Changing attitudes towards violence and war are important markers of medieval European cultural development and, as such, have been the focus of numerous historical studies. Saints' offices have not, however, been analysed along these lines, an unjustified neglect given their central place in the daily cultural life of ecclesiastical institutions, not to mention the large range of related scholarly topics they represent. Offered here is an overview of these topics, beginning with an examination of offices with roots in Merovingian and Carolingian times, and proceeding to later offices originating in the crucial time of the first crusades and beyond. How is violence described in chants with texts drawn from the Old and New Testaments? How is it handled in chants based on later hagiographic literature? Is Christian military violence legitimised in these chants? How are enemies portrayed? How are the messages of these texts articulated in their musical settings? Answers to these questions might place the sacred monophony of the Latin Church into its proper context, that is, as a means of socio-political reflexion during the Middle Ages.

This article aims to show the relevance of musical and musical-textual analysis of saints' offices in approaching socio-historical aspects of the Middle Age. It investigates the moral and socio-historical concepts conveyed by the responsoria prolixa in honour of martyred saints in the famous Codex Hartker (CH-SGs 390–391, c.1000). What were the right ways to deal with violence and suffering? Did these differ for men, women and children? In the analysis of responsories in honour of St Stephen, St Lawrence, the Holy Innocents, Sts Cecilia and Agatha, striking musical or textual-musical features which emphasise or even interpret the message of the text have repeatedly been found. The quantity and similarity of such observations lifts them out of the haze of arbitrariness Indeed, it is possible to identify gender-specific and role-specific differences with regard to the behaviours which enabled people to attain the degree of sainthood.

During the reconquest of Islamic territories on the Spanish March, Iberian lands witnessed a religious transformation enacted by the Christian victors and characterised by the resurgence of devotion to both old and new saintly figures. The present article explores how the music of saints represents, and thus interprets, issues related to violence and suffering so prevalent on the frontier. The chants for prominent saints in the area, Paul of Narbonne, Eulalia of Barcelona and Saturninus of Toulouse, are explored here in relation to how words and music interacted to illustrate the saints' position in relation to violence and suffering. Musical analyses trace how the topoi of orthodoxy in faith and confronting bloodshed with devout resolution are cast in the chants of earlier styles to those of the late twelfth century. Differences in musical depictions of these subjects underscore how the saints, in their changing sonic personae, were made to engage with the realities confronting Christian frontier communities.

This article discusses the theology of the late twelfth-century offices in honour of the Danish patron saint Knud Lavard, asking to what extent this theology can be seen to have been underlined in musical representations. Altogether, there is surprisingly little war imagery in the offices. Although Knud Lavard was a military leader, a dux, and is presented in the offices as a miles Christi, and although some formulations in the office can be read to construct him as a crusader, his mildness and his passive suffering are much more emphasized. Indeed, the theological tenor is that of a Christ-like martyr being slaughtered without resistance. The emphasis is thus on suffering as a consequence of evil and unprovoked aggression, verbally as well as musically. This will be underscored by textual as well as musical analysis of central parts of the offices, focusing on the relationship between the responsories and the homiletic readings of the last Nocturns of Matins, which so far have not been much discussed in scholarship, taking also the sequence for the Translation Mass, Diem festum veneremur, into consideration.