Cultural Nationalism and the Study of Liturgy in Eighteenth-Century Spain

FAIN: FT-54235-06

Susan Leslie Boynton
Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)

I will travel to Madrid and Toledo, Spain, to complete my study of primary sources emanating from the work of the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel for the Royal Commission on the Archives under Ferdinand VI in 1749-56. The materials to be consulted are housed (in Madrid) in the Biblioteca Nacional, the Biblioteca del Palacio Real, and the Real Academia de la Historia, and (in Toledo) in the Archivo Catedral and the Biblioteca de Castilla y Leon. The ultimate outcome of my work will be a monograph on Burriel's study of the medieval Iberian liturgy as an expression of cultural nationalism in the context of the Spanish enlightenment, and its importance within the intellectual climate of Bourbon Spain before the suppression of the Jesuit order.

Associated Products

Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Book)
Title: Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain
Author: Susan Boynton
Abstract: Silent Music explores the importance of music and liturgy in an eighteenth-century vision of Spanish culture and national identity. From 1750 to 1755, the Jesuit Andres Marcos Burriel (1719-1762) and the calligrapher Francisco Xavier Santiago y Palomares (1728-1796) worked together in Toledo Cathedral for the Royal Commission on the Archives, which the government created to obtain evidence for the royal patronage of church benefices in Spain. With Burriel as director, the Commission transcribed not only archival documents, but also manuscripts of canon law, history, literature, and liturgy, in order to write a new ecclesiastical history of Spain. At the center of this ambitious project of cultural nationalism stood the medieval manuscripts of the Old Hispanic rite, the liturgy associated with Toledo's Mozarabs, or Christians who had continued to practice their religion under Muslim rule.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Music/MusicHistoryWestern/?view=usa&ci=9780199754595
Primary URL Description: Publisher's page on book
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780199754595

“Writing History with Liturgy,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert A. Maxwell (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010), 187-200, (Article)
Title: “Writing History with Liturgy,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. Robert A. Maxwell (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010), 187-200,
Author: Susan Boynton
Abstract: This is a story of two archivist-historians: the monk Gregory of Catino, chronicler of the imperial abbey of Farfa (1060–ca. 1135?) and the Spanish Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel, polymath humanist and professor of theology (1719–62). For both writers, the ecclesiastical archive was a repository of memory that served as a point of departure and a foundation for elaborately constructed foundation narratives. However remote from each other in time, place, and institutional context, Gregory and Burriel followed analogous trajectories while transcribing and organizing an archive. Each wove transcriptions of archival documents into historical narrative, and pursued a novel approach to history writing in which the medieval liturgy was deeply imbricated. The juxtaposition of two such different figures serves to shed light on a heretofore unacknowledged trait common to history writing both in and about the Middle Ages, namely the persistent role of the liturgy in structuring strategies of historical presentation.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03636-6.html
Primary URL Description: Publisher's book page
Format: Other
Publisher: Penn State University Press

“Reconsidering the Toledo Codex of the Cantigas de Santa Maria in the Eighteenth Century,” in Quomodo Cantabimus Canticum? Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner, ed. Rena Charnin Mueller, John Nadas, David Cannata, and Gabriela Ilnitchi (Stuttgart: Americ (Article)
Title: “Reconsidering the Toledo Codex of the Cantigas de Santa Maria in the Eighteenth Century,” in Quomodo Cantabimus Canticum? Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner, ed. Rena Charnin Mueller, John Nadas, David Cannata, and Gabriela Ilnitchi (Stuttgart: Americ
Author: Susan Boynton
Abstract: Study of the copy made by the eighteenth-century scribe Francisco Santiago y Palomares of the thirteenth-century Toledo Codex of the Cantigas de Santa Maria.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.corpusmusicae.com/misc/misc07.htm
Primary URL Description: Publisher's book page
Format: Other
Publisher: American Institute of Musicology

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