“A blind man, if he be not quite blind, refuses to be led by a guide; and, since he sees a little, he thinks it better to go in whatever happens to be the direction which he can distinguish, because he sees none better; and thus he can lead astray a guide who sees more than he, for after all […]
An Irish monk explains some liturgical differences: “Jesuits, as practical individuals, are wont to pray privately in whatever posture a man finds congenial; there is a certain distrust of ritual, corporate ceremony, and rubrics. Nec cantat, nec rubricat. This approach to private prayer even affects the way certain Jesuit priests celebrate Holy Mass. Benedictines, on the whole, are wont to […]
“As man’s distinction consists in a property which no other creature on earth possesses, viz., intellectual perception, in the exercise of which he does not employ his senses, nor move his hand or his foot, this perception has been compared – though only apparently, not in truth – to the Divine perception, which requires no corporeal organ. On this account, […]
Song of Toledo, a novel of 11th century Spain. Now available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Can a man go home again after fighting his own king? The year is 1086, and for Brother Bernardo, who is accompanying the new archbishop of Toledo from the great monastery at Cluny back to the ancient capital of Hispania, that question is […]
Pick up a newspaper on any given day and you’re bound to find an article describing a clash between some form of secular political power and a religious institution. In the West, these episodes play out, at least for the most part, in courts or legislative bodies. But that has not always been the case. In medieval Spain, over the […]
As I’ve noted in earlier entries, in the late 11th century a number of popes were intent upon unifying liturgical practice across Christian Europe. In Spain that effort was opposed by Christians who had been living under Moorish rule for centuries and had developed their own Arab language rite. Loyal to what would later be dubbed the Mozarabic Rite, these […]
Officials who regulate things – markets, schools, industries – have always had power. In the cities of Al-Andalus, as the part of Spain under Moorish rule was known in medieval times, the Muhtasib, or Master of the Market, held sway over much of daily life. In Song of Toledo, Faisal is a boy coming of age in Tulaytula (Toledo). This […]
“The muwashshah is both the product and a microcosm of the cultural conditions peculiar to al-Andalus. Its linguistic complexity reflects the fluid and diverse linguistic situation of the peninsula’s population. The muwashshah embodies the flexible and changing relation between the written languages (classical Arabic, Hebrew), as well as between these languages and the oral forms (the Arabic spoken in Andalusia; […]
“The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, ‘the divine office.’” -Catechism of the Catholic Church While the Liturgy of the Hours is still an important piece of the official prayer life […]
The usual distinction, when looking at medieval Spain, is between the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities. But it’s when you look a layer below, so to speak, that things get interesting. For example, the Moors who dominated the peninsula for centuries were divided between an elite whose ancestors hailed from Damascus and Baghdad, among other places, and the far more […]