Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Talk about religious trivia

Can you guess what this picture is about?

It even outstripped my store of trivia, which is considerable.


In the 11th century, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor tried to abolish the native Spanish form of the Mass, the Mozarabic rite, --the rite of the Visigoths who'd come under Arab rule--and replace it with the Roman rite. They held a trial by fire and threw both the Mozarabic and Roman missals in the flames. The Mozarabic book won. For a while. The plate is from a Mozarabic missal.



With my lifelong interest in oddities and lost causes, I am actually acquainted with the Mozarabic rite (and its sibling, the Gallican, which Charlemagne wiped out entirely in the 9th century). Both were/are Latin rites but with significant differences from the Roman way in the Mass, the other sacraments, the Office and architectural style and music
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By modern times it had ceased to exist in Spain save for one side chapel in the cathedral in Toledo. It has been revived and "reformed" of its Roman accretions and now exists again, at least in the Toledo diocese. John Paul II celebrated the Mozarabic rite Mass in St Peter's in 1992.

(Because I can't help myself, the Latin in the plate reads, from top down: "Both books thrown into the fire" "The Roman one jumped out of the fire" "The Gothic (another name for the rite) one unharmed in the flames")

Just think. If you didn't read Ex Cathedra, you might never know this!

1 comment:

Leah said...

Which is why I continue to read.

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