An innovative, scholarly introduction to the distinctive and enigmatic Christian liturgy of early medieval Iberia.

The tradition of Old Hispanic liturgical chant is here examined through a new methodology, enabling striking new insights into its use.

The Hispanic rite, a medieval non-Roman Western liturgy, was practiced across the Iberian Peninsula for over half a millennium and functioned as the most distinct marker of Christian identity in this region. As Christians typically began every liturgical day throughout the year by singing a vespertinus, this chant genre in particular provides a unique window into the cultural and religious life of medieval Iberia. The Hispanic rite has the largest corpus of extant manuscripts of all non-Roman liturgies in the West, which testifies to the importance placed on their transmission through political and cultural upheavals. Its chants, however, use a notational system that lacks clear specification of pitch and has kept them barred from in-depth study. Text, Liturgy and Music in the Hispanic Rite is the first detailed analysis of the interactions between textual, liturgical, and musical variables across the entire extant repertoire of a chant genre central to the Hispanic rite, the vespertinus. By approaching the vespertini through a holistic methodology that integrates liturgy, melody, and text, author Raquel Rojo Carrillo identifies the genre's norms and traces the different shapes it adopts across the liturgical year and on different occasions. In this way, the book offers an unprecedented insight into the liturgical edifice of the Hispanic rite and the daily experience of Christians in medieval Iberia.

The bibliography includes material published from 2010 to 2012. Following on from the first bibliography (Brill, 1988) and its updates (Brill 2006, 2008, 2011) this volume covers recent literature on: Archaeology, Liturgy, Monasticism, Iberian-Gallic Patristics, Paleography, Linguistics, Germanic and Muslim Invasions, and more. In addition, peoples such as the Vandals, Sueves, Basques, Alans and Byzantines are included. The book contains author and subject indexes and is extensively cross-indexed for easy consultation. A periodicals index of hundreds of journals accompanies the volume. Further updates are to be expected at intervals of three years.

This book shows the influence of medieval musical manuscripts on the articulation of national identity in Enlightenment Spain. For the eighteenth century Jesuit Andres Marcos Burriel (1719-1762) and his associate the calligrapher Francisco Palomares (1728-1796), the notation that preserved the music of the past was a central source in the study of history.