THE CARDONA AND FERNÁNDEZ DE CÓRDOBA COATS OF ARMS IN THE CHIGI CODEX

Extract

The Chigi Codex occupies a place of honour among music manuscripts of the Renaissance; thirteen masses by Ockeghem along with L'homme armé masses by Josquin, Busnoys, Brumel and Compère figure prominently among its contents. According to Herbert Kellman, it was copied between 1498 and 1503 for the Burgundian nobleman Philippe Bouton. Several coats of arms of the Spanish families Cardona and Fernández de Córdoba appear in different places in the manuscript and Kellman suggested that the transfer of the Chigi Codex to the Spaniards occurred after the death of its first owner in 1515. Seven works, the foliation in the upper right margin of the recto folios and a table of contents with a heading that reads Tabla de missas y motetes were added by a Spanish scribe. Since Mouton's motet Quis dabit oculis, written on the death of Anne of Brittany in 1514, is also among the added works, Kellman concluded that these additions to the Chigi Codex were made after that date. The assumption that the manuscript travelled to Spain is further supported by a seventeenth-century inscription written in Italian on the flyleaf of the manuscript, which affirms that the book was used in Spain.