A fascinating study in popular religion and the power of religious symbols.
“A wonderful English introduction to the history, structure, theology, and spirituality of the Hispano-Mozarabic Good Friday liturgy.”
—Kenneth G. Davis, O.F.M., St. Meinrad School of Theology
“This ground-breaking work demonstrates that Hispanic Catholicism is rooted not only in indigenous religions and the conquest and mestizaje of the Americas, but foundationally in an Iberian Catholic tradition that dates from the first millennium of Christianity.” —Timothy Matovina, University of Notre Dame
Veneration of the Cross plays a major role in Hispanic popular religion. But for the Mozarabs, a Catholic community that traces its roots to the Visigoths and Hispano-Romans of seventh-century Spain, veneration of the Cross—particularly the Lignum Crucis, a relic of the “True Cross”—has served to join devotion to Christ with a powerful symbol of religio-ethnic identity and survival in the face of persecution. The Mozarabs (the term may mean “Arabized”) of Toledo maintained their Catholic identity through the period of Islamic rule. After the Christian reconquest of Spain and the imposition of uniform Roman liturgical rites, they clung tightly to their own Mozarabic Rite, which is still recognized and celebrated today.
Raúl Gómez-Ruiz, a priest of the Society of the Divine Savior, is past-president of the National Hispanic Institute of Liturgy and of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States (ACHTUS). He is a professor and vice president for Academic Affairs at the Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin.
