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Marian texts and themes in an English manuscript: a miscellany in two parts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Christopher Page
Christopher Page
Affiliation:
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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Extract

Michael Morrow was an acute reader of medieval literature, and one who knew that every medieval text is a potential source of information for the modern performer and musicologist. A striking example is provided by the 453 chapters of a fifteenth-century anthology now in the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. This imposing book appears to be one of the largest collections of Marian miracle-stories in the world. Assembled in the year 1409, perhaps in East Anglia, it contains forty-nine chapters about Marian devotions, liturgies, plainsongs and prayers, among them several texts that were set by English composers: Salve regina (there are ten chapters devoted to this chant alone), Alma redemptoris mater, Gaude flore virginali, Sancta Maria non est tibi similis, Salve sancta parens, Gaude Maria virgo, Ave maris Stella and Gaude virgo mater Christi.

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Articles
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 23 - 44
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Manuscript 95. For a physical description and inventory see James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge (Cambridge, 1895), 77–109.Google Scholar See also the Appendix at the end of this article. Sidney 95 has attracted little attention until recently, probably because it was not consulted by the authors of two works which still occupy a fundamental position in this field, namely Mussafia, A., ‘Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden’, Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historichen Classe der Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, CXIII (1886), 917–94;Google Scholar CXV (1888), 5–92; CXIX (1889), ix Abh., 1–66; CXXIII (1891), viii Abh., 1–85; CXXXIX (1898), viii Abh., 1–74; and Poncelet, A., ‘Index miraculorum B. V. Mariae quae saec. VI-XV Latine conscripta sunt’, Analecta Bollandiana, 21 (1902), 241–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Notable exceptions include Brown, C., A Study of the Miracle of Our Lady Told by Chaucer's Prioress, Chaucer Society Publications 45 (London, 1910),Google Scholar which prints several chapters that will concern me below, and Constable, G., ‘The Vision of a Cistercian Novice’, in Constable, G. and Kritzeck, J., eds., Petrus Venerabilis 1156–1956 (Rome, 1956), 95–8,Google Scholar giving a text of Book IV:69. The importance of Sidney 95 in any account or edition of miracles of the Virgin is acknowledged in several recent studies, including Whiteford, P., The Myracles of Oure Lady (Heidelberg, 1990),Google Scholar notes on nos. 1, 2, 5, 7 et passim.

2 A rubricated introduction to the collection on f. lr reads: ‘Incipit prologus prime partis tractatus miraculorum beate et perpetue virginis Marie genitricis dei per quemdam monachum de Thome diversis ex libris collecti et in hanc formam ad laudem eiusdem virginis redacti. Anno domini millesimo CCCC mo ix.’ The words ‘de Thome’, referring to the Benedictine monastery of Thorney in the Isle of Ely, are written in black over an erasure by a hand that may be as late as the sixteenth century. It is therefore impossible to establish where the manuscript was compiled, although (i) the reference to Thorney, (ii) the various notes of ownership by ‘George Rayner of Peterburrough’ and (iii) the donation of the manuscript to Sidney Sussex College in 1631 by John Clement, ‘ecclesiae de Chesterton in Com. Huntingdonensi rectoris dicti Collegii quondam Scholaris’, suggest that the manuscript has been in East Anglia since the late sixteenth century, and perhaps since the Dissolution. John Clement's gift is recorded by a label, contemporary with the College's acquisition of the manuscript, visible inside the front board. George Rayner is probably the individual of that name who was ordained at Peterborough on 1 April 1614. See Venn, J. and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part I, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1992–1997), sv.Google Scholar ‘Rayner, George’. An entry on f. lr gives the price of the volume as twenty shillings; presumably Rayner was the buyer. At least half a dozen different hands can be detected in the manuscript which is presumably therefore the production of an important centre. The date 1409 could refer to the date of the collection, to the date of the manuscript, or perhaps to both. I am grateful to Nicholas Rogers for the advice that the style of the perrwork illustration on f. lr is consonant with a date early in the fifteenth century.

3 The chapters form Book 11:52-100. My listing of polyphonic settings is based upon Curtis, G. and Wathey, A., ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music: A List of the Surviving Repertory’, [RMA] Research Chronicle, 27 (1994), 1–69.Google Scholar Other prayers and plainsong texts include Mater digna dei, O beata el intemerata, Ave benignissima, Ave mater domini and Felix namaue. (Two different texts appear with the incipit Ave mater domini: on f. 89v, a long prose prayer beginning Ave mater domini, ave regina celi, and on f. 93r the antiphon Ave mater domini mei Jhesu Christi.) There are chapters of interest to the musicologist elsewhere in Sidney 95. For example, Book IV:77 concerns Adam ‘of St Victor’ and the composition of Salve mater salvatoris, on which see Fassler, M. E., ‘Who was Adam of St. Victor? The Evidence of the Sequence Manuscripts’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 233–69, at 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar To some extent, it is artificial to give special attention to texts with surviving polyphonic settings, for the chapters in Sidney 95 make little attempt to distinguish between plainsongs and prayers, and there is no clear distinction between singing (whether polyphonic or monophonic) and saying. In part, this is a reflection of the terminology in the Rule of St Benedict; see Lamothe, D. R. and Constantine, C. G., eds., Matins at Cluny for the Feast of St. Peter's Chains, Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society (London, 1986), 3–4,Google Scholar n. 5: ‘Benedict did not make any permanent distinction between dicere and cantare …. The words are used interchangeably, and should not therefore be interpreted as a specific indication of what is said and what is sung.’ The usage of the Sidney narratives also reflects a contemporary reality in which ritual (and many other) items might be said or sung, either to distinguish liturgical occasions of different rank, for music ‘meltyth the harte in to more deuocyon’, or because the number of choir monks in a house was too small for a sung service because of dwindling numbers or absenteeism. For the Middle English reference to the affective power of music see The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, J. H., Early English Text Society, Extra Series 19 (London, 1873), 32.Google Scholar

4 For references to such images in private dwellings see f. 63r: ‘Ymaginem beate virginis Marie domina quedam habebat in camera sua super columnellam decenter compositam …’. The chapters on Marian prayers and plainsongs begin with a story concerning the origins of the Salve regina which is told twice, once in prose and once in verse designed to be sung to the melody of the well-known hymn Pange lingua. For an edition and commentary see C. Page, ‘A “new” Latin Song about the Salve Regina’ (forthcoming).

5 James, , A Descriptive Catalogue, 108–9,Google Scholar analyses the principles of organization.

6 Printed in Brou, Dom L., ‘Marie “destructrice de toutes les hérésies” et la belle légende du répons Gaude Maria Virgo’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 62 (1948), 329–30.Google Scholar

7 E.g. f. lOv, 16v, 17v et passim.

8 Fols. 81r-v, the story of a noble matrona who hears Dominican friars in their church singing the Salve regina with trope and collect (cum versu et collecta).

9 For this guild see Waterton, E., Pietas Mariana Bntannica, 2 vols. (London, 1879), II, 87–9,Google Scholar with extracts from the guild certificate.

10 Editions in Whiteford, The Myracles of Oure Lady, nos. 31–4.

11 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. A. 1. See Meale, C. M., ‘The Miracles of Our Lady: Context and Interpretation’, in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. Pearsall, D. (D. S. Brewer, 1990), 116–36.Google Scholar

12 See Brunvand, J. H., The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meanings (New York and London, 1981), 7.Google Scholar

13 Among other aspects. See Malyshko, O., ‘The English Conductus Repertory: A Study of Style’, Ph.D. diss., New York University (1989),Google Scholar and Losseff, N., The Best Concords: Polyphonic Music in Thirteenth-Century Britain (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

14 In his succinct study ‘Polyphonic Offertories in Medieval England’, [RMA] Research Chronicle, 26 (1993), 1–3Google Scholar.

15 Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century (hereafter abbreviated PMFC), 14, English Music of the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries, ed. Sanders, E. (Monaco, 1979);Google Scholar the texts and translations are in PMFC 15 Motets of English Provenance, ed. Harrison, F. LI. (Monaco, 1980), 207–49.Google Scholar

16 Reaney, G., ed., Manuscripts of Polyphonic Music llth-Early 14th Century, Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, BIV/1 (Munich and Duisberg, 1966), 581.Google Scholar There is a facsimile of f. lr of the manuscript, togther with a succinct discussion of the voice-exchange sections, in Sanders, E., ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm’, journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 439–69, at 460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The piece is edited by Sanders in PMFC 14 as item 28; for text and translation see vol. 15, 218. There is also an edition in G. A. Anderson, Notre-Dame and Related Conductus, 9 Parts, Institute of Mediaeval Music (Henryville, Ottawa and Binningen), Part 9, 27–31. My discussion in what follows is unaffected by one's answer to the question of whether Salve mater gratie, printed by Sanders as a separate composition (Ibid., no. 29, but see Sanders' commentary upon this item), is part of Flos regalis or not. Anderson assumes that it is part of Flos regalis and prints it accordingly.

17 Indeed it is not translated in the English version which PMCF offers: ‘The king has conducted Thee to the royal wedding room…’. I cannot account for the translation in Anderson, Notre-Dame and Related Conductus, 9, ix, where ‘Salem’ also appears without capital initial: The king has led / Thee pure / Into the royal chamber…’.

18 I have benefited greatly from discussing this passage with Malcolm Gerrat.

19 Other key texts include Genesis 14:18, where Melchizedek brings bread and wine for Abraham's men (whence the reference to Melchizedek in the Canon of the Mass) and Psalm 109 (110): 4, which identifies the priestly order of Melchizedek with the Davidic line and therefore with the Messianic hopes of Israel.

20 Compare the poem by the fourteenth-century friar Herebert, William, Thou womman boute fere (‘Thou woman without peer’); text in Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology, ed. Davies, R. T. (London, 1963), no. 28.Google Scholar Compare also Mone, F. J., Hymni Latini Medii Aevi, 3 vols. (Freiburg, 1853–1855), I, 59 and 62; II, 343.Google Scholar

21 Patrologia Latino 182:216.

22 Mone, , Hymm Latini Medii Aevi, II, 373–5;Google Scholar for the Flos regalis stanza see lines 17–24.

23 On Bernard of Morlaas see Pepin, R. E., ‘Novem species poenae: The Doctrine of the Nine Torments’, Latomus, 47 (1988), 668–74.Google Scholar

24 For a text of the Mariale see Analecta Hymnica 50:424–56.

25 Ibid., 456–82, at 457, and the stanza on 466:‘O Maria, mater pia, / Stirpe nascens regia, / Virginalis flos, regalis / Proles et egregia’.

26 Mone, , Hymni Latini Medii Aevi, U, 374,Google Scholar also reads ‘talem’.

27 This is the motet [ ] / Fons ortorum / PES (WF 30). See Dittmer, L. A., The Worcester Fragments, Musciological Studies and Documents 2 (American Institute of Musicology, 1957), 48–9 (edition and reconstruction of text), and 30–1 (commentary).Google Scholar

28 In PMFC 14 commentary upon item 28. See also idem, ‘Conductus and Modal Rhythm’, 459.

29 For the example of Zelo tui langueo / Reor nescia see C. Page, ‘A Fourteenth-Century English Motet in Performance: Two Contemporary Depictions’ (forthcoming).

30 For other settings see Curtis and Wathey, ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music’, 57.

31 Gaude flore virginali may be found in many English Books of Hours, in Flemish Books of Hours produced for the English market, and in some manuscripts produced for use in France and Handers. For the link with Becket see Analecta Hymnica 31:199 and the following manuscripts: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 3–1979 (f. 72), and 4–1954 (f. 404); London, British Library, Royal 17 A. xxvii, fols. 83v-4, where the badly torn (perhaps vandalized) verso leaf recounts part of the miracle story about to occupy us.

32 On Beckefs learning see de Hamel, C., ‘A Contemporary Miniature of Thomas Beckef’, in Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, ed. Smith, L. and Ward, B. (London, 1992), 179–84.Google Scholar

33 The Eton Choirbook, ed. F. LI. Harrison, 3 vols., Musica Britannica 10–12 (London, 1967–73), I, 144, commentary upon Kellyk's Gaude flore virginali.

34 Brown, C. and Robbins, R. H., The Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943), no. 2296;Google Scholar and Robbins, R. H. and Cutler, John L., Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse (Lexington, 1965), no. 2296.Google Scholar I am grateful to Catherine Hocking for drawing my attention to this text.

35 WF 99. See Dittmer, , The Worcester Fragments, 178–9Google Scholar (diplomatic facsimile) and 61 (commentary). Edition by Sanders in PMFC 14, item 21; text and translation in vol. 15, 216.

36 Analecta Hymnica 24:162, and 32:58.

37 London, British Library, Additional 61889, f. 19v; Royal 17 A. xxvii, fols. 85v–86; Harley 1025, f. 170r-v; Harley 2869, f. 85r-v; Harley 2887, fols. 16v–17; Cambridge, Sidney Sussex, 58, (unfoliated); Cambridge, University Library, Ee.V.13, f. 133v.

38 See, for example, Forney, K. K., ‘Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp’, Early Music History, 7 (1987), 157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Two vital studies of the late medieval tendency towards confraternities of all kinds are Bynum, C. W., ‘Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?’ The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31 (1980), 1–17;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rubin, M., ‘Religious Culture in Town and Country: Reflections on a Great Divide’, in Church and City 1000–1500: Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. Abulafia, D., Franklin, M. and Rubin, M. (Cambridge, 1992), 3–22.Google Scholar

39 Rokéah, Z. E., ‘The State, the Church, and the Jews in Medieval England’, in Antisemitism Through the Ages, ed. Almog, S. (Oxford, 1988), 99–125, at 104.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 111.

41 Abulafia, A. S., Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Renaissance (London and New York, 1995), 77–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 See especially Guibert of Nogent in PL 156:499–500.

43 Abulafia, Christians and Jews, 110.

44 The Prioress's Tale in The Canterbury Tales is an analogue to the narratives about to be considered. See Frank, R. W., ‘Miracles of the Virgin, Medieval Anti-Semitism and The Prioress's Tale1’, in The Wisdom of Poetry, ed. Benson, L. D. and Wenzel, S. (Kalamazoo, 1982), 177–88;Google ScholarRex, R., ‘Chaucer and the Jews’, Modern Language Quarterly, 45 (1984), 107–22;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSpector, S., ‘Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress's Tale’, in The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, ed. Edwards, R. R. and Spector, S. (New York, 1991), 211–28.Google Scholar Also of importance are Rokéah, ‘The State, the Church, and the Jews’; and J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca and London, 1982).

45 Christians and Jews, 139.

46 S.v. ‘Virgin Mar’.

47 S.v. ‘Mary, Blessed Virgin, Devotion to’.

48 S.v. ‘Marie, mere de Dieu’.

49 The entry for ‘Judentum’ concerns Mary in the light of Jewish tradition.

50 Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1440-c. 1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), 15.Google Scholar

51 In the Sarum rite the lection that immediately precedes the responsory is a passage from the Expositiones in leviticum by Rhabanus Maurus explaining the sacrifices required by Leviticus 12:7–8 for a woman to be purified after parturition; it does not bear upon the responsory and the ‘Judeus infelix’. Breviarium ad Usum Sarum, ed. Proctor, F. and Wordsworth, C., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1879, 1882 and 1886), HI, 143.Google Scholar The lection, identified with the aid of the Patrologia Latina on CD-ROM, may be found in PL 108:370–1.

52 Fols. 85v–86. This legend has been studied in Brou, ‘Marie “destructrice de toutes les hérésies” ’. I am grateful to Dr David Chadd for this reference, which is also signalled in Aureliani Reomensis Musica Disciplina, ed. L. Gushee, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 21 (American Institute of Musicology, 1975), 105. The text in Sidney 95 is virtually identical to the version printed by Brou as representing the ‘third stage’ of the legend, but Brou's source is a Vatican manuscript, printed without note of shelf mark, by Fioravante Martinelli in his Roma ex Ethnica Sacra of 1653.

53 Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. (Oxford, 1969), 148–9.Google Scholar The authority of Bede is invoked at the beginning of this chapter in Sidney 95: ‘Temporibus beati Bonefacii pape qui, ut in ecclesiasticis historiis legitur…’.

54 Gushee, , Aureliani Reomensis Musica Disciplina, 105.Google Scholar

55 Here, as in some other miracle stories relating to plainsongs, there is an underlying fascination with liturgical fracture, a miraculous suspension of rite.

56 Gushee, Aureliani Reomensis Musica Disciplina, 105: ‘ob venerationem sanctae Dei gentricis Mariae simul et ob Iudaeorum insaniam et herericorum refutandam protervam superstitionem’.

57 ‘Est quedam civitas Italie cathedralem habens ecclesiam in qua clerici quos canonicos seculares vocant deserviunt. In hac eciam civitate quidam adolescentulus erat quern naturaliter insita suavitas vocis eisdem clericis familiarem fecerat… Unde et idem puer tarn propter suavitatem vocis, tarn propter ingenii perspicaciam, maiorem eorumdem clericorum familiaritatem promeruit. Didicit ergo ab eis inter cetera responsorium cum versu de gloriosa dei genetrice virgine Maria, cuius inicium Gaude Maria virgo quod et ipse coram eis propter delectabilem eiusdem cantilene composicionem modulari solirus erat. Et quoniam difficile dedicitur versus, idem cantus pre ceteris in ore pueri personabat’ (f. 86v).

58 See Page, C., The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (London, 1989), 135–6.Google Scholar

59 Brunvand, , The Vanishing Hitchhiker, 7.Google Scholar

60 Breuer, M., ‘The Black Death and Antisemitism’, in Almog, Antisemitism, 139–51;Google Scholar and Lewis, A. M., ‘Anti-Semitism in an Early Fifteenth-Century Motet Tu nephanda’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 3 (1994), 45–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, 11.

62 Terms in the versions of Sidney 95 include puer (many times), adolescentulus, filius parvulus and puerulus. Compare fols. 87v–88 where the protagonist is an adult monachus.

63 For the theme of the Marian image in the life of the citizenry, see the chapter of Sidney 95 concerning the Londoners' devotion to a precious statue of the Virgin and child in a side altar at Westminster Abbey: ‘In Britannia maiori famosa metropolis Lundonia nomine habet in suburbio ab occidentali parte civitatis ecclesiam in honore beati Petri apostolorum principis consecratam … In hac beate dei genitricis et perpetue virginis Marie ymago collocata predicandam sollempniter prefert pulcrirudinem et artificialis splendor commendat opens venustatem, ad quam festivis diebus pars civitatis maxima confluit et oblacionibus sacris honorat …’ (f. 64v). This image is said to have been on the north side of the abbey, and was therefore perhaps located in the chapel of St Mary le Pew (i.e. perhaps St Mary of ‘Le Pui’, referring to a common belief about the origin of the antiphon Salve regina, sometimes referred to as ‘the antiphon of Le Pui’).

64 There are some stories in which the Virgin displays her exceptional mercy by helping or rescuing a Jew, and there are several such stories in Sidney 95.

65 The Owl and the Nightingale, Chapter 4.

66 C. Page, notes to The Spirits of England and France III, by Gothic Voices (Hyperion CDA66783).

67 F. 88r: ‘puer…clericus erat et sicud illi etati convenit vox clara ab eius gutture resonabaf’.

68 On this important theme see Langmuir, G. I., History, Religion and Antisemitism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990).Google Scholar