Constanza de Castilla’s Marian Doctrines in a Dominican Setting: Her ‘Officium Incarnacionis Domini Nostri Ihesus Christi’

The Dominican Constanza de Castilla’s exceptional liturgical book, her Libro de devociones y oficios [Book of Devotions and Offices], served devotional and practical purposes in the convent of Santo Domingo el Real in Madrid. The article begins by examining Dominican nuns’ participation in Corpus Christi processions. It then examines Constanza’s liturgy for the Mass of the Incarnation (25 March). A study of liturgical calendars and offices both prior to and contemporary to Constanza reveals that there are no Castilian offices given the title ‘Incarnation of Our Lord’. Comparison of the contents of the office with the same liturgies reveals none with the exact same antiphons or readings. However, Constanza’s choice of the name ‘office of the Incarnation’ is matched to a similar wording in the account book of Franciscan nuns. They also give the name day of the Incarnation to the feast they celebrate on 25 March. The article also summarizes the theological theme of kenosis, Christ’s self-abasement, apparent elsewhere in the Book of Devotions and Offices and which is touched upon in the office of the Incarnation. Finally, it examines the links between Thomas Aquinas’s thinking on the Virgin Birth and where that is echoed by Constanza. This article concludes that, for this short office, Constanza’s Mass shows no signs of having been copied from existing offices, always with the proviso that what remains of fourteenth and fifteenth century liturgies provides an imperfect picture.