Latin Fragments and Catalan Verses: Printing Linguistic and Devotional Metonymy in La dolorosa passio del nostre redemptor Jesuchrist (Barcelona, 1518)

Abstract

In sixteenth-century Barcelona, printing houses mainly produced books in Catalan, Castilian, and Latin. At times, imprints contained combinations of these languages. This analysis of a printed compilation of Passion-centered poetry employs metonymy to study the intersections of whole and partial texts within La dolorosa passio del nostre redemptor Jesuchrist (Barcelona, 1518) alongside the identities of its readers as individuals and as members of an ecclesiastical whole. I argue that the Latin fragments and Catalan verses in La dolorosa passió guided readers through individual and collective modes of Catholic devotion, including personal compassion for Christ’s suffering and remembrance of communal liturgical celebrations. A unique aspect of this printed book is that the printer, Pere Posa, was the one who inserted Latin phrases before and after the Catalan poems. His decision to mingle Latin fragments with Catalan poetry points to the existence of an early modern Iberian readership that performed personal and collective devotional practices in both languages. Mukul Saxena’s concept of lifestyle diglossia illustrates how lay Catholic readers tailored their use of Latin and Catalan on La dolorosa passió’s folios to match religious practices they as individuals and their society as a whole were cultivating. The presence of contiguous Latin fragments and Catalan verses demonstrates that, far from compartmentalizing their communal and individual religious experiences, early modern Iberian Catholics enacted overlapping collective and personal identities while reading printed devotional books. I contend that we can trace these intersections by putting content in dialogue with materiality using imprints like La dolorosa passió.