Mozarabs, Hispanics, and the Cross

Veneration of the cross plays a major role in hispanic popular religion. But for the Mozarabs, a Catholic community that traces its roots to the Visagoths and Hispano-Romans of seventh-century Spain, veneration of the cross--particularly the Lignum Crucis, a relic of the "True Cross"--has served to join devotion to Christ with a powerful symbol of religio-ethnic identity and servival in the face of persecution. The Mozarabs (the term may mean "Arabized") of Toledo maintained their Catholic identity through the period of Islamic rule. After the Christian reconquest of Spain and the imposition of uniform Roman liturgical rites, they clung tightly to their own Mozarabic Rite, which is still recognized and celebrated today.