the choice of the âKingâs bannersâ could be perceived as referring to Ferdinand of Castile as well as to the idea that the conquest of Oran was instrumental to the crusade to Jerusalem envisioned by Cisneros. Robles relates that after leaving his ship the cardinal preached a sermon to the knights, soldiers, captains, inciting them to battle. Although he remained in Mazalquivir during the offensive, Cisneros prayed so vigorously that by the end he was completely drenched in sweat.60
The Dominican friar Juan de Marieta, a contemporary of Robles, likened the cardinal praying for victory during the battle at Oran to the attitude of Moses before the crossing of the Red Sea. Marieta included Cisneros among the Spanish saints as part of the ongoing campaign to canonize him. According to Marieta, âinfidelsâ besieging Oran in 1573 were terrified by the spectacle of a âfriar Franciscoâ wearing a cardinalâs hat as he defended the port. The miraculous apparition, which reoccurred many times thereafter, was believed to be none other than Cisneros himself (thirty-six years after his death), identifiable by the combination of Franciscan habit with the symbolic galero.61 Thus, in addition to his sacramental role, the cardinal was credited with protecting Oran in perpetuity. Baltasar Porreño (1569â1639), quoting Robles, describes the miraculous appearance of Cisneros as a santo Conquistador:
The citizens and soldiers of Oran with full throat proclaim our Cardinal the Conqueror Saint, stating it to be very true that he appeared many times, like another Apostle Santiago, at the port and on the walls of their city, dressed in his archiepiscopal garb, with his pastoral staff, and a drawn sword, defending the city valiantly from the assaults of the unbelievers who sought to return it to their power.62
The visual arts similarly inform the comparison of Cisneros to Santiago, which takes on heightened meaning in the context of contemporary images of Saint James as Moorslayer (Matamoros) seated on a white horse and brandishing a drawn sword. The iconography of the moorslayer originated in the legend of the Battle of Clavijo, according to which the saint appeared in this guise in 834 when forces of King Ramiro I of Asturias and the emir of Cordoba clashed near Clavijo. The fiction of the battleâs historicity was perpetuated by its inclusion in the thirteenth-century chronicle by the Toledan archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.63
Descriptions of Cisneros as a new Santiago highlight the militancy of the archbishop as a key figureâand, in the case of Oran, a leaderâin a wider crusade that sought to establish a Spanish empire in the Mediterranean, with Ferdinand reigning as king of Jerusalem. Deploying the image of Santiago Matamoros to describe the postmortem interventions of Cisneros effectively connected his persona with a saint whose cult had taken on a military dimension after the First Crusade.64 The Order of Santiago, founded in the last quarter of the twelfth century, had the mission of eliminating Muslims from the Iberian peninsula as well as of protecting pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela.
The role of Santiago as a supernatural military leader is also cited in one of the first eyewitness accounts of the conquest of Oran, the letter of Juan de Cazalla, which states that the Spanish forces were as vigorous as if God and Santiago were their captains.65 Cazalla wrote at a time when the iconography of Santiago was becoming increasingly violent.66 By the early seventeenth century, when Robles and Porreño published their histories, the image of Santiago Matamoros with drawn sword, his horse trampling the bodies of Muslims, could be seen in churches throughout the Iberian peninsula.67 Recent controversies around the iconography of Santiago Matamoros illustrate the need to concede that such violent images, while troubling, were also integral parts of a historical context in which the slaying of Muslims was considered not only sanctioned by divine authority but even celebrated as a sign of the saintâs power.
Commentators rarely note the implications of the martial iconography in the Mozarabic Chapel other than to acknowledge its place in the dominant anti-Muslim ideology of the period. In addition to conveying a visually impressive interpretation of past events, however, such images actively shaped ideas about the meaning of the places, persons, and events depicted. The frescoes furthered the normalization of imperial conquest and advanced the notion that the North African campaign was Cisnerosâs contribution to a crusade-like holy war. According to Erika Dolphin, Cisneros saw as models for the conquest of Oran the earlier victories of Ferdinand and Isabella as well as Alfonso VIâs capture of Toledo in 1085.68 His contemporaries also perceived such parallels: Cazallaâs letter states that Oran, with its fine houses, âseems to be Toledo.â69 On close inspection, the gates and walls of Oran as represented by Borgoña do bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Toledo. In the minds of their early viewers, the frescoes may have echoed earlier triumphs, thereby amplifying the archbishopâs place in the imperial project.
Among the frescoesâ precedents are three-dimensional images of the conquest of Granada adorning the choirstalls in the lower choir of Toledo Cathedral. These wood carvings, commissioned by Cisnerosâs predecessor, Pedro González de Mendoza (archbishop of Toledo from 1482â95), were produced between 1489 and 1496 under the direction of Rodrigo Alemán.70 The sculptures were conceived during the wars with the kingdom of Granada, and thus depict events that were quite recent at the time.71 It was in the lower choir, according to the royal chronicler Fernando del Pulgar, that the Catholic Monarchs had given standards and insignia to the master of the Order of Santiago in support of war âagainst the Moors.â72 The cathedral enacted historical memory of prior wars against Muslims in other ways as well. Each year, a ceremony at the high altar commemorated the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in which Alfonso VIII of Castile, along with Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon, had defeated the forces of the Almohad caliph Muḥammad al-NÄá¹£ir in 1212.73 New plainchant offices were created for the liturgical remembrance of this turning point in the political history of the Iberian peninsula.74
Other precedents for the frescoes in the Mozarabic Chapel were the large tapestries that usually decorated more secular, courtly settings.75 As Felipe Pereda has pointed out, the various artistic projects carried out under González de Mendozaâs patronage demonstrate that, since at least 1482, he had interpreted the expansionist politics of the Crown as providential and foundational for a âuniversalâ monarchy with an evangelizing mission.76 Cisneros, in turn, wanted viewers of the fresco in the Mozarabic Chapel to understand Oran as his providential extension of the Spanish kingdoms. Long after his lifetime, with the siege of Oran as a backdrop, the liturgy was witnessed not only by the Mozarabic chaplains but also by rulers and other august visitorsâprecisely the striking visual juxtaposition underlined by Robles in his Compendio.
4 Framing History
Roblesâs account of the conquest of Oran, we have noted, emphasizes Cisnerosâs involvement as a military leader as well as erudite churchman. These were the two facets of the cardinalâs identity most frequently invoked in the seventeenth century, and they are also central to the verse paratexts that frame Roblesâs writings on Cisneros in their printed form. These poems, composed by Toledan ecclesiastics, are not usually cited in discussions of the Compendio, but they should be, since they contributed to the print panegyric shaping the memory of Cisneros. In rhetorically charged language, the sonnets develop a number of important themes in his life, adding a layer of commentary to Roblesâs prose. The particular interest of the paratexts for this chapter lies in their memorialization of Cisneros through references to the conquest of Oran, to the Mozarabic Chapel, and to the rite itself.
The Compendio is prefaced by five sonnets and a Latin epigram. The first sonnet was written by Pedro Vaca de Herrera, regidor (alderman) of Toledo and a member of the poetic academy of the Conde de Fuensalida, which met in Toledo in 1602â3.77 Vaca de Herreraâs sonnet begins with an allusion to the opening hexameter of Virgilâs Aeneid, âI sing of arms and the manâ (Arma virumque cano), which reinforces the martial tone of the opening lines. Readers of the Compendio would have recalled that Aeneas, like Cisneros, had made history on the shores of North Africa, albeit in quite a different way. The poet enjoins Robles to sing with a resonant voice about the deeds of Cisneros, who bore the weight of the church on his powerful arm:
Sing [of] arms and the famous man who longs for uncertain, haughty Glory; with a high accent and sonorous voice write proud deeds in legendary order. Sing joyfully [of] the unconquered, powerful arm on which the weight of his Church rests, and [the arm that] vanquished the barbarian of Oran and humiliated the savage neck. May his false history surrender to time, which abhors vain things; disproven, [it gives way] to continuous proofs. May your history remain in high glory traversing time through the ages, and may it grow with the verdure of new branches.
Cante las armas, y el varón famoso,quien apetece incierta Gloria altiva:con alto acento, y voz sonora escrivavanos hechos, en orden fabuloso.Vos, el invicto braço poderoso,en quien el peso de su Yglesia estriva,y al barbaro de Oran vence y derribala indomita cerviz, cantad gozoso.De aquel se rinda la fingida historiaal tiempo, que aborrece vanidades,desvanecida a las continuas pruevas;la vuestra permanezca en alta gloria,discurriendo del tiempo en las edades:y crezca con verdor de ramas nuevas.78
The song that Robles is commanded to sing has two meanings that literally resonate with the aims of the Compendio. The opening allusion to the Aeneid implicitly compares the biography that is the Compendio to an ancient-style epic in which Cisneros is the heroic protagonist. At the same time, the song symbolizes the chant of the Mozarabic rite, which Robles, as a Mozarabic chaplain, sang regularly. In the second quatrain, just as in the Mozarabic Chapel, the conquest of Oran figures prominently.
The second prefatory sonnet, by Gregorio de Angulo, is addressed to the portrait of Cisneros engraved by Petrus Angelus that appeared in the edition. Robles is again cast as an epic poet singing of the deeds of Cisneros âand learned voice that sings your featsâ (y docta voz que tus prohezas canta). The verses compare the verbal portrait of Cisneros in the Compendio to the visual one rendered in bronze by the point of the burin (an engraving tool). Angulo concludes the sonnet with an evocation of the cardinalâs dual roles as churchman and soldier:
Let the burin on hard bronze and the learned voice that sings your feats, accomplish the divine will, which brings this effigy to light in the pure air. Immortal, both here [i.e., on earth] and there, on the lofty wheel [i.e., the heavens], you secure the holy place, and it is your memory that terrifies the infidel, column of faith, wall of peace. Heaven guards your fire eternally, and crowning you, calls you conqueror, and the world offers incense to your holy name, because you are owed with double fame (Wise Prelate, valorous Captain) double honor, ever more immense.
Execute el buril, el bronce duroy docta voz que tus prohezas cantala voluntad divina, que levantaesta efigie a la luz del ayre puro.Aqui y alli inmortal pones seguro,en la alta rueda, la sagrada planta;y es tu memoria, que al infiel espanta,columna de la fe, de la paz muro.Guarda el cielo tu lumbre eternamente,que a coronarte vencedor te llama,y al santo nombre ofrece el mundo incienso.Que a ti se deve con doblada fama(Sabio Prelado, Capitan valiente)doblado honor, y cada qual inmenso.
This sonnet appears to cite Roblesâs reference to Cisneros being acclaimed as the conquistador. Possibly there is also an allusion to Juan de Marietaâs Historia ecclesiastica (known to Robles and cited by him, as we have seen), in which the word espanto describes how the sight of the âfriar Francis with a cardinalâs hat,â identified as the long-dead Cisneros, âcaused the pagans terrible frightâ (ponia a los Paganos terrible espanto). It was, indeed, his memory that terrified the âinfidel,â as this poem phrases it (al infiel espanta).79
While the first and second sonnets thematize Roblesâs biography, addressing him as author of the work and approaching its subject by way of the portrait published in the edition, the remaining three prefatory poems turn to the clergy of Toledo Cathedral. The third sonnet preceding the main text of the Compendio was penned by José de Valdivielso (1565â1638), a chaplain of the Mozarabic Chapel and curate of the Church of San Torcuato.80 The poem is addressed to the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas (1546â1618, archbishop of Toledo from 1599):
The white Swan (whose feathers of gold the sun of the sempiternal Orient burnishes), floating on the current in the river of glory, sings a song as sweet as it is sonorous. I heard the cry of his thirteen cygnets, who tenderly beg him (as they would a father) to ask the resplendent red pastor [i.e., the cardinal], to guard their nest, which is the choir of heaven. He turned to Bernard full of stars, Christian Argos, whose beautiful lights [i.e., eyes] watch over the Church, and said: âDefend my nest, good shepherd; your Stars thereby transformed into Suns, you shall ascend to the circle of the two-time son.â
El blanco Cisne (cuyas plumas de oro,retoca el sol del siempre eterno Oriente)que en el rio de gloria, a la corriente,canta, no menos dulce que sonoro.De sus polluelos treze escuchè el lloro,que como a padre, ruegan tiernamente,pixa al roxo pastor resplandeciente,guarde su nido, que es del cielo coro.Al Bernardo bolvio, de estrellas lleno,Argos Christiano, cuyas luzas bellas,velan sobre la Yglesia, y assi dixo:Defiendeme mi nido, pastor bueno,assi buelta en Soles tus Estrellas,Subas al roto del dos vezes hijo.
The sweet and resonant song of the swan (playing on the name Cisneros) stands in for the chant of the liturgy that the archbishop had perpetuated in the chapel with his endowment, the coins of those funds figuring here as golden feathers. The offspring of the swan are the thirteen Mozarabic chaplains imploring the cardinal to maintain and support the foundation. The stars that are transformed into suns refer to the heraldry of the Rojas familyâthere being five stars on the right side of the coat of arms of Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas.81 By opening with the dawn and closing with the stars, the sonnet frames the chapelâs history from its foundation by a former archbishop to its hope of patronage under the current one, Cardinal Bernardo.
The fourth prefatory sonnet, addressed by Martin Chacon to Cisneros himself, evokes the foundation of the chapelâs thirteen Mozarabic chaplaincies, continuing the metaphor of the chaplains as singing birds, the young offspring of the chapelâs founder:
The thirteen little birds you chose (bending your ear to their angelic harmony), illustrious Prince, you placed where the Tagus swiftly flows. With the ancient songs that you gave them, the songs that Time sought to bury, every day they bring to light joyous hymns, and sad dirges. Among those [birds], with a gallant tone, in the branches of an Oak Tree [i.e., Robles, the author], a goldfinch with a subtle throat stopped his flight. Sir, listen attentively to the writing which holds all heaven hanging; it is your deeds that he sings to the world.
Los treze paxarillos que escogistes,inclinado a su angelica armonia,y adonde Tajo mas veloz corria,illustrissimo Principe pusistes.Con las viejas canciones que les distes,a quien el tiempo sepultar queria,al sol le hazen salua cada dia,de alegres hymnos, y de endechas tristes.Entre los quales, con gallardo acento,en las ramas de un Roble, parò el bueloun sirguerillo de subtil garganta,Oyd, señor, la letre un poco atento,que pues tiene suspenso a todo el cielo,hazañas vuestras son, que al mundo canta.
While the fourth sonnet figuratively introduces Robles among the chaplains, through both the name of the oak tree and the figure of the author-goldfinch perched in it, the fifth sonnet, by Alonso Palomino (1573â1637), is addressed to Robles as one of the Mozarabic chaplains and does not take up the theme of the Mozarabic rite (for which reason we pass over it here).
Following the five prefatory sonnets is a Latin epigram by the priest Francisco Gutiérrez, which refers to the Mozarabs as âmixed with Arabs,â following the most common etymology.82 The poem enjoins the reader to learn the Mozarabic rite and celebrates Cisnerosâs endowment of it when little remained of its celebration:
Learn the ancient rites of the Mozarabs for the holy sacrifices, and [learn] the prayers they bore to God and those on high [i.e., the saints]. When our nourishing faith weaned our forefathers, she gave pleasant cakes to this youthful people. She refreshed her nurslings who were mixed with those of the Arab nation, and she lay hidden as if in a small seed. There remained scarcely any Gothic traces of observance; what had fallen away was restored by the wealth of Ximénez. For the devout master who accomplished so many things while alive sang more sweetly as a dying swan [i.e., his bequest to the chapel]. Nor is it surprising what remains of the ancient oak tree after this, if already new oaks flow with sweet honey.
Muzarabum priscos ad sacra piacula ritusdisce, Deo, et superis quas retulere preces.Alma fides nostros quando ablactavit avitos,impuberi haec populo crustula blanda dedit.His arabum genti mixtos recreavit alumnos,et velut in parvo semine delituit.Gottica vix aderant aliquot vestigia cultus,Lapsaque Ximenii restituuntur ope.Nam pius Antistes qui tot, dum vita, peregit,Dulcius hoc cecinit iam moriturus Olor.Nec mirum antiquo maneat quod robore post hac,si nova iam dulci robora melle fluunt.
Here, Christianity in Toledo is personified as a mother weaning her children (the Mozarabs) and introducing them to solid food while they lived under Muslim rule. While drawn from the common Christian symbol of the church as mother, the verse âimpuberi haec populo crustula blanda deditâ verbally echoes an oft-cited verse from the Satires of Horace describing teachers who motivate boys to learn by giving them cakes.83 The image of the Christian faith hidden in a seed alludes obliquely to a parable in the synoptic Gospels where the kingdom of heaven is compared to a diminutive mustard seed that grows into a vast tree (Matthew 13:31â32, Mark 4:30â32, and Luke 13:18â19). By implication, the emergence of the tree is likened to Christianity in Toledo after the conquest of 1085. The poem also closes with a vegetal metaphor: while the old oak tree is Robles, the ânewâ oaks flowing with honey, evoked in the final verse, poetically figure the replenishment of the Mozarabic Chapel clergy with new arrivals, who multiply and thrive like shoots from a tree.
Together, the sonnets and epigram prefacing Roblesâs Compendio employ vivid imagery to complement and frame the remembrance of Cisneros that the prose biography accomplished. While these poems place the greatest emphasis on Cisnerosâs role as founder of the Mozarabic Chapel, the first two sonnets affirm the cardinalâs military feats specifically in relation to the conquest of Oran, so prominently on display in the Mozarabic Chapel.
The image of Cisneros as both man of arms and man of letters also informs the accompanying poems and the main text of Roblesâs short treatise on the Mozarabic rite, the Breve suma, which is an excerpt from his Compendio.84 Like the Compendio, the Breve suma is framed by sonnets that pay tribute to Cisnerosâs gift of a long life for the Mozarabic rite.
The first prefatory sonnet, by José de Valdivielso, is addressed to the cathedral chapter. With vivid language, it contrasts the inevitable ravages of death and time with the survival of the Mozarabic rite (alluding also to the legendary duel and the trial by fire):
Let worm-eaten death stain with blood her cruel scythe in fatal victory; war, in its absolute glory, may take a second life away from the holy honor. Timeâswift, fierce, and deadlyâmay sully deeds worthy of immortal memory. Fire may rob human history of the rightful recompense due to virtue. God protects the holy Gothic office from the effects of time and death, scorching fire and angry Mars. The instruments of his strong arm being a pastor celebrated for his Swans, and you, Senate, who humble all.85
Ensangriente la muerte carcomidaLa cruel segur, con la mortal victoria,Quite la guerra en su tyrana gloriaAl honor santo la segunda vida,Huelle el tiempo veloz, fiero, homicida,Los hechos dignos de inmortal memoria,El fuego robe de la humana historiaLa justa paga a la virtud debida.Que contra lo que pueden tiempo y muerte,El fuego abrasador, y Marte ayrado,Guarda Dios el oficio santo Godo.Siendo instrumentos de su braço fuerteun pastor de sus Cisnes celebrado,y vos, Senado, a quien lo humilla todo.
The direct address to the âSenateâ (the chapter) also refers to the bishop (the pastor) as united with the canons in their continuance of Cisnerosâs program.
The second prefatory sonnet, this one by Alonso Palomino, portrays Cisneros as both humanist and soldier. The pairing of learning and military prowess is the central conceit of the poem:
From this day forth let the universal dispute that arms and letters waged now cease, for they have reached a truce in the one who is learned in letters and in arms. They will see how important to the world it is that the scholar and the soldier who defends himself with letters and with arms understands both letters and arms. You will see that the Archbishop, Brother Francis, with letters and arms, in peace and in War, has been the truce between them and an example for the world. With arms he conquered Moorish Oran, with letters he earned heaven, and on earth he left his memory in his sacred temple.
Cesse desde oy la universal contiendaque las armas y letras han tenido,pues a estar tan conformes han venidoen quien de letras y armas se deprenda.El letrado, el soldado, que defiendacon letras, o con armas su partido,veran quan importante al mundo ha sidoque junto letras y armas comprehenda.Verà que el Arçobispo fray Francisco,con letras y armas, en la paz y en Guerra,ha sido de ellas paz, y al mundo exemplo.Vencio con armas el Oran Morisco,ganò el cielo por letras, a la tierradexò memoria en su sagrado templo.
The phrase âarms and lettersâ permeates Palominoâs sonnet, intensifying through repetition the contrast between the two and thus lending emphasis to their remarkable conjuncture in Cisneros. Even the order of the terms in each phrase conveys a subtle meaning. Whereas the first instance presents the more common formulation âarms and letters,â the subsequent five references reverse the order to âletters and arms,â acknowledging the primary identity of Cisneros as a letrado and the predominance of his learned endeavors over his military ones. The symmetrical positioning of the âarms and letters / letters and armsâ phrases within the verses sets them off to underline their symbolism: lines 4 and 8 end with clauses describing Cisneros as mastering letters and arms (en quien de letras y armas se deprenda and que junto letras y armas comprehenda) while âwith letters and armsâ appears at the beginning of lines 6 and 10.
After evoking the joining of arms and letters figuratively in the first eleven verses of the sonnet, the final three verses turn to the historical context, citing Cisnerosâs victory at Oran and philological achievements as accomplished respectively with arms and letters. A verb in the preterite at the start of each of these three verses (vencio, ganò, dexò) reinforces the coherence of the concluding triplet as a separate unit. Palomino closes the sonnet with the image of Cisnerosâs legacy of memoria, meaning both the memory of the man himself and the continued celebration of the Mozarabic rite in the chapel he had founded âin his sacred temple.â
By invoking the âuniversal disputeâ of arms and letters, the sonnet positions Cisneros in relation to the longstanding trope of a conflict between them as radically different skills. Unlike other instances of the arms and letters debate, however, Palominoâs sonnet applies the concept in an encomium to a venerable churchman, by contrast with the usual subjects of this discourse, who were laymen. Perhaps the most famous example of the arms and letters debate in Spanish literature of the period is in the first part of Cervantesâs Don Quixote, which was published in 1605, just two years after Palominoâs sonnet in the Breve suma.86 In a speech over dinner, the eponymous protagonist compares the occupations of letters and arms, first extolling the military life (in chapter 37), then condemning the dangers of war to which soldiers are exposed (in chapter 38). Part of his speech ventriloquizes these two occupations as personified entities:
Letters say that without them, arms cannot maintain themselves, for war, too, has its laws and is governed by them, and laws belong to the domain of letters and men of letters. To this arms make answer that without them letters cannot be maintained.87
As in Don Quixote, Palominoâs sonnet may reflect a retrospective view rather than a contemporary notion of competition between arms and letters.88 According to Anne J. Cruz, by the seventeenth century âthe conflict between arms and letters, as envisioned in Don Quixoteâs archaic mindset, no longer held any ideological currency.â89 The changing socioeconomic landscape of early modern Spain and altered conditions of warfare lessened the distance between educated letrados (such as lawyers) and military professionals, who were increasingly active as writers.90 Cervantes himself was both a military man and a writer; immediately following the arms and letters speech in Don Quixote is the section known as the Captiveâs Tale, which is a semiautobiographical account of the authorâs own captivity in Argel.91 Embedded in the Captiveâs Tale are poems that include criticism of Spanish expansion in North Africa under Charles V.92 Thus, Palominoâs evocation of the contrast between arms and letters, like Cervantesâs, seems to be reminiscent of sixteenth-century courtly ideals.
Indeed, Palominoâs portrait of Cisneros as the union of arms and letters may reflect the influence of sixteenth-century poetry, specifically the oft-quoted dictum ânow the sword, now the penâ in the third eclogue of the Toledan soldier-poet Garcilaso de la Vega (c.1501â36): âAmid the arms of bloody Mars where there is scarcely anyone who can oppose his fury, I stole this brief quantity of time, wielding now the sword, now the penâ (Entre las armas del sangriento Marte, do apenas ay quien su furor contraste, hurté de tiempo aquesta breve suma, tomando ora la espada, ora la pluma).93 Ignacio Navarrete notes that the poemâs construction implies a combination of arms and letters rather than the need to choose between them: the contraction of vowels in the final verse of this passage (audible when the poem is read aloud, albeit not visible in its written form) has the effect of assigning the same number of syllables to the words âswordâ and âpen.â94 The resultant verbal conjunction thus conveys the junction of the two, which was embodied in Garcilaso himself.
Palomino must have known Garcilasoâs tenth sonnet, which was widely imitated in the sixteenth century. Thus, the exemplary fusion of arms and letters embodied by Cisneros in Palominoâs sonnet may be an intentional adaptation of Garcilasoâs image to suit an ecclesiastical figure who represented just as much a meeting of opposites.95 The poet and the archbishop were in fact acquainted, at least through correspondence, as witnessed by an autograph letter sent to Cisneros around 1496 by Garcilaso, at that time an ambassador in Rome.96
Following the text of Roblesâs Breve suma are two further sonnets, one addressed to the author by Don Juan Vaca de Herrera and the other addressed to Cisneros by the Toledo clergyman Juan MartÃnez. (We pass over the first one, as it does not focus on Cisneros.) The second poem tellingly brings out a number of themes showing the close linkage between the rite and the archbishop himself:
Since you, Swan/Cisneros, are silent, I raise my voice, though you will hear the voices of the chorus of the rite to which the Moor Muza Arabe gave his name, for it is a Holy Office. Thanks to your sweet and miraculous song, Toledo esteems and enjoys this treasure; gold in the veins of the earth would not be esteemed or valued as highly. You are the Sun that has revealed this gold and the Laurel Tree that preserved these relics and these remains from the lightning bolt of oblivion. And since ignorance conceals them, a son of yours who has produced this [book] presents it to your eyes like an Eagle.97
Pues vos Cisne callays, mi vos levanto,aunque oyres en el cielo las del coro,del rezo, a quien Muza Arabe Morosu nombre dio, con ser oficio santo.Por vuestro dulce y milagroso cantoToledo estima y goza este tesoroque en las arterias de la tierra, el oroni se estimara, ni valiera tanto.Vos soys el Sol que aqueste oro descubre,y el Laurel, que del rayo del olvidopreservò estas reliquias y despojos.Y por que la ignorancia los encubre,un hijo vuestro que este ha producido,como Aguila lo saca a vuestros ojos.
The poem plays with the name of Cisneros (cisne, âswanâ) and refers to one of the competing etymologies of the word Muzarabe, the variant according to which the Mozarabic communities took the name of a Muslim general, as seen in chapter 2. This sonnet was published just six years before the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. Likening the rite unearthed by Cisneros to gold mined from veins in the earth evokes both his restoration of the chant and his commissioning of the editions, which brought to light texts that had been hidden in faded and inscrutable manuscripts. Although Cisneros/the swan is silent, his song persistsâin both the Mozarabic chant sung in the chapel and his endowment perpetuating the celebration of the rite.
Cisneros had rescued the rite from the cumulative effects of time and neglect, and perpetuated it in print as well as endowing its performance. As we will see, early modern publications ofâand commentaries onâthe rite framed it as a monument to the archbishopâs personal initiative, while also attesting to a nostalgic, somewhat mythological idea of a Christian community that had existed continuously through time. This doubly commemorative reception of the Mozarabic rite extends from Cisneros through the eighteenth century and beyond, into the modern historiography of Spain. In the process, memory of the rite continued to develop in relation to monarchy and empire.
5 The Rite in the Eighteenth Century
Under the Spanish Bourbons, the relationship between the Mozarabic rite and the monarchy was rendered more explicit than it had been at any time since the rule of the Catholic Monarchs. The Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel (1719â62) was engaged by the government of Ferdinand VI (1747â59) to comb the archives for evidence to support the Spanish Crownâs prerogatives over ecclesiastical property, claimed in decades of negotiations between the kingâs ministers and the Vatican. Leading the Commission on the Archives in Toledo from 1749 to 1755, Burriel carried out extensive research on the history of the liturgy, which he considered an essential component of Spanish national identity and of direct relevance to the Bourbon monarchy. In the 1740s, he went so far as to propose that a new edition of the Mozarabic rite, intended for parish use, should be adopted in a royal foundation at the court in Madrid as well as in the Mozarabic chapels where the rite was celebrated in Toledo, Salamanca, and Palencia.98 Introducing the Mozarabic liturgy at court would have affirmed the importance of the rite for the Bourbonsâ deployment of neo-Gothic ideology. Yet another way in which Burriel related the Mozarabic rite to Bourbon regalism was by preparing an edition of the MonarquÃa de España by Toledan historian Pedro Salazar de Mendoza (1549â1629). Although Salazar de Mendoza had penned the treatise in the seventeenth century, its articulation of political theory was readily adapted to the Bourbon dynastyâs appropriation of the Visigothic legacy.99
Burriel linked the medieval rite to the Bourbons most directly with the handmade parchment fascimile of a Mozarabic liturgical manuscript he presented to Ferdinand VI in 1755. Executed in full color and with painstaking detail by the virtuoso calligrapher Francisco Xavier Palomares, this extraordinary object illustrates with vivid immediacy the religious legacy that Burriel summarized for the king in a dedicatory preface.100 In this text, as in other commentaries, he describes the Mozarabic manuscripts in Toledo Cathedral as witnesses to the continuity of belief in the rulers from the Visigoths to the present:
These books are so many witnesses, most worthy of veneration for their antiquity and without comparison for their authenticity; they proclaim and cry out that Your Majesty believes, confesses, and venerates with all his Spanish Catholic vassals the same [things] that all Your Majestyâs royal ancestors believed, confessed, and venerated with all their vassals for more than 1,200 years since the Catholic Kings Saint Hermenegild, and his brother the Catholic King Reccared.101
Burriel portrayed the Mozarabic rite as a reflection of the monarchy itself at a time when there were local attempts to undermine the ancient liturgy in Toledo, citing those who wished to âdo away with the foundations of Ximénez and to invalidate the concessions given to the Mozarabs, when they only needed to correct the abuses that there were.â Moreover, Burriel wrote, âall should agree to maintain that which I judge to be the greatest and most solid glory of the nation.â102 Similar language appears in a petition from the clergy of the six Mozarabic parishes for royal patronage (patronato real) to support their liturgy, which they called âthe most glorious crest and shield that could be made for Spain to the envy of foreign nations.â103 The clergy claimed that they could not maintain a properly dignified celebration of the rite without the tithes paid by the members of their parishes, a longstanding arrangement that was frequently challenged in court.104 Although the petition is undated, it must have been written after 1723, when Philip V attended Mass in the Mozarabic Chapel (an event mentioned in the text); he later confirmed the privileges and exemptions of the Mozarabs.
Monarchy was one context for remembering the rite in the eighteenth century. Empire was another, and it bore implications for the riteâs early modern significance. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, Archbishop Francisco Antonio Lorenzana (1722â1804) published several editions of the rite. The first, printed in 1770 in Puebla de los Angeles, was the Missa Gothica seu Mozarabica et Officium itidem Gothicum (âGothic or Mozarabic Mass and likewise Gothic Officeâ), which combines texts of the Mass and Office with commentary on the Mozarabic rite and explanatory rubrics.105 The Mozarabic rite was not observed in Mexico, which followed the rite of Seville.106 Nevertheless, the Missa Gothica was connected to Puebla through its bishop, Francisco Fabián y Fuero (1719â1801), who was largely responsible for the contents of the edition (and who had been a canon of Toledo Cathedral alongside Lorenzana). The inclusion of the Mass for Saint James (Santiago) affirmed Santiagoâs patronage of Spanish Catholicism and his early modern image as a missionary.107 While music and liturgy had longstanding missionary functions in Spanish colonialism, the Mozarabic rite does not properly belong to that historyâexcept obliquely, by virtue of its celebration in close proximity to a representation of the conquest of Oran, a meaningful juxtaposition that had been intended by Cisneros.108
It may be significant, then, that the archbishop published the Historia de Nueva España by the conquistador Hernan Cortes in the same year as the Missa Gothica.109 The title of the Missa Gothica binds it to Spainâs global empire, for it ends with the designation of Toledo as the primatial see of the Indies as well as of âthe Spains.â110 Rather than the term âempire,â in the early modern period las Españas designated the ensemble of kingdoms and territories under the universal monarchy (monarquÃa universal) of Spain.111 Cisnerosâs official titles as cardinal archbishop were âCardinal of Spainâ (Cardenal de España), referring most probably to ancient Hispania, and âPrimate of the Spainsâ (Primado de las Españas).112 In any case, the symbolism of empire seems likely to have motivated a Toledan prelateâs inaugural republication of the rite in Mexico rather than in Toledo.
It is tempting to see Lorenzanaâs publication as an assertion of the power of liturgy to shape history. Perhaps he intended the Missa Gothica edition to convey the role of the Mozarabic rite in the imagining of Spain as a transatlantic power. In 1771, he sent two copies of the edition to Toledo Cathedral, where he would be named archbishop in the following year.113 The gesture seemed to extend into print and across the ocean the vision of conquest that Cisneros had pursued with the siege of Oran and had visually evoked in the Mozarabic Chapel, for, like the Mozarabic Chapel, the Missa Gothica contains vivid and memorable images of violence. In this case, however, the victim was the Mozarabic rite itself.
The preface to the Missa Gothica edition includes the stories of the duel and the trial by fire opposing the Roman and Mozarabic rites, and the volume includes two engravings depicting these events. Lorenzana took the symbolic capital of the Mozarabic rite a step further than his predecessors by promoting and even perpetuating its legendary status through visual culture. Unlike the fresco depicting the conquest of Oran, the engravings illustrate the miraculous survival of the Mozarabic rite after the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085. The textual narrative underlying these images recounts the forcible introduction of the Roman rite in Toledo in the years after the conquest. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the legend became widely diffused through Juan de Marianaâs Historia general de España, and the images in Lorenzanaâs Missa Gothica form part of the transmission and reception of the story.
The first engraving, which follows the prolegomena to the edition, depicts the fire from which the Roman-rite book leapt out while the âGothicâ one was unharmed (Fig. 3.4). The second engraving, which faces the opening of the little hours in the breviary, portrays the duel between two knights, each representing one of the rites (Fig. 3.5). The victor in this combat was the Toledan Lope MartÃnez de Matanza, as stated in the banderole above the scene. These illustrations were designed and executed by José de Nava (1735â1817), the most accomplished and prolific engraver in Puebla at the time.114 Besides the many images he produced for books, in 1755 Nava engraved a map and table of places in Spanish North America that, according to Magali Carrera, âreflected the Bourbon regimeâs move toward a pragmatic philosophy of governance based on domination through empirical information for comprehensive management and administration.â115 The mapâs creation dates to soon after the arrival in Puebla of its dedicatee, AgustÃn de Ahumada y Villalón (c.1715â60), the viceroy of New Spain appointed by King Ferdinand VI. Thus, Navaâs engraving production encompassed not only religious tractatesâmost notably a series of illustrations for a Life of Saint Rose of Viterboâbut also cultural products like the map that were directly related to the pragmatic aspects of the colonial enterprise.116 The 1770 Missa Gothica shares elements with both the religious and political publications in which Navaâs engravings appeared. On the one hand, the textual contents of the edition exemplified the peninsulaâs religious culture with the performative function of asserting the continuity of ancient Visigothic liturgical tradition. On the other hand, the publication of the edition in Puebla acquires a deeper meaning in the context of colonial administration.
Figure 3.4
José Nava, The Trial by Fire, engraving, 1770, from Lorenzanaâs Missa Gothica
Photo: Public Domain: Hathi Trust.
Figure 3.5
José Nava, The Duel, engraving, 1770, from Lorenzanaâs Missa Gothica
Photo: Public Domain: Hathi Trust.
The images made by Nava for the Missa Gothica edition depict a conflict concerning ritual prerogative in which a foreign liturgy was imposed on the city by newcomers while the original inhabitants could retain their own tradition as a minority practice. The story could have resonated with the inhabitants of New Spain, who were forced to accept Catholic ritual practice with a violence that was mitigated at times by the foreign clergyâs attempts to incorporate native elements into the liturgy.117 In this context, it is fitting that the backgrounds designed by Nava for his engravings in the Missa Gothica may evoke the cityscape of Baroque Puebla, as Juan Isaac Calvo Portela has suggested.118 Contemporary viewers of these scenes might have perceived in this blending of histories the use of New Spain for reflecting on the history of Spain, whereby Puebla became a stage for retelling the story of the Mozarabic rite.
Lorenzanaâs intention in the Missa Gothica was to âdemonstrate that the ancient Toledan rite followed so faithfully and closely the earliest of ritesâthe Romanâthat it attained the rank of apostolicity.â119 This comment, made by a modern biographer of Lorenzana, Luis Sierra Nava-Lasa, needs some historical context, for the relationship between the ancient rite of Toledo (the Mozarabic) and the Roman rite has always been fraught. The Missa Gothica edition appeared at a time when neo-Visigothic ideology maintained the continuity of religious and political identity from the Visigothic period onward. Given that the Mozarabic rite was held to be a paramount legacy of the Visigoths, Lorenzanaâs first liturgical publication renewed the association of the rite with the Visigoths that had been reaffirmed by Cisneros, one of his most illustrious predecessors as cardinal archbishop of Toledo. Lorenzanaâs contemporaries must also have perceived connections between the two archbishops. Such collectively imagined parallels were realized in ritual as well as in other actions. In preparation for Lorenzanaâs arrival from Mexico, the cathedral chapter celebrated supplicatory rites to invoke divine protection for the archbishopâs perilous voyage by sea, just as their predecessors had done for Cisneros when he embarked on the campaign to conquer Oran.120 Even further underlining his emulation of Cisneros, Lorenzana later went to Spanish-occupied Oran on a pastoral visit that could not help but convey political intent.121
The publication of Lorenzanaâs Missa Gothica in Puebla suggests a symbolic meaning for the Mozarabic rite in the context of Spainâs imperial project. The engravings portray a conflict between adherents of different liturgical traditions. The cause is a military victory. In effect, while the volumeâs content is an edition of the Mozarabic rite with commentary, the idea of conquest adhered to the Missa Gothica as an object situated in space and time. Like the celebration of the rite in the Mozarabic Chapel of Toledo Cathedral, so too Lorenzanaâs editions reinforce the role of print as a mode of tribute and recollection.122
The printed editions were a catalyst for the perception and memory of the rite throughout the centuries after 1500. Chapter 4 turns to the diffusion of the Mozarabic editions of Ortiz in early modern Europe. Tracing the provenance of the extant copiesâand the pathways some of them followed from Spain to other placesâillustrates their role as vectors of knowledge about the Mozarabic rite. Patterns of ownership and the locations of the volumes were factors in the historical study and ideologically informed appraisals of the rite, which form the subject of chapter 5.
Appendix C: Petition from the Clergy of the Mozarabic Parishes in Toledo
Madrid, BNE, MS 13059, fols 204râ205r (undated copy)
Translation by Liam Moore
Sir. The congregation of Priests and Prebendaries of the six Mozarabic Churches Santa Justa, San Marcos, San Lucas, Santa Eulalia, San Torquato, and San Sebastián of the city of Toledo, at the royal feet of Your Majesty, with the most profound and due humility, states:
That the Holy Gothic-Mozarabic Office was known in the first centuries of the Law of Grace with the venerable name of Apostolic, because it owed its origin to the Apostolic See and it was made known and established in Spain by the seven Apostolic Bishops, Disciples of our Patron Saint James. When they were sent to this Province by the Prince of the Apostles, Saint Peter, they planted in it the Faith of Jesus Christ. And afterwards [the rite] acquired the name of Gothic, because it was glorified by Saints Leander, Isidore, Eugenius, Ildefonsus, and Julian, Archbishops of Toledo and Seville, all from the Gothic Nation. And finally that of Mozarabic, because in the prolonged period of the tyrannical Domination of the Saracen Arabs, the Catholic Faithful, who lived mixed with them, conserved it in the aforementioned six churches, despite their tyranny, unhurt and pure. And they practiced it always constant and steady in the Faith, and they used it during almost four Centuries in the same form, method, and rule in which they had received it from the Apostolic See. Because of these things, it has been and today is known, famous, laudable, and respected in the entire Catholic World, not just due to its venerable antiquity, but rather to how devout, distinguished, and admirable are its rites, ceremonies, and prayers, which, dictated by Divine Wisdom to those most Holy Fathers, our Prelates, are a most strong and impenetrable Shield against the bold arms of the Heresies. A most clear Testament of the sacred Dogmas of the Christian Faith: the most glorious Crest and shield that could be made for Spain, they are the envy of foreign Nations, happy and fortunate above all others, for [204v] none like her achieved the fathomless Glory of Knowledge in this day today, maintained and conserved the Mass and original Rite received from Rome. To sum up, it was the most principal purpose of the Glorious Kings, Your Majestyâs Progenitors, for putting this city before other royal cities, their royal zeal and devotion yet unsatisfied with only diligently watching over the perpetuity and exaltation of this Holy Office in the six Churches referred to, they even deigned to come in person to Toledo to beautify them, attending the mass of the sacred rite and honoring its ministers, as did recently his Majesty King Don Philip V (who rests in God) in the year 1723.
Being thus, sir, all that the congregation reverently sets before Your Majesty in the most concise manner that has been possible for it, that this Holy Office being always favored by the Lord Kings has flourished in Toledo, performed in the aforesaid six Churches through the long course of Ten and seven centuries. It has been maintained by them and their Ministers, Priests and Prebendaries, with the Tithes of their parishioners and one singular Donation that, with the approval of the Apostolic See, was assigned to them by the lord King Don Alfonso VI, enough in that period for their decent maintenance. It is also true that the tyranny of the times aided by the irresistible force of the long and most costly lawsuits that since the year 1500 have been brought against these Churches (and that continue at this time in the supreme council of Your Majestyâs Royal Chamber) by various powerful communities concerning the Rights over the said Tithes and Parishioners have placed them in such an unhappy state that although their Priests and Prebendaries have had the Justice [of their claims] shown and proven, in no way can they now confront such continually growing expenses nor maintain themselves with the decency owed to their character and Ministries, given the extreme scantiness to which their income is reduced, which is notorious. They see themselves obliged (although with the greatest pain) to abandon the said Churches, leaving the holy and most ancient [205r] Mozarabic Rite exposed to total extinction, which is what necessarily will have to follow, because no one can be found who for a lean stipend would want to study and learn such an exceedingly difficult rite and chant, nor take upon himself the unfathomable labor of attending to the Performance of the Mass, and of all the daytime and nighttime canonical Hours; and with that this illustrious memory will have to be extinguished and soon end, unless some very rapid remedy is applied that will hinder it. This we entrust to the Catholic zeal, religion, and Piety of Your August Majesty, in which virtues Your Majesty not being inferior to any of your glorious Progenitors, we hope that with the powerful arm of your greatness you detain the fatal ruin that threatens [it]. It will be without doubt of great concern to the royal magnanimous Heart of Your Majesty if the end of this Holy Office should occur in the times of your most happy reign. And so the congregation duly supplicates that Your Majesty condescend to receive in your royal protection and patronage (as a singular and the most powerful means for the conservation and perpetuity of the Holy Mozarabic Office) the six Churches referred to and adding them to the Royal Patronage, endow them with Income according to your royal pleasure, so that the six Priests and eight Prebendaries that make up the Clergy of this rite can maintain themselves with the Decency corresponding to Ministers of Your Majesty and so that the said Holy Office will be celebrated daily with the solemnity owed to it. This we hope from the Catholic zeal and magnificence of Your Majesty.
Señor. La congregacion de Curas y Beneficiados de las seis Iglesias parrochiales Mozarabes Santa Justa, San Marcos, San Lucas, Santa Eulalia, San Torquato y San Sebastian de la ciudad de Toledo a los Reales Pies de V. Magd. con el mas profundo debido rendimiento dice:
Que el Oficio Sancto Gothico-Mozarabe conocido en los primero siglos de la Ley de Gracia con el renombre venerable desde Apostolico, por que debio su origen a la silla Apostolica, y le publicaron, y establecieron en España los siete Santos Apostolicos Obispos Discipulos de nuestro Patron Santiago, que embiados a esta Probincia por el Principe de los Apostoles San Pedro plantaron en ella la Fee de Jesu Christo. Y que despues adquirio el de Gothico, por haberle illustrado los santos Leandro, Isidoro, Eugenio, Ildephonso y Jullian, Arzobispos de Toledo y Sevilla, todos de lo [sic] Nacion Goda. Y ultimamente el de Mozarabe, porque en el dilatado tiempo de la tyrana Dominacion de los Arabas Sarracenos, los Fieles Catholicos, que vivieron123 mezclados con ellos, le conservaron en dichas seis iglesias, a pesar de su tyrania, indemne y puro; y le practicaron tambien constantes y firmes en la Fee, y exercieron por casi quatro Siglos en la misma forma, methodo y regla, que le recibieron de la Apostolica Silla. En cuyo supuesto, ha sido, y hoi es, conocido, famoso, plausible, y respetado en todo el Orbe Catholico, no solo por su venerable antiguedad, sino por lo devoto, raro, y admirable de sus Ritos, Ceremonias y Oraciones, que dictadas por la Sabiduria Divina, a aquellos Santissimos Padres y Prelados nuestros, son fortissimo impenetrable Escudo contra las atrevidas armas de los Hereses. Testimonio clarissimo de los sagrados Dogmas de la Fee Christiana: Tymbre y blazon el mas glorioso, que pudo hacer a España, son embidia de las Naciones estrangeras, feliz y dichosa sobre todas; pues [204v] ninguna, como elle, logrò la Gloria imponderable de haver, havrá el dia de hoi, mantenido y conservado la Missa, y rito primitive que recibio de Roma: y en fin, objeto principalisimo de los señores reyes Gloriosos Progenitores de V. Magd, pues anteponiendo este, a otros regios cuidados, no satisfechos su real celo, y devocion con invigilar solicitos, sobre la perpetuidad y exaltacion de este Oficio Santo, en las seis referidas Iglesias: se dignaron tambien de pasar en persona a Toledo, y decorarlas, oyendo la missa de este sagrado rito, y honrando a sus ministros, como lo executó ultimamente, la Magestad del Señor Rey D. Phelipe Quinto (que de Dios goza) en el año de Mil, Setecientos y Veinte y Tres.
Siendo pues assi, señor, todo lo que la congregacion expone reverente a V. Magd. Con la expresion mas concisa que le ha sido posible, y que este Oficio Santo favorecido siempre de los Señores Reyes, ha florecido en Toledo, exerciendose en dichas seis Iglesias por la larga carrera de Diez y siete siglos, manteniendose ellas y sus Ministros Curas y Beneficiados, con los Diezmos de sus Parrochianos, unica y sola Dote, que con aprovacion de la Silla Apostolica les dejó asignada el señor rey D. Alonso el Sexto, bastante en aquella edad para su manutencion y Decencia. Es tambien cierto, que la tyrania de los tiempos auxiliada de la fuerza irresistible de largos, y costossisimos Pleitos que desde el año de Mil y Quiniento han seguido contra estas Iglesias (y siguen actualmente en el supreme consejo de la Real Camara de V. Magd.) diferentes communidades poderosas, sobre el Derecho de dichos sus Diezmos y Parrochianos, las han puesto en tan infeliz estado, que aunque sus Curas y Beneficiados tienen manifestada y comprobada su Justicia, no pudiendo ya, en manera alguna, suplir tan crecidas continuadas expensas, ni mantenerse con la decencia debida a su caracter y Ministerios, a vista de la suma cortedad a que estan reducidas sus rentas, que es notoria; se veran precisados (aunque con gravissimo dolor suyo) a desamparar dichas Iglesias, y dejar expuesto el sagrado antiquissimo [205r] rito Mozarabe a una total extinccion, la que forzosamente habró de seguirse, porque no se allara quien por un tenue emolumento, quiera aplicarse a aprehender el rito y canto sumamente dificiles; ni tomar sobre si el imponderable trabajo de la asistencia al Exercicio de la Missa, y de todas las Horas Canonicas Diurnas, y Nocturnas; con que esta illustre memoria habra de estinguirse, y acabarse brevemente, a menos de no ponerse prestantissimo remedio que lo estorbe. Este le libramos en el Catholico celo, religion, y Piedad de V. Magd. Augusta. En cuyas virtudes, no siendo V. Mag. inferior a ninguno de sus gloriosos Progenitores, esperamos que con el brazo poderoso de su grandeza detenga la fatal ruyna que amenaza. La qual seria, sin duda, muy sensible al real Magnanimo corazon de V. Magd. si el acabamiento de este Oficio Santo acaeciese en los tiempos de su felicisimo Reynado. Por tanto a V. Magd. suplica la Congregacion rendidamente, se digne de recebir en su real proteccion y amparo (como medio unico, y el mas poderoso para la conservacion y perpetuidad del Oficio Santo Mozarabe) a las seis referidas Iglesias, y agregandolas al Real Patronato, dotarlas con las Rentas que mas fueren de su real agrado, para que los seis Curas, y ocho Beneficiados, que componen el Clero de este rito, puedan mantenerse con la Decencia correspondiente a Ministros de V. Magd., y dicho Oficio Santo celebrarse diariamente con la solemnidad debida. Assi lo esperamos del Catholico celo, y magnificencia de V. Magd.
David McKitterick, The Invention of Rare Books: Private Interest and Public Memory, 1600â1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 322.
Les lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, 7 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1984â92). For a brief summary of the concept see Pierre Nora, âBetween Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,â trans. Marc Roudebush, in âMemory and Counter-Memory,â special issue, Representations 26 (1989): 7â24.
Pierre Nora, âFrom Lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory,â preface in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Pierre Nora (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), xvii.
Aleida Assmann, âCanon and Archive,â in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning in collaboration with Sara B. Young, Media and Cultural Memory 8 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 97â108, at 98.
The dual memorial function of the Mozarabic Chapel differentiated it from the more typical funerary chapels that elite ecclesiastics endowed for services to be performed in their memory. With regard to Toledo see Almudena Cros Gutiérrez, âThe Artistic Patronage of Gil de Albornoz (1302â1367), a Cardinal in Contextâ (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2008), 234â39.
On this program of decoration see Erika Dolphin, âArchbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros and the Decoration of the Chapter Room and Mozarabic Chapel in Toledo Cathedralâ (PhD diss., New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 2008), 259â73.
Fray Hernando de Talavera, Oficio de la Toma de Granada, ed. Francisco Javier MartÃnez Medina, Pilar Ramos López, Elisa Varela RodrÃguez, and Hermenegildo de la Campa (Granada: Diputación de Granada, 2003), 84: On the verge of the worldâs evening, the highest Word liberated the kingdom of Granada by the right hand of King Ferdinand (Verbum supernum dimicans Fernandi regis dextera Granate regnum vendicat vergente mundi vespere).
Beatriz Alonso Acero, Cisneros y la conquista española del norte de Ãfrica: Cruzada, polÃtica y arte de la guerra (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2005); Alonso Acero, España y el norte de Ãfrica en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Editorial SÃntesis, 2017), 58; Andrew Devereux, âEmpire in the Old World: Ferdinand the Catholic and His Aspiration to Universal Empire, 1479â1516,â in In and Of the Mediterranean. Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies, ed. Michelle M. Hamilton and Nuria Silleras Fernández, Hispanic Issues 41 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015), 119â42; Devereux, âNorth Africa in Early Modern Spanish Political Thought,â Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (2011): 275â91; Devereux, The Other Side of Empire: Just War in the Mediterranean and the Rise of Early Modern Spain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), 95â126.
Eva Botella-Ordinas, ââ¯âExempt from Time and from Its Fatal Changeâ: Spanish Imperial Ideology, 1450â1700,â Renaissance Studies 26, no. 4 (2012): 580â604, at 588. For an overview of Spanish theories of empire see Manuel Herrero Sánchez, âSpanish Theories of Empire: A Catholic and Polycentric Monarchy,â in A Companion to Early Modern Spanish Imperial Political and Social Thought, ed. Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp, Brillâs Companions to European History 21 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 17â52.
Alonso Acero, Cisneros, 64â87; Alonso Acero, España y el norte de Ãfrica, 58â63, 89; José GarcÃa Oro, Cisneros, el cardenal de España (Barcelona: Ariel, 2002), 185â209.
For an edition of the letters with a historical introduction see MarÃa Isabel Hernández González, El taller historiográfico: Cartas de relación de la conquista de Orán (1509) y textos afines (London: Dept. of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1997).
Ibid., 37â46.
Ibid., 47â54.
Ibid., 55â57.
Ibid., 58â61, at 60.
Ibid., 49, 53.
These pamphlets were often a single sheet of paper folded twice to create four pages of text.
Vicenç Beltrán, âLos primeros pliegos poéticos: Alta cultura / cultura popular,â Revista de literatura medieval 17 (2005): 71â120.
See Pedro Cátedra, âEn los orÃgenes de las epistolas de relación,â in Las âRelaciones de sucesosâ en España (1500â1750), ed. MarÃa Cruz GarcÃa de EnterrÃa (Alcalá de Henares: Publications de la Sorbonne / Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá, 1996), 33â64; MarÃa Sánchez Pérez, âPanoramica sobre las Relaciones de sucesos en pliegos sueltos poeticos (siglo XVI),â eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 21 (2012): 336â68,
See the texts introduced and edited in Pliegos sueltos sobre el emperador Carlos Quinto, ed. Antonio Pérez Gómez, 2 vols, Duque y marques: Opúsculos literarios rarÃsimos 12â13 (Valencia: ⦠la fonte que mana y corre â¦, 1958).
Hernández González, El taller historiográfico, 51: La primera cosa que yo vi en la tierra de Ãfrica fue una cruz, e dixe luego a los que estavan comigo: âEn esta señal vençeremosâ, como yo avÃa predicado el dÃa de la cruz, ante que partiésemos, e avÃan dicho que yvamos a buscar la cruz a Ãfrica.
The complicated textual history of this episode has been addressed by Raymond Van Dam, most recently in âThe Sources for Our Sources: Eusebius and Lactantius on Constantine in 312â13,â in Constantine: Religious Faith and Imperial Policy, ed. A. Edward Siecienski (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 59â74, esp. 68. See also Van Dam, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Historias de la Divinal Victoria de Orán (Logroño: Arnao Guillén de Brocar, 1510). Critical edition and facsimile in âHistorias de la Divinal Victoria de Oránâ por MartÃn de Herrera, ed. Pédro Cátedra, 2 vols, Monumentos tipográficos riojanos 3 (San Millán de la Cogolla: CiLengua, 2009).
Ibid., 2:213â18. This section makes the Historias one of the earliest textual sources for the biography of Cisneros.
Ibid., 2:201: Décadas de pulsión escatológica convergen, como en un torbellino, en el vórtice de la victoria de Orán y en la figura mesiánica y providencial de Cisneros. La toma de Orán es el pórtico de una nueva era y el inicio del camino a una misión sagrada de la cristiandad, la conquista de Jerusalén, que reinstaurerá el reino de Cristo en la tierra antes de la Revelación ultima en que el Triunfo de la Eternidad se haga presente.
Ibid., 2:24. For the section devoted to the destruction of Jerusalem see 2:91â150.
Ibid., 2:22. Cátedra points out that the news actually arrived the next day. See also his commentary at 2:192â93.
Ibid., 2:191â93.
Ibid., 2:52: Y las ordenes [â¦] oren como quand Orán se ganó, que más harán sus preces que guerra nos.
Ibid., 2:49.
Ibid., 2:156â57.
Ibid., 2:321â81.
Erika Rummel, Jiménez de Cisneros: On the Threshold of Spainâs Golden Age, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 212 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999), 36â37.
Cartas del cardenal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas à Diego Lopez de Ayala, ed. Pascual Gayangos and Vicente de la Fuente (Madrid: Colegio de Sordomudos y de Ciegos, 1867), 1â7.
Sophie DomÃnguez-Fuentes, âLes fresques de la campagne dâOran peintes par Juan de Borgoña dans la chapelle Mozarabe de la cathédrale de Tolède,â Cahiers de la Méditerranée 83 (2011): 33â42, at 17,
Alvar Gómez de Castro, De rebus gestis a Francisco Ximenio Cisnerio archiepiscopo Toletano (Complutum: Andream de Angulo, 1569), fols 41vâ42r: In cuius restitutionis memoriam cenotaphium reparatori in medio sacello honorifice erectum cernitur, impendente desuper coccÃneo galero, Cardinalitii honoris insigni.
Carol M. Richardson, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century, Brillâs Studies in Intellectual History 173 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 122, 131â35. Richardson states (135 n. 131) that the earliest instance known to her of the practice of hanging a cardinalâs hat over his tomb was that of Cardinal Richelieu (d. 1642) at the Sorbonne, but Gómez de Castroâs description of the galero over the cenotaph of Cisneros was published in 1569.
Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 139.
Alonso Acero, España y el norte de Ãfrica, 80â83. Mers el Kébir is ten kilometers from Oran.
José M. Escribano-Paéz, Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500â1540, Early Modern Iberian History in Global Contexts: Connexions (New York: Routledge, 2020), 23â61.
Hernández González, El taller historiográfico, 47.
Escribano-Paéz, Juan Rena, 43.
Escribano-Paéz, Juan Rena, 27â29.
The letter was printed in Toledo in 1509. See R. Consuelo Gonzalo GarcÃa and Mercedes Fernández Valladares, âLa âCarta de Cisnerosâ sobre la Toma de Orán (1509) y la difusión de la victoria en Italia por Baltasar del RÃo: Más relaciones post-incunables recuperadas,â in Las relaciones de sucesos en los cambios polÃticos y sociales de la Europa moderna, ed. Jorge GarcÃa López and Sònia Boadas (Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2015), 427â45.
Tess Knighton and Carmen Morte GarcÃa, âFerdinand of Aragonâs Entry into Valladolid in 1513: The Triumph of a Christian King,â Early Music History 18 (1999): 119â63.
Amy G. Remensnyder, La Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 89.
Alonso Acero, España y el norte de Ãfrica, 89.
âHistorias de la Divinal Victoria de Oránâ por MartÃn de Herrera, 2:186.
Eugenio de Robles, Compendio de la vida y hazañas del cardenal [â¦] F. Ximenez de Cisneros [â¦] (Toledo: P. Rodriguez, 1604), 232 (ch. 22): De la fundacion de la unica y singular Capilla de Corpus Christi, que llaman de los Muzarabes de la santa yglesia de Toledo; y conquista de la ciudad de Oran, por nuestro Illustrissimo Cardenal.
Robles, Compendio, 241.
The titulus that is visible now is a Castilian translation of the Latin text, followed by accounts of the military conflicts in Oran in the eighteenth century; see Dolphin, âArchbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros,â 329.
Joanna of Castile (1479â1555), daughter of the Catholic Monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, ruled as queen of the Crown of Castile from 1504 (at the death of Isabella) but Ferdinand became her regent in 1507. Robles, Compendio, 243â44: Anno salutis Christianae, millesimo quingentesimo nono, Pontificatus domini Iulii Papae secundi anno sexto, regnante serenissima domina Ioanna Regina Castellae, relicta quondam Philippi Burgundi unici Maximiliani Imperatoris nati, ac pro ea Ferdinando eius genitore Aragonum, et utriusque Siciliae Rege Catholico regnorum gubernacula gerente: Reverendissimus pater et dominus frater Franciscus Ximenez de Cisneros, Cardinalis Hispaniae, et Archiepiscopus Toletanus, ex portu Carthaginensi, cum ingenti armatorum classe, tormentis, et commeatibus, refectissima movens, in biduo [Robles: viduo] ad Mazarquibir, die decimo octavo Maii apulit, et ea nocte in classe pernoctato, sequenti die eggresso e navibus exercitu, cum hostibus conflictum habuerunt, quibus ultra urbis Aurensis ambitu expulsis, et profligatis, ad portus usque impune perventum est, ubi picas pro scalis ad muros exponentes, in urbem primi congressores ascenderunt, et eleuatis ad menia signis Christianorum, ac portis undique reseratis cuncti fideles pariter intraverunt, et cessis passim quatuor millia hostium, urbs ipsa cum arce infra quatuor horas capitur, triginta de nostris solum desideratis, annuente Deo, qui in Trinitate perfecta vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Robles, Compendio, 244.
Botella-Ordinas, ââ¯âExempt from Time,ââ¯â 581.
Robles, Compendio, 246.
Robles, Compendio, 256: concediendo el Señor a nuestro Cardenal y Capitán de su Iglesia el privilegio que en el viejo testamento condeció al otro valeroso capitán de su pueblo Hebreo Iosué. (The biblical reference is to Joshua 10:12â13).
Beth C. Spacey, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2020).
Robles, Compendio, 252.
On the hymnâs composition for the Cross relic see most recently Lynn Jones, âPerceptions of Byzantium: Radegund of Poitiers and Relics of the True Cross,â in Byzantine Images and Their Afterlives: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr, ed. Lynn Jones (London: Routledge, 2014), 105â24, at 112â13.
Robles, Compendio, 255.
Robles, Compendio, 257â58; Juan de Marieta, Historia ecclesiastica y flores de Santos de España (Cuenca: Juan Messelin, 1594), bk. 5, ch. 97, fol. 145r.
Robles, Compendio, 257; Baltasar Porreño, Vida y hechos del cardenal Fray Francisco Jiménes de Cisneros arzobispo de Toledo, ed. Ãngel Fernández Collado, Alfredo RodrÃguez González, and Isidoro Castañeda Tordera, Primatialis Ecclesiae Toletanae Memoria 40 (Toledo: Cabildo Primado, Catedral de Toledo, 2017), 244: Los naturales y soldados de Oran, llaman a boca llena a nuestro Cardenal, el santo Conquistador, afirmando por cosa muy cierta auerse aparecido muchas vezes, como otro Apostol Santiago en España, en la puerta y muralla de su ciudad, vestido de pontifical, con su pastoral baculo, y un estoque desnudo, defendiendola valerosamente de los assaltos de los paganos que pretendian tornarla a su poder.
Erin Rowe, Saint and Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Avila, and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), 22. The nationalist tendency to consider the legendary battle a historical event was in evidence during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. See for instance Julián Cantera Orive, La batalla de Clavijo y aparición en ella de nuestro patrón, Santiago (1944; repr. Logroño: Gobierno de La Rioja ConsejerÃa de Educación, Cultura, Juventud y Deportes, 1997).
Katherine Van Liere, âThe Moorslayer and the Missionary: James the Apostle in Spanish Historiography from Isidore of Seville to Ambrosio de Morales,â Viator 37 (2006): 519â43. Richard A. Fletcher, Saint Jamesâs Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego GelmÃrez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 296â97, points out that associations between Santiago and warfare against Muslims first became widespread in the twelfth century.
Hernández González, El taller historiográfico, 50: e como llevassen a Dios e a Santiago por capitán.
Heather Dalton, âSantiago Matamoros/Mataindios: Adopting an Old World Battlefield Apparition as a New World Representation of Triumph,â in Matters of Engagement: Emotions, Identity, and Cultural Contact in the Premodern World, ed. Hannes Ziegler, Daniela Hacke, and Claudia Jarzebowski (New York: Routledge, 2021), 95â122, at 97â98.
Nicolás Cabrillana, Santiago Matamoros: Historia y imagen (Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones, Diputación de Málaga, 1999).
Dolphin, âArchbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros,â 272â73.
Hernández González, El taller historiográfico, 53.
Dorothee Heim, Rodrigo Alemán und die Toledaner Skulptur um 1500: Studien zum künstlerischen Dialog in Europa (Kiel: Ludwig, 2006), 92â97.
See Dorothee Heim, âInstrumentos de propaganda polÃtica borgoñona al servicio de los Reyes católicos: Los relieves de la Guerra de Granada en la sillerÃa de la catedral de Toledo,â in El intercambio artÃstico entre los reinos hispanos y las cortes europeas en la Baja Edad Media, ed. Concepción Cosmen Alonso, MarÃa Victoria Herráez Ortega, and MarÃa Pellón Gómez-Calcerrada (León: Universidad de León, 2009), 203â15; Felipe Pereda, ââ¯âAd vivum?â o como narrar en imágenes la historia de la Guerra de Granada,â Reales sitios: Revista de patrimonio nacional 154 (2002): 2â20; Pereda, âRelieves toledanos de la guerra de Granada: Reflexiones sobre el procedimiento narrativo y sus fuentes clásicas,â in Correspondencia e integración de las artes: XIV Congreso nacional de historia del arte: Málaga, del 18â21 de septiembre, ed. Isidoro Coloma, MarÃa Teresa Sauret Guerrero, Belén Calderón Roca, and Raúl Luque RamÃrez (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga), 1:345â74.
Borja Franco Llopis and Francisco de AsÃs GarcÃa GarcÃa, âConfronting Islam: Images of Warfare and Courtly Displays in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain,â Jews and Muslims Made Visible in Christian Iberia and Beyond, 14th to 18th Centuries: Another Image, ed. Borja Franco Llopis and Antonio Urquizar-Herrera, The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 67 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 235â65, at 239â40. I am grateful to Ana Méndez Oliver for this reference.
Tom Nickson, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (College Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), 176â77.
Mercedes Castillo Ferreira, âMúsica y polÃtica: el oficio en canto llano para la conmemoración de la batalla de Las Navas de Tolosa,â in Las Navas de Tolosa 1212â2012: miradas cruzadas, ed. Patrice Cressier and Vicente Salvatierra (Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 2014), 43â52.
Dolphin, âArchbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros,â 268.
Felipe Pereda, âPedro González de Mendoza, de Toledo a Roma. El patronazgo de Santa Croce in Gerusalemme entre la arqueologÃa y la filologÃa,â in Visiones imperiales y profecÃa: Roma, España, nuevo mundo, ed. Stefania Pastore and Mercedes GarcÃa-Arenal, Lecturas: Historia moderna (Madrid: Abada, 2018), 127â57.
Abraham Madroñal Durán, âEntre Cervantes y Lope: Toledo, hacia 1604,â eHumanista/Cervantes 1 (2012): 300â32, at 318, citing José Manuel Blecua, âLa academia poética del Conde de Fuensalida,â in Sobre poesÃa de la edad de oro (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), 203â8.
Robles, Compendio, unfoliated front matter.
Marieta, Historia ecclesiastica, fol. 145r.
Although a Mozarabic clergyman, Valdivielso was not a Mozarab; see Abraham Madroñal Durán, âJosé de Valdivielso,â in Diccionario biográfico electrónico, Real Academia de la Historia,
For a reproduction of the coat of arms in the frontispiece of Madrid, BNE, MS 9850 see Cloe Cavero de Carondelet, âProyectos compartidos. Las fundaciones del cardenal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas durante el valimiento del duque de Lerma,â in Apariencia y razón. Las artes y la arquitectura en el reinado de Felipe III, ed. Bernardo J. GarcÃa GarcÃa and Ãngel RodrÃguez Rebollo (Aranjuez: Doce Calles, 2020), 67â92, at 70, fig. 1.
The etymology of the designation âMozarabâ is discussed in chapter 2.
Horace, Satires 1.1.25â6: ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi / doctores, elementa uelint ut discere prima (as kind teachers at first give cakes to boys, so that they may wish to learn the first elements).
Eugenio de Robles, Breve suma y relacion del modo del rezo y missa del oficio santo gotico mozarabe: Que en la capilla de Corpus Christi de la santa yglesia de Toledo se conserua y reza oy conforme a la regla del glorioso San Isidoro Arçobispo de Seuilla (Toledo: s.n., 1603). The Breve suma comprises chapters 23â25 of the Compendio (published 1604).
I am grateful to Gary Mayta-Lizarraga for his help in translating this sonnet.
On the literary context for this passage see Michel Moner, Cervantès: Deux thèmes majeurs: Lâamour, les armes et les lettres, Thèses et recherches 15 (Toulouse: France-Ibérie recherche, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1986), 71â136.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, trans. John Ormsby (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1885), 214; Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo, 2nd ed., Clásicos Castalia 77, 78 (Madrid: Castalia, 1982), 1:469: Dicen las letras que sin ellas no se podrÃan sustentar las armas, porque la guerra también tiene sus leyes y está sujeta a ellas, y que las leyes caen debajo de lo que son letras y letrados. A esto responden las armas que las leyes no se podrán sustentar sin ellas.
A respected writer of religious poetry, Palomino was the chaplain of the chapel of Don Pedro Tenorio in Toledo Cathedral at the time Roblesâs Breve suma was published. On his life and works see Abraham Madroñal Durán, âAlonso Palomino y Juan Ruiz de Santa MarÃa, dos poetas toledanos del tiempo de Lope de Vega (con un vejamen inédito),â Toletum: BoletÃn de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes y Ciencias Históricas de Toledo 35 (1996): 153â87.
Anne J. Cruz, âArms versus Letters: The Poetics of War and the Career of the Poet in Early Modern Spain,â in European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 186â205, at 191.
Faith S. Harden, Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain, Toronto Iberic 53 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020).
Cervantes was often in Toledo in the early seventeenth century; Madroñal Durán, âEntre Cervantes y Lope,â 301.
I thank Ana Méndez Oliver for reading my translations and pointing out the relevance of the Captiveâs Tale.
Ignacio Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch: Poetry and Theory in the Spanish Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 116, (translation slightly modified).
Navarrete, Orphans of Petrarch, 117.
The allusion to âangry Marsâ (Marte ayrado) in the sonnet by Valdivielso immediately preceding Palominoâs may indirectly signal the influence of the verses cited from Garcilasoâs tenth sonnet.
Madrid, BNE, MSÂ 20212/7/1,
I am grateful to Michael Agnew for his help with this translation.
Alfonso Echánove Tuero, La preparación intelectual del P. Andrés Marcos Burriel, S.J. (1731â1750) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas, Instituto EnrÃque Flórez, 1971), 270â71.
José Javier RodrÃguez Solis, âAndrés Marcos Burriel y la historia textual de la MonarquÃa de España, de Pedro Salazar de Mendoza,â Hispania 82, no. 271 (2022): 355â83. The text (but not in Burrielâs edition) was finally published in 1770 (in Madrid, by Joachin Ibarra).
Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Palacio, II/483. See Susan Boynton, Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain, Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 85â112,
Madrid, Real Biblioteca del Palacio, II/483, fol. 3v: Estos libros son otros tantos testigos dignisimos de veneracion por su vejez y mayores de toda excepcion por su authenticidad que claman, y gritan, que V. Magestad cree, confiesa, y adora con todos sus Vasallos Catholicos Españoles lo mismo, que desde los Catholicos Reyes San Hermenegildo, y su hermano el Catholico Re Reccaredo, han creydo, confesado, y adorado por mas de 1200 años todos los Reyes Progenitores de V. Magestad con todos los Vasallos.
Andrés Marcos Burriel, âApuntamientos,â in Echánove Tuero, La preparación intelectual, 270.
Madrid, BNE, 13059, fol. 204r: Tymbre y blazon el mas glorioso, que pudo hacer a España, con embidia de las Naciones estrangeras. For the complete text of the petition see appendix C, at the end of this chapter.
Madrid, BNE, 13059, fols 204vâ205r. The court cases invoked by Burriel, Camino, and the Mozarabic parish clergy are described in chapter 2.
Missa Gothica seù Mozarabica, et Officium itidèm Gothicum [â¦] capituli Sanctae Ecclesiae Toletanae, Hispaniarum et Indiarum primátis (Angelopoli: Typis Seminarii Palafoxiani, 1770).
The Cathedral of Mexico was founded as a dependency of Seville; the rite of Seville observed in Mexico was revised after the Council of Trent to adhere more closely to the Roman rite.
Van Liere, âThe Moorslayer and the Missionary.â
Some important studies of music in early modern Spanish colonialism are Geoffrey Baker, Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Ireri Elizabeth Chávez-Barcenas, âSinging in the City of Angels: Race, Identity, and Devotion in Early Modern Puebla de los Ãngelesâ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2018); Drew Edward Davies, Forging Repertories: Cathedral Music in New Spain and Its Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025); David R.M. Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Jesús Ramos-Kittrell, Playing in the Cathedral: Music, Race, and Status in New Spain, Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Historia de Nueva-España escrita por su esclarecido conquistador Hernan Cortés [â¦] (Mexico City: Joseph Antonio de Hogal, 1770).
The publication of the Missa Gothica in Puebla forms part of the broader publication program Lorenzana pursued while in Mexico, on which see Javier Malagón-Barceló, âLa obra escrita de Lorenzana como arzobispo de México, 1766â1772,â Historia mexicana 23 (1974): 437â65.
Chad Gasta, Imperial Stagings: Empire and Ideology in Transatlantic Theater of Early Modern Spain and the New World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 40.
Cisneros used both titles when he signed letters.
Ãngel Fernández Collado, âEl cardenal Lorenzana: Semblanza de un singular arzobispo de Toledo,â in El cardenal Lorenzana, arzobispo de Toledo, Ciclo de conferencias en el centenario de su muerte (1804â2004), ed. Ãngel Fernández Collado (Toledo: Instituto Teológico San Ildefonso, 2004), 9â26, at 12 n. 4.
José Toribio Medina, La imprenta en la Puebla de los Angeles (1640â1821) (Santiago, CL: Imprenta Cervantes, 1908), lists forty books with engravings by Nava. On Nava see Juan Isaac Calvo Portela, âEl grabador poblano José de Nava. Estudio de algunas de sus estampas religiosas,â Bibliographica 2 (2019): 14â40 (see 24â29 for the engravings in the Missa Gothica),
Magali Carrera, âEntangled Spaces: Mapping Multiple Identities in Eighteenth-Century New Spain,â in Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 82. The copy of the map now in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University (
For Navaâs suite of illustrations of a Life of Saint Rose of Viterbo, executed around 1800 (but published without a date or title page), see Santa Rosa de Viterbo a través de los ojos de un grabador novohispano, ed. Teresa Matabuena Peláez, Marisela RodrÃguez Lobato, and MarÃa Cristina Sánchez de la Vara, vol. 1 (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, 2016). A complete digitized copy from the Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries is available at
A useful recent study of musicoreligious syncretism in New Spain is Ireri Chávez-Barcenas, âNative Song and Dance Affect in Novohispanic Christian Rituals,â in Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity, ed. Suzanne G. Cusick and Emily Wilbourne (Cambridge: OpenBook, 2021), 37â64,
Calvo Portela, âEl grabador poblano José de Nava,â 36.
Luis Sierra Nava-Lasa, El cardenal Lorenzana y la ilustración, Publicaciones de la Fundación Universitaria Española, MonografÃas 11 (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, Seminario Cisneros, 1975), 163: demostrar que el rito antiguo toledano consiste en una sucesión tan fiel y próxima a las más primitivas, a la romanaâtipicaâque se le equipara en cuanto a rango de apostolicidad.
Hilario RodrÃguez de Gracia, âFrancisco Antonio Lorenzana: Un arzobispo viajero,â in Collado, El cardenal Lorenzana, 179â216, at 188.
RodrÃguez de Gracia, âFrancisco Antonio Lorenzana,â 202â4.
Lorenzanaâs subsequent editions are discussed in chapter 5.
The text originally read âviviendo,â which was crossed out. âVivieronâ is written in the margin.