Liturgical Reform in Medieval Spain and the Response of the Pilgrim Movement

LITURGICAL REFORM IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN AND THE RESPONSE OF THE PILGRIM MOVEMENT Thomas D. Spaccarelli Sewanee: The University ofthe South The present article considers the implications that two different but related liturgical reforms might have on the study of pilgrimage and on our comprehension ofEscorial MS h.1.13, a book I have had the temerity of calling El libro de los huéspedes (LH). My ideas are an extension of certain issues and themes I outlined in A Medieval Pilgrim's Companion, coupled here to Roger Wright's linguistic ideas and to the historical reality of liturgical reform. Firstamongtheseideasisthatpilgrimagewasunderstoodbythosewho participated in it as a sacrament. Next, there is the issue ofegalitarianism so common in the activity of pilgrimage. The LH insists on the equality of males and females and also posits that there is very little difference between clergy and lay people in terms of their comprehension of God, salvation, and the religious path. This study considers the possibility that these issues and concerns react to and emerge out ofthe liturgical reforms ofboth the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, moments which are central in Roger Wright's revolutionary theories concerning Latin and the Romance languages. In addition, the study proposes that the heterodox I would like to thank John K. Moore, Jr. and Stephen B. Raulston for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts ofthis study. La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 257-72 258Thomas D. SpaccarelliLa corónica 36.2, 2008 religious life outlined and defended in the LH is one of the perennial flowerings ofa different kind of Christian practice that can trace its roots as far back as The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, dated to the first half of the second century by Karen L. King (184). Whereas the LH reacts to these liturgical reforms with its own concept of sacrament, other texts, especially those produced by the new cultural elite trained in Palencia, will support the reforms and attempt to popularize them. Finally, this study will examine Berceo's thirteenth-century Del sacrificio de la misa and show how it contrasts with the LH vis-à-vis these reforms. Roger Wright first outlined his ideas in Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France published in 1982. He subsequently published two other volumes, one a collection of essays by a variety of philologists responding to his ideas, Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages, and then a collection of his own studies, Early Ibero-Romance, published in 1994. By the time of his 1996 Tratado de Cabreros and the 2002 Sociophilological Study ofLate Latin, Wright had developed a new field, "sociophilology", which culls information from "several academic fields at once" in order to arrive at an understanding of "medieval literacy" (Sociophilological 6). His basic idea is very simple: Vulgar Latin never existed. The idea that the cultural elites continued speaking Latin while at the same time participating with the rest of the population in the evolution of what would become the Romance languages is nothing more than a fiction. The fiction would have it like this: the cultural elites were bilingual, speaking the vernacular on a daily basis, but preserving Latin (albeit imperfectly) for worship, legal matters, documents, and the like. Of course, the hoi polloi were limited to the vernacular. In contrast, Wright believes that at least in the Romance-speaking areas, most individuals were monolingual, and those who dealt with Latin did so only as a written code for the vernacular they spoke. When that code was read aloud it came out as whatever Romance vernacular that particular reader spoke.1 The implications of this revolutionary idea are amazing. 1 Dutton had already pointed out in 1980 that Latin documents must have been read aloud in the vernacular: "Despite the fact that all documents were composed in Latin in the earlier period, we find constant references to them being read aloud to the witnesses and parties. This point is frequent in all Liturgical Reform in Medieval Spain259 It means, for instance, that the traditional way to read the Mass and accompanying sermons would be in the vernacular. That is, the text would be written in what looks like Latin...