I began this book with the request of a French diplomat, the Maréchal de Noailles, to consult manuscripts of the Mozarabic rite while he was in Spain in 1746. In closing, I return once again to the perception of the rite in France, this time through the filter of historiography. It is instructive to juxtapose the maréchalâs curiosity with the disapproving response of his contemporary Voltaire to the most famous story about the rite, the duel opposing the Roman and Mozarabic rite and the trial by fire to which their books were subjected. The narrative punctuates a section on religion and superstition at the conclusion of the first volume of the Essay on Universal History, first published in 1743.1 Despite their contrasting viewpoints, de Noailles and Voltaireâboth men, not coincidentally, from France, where bibliophiles were particularly interested in the Ortiz editionsârepresent two main facets of the riteâs reception in early modern Europe: the place of the editions in the history of rare books, on the one hand, and the symbolic role of the Mozarabs in the perception of Christianity in Spain, on the other.
Voltaire remarked that, after the duel, âall the laws of chivalryâ opposed proceeding to trial by fire. More than that, the duel and the trial by fire represented for him a remote and excessively pious past that was inferior to his own society. Such condescension clearly stands at a geographic and political distance from Spain, where the aftermath of the combat between the two rites bore the weighty symbolism of foreign encroachment on the inhabitants of Toledo.
Already for more than half a millennium, writers in the Iberian peninsula had viewed the eleventh-century imposition of the Roman rite there through the lens of national identity. The thirteenth-century Alfonsine vernacular Estoria de España, following the chronicle of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, situates the aftermath of the trial by fire in the political context of Alfonso VIâs decision (influenced by his âFrenchâ queen, Constance of Burgundy) to impose the âFrenchâ (Roman) rite on all the clergy and laity of his realm.2 Concurrently, a cleric from southern France, Bernard of Sahagún, arrogated ecclesiastical power to himself as archbishop of Toledo. But the most consequential intervention of all was royal. Disregarding the outcome of the trial by fire, the king memorably imposed his own will along with the Roman-Gregorian liturgy, which Spanish writersâeven in the middle of the eighteenth centuryâconsistently characterized as French. The Jesuit historian Andrés Marcos Burriel and the calligrapher Francisco Xavier Palomares, writing around 1750, during the reign of the Spanish Bourbons, described the introduction of the Roman rite in Toledo as signaling a broader incursion of political influence from France, which likewise brought a foreign writing style (late Caroline minuscule) along with Frankish settlers.3
Voltaireâs version of the narrative, which appeared years before Burrielâs research project began in Toledo, approached the events from the French perspective and extended the nationalist interpretationâalbeit with a twist. While many writers over the centuries had recounted the contest between the two rites as crucial to the history of Christian Spain, Voltaire attributed the spirit evinced by the story to colonized peoples of his own day. To the Frenchmanâs mind, trials by fire illustrated the superstitious tendencies that Europeans shared with Africans: âMost of what I have told, one would expect to read in a tale of Hottentots or Negroes; it must be admitted that we still resemble them in certain ways.â4 This reading of the story of the Mozarabic riteâs medieval past against a background of contemporary colonialism speaks in its own way to the riteâs early modern role as a recollection of past communities as well as a representation of present ones. In Spain, the Mozarabic liturgyâs marginalization and suppression had been impressively reversed by Cisneros, an avatar of early Spanish imperialism. By Voltaireâs time the rite had become, in effect, a liturgy of empire, its symbolic role a function of what Eva Botella Ordinas terms imperiocentrismâa transnational and imperialist historiography in the service of interests that âself-identified as national.â5
That transformation of the Mozarabic rite began around 1500 with Cisnerosâs advocacy for it, which was matched only by his ardent support for Spainâs expeditions in North Africa. As noted in chapter 3, the archbishop funded the conquest of Oran with the revenues from Toledo Cathedral, into which he had introduced the Mozarabic rite, an act of foundation that became a major part of his public identity. He overtly connected his own championing of both causes by commissioning a depiction of the conquest of Oran in the Mozarabic Chapel. Throughout the early modern period, one marked by Spanish imperial aspirations, the reception of the Mozarabic rite, whether in print or performance, was closely bound to ideas of conquest.
In this book I have emphasized the importance of print culture in that reception and the range of potential meanings of Mozarabic editions for those who owned and used them. After describing the creation of the editions in chapter 1, in chapter 4 I examined their use and ownership, with attention to the provenance of surviving copies and the annotations they contain. Users of these books were participants in the meanings that accumulated over the centuries after their publication. The copies that remain in Toledo bear witness to their long histories of use in parallel with the ongoing celebration of the liturgy in the Mozarabic Chapel. The copies that left Toledo, beginning in the sixteenth century, attest to the perception of these volumes as luxury objects even as they symbolized Iberian traditional religion.
Unlike early Latin liturgical rites such as the Gallican and the Beneventan that had largely disappeared as a result of the Carolingian and Gregorian reforms, the Mozarabic rite was never entirely extinguished. While prolonging its life, the patronage of Cisneros altered it considerably, as we have seen, and the changes met with scrutiny. In chapter 5, I analyzed evidence for the place of the editions in the development of liturgical erudition. Between 1500 and 1800 historians and philologists strove to grasp what distinguished the medieval Old Hispanic liturgy from the neo-Mozarabic rite. Intellectually, this was a consequential undertaking, as differences between the riteâs medieval and early modern forms proved to be productive sources of tension, eliciting a comparative method of historical inquiry that modernized liturgical erudition. Successive generations of scholars built on Cisnerosâs legacy, each edition and commentary making its own distinctive and situated use of the Ortiz editions.
The neo-Mozarabic rite was filtered through multiple layers of use and reception, accruing meaning from the readers, writers, artists, statesmen, booksellers, bibliophiles, and librarians who engaged with the editions. While in the medieval period the Mozarabic rite had been attached to distinct social groups (Visigoths, Toledans, Mozarabs), new associations coalesced after Cisneros. Study and practice of the liturgy not only amplified the received tradition but also created a sense of affiliation with the âimagined communitiesâ of use, the most salient for this book being scholars and bibliophiles.6 By regarding the Mozarabic rite as something dynamic and diffuseânot a static corpus of texts, but a more malleable collective patrimonyâwe can better understand its function as a cultural symbol, the variety of readings it engendered, and its lasting impact on the construction of history and identity.
Mr. de Voltaire, Abrégé de lâHistoire universelle depuis Charlemagne jusques à Charlequint, vol. 1 (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1743).
Mariano de la Campa Gutiérrez, La estoria de España de Alfonso X: Estudio y edición de la versión crÃtica desde Fruela II hasta la muerte de Fernando II, Anejos de Analecta Malacitana 75 (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2009), 498.
On these passages in Burrielâs PaleografÃa Española (1753) and Palomaresâs Polygraphia Gothico-Española (1764) see 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), 149â51.
Voltaire, Abrégé de lâHistoire universelle depuis Charlemagne, 1:348â49: La dernière épreuve que je rapporterai, est celle dont on se servit pour décider en Espagne après la prise de Tolède, si on devoit réciter lâOffice Romain, ou celui quâon appelait Mosarabique? On convint dâabord unanimement de terminer la querelle par le duël. Deux champions armés de toutes pièces combattirent dans toutes les règles de la Chevalerie. Don Ruis de Montania, Chevalier du Missel Mosarabique, fit perdre les arçons à son adversaire, et le renversa mourant. Mais la Reine qui avait beaucoup dâinclination pour le Missel Romain, voulut quâon tentât lâépreuve du feu. Toutes les Loix de la Chevalerie sây opposoient. Cependant on jetta au feu les deux Missels, qui probablement furent brulés; et le Roi pour ne mécontenter personne, fit en sorte que quelques Ãglises prieroient Dieu selon le Rituel Romain, et que dâautres garderoient le Mosarabique. Dans la plupart des choses que je viens de rapporter, on croiroit lire une relation des Hottentots ou de Nègres; et il faut lâavouer, nous leur ressemblons encore en quelque chose.
Eva Botella Ordinas, âLeyendas imperiocéntricas, memoria oficial e historias descoloniales,â eHumanista 50 (2022): 54â73, at 56.
For the idea of âimagined communitiesâ see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991).