The Order of Saint Gonzalo

Right now there's nothing in Andalusada called the Order of St. Dominic, and even if there are "Dominicans" they have nothing to do with the Dominicans IRL. That's because that niche evolved differently, and the organization filling it is the Order of Saint Gonzalo, commonly the Gonzalans.

Dominican Gonzalan spirituality 101

Because of Rule of Canny, Gonzalan spirituality looks understandably like the Dominican spirituality it replaces. (At one point, I described Franciscan and Dominican spiritualities as being "Christocentric" vs. "Logocentric"; in Andalusada, the distinction is better incarnational vs. evangelical.) The first and most glaring distinction is that Gonzalo did something Domingo didn't: by adopting (and adapting) the Rule of Saint Stephen from Stephanines, he circumvented a papal ban on establishing new rules.

"The one rule of our salvation and of all others'," the Rule begins, "is the Gospel of Christ..." - and it goes from there, in a fairly stark fashion. More specifically, the Rule is followed by a distinctly Augustinian, southern, and... well, let's be honest, openly schismatic reading of it, which lead to hundreds of Stephanines defecting to Gonzalo's side when it became known to them. That southern-Augustinian-dissenting addendum moderates the Muretin starkness, but in doing so also emphasizes the features of it that are most recognizably Dominican.

(This means that, from the very start, a case could be made that Saint Gonzalo wasn't following his own Rule. It also means that, unlike the Dominicans IRL, it's both meaningful and possible for there to be Capuchin-style strict-observance orders. Some of those strict-observance sausage parties were probably key figures in the rise of the Sodality.)

Introducing St. Matilda

Saint Matilda exists because Saint Dominic doesn't. Per Rule of Canny, Andalusada needs someone to fill his shoes, an that someone is Saint Gonzalo of Lerida - but he's an original character, which means that I have both free room and a lot of details to fill in. And back before his page took on its current form, one of my earliest notes about Gonzalo was something I wanted in his story: "a Gonzalan St. Clare."

For the longest time, this has sat unattended, because the only reason I introduced Gonzalo was because John George wasn't an Augustinian, and I honestly hadn't had any interesting thoughts about it. Last night, though, while trying to rename Catholic orders to fit into my arbitrary naming conventions, I discovered some really cool things, which brought this back to mind - and I'm gonna make the most of it.

(Re)Introducing St. Francis of Assisi

To save myself work, and keep Andalusada canny, I'm allowing myself a rolling century of grace. There can be some small changes to what's going on anywhere beforehand, but that doesn't count for a hell of a lot - but after the ripples of that one stone in the stream of history impact into the history of a given area, there's a one-century countdown before anybody recognizable stops being born. And even within that timeframe, their lives and careers will be increasingly impacted by the drift of the world.

I realize that this is kinda vague, so I'm going to demonstrate what I mean by this with a rather important example. But before I do that, I'd to take a moment and ask the forgiveness of God.

Because I'm going to grimdark Saint Francis of fucking Assisi.

The Guerillas of Toleto

The survival of Moorish Spain (in the form of Seville) effectively stalls the southern expansion of the Roman Rite. Under various iterations of Moorish rule, the Mozarabic liturgy survives long past the point where it died out IRL.

It also means that the struggle within the Spanish Church over which Rite to use is more pronounced, and much more politicized, because the major players - Aragon and Catalonia - are extremely tied to the Roman Rite. Their efforts to push south (and not purely military ones; witness the Gonzalans) are going to be resented, and perceived as imperialism, by the Christians living under Moorish rule.

This most frequently comes to a head in the Primate of Spain: Toleto, a city (like Batallos) on the edge of both the Christian and Moorish worlds, and (unlike Batallos) one that changes hands at least twice during the Middle Ages. [details?] In Milan, attempts to suppress the Ambrosian Rite led to repeated riots. Attempts to do the same in Toledo are going to lead to what are called, in hindsight, the guerillas: the little wars.

Introducing Saint Gonzalo of Lerida

After any big divergence, a region has a 100-year grace period to produce the same notable people, with the creative license increasing the further I get from that divergence.

Iberia's grace period runs out in 1181, which is problematic because that's before a bumper crop of its most significant figures are even born. Some can be handwaved a bit (the ibn Rushd family was well-entrenched and had produced brilliant minds for generations by that point, so Averroes might be salvageable), but some of them can't be - like Saint Dominic, for instance, without whom Western history to come gets very alien fast.

Fortunately for me, though, if you can't use the original, you can always use an Expy. All you need to do is adjust the superstructure to account for the changed base (yes, I know, but it works), and you can work around it interestingly. And if you choose the point you start at, you can even use the Expy to highlight the little changes in the world.

So now I'm going to introduce his replacement: St. Gonzalo of Lerida.