Here we are in Holy Week in Spain, procession after procession, wonderful effusions of community, starting to break about our heads. Oddly, I find myself thinking of John of Gorze. This highly influential Benedictine reformer came to Spain in 953 on a mission from the Holy Roman Emperor Otto 1 to the Caliph of al-Andalus in Cordoba – the totally remarkable abd al-Rahman III. Forgive, if you can, these difficult names.
The emperor’s aim was to persuade the Caliph to deal with Muslim marauders based, according to accounts, either near St-Tropez or, more persuasively, marauding away in the Alpine Passes. Or both. A Jewish grandee of Cordoba named Hasdai ibn Shaprut, prince of his people, physician, linguist, all-purpose intellectual, was called in to read the emperor’s letter and decided it might be considered derogatory to Islam. John of Gorze was no seeker after martyrdom and waited three years in effective imprisonment till a message had been conveyed to the emperor by a Christian bishop from Andalusia (Jews and Christians at this period fully operational under Islam) and the emperor’s original letter rewritten rather more tactfully. On this basis, John of Gorze managed an audience with the Caliph, who was seated in awesome splendour. He was allowed to kiss his hand, a very special privilege. Maddeningly, given this promising beginning, the chronicle which tells the story offers not a word on what the two men actually said.
I mention John’s Spanish visit in Holy Week since it is worth noting that In his time as abbot of Gorze, not far from the Moselle, John sponsored the ‘Gorzean reform movement’ which seems to have been critically important in the evolution of Passion plays. Centuries later, the procession of the three Mary’s to the Sepulchre became the emotional centrepiece of one of the greatest musical set-pieces of the middle ages, the St Gall Passion Play.