Rituals of Victory: The Role of Liturgy in the Consecration of Mosques in the Castilian Expansion over Islam from Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries

Abstract

Scholarly work on the conquest of Muslim cities in the so-called Castilian Reconquista has focused largely on political consequences rather than conquest rituals. Against the previous background, this article turns attention toward civil and religious rituals associated with the Christian conquest of Muslim cities as an expression of triumph. Among these rituals, the conversion of the congregational mosques has been discussed in chronicles and liturgical books that reveals the role of liturgy to understand both appropriation and sacralization of the mosque to remove these places from Muslim control, restoring the Christian faith in the new churches. These rituals are an evident legacy of Roman law modified in late antiquity, and this paper’s main aim is to highlight the re-use of preexisting Church consecration ceremonies gathered in the Roman Pontifical in order to clean up the “Mohammedan filth” applied to post-Reconquista churches.

Keywords

• conquest
• mosque
• liturgy
• ritual
• cathedral
• medieval Iberia