The techniques of the parody Mass were over one hundred years old by the time they were taught to the young Tomas Luis de Victoria. From the work of Josquin's generation, through the early sixteenth century, composers used motets (and secular music as well) to unify their settings of the five movements of the Mass Ordinary. Major sections of the Mass should begin by quoting the model's opening phrase, and similar internal motives should further weave the Mass together. But Victoria's 1583 publication of nine Masses included several which bent the parody "rules" nearly to the point of ignoring them. His 1583 Mass on the motet O quam gloriosum, though clearly unified in the sonic world of the five movements, treats its model so loosely as to appear freely composed at times.

This Mass, though based on Victoria's own 1572 motet O quam gloriosum (for All Souls' Day), does not even use the motet's opening phrase, as would be expected in the parody tradition; rather, it treats the second incise of text, "in quo cum Christo" as the principal model motive which appears at the head of several (but not all) movements. The powerful and joyous opening series of chords in the motet may have seemed too distinctive, or too limiting to the resultant Mass movements. Instead, Victoria composes five movements which share several smaller motives derived from other parts of the motet. The most common are a pair of motives - one rising through a melodic fourth, the other descending a third and reascending to tonic - which together set the model's concluding text, "quocumque ierit." He also makes excellent use of a series of descending suspensions which in the motet evoke the penultimate phrase, "sequntur Agnum:" the voices literally "follow" one another to form the gesture. This memorable passage appears several times in the Mass, even bookending the entire setting by being quoted almost verbatim to close both the Kyrie and Agnus Dei, the first and last movements.

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