De La Cogolla Research Articles

Three Men in the Fire (×3)

The Old Hispanic liturgy for Córdoban saints Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis associates the martyrs with the three men thrown into the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). This article explores the compilation choices and musical strategies that establish this biblical parallel, their possible motivations, and how a liturgy emphasizing these biblical heroes would have been received by the community that used it. The chants and prayers for Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis are borrowed from the liturgy for another trio of Iberian saints (Fructuosus, Augurius, and Eulogius), and I argue that these chants may have been selected to capitalize on the layers of cultural associations that had accrued to Daniel 3. Contemporary biblical illuminations, illustrated Beatus Apocalypse commentaries, and anti-Islamic polemics alike emphasize the Babylonian location of the three men in the furnace. In anti-Islamic polemic, Babylon becomes Córdoba, the capital of the Umayyad caliphate. These textual and artistic traditions were prominent at the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, the presumed origin of the earliest witness to the surviving liturgy for Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis. After newly identifying anti-Islamic polemical aspects of the saints’ passio, I propose that the choice to highlight Daniel 3 in Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis’s liturgy emphasized the saints’ Córdoban origin and inscribed their story within the contemporary contexts of Muslim-Christian relationships.

The Bullary as a New Type of Cartulary: The Example of Becerro III of San Millán de la Cogolla

Following the famous miscellaneous volume of 1993 dedicated to the study of cartularies, part of the historiographical attention on these manuscripts has focused on their typological diversity. This study aims to advance research in this specific area by investigating the emergence of cartularies devoted to the preservation of papal documents. Such manuscripts have been known as bullaria (or bullaries in English and bularios in Spanish) since the early Modern Age, the period of their maximum diffusion. In the Iberian Peninsula, there survive several exemplars from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that can be interpreted as precursors of this new typology. Due to its early chronology, the Becerro III of the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla is an excellent starting point for this investigation. The study of this manuscript reveals that, despite its factitious nature, the monks’ creation of a dossier of papal privileges which opens the manuscript can be recognised as a «proto-bullary», which anticipated by several centuries the definition and diffusion of a new type of cartulary.

Un oficio inédito en honor de San Millán. En torno a la primera liturgia romana emilianense

The liturgy composed in honour of St Millán, following the introduction of the Roman rite in Castile, is practically unknown in terms of the formularies of the Divine Office. The present article offers a critical edition of an unpublished office of the hermit saint found in two breviaries of the diocese of Calahorra dating back to the 15th and 16th cent. It also sets out the hermeneutical keys to its contents, production, and origin, assessing the arguments that relate it to the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja).

Meyer Schapiro’s ‘Road not Taken’: San Millán de la Cogolla and Resistance to the Roman Rite

Meyer Schapiro’s landmark article, ‘From Mozarabic to Romanesque at Silos’, advanced the notion that visual evidence for resistance to the newly adopted Roman rite (Council of Burgos, 1080) could be found in the art and architecture of the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos. This article suggests that Schapiro’s inquiry could have been more successfully pursued at the Riojan monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, the only site where written evidence for this resistance is preserved. This study considers the Arca of San Felices and its Romanesque ivories (c. 1090) in the context of sweeping political and religious changes that threatened the cult of Emilian, the monastery’s patron saint, who was venerated in the Old Hispanic rite and whose remains were translated to their own deluxe shrine earlier in the century. That efforts were again marshalled to promote Felix, an obscure local hermit who was once Emilian’s teacher, are presented here as a form of resistance to the imposition of the Roman rite.

La Biblia Escorial I.I.6 by Enrique-Arias, Andrés (review)

Reviewed by: La Biblia Escorial I.I.6 by Enrique-Arias, Andrés Steven N. Dworkin Enrique-Arias, Andrés, ed. La Biblia Escorial I.I.6. Transcripción y estudios. Logroño: CiLengua Fundación San Millán de la Cogolla, 2010. 98 pp +1 CDROM. ISBN 978-84-937654-6-0. A rich tradition of vernacular renderings (romanceamientos) of the Bible flourished in medieval Spain. At least a dozen different manuscripts have preserved Romance versions of the Bible, the largest number in any medieval European vernacular. All but two of these translations are based on the Hebrew Bible and thus exclude the New Testament. In some of the versions derived from the Hebrew text, the Deuterocanonical books follow the text of the Vulgate. These texts were prepared by Jews for the use of both their co-religionists, and for Christian patrons who commissioned and sponsored some of these translations. Although some may reflect earlier originals, the majority of these versions date from the fifteenth century, a time when the Church was not strictly enforcing its prohibition on private ownership of vernacular Bibles. The negative attitude of the Church in the Iberian Peninsula toward vernacular Bibles may explain in part the paucity of Romance Bibles based on the Latin Vulgate. The surviving manuscripts may be but the remnants of a much richer tradition of Romance Bibles in medieval Spain. In addition, vernacular Bible texts constitute lengthy sections of such works as the early thirteenth-century Fazienda de ultra Mar and the Alfonsine General estoria (the latter based on the Vulgate). Romance biblical fragments also turn up in several fifteenth-century texts. Three recent studies by Gemma Avenoza provide an informative description and analysis of the manuscripts that have preserved medieval Spanish Bibles. The Biblical text contained in Escorial Manuscript I.I.6 (also known as I-J-6 and E6; hereafter E6) is one of the two medieval Spanish vernacular Bibles translated directly from the Vulgate (the other being Escorial MS I.I.8 or E8) and is the oldest Castilian vernacular Bible. This copy was executed ca. 1250 and, consequently, is the longest extant pre-Alfonsine Castilian prose text. It is a treasure trove of early Castilian linguistic forms. Its 358 double-columned [End Page 291] folios contain the Old Testament starting from Proverbs, and the entire New Testament. Escorial Manuscript I.I.8 (E8) contains most of the Old Testament material missing from E6, a situation which has led some experts to suspect that both go back to a common Vulgate-based original. The Gospel of St. Matthew as transcribed in E6 was edited by Thomas Montgomery, who subsequently joined forces with Spurgeon Baldwin to publish a well-received edition of the remainder of the New Testament. Over the years various scholars have edited individual Old Testament books from E6, often in journals of difficult access or as unpublished dissertations. Enrique-Arias identifies these editions at page 16 of his Introduction to the book under review, which offers its readers the first edition of the entire Biblical text preserved in E6. Andrés Enrique-Arias is one of the leading specialists in the study of medieval vernacular Spanish Bibles. He is the creator of the website Biblia medieval (www.bibliamedieval.es), which offers, among other features, a transcription of all extant medieval Spanish Bible manuscripts as well as those portions of Biblical books reproduced in other texts, accompanied by the text of the Vulgate and the Hebrew Bible (the latter both in Hebrew script and in transliteration). Enrique-Arias has designed a parallel corpus, which allows the researcher to compare at one glance how a given Biblical passage is rendered in all the relevant Romance versions. Such a tool is invaluable to the textual critic and to the historical linguist who wishes to compare the choice of, say, orthographical and morphological variants, syntactic constructions, or lexical items. Enrique-Arias himself has authored a number of studies of Spanish morphosyntax based on the data found in the Biblia medieval corpus (e.g., Biblias romanceadas, Lingua eorum). In addition to a Prologue by Claudio García Turza and a brief Introduction by the editor, four studies accompany the transcription...

¿Qué sabemos del Cantar de Fernán González?

The Poem or Book of Fernán González was probably written c. 1250 by a monk of San Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos, Castile) to strengthen the legendary foundation of his monastery by the tenth-century Castilian Count, Fernán González, and to promote his tomb cult there. The Arlanza poet was competing with the benefits that Santiago and San Millán de la Cogolla were trying to get on legendary accounts of the champion of the independence of the County of Castile from the Kingdom of León. It is clear that this is a work of monastic propaganda, designed to attract pilgrims and donations; therefore perhaps a better title for it would be Poem of the Foundation of San Pedro de Arlanza. The Arlanza poet was fond of the popular and orally transmitted Romance epics (Hispanic and Carolingian songs). He knew Siete infantes de Salas, the tradition of the Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo (Gesta de las Mocedades de Rodrigo), the anti-Carolingian song(s) of Bernardo del Carpio, and the Roncesvals Matière. We also suspect that the poet was recasting a now-lost epic cantar de gesta of Fernán González. This cantar was probably also known by Gonzalo de Berceo, who was actively working in San Millán de la Cogolla, a few years earlier, trying to attract pilgrims and donations. In this article, I try to analyze how much we know of the lost Cantar de Fernán González and if the Monastery of Sahagún (León) also reappropriated it for its own propaganda.

Conciencia nacional y devoción jacobea en el Poema de Fernán González

Jacobean devotion and national awareness are closely related in the Poema de Fernán González (PFG). The great advance of the Reconquest in the thirteenth century and the reevaluation of the past that it caused enabled the broad Hispanic perspective of the PFG. Spain is not only a distant and longed-for reality (“regnum Gothorum”) but a current political concept. This is the frame of the PFG's intense Castilian sentiment. Castile is the bastion of the Visigothic monarchy, which did not yield to the Muslims and was the foundation for the recovery of Spain. The territorial diversity becomes the outstanding feature of this country, in which the “Montaña” takes an important role. Confronting the proposal of the cult of Saint Millán by the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, the author of the PFG, aware of the damages that such a cult was causing to his monastery, clings to the Jacobean devotion that achieved a broad Hispanic scope.

Sign of the Cross: contexts for the Ivory Cross of San Millán de la Cogolla

This article focuses on the surviving arms of the ivory cross of San Millán de la Cogolla and proposes a new interpretation for its striking Córdoban visual aesthetic. The article rejects an interpretive framework privileging religious divisions between Muslims and Christians. Instead this essay emphasizes the kinship and political ties that connected the Andalusi caliph ‘Abd al- Raḥmān III (r. 912–61) and Toda, Queen of Pamplona. Queen Tota, as she is named in Latin charters, or Tuta bint Asnar, as she is named in the Umayyad court chronicle, has long been recognized as a key figure in the political milieu of tenth-century Iberia. Using the material evidence of the cross as a departure point, the article considers the Arabic and Latin texts that point to Tota's centrality not only to the politics, but also to cultural transfer between al-Andalus and Hispania. The presence of the ivory cross at San Millán, and its Córdoban aesthetic, I argue, are symptomatic of Tota's strategic use of her kinship connection to ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, which she used – and made manifest through material culture – to establish, proclaim, and consolidate power and authority for herself, her children and her grandchildren, who subsequently ascended the thrones of Pamplona and León as northern counterparts to their kin, the caliphs of Córdoba.

Rebranding San Millán: the Becerro Galicano as a rejection of the monastery's Navarrese heritage (1192–95)

This article examines the context in which the Becerro Galicano of San Millán de la Cogolla was created in the late twelfth century. The first factor taken into account is the monastery's position on the frontier between the kingdoms of Castile and Navarre. Then the contents and structure of the cartulary are compared with those of its now lost predecessor, the Becerro Gótico, a comparison that reveals that the prime concern of the monastery by the late twelfth century was the defence of its possessions from the bishopric of Calahorra. Finally, events of the 1190s, above all a resurgent bishopric and endemic warfare in the Rioja region, conditioned the decision to compose a cartulary stressing the monastery's Castilian origins and subsequently seek its ratification by higher ecclesiastical authorities.

Mediaeval Ivories in the Archaeological Museum, Madrid

BY order of the Government, the famous ivories from the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla have been placed on view in the Archaeological Museum. They include three distinct lots: the “ara,” or altar, the remnants of the chest of San Millán, and the remnants of the chest of St. Felices.The ara of San Millán, in its present condition, is like a small wooden altar lined with ivory plaques surrounded with finest metal filigree borders. The ivory plaques are minutely carved with a variety of animals-sporting among the foliage. The background is gilt. The plaques are mozarabic work dating from about 980–990 A.D. and are closely related to the Moorish ivories from Cordoba of the same period, of which there are two splendid examples in the Museum: the cylindrical box from Zamora and the casket from Silos. The bottom of the altar is lined with an Hispano-moresque textile of the XIIth century, representing double busts of winged lions, in mauve, black, green, yellow and white.