Between Paris and Al-Andalus: Bishop Maurice of Burgos and his World, c.1208-1238

Abstract

This thesis examines the life and career of Bishop Maurice of Burgos, one of the most important figures within the Castilian Church of the early thirteenth century. Archdeacon of Toledo from 1208 and then Bishop of Burgos from 1213 until his death in 1238, Maurice’s career unfolded in the midst of some of the defining events of the thirteenth century, and a detailed understanding of his life raises a number of important questions about the Church and society within which he lived and worked. From his earliest days as archdeacon amongst the Mozarabs of Toledo, his career straddled cultural and religious boundaries. He was an ambitious bishop; a patron, scholar, judge, crusader, and the founder of the Gothic cathedral of Burgos, and he grappled with some of the foremost intellectual, cultural and theological questions of his day. This thesis places Maurice firmly within his context, analysing, for the first time, the full scope of his career, and incorporating a variety of new evidence to shed light on a prelate who lived at the heart of Castile but whose life was animated by ideas and influences from Paris, Cordoba, Bourges, Rome and beyond. Chapter One addresses Maurice’s place in the multicultural society of thirteenth-century Castile, establishing connections that he would draw on throughout his life. Chapter Two analyses his interactions with Islam, both as a crusader and, perhaps more unexpectedly, as an intellectual. In Chapter Three, this study addresses Maurice’s establishment of episcopal power in the diocese of Burgos, where he worked within complex and often conflicting networks of power to define his auctoritas. Chapters Four and Five focus on the cathedral of Burgos itself, with Chapter Four analysing the Concordia Mauriciana, a unique constitution written by Maurice in 1230, through which we can see both his intellectual interests and his reception of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council. Chapter Five addresses Maurice’s foundation of the Gothic cathedral of Burgos, contextualising his actions as founder-bishop within his broader efforts to introduce cultural change within the church in Burgos. Finally, an Afterword raises the question of a link between Bishop Maurice and the unidentified figure of ‘Mauricius Hispanus’, whose teaching was censured in the University of Paris in 1215.