Views of Transition: Liturgy and Illumination in Medieval Spain by Rose Walker (review)

running head rose walker, Views ofTransition: LiturgyandIllumination in MedievalSpain. Toronto: The British Library and University ofToronto Press, 1998. Pp. 264. isbn: 0-8020— 4368-2. $75. The study ofmedieval culture is often a search for patterns. While this search may take a variety offorms, one ofthe most popular is the academic case study, which, by limiting analysis to a small number of related examples, provides a reassuringly manageable avenue of approach to a sometimes bewildering diversity of evidence. The attendant risk, of course, is that this artificially narrow focus might facilitate overinterpretation when conclusions are applied more generally. RoseWalker's Views ofTransition: LiturgyandIllumination inMedievalSpain, fully demonstrates the merits ofthe typical case study, if it does not entirely escape its risks. Examining a small group of liturgical manuscripts associated with key monastic centers in Castile, Dr. Walker attempts to retrace the history of the late eleventhcentury transition from the Mozarabic liturgy ofearly medieval Spain to the Roman rite promoted elsewhere in the Latin West. By analyzing breviaries and missals used both before and after this liturgical change, which in Castile took place around 1080, she identifies changes in the organization, selection, and content ofliturgical texts, as well as the manner in which they are presented on the page, in an effort to clarify the means by which the transition between liturgies was implemented and received. Dr. Walker's examination ofeach manuscript is impressively meticulous, including minute description and analysis of its codicological, paleographical, textual, and art historical characterstics buttressed with detailed photographs and extensive appendices. Although this rather archaeological specificitymakes at times fordaunting reading, rewardinglysuccinct conclusions at the end ofeachsection are bothsuggestive and appropriately cautious in tone. In the end, Dr. Walker reconstructs convincingly a multifaceted shift from the irregular, idiosyncratic, and locally inflected Mozarabic liturgy to the far more systematic and structured Roman one, showing how not just the content and organization ofliturgical texts, but their physical presentation, were radically transformed over the course of a few decades. Among the changes she describes are the reduction and eventual omission of traditional Mozarabic feasts, prayers, and readings; the emergence ofa new emphasis on devotion to the Virgin; the gradual replacement ofCaroline script with Visigothic writing; and the rise ofa relatively new visual language, the Romanesque, to replace indigenous Iberian forms. Such richly elaborated conclusions cannot help but imply further questions which are not so fully explored by this study. One might ask, for instance, to what extent the phenomena traced in Dr. Walker's examples might be found in other liturgical manuscripts beyond this fairly limited sampling? Would these demonstrate a similar approach to and reception ofthe liturgical change elsewhere in Spain? Although the rationale for restricting her investigation initially to Castillan manuscripts is logical, the tendency to steer clear of other Spanish centers of liturgical reform tends to privilege the Castilian model more than it might merit, and more, in fact, than the author might have intended to do. A briefreview ofmanuscripts from other Spanish monastic centers, especially from Aragon (where the liturgical change occurred at arthuriana the monastery of San Juan de la Peña almost ten years earlier than in Castile, in 1071), might bring a richer significance to some ofthe author's broader conclusions. Also potentially fruitful would have been a more focused discussion ofhow changes in the Castillan manuscripts might have been affected by practical issues, such as the training of indigenous scribes and artists, the influence of foreign ones, and the character ofthe models potentially available in the region, issues to which the author refers interestingly from time to time but does not seriously explore. Such questions as these are not intended to minimize Dr. Walker's significant scholarly achievement so much as to reveal the importance ofstudies like hers in establishing a foundation for more far-ranging inquiry. pamela a. patton Southern Methodist University ...