Writing History in the Middle Ages

Volume 3

Medieval Cantors and their Craft

 Y O R K M E D I E VA L P R E S S

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Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor
Dr T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art)
Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature): Secretary
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Dr K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature)
Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology)
Professor W. Mark Ormrod (Dept of History)
Dr Lucy Sackville (Dept of History)
Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art)
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Writing History in the Middle Ages

issn 2057-0252

Series editors
Dr Henry Bainton, University of York
Professor Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark

History-writing was a vital form of expression throughout the European Middle Ages,
and is fundamental to our understanding of medieval societies, politics, modes of
expression, cultural memory, and social identity. This series publishes innovative work
on history-writing from across the medieval world; monographs, collections of essays,
and editions of texts are all welcome.

Other volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book.
Medieval Cantors and their Craft
Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500

Edited by
Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis,
A. B. Kraebel and Margot E. Fassler

Y O R K M E D I E VA L P R E S S
 © Contributors 2017

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
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recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2017

A York Medieval Press publication

in association with The Boydell Press
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
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and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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and with the
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York

isbn 978 1 903153 67 3

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The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy

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or will remain, accurate or appropriate

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Typeset in Palatino LT by David Roberts, Pershore, Worcestershire

In memory of Olivia Remie Constable

❧
 Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Contributors x
Acknowledgments xiv
Abbreviations xvi

Introduction 1

part i The Carolingian Period

1 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

David Ganz 8
2 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages
Rosamond McKitterick 23
3 Notker Bibliothecarius
Susan Rankin 41
4 Singing History: Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli
Lori Kruckenberg 59

part ii The Eleventh Century

5 Adémar de Chabannes (989–1034) as Musicologist

James Grier 90
6 Cantor or Canonicus? In Search of Musicians and Liturgists in
Eleventh-Century Constance
Henry Parkes 103
7 Shaping the Historical Dunstan: Many Lives and a Musical Office
Margot E. Fassler 125
8 Female Monastic Cantors and Sacristans in Central Medieval
England: Four Sketches
Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis 151

vi
 part iii England in the Twelfth Century

9 Cantor, Sacrist or Prior? The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman

England
Teresa Webber 172
10 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral
Priory, c. 1090–1129
Charles C. Rozier 190
11 Reshaping History in the Cult of Æbbe of Coldingham
Lauren L. Whitnah 207
12 William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian
Paul Antony Hayward 222
13 Lex orandi, lex scribendi? The Role of Historiography in the
Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury
Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn 240
14 Of the Making of Little Books: The Minor Works of William of
Newburgh
A. B. Kraebel 255

part iv On the Continent: Five Case Studies

15 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre and their Contribution to Crusade

History and Frankish Identity
Cara Aspesi 278
16 Shaping Liturgy, Shaping History: A Cantor-Historian from Twelfth-
Century Peterhausen
Alison I. Beach 297
17 The Roman Liturgical Tradition According to a Twelfth-Century
Roman Cantor
Peter Jeffery 310
18 A Life in Hours: Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers
Anna de Bakker 326
19 Writing History to Make History: Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of
Reform
Claire Taylor Jones 340

Index of Manuscripts 357

General Index 361

vii
 Illustrations

Frontispiece
British Library, MS Arundel 16, fol. 2 © The British Library Board. xviii

Figures
4.1 Graz, Universitätsbibliothek MS 30, fol. 251v (selection). Reproduced
with permission. 76
4.2 Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 129, fol. 86r (selection).
Reproduced with permission. 76
4.3 St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 391, p. 65 (selection).
Reproduced with permission. 78
4.4 Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftsbibliothek CCl. 1013,
fol. 160r (selection). Reproduced by permission of the Stiftsbibliothek
Klosterneuburg. 78
4.5 (a) Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek Codex 83, fol. 56r (selection);
(b) fol. 56v (selection). Reproduced with permission. 78
5.1 BnF lat. 1120, fol. 186r (selection). Bibliothèque nationale de France. 96
5.2 BnF lat. 1121, fol. 93r (selection). Bibliothèque nationale de France. 97
5.3 (a) BnF lat. 1120, fol. 201v (selection); (b) BnF lat. 1121, fol. 118r
(selection). Bibliothèque nationale de France. 98
5.4 BnF lat. 1085, fol. 70r (selection). Bibliothèque nationale de France. 99
5.5 BnF lat. 1121, fol. 223v (selection). Bibliothèque nationale de France. 100
5.6 (a) BnF lat. 1120, fol. 50r (selection); (b) BnF lat. 1121, fol. 30r
(selection); (c) BnF lat. 909, fol. 43r (selection). Bibliothèque nationale
de France. 101
7.1 Bodl Auct. F.4.32, f. 1r. Reproduced by permission of The Bodleian
Libraries, the University of Oxford. 129
14.1 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 73, fols. 102v–103r.
Reproduced by permission of the Library. 270
14.2 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 73, fols. 103v–104r.
Reproduced by permission of the Library. 271
14.3 BL Stowe 62, fols. 157v–158r. © The British Library Board. 272
14.4 BL Stowe 62, fols. 158v–159r. © The British Library Board. 273
14.5 Bodl Rawlinson C. 31, fols. 6v–7r. Reproduced by permission of
The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford. 275

viii
 Tables
4.1 Chants and psalms for the Office of Inventio Crucis in SG 391,
pp. 61–6 73–4
5.1 The Libelli of BnF lat. 1120 and 1121 94
6.1 Chants in the hand of Wolferad 111
6.2 Chants in the hand of Heremann 118–20
7.1 The prose vite of Dunstan (up to the twelfth century) and their
probable dates of composition 126
7.2 Timeline of the career of Dunstan and other major events 127
7.3 Subjects of Lauds antiphons for the Feast of Dunstan, Worcester
F. 160 144
12.1 Contents of Bodl Auct. F.3.14 (SC 2186) 224
15.1 The three stages of the 15 July feast celebrated by the Holy Sepulchre
in the twelfth century 291
17.1 The contents of Benedict’s Liber politicus 313
17.2 Comparison of the Liber politicus with the Ordo Romanus Primus 313
17.3 Popes of the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries 325
18.1 ‘Gaude mater ecclesia’ 330–1
18.2 Third Nocturn, fourth responsory and verse 333
18.3 First Vespers, responsory and verse 335

Music Examples
5.1 Offertory ‘Tollite portas’ (opening refrain and first verse only) 97
6.1 Melismas in WLB HB VII 37 set against Heidelberg,
Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Sal. IX.61 (author’s reproduction). 121
7.1 Responsory ‘Dunstanus archiepiscopus’ 142–3
18.1 Responsory ‘Egressus igitur nobis’ 332

The editors, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions
and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they
hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders;
apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to
add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

ix
 Contributors

Cara Aspesi is doctoral candidate and Instructor in the Department of

Theology at the University of Notre Dame concentrating in Liturgical Studies.
She is completing her dissertation on Lucca, Biblioteca Arcivescovile MS 5,
a Crusader breviary and partial pontifical that provides insight into many
aspects of life and thought in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth
century. She also works on the influence of early Christian liturgical reading
on the emergence of the concept of a Scriptural canon.

Anna de Bakker is PhD student at the Medieval Institute of the University

of Notre Dame, working on the intersections of music, liturgy, and culture
in the high to late Middle Ages. She holds a Master of Arts in Religion from
Yale Divinity School, with a certificate from the Institute of Sacred Music, and
an AB in History from Harvard College. Her dissertation explores the late
medieval office in the Lowlands.

Alison I. Beach is Associate Professor of history at the Ohio State University.

In 2004 she published Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform
in Twelfth-Century. In 2002, she organized a conference at Stift Admont in
Steiermark, Austria, which brought together medieval scholars from both the
English- and German-speaking traditions. Prof. Beach then edited a volume
based partially on the conference entitled Manuscripts and Monastic Culture:
Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany, published in 2007.

Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Saint

Martin’s University. Her research focuses primarily on the liturgical and
intellectual histories of communities of women religious in the central and
late Middle Ages. She is currently working on a book on the pastoral roles
and liturgical practices of Benedictine women religious in England during
the central Middle Ages, entitled, In Persona Christi: Benedictine Women’s
Ministries in Central Medieval England.

Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy,

and Director of the Program in Sacred Music, University of Notre Dame, is
also Tangeman Professor of Music History, Emerita, Yale University. Recent
books include Music in the Medieval West and its accompanying Anthology
(2014) and (with Jeffery Hamburger, Eva Schlotheuber, and Susan Marti) Life
and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300–1425: Inscription and Illumination
in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, 2 vols. (2016). Fassler
is Vice President of the Medieval Academy of America and a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

x
 Contributors

David Ganz studied in Oxford, Tubingen and Munich and wrote his thesis
on Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance. He was Professor of Medieval
Latin in Chapel Hill, whence he moved to the Chair of Paleography in the
University of London. In 2011 he gave the Lowe lectures in Oxford, and
in 2012 he became a Visiting Professor of Paleography at the University of
Notre Dame. He has worked on Latin manuscript books before 900, and is an
advisor to Digital Scriptorium and to the St Gall Plan website.

James Grier is Professor of Music History at the University of Western

Ontario. Author of The Critical Editing of Music (1996) and The Musical World
of a Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (2006),
he has also published an edition of music written in the hand of Adémar
in CCCM (2012), the first music to be published in that series, and articles
on music and liturgy in medieval Aquitaine, textual criticism and editing
music, and the music of F. J. Haydn, Frank Zappa, and Bob Dylan and Roger
McGuinn.

Paul Antony Hayward is senior lecturer in history at Lancaster University.

He works on historiography, the cult of saints and political practice in Latin
Christendom, c. 400–1150. Recent publications include The Winchcombe and
Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester,
Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 373, 2 vols. (2010), and ‘The
Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of
Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum’, ANS 33 (2011),
75–102. He is presently writing Power, Rhetoric and Historical Practice in
Medieval England: From William of Malmesbury to Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Peter Jeffery is the Michael P. Grace II Chair of Medieval Studies at the

University of Notre Dame, and Scheide Professor of Music History Emeritus,
Princeton University. He is presently completing an annotated translation of
Ordo Romanus Primus. Among his many grants and awards are those from
the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Musicological Society.

Claire Taylor Jones is Assistant Professor of German at the University of

Notre Dame. She is currently completing a monograph on convent literature
for German Dominican women and translating a major work by Johannes
Meyer, a mid-fifteenth-century Dominican friar whose German-language
chronicles are the object of her contribution to this volume.

xi
 Medieval Cantors and their Craft

A. B. Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University, San

Antonio, Texas. His research focuses on book history and religious literature
in the later Middle Ages, especially as they relate to scholastic commentary
and biblical translation. He is currently completing a monograph on the
subject, tentatively entitled The Appeal of the Academic: Biblical Commentary and
Translation in Later Medieval England.

Lori Kruckenberg is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of

Oregon, where she teaches courses in medieval and Renaissance music. Her
scholarship focuses on Latin monophonic song in the Middle Ages, especially
sequences, tropes and the so-called new song tradition. More recent work
centers on traditions of the cantrix in German-speaking lands, c. 900–1400,
and on the Casus sancti Galli. She has twice held fellowships from the
Fulbright Commission and recently won the Noah Greenberg Award.

Rosamond McKitterick is Professor Emerita of Medieval History in the

University of Cambridge and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and currently
Chair of the Faculty of History, Archaeology and Letters of the British School
at Rome. Her books include History and Memory in the Carolingian World
(2004); Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006); Charlemagne:
the formation of a European identity (2008); Old Saint Peter’s, Rome (ed. with J.
Osborne, C. Richardson and J. Story) (2014); and The Resources of the Past in
the Early Middle Ages (ed. with C. Gantner and S. Meeder) (2015). Her current
work within the field of the early medieval history of Europe focuses on a
people’s (re)construction, knowledge and use of the past, especially the
Roman past.

Henry Parkes is Assistant Professor of Music at the Yale Institute of Sacred

Music and Department of Music. A professional church musician turned
academic, his current research deals broadly with the lived experience of
chant and liturgy at the turn of the first millennium. A particular interest in
the material and intellectual histories of liturgical codices stands behind his
first book, The Making of Liturgy in the Ottonian Church, published in 2015.

Susan Rankin is Professor of Medieval Music at the University of Cambridge.

She studied at Cambridge, King’s College London and Paris (EPHE IV). Her
research engages with music of the middle ages through its sources and
notations, and through its place and meaning within ritual. A special focus
has been the paleography of early medieval musical sources, and she has
edited facsimiles of two Sankt Gallen tropers and the Winchester Troper,
demonstrating how the earliest European repertory of two-part polyphony
can be recovered. She is now working on the relation between musical sound
and notations in the ninth century.

xii
 Contributors

Charles C. Rozier is Lecturer in Medieval History at Swansea University.

His work examines the collection and composition of historical texts in
Anglo-Norman monasteries. He is co-editor of Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and
Interpretations (2016) and is currently writing a monograph which explores
the multi-layered uses of the past at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 995–1130
(forthcoming).

Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn received a Cand. Philol. degree in history, English,

and Latin from the University of Bergen in 2002, and a PhD in history from
the same University in 2007. He was lecturer at the department of history,
University of Bergen, from January to November 2007, and between 2008 and
2013 he held a post-doctoral fellowship at the University. From January 2011
he has also held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Saxo Institute, University of
Copenhagen, Denmark. His main publication is William of Malmesbury and the
Ethics of History (2012).

Teresa (Tessa) Webber is University Reader in Paleography at the University

of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. She is the author of Scribes
and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075– c. 1125 (1992) and co-editor of The
Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, CBMLC 6 (1998) and The Cambridge History
of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume I: To 1640 (2006). She is currently
preparing for publication her Lyell Lectures, delivered in Oxford in 2016, on
public reading and its books in English monastic practice, c. 1000–c. 1300.

Lauren L. Whitnah is Lecturer in the Marco Institute for Medieval and

Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research
examines the cults of Anglo-Saxon saints in northern England and southern
Scotland in the twelfth century, exploring the impact of political upheaval on
local religious practice. Her current book project, tentatively entitled Patrons
of that Place, is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between saints’
cults and sacred place in twelfth-century Northumbria.

xiii
 Acknowledgements

In a book with nineteen chapters, edited by three scholars, there are countless
people and institutions that should be acknowledged – especially the
libraries where each of us have worked, the universities and foundations
that have supported us, and the many people who have helped along the
way, including the requisite kinds of spousal support. Out of all these,
most greatly to be thanked are the Medieval Institute of the University of
Notre Dame and its friend and supporter Robert M. Conway. Through
Mr. Conway’s generosity we were able to begin work on this book with a
superb conference at the Notre Dame London Centre in October 2013. At
this conference, curated by Katie Bugyis and Margot Fassler, scholars from
the University of Notre Dame and other institutions in the USA and Canada
joined colleagues from universities in the UK to share the ideas from which
this book developed. We thank the Notre Dame London Centre and its staff,
especially Charlotte Parkyn, for their hospitality and assistance, the students
from the University of Notre Dame who helped curate the conference,
especially Emily Kirkegaard and Anna de Bakker, and the scholars who
chaired sessions: Emma Dillon, Nicholas Bell and Helen Deeming. Giles
Constable of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton attended at our
invitation and enlivened our conversations with his ideas. Professor Remie
Constable, the then Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor
of History at the University of Notre Dame, must be credited with the initial
inspiration for our work. Her support, constant enthusiasm and kindness
made this book possible, and we dedicate it to her memory.
We wish to express our particular gratitude to the Institute for Scholarship
in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame for financial support in
the book’s production and printing. Caroline Palmer of Boydell and Brewer
and Professor Pete Biller of York Medieval Press have been helpful and
supportive at every turn. We are thankful to them and to all the authors in
our book who have faithfully answered every query. Collaborating with our
contributors has been a joy.
Some of those contributors wish to acknowledge individual debts. In
addition to thanking the conference organizers, David Ganz expresses his
gratitude for the valuable feedback provided by Charles Rozier and Julie
Barrau. For their efforts in helping him locate and consult the primary
sources behind his chapter, Henry Parkes extends his thanks to the staff
of the Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek Fulda, the Württembergische
Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart and the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek
Darmstadt, as well as Michael Kuthe of the Stadtarchiv Konstanz. Teresa
Webber thanks Michael Gullick for his careful reading of her chapter. Lauren

xiv
 Acknowledgements

Whitnah acknowledges the generous suggestions made by Anna Siebach

Larsen, Hildegund Müller, Julia Schneider and John Van Engen.
KAB
MEF
ABK

xv
 Abbreviations

AASS Acta Sanctorum

AH Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi
ANS Anglo-Norman Studies
ASE Anglo-Saxon England
BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis
BL London, British Library
BLB Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek
BnF Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bodl Oxford, Bodleian Library
Can CANTUS: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant
CBMLC Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues
CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library
CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis
CCM Corpus Consuetudinem Monasticorum
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
CCT Corpus Christianorum in Translation
CP Casus Monasterii Petrihusensis, ed. O. Abel and L. Weiland, MGH
Scriptores 20
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CUL Cambridge, University Library
Decreta Lanfranc, The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles and
C. Brooke (Oxford, 2002)
DUL Durham, University Library
EadLD Vita S. Dunstani, in Eadmer: Lives and Miracles, ed. A. J. Turner and B. J.
Muir (Oxford, 2006)
EadMD Miracula S. Dunstani, in Eadmer: Lives and Miracles, ed. A. J. Turner and
B. J. Muir (Oxford, 2006)
EEA English Episcopal Acta
EHR English Historical Review
ELD Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford,
1991)
A Adelard of Ghent, Lectiones in Depositione S. Dunstani
B Vita S. Dunstani
Fass A M. E. Fassler, ‘Office of the Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and
Customaries: A Preliminary Investigation’ Early Music History 5 (1985),
29–51

xvi
 Abbreviations

Fass B M. E. Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in

Twelfth-Century Paris (Notre Dame, IN, 1993 and 2011)
Fass C M. E. Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and
the Arts (New Haven, CT, 2010)
Fass D M. E. Fassler, ‘The Liturgical Framework of Time and the Represent­
ation of History’, in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History,
ed. R. A. Maxwell (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 83–123
GPA William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum,
ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2007)
GRA William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors,
M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1998, 1999)
HBS Henry Bradshaw Society
HE Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and
R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969)
Heads The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales, 940–1216,
ed. D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke and V. C. M. London (Cambridge,
1972)
HLB F Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek Fulda
JAMS Journal of the American Musicological Society
LC Le Liber Censuum de l’église romaine, ed. Fabre
LdE Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio, ed. D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000)
LP Le Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886–92)
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Capit. Capitularia regum Francorum
Epp. Epistolae
Libri Mem. NS Libri Memoriales et Necrologia, Nova series
SRG NS Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series
SRM Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum
SS Scriptores (in Folio)
OsLD Osbern, Vita Sancti Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs,
Rolls Series (London, 1874)
OsMD Osbern, Liber Miraculorum Beatissimi Patris nostri Dunstani, in Memorials
of St Dunstan, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (London, 1874)
PL Patrologia Latina
PPTS Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society
RB Revue Bénédictine
SG Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen
ULB D Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt
WilLD Vita Dunstani (Life of Dunstan) in William of Malmesbury, Saints
Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract,
ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002)
WLB Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek

xvii
Historiated initial depicting the cantor Osbern of Canterbury:
British Library, MS Arundel 16, fol. 2
 Introduction

Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler and A. B. Kraebel

‘History’, as it was understood by medieval Christians, was a broad concept

with many meanings. It could be defined as a written record, compiled
through processes inherited from classical Greek and Roman authors. But
even when it proclaimed itself to be ‘factual’, the work of those who shaped
the past in the Latin Middle Ages was different from that of their pagan
ancestors. Although they often made claims about veracity, even when
dealing with the miraculous, they did not ‘absolutize’ history (as de Lubac
put it). Although they had a sense of universal history, time instead related
to and unfolded within a framework conditioned by the Incarnation of the
Word, and by the moral sense that this history-transforming event could
impart to listeners and readers. The biblical orientation of history gave
time a clear beginning and also predicted an apocalyptic end. But even as
time moved relentlessly forward in this cosmic sense, the liturgy made it
constantly spiral backward, rendering past sacred events present through
ritual commemoration. Such liturgical celebration of time had many layers,
mingled and arranged according to the calendar, with its varying and its
fixed cycles of feasts, voiced through psalmody, readings from the Old and
New Testaments and the lives of the saints.
How the past was known, both by individuals and within communities,
varied from one specific local community to another, for the liturgy was ever
changing, especially as new feasts, and feasts of new saints, were added to suit
particular needs. Some knew about certain past events from what they read,
as had long been the case, but in the Middle Ages many more knew about
the past from various reenactments: ritual actions, dramatic productions,
sermons and tales they heard about biblical characters and saints, encounters
with art and architecture and from contact with shrines and relics.
Much of medieval history-making was thus memorial in nature, bringing
the past forward, again and again, to recall its individual or communal
significance. At the heart of the medieval Christian understanding of the
past was a simple, foundational command from Christ: ‘Hoc facite in meam
commemorationem’ [‘Do this in remembrance of me’] (Luke 22. 19). Recreate
the past for me, through the liturgy of the Mass, with its chants, readings
from Scripture and communion service, as well as through the eight
hours of communal prayer sung in both monasteries and cathedrals at set
times throughout the day, with appropriate chants, Psalms and readings
complementing those recited at Mass to distinguish any particular feast.

1
 Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, A. B. Kraebel

After the hour of Prime there was a chapter meeting, where, in addition to the
Benedictine practice of reading from the Rule, both monastic and cathedral
communities heard daily readings from the martyrology, a fixed collection
of remembrances of the saints and figures from the Bible, and the necrology,
which preserved the names of people from the community who had died
on that day (or within the week or month), sometimes with statements from
their wills. The liturgy, whether the Mass or the Divine Office, not only saved
and preserved the past, but it taught its meanings to all who were involved
in its observance, hour by hour, day by day, season by season, year by year,
through text, music, matter and movement.
History is not known without effort. If the past is not recorded, recreated
and reimagined, it dissipates from memory and ceases to exist. In the Latin
Middle Ages many different kinds of people were required to undertake the
complex processes of remembering the past and fostering its many ways of
being taught and sounded out in public and private ceremonies. The past was
never static, but was always being reshaped, often to suit political conditions
as well as spiritual needs. This book is about medieval cantors, the people
who were among the most responsible for shaping history in this period,
and the many and varied activities they performed. We have observed
their work and their characters, beginning with the Carolingian period and
moving forward until the very late Middle Ages. And although many of the
following chapters focus on Anglo-Norman England, where the evidence is
especially abundant, we have taken up case studies from history-makers on
the Continent as well, signalling that, although our book is the first to treat
this complicated subject from our particular perspective, the authors hope to
encourage further study.
The initial idea behind the gathering of scholars that produced this
volume centered upon the individual in medieval monastic life who ‘kept the
time’. This person was the medieval cantor, precentor or armarius – these three
being common names for the same office-holder in the late tenth, eleventh
and twelfth centuries. There is a profile for this individual, especially in the
central Middle Ages, and it is outlined in medieval customaries, those books
that flesh out the various duties of monastic and, sometimes, of cathedral
officers. There was also a profile for the kind of book(s) the cantor required in
order to do the work of marking time.1
One of the fullest descriptions of the many duties performed by the
armarius is found in the pages of the Liber ordinis of the abbey of St Victor in

1 For example, excellent studies of the so-called ‘Durham cantor’s book’ are found
in two seminal articles: A. Piper, ‘The Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean and
Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)’ in Anglo-Norman Durham (1093–1193), ed. D. Rollason
et al. (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 79–92; and M. Gullick, ‘The Scribes of the Durham
Cantor’s Book and the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, ed.
Rollason et al., pp. 93–109.

2
 Introduction

Paris, a customary with the earliest copies dating c. 1200. The portrait that
emerges from this source is of a figure who was in charge of the liturgy and
its music at the abbey. He assigned readings and chants and made sure that
lectors and singers were prepared for their liturgical assignments; he ensured
that liturgical books were ready for use and could be consulted in a timely
fashion. He was the monastic librarian, and all the books, both those for the
liturgy and for other communal and private uses, were in his keeping. He was
in charge of the scriptorium, and the procurement of the materials needed for
making books was within his remit, as was their proper and timely repair. In
monastic scriptoria, the production of liturgical books was by far the most
common of the tasks; thus, the liturgical knowledge and authority of the
armarius/cantor was crucial. His role was also ceremonial: some chants were
intoned by him, and he held the book when the abbot read or sang. Although
not mentioned in the Victorine source, the armarius/cantor may have written
tonaries and other materials needed for instruction in singing, given his
musical expertise.
In monastic institutions throughout Europe there were men and women
charged with these duties, and their work prepared them to be intimately
involved in the keeping of the history of the places they served. Insofar as they
were in charge of liturgical materials, including calendars and martyrologies,
they were responsible for recording death dates and for sending out notices
to communities and individuals within their confraternity of prayer to
request prayers for the dearly departed. Insofar as establishing the date of
Easter, which fell to them, they were skilled in the use of the computus and
the mathematical calculations required to mete out festal time. In line with
their responsibilities, many medieval cantors composed new music and texts
for the veneration of saints, especially those of unique local significance.
Institutional history was shaped in and through hagiography, and cantors,
time and again, did the work to foster, translate and maintain their
communities’ treasured cults. Many cantors moved back and forth across the
thin or fuzzy line separating history and hagiography, registering the deeds
of saints as well as of popes, bishops, kings, queens and other renowned
personages, both past and present. There were many medieval figures who
fit this profile, who took on one or more of the aspects of the assignments
commonly belonging to the armarius/cantor; some of them will be featured in
this book.
In creating a description of medieval librarians, Richard Sharpe advises,
‘the diversity and inconsistency of their activities must warn against easy
generalization’.2 Whereas our book is about the processes of shaping
history in the Middle Ages, with an emphasis upon the history-makers

2 R. Sharpe, ‘The Medieval Librarian’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain

and Ireland, Vol. 1: To 1640, ed. E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber (Cambridge, 2006),
pp. 218–41 (p. 241).

3
 Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, A. B. Kraebel

and their various roles within their communities, it is not solely a book
about the medieval cantor/armarius, and easy generalizations have indeed
been avoided. Sometimes it seems as if we are deliberately deconstructing
this office, pointing to the many ways in which the cantors we discuss do
not fit the profile recovered from the Victorine Liber ordinis. We also take
up the kinds of history-making that were not solely the work of cantors,
even in monasteries, and the question of whether their textual and musical
productions should even be considered works of ‘history’. To establish a
framework for understanding the chapters that follow, our study begins with
definitions of ‘history’ presented by David Ganz, challenging the reader at
the outset to consider what history was to those who wrote it – those who
‘made’ it.
Some authors in our book have written on figures who fit the description
of the cantor-chronicler given above: Lori Kruckenberg’s study of Ekkehard
IV of St Gallen, Alison Beach’s work on the cantor of Peterhausen, Charlie
Rozier’s study of Symeon, the cantor-historian of Durham, Sigbjørn Sønnesyn
on William of Malmesbury, Cara Aspesi on the cantors of the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem, and Peter Jeffery on the twelfth-century cantor-chronicler
Benedict of St Peter’s basilica in Rome. Others have looked at the ways
that liturgy shaped historical texts and that saints’ cults, in turn, promoted
historical understanding and regional identity: Rosamund McKitterick on
the Liber pontificalis, which includes study of various local recensions, Margot
Fassler on the cult of Dunstan, Lauren Whitnah’s work on liturgy and identity
in an office for St Æbbe, Claire Jones’s study of Johannes Meyer’s chronicles
and his defence of reformed Dominican nuns, and Anna de Bakker’s work
on the cantor Goswin of Bossut and an office created for the Cistercian
monastery of Villers.
Several chapters in the book have expanded our understanding of the
work that musicians did for their libraries and their liturgies, inspiring the
reader to think about the many activities of musicians, whether they held the
office of cantor or not: Susan Rankin’s study of Notker of St Gallen, James
Grier’s account of Adémar of Chabannes, Henry Parkes on various officials
working at Constance, Katie Bugyis’s study of English Benedictine women
religious, including not only cantors but also sacristans, Teresa Webber on the
shared duties of cantors, priors and sacristans, A. B. Kraebel on William of
Newburgh’s shorter writings in relation to his larger exegetical and historical
projects, and Paul Hayward’s analysis of William of Malmesbury, which
charges that his work as cantor actually had little to do with his history-
writing (a point of view with which two other authors disagree).
This volume, when compared with scholarship on medieval history-
writing that appeared around a generation ago, demonstrates that a steady
transformation has taken place in the way the subject is studied. Our book
is near in spirit to The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to
Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford,

4
 Introduction

1981). In their foreword, Davis and Wallace-Hadrill claim that their book is
about historiography, ‘not only the writing of history by medieval men but
the way they looked at the past and the influences that led to that looking’
(p. v). Foundational to this exploration is the study of how history relates
to monastic identity, to hagiography, to schools of thought, to confession, to
sermons and to law. But all of these activities are perceived only as textual –
that is, they lack the idea that liturgy, the liturgical arts and the people who
were responsible for their production were also deeply engaged in history-
writing and in history-making, and that their activities influenced their work
as composers of history, hagiography and music. More recently, this idea has
come to the fore in the need to understand not only how history was written,
but how it was made and performed.3
Our book is in sympathy with these attempts to redefine history as both
a written phenomenon and a way of sounding, representing and reenacting
the past. But we aim not only to examine the role of the liturgy in the making
of history, but also to attend closely to the individuals who shaped history
through their textual and musical compositions, and to the kinds of training
and knowledge these compositions required. We have tried to define the
medieval cantor as a history-maker, and, in doing so, we have found a richer
and fuller understanding of this office (and related ones) than we initially
imagined was possible. The cantor-historian that emerges from the pages of
medieval customaries is an idealized official. But, as many of our contributors
confirm, this ideal often was transformed (or abandoned) to fit the needs of
particular communities, and, indeed, the different roles that the customaries
describe could be performed by an individual cantor at different stages in his
career. Many contributors, citing paleographical and codicological evidence,
vividly demonstrate the kinds of books cantors copied, and how they copied
them, and some are even able to hint at the quirks of a cantor’s personality
through the very corrections or annotations that he or she made. Others show
that other monastic officers (often priors or sacristans), depending on their
talents and their communities’ needs, assumed some of the responsibilities
envisioned for a cantor. And one suggests that the liturgy might not always
have been the primary shaping force behind a cantor’s history-writing –
classical historical sources could be greater influences, at least at certain
stages in the career, to speak to the interests and tastes of patrons and
intended audiences. By allowing concrete case studies to complicate, broaden

3 This change can be seen in many studies, but especially in the following: Medieval
Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. G. Althoff et al. (Cambridge,
2002); S. Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial
Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, NY, 2006); Representing History, 900–1300: Art,
Music, History, ed. R. A. Maxwell (University Park, PA, 2010); and Contextualizing
Miracles in the Christian West, 1100–1500: New Historical Approaches, ed. M. M.
Mesley and L. E. Wilson (Oxford, 2014).

5
 Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, A. B. Kraebel

and pluralize our initial idealized definitions of the medieval cantor, we have
uncovered more nuanced portraits of monastic and cathedral history-makers.
It is our hope that readers of this volume will come away impressed by this
diversity and encouraged to search for other shapers of the medieval past.

6
 part i
The Carolingian Period
 1
Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

David Ganz

Introduction to the term ‘historia’

This chapter seeks a clearer understanding of what medieval historians said

about the nature of history, especially in the period before 1200. The two
essential studies of the meaning of history in the Middle Ages are the chapter
by Gert Melville in the volume Formen der Geschichtsschreibung and Peter
von Moos’s prodigiously learned monograph, Geschichte als Topik.1 They
both seem to me to have been largely ignored by English readers, but they
offer unrivalled guidance about medieval ideas of the nature and function of
history. Lastly, but by no means least, in English there is the recent book by
Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500.2
The questions I shall address include: What is the purpose of history?
What is its literary genre? How does human history relate to divine history?
And lastly, what is the place of hagiography in history? Many of the chapters
in this volume are concerned with views of the past and the shaping of the
past in various kinds of writing, ranging from chronicles to saints’ lives, and
the roles that musically and liturgically trained authors played in these many
understandings of the past. My work looks instead at the term ‘historia’ in
a narrower sense, one rising out of classical antiquity – an understanding
that I believe continued to be important in the Middle Ages, especially in the
Carolingian period.
I begin with a quotation from Burckhardt, which defines my own position:
‘While philosophers of history see the past as a contrast and a preliminary
stage to our development, we look at what is constant and recurrent as
something echoing in us and so comprehensible.’3 The sense of historical

1 G. Melville, ‘Wozu Geschichtsschreibung? Stellung und Funktion der Historie im

Mittelalter’, in Formen der Geschtsschreibung, ed. R. Koselleck et al. (Munich, 1982),
pp. 86–146; von Moos, Geschichte als Topik: das rhetorische Exemplum von der Antike
zur Neuzeit und die historiae im ‘Policraticus’ Johanns von Salisbury (Hildesheim, 1988).
2 M. S. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester, 2011).
3 J. Burckhardt, Uber das Studium der Geschichte, in Jacob Burckhardt Werke: kritische
Gesamtausgabe, 28 vols. at present (Munich, 2000–), X, 356: ‘Die Geschichts-
philosophen betrachten das Vergangene als Gegensatz und Vorstufe zu uns als

8
 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

constants, so ably explored by Burckhardt in his lectures on the study of

history, is absent from most courses of study today, but it was a medieval
commonplace. The ways in which God had treated earthly powers were
always instructive, and they followed a pattern. Orosius, for example, writes,
‘Multa convenienter inter Babylonam, urbem Assyrirorum tunc principem
gentium, et Romam, acque nunc gentibus dominantem, conpacta conscipsi’
[‘I noted the many points of similarity between the Assyrian city of Babylon,
which was the leading nation at the time, and Rome, which dominates the
nations in a similar way today’].4 Likewise, Hrabanus Maurus believed that
kingdoms were transferred from one people to another because of injustice
and wickedness, and this was, for him, the enduring lesson of the history of
every nation.5
To preface the following sketch of a very complicated subject, it should
be noted that history was never a formal discipline in classical or medieval
education; indeed, as a literary genre history was always subordinate in the
scheme of the liberal arts. Clio was considered one of the nine Muses who
feature in Martianus Capella, but medieval commentators explained that
she represented rhetoric. Philosophy put the Muses to flight. The earliest
placing of Clio would seem to be Hugo of Mâcon’s mid thirteenth century
Gesta militum, and he merely dedicated a book of his work to each Muse.6 In
1243 Richard of St Germano, a Monte Cassino notary, began his Chronicle by
quoting the verse, ‘Explicat ingenio res gestas ordine Clio’ [‘Clio sets events
forth in an ingenious order’]. Because history was never exactly defined, it
risked a vague and contingent status. But, as Melville has shown, there were
clear rules about different categories of history which all might be contrasted
with other expressions of human experience. Human institutions and their
development might be understood as a part of the order of times, and an
understanding of the literal meaning of Scripture was the basis for any
exploration of its spiritual meaning.7

Entwickleten. Wir betrachten das sich Wiederholende Constante, Typische, als ein
in uns Anklingendes, und Verständliches.’
4 Pauli Orosii Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII VII, 2, ed. K. F. W. Zangemeister
(Leipzig, 1889), p. 235; for the English, see Seven Books of History Against the Pagans,
trans. A. T. Fear (Liverpool, 2010), p. 320.
5 Cf. Hrabanus’s gloss on Ecclesiasticus 10. 8, PL 109, 827: ‘Regnum a gente in gentem
transfertur, propter iniustitias, et iniurias, et contumelias, et diversos dolos. Huius
sententie veritatem omnium pene gentium notant historie, et causas diversorum
populorum ostendunt. Nec hoc ignorare potest, qui Chaldeorum et Persarum
Grecorumque potentissima regna subversa legit, et Romanorum regnum vacillare
conspicit, nec stabile aliquid in mundo esse perpendit.’
6 See De Gesta militum des Hugo von Mâcon: ein bisher unbekanntes Werk des
Erzählliteratur des Hochmittelalters, ed. E. Könsgen, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1990).
7 The most familiar statement of this last commonplace is found in the writings
of Hugh of St Victor, admirably set out by B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the
Middle Ages, 3rd rev. edn (Oxford, 1983), pp. 97–106.

9
 David Ganz

To understand what the term ‘historia’ meant in the early Middle Ages,
we may start with the excellent entry in the Thesaurus linguae latinae by
Wolfgang Schmid.8 He distinguishes between the knowledge of events
through experience, knowledge of geography or natural history and types of
knowledge of past events, which might be mythical or true (in which case one
might speak of historia vera, historie veritas). History was distinguished from
annals in that it was told by those who had been present. It might be reliable
information about a person, it might be the title of a book and it might be
the precepts learned from such works, brevis et aperta et probabilis. In a more
abstract sense, the idea of tradition was central, but that might mean that it
was different from what could be understood rationally. It was composed or
woven using verbs more elaborate than merely ‘to write’. But it could also be
the story of someone’s life.
With these general considerations in mind, the remainder of this chapter
traces the use of ‘historia’ in a variety of Latin authors, for convenience
divided into two major parts: first, writers in antiquity, beginning in
pre-Christian Rome, and, second, writers in the early Middle Ages, up to
c. 1200, though on occasion straying later. Throughout these many centuries,
this particular strain of meaning for the term ‘historia’ remains remarkably
consistent.

‘Historia’ in classical and late antiquity

In some ways medieval understandings of the term ‘historia’ were rooted in

classical and late antiquity. History offers not only truthful information, but
the lessons which the informed reader can reach. And the concern for clarity
and brevity remind us that history was written for oral delivery as much
as for the study. Cicero and Quintilian argued that history may present the
greatest task for the orator in terms of fluency and variety of language. As
forensic oratory came to play a less obvious part in civic life, ‘history was the
one branch of rhetoric that had lost none of its ancient opportunities’.9
The concern with clarity and brevity is often stressed by historians in
their prefaces. Sallust in the Catiline War had commented on the diffculty
of writing history because the style and diction must be equal to the deeds
recorded.10 Some medieval authors followed suit. Fredegar wanted to write

8 Thesaurus linguae latinae, 11 vols. at present (Leipzig, 1900–), VI, cols. 2833–40.
9 R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, I: The
Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth’, in History and
Historians, Selected Papers of R. W. Southern, ed. R. J. Bartlett (Oxford, 2004), p. 18.
10 Sallust, Bellum Catilinae III.2, ed. L. D. Reynolds (Oxford, 1991), pp. 6–7: ‘Tamen in
primis arduum videtur res gestas scribere; primum quod facta dictis exaequanda
sunt; dehinc, quia plerique, quae delicta reprehenderis, malevolentia et invidia

10
 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

in an appropriate style and as concise a manner as possible and hoped for

eloquence.11 Freculf wanted to be clear and concise in his compilation of
whatever pertains to the truth of history.12 Lupus in the preface to his Vita
Wigberti alludes to the problem of style in historical narrative: ‘historiam
quae se obscurari colorum obliquitatibus rennuit’ [‘he disapproves of history
which is obscured by the oblique effects of rhetorical colours’]. Marius
Victorinus, echoed by Hrabanus, explained that grammar was the science
of explaining poets and historians. And Homer, Virgil and Lucan might be
considered historians.
The kind of narrative based on the exposition of the facts presents three
forms: legendary, historical and realistic. The legendary tale comprises events
neither true nor probable, like those transmitted by tragedies.13 Servius
famously said that Lucan was a historian and not a poet, most probably
because he excluded the gods from his epic,14 and his verdict was repeated
by Isidore (Etymologies VIII.vii.9) and in the Bern commentary on Lucan.15
The Rhetorica ad Herrenium contrasts the historical narrative, an account
of exploits actually performed, but removed in time from the recollection of
our age, and those realistic narratives recounting imaginary events, which
nevertheless could have occurred, like the plots of comedies.16 This view was
adapted by Bede. Events always needed to be probable, and this seems to
be Bede’s chief concern when he referred to laws of history, as Cicero had
done:

dicta putant; ubi de magna virtute atque gloria bonorum memores, quae sibi
quisque facilia factu putat, aequo animo accipit, supra ea veluti ficta pro falsis
ducit.’
11 Fredegar, Chronica, MGH SRM II, 123: ‘Cum aliquid unius verbi proprietate non
habeo quod proferam nisi prestitum ab Altissimo. … Vernaculum linguae huius
verbi interpretatur, absorde resonat: si ob necessitate aliquid in ordine sermonum
mutavero, ab interpretis videor officio recessisse.’ This passage has been linked to
Jerome’s translation of Eusebius (PL 19, 313: ‘Accedunt hyperbatorum anfractus,
dissimilitudines casuum, varietates figurarum; ipsum postremo suum, et, ut ita
dicam, vernaculum linguae genus’), but Jerome is talking about translation, while
Fredegar is talking about his own language.
12 Freculf, Historiarum Libri XII, ed. M. I. Allen CCCM 169A (Turnhout, 2002), p. 17.
13 Ad Herrenium I.viii.13, ed. F. Marx (Leipzig, 1894), p. 195: ‘Id quod in negotiorum
expositione positum est tres habet partes: fabulam, historiam, argumentum. Fabula
est quae neque veras neque veri similes continet res, ut eae quae tragoediis tradite
sunt. Historia est gesta res, sed ab aetatis nostrae memoria remota.’
14 In Virgilii Carmina Commentarii, ad Aen. I.382, ed. G. Thilo, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1883–
1902), I, 129: ‘Lucanus namque ideo in numero poetarum esse non meruit, quia
videtur historiam compuisse, non poema.’
15 P. von Moos, ‘Poeta und historicus im Mittelalter. Zum Mimesis-Problem am
Beispiel einiger Utreile über Lucan’, Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und
Litteratur 98 (1976), 93–130.
16 Ad Herrenium I.viii.13, p. 195.

11
 David Ganz

Lectoremque suppliciter obsecro, ut si qua in his que scripsimus aliter quam

se veritas habet posita repererit, non hoc nobis imputet qui, quod vera lex
historie est, simpliciter ea que fama vulgante collegimus ad instructionem
posteritatis litteris mandare studuimus.17

[I humbly beg the reader, if he finds anything other than the truth set down
in what I have written, not to impute it to me. For in accordance with a
true law of history I have simply sought to commit to writing what I have
collected from common report, for the instruction of posterity.]

Likewise, in his commentary on Luke, Bede claimed that ‘opinionem

vulgi exprimens, que vera historie lex est, patrem Ioseph nuncupat Christi’
[‘expressing the common belief, which is the true law of history, he [the
Evangelist] called Joseph the father of Christ’].18 Bede is here quoting Jerome,
Adversus Helvidium,19 and Bede himself would, in turn, be quoted by William
of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon.20
The contrast between theological truth and common perception was an
issue for authors in late antiquity. For Jerome, lex historie is the legitimation
of oral tradition. A truthful narrator may sometimes use vulgar opinion
even if it is false, as when Joseph was called the father of Jesus. Evangelists
spoke veritatis historie because of eyewitness information. Isidore rejected oral
sources in favour of what was seen, a feature which Einhard later grasped
and employed. Einhard claims that no one could write more truthfully than
he had done, since he was present at the events which he described and as
an eyewitness he is reliable: ‘oculata ut dicunt fide’, with his reference ‘as
they say’ indicating that he is quoting. The expression goes back to Cyprian,
referring to Paul’s ascent to heaven, when he saw Christ, ‘qui occulata fide
Ihesum Dominum vidisse se gloriatur’ [‘who boasts that he saw the Lord
Jesus as an eyewitness’].21 It is also found in Roman law: eyewitness accounts

17 HE Pref., pp. 6–7. See further R. Ray, ‘Bede’s Vera lex historiae’, Speculum 55 (1980),
1–21; W. Goffart, ‘Bede’s Vera lex historae Explained’, ASE 34 (2005), 111–16; T. J.
Furry, Allegorizing History: The Venerable Bede, Figural Exegesis and Historical Theory
(Cambridge, 2013).
18 In Lucae Evangelium Expositio I.2, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 120 (Turnhout, 1960), p. 67;
translation taken from Goffart, ‘Bede’s Vera lex’, p. 112.
19 Jerome, Adversus Helvidium IV, PL 23, 197.
20 GRA V.445, p. 796–7; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum IV.14, ed.
D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 235.
21 Cyprian, Ad Fortunatum 13, in Cypriani Opera Omnia, ed. G. Hartel, CSEL III.1
(Vienna, 1868), p. 346; and II Cor. 12. 1–10; cf. the miracles of St Stephen: visibus
vestris occulata fide (PL 41, 837).

12
 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

were superior to hearsay evidence,22 and in the Historia Tripartita: ‘et hoc
oculata fide cognoscens’.23
An anonymous medieval commentary on Matthew, spuriously attributed
to Bede in Cologne, Dombibliothek MS 16, makes clear the imporance
of oral testimony. Herod is described in Matthew 14. 9 as very sorrowful
(contristatus), and though the commentator thinks this was feigned, he
explains that historians tell events as they seemed to the people who were
present.24
History could be national: Augustine frequently talks of Roman history
and of Christian history, and national histories were to have a long future.25
Augustine’s approach to historical events depended on his distinction
between the literal and the spiritual truth of a particular event, and involved
a necessarily unending struggle to be free from the effects of imperfect human
understanding.26 For Augustine, the deeds of God are also history, in line
with St Paul’s dictum that the history of Exodus is an allegory of the Christan
people: ‘All these things happened to them in figure, and they are written
for our correction’ (I Corinthians 10. 11). These ideas will be considered at
greater length below, but it should be noted that history is not a Hebrew
concept: the Old Testament talks of Chronicles but apparently there is no
term corresponding to history.27

22 Justinian, Institutes, III.vi.9, trans. P. Birks and G. McLeod (Ithaca, NY, 1987),
pp. 98–9: ‘Cum magis veritas occulata fide quam per aures animis hominum
infigatur.’ (Birks and McLeod include a facsimile reprint of Krueger’s Latin
edition.)
23 PL 69, 894. For further discussion, suggesting that the expression goes back to what
Isidore says about history in the Etymologies, see Kempshall, ‘Some Ciceronian
Models for Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne’, Viator 26 (1995), 11–37 (p. 17).
24 PL 92, 71: ‘Nequaquam enim Herodes pro huiusmodi petitione contristatus est;
sed mos est historicorum ita res narrasse sicut tunc a presentibus facta fuisse
videbantur: simulabat enim tristitiam in facie, cum letitiam haberet in mente.’ The
passage is quoted by the late Carolingian commentator known as ‘Christian of
Stavelot’, see Expositio super Librum generationis, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 224
(Turnhout, 2008), pp. 80, 283.
25 H.-W. Goetz, ‘Gens: Terminology and Perception of the “Germanic” Peoples from
Late Antquity to the Early Middle Ages’, in The Construction of Communities in the
Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts, ed. R. Corradini et al. (Leiden, 2003),
pp. 39–61; see too the essays collected in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: von der
Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, ed. W. Pohl (Vienna, 2004).
26 C. Ligota, ‘La foi historienne, histoire et connaissance de l’histoire chez s. Augustin’,
Revue des études augustiniennes 43 (1997), 111–72.
27 See the essays collected in Das Alte Testament–ein Geschichtsbuch?, ed. E. Blum et al.
(Münster, 2005).

13
 David Ganz

Medieval developments of ‘historia’

As already suggested, medieval discussions of the disciplines had no separate

place for history. Isidore of Seville treated history at the end of his book on
grammar ‘because it commits to letters whatever is worthy of memory’.28 In
his grammar, Alcuin defined twenty-six genera, including Letters, Syllables,
Figures and Tropes, Prose and Verse, Fables and History.29 But what is not a
category of literature can be a category of bibliography. Alcuin’s account of
the authors at York included the historici veteres Pompeius Trogus and Pliny.30
Carolingian librarians often regarded history as a separtate category, and
the ninth-century Lorsch catalogue in Vatican Libary MS Pal. lat. 1877, fol. 3
lists the Historia eccelesiastica Eusebii, Historia Iosephi, Historia Orosii, Chronica
Eusebii, Hieronimi et Bede, Gesta Pontificum Romanorum, Gesta Francorum
Gregorii Toronensis, Historia Iordanis, Pompeii Trogi Epitoma, Excidium Troie et
Historia Daretis Frigii, Florus, Julius Hilarionis, Hieronimi, Idacii, Solini, Iosephi
Libri antiquitatum.31 Likewise, the ninth-century Murbach catalogue has a
section de historiis.32
To discover what history was, a medieval writer could turn to glossaries
and encyclopedias. The Liber glossarum entries begin Historia compositionis rei
geste and end Historicus pantomimus qui historias scribit, but they chiefly quote
from Isidore’s Etymologies.33 Isidore distinguished between history, argument
and fable and explained that history is the narrative of things which have
happened, and through such narratives things done in the past are made
known:

Historia est narratio rei geste, per quam ea que in preterito facta sunt
dignoscuntur. Dicta autem Grece historia, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱστορεῖν, id est a videre
vel cognoscere. Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui
interfuisset, et ea que conscribenda essent vidisset. Melius enim oculis que
fiunt deprehendimus, quam que auditione colligimus.34

28 Etymologies I.xli.1–2, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911). (Note that Lindsay’s
edition is unpaginated.)
29 Alcuin, De grammatica, PL 101, 858. Cf. M. Sot and Y. Coz, ‘Histoire de écriture
de l’histoire dans l’œuvre d’Alcuin’, in Alcuin de York à Tours: écriture, pouvoir et
réseaux dans l’Europe du haut Moyen Âge, ed. P. Depreux and B. Judic (Rennes, 2004),
pp. 175–91.
30 Alcuin, The Bishops, Saints and Kings of York, ed. P. Godman (Oxford, 1982), p. 124.
31 A. Häse, Mittelalterliche Bücherverzeichnisse aus Kloster Lorsch: Einleitung, Edition und
Kommentar (Wiesbaden, 2002), p. 137, with commentary on pp. 189–94. In some
cases several texts were collected in one manuscript volume.
32 Wolfgang Milde, Der Bibliothekskatalog des Klosters Murbach aus dem 9. Jahrhundert.
Beihefte zum Euphorion 4 (Heidelberg, 1968), p. 47.
33 I have used the Lorsch copy, Vatican Library MS Pal. lat. 1773, fol. 147.
34 Etymologies I.xli.1; trans. S. Barney et. al (Cambridge, 2006), p. 67. See further
A. Borst, ‘Das Bild der Geschichte in Enzyklopädie Isidors von Sevilla’, Deutsches

14
 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

[A history is a narration of deed accomplished; through it what occurred

in the past is sorted out. History is so called from the Greek term [meaning
‘inquire’, ‘observe’], that is, from ‘seeing’ or from ‘knowing’. Indeed, among
the ancients no one would write a history unless he had been present and
had seen what was to be written down, for we grasp with our eyes things
that occur better than what we gather with our hearing.]

Isidore explains what needs to be considered: person, action, time and

place – a supplement to theology. It was important that the events narrated
had actually happened, and the role of history was to narrate them:
monumenta quod memoriam tribuunt rerum gestarum.35 The events are told
for the instruction of men of the present. Henry of Huntingdon was clear
about that function: making the past present again was a way to transmit
values.36 The past served to teach how to judge the future, and it provided a
source of new understanding.37 (More on this below.) ‘Historia’ transmitted
knowledge which would otherwise trickle away, in a process which Melville
calls Entgegenwärtigung, or making the past present.
Isidore might also have chosen to treat history as a branch of rhetoric,
and it is worth considering why he failed to do so. Ancient rhetorical theory
affirmed that the rhetoricians have not furnished it with rules, for its rules
are obvious. According to Cicero, ‘Who does not know history’s first law to
be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second
that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? … The nature of the subject
needs chronological arrangement’.38 We can find a more rhetorical account
than Isidore’s preserved in a late eighth century Monte Cassino florilegium
containing over fifty texts dealing with metre, grammar and rhetoric, with a
progymnasmata sequence including works by Emporius and Priscian, clearly
designed to train pupils in various genres of prose composition.39 This
includes a discussion of history which encapsulates the Roman rhetorical
traditon:

Historia est rerum gestarum et dignarum memoria relatio: ea versatur aut in

rebus bellicis aut in negotiis civilibus, id est pacis. Historici officii sunt tria:
ut vera res, ut dilucide, ut breviter exponat. Vere res sunt, si rerum actarum
vetustas et obcsuritas diligentur exploretur, si explorata libere, id est sine

Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 22 (1966), 1–62.

35 Etymologies I.xli.2.
36 Melville, ‘Wozu Geschichte schreiben?’, pp. 96–7.
37 Kempshall discusses the categories for judging the usefulness of past events and
the prominence given to understanding events of the past within deliberative
rhetoric: Writing of History, pp. 237–48.
38 Cicero, De Oratore II.xv.62, trans. E. W. Sutton and E. Rackham (Cambridge, MA,
1942), pp. 243, 245.
39 L. Holtz, ‘Le Parisinus Latinus 7530, synthèse cassinienne des arts libéraux’, Studi
Medievali 16 (1975), 97–152.

15
 David Ganz

metu aut gratia aut invidia referatur. Lucida fit historia, si ut oportet res pro
temporibus, pro locis, pro activis structura simplici et perfecta explanetur:
brevis autem, si nihil vel supervacaneum vel leve interponatur, si singulis
verbis sententie exprimantur, si non longo circuitu elocutio terminetur. Est
et illa virtus ut grata sit, quod fieri solet, si varietate si translationibus, si
figures, si novis verbis, si cultu sententiarum, si concinnatiore structura
concinetur. Opus historie est, ut nos notitia rerum instruat, finis autem, id
est to telos, ut ex ea sequendas aut fugiendas res cognoscamus aut ad usum
eloquentie adiuvemur.40

[History is the account of events worthy of memory and it covers matters

of war and civil affairs, that is peace. The duties of a historian are threefold,
that he expounds true matters, that he writes clearly and that he writes
briefly. Matters are true if the age and obscurity of events is carefully
explored and what is discovered is reported freely, that is without fear or
favour or envy. History is made clear if the matter is explained as it should
be according to times, places and deeds. It is brief if nothing superfluous or
light is inserted, if the opinions are expressed in the individual words and if
the utterance does not end in a long periphrasis. Its virtue is that it should
be pleasing. The task of history is that it instruct us by the knowledge
of events, its end, or telos, is that from them we may know what is to be
followed or avoided or that we be helped to the use of eloquence.]

Complementing this rhetorical tradition, discussions of ‘historia’ also

proliferate in exegetical theory. In this context, history was the base of all
understanding, as set out by ‘Christian of Stavelot’ in his commentary on
Matthew:

Studui autem plus historicum sensum sequi quam spiritalem, quia

irrationabile mihi videtur spiritalem intelligentiam in libro aliquo querere,
et historicam penitus ignorare: cum historia fundamentum omnis
intelligentie sit et ipsa primitus querenda et amplexanda, et sine ipsa
perfecte ad aliam non possit transiri.41

[I have endeavoured to follow the historical sense more than the spiritual,
for it seems to me irrational to seek after a spiritual understanding in
any book while being thoroughly ignorant of the historical, since history
is the foundation of every understanding, and is itself to be sought after

40 C. Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores (Leipzig, 1863), p. 588; the translation also appears
in my essay, ‘The Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious’, in Rome and Religion in the
Medieval World: Studies in Honor of Thomas. F. X. Noble, ed. V. L. Garver and O. M.
Phelan (Farnham, 2014), pp. 129–48 (p. 134). The text is discussed by J.-P. Callu,
‘Ecrire l’histoire à la fin de l’empire’, in his Culture profane et critique des sources de
l’antiquité tardive (Rome, 2006), pp. 7–23; see too M. Sehlmeyer, Geschichtsbilder
für Pagane und Christen: Res Romanae in den spätantiken Breviarien (Berlin, 2009),
pp. 17–24.
41 Expositio super Librum generationis, pp. 52–3.

16
 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

and embraced first, and without it one cannot perfectly go on to another

understanding.]

According to one version of the familiar schema, history is when things

done by God or man are recounted; allegory, when they are understood as
being said figuratively; analogy, when the harmony of the old and the new
covenants is being deomonstrated; etiology, when the causes of things are
presented. Is the making of heaven and earth only historical?42 No; it is
also a science. We can see this in the Carolingian scheme of the divisions of
philosophy into the practical and the investigative sciences which moved
from the visible to the divine, with quotations from Scripture showing
examples of each one. The investigative sciences are divided into history
(simply exposition of doctine in which nothing is secret save that the words
resound) and spiritual understanding, itself divided into the tropological,
allegorical and anagogical.43
The role of the divine in establishing history is most clearly set out by
Folcuin in his history of the monastery of Lobbes, composed between 965
and 990:

Vis enim Deitatis omnipotentissima, cuique quod est, esse perfectum est,
rerum formas per principales quasdam materias penes se semper perfectas
habuit, sed quando voluit et ubi voluit nobis visibiles fecit … et ipse in
tempora cuncta ordinaverit. Nam quando voluit, regna statuit, et quando
voluit, mutavit.44

[The omnipotent power of God, for whom what is is perfect, has the forms
of things through certain principal materials which are for him always
perfect, but when he wills and where he wills, he makes them visible
to us … and he himself ordered all things in time. For when he wills he
establishes kingdoms, and when he wills he changes them.]

Orosius explains that studious men wrote down the deeds of kings and
peoples to preserve an eternal memory.45 At the end of the Carolingian
age, Regino said it seemed unworthy that since historians had transmitted

42 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram II.5, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 28.1 (Vienna, 1894), pp. 38–9.
43 B. Bischoff, ‘Eine verschollene Einteilung der Wissenschaften’ in his Mittelalterliche
Studien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966–81), I, 273–88; see Valenciennes, Bibliothèque
municipale MS 404, fols. 58r–59v; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS Clm
14456, fols. 68r–69r; and Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek MS Hist. nat. 1, fol. 44rv.
44 MGH SS 4, pp. 54–5. Cf. G. Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik der Widmungsbriefe
mittelalterliche Geschichtschreiber bis zum Ende des 12 Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für
Diplomatik 4 (1958), 59–119 and 5/6 (1959–60), 73–153. For full translations, see
J. Lake, Prologues to Ancient and Medieval History: A Reader (Toronto, 2013).
45 Historiarum Adversum Paganos I.1, p. 5: ‘Et quoniam omnes propemodum tam apud
Grecos quam apud Latinos studiosi ad scribendum viri, qui res gestas regum
populorumque ob diuturnam memoriam verbis propagaverunt.’

17
 David Ganz

the events of Hebrews, Greeks, Romans and other peoples to our own age,
his own age should be stuck in a perpetural silence, as if all human activity
had ceased or nothing was worthy of memory.46 Historical narrative offered
coherence, the only remedy to the incoherence of events scattered through
time.
The usefulness of history comprises an understanding of the sequence
of events in time, and this was very important for the medieval use of the
term, as taken over from antiquity. The historian does not compose that order
but narrates it: it may involve human constructions, but what has happened
is created and controlled by God. In the City of God, Augustine dismantled
an idealized history of Rome: virtue and liberty were unmasked as greed
for praise and a desire for domination. But there were clear hermeneutic
problems in any understanding of history. As he writes in On the Trinity,

In omnium istarum quas commemorauimus temporalium rerum scientia

quaedam cognoscibilia cognitionem interpositione temporis antecedunt
sicut sunt ea sensibilia quae iam erant in rebus antequam congnoscerentur
uel ea omnia quae per historiam cognoscuntur; quaedam uero simul esse
incipiunt uelut si aliquid uisibile quod omnino non erat ante nostros oculos
oriatur, cognitionem nostram utique non precedit, aut si aliquid sonet ubi
adest auditor, simul profecto incipiunt esse simulque desinunt et sonus
et eius auditus. Verumtamen siue tempore precedentia siue simul esse
incipientia cognoscibilia cognitionem gignunt, non cognitione gignuntur.47

[In the knowledge of all these temporal things which we have mentioned,
there are some knowable things which precede the acquisition of the
knowledge of them by an interval of time, as in the case of those sensible
objects which were already real before they were known, or of all those
things that are learned through history; but some things begin to be at the
same time with the knowing of them – just as, if any visible object, which
did not exist before at all, were to rise up before our eyes, certainly it does
not precede our knowing it; or if there be any sound made where there is
some one to hear, no doubt the sound and the hearing that sound begin
and end simultaneously. Yet nonetheless, whether preceding in time or
beginning to exist simultaneously, knowable things generate knowledge,
and are not generated by knowledge.]

46 MGH SS 1, p. 543: ‘Indignum etenim mihi visum est, ut, cum Hebreorum Grecorum
et Romanorum aliarumque gentium historiographi res in diebus suis gestas scriptis
usque ad nostram notiatiam transmiserint, de nostris quamquam longe inferioribus
temporibus ita perpetuum silentium sit, ut quasi in diebus nostris aut hominum
actio cessaverit aut fortassis nil dignum, quod memorie fuerit commendandum,
egerint aut, si res digna memoratu gestae sunt, nullus ad hec litteris mandata
idoneus invetus fuerit, notariis per incuriam otio torpentibus.’
47 De Trinitate XIV.x.13, ed. W. J. Mountain, CCSL 50–50A (Turnhout, 1968), II, 440;
trans. A. W. Haddan (Edinburgh, 1873), pp. 360–1.

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 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

Likewise, in On Christian Doctrine:

Narratione autem historica cum preterita etiam hominum instituta

narrantur, non inter humana instituta ipsa historia numeranda est, quia iam
que transierunt nec infecta fieri possunt, in ordine temporum habenda sunt,
quorum est conditor et administrator Deus.48

[History itself is not to be reckoned among human institutions, because

things that are past and gone and cannot be undone are to be reckoned as
belonging to the course of time, of which God is the author and governor.]

In his letter On Seeing God, Augustine asserts that past events, most notably
the Resurrection, can only be known by faith. Things seen by the mind need
no bodily senses to let us know that they are true, but those seen through the
body cannot become our knowledge without a mind to which these incoming
messages can be referred.49 Indeed, God’s temporal arrangement by means
of his changeable creation is designed to make the soul recall its origin and
perfect nature.50 Dispersal in time is counteracted by the temporal structure
of the narrative.
Augustine insists that historical events could only be believed and never
understood by men.51 When he attempts to formulate how God might know
history he draws on the analogy of singing:

Certe si est tam grandi scientia et prescientia pollens animus, cui cuncta
preterita et futura ita nota sint, sicut mihi unum canticum notissimum,
nimium mirabilis est animus iste atque ad horrorem stupendus, quippe
quem ita non lateat quidquid peractum et quidquid reliquum seculorum est,
quem admodum me non latet cantantem illud canticum, quid et quantum
eius abierit ab exordio, quid et quantum restet ad finem. Sed absit, ut tu,
conditor universitatis, conditor animarum et corporum, absit, ut ita noveris
omnia futura et preterita. Longe tu, longe mirabilius longeque secretius.52

[Surely, if there be a mind, so greatly abounding in knowledge and

foreknowledge, to which all things past and future are so known as one
psalm is well known to me, that mind is exceedingly wonderful, and
very astonishing; because whatever is so past, and whatever is to come
of after ages, is no more concealed from him than was it hidden from me

48 De Doctrina Christiana II.xxviii.44, ed. J. Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnhout, 1962), p. 63;

trans. J. F. Shaw (Edinburgh, 1873), p. 63.
49 De videndo Deo 38, in Epistulae, ed. A. Goldbacher, CSEL 44 (Vienna, 1904),
pp. 312–13.
50 De vera religione X.19, ed. K.-D. Dauer, CCSL 32 (Turnhout, 1962), pp. 199–200.
51 De diversis quaestionibus XLVIII, ed. A. Mutzenbecher, CCSL 44A (Turnhout, 1975),
p. 75: ‘Alia sunt que semper creduntur et numquam intelleguntur, sicut est omnis
historia temporalia et humana gesta percurrens.’
52 Confessiones XI.xxxi.41, ed. L. Verheijen, CCSL 27 (Turnhout, 1981), p. 215; trans. J. G.
Pilkington (Edinburgh, 1886), pp. 317–18.

19
 David Ganz

when singing that psalm, what and how much of it had been sung from
the beginning, what and how much remained unto the end. But far be it
that thou, the Creator of the universe, the Creator of souls and bodies – far
be it that thou shouldest know all things future and past. Far, far more
wonderfully, and far more mysteriously, thou knowest them.]

This notion of some mysterious, divine understanding of historical events

helps to explain the medieval penchant for reading history in a moralizing
vein. History was regarded as a branch of Ethics according to William of
Malmesbury:

Iam uero ethice partes medullitus rimatus, illius maiestati assurgo, quod
per se studentibus pateat et animos ad bene vivendum componat; historiam
precipue, que iocunda quadam gestorum notitia mores condiens, ad bona
sequenda vel male cavenda legentis exemplis irritat.53

[As for ethics, I explored parts in depth, revering its high status as a subject
inherently accessible to the student and able to form good character; in
particular I studied history, which adds flavour to moral instruction by
imparting a pleasurable knowledge of past events, spurring the reader by
the accumulation of examples to follow the good and shun the bad.]

A similar account in Henry of Huntingdon is considerably more elaborate, a

passage later taken up by John of Salisbury in his Policraticus VII.9:

Ubi autem floridius enitescit virorum fortium magnificentia, prudentium

sapientia, iustorum iudicia, temperatorum modestia, quam in rerum
contextu gestarum? Audivimus quidem Homericam laudans historiam
Flaccus intimaverit, dicens: ‘Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile,
quid non, / Plenius et melius Crisippo et Cantore dicit’ [Epistles I.2, 3–4].
Cantor siquidem et Crisippus, circa morum doctrinam philosophantes,
multis codicibus desudarunt, Homerus autem velut speculo eliquans
prudentiam Ulixis, fortitudinem Agamennonis, … honestum et utile, ad his
contraria, lucidius et delectabilius philosophis historiando disseruit.54

[Where does the grandeur of valiant men shine more brightly, or the
wisdom of the prudent, or the discretion of the righteous, or the moderation
of the temperate, than in the context of history? Indeed, we have heard
what Horace said, in praise of Homeric history, that it ‘defines what is noble
and what is infamous, what is proper and what is not, more fully and better
than Chrysippus and Crantor’. Whereas Crantor and Chrysippus sweated
to produce many volumes of moral philosophy, Homer showed, as clearly
as in a mirror, the prudence of Ulysses, the fortitude of Agamemnon, …
and in his narrative he discussed what is right and proper more clearly and
agreeably than the philosophers.]

53 GRA II.prol., pp. 150–1.

54 Historia Anglorum, pp. 2–3.

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 Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations

The exemplum, according to Isidore (Differentiae 191) was made credible

through history,55 and von Moos has rightly challenged the view that only
with the Renaissance are these exempla used to learn concrete modes of
behaviour rather than to prove and convince. Indeed, medieval exempla
are said to convey, elucidate and didactically strengthen a doctrine which is
already known. To return to Augustine:

Non modo querimus utrum sit factum, sed utrum fuerit faciendum. Sane
quippe ratio etiam exemplis anteponenda est, cui quidem et exempla
concordant, sed illa, que tanto digniora sunt imitatione quanto excellentiora
pietate.56

[We are not inquiring whether it has been done, but whether it ought to
have been done. Sound judgment is to be preferred even to examples,
and indeed examples harmonize with the voice of reason; but not all
examples, but those only which are distinguished by their piety, and are
proportionately worthy of imitation.]

Sound reason and morality must determine the choice of exempla.

The question of exemplarity leads us, finally, to the status of saints’ lives.
As Paul Lehmann noted, throughout the Middle Ages the term ‘historia’
could be used to refer to books of the Bible, saints’ lives, versified offices
and even schoolbooks such as the Historia Scholastica.57 ‘Historia’ came to
categorize those biblical passages which were used for responses, and for the
liturgical groupings of responses themselves.58 In a similar sense, ‘historia’
was frequently used for the lives of the saints – but there the word means
‘story’. Thus Bede and Alcuin both describe their hagiographical writings
as ‘historia’.59 Ardo, in his life of Benedict of Aniane, links the traditional
practice of learning from histories and annals with his hagiographical

55 Differentiae 191, PL 83, 1329: ‘Exemplum historia est, similitudo approbatio.’ Cf. von
Moos, Geschichte als Topik, pp. 58–60.
56 De Civitate Dei I.22, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCSL 47 (Turnhout, 1955), p. 24;
trans. (Edinburgh, 1871), I, 33. This passage was quoted by Gratian, Decretum IX.11.
57 P. Lehmann, ‘Mittelalterliche Büchertitel’, in his Erforschung des Mittelalters (Stuttgart,
1959–62), V, 1–93. Cf. H.-W. Goetz, ‘Die “Geschichte” im Wissenschaftssystem
des Mittelalters’, in F.-J. Schmale, Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichts­
schreibung (Darmstadt, 1985), pp. 165–213.
58 For detailed discussion of the term as applied to liturgical sources (often traced
back to Amalarius of Metz), see also Ritva Jonsson (Jacobsson), Historia: Études sur
la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm, 1968), pp. 9–25.
59 Bede, Vita Felicis confessoris, PL 94, 789: ‘Felicissimum beati Felicis triumphum,
quem in Nola Campanie civitate, Domino adiuvante, promeruit, Paulinus eiusdem
civitatis episcopus versibus hexametris pulcherrime ac plenissime descripsit;
qui quia metricis potius quam simplicibus sunt habiles lectoribus, placuit nobis
ob plurimorum utilitatem, eamdem sancti confessoris historiam planioribus
dilucidare sermonibus.’ Alcuin, Vita Willibrordi, PL 101, 695: ‘Hanc historiam
sanctissimi patris et summi sacerdotis Willibrodi.’

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 David Ganz

enterprise.60 Likewise, the exempla sanctorum were contrasted with Hector

and Socrates by Sulpicius, since their exempla comfort us through grace and
not heroics.
As von Moos concluded: ‘In the great majority of cases, “historia” has
the sense of an authorized “history”, narrated and in a particular written
form, and it can then blend into derived meanings like “history-book” and
historiographical works.’61 In the words of Beryl Smalley: ‘The saint’s life
offered a tempting model of dateless history.’62 But a longer narrative, even
though it offered examples – and in Christian times examples shaped by
grace – also showed God’s purposes.63 In this regard, if they are not always
instances of ‘historia’ in the stricter sense traced above, the saints’ lives
discussed in the following chapters can share with ‘historia’ a complex
commitment to rhetorical invention, exemplarity and, of course, the recording
of res gestae.

60 Subsidia Anianensia: Überlieferungs- und textgeschichtliche Untersuchungen

zur Geschichte Witiza-Benedikts, seines Klosters Aniane und zur sogenannten
‘anianischen Reform’; mit kommentierten Editionen der ‘Vita Benedicti Anianensis’,
‘Notitia de servitio monasteriorum’ des ‘Chronicon Moissiacense/Anianense’ sowie
zweier Lokaltraditionen aus Aniane, ed. W. Kettemann (Duisburg, 2000), pp. 141–3:
‘Esto occulendam esse decernerit, veniam de meo posco errore: Sin vero utilem,
qui libenter parverunt viventi, immitari satagant vitam absentis. Perantiquam
siquidem fore consuetudinem, et actenus regibus usitatam, queque geruntur
acciduntve annalibus tradi posteris cognoscenda, nemo, ut reor, ambigit doctus.
Et quoniam mens diversis rebus partita oblivione cecatur, divinitus credimus esse
consultum, ut que oblivio prolixa procurrente tempore poterat aboleri, litteris
mandarentur servanda, quarum lectione iocundantur, hylarescunt totosque se ad
gratiam inflectunt. Hi qui talia concupiscunt legere: nec ab his temerarius iudicatur,
auctor scripture, etiam si contingat minus politis perstrepere verbis; ad quam
avide cognoscendam desudant. Concedant igitur nobis et precedentium legere
vitam, et posteris mandare que ipsis nostris temporibus vidimus, vel audivimus,
ad augmentum animarum profutura: nec condemnemur de imperitis sermonibus,
et rusticitatis vitium redolentes, quoniam ratum ducimus normam salutiferam licet
rudibus depromere.’
61 Von Moos, Geschichte als Topik, p. 150: ‘Im weitaus den meisten Fällen hat historia den

Sinn einer erzählten, insbesondere schriftlich fixierten, autorisierten “Geschichte”

und kann darum mit der abgeleiteten Bedeutung des “geschichtenbuchs” oder des
historiographischen Werks verschmelzen.’
62 Smalley, Study of the Bible, p. 49.
63 Kempshall brings this out in his discussion of Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis. See

Writing of History, pp. 409–10.

22
 2
Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

Rosamond McKitterick

The Frankish historians responsible for the Annales regni francorum charted
Charlemagne’s visits to particular saints’ burial places to honour their cults.
The regular record of where the king spent Easter and Christmas, and thus
the framing of the ruler’s movements within Christian time, is also a striking
feature of the contemporary annalists’ account of his reign.1 They underscored
the place of religious devotion in Charlemagne’s conception of his role as
ruler within his realm. Major political occasions and royal demonstrations of
power, from Charlemagne’s royal coronation on the feast of St Denis in 768
onwards, were orchestrated within an essentially liturgical framework. That
reality underpins the narrative itself, for the celebration of Christmas and
Easter provides the impetus for each successive year, recorded furthermore
according to the year of the Incarnation. The Frankish representation of
Charlemagne and his deeds is thus unconditionally Christian and accords
significant prominence to liturgical observance.
So much is well known. Stating the obvious nevertheless prompts the
questions of how and why both the Christian era and the liturgical celebration
were established as possible and accepted features of an historical narrative,
as instrumental in the representation of particular protagonists and their
success, and as part of the literary structure of an historical text.2 Other eighth-
century narratives of the Franks, notably the Liber historiae francorum and the
Continuations of the Chronicle of ‘Fredegar’, lack such liturgical emphasis.
In the Liber historiae francorum at least, the liturgy played a decisive part in
the narrative only twice. The account of the attack on Vienne when Bishop
Mamertus was celebrating Mass and the royal palace was burnt relates that
the bishop thereupon declared a three-day fast and the ‘three-day litany’ that
the author claims is now ‘practised everywhere’.3 A reference to a three-day

1 R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: the Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008),

pp. 321–6.
2 S. Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles’, in

Writing Medieval History, ed. N. Partner (London, 2005), pp. 88–108; G. Declercq,
Anno Domini: Les origines de l’ère chrétienne (Turnhout, 2000).
3 Liber historiae francorum c. 16, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH Scripotores rerum

merovingicarum 2 (Hannover, 1888), p. 266.

23
 Rosamond McKitterick

period of prayers and fasting is included in the Chronicle of Fredegar as part

of the story about the remarkable (in every respect) discovery by the bishops
of Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople of the Lord’s garment from
the Passion, inserted as an event in the thirtieth reign of the Frankish king
Guntramn, in the same year that war broke out between Franks and Bretons.4
Certainly a three-day fast is also subsequently associated with the Avar
campaigns in 791/3,5 and the process which produced the Ordinatio imperii in
817, even if the narrative sources do not tell us this.6
The Liber historiae francorum also refers to Chlotild’s proposal to her
husband Clovis that they build a church in Paris dedicated to St Peter, prince
of the apostles, so that he will help Clovis in his war against the Arian Goths.
That same chapter records how Clovis’s campaign against Alaric II, king of
the Visigoths, brought him to Tours, and Clovis asked for a sign at the basilica
of St Martin. When his messengers crossed the threshold was the moment
when the primicerius was leading the antiphon from Psalm 18. 37–8 that
was presumably part of the night office in the church that day: ‘Precinxisti
me Domine, virtutem ad bellum, subplantasti insurgentes in me subtus me
et imimicorum meorum dedisti mihi dorsum et odientes me disperdedisti’
(‘You have girded me Lord with the strength in battle. You have subjected
under me those who rose up against me. You have made my enemies turn
their backs to me and you have destroyed those who hate me’). This was
the message that was brought to Clovis and, by implication, helped him to
secure his victory at Vouillé. Clovis subsequently gave gifts to the church of
St Martin at Tours.7
Although the Paris church’s dedication to St Peter is the Liber historiae
francorum’s own contribution to the narrative about Clovis, the story about
the pointed choice of antiphon is taken from Gregory of Tours’s Historiae
II.37.8 The Psalm text at this point of the narrative acts as an affirmation of
God’s support, and effectively as prophecy.
Communicating the appreciation of God’s special support for the Franks
has long been recognized as a major element of the annalists’ agenda,9 and
the use of biblical language is also a familiar and effective literary device

4 The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar and its Continuations, ed. J. M. Wallace-
Hadrill (London, 1960), c. 11, p. 9.
5 MGH Epp. IV, ed. E. Dümmler (Berlin, 1895), pp. 528–9. See D. Bachrach, Religion
and the Conduct of War, c. 300–c. 1215 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 34, 39.
6 Ordinatio imperii, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Cap. I (Hanover, 1883), no. 136, 270–1.
7 Liber historiae francorum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), c. 17, p. 268.
8 Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri decem, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1 (Hanover,
1951), p. 86.
9 M. Garrison, ‘The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin
to Charlemagne’, in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Y. Hen and
M. Innes (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 114–61.

24
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

by writers of history and political polemic.10 The particular deployment of

liturgical texts and the framing of the narrative to make the antiphon the
climax of the story, however, suggest the conjoining of liturgical language
and historical thinking on the part of both Gregory and the Liber historiae
francorum author. This antiphon was more than an apt biblical phrase. It
placed the anecdote of Clovis’s subsequent victory over the Arians in a
precise commemorative context of the weekly liturgical ritual not just of
Tours, but of all the ecclesiastical communities that celebrated the Office of
the church. Above all, it articulated the entire ideology of Clovis’s campaign
in liturgical language.
One source of narrative inspiration for both the deployment of the liturgy
in this way and for liturgical information for Gregory of Tours was the Liber
pontificalis. Gregory’s knowledge of the Liber pontificalis is clearly affirmed by
his inclusion of a summary gesta of the bishops of Tours in Book X of his
Historiae.11 The Liber pontificalis, moreover, arguably established not only the
appropriateness of the topic of liturgy in an historical narrative but also its
symbolic importance for the author of the Liber historiae francorum and the
later Frankish annalists.
The transmission of the text of the Liber pontificalis, the history of the
bishops of Rome from St Peter to the ninth century, is strikingly Frankish in
its concentration.12 Many of the earliest extant manuscripts were produced
at the end of the eighth century and in the early ninth century in Francia.
Distinctively Frankish redactions of the eighth-century lives in particular
were created, probably after the Frankish conquest of Lombardy, and possibly
in two stages. The first was in Rome itself by someone who might have been
able to consult documents in the vestiarium, and the second stage was in
Francia, possibly at the court.13 Certainly a Frankish audience was envisaged,
and knowledge of the text at the Carolingian court can also reasonably be
supposed.14

10 M. de Jong, ‘Carolingian Political Discourse and the Biblical Past’, in The Resources
of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. C. Gantner, R. McKitterick and S. Meeder
(Cambridge, 2015), pp. 87–102.
11 R. McKitterick, ‘Rome and the Popes in the Construction of Institutional History
and Identity in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek
Scaliger MS 49’, in Rome and Religion in the Medieval World: Studies in Honor of
Thomas F. X. Noble, ed. O. Phelan and V. Garver (Aldershot, 2014), pp. 207–34; and
M. Sot, ‘Introduction. Auxerre et Rome: Gesta pontificum et Liber pontificalis’, in Liber,
Gesta, Histoire. Écrire l’Histoire des Évêques et des Papes, de l’Antiquité au XXIe
siècle, ed. F. Bougard and M. Sot (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 5–20.
12 F. Bougard, ‘Composition, diffusion et réception des parties tardives du Liber
Pontificalis romain (VIIIe–IXe siècles)’, in Liber, Gesta, Histoire, pp. 127–52.
13 Ibid., p. 138; and C. Gantner, ‘The Lombard Recension of the Liber Pontificalis’,
Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 10 (2013), 65–114 (p. 71).
14 M. Buchner, ‘Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des “Liber pontificalis” und zu seiner
Verbreitung im Frankenreich im 9. Jahrhundert. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte

25
 Rosamond McKitterick

The most crucial aspect of the Liber pontificalis in its later eighth-century
biographies, however, is the integration of the Franks into Roman and papal
history and the way in which Rome’s past is made a relevant aspect of
Frankish historical memory.15 As I have suggested elsewhere, the Christian
or Christianizing representations of Rome’s past in the Liber pontificalis also
became part of the Frankish memory of Rome in the eighth and the ninth
centuries.16 I have also linked that very particular memory with the liturgical
readings incorporated into the lectionary that appears to have been compiled
in Rome in the course of the late seventh century. The entire set of readings
is orchestrated according to the stational liturgical readings of Rome, with
the church specified. During Holy Week, for example, the Gospel for the day
was read in sequence from Monday to Saturday at Santa Prassede, Santa
Prisca, Sancta Maria,17 the Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the Lateran,
and Santa Maria Maggiore on Easter Sunday itself. The lectionary creates a
virtual duplication of Rome within the framework of the liturgical readings.
Liturgical time is mapped onto the sacred space of Rome and fused within
the surviving copies of this lectionary, all of them extant from the Frankish
realms and designed for performance within a Frankish church.18
The earliest and fullest example of such evocation of churches in
detail is the Godescalc lectionary, produced by the scribe associated with
Charlemagne’s court and on commission from Charlemagne and his wife
Hildegard to mark the baptism of their young son Pippin in Rome in 781.19
Godescalc’s elaboration of the many churches of Rome, so very much fuller
than any other extant version of the church lectionary or ordo from the eighth
century, suggests that one possible source for Godescalc was indeed the
Liber pontificalis itself. The papal history may well have inspired Godescalc’s
imaginative extrapolation of the lectionary rubrics and deployment of the
copious information about the special churches of Rome in that historical
narrative to extend the sacred space in Francia in which these extracts from
Scripture were read aloud.20

der karolingischen Hofbibliothek und Hofkapelle’, Römische Quartalschrift 34 (1926),

141–26.
15 R. McKitterick, ‘Transformations of the Roman Past and Roman Identity in the

Early Middle Ages’, in The Resources of the Past, pp. 225–44.

16 R. McKitterick, ‘Charlemagne, Rome and the Management of Sacred Space’, in

Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes. Construction et deconstruction, ed.
R. Große (Turnhout, forthcoming).
17 The church of St Mary is not further specified, though certainly in later sequences it

is Santa Maria Maggiore as for Easter Sunday.

18 McKitterick, ‘Charlemagne, Rome’.
19 L. Nees, ‘Godescalc’s Career and the Problems of Influence’, in Under the Influence:

the Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. J. Lowden and
A. Bovey (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 21–43.
20 C. Denoël, ‘Die Perikopen’, in Das Godescalc-Evangelistar, Eine Prachthandschrift für

Karl den Großen, ed. F. Crivello, C. Denoël and P. Orth (Munich, 2011), pp. 98–125.

26
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

In this chapter therefore, with its possible function in mind as a model

for a particular way of writing history, I should like to explore the degree
to which the Liber pontificalis exploits the liturgy and music as a narrative
strategy to highlight both actual and symbolic meaning in relation to papal
representation. That empirical finding may then throw light on the wider
issue of liturgy’s place in medieval historical writing more generally, in terms
of both the representation of time and the way liturgical memory might have
enhanced historical imagination. Although the Liber pontificalis is so well
known, it is worthwhile briefly highlighting those aspects of the text – its
structure and composition – that are particularly germane to any enquiry
about the way liturgy might have been used by the Liber pontificalis’s authors.
The Liber pontificalis, first composed in the sixth century and added to
periodically from the seventh century until the later ninth century, presents a
history of the popes in the form of serial biography in chronological sequence
from St Peter (d. c. 64).21 The text follows the model provided by the serial
biographies of Roman emperors, namely, Suetonius’ Lives of the twelve caesars
and the brilliantly outrageous fourth-century concoction known as the
Historia augusta, in order to substitute the Roman bishops historiographically
for Roman emperors and to Christianize Roman history.22 Like the imperial
biographies, each life is formulaic in structure and content, with particular
details offered, some more substantial than others, about the pope’s origin
and father, his election, events during his reign, his contributions to the
religious life of Rome, political activities, endowments and building activity,
death, burial and the number of ordinations he performed of bishops, priests
and deacons. The Petrine chronology is an innovation as well as a political
statement to reinforce not just the apostolic succession but also the primacy of
the see of St Peter.23

21 Le Liber pontificalis. Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, ed. L. Duchesne, 2 vols.

(Paris, 1886–1892); 2nd edn + vol. 3 (Paris, 1955–57); Liber pontificalis (Pars prior), ed.
T. Mommsen, MGH SS Gesta pontificum romanorum I,1 (Berlin, 1898); H. Geertman,
‘La Genesi del Liber pontificalis romano. Un Processo di Organizzazione della
Memoria’, in Liber, Gesta, Histoire, pp. 37–107; D. M. Deliyannis, ‘The Roman Liber
pontificalis, Papal Primacy, and the Acacian Schism’, Viator 45 (2014), 1–16.
22 R. McKitterick, ‘Roman Texts and Roman History in the Early Middle Ages’, in

Rome across Time and Space, c. 500–c. 1400: Cultural Translation and the Exchange of
Ideas, ed. C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick and J. Osborne (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 19–34.
Some elements of this argument are also in R. McKitterick, ‘La Place du Liber
pontificalis dans les genres historiographiques du haut Moyen Âge’, in Liber, Gesta,
Histoire, pp. 23–35.
23 M. Borgolte, Petrusnachfolge und Kaiserimitation. Die Grablege der Päpste, ihre Genese

und Traditionsbildung (Göttingen, 1989); S. Scholz, Politik- Selbstverständnis –

Selbstdarstellung. Die Päpste in karolingischer und ottonischer Zeit (Stuttgart, 2006),
R. McKitterick, ‘The Representation of Old St Peter’s Basilica in the Liber pontificalis’,
in Old St Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick, J. Osborne, C. Richardson and J. Story
(Cambridge, 2013), pp. 107–34; D. M. Deliyannis ‘The Roman Liber pontificalis’.

27
 Rosamond McKitterick

Despite the multiple authorship and potential variety of perspectives

on the history of the popes and Rome that were incorporated into the Liber
pontificalis between the sixth and the ninth centuries, the text maintains a
remarkable degree of thematic and narrative consistency. Unfortunately no
agreement has been reached about the precise identity or official function
of the authors. It is generally agreed that the authors were papal clerks
of some kind. Some prefer to see the text as emerging from the notarial
office of the Primicerius notariorum who made use of papal records in other
offices, especially that of the vestiarius.24 Others suggest that it was the
vestiarium clerics themselves who composed the papal lives.25 There is so
much implied in the content of the lives about access to a comprehensive
range of papal records, beyond the estate and church fabric records kept
in the Registers in the vestiarium, that the papal writing office may indeed
have been where the Liber pontificalis was compiled; there is no decisive
evidence to help resolve this issue as yet. To account for the nature of
the information in the text, some scholars have resorted to a degree of
movement between the two offices by those responsible for its composition
in a way that is difficult to envisage in practical terms.26 The most revealing
evidence, as Richard Pollard has demonstrated, is the deployment of the
cursus, or prose rhythm in the writing style of the papal chancery, which
indicates that whoever was writing the papal letters in the late sixth and the
seventh century at least was not also responsible for the Liber pontificalis.27
Taking up a suggestion made by Margot Fassler in the light of particular
links between earlier medieval liturgical and literary and historiographical
composition,28 there is the possibility of a constructive association between
those compiling the liturgical books with texts and ordines on behalf of the
popes, the composers of chant, and the authors of the Liber pontificalis. This
is perhaps reflected in the perspectives and occasional detail in the latter’s
text. Such a scenario is all the more plausible in the light of the apparently
intense period of activity in the composition of liturgical texts in the later
seventh and eighth centuries in Rome that can be surmised from the later

24 L. Duchesne, Étude sur le Liber pontificalis, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises

d’Athènes et de Rome 1 (Paris, 1877); T. F. X. Noble, ‘A New Look at the Liber
Pontificalis’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 23 (1985), 347–58.
25 H. Geertman, More veterum. Il ‘Liber pontificalis’ e gli edifici ecclesiastici di Roma nella
tarda antichità e nell’alto medioevo (Groningen, 1975).
26 F. Bougard, ‘Composition, diffusion et réception’. See also C. Gantner, ‘The
Lombard Recension’.
27 R. M. Pollard, ‘The Decline of the cursus in the Papal Chancery and its Implications’,
Studi Medievali 50 (2009), 1–40; and R. M. Pollard, ‘A Cooperative Correspondence:
Papal Letters in the Age of Gregory the Great’, in A Companion to Gregory the Great,
ed. B. Neil and M. Dal Santo (Leiden, 2013), pp. 291–312.
28 Fass A; Fass B.

28
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

manuscript evidence and the dissemination of liturgical books north of the

Alps.29
The template provided by the first section of the Liber pontificalis was
adopted by the subsequent authors, with an enhancement of established
themes as well as new elements, not least the liturgy. The liturgical thread
within the narrative plays a number of different roles. In the first place
it anchors the liturgy within Rome as part of the new Christian identity of
Rome itself. Some of the elements of the construction of that identity are
equally pertinent for the deployment of the liturgy as a narrative and political
strategy on the part of the authors.30
Certainly, too, the text of the Liber pontificalis constructs a history of the
liturgy as a fundamental element of the narrative. In this respect the authors
follow their imperial models. The secular imperial biographies had routinely
presented the emperor’s devotion to religious matters as central aspects of
the imperial role. These contributions to the religious life of the city were
reinterpreted within a Christian framework by the Liber pontificalis authors,
but in historiographical terms the authors also incorporated a history of the
liturgy as orchestrated by the pope himself. Whether or not any particular
pope, especially those recorded in the pre mid sixth century section of the
Liber pontificalis, can actually be credited with the innovations attributed to
them is hardly the point. Too much credence may have been given hitherto to
the chronology of liturgical development presented in the Liber pontificalis’s
first sixty lives, but that is a topic not to be laboured here. The Liber pontificalis
authors used the fact of papal innovation to enhance the popes’ leadership in
matters of Christian worship emanating from Rome, and thus the formative
role of Rome and its bishop in the construction of the liturgy and liturgical
observance overall. This manifests itself in contributions to the cycle of the
liturgical year, to the structure and content of the Mass and accompanying

29 See J. MacKinnon, The Advent Project. The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the
Roman Mass Proper (Berkeley, 2000); the useful surveys in C. Vogel, Medieval Liturgy:
an Introduction to the Sources, trans. and rev. W. G. Storey and N. K. Rasmussen
(Washington D.C., 1986); and Y. Hen, The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish
Gaul to the Death of Charles the Bald (877) (London, 2001). See also J. Dyer, ‘Roman
Processions of the Major Litany (litaniae maiores) from the Sixth to the Twelfth
Century’, in Roma felix – Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. C. Neuman
de Vegvar and É. Ó Carragáin (Aldershot, 2007), 113–38; and P. Jeffery, ‘The Early
Liturgy of Saint Peter’s and the Roman Liturgical Year’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome,
pp. 157–76.
30 I have explored the question of Roman identity in relation to the liturgical
evidence more fully elsewhere. See R. McKitterick, ‘Romanness and Rome in
the Early Middle Ages’, in Transformations of Romanness in the Early Middle Ages:
Regions and Identities, ed. W. Pohl, C. Gantner, C. Grifoni and M. Pollheimer (Berlin,
forthcoming). Consequently there is some overlap between that chapter and this
one and I have drawn on some sections of it in what follows.

29
 Rosamond McKitterick

prayers and readings, and specifications about the performance of the ritual
documented in the ordines.
Some of the innovations noted in the Liber pontificalis, furthermore,
concern the organization of the liturgy and clergy in Rome. Others have
more general implications for liturgical observance in Britain, Frankish Gaul,
Spain, Italy, Dalmatia and the German regions where papal authority was
in the process of becoming established. A hint, too, of the understanding of
the essentially commemorative function of the liturgy in relation to Christ’s
life and passion underlying all the texts and the creative purpose of their
composition and assembly is the reference to the historical re-enactment of
liturgical performance in the Life of Innocent I (401–17), who decreed a fast
on Saturdays, since ‘Hic constituit sabbatum ieiunium celebrari, quia sabbato
Dominus in sepulchro positus est et discipuli ieiunaverunt’ (‘It was during
a Saturday that the Lord had lain in the tomb and the disciples fasted’).31
Similarly Pope Silvester I (314–35) is said to have required the sacrifice on
the altar to be on ‘non in siricum neque in pannum tinctum, nisi tantum
in lineum terrenum procreatum, sicut corpus domini nostri Iesu Christi in
sindonem lineam mundam sepultus est’ (‘naturally produced linen [not silk
or dyed cloth] just as the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was buried in a fine
linen shroud’).32
Examples of the construction of a history of the basic liturgy are the crediting
to Pope Telesphorus (c. 125–c. 136) with the introduction of the Lenten
period of fasting before Easter, the celebration of a night Mass on the Lord’s
birthday and the singing of the Gloria before the offering of the Eucharist in
the Mass.33 Pope Victor I (189–98) was said to be emulating Pope Eleutherius
(c. 174–89) in saying Easter should be on a Sunday.34 Pope Miltiades (311–
14) forbade fasting on Thursdays and Sundays, ‘quia eos dies pagani quasi
sacrum ieiunium celebrabant’ (‘for those were days the pagans observed as
a holy fast’).35 Pope Damasus I (366–84) decreed that ‘psalmos die noctuque
canarentur per omnes ecclesias; qui hoc precepit presbiteris vel episcopis
aut monasteriis’ (‘in all the churches the psalms should be sung by day and
night, a requirement he placed on priests, bishops and monasteries’).36 Pope
Celestine I (422–32) is described as issuing a decree ‘ut psalmi David CL ante
sacrificium psalli antiphanatim ex omnibus, quod ante non fiebat, nisi tantum
epistula beati Pauli recitabatur et sanctum evangelium’ (‘before the sacrifice

31 Life 42, LP, I, 222; R. Davis, trans., The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). The Ancient
Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, 3rd edn (Liverpool, 2010),
p. 32.
32 Life 34, c. 7, LP, I, 171; Book of Pontiffs, p. 15.
33 Life 9, LP, I, 129.
34 Life 15, LP, I, 137.
35 Life 33, LP, I, 168.
36 Life 39, LP, I, 213; Book of Pontiffs, p. 29.

30
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

the 150 Psalms of David should be performed antiphonally by everyone,

that this used not to be done, but only St Paul’s Epistle and the holy Gospel
were recited’).37 Leo I (440–61) introduced the prayer ‘sacrum sacrificium’
in the performance of the Mass; Pope Gelasius I (492–96) is credited with
providing ‘sacramentorum prefationes et orationes’ (‘prefaces and prayers
for the sacraments’); and Pope Gregory I (590–604) added the prayer ‘diesque
nostros in tua pace dispone, et cetera’ (‘and dispose our days in thy peace
etc.’) to the recital of the canon.38 Pope Simplicius (468–83) is praised for his
provision for the liturgical observance in particular Roman churches, for ‘hic
constituit ad sanctum Petrum apostolum et ad sanctum Paulum apostolum
et ad sanctum Laurentium martyrem ebdomadas ut prebyteri manerent,
propter pentitentes et baptismum: regio III ad sanctum Laurentium, regio
prima ad sanctum Paulum, regio VI vel septima ad sanctum Petrum’ (‘he
fixed the weekly turns at St Peter’s, St Paul’s and St Lawrence’s so that
priests should remain there for penitents and for baptism – from region
three at St Lawrence’s, region one at St Paul’s, regions four through seven at
St Peter’s).39 According to the Liber pontificalis’s authors John III (561–74) took
this further by insisting that ‘oblationem et amula vel luminaria in easdem
cymiteria per omnes dominicas de Lateranis ministraretur’ (‘every Sunday at
the martyr’s cemeteries the offering, the vessels, and the lighting should be
serviced from the Lateran’).40 Symmachus (498–514) decreed the singing of
the Gloria every Sunday and martyr’s feast day.41 The Feast of SS Peter and
Paul on 29 June is attributed to Pope Cornelius (251–53),42 and the specific
provision for the liturgical commemoration of St Peter and his shrine in
St Peter’s basilica was augmented by Pope Gregory I.43 Devotion to the Cross
was enhanced in the aftermath of Sergius I’s (687–701) finding of a fragment
of the Cross in St Peter’s basilica.44 Pope Sergius also introduced the singing
of the Agnus Dei into the Mass.45 Leo IV (847–55) added to the growing

37 Life 45, LP, I, 230; Book of Pontiffs, p. 33. See P. Jeffery, ‘The Introduction of Psalmody
into the Roman Mass by Pope Celestine I (422–432): Reinterpreting a Passage from
the Liber Pontificalis’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 26 (1984) 147–65.
38 Lives 47, 51, 66, c. 3, LP, I, 239, 255, 312; Book of Pontiffs, pp. 37, 42, 60.
39 Life 49, LP, I, 249; Book of Pontiffs, p. 40.
40 Life 63, c. 1, LP, I, 305; Book of Pontiffs, p. 58.
41 Life 53, LP, I, 263.
42 Life 22, LP, 150; and R. McKitterick, ‘The Representation of Old Saint Peter’s
Basilica’.
43 Life 66, LP, I, 312; and Jeffery, ‘The Early Liturgy of Saint Peter’s’.
44 Life 86, c. 10, LP, I, 374: ‘die Exaltationis sancte crucis in basilica Salvatoris que
appellatur Constantiniana osculatur ac adoratur’; Book of Pontiffs, p. 83. See
É. Ó Carragáin, ‘Interactions between Liturgy and Politics in Old Saint Peter’s,
670–741. John the Archanctor, Sergius I and Gregory III’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome,
pp. 177–89 (pp. 185–7).
45 Life 86, c. 1, LP, I, 376; and J. F. Romano, Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome
(Farnham, 2014), pp. 71–3.

31
 Rosamond McKitterick

number of Marian commemorations in Rome by introducing the Octave day

of the Assumption, ‘que minime Roma antea’ (‘never before kept at Rome’).46
The founding, endowment or embellishment of new oratories and churches
in Rome is often noted in association with liturgical observance, sometimes
explicitly to emulate the liturgical observance of St Peter’s basilica. Gregory
III (731–41), for example, established a monastic community at S. Crisogono
so that they would perform ‘Deo laudes in eundem titulum, diurnis atque
nocturnis temporibus ordinatum, secundum instar officiorum ecclesie beati
Petri apostoli’ (‘God’s holy praises, as arranged for daytime and nighttime,
just like the offices of St Peter’s).47 The development of the institutional
structure and personnel of the Roman church is a further element of the Liber
pontificalis, by the simple device of recording for each pope how many bishops,
priests and deacons were ordained during their reigns, on what became in
due course, the Ember days – three days, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday –
after each Feast of St Lucy (13 December), Ash Wednesday, Pentecost and
Holy Cross Day (14 September) in the liturgical year.48 Similarly the Liber
pontificalis documents the organization of the church within the city of Rome
as well as more generally, such as the establishment of the tituli and the seven
deacons of Rome attributed to Pope Evaristus (c. 100–c. 109), the organization
of the seven regions with notaries by Pope Clement I (c. 91–c. 101) and the
definition of the grades of the clerical hierarchy credited to Pope Gaius (283–
96).49 The process for the election of the pope is recorded from St Peter’s
designation of his successors Linus (c. 66–c. 78) and Anacletus (c. 79–c. 91)
onwards, and the obligation imposed on the bishop of Ostia to consecrate the
bishop of Rome.50
More general points are also made by the authors by means of the
liturgy. Sergius I’s addition of the Agnus Dei and litanies for the feast days of
Mary – the Annunciation, Dormition and Nativity – serve to enhance papal
and Roman leadership, and round off the narrative of Sergius’s firm stance
against doctrinal interference from Byzantium and the sequence of papal
endowments within Rome.51 The liturgical renewals of ‘ancient ritual for the
various grades of the clergy’ by Stephen III (768–72),52 and the innovations

46 Life 105, c. 26, LP, II, 112.

47 Life 92, c. 9, LP, I, 418; R. Davis, trans., The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, 2nd edn
(Liverpool, 2007), p. 24.
48 For details see McKitterick, ‘Romanness and Rome’.
49 Lives 6, 4, 29, LP, I, 126, 123, 164.
50 Life 35, LP, I, 202, though the bishops of Porto and Albano joined the bishop of
Ostia as the three bishops customarily designated as the consecrators of the new
pope.
51 Life 86, c. 14, LP, I, 376.
52 Life 96, c. 27, LP, I, 478: ‘Erat enim hisdem prefatus beatissimus presul ecclesie
traditionis observator; unde et pristinum ecclesie in diversis clericatus honoribus
renovavit ritum. Hic statuit ut omni dominico dei a septem episcopis cardinalibus

32
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

with respect to the establishment of litanies before Ascension Day by Leo III
(795–816),53 not only assist in the creation of the image of the pope at the heart,
and as the fount, of the religious organization and ritual of the church, but
also reinforce, by the placement of these references in the biographies of each
pope, his political legitimacy. Thus in Stephen’s case, his establishment of the
xenodochia is part of the statement of his character at the beginning of his Life,
and the claim to have restored ancient ritual with the provision for the seven
‘cardinal bishops’ to celebrate Mass and recite the Gloria in the Lateran comes
after the long episodes concerning Pope Constantine II and the attempts
to force the pope to consecrate the scriniarius Michael as archbishop of
Ravenna.54 In Leo III’s case, the references to his endowments and liturgical
practice are placed after his trial and reinstatement by Charlemagne’s missi.
References to the liturgy in the Liber pontificalis, therefore, are significant
in both their quantity and their function, and references to music no less
so. Most are simply part of the liturgy, such as processions accompanied by
‘cum ymnis et canticis spiritalibus’ (‘with hymns and spiritual chants’), and
the chanting of the psalms. Paul I established a monastery for monks to
chant in the Greek manner.55 But the wish of Pope Hadrian I (772–95) that
the community of SS Bartholomew and Andrew should celebrate the Office
in two choirs was also designed for his own commemoration: ‘quatenus
piis laudibus naviterque psallente, hymniferis choris Deique letis resonent
cantibus, reddentes Domino glorificos melos pro sepius memorati venerandi
pontificis nomen, scilicet in secula memorialem eius pangentes carminibus’
(‘in this way they should diligently chant their psalms of pious praise,
re-echoing with chants in hymn-singing and God-pleasing choirs, and render
glorious melody to the Lord in this venerable pontiff’s name, composing
his memorial in song forever’).56 The scattering of references to singing as
well as to liturgical prayer and procession, moreover, all suggest that liturgy
and its performance were presented as a distinctive mark of papal virtue, at
least from the late seventh century onwards. Every day, for example, Stephen
V (885–91) is said to have celebrated the ceremonies of the Mass: ‘Nocte et
die orationi insistebat, et numquam psalmodiis cessabat nisi cum utilitatem
populi ad se reclamantis perficere cupiebat, ut oppressos sublevaret et
afflictis subveniret’ (‘night and day he devoted himself to prayer and he

ebdomadariis, qui in ecclesia Salvatoris observant, missarum solemnia super altare

beati Petri celebraretur et “Gloria in excelsis Deo” ediceretur.’; Eighth-Century Popes,
p. 102.
53 Life 98, c. 43, LP, II, 12.
54 R. McKitterick, ‘The damnatio memoriae of Pope Constantine II (747–768)’, in Italy
and Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed.
Ross Balzaretti, Julia Barrow and Patricia Skinner, Past and Present Supplementary
Series (Oxford, 2016).
55 Life 95, c. 5, LP, I, 465.
56 Life 97, c. 68, LP, I, 506; Eighth-Century Popes, p. 157.

33
 Rosamond McKitterick

never ceased the chanting of the psalms except when he wanted to fulfil the
need of the people that called to him in order to raise up the crushed and
help the afflicted’).57 A few popes – Leo II (682–3), Benedict II (684–5), Sergius
I, possibly Gregory III, Leo III, Paschal I (687) and Sergius II (844–7) – are
distinguished for their skill as singers,58 but the scola cantorum is mentioned
only in the Lives of Sergius II and Stephen V.59
So far I have suggested that the Liber pontificalis maintains the theme of
liturgical commemoration, innovation and organization as a major aspect
of the pope’s role. This in itself serves to reinforce both the continuities and
contrasts in the early medieval conception of the papal successors to the
imperial rulers of Rome. The pope’s public display takes the form, at least
within the narrative of the Liber pontificalis, primarily of religious observance
and liturgical commemoration, not least the performance and processions of
the stational liturgy.60 But the punctuation of the text with particular forms
of liturgical celebration also demonstrates the pope’s responsibility for his
people as an intercessor with God and the saints, and thus the liturgy’s
essential role as the formal and ritualized mode of communicating with
God as well as with the Christian populace. In the violent and politically
charged context in which Pelagius I (556–61) became pope after the death
of Vigilius (537–55) his predecessor, recorded in the mid seventh century
reconstruction of the previous century’s events in the second section of
the Liber pontificalis,61 Pelagius and the Byzantine military general Narses
made an attempt to appease the populace by liturgical means. No bishops
had been willing to ordain Pelagius. His consecration was in the end
performed by the bishops John of Perugia and Bonus of Ferentinum along
with Andrew, ‘a priest from Ostia’.62 The litany and procession ‘cum ymnis
et canticis spiritalibus’ (‘with hymns and spiritual chants’) to St Peter’s
was followed by ‘Pelagius tenens evangelia et crucem Domini super caput
suum’ (‘Pelagius holding the Gospels and the Lord’s cross above his head’);
he then ‘in ambone ascendit, et sic satisfecit cuncto populo et plebi quia
nullum malum peregisset contra Vigilium’ (‘went up to the ambo; in this
way he satisfied the entire populace and plebs that he had caused Vigilius no

57 Life 112, c. 8, LP, II, 192; R. Davis, trans., The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes
(Liverpool, 1995), p. 301.
58 Lives 82, c. 1; 83, c. 1; 86, c. 1; 92, c. 1; 98, c. 1; 100, c. 1; 104, c. 2, LP, I, 359, 363, 371,
415; II, 1, 52, 86.
59 Lives 104, c. 2; 112, c. 17, LP, II, 86, 195. See C. Page, The Christian West and Its Singers.
The First Thousand Years (New Haven, 2010), pp. 243–60.
60 J. F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship; the Origins, Development, and
Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987).
61 Lives 62–72, LP, I, 303–24. R. McKitterick, ‘The Papacy and Byzantium in the
Seventh- and Early Eighth-Century Sections of the Liber pontificalis’, Papers of the
British School at Rome 84 (2016), 1–33.
62 Life 62, c. 1, LP, I, 303; Book of Pontiffs, p. 57.

34
 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

harm’).63 In the late seventh century the celebration of Mass in Santa Maria
Maggiore was made the dramatic scene of the formal rejection of a doctrinally
unacceptable ‘synodic’ letter from the patriarch of Constantinople. The people
and clergy of Rome prevented Pope Eugenius I (654–57) from finishing the
celebration of Mass until he had promised to reject it.64 Even more overtly
political was the ambivalent description, given the context, of the leave
given to the papal legate Bishop John of Porto, in attendance at the council
in Trullo (680), to celebrate Mass in Latin, before the emperor and patriarchs,
on the Octave of Easter in the church of Santa Sophia in Constantinople.
Praise, also in Latin, ‘victoriis piisimorum imperatorum’ (‘for the victories of
the pious emperors’) (possibly a reference to the laudes) was offered by the
congregation.65
Liturgical invocation against enemies, both natural and human, is also
deployed in the Liber pontificalis. Daily litanies were inaugurated in the
aftermath of the death of Pope Adeodatus II (672–76) ‘to placate the Lord’ and
avert yet more dreadful weather that was destroying crops and preventing
the threshing and storing of grain.66 For the province’s safety and that of all
Christians, Pope Stephen II (752–57) decreed a litany should take place every
Saturday.67 Perhaps the most famous instance of a protective liturgy so that
‘this city might stand firm and strong forever’, however, is the blessing of
the newly constructed Leonine city and walls encircling St Peter’s basilica
ordered by Pope Leo IV:

ut omnes cum eo episcopi pariter ac sacerdotes, immo levite et universi

ordines clericorum sancte catholice et apostolice Romane ecclesie, post
letanias et psalterium decantatum, cum hymnis et canticis spiritalibus
per totum murorum ambitum, nudis pedibus, cinerem portantes in capite,
circuirent; et inter cetera episcopis cardinalibus aquam fieri benedictam
precepit, ut inter orationum officia, aquam ipsam transeuntes per murum
sanctificationes gratia iactare omnimodis studuisset. Qui ab eo iussum
fuerat humiliter peregerunt. Ipse autem venerabilis pontifex ore suo
tres super eundem murum orationes multis cum lacrimis ac suspiriis
dedit, rogans ac petens ut sepedicta civitas et Christi conservaretur in
evum auxilio et sanctorum omnium angelorumque presidio ab universo
inimicorum secura et inperterrita perduraret incursu.68

63 Life 62, c. 2, LP, I, 303; Book of Pontiffs, p. 58. On the consecration of a pope compare
note 50 above.
64 Life 77, c. 2, LP, I, 341.
65 Life 81, c. 15, LP, I, 354: ‘et omnes unanimiter in laudes et victoriis piisimorum
imperatorum idem latine vocibus adclamarent.
66 Life 79, c. 5, LP, I, 467.
67 Life 94, c. 13, LP, I, 443.
68 Life 105, cc. 72–3, LP, II, 124–5; Ninth-Century Popes, pp. 142–3.

35
 Rosamond McKitterick

[All the bishops, sacerdotes, deacons and all the orders of the clergy of the
holy catholic and apostolic Roman church, should, after litanies and the
chanting of the psalter, with hymns and spiritual chants, go with him round
the whole circuit of the walls, barefoot and with ash on their heads. Among
other things he enjoined that the cardinal bishops should bless water, so
that during the offices of the prayers they might be zealous in casting that
water in every direction to hallow the wall as they crossed it. They humbly
fulfilled what he had ordered. The venerable pontiff himself pronounced
three prayers over this wall, with much weeping and sighing, asking and
beseeching that this city might both be preserved for ever by Christ’s aid
and endure safe and unshaken from every incursion of its enemies by the
guardianship of all the saints and angels.]

The Liber pontificalis then included three newly composed papal prayers in
the narrative, one to be said over the gate which looks towards St Peregrinus
(one of the Frankish hotels), one over the postern which overlooks the Castle
s. Angelo, and the third over the postern which looks towards the Schola
saxonum. Initially presented as a reaction to a Saracen attack, the narrative
uses the liturgy and the texts of the prayers to create a dramatic staging of
the ritual and the prayers to emphasize the apostolic succession from St Peter
and the pope’s duty to preserve the holy apostolic and catholic church from
enemies, as well as to proclaim the work Leo IV had carried out for the sake
of God’s protection of Rome and St Peter’s.
This threefold blessing is then further reinforced by the singing of a Mass
for the safety of the people (so-called from the opening words of the introit
‘Salus populi’) in the basilica. The fact that it was the day before the vigils
of the apostles Peter and Paul was of further significance: ‘And throughout
the whole city of Rome there were celebrations of unbounded gladness and
unmeasured rejoicing.’ The author then called on all readers – for Leo IV was
apparently still living when this section of the biography was written – to
pray for the pope himself.69 This liturgical exhortation is the climax of this
biography, for the next section of the Life is devoted to an itemization of Leo
IV’s embellishments of, and gifts to, various churches in Rome, interspersed
with a brief account of the Synod of 853 and the approval of forty-two canons
pertaining to ‘the salvation and gain of all Christian men’.70 The narrative was
clearly designed to reach an immediate audience and is a significant instance
of the expectations of both writers and readers as far as the effectiveness of
liturgical prayer is concerned.71
Even the popes’ meetings with secular rulers are reinforced liturgically.
Perhaps the most famous of these are, first of all, the account in the Life of
Hadrian I, which notes how Charlemagne was welcomed with shouts of

69 Life 105, c. 74, LP, II, 125.

70 Life 105, cc. 90–1, LP, II, 129.
71 See Davis, Ninth-Century Popes, p. 150, notes 131–3.

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 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

acclamation and praise ‘laudem Deo et eius excellentie decantates universus

clerus et cuncti religiosi Dei famuli, extensa voce adclamantes: “benedictus
qui venit in nomine Domini”’ (‘and the whole clergy and all God’s servants
the monks chanted praise to God and his Excellency, loudly acclaiming:
“Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord”’).72 Similarly, the Life of
Sergius II describes when Louis II was only a mile or so away from the city,
‘universas militie scolas una cum patronis direxit, dignas nobilissimo regi
laudes omnes canentes, aliosque militie edoctissmos Grecos, imperatorias
laudes decantantes, cum dulcisionis earundem laudium vocibus, ipsum
regem glorifice susceperunt’ (‘he sent all the schole of the militia, along with
the patroni, all chanting praises worthy of the noble king, and with other most
learned Greeks of the militia chanting the imperial praises with these sweet
sounds of praise they gloriously welcomed the king’).73
In conclusion, the extraordinary creativity in modes of representing the
past in eighth- and ninth-century Francia and Italy has long been recognized,
but the role of liturgy within historical narrative and understanding of the
past in a way that goes beyond the record of incidents or even the use of
liturgical or biblical language needs to be more fully acknowledged. At a
basic level, Roman historians emerge in the Liber pontificalis as no less creative
than their Frankish confrères north of the Alps, and it is no surprise to find
them influencing each other, particularly from the second half of the eighth
century onwards. Some Frankish historians, for their part, undoubtedly
registered and demonstrated their absorption of the presentation of the
liturgy and music in the Liber pontificalis and appreciation of its potential.
Indeed, they augmented it, as the telling Frankish interpolations into the full
texts and also preserved in various Frankish epitomes clearly reflect.74 The
association between liturgy and virtue, for example, appears to have been
accepted by some at least among its readers and copyists. The singing of the
Sanctus described as an innovation made by Pope Sixtus I (c. 116–c. 125) is a
Frankish interpolation made in the late eighth century. Sixtus had allegedly
decreed that within the performance of the Mass with the priest beginning it,
the people should sing the hymn Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabaoth.75
This dynamic connection between liturgy and history was an important
legacy for writers of history in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe. I offer
two instructive examples here – one from the beginning and one from the end
of the Liber pontificalis in an eleventh-century epitome of the Liber pontificalis

72 Life 97, c. 38, LP, I, 497; Eighth-Century Popes, p. 139.

73 Life 104, c. 9, LP, II, 88; Ninth-Century Popes, p. 78.
74 C. Gantner, ‘The Lombard Recension’; and R. McKitterick, ‘Perceptions of Rome
and the Papacy in Late Merovingian Francia: the Cononian Recension of the Liber
pontificalis’, in East and West in the Early Middle Ages: the Merovingian Kingdoms in
Mediterranean Perspective, ed. S. Esders and Y. Hen (Berlin, forthcoming).
75 Life 8, LP, I, 128; Book of the Pontiffs, p. 35.

37
 Rosamond McKitterick

attributed to Adémar of Chabannes of the Liber pontificalis in Paris BnF

lat. 2400. There a claim is added to the Life of Peter that Peter had been the
‘primus missam constituit celebrare in commemoratione passionis domini in
pane et vino aqua mixto cum sola oratione dominica et sanctificatione sancte
crucis quam ceteri sancti apostoli imitati sunt in hac celebratione’ (‘first to
lay down that the Mass be celebrated to commemorate the Lord’s passion in
bread and wine mixed with water, using only the Lord’s prayer and hallowing
with the holy cross; this the other holy apostles copied when celebrating
it’).76 The epitome of the Liber pontificalis (fols. 138–51) is part of a composite
manuscript.77 The whole codex exemplifies the integration of liturgical
practice and history. Besides the special redaction of the Liber pontificalis, it
includes a version of Amalarius of Metz’s Liber de divinis officiis, canons from
a number of different canon law collections, and texts on heresies, bishops,
the burial places of the patriarchs, apostles and fathers, a Carolingian version
of Bede’s De sex etatibus mundi and extracts from the Annales Engolismenses.78
The Liber pontificalis epitome also includes a long account of the liturgical
work of Hadrian II (867–72), extant only in this manuscript. The papal official
responsible for the original life had provided a full account of the singing
and chanting that had taken place on the Friday of Septuagesima and how
Hadrian had invited the Greek monks and others attending the (possibly
special) service to take refreshment. He not only served his guests with his
own hands but made a break with tradition by reclining with them and ‘cum
illis Deum in hymnis et canticis spiritalibus ibi per totum spatietem iugiter
concrepantium laudans’ (‘joining with them in praising God with hymns and
spiritual chants [going through] the whole vast company of them there as
they kept up a constant chorus [of praise]’).79 In the original life this dramatic
display of humility is set within the context of Hadrian’s succession to Pope
Nicholas and the opposition to Photius of Constantinople.
It appears to have been Adémar himself who added a detailed account of
the Gregorian antiphoner. The full text is provided in Duchesne’s edition and
Davis translated it as follows.80

76 Life 1, Liber pontificalis, ed. T. Mommsen, p. 4.

77 LP, I, clxxxii–clxxxiv.
78 R. Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History. Adémar of Chabannes, 989–1034

(Cambridge MA, 1995), pp. 362–5.

79 Life 108, cc. 16, 19, LP, II, 176.
80 LP, I, clxxxii. This story was also included by Adémar of Chabannes in his Chronicle;

see Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain (Turnhout, 1999), p. 89; and
Adémar de Chabannes, Chronique, trans. Y. Chauvin and G. Pon (Turnhout, 2003),
pp. 147–9. See also A. Haug, ‘Noch einmal: Roms Gesang und die Gemeinschaften
im Norden’, in Nationes, Gentes und die Musik im Mittelalter, ed. F. Hentschel and
M. Winkelmüller (Berlin, 2014), pp. 103–46. Adémar’s contributions to the history
of music are discussed further in Chapter 5 in this volume.

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 Liturgy and History in the Early Middle Ages

Like the earlier Hadrian he confirmed the Gregorian antiphoner in many

places and he laid down that a second prologue in hexameter verses was
to be sung at the high Mass on the first day of our Lord’s Advent; this
begins like the proemium of the earlier Hadrian, which he had composed
very carefully for all Masses on the same first Sunday of the Lord’s Advent,
but it consists of more verses. He laid down that in the monasteries at high
Mass on special solemnities not only were those interpolated hymns that
they call ‘praises’ be sung in the angelic hymn ‘Glory be to God on high’,
but also in the psalms of David that they call ‘introits’ there were to be
sung the inserted chants which Romans call ‘festival praises’ and Franks
call ‘tropes’, which means figured adornments in praise of God. He also
handed down the melodies for singing before the Gospel, those which
they call ‘sequences’ because the Gospel ‘follows’ them. And because these
festival chants had been established and composed by lord pope Gregory
I and afterwards by Hadrian together with Abbot Alcuin the favourite of
Emperor Charles the Great (and this Caesar Charles took great delight
in them), but they were now being omitted by the neglect of the singers,
they were so confirmed to our Lord Jesus Christ’s praise and glory by this
bounteous prelate of whom we speak, that through the care of scholars the
troper also should thenceforth be kept in use alongside the antiphoner for
honourable chants on solemn days at high Mass. He laid down that Roman
clerics should instruct our brethren the poor of our Lord Jesus Christ that
for three days before Holy Easter Sunday, that is, on the day of the Lord’s
Supper, the day of Preparation, and the day of the Lord’s being in the tomb,
they should beg alms in this city of Rome in no other way than by singing
this chant loudly in the streets and in front of monasteries and churches:
‘Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Lord have pity on us, Christ the Lord became
obedient unto death’. He performed two ordinations in December and
March, eight priests, five deacons; for various places sixty bishops.81

Davis notes that these ordination statistics are recorded nowhere else,
but what they do indicate is Adémar’s own reproduction of what he felt
to be the most important themes of the Liber pontificalis. Like the Mainz/
Fulda epitomizer of the Liber pontificalis whose work is extant in Leiden
Universiteitsbibliothek Scaliger 49, Adémar also registered the importance of
the liturgical innovation that was so integral a part of the pope’s history, the
emphasis on succession and continuation of the church by the simple means
of ordination of priests to perform the ministry, and above all the intertwining
of liturgy and history in the perception of the past in the early Middle Ages.82
The authors of the Liber pontificalis clearly understood liturgy as an
essential component of the history of Rome and the popes. I have suggested
that with its particular representation of the past, the Liber pontificalis
provided a historiographical as well as an actual model for liturgy’s place in

81 Ninth-Century Popes, pp. 293–4.

82 McKitterick, ‘Rome and the Popes’.

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 Rosamond McKitterick

history. The pope’s liturgical functions were a specific means of defining and
symbolizing his leadership of the church. As I have commented elsewhere,
moreover, ‘liturgy in the Liber pontificalis increasingly served as an historical
anchor as well as an essential reminder and memory of the continuity of the
papal institutions and the Petrine succession in the Liber pontificalis, especially
in the eighth- and ninth-century sections. In this sense the pope in the Liber
pontificalis’s historical representation is at the junction of cyclical liturgical
time, which he himself orchestrates, and of linear historical time, in which he
is an active player’.83 The Liber pontificalis played a crucial role in establishing
the Christian era and liturgical celebration as both possible and accepted
features of a historical narrative.
Yet the literary deployment of descriptions of liturgical ritual and the
inclusion of liturgical prayers to chart major political positions and notable
phases in the narrative structure overall, to reinforce the actions of particular
protagonists, and to account for their success all suggest that the liturgy
was indeed one of the formative strands of early medieval historiography.
Authors wanted to make sure that their readers understood their place in
contemporary Christian history as well as within a more comprehensive past.
Drawing on a liturgy that was a central and familiar element of their own
religious devotion was a vital and evocative means of connecting past and
present.

83 McKitterick, ‘Romanness and Rome’.

40
 3
Notker Bibliothecarius

Susan Rankin

de passionibus sanctorum
Preter ea debes agones et uictorias sanctorum martyrum diligentissime
perquirere, ut eorum exemplo non tantum inlecebras mundi respuere, sed
et animam pro Christo ponere et cruciatus corporis pro nihilo ducere dei
gratia et sancti spiritus inhabitatione consuescas; primumque precipuorum
apostolorum Petri et Pauli, Andreae et Iacobi fratris Iohannis, sed et Iacobi
fratris domini … Post apostolos sequitur passio uel hystoria de sancto
Clemente. Dehinc mirabilis de sancto Alexandro, Euentio, Theodolo,
Hermete et Quirino et ceteris …1

[on the passions of the saints

In addition you should most assiduously go through the struggles and
the victories of the holy martyrs, that, by their example, you should not
only spurn the delights of the world but you should place your soul for
Christ and grow accustomed to think nothing of the troubles of your body
except for the indwelling of the grace of God and the Holy Spirit. Firstly the
chief apostles Peter and Paul and Andrew and James the brother of John
and James the brother of the Lord … After the apostles follows the passion
of St Clement and then wonders about St Alexander, Eventius, Theodolus,
Hermes and Quirinus and the rest …]

This is but the tenth part of a substantial account of literature about the
passions of the saints of the Christian Church, set out in chronological order
and with explanations of the contributions of individual writers – including
Eusebius, Jerome and Cassiodorus – to this body of texts. The letter of which
it forms a part begins with the admonition ‘miror te res ineptas appetere’ (‘I
am amazed that you are looking at unsuitable things’), continuing ‘si me
audisses, omnes auctores nostros notissimos haberes’ (‘had you listened to
me, you would have known all of our authors very well’).2

1 E. Rauner, ‘Notkers des Stammlers “Notatio de illustribus uiris”. Teil I: Kritische

Edition’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 21 (1986), 34–69 (pp. 67–8). On the Notatio see
also B. Kaczynski, ‘Reading the Church Fathers: Notker the Stammerer’s Notatio de
illustribus viris’, Journal of Medieval Latin 17 (2007), 401–12.
2 Rauner, ‘Notker des Stammlers’, p. 58. This translation from Kaczynski, ‘Reading
the Church Fathers’, p. 409.

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 Susan Rankin

The text is threaded through with commentary, often very personal

observations, with the comments on authors and works cited described
by Kaczynski as ‘specific and rich in detail’.3 The passage dealing with the
passions of saints is shaped as a historical presentation of Christianity, and
the place of individual figures within it:

Occidens etiam ipse licet sero, tandem tamen aliquando in germen erupit:
Martinum Pannoniis ortum et non solum Italiam uel Germaniam seu
Gallias sua presentia inluminantem, sed etiam omnes orientales ipsis
testibus claritate luminis superantem.4

[But in the west, though it was late, at last at some time, the seed burst forth:
Martin, born in Pannonia, and illuminating not only Italy and Germany or
Gaul by his presence, but also conquering all the easterns, according to
their testimony, by his clarity of light.]

Begun with the apostles, the passage about saints and martyrs is drawn to
a close with a series of names presented in plural form and chosen to cover
many parts of Europe – rendering the list all-inclusive:

Comgellos, …, Columbas, Columbanos, Gallos, Gregorium V. nomen

Chrisostomi Grecis auferentem, Benedictos, Honoratos, Libertinos,
Otmaros nostrum et Belgicum.5

[the Comgalls, …, Columbas, Columbanuses, Gauls, Gregory or the name

of Chrysostom brought over from the Greeks … Benedicts, Honoratuses,
Libertines, Otmars – ours and the Belgian one.]

If it were not otherwise known, this closing list would have identified the
institution where this Christian literary schedule was composed. Including
St Comgall, the Irish founder of the abbey of Bangor, from where St Gall had
set out on missionary activity, then Columbanus, Gall’s master, as well as the
older St Columba, and ending with ‘our Otmar’, first abbot of the abbey of
Sankt Gallen, the letter was self-evidently written at that abbey. Composed
by Notker Balbulus, it was addressed to his pupil Salomo at some time in
the 880s.6 The passage on passions of the saints invites us to reflect not only
on Notker’s own awareness of and attitude toward such literature, but also
on the wider campaign of study and compilation of the deeds of the saints at
Sankt Gallen.

3 Kaczynski, ‘Reading the Church Fathers’, p. 410.

4 Rauner, ‘Notker des Stammlers’, pp. 68–9.
5 Ibid.
6 The earliest manuscript source of the letter is Vienna, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, MS lat. 1609, copied at Freising in the early tenth century,
probably directly from a St Gallen exemplar: see N. Daniel, Handschriften des
zehnten Jahrhunderts aus der Freisinger Dombibliothek (Munich, 1973), pp. 70–2.

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 Notker Bibliothecarius

Notker Balbulus of Sankt Gallen

We are used to thinking of Notker as a composer of sequences, extremely

artful in their craft;7 as the writer of an account of the Deeds of Charlemagne;8
and as the author of a life of St Gall in verse.9 There are many other bits and
pieces composed by him: hymns to Stephen, copied by Notker himself in
SG 242 (pp. 3–9);10 some tropes in verse;11 a collection of letter and charter
models;12 and several charters.13 Edited mainly in the Monumenta Germaniae
Historica – that is, apart from Wolfram von den Steinen’s Notker der Dichter –
these texts have led us to imagine that Notker is largely mastered: we know
him, because we have read his words. But there are two serious gaps in our
knowledge of Notker as a learned and creative figure. For the sequences,
astonishingly, no modern edition with music has yet been published. Happily
this lacuna will shortly disappear.14

7 The texts (but not the melodies) are edited in W. den Steinen, Notker der Dichter,
2 vols. (Bern, 1948).
8 Notker der Stammler. Taten Kaiser Karls des Grossen, ed. H. F. Haefele, MGH Scriptores
n.s. 12 (Berlin, 1959); Two Lives of Charlemagne: Einhard and Notker the Stammerer,
trans. D. Ganz (London, 2008).
9 W. Berschin, ‘Notkers Metrum de vita S. Galli. Einleitung und Edition’, in
Florilegium Sangallense: Festschrift für Johannes Duft zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. O. P.
Clavadetscher et al. (Sigmaringen, 1980), pp. 71–121.
10 Poetae Latini aevi carolini, ed. P. Winterfeld, MGH Antiquitates 4.1 (Berlin, 1864),
pp. 337–9. Manuscripts in the Stiftsbibliothek at Sankt Gallen will be cited as SG
followed by a number; all may be seen in digital facsimile on the e-codices website,
unless otherwise noted.
11 These are preserved on pages set before the Notatio in Vienna 1609 (fols. 4r–8v):
see S. Rankin, ‘Notker und Tuotilo: Schöpferische Gestalter in einer neuen Zeit’,
Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft n.s. 11 (1991), 17–42.
12 Das Formelbuch des Bischofs Salomo III von Konstanz aus dem 9. Jahrhundert, ed.
E. Dümmler (Leipzig, 1857); see also Rauner, ‘Notker des Stammlers’; A. Rio,
Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages. Frankish Formulae,
c. 500–1000 (Cambridge, 2009), 152–60; and P. Erhart, ‘Notker Balbulus, Othere und
Adalbert der Erlauchte in Oberwinterthur’, in Schaukasten Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen.
Abschiedsgabe für Stiftsbibliothekar Ernst Tremp, ed. F. Schnoor et al. (St Gallen, 2013),
pp. 104–13.
13 On the identification of charters copied by Notker himself, see Susan Rankin, ‘Ego
itaque Notker scripsi’, RB 101 (1991), 268–98, proposing four individual examples;
for a list of charters of which the text was composed by a ‘Notker’ or ‘Notger’,
with notice of two further charters copied by Notker, see Erhart, ‘Notker Balbulus’,
Appendix 2. Reproductions of the charters are now published in the series Chartae
Latinae Antiquiores: Facsimile Edition of the Latin Charters, 2nd series, Switzerland,
Sankt Gallen: see especially vols. 106–7, Switzerland IX–X, Sankt Gallen VII–VIII,
ed. P. Erhart et al. (Dietikon-Zurich, 2013–14). On the total œuvre of Notker see
W. Berschin, ‘Notker I. von St. Gallen (d. 912) überlieferungsgeschichtlich gesehen’,
in Mittellateinische Studien (Heidelberg, 2005), pp. 193–202.
14 C. Bower, Notker Balbulus Liber Ymnorum, forthcoming as HBS 121–2 (Woodbridge,
2016).

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 Susan Rankin

The other unnecessary gap in our understanding is cognizance of his

intellectual formation – what books were available to him and how he
used them – gathered from extant materials. Such information about any
creative figure is desirable, but more often than not elusive. Yet for Notker
Balbulus, awareness of the texts he knew well and cared about need not
be vague, since there is a wealth of information about it still surviving in
material form.15 Identified in a charter of 890 as ‘Notker bibliothecarius’,16
Notker also wrote of himself as ‘having accumulated much’ for the library
of St Gallen, ‘by the grace of God’.17 The traces of Notker’s activity as scribe
and as organizer of other scribes are omnipresent in the surviving books of
the abbey. As a young man, he was often set to copy texts; later – whether
or not named as librarian – he had extensive responsibility for the abbey’s
books; in this role, he can be seen renewing deteriorated materials, procuring
texts not present in the library, compiling volumes necessary for the daily life
of the community, organizing teams of scribes to copy, providing paratextual
resources to explain the contents of those volumes, and generally caring
for this enormously important resource on which his monastic community
depended.
In the context of the discussion of cantors, and of the variety of activities
undertaken by such office-holders – including, besides liturgical organization
and composition, the writing of history – the nature and spread of the
enterprises at the centre of which Notker sat is extremely interesting. It is
doubtful that he had responsibility for liturgical organization at any stage of
his life, and I have not seen evidence of his involvement with the copying
of books of chant for the liturgy;18 yet his participation in the copying
of homiliaries – and his potential contribution to their structuring and
adaptation for St Gallen – cannot be underestimated. There is no evidence
that Notker held the office of cantor, yet he was much more than a competent
musician, as becomes clear through study of the Liber ymnorum.19 He was
certainly a historian, yet writing the chronicle of his own abbey’s history was

15 The same questions are raised by Rauner, ‘Notker des Stammlers’, p. 35, who
writes: ‘The answer to this is only to be found in the St Gallen library, in its
manuscripts and medieval book catalogues’ (‘Gerade hierzu ist Antwort nur in
der St Galler Bibliothek zu finden, in ihren Handschriften und mittelalterliche
Bibliothekskatalogen’).
16 H. Wartmann, Urkundenbuch der Abtei Sanct Gallen 2: 849–920 (Zurich, 1866), no. 679
(890 VIII 1).
17 SG 14, p. 331: ‘nefas putaui si illa bibliothece˛ sancti Galli . cui dei gratia multi
accumulaui . scribere negligendo defrudauerim ·’, a notice written into the book by
Notker himself.
18 In the context of a collection of materials for the liturgy of the dead, now in SG
152 (pp. 280–336) for which he had the main responsibility, Notker copied the
incipits of responsories and their verses under the heading ‘resp[onsoriis] in
commem[oratione] fratru[m] · de iob et psalmis ·’ (p. 336).
19 See the introduction to Bower, Notker Balbulus Liber Ymnorum, vol. 1.

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not consigned to him but to his colleague, Ratpert.20 Finally, his compilation
of a martyrologium and concern with the copying of saints’ passions provide
a material evidential backdrop to his remarks in the Notatio de illustribus viris –
this was a monk for whom the drama of Christian history had a significant
place in daily life. If then we are to think about the activities of liturgical
musician, chronicler and historian as linked and undertaken by the same
person, Notker earns his place rather easily.

Notker as scribe and maker of books

Notker’s hand is identifiable on the basis of an autobiographical passage

(‘Ego Notkerus…’) written into SG 14 (p. 331), and the clear likeness of this
hand with that writing a series of charters copied by a scribe named Notker.21
The identity of the hand is confirmed by a further association, between the
note in SG 14 and another codex in the Stiftsbibliothek. That note refers to the
fact that Notker had had the book of Baruch together with a letter of Jeremiah
copied at the end of a book of the prophets. The copy can be found at the end
of SG 39 (pp. 453–67), with its title and the first two lines (p. 453, lines 1–6)
copied by the same hand. As many as thirty-one codices in which Notker
can be found writing substantial portions, or leading the work of a team of
scribes, or simply correcting text as he read it, have been identified; there may
be more.22 He can be seen copying large portions of text in the Martyrology
of Hrabanus (SG 458), including the prose and verse dedications (pp. 4–8)
and the whole of the first gathering (up to p. 18). There are several instances
where he is found copying the same text into different codices; these include,
for example, a narration (‘relatio’) for the feast of St Michael the archangel
(Memoriam beati archangeli Michaelis toto orbe venerandam),23 copied into SG 432
(pp. 464–7) and then into SG 433 (pp. 402–10). His first copy was appended

20 Ratpert St. Galler Klostergeschichten (Casus sancti Galli), ed. and trans. H. Steiner,
MGH Scriptores rerum germanicum 75 (Hannover, 2002): this covers the period
614–884. A contemporary copy of Ratpert’s text is still in the library at St Gallen
(SG 614, pp. 78–134): of this Notker copied the first three lines on p. 79, that is, the
beginning of the main text.
21 On the identification of Notker’s hand see Susan Rankin, ‘Ego itaque Notker
scripsi’, with previous bibliography. There are several charters in the Stiftsarchiv
at St Gallen with the subscription ‘Notker’, but not all were actually written by
Notker Balbulus: see Rankin, ‘Ego itaque Notker scripsi’, and for a complete list,
with some new additions, see Erhart, ‘Notker Balbulus’, Appendix 2.
22 The resources of the codices electronici sangallenses have enabled this task in a way
unimaginable before the advent of digital photography. I have not yet carried out a
comprehensive search for Notker’s work in the Stiftsbibliothek holdings. Much of
the Notker copying known to me will be mentioned in this paper, but there is more
beyond this.
23 BHL 5948–9; Notker attributes the text to Bede.

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 Susan Rankin

at the end of an homiliary to which he added a substantial supplement; at

that stage he added at the end of this long account ‘Ego Beda hanc hystoriam
tortuosissimam . ad normam ueritatis correxi ·’ (‘I, Bede, corrected this very
convoluted history to the standard of truth’) (SG 432, p. 467b, lines 16–17).
The source of this note is unknown, but Notker’s interest in passing it on
is typical of his concern with Christian history and authorship. In SG 432
that text was followed by the homily Celebritas hodierne diei admonet, written
in honour of the Blessed Virgin and attributed to Augustine (pp. 467–9).
Later, in the homiliary he largely organized and copied himself, this homily
was placed in the appropriate position in sequence between homilies for
St Lawrence (10 August) and St Bartholomew (24 August), as the first of a
series for the feast of the Assumption on 15 August (SG 433, pp. 282–7).
Notker’s concern with the preservation of texts, and understanding their
status, is well illustrated by the introductory title in SG 39 (p. 453): ‘Liber iste
qui Baruc nomine praenotatur · in librorum canone non habetur · nisi tantum
in uulgata editione · similiter epistola Hieremiae · propter notitiam autem
legentium hic scripta sunt · quia multa de Christo · novissimisque temporibus
indicant ·’ (‘This book which is entitled by the name of Baruc. It is not in the
canon of books. Unless, however, in the vulgate edition. Similarly the letter
of Jeremiah. For the notice of readers these things are written because they
proclaim many things about Christ and the last days’).
Notker’s interactions with other scribes take many forms. In the simplest
cases, he sets the style and module of script and hands over to another scribe.
In the contemporary copy of Ratpert’s Casus sancti Galli, Notker wrote out
the first three lines on the first page, and then never reappeared (SG 614,
pp. 78–134, at p. 79). In contrast, in the copy of the Martyrology of Ado (SG
454), a more supervisory presence is revealed: on the grand title page (SG 454,
p. 24) someone drew three large decorated initials (for In nomine domini,
Quo genere and Populus christianus).24 Then, in the first column,
Notker wrote the rest of the title, in rustic capitals using red ink, and then,
after Q, in black ink; following P at the top of the second column, he wrote
one line in rustic capitals, and then continued the main text in his typical
Caroline hand, up to line 10 ‘marty’, the next scribe taking over to finish this
word ‘rum’.25 (This may have been a deliberate act of disguise, in a situation
in which the scribe to whom Notker handed over was also expert, and wrote

24 A. von Euw considered these initials to be the work of Notker: see his Die St. Galler
Buchkunst vom 8. bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (St Gallen, 2008), I, 444.
This is difficult to demonstrate, other than through their proximity to the script of
Notker. The ink used to draw these initials is slightly darker than that used to write
the rustic capitals which sit alongside. The same is true of the decorated initial and
rustic capitals at the beginning of the dedicatory letter on p. 2 of the codex.
25 It should be noted that, in l. 6 of this column, the word ‘meritis’ has been corrected,
with only ‘me’ representing the first copying campaign.

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 Notker Bibliothecarius

a hand very close to Notker’s own.) This second scribe continued working
up the end of the introduction, including the hymn Aeterna Christi munera
(p. 27); then Notker wrote (in rustic capitals in red ink) the title for the next
passage (‘In nomine Domini · Incipit libellus de festiuitatibus apostolorum ·
et reliquorum qui discipuli aut uicini · successoresque ipsorum apostolorum
fuerunt ·’). And then at the top of the next page (p. 28) Notker wrote out the
rubric and the rest of lines 1–2, and his expert colleague took up the reins
again. Notker’s script appears elsewhere in the volume, above all in the
compilation of the prefatory material on pp. 2–22, the dedicatory letter and
then the Kalendar-Martyrologium.26
As head of a team of scribes, Notker also corrected passages copied by
those whose work he directed – and he was an inveterate corrector. If the
problem were substantial he could erase, or write passages into the margin,
but more usually the corrections are simply written into the main text, with
dots to signal deletion, or even crossings out. On the first three lines of SG 152,
p. 294 the first scribe wrote:
1         Non enim
2 diceret celestia . dixit autem . et ter
3 restria corpora
Notker corrected this to:
1         Non enim de car
2 ne diceret ce˛lestia . dixit autem . et ter
3 restria corpora ce˛lestia ·
And as corrector Notker can be discovered not only sorting out the passages
copied under his direction, but also texts copied long before. Such an example
is the homily Audiens a domino Petrus quia dives difficile in SG 553 (pp. 151–62),
copied in Sankt Gallen in the mid-ninth century, as an adaptation of Bede’s
homily for Benedict Biscop for the feast of St Gall.27 Notker worked his way
through this text, making constant adjustments, and then copied it out, with
all those corrections, into the homiliary now SG 433 (pp. 447–57).
Notker’s working procedures and his title of librarian (in 890 at least)
suggest the value of juxtaposition with Reginbert, librarian at Reichenau
until his death in 846, and involved in copying at least thirty-five extant
manuscripts.28 As scribes in charge of other scribes, Reginbert’s and

26 Von Euw has, quite rightly, corrected my attribution of the whole of p. 2 to Notker
(Die St. Galler Buchkunst, I, 444): Notker wrote only up to column a, line 7, ‘fuisse’.
27 Although he was active on p. 159, Notker was not responsible for the long
interjection in the lower margin of this page.
28 On Reginbert see K. Preisendanz, ‘Reginbert von der Reichenau. Aus Bibliothek
und Skriptorium des Inselklosters’, Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher n.s. (1952/53),

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 Susan Rankin

Notker’s engagement with the processes and tasks of copying appear very
similar, and the older librarian may well have been a direct model for the
younger. Reginbert can be found copying long stretches of text, as in BLB
Aug. perg. 18, where he was the main scribe for a collection of texts, including
commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer and on creeds; on pages filled by other
scribes (some writing Caroline rather than Alemannic scripts), Reginbert’s
very characteristic rustic capitals may often be seen in the headings or other
interjections into the text. At the other end of the spectrum, his work may
appear only in titular material, as in BLB Aug. perg. 144, where he wrote in
red, and in rustic capitals on fols. 2v, 13v, 14r and 16r, and nowhere else in the
book. The point of handover from Reginbert to another scribe can be more
visually evident than in Notker’s work, that is, when the other scribe writes
a Caroline minuscule, in contrast to Reginbert’s own stylish Alemannic
minuscule.29 But in many cases, as Maag has demonstrated for the so-called
Wolfcoz-Evangelistar in Sankt Gallen, the handover from Reginbert to another
scribe writing Alemannic minuscule can be hard to spot, unless the detail of
the ductus of individual letters is carefully traced. Where his intervention is
easily as obvious as Notker’s is in the correction of errors. Within a heading
written in red capitals in BLB 94 (fol. 39r) he supplied words and endings
missing from the first scribe’s work (shown here in italics). On this occasion
Reginbert’s intrusion is rendered more obvious through his use of brown ink:

finit liber eusebi i hieronimi p r i m u s

incip i u n t c o n t r a i o v i n i a n u m · c a p i t u l at i o n e s de libro · i i · do ·

Reginbert’s hand reappears in syllables, words and phrases between lines

and in the margins on many pages of this codex.
Of course, the geographical closeness of the two abbeys and the fact of
considerable exchange between them means that Notker – working one
generation after Reginbert’s death in 846 – may have had a teacher who had
himself learnt from the model of Reginbert. Whether or not Notker could
recognize the difference between the hands of Reginbert and Wolfcoz – one
working in Reichenau, the other in Sankt Gallen, in the first half of the ninth
century, and both writing Alemmanic minuscule – he will have had these

1–49. The most comprehensive list of material copied by Reginbert is now N.

Maag, Alemannische Minuskel (744–846 n. Chr.), Quellen und Untersuchungen zur
lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 18 (Stuttgart, 2014), pp. 203–5; see also
M. Tischler, ‘Reginbert-Handschriften, mit einem Neufund in Kloster Einsiedeln’,
Scriptorium 50 (1996), 175–83, and pl. 12. On the famous ex-libris added by
Reginbert see W. Berschin, ‘Vier karolingische Exlibris’, in Mittellateinische Studien,
pp. 169–78; and F. Heinzer, ‘Ego Reginbertus scriptor – Reichenauer Büchersorge als
Spiegel karolingischer Reformprogrammatik’, in Klosterreform und mittelalterliche
Buchkultur im deutschen Südwesten (Leiden, 2008), pp. 17–31.
29 As, for example, in BLB Aug. perg. 144, fol. 5r, where Reginbert wrote out the first
fourteen lines, followed after this by another scribe who wrote Caroline minuscule.

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heavy and clear hands as constant visual models. In his explanation written
into SG 14 – a collection of Old Testament books – he referred directly to
having read the extract he would copy into the codex in a very old book at
Reichenau (‘in quodam antiquissimo augiensium libro’).30 Large portions
of this codex were copied by Wolfcoz,31 including the passage after which
Notker added a note, an excerpt from Augustine’s De civitate Dei and the
riddle from the apocryphal book Esdras III. The work of these two important
scribes was before Notker’s eyes, their handling of texts part of his everyday
experience.
The juxtaposition of Reginbert and Notker throws into relief the differing
achievements of the two and calls attention to specific interests followed up
by Notker. Among books copied by Reginbert or organized by him we find
patristica, contemporary biblical commentaries, canon law and history, and
even a book of Office liturgy including chants.32 Also related to daily worship
are several volumes of saints’ lives.33 Our knowledge of Reginbert’s range as
a scribe can be extended beyond extant books, since he made a list of what he
had copied (or had organized to have copied). It includes an ‘antiphonarius
gradualis’ with ‘antiphone de litaniis vel de quacunque tribulatione’; in
other words, a gradual with an appendix of processional chants.34 Then
there is a ‘libello continetur cantus gradualis et nocturnalis’ and collections
of hymns for the whole year (‘et hymni festis diebus per circulum anni’).35
The span of Reginbert’s commissions as librarian and scribe is vast, including
much liturgica, but it also includes the Reichenau Confraternity book and
inscriptions on the famous St Gallen plan. I think that means that, if you
needed something copied at Reichenau and wanted the best scribe, you got
Reginbert.
Those ways in which Notker’s copying activity differs from Reginbert’s
are informative. What I have found copied or organized by him covers a
wide sweep of monastic reading, including Augustine, Isidore and accounts
of church councils and monastic rules, but the dominating theme is liturgica –
there are no less than seven collections of homilies, as well as homilies copied
into other books, three martyrologies (not including the one he himself
composed) and a collection of saints’ lives, with which he was involved.
While we do not yet know just how much can be attributed to Notker, we

30 On this see p. 45 above.

31 Maag, Alemannische Minuskel, pp. 107–9.
32 Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Kupferstichkabinett, Kapsel 536/SD
2815, 2816 (two folios).
33 BLB 32 (passions of saints), 136 (fols. 21–46, several saints’ lives) and 202
(fols. 87–152, passions and lives of saints); WLB Cod. Theol. et phil. 2o 95 (saints’
lives).
34 P. Lehmann, Mitterlalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschland und der Schweiz I: Die
Bistümer Konstanz und Chur (Munich, 1918), p. 260.
35 Ibid., p. 261.

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 Susan Rankin

can see immediately that he was not copying the grand manuscripts made at
St Gallen during his lifetime – the Folchart Psalter (SG 23, in which the hand
is very like Notker’s, but it is not his), books of Gospel readings (SG 53 and
54), the lives of SS Gall and Otmar (SG 562) and many other books. For these
high-grade books, it was the habit at the abbey of Sankt Gallen to entrust
each to a single good scribe. Notker’s time and energy seem to have been
directed in other ways, managing the work of teams of scribes – including
many who appear to be embarking on their first task of copying, ordering
the parts of codices, producing paratextual material and sometimes working
closely with the text.
Such an example of close work with a text is in a copy of the Indiculum
of the works of St Augustine produced in association with the saint’s vita
by Possidius. It was argued by François Dolbeau that Possidius’s indiculum
was not an isolated work, but an integral part of the vita of Augustine;
indeed, Augustine himself may be behind the preparation of the list, as
a preliminary to ‘publishing’ his complete works.36 The list was copied
into SG 571 (pp. 1–48), with the heading ‘incipit indicium librorum
sancti augustini episcopi · quod possidius calamensis episcopi
collegit · qui et vitam ipsius composuit ·’,37 followed immediately
by the vita (pp. 50–178). The Indiculum and the vita are in physically separate
gatherings, with a list of chapter headings for the vita in between,38 and they
could have been bound in either order, at the time of their manufacture; these
texts are now bound with others copied in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
It was Notker who organized, oversaw and corrected these three textual
entities.39
Notker’s work on Possidius’s vita involved the correction of passages
copied by scribes whose comprehension of the text was weak, or who left

36 F. Dolbeau, ‘La survie des œuvres d’Augustin. Remarques sur l’Indiculum attribué
à Possidius et sur la bibliothèque d’Anségise’, in Du copiste au collectionneur.
Mélanges d’histoire des textes et des bibliothèques en l’honneur d’André Vernet,
Bibliologia 18 (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 3–22 (pp. 6, 12). Possidius’ list is edited by
A. Wilmart, ‘Operum S. Augustini elenchus’, Miscellanea Agostiniana 2 (Rome, 1931),
pp. 149–208. On various assessments of the status of the Indiculum see W. Geerlings,
ed., Possidius Vita Augustini (Paderborn, 2005), pp. 109–11.
37 ‘Here begins the list of the books of St Augustine, bishop, which Possidius, bishop
of Calama, assembled, and who also wrote his life.’ The use of ‘Indicium’ rather
than ‘Indiculum’ was relatively common.
38 The Indiculum is written out in three quaternios, followed by a list of chapter
headings for the vita written into a binio, from which the first folio has been
removed; then four quaternios, a ternio (pp. 151–62), and two further quaternios
for the vita.
39 I thank Hartmut Hoffmann † for his identification of this manuscript as one of
those in which Notker’s hand can be seen.

50
 Notker Bibliothecarius

out phrases in error.40 Having written out the first lines of the vita (p. 55, lines
1–5), and then the first lines on the subsequent page (p. 56, lines 1–6), Notker
then seems to have considered this model enough for the other scribes who
were to copy out the text; from this point on he intervened in the vita only
as a corrector. For the other two parts of this Augustinian enterprise his
participation was of a quite different kind. The list of chapter headings for
the vita was substantially copied by him,41 and he was probably responsible
for all of the numbers set into the left-hand margin throughout the four pages
occupied by these tituli (pp. 50–3). It is not known whether this Capitulatio
belonged to the original text of the vita, or represents an early medieval
addition,42 nor are the specific divisions of the vita made here replicated
elsewhere.43 Whence Notker got these divisions and tituli is currently
unknown.
The manuscript transmission of the Indiculum of Augustine’s writings
is more easily followed,44 and it would be possible to consider Notker’s
interventions in that light. Without going so far, however, it is possible to see
Notker working through this list, not only to correct the text copied by the
other scribe with whom he collaborated to produce the Indiculum, but also
attempting to sort out a certain amount of chaos in the numbering, and, in
addition, using the list as a way of checking what was and what was not in
the library at St Gallen. Many of his interventions, following his writing out of
the title (p. 1, lines 1–4) and first three entries (p. 1, lines 5–7), are immediately
identifiable through the use of red ink (then corroborated by details of script).
Since he was working through the list adding numbers in red ink to the left of
entries, he commonly came across situations in which correction was needed.
These corrections were supplied by him using the pen which was in his hand
at the time; thus, for example, the additions of ‘muliere’ and ‘supra’ (as well
as others) on p. 42 are in his characteristic hand. On many pages he marked
‘rq.’ or ‘r’ (require) in the margin, seemingly reminding himself of the need to
identify copies of specific texts.45 Other remarks (as opposed to corrections)
in red include ‘hos libros alii capitula vel titulos dicunt’ (p. 7); ‘sine numero’

40 As for example on p. 161, where the scribe left out phrases between two occurences
of ‘Magis timeamus’ (Vita, c. 30); these were added by Notker in the lower margin.
41 p. 50 in total; p. 51, lines 1–3, ‘quomodo’; p. 52, lines 1–8, and all the chapter
numbers.
42 This list of chapter headings is edited by Walter W. Berschin: ‘Possidius, Vita Sancti
Augustini. Eine patristische Biographie mit klassischem Hintergrund’, in idem.,
Mittellateinische Studien (Heidelberg, 2005), pp. 1–7.
43 On the manuscript transmission see H. T. Weiskotten, Sancti Augustini vita scripta
a Possidio episcopo (Princeton, 1919), pp. 23–32; the Vita is also edited by A. A. R.
Bastiaensen, Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino (Milan, 1975),
pp. 130–240.
44 See Wilmart’s edition (n. 36 above).
45 As, for example, three times on p. 27.

51
 Susan Rankin

(p. 13); ‘si decadas attenderis ’. si uero tractatus · inferius numera ·’ (p. 23);
‘absque num .’ (p. 28); and at the end of the list ‘hec de plurimis pauca sunt
adnotata’ (p. 48). To make sense of these annotations would require proper
philological study. For now, it can be observed that the exemplar(s) available
to Notker were deficient in the way in which the entries were numbered.
His interventions reveal the extent to which he attempted to put order into
this text and its numbering system, presumably as a basis for checking the
Augustinian holdings of the abbey’s library. His work with the Indiculum and
vita did not stop there; in the large passional whose preparation he oversaw
(SG 577), he began the tituli for the vita (p. 451a, lines 3–8) and the vita itself
(p. 453a, lines 1–4). The text of the Indiculum which follows the vita was
copied directly from SG 571, with Notker’s corrections in red incorporated
(sometimes rendering nonsense). Finally, he added at the end (p. 513b, lines
12–16): ‘Hȩc de plurimis pauca sunt adnotata · Ita ut in his ipsis multa sint
de numeris omissa · Idcirco et iam capitulatio uidetur imperfecta’ (‘From
here on few are listed; thus many are left out of the numbers; therefore the
chapterizing is seen to be imperfect’).

Martyrologies, saints’ lives and homiliaries

One of the most sustained campaigns of book-making at St Gallen in the

second half of the ninth century was dedicated to the assemblage of codices
for formal reading, principally during liturgical celebrations. This led to the
copying as well as creation of martyrologies, to the construction of collections
of saints’ lives and to the production of several collections of homilies. This
work had begun while Notker was still young; in the earliest of the homiliaries,
he was certainly not in charge. More significantly, the drive may have been
led by the most influential figure associated with St Gallen in this period:
Grimald. Hrabanus Maurus had dedicated his own martyrology to Ratleik,
abbot of Seligenstadt and chancellor to Louis the German, and to Grimald,
abbot of St Gallen (841–872) and archchaplain to Louis the German; that dual
dedication probably dates from the period when Ratleik and Grimald were
both at court before Ratleik’s death in 854.46 Yet Notker was deeply involved
in this campaign, at many points acting to put into action plans which may
have been conceived by others and, in the last years of his life, composing
a new martyrology. This new martyrology survives in a copy made in the
early tenth century (SG 456), possibly after Notker’s death; there is no sign

46 See B. Bischoff, ‘Bücher am Hofe Ludwigs des Deutschen und die Privatbibliothek
des Kanzlers Grimald’, in Mittelalterliche Studien 3 (Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 187–212
(p. 195). In a list of books owned by Grimald and given to the monastic library on
his death, a ‘martyrologium Rhabani in volumine I’ is listed (SG 267, p. 31); this
was probably the current SG 457.

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 Notker Bibliothecarius

anywhere in this book of his own hand (and the text was left incomplete).
But Notker had already organized the copying of other martyrologies from
which his own version drew; his most important textual source was that
by Ado of Vienne (d. 875), and the SG copy of the second version (SG 454)
was both begun and finished by him.47 In a copy of the martyrology made
by Hrabanus Maurus, Notker inscribed the whole of the verse dedication
from Hrabanus to Grimald in rustic capitals, giving it more prominence
than the preceding (prose) dedication to Ratleik (SG 458).48 The St Gallen
library also possessed the martyrology composed in verse by Wandalbert of
Prüm (SG 250, pp. 28–65), for which Notker had copied the first three pages
(pp. 28–31),49 and an older copy of Bede’s martyrology (SG 451).50 Notker’s
work in preparing these martyrologies was merely the starting point for a
further campaign of study of their content, evidence for which survives in
copious detail. John McCulloh’s investigations into the relation between
Notker’s own text and those of his main models, Ado and Hrabanus, have
demonstrated significant characteristics of Notker’s approach, above all, his
ways of dealing with conflicting dates. As elsewhere, Notker was articulate
about what he was actually doing: ‘What does make Notker unusual is
the surprising number of notices in which he announced to his audience
that his sources disagreed or in which he actually refuted the errors in his
sources.’51 Very often the textual versions presented in Notker’s martyrology
can be traced back to annotations made in the earlier books, allowing the
compositional process documented in text form by McCulloh to be seen in
process, as Notker sat before those books.
Among copies of saints’ lives with which Notker was involved, his most
sustained contributions appear in the ‘passionarium novum’, SG 577 (as the
codex was described in the contemporary lists in SG 566).52 In this book his
presence is all-pervasive as the writer of chapter lists (p. 5 for the Vita sancti

47 See above, p. 46, and Rankin, ‘Ego itaque Notker scripsi’, pp. 289–90. On
martyrologies in this period see especially J. McCulloh, ‘Historical Martyrologies in
the Benedictine Cultural Tradition’, in Benedictine Culture 750–1050, ed. W. Lourdaux
and D. Verhelst (Leuven, 1983), pp. 114–31, with previous bibliography.
48 On this manuscript see Rabani Mauri Martyrologium, ed. J. McCulloh, CCCM 44
(Turnhout, 1979), xliii–xlvi; McCulloh links the work of the main corrector of this
manuscript with corrections made to SG 457, describing the hands as identical –
and this was certainly Notker’s hand.
49 Without knowledge of Notker’s involvement as scribe, it was Von Euw’s view that
Notker was responsible for the compilation of this whole ‘astronomical-computistic
encyclopedia’ during the period when he was librarian (set by Von Euw as 880–90)
(Die St. Galler Buchkunst, I, no. 120).
50 Bischoff, Katalog III, no. 5752 dates the manuscript to the first quarter of the ninth
century.
51 McCulloh, ‘Historical Martyrologies’, p. 126.
52 See P. E. Munding, Das Verzeichnis der St. Galler Heiligenleben und ihrer Handschriften
in Codex Sangall. No. 566, Texte und Arbeiten I/3–4 (Beuron, 1918).

53
 Susan Rankin

Ermenlandi; p. 242 for the Vita sancti Cassiani; p. 451, lines 3–8, for the Vita
sancti Augustini); as the scribe who could write the beginnings and endings of
individual parts, so as to set them out clearly (as on p. 45b, lines 1–15, the end
of the Vita sancti Ermenlandi and the beginning of the Vita heremite Meginrati,
and on p. 374b, the end of the Passio sancti Thrutberti and the beginning of
the Passio sancti Andeoli); and as the scribe who added headings (above all
in the Vita sancti Ermenlandi, but also as on p. 174a, lines 20–7) or showed
how to write out a hymn composed by St Hilary of Poitiers (p. 158b, l. 22
to p. 159a, l. 4). At one point Notker wrote out a whole page, including a
passage of fourteen lines written in rustic capitals, alternately red and black –
why the Vita sancte Marie Egyptiacae deserved this special treatment is unclear,
unless it was because it had been translated by Paul the Deacon.53 Notker
can also be found working in a volume of saints’ lives (SG 551), and making
corrections in much older copies of texts (as in the Passio sancti Leudegarii in
SG 548, pp. 67–116), preparatory to their being recopied.
There is one type of book of liturgical readings for which, over time, Notker
seems to have become the main overseer of design and creation: the homiliary.
In extant homiliaries, it is possible to follow his scribal work from a period
when he was working to the orders of someone else, to a time when he was in
charge and making serious decisions about what should be copied and how,
and finally, to a time when, as an older man, he was simply commissioned
by one of his ex-students to make a homiliary for use elsewhere. SG 431 is a
winter homiliary, the second of a pair, and consequently containing homilies
for feasts from Septuagesima to Tuesday in Holy Week. Unlike all of the
copying work so far considered, in this book Notker copied long passages
of text on series of pages; he was also responsible for the table of contents
(pp. 2–4). That Notker was working to someone else’s orders can be inferred
further from the opening page of text (p. 6), where, in contrast to his work in
such a book as SG 454, he was not the scribe who wrote out the introductory
heading in capitalis, but the scribe of the main text (column b, l. 8 onwards).
Moreover, the hand seen in SG 431 is thin and upright, as in the charter dated
873;54 this is manifestly Notker’s ‘young’ hand.
A series of collections drawing on the homiliary prepared by Paul the
Deacon was made at St Gallen between the second quarter and the end of the
ninth century.55 As a group SG 430–434 offer an almost complete compilation
of homilies for the temporale and sanctorale, as follows:

53 SG 577, p. 269a, ‘Huius imitabilis conuersionis · actuumque et morum uitam · et

poenitentie magnum uirileque certamen uenerabilis Mariae E˛gyptiace˛ · qualiter
in heremo expleuerit tempora uitae · de Greco transtulit in Latinum Paulus
uenerabilis diaconus · sanctae Neapolitanae ecclesiae ·’
54 Sankt Gallen Stiftsarchiv III.310.
55 I leave out of consideration here two St Gallen homiliaries: SG 422 (made in the
first half of the ninth century, and possibly before SG 432), with a selection and

54
 Notker Bibliothecarius

Winter I (Advent to Sundays after Epiphany, Purification and Annunciation):

SG 430
Winter II (Septuagesima to Tuesday before Easter): SG 431
Summer I (Easter Vigil to 26th Sunday after Pentecost, including Proper of
Saints): SG 432
Summer II (Sundays after Pentecost, 26 in number): SG 434
Proper of Saints (St Andrew, 30 November, to St Clement, 23 November,
and Common of saints): SG 43356

Of these the oldest is SG 432, probably begun in the 830s;57 this reproduces,
largely, the collection of texts prepared by Paul the Deacon at the request of
Charlemagne for these parts of the liturgical year, ending with the homily
‘Clementissimus omnipotens Deus pietate’ in letania quando volueris.58 As in
other copies of this centrally prepared and disseminated book, the way in
which SG 432 is arranged mixes feasts of the temporale and sanctorale, and
names Sundays after Pentecost in relation to saints’ feasts; thus, on p. 193, we
find the homily ‘Dominus Deus cum David regem’ with the rubric ‘Dominica
I post natale apostolorum’ (thus the Sunday after the feast of SS Peter and
Paul on 29 June), and on p. 224 the homily ‘Surdus ille et mutus’ with the
rubric ‘Dominica I post sancti Laurenti’ (thus the Sunday after 10 August).
The other codices were all made later, and in all four this older system
of reference has been abandoned; thus, ‘Dominus Deus cum David regem’
is now set for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost (SG 434, p. 64) and ‘Surdus
ille et mutus’ for the twelfth Sunday (SG 434, p. 186).59 More importantly,
the arrangement of material sequentially through the year, with all of the
problems caused by the constantly changing relation between fixed and
moveable feasts, was now altered in favour of a separation between temporale
and sanctorale feasts: SG 434 was dedicated to the Sundays after Pentecost

ordering of homilies unrelated to the later collections considered below; and Basel
Universitätsbibliothek B.III.2, on which Zachary Guiliano (see n. 58 below) will
report. It is clear from numerous annotations (as on fol. 118v, end of lines 12–17)
that Notker had access to this manuscript, and may have used it in the preparation
of other books.
56 From p. 60: the preceding section was added (in the late ninth or early tenth
century) to the original corpus.
57 Von Euw, Die St. Galler Buchkunst, p. 375.
58 In as much as the content of Paul’s collection can currently be checked using
R. Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: analyse de manuscrits (Spoleto, 1980).
A detailed study of the composition, dissemination and use of Paul the Deacon’s
homiliary from the late eighth to the mid ninth century is currently being prepared
by Zachary Guiliano at the University of Cambridge. I am grateful to him for many
useful conversations about the St Gallen homiliary material.
59 At some time during the preparation of SG 434 the listing of Sundays after Pentecost
slipped, so that the numbering in the main codex is one behind the numbering in
the contents pages, which begins with the second Sunday after Pentecost. In the
case of ‘Surdus ille et mutus’ the Sunday named in this list (p. 3) is the thirteenth.

55
 Susan Rankin

and SG 433 to the saints’ feasts. With the exception of its last four pages
(pp. 337–40) SG 434 was copied in its entirety by Notker; the same is true
of the main body of SG 433 (pp. 60–632). In these two volumes, besides the
separation of the two festal series, another new design element emerges: in
the collection circulated under Paul the Deacon’s name, only a small number
of saints’ feasts were linked with specific homilies, leaving users to select
from a large number of others for the sanctorale of an individual institution.
In SG 433, instead of retaining that large unspecific collection, individual
homilies are selected for each saint’s feast.
It is clear from the contents of SG 430 and 431 – containing the winter
readings up to Easter – that a programme of expansion of the main Paul
the Deacon series had been undertaken, with about a quarter to a third as
much again drawn primarily from sermon collections by John Chrysostom,
Maximus of Turin, Pope Leo, Pope Gregory, Bishop Gregory of Tours and
Bede.60 (The inclusion of this extra material explains why the winter part
of the homiliary was broken into two volumes.) This suggests the presence
of a senior directing hand, seeking out and choosing material. At that stage,
Notker was not in charge, and it was surely too early for him to have had
such a charge. In the case of SG 433 and 434, however, it may well have
been Notker who had to identify and extract any specifically named saints’
feasts with homilies from earlier collections; who then had to construct an
appropriate list of the many saints’ feasts for whom homilies were required
(including not only the main Roman saints but also St Gall, and the new
feast of All Saints); and who finally, before beginning to copy, had to choose
appropriate homilies for each individual temporale and sanctorale feast. For
the feast of St Gall, for example, four homilies were copied in SG 433:

p. 438: ‘Ad sancti ac beatissimi istius patris nostri’ (Maximus)

p. 444: ‘De se ipso Dominus’ (Bede)
p. 447: ‘Audiens a Domino’ (Bede)
p. 457: ‘Sancti euangelii fratres karissimi aperta uobis est’ (Gregory)

Three of these were drawn directly from Paul the Deacon’s collection, but
‘Audiens a Domino’ was based on Bede’s homily for St Benedict, rewritten
so that it could apply to St Gall. That rewriting had already been achieved
long before Notker got his hands on the text; he was merely responsible for
correcting it (SG 553, pp. 151–62) and then recopying it in SG 434. Likewise,
for the feast of All Saints, six homilies were proposed, beginning with
three drawn from Paul’s collection, and then sermons by Gregory, and two
attributed to Hrabanus and Walafrid Strabo:

60 Other material includes selections from Origen’s Commentary on Romans (quite rare
at this time), the Revelatio Sancti Stephani, and some Augustine and ps-Augustine, a
sermon by Jerome and St Cyril’s letter to Nestorius (attributed to Leo).

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 Notker Bibliothecarius

p. 504: ‘Qui sanctorum merita’ (John Chrysostom)

p. 510: ‘Et si generaliter omnibus loquitur’ (Bede)
p. 515: ‘Iste locus evangelii’ (Augustine)
p. 515: ‘Quia enim superna’ (Gregory)
p. 656: ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis’ (Hrabanus)
p. 669: ‘Hodie dilectissimi omnium sanctorum’ (Walafrid)61

Such choices surely required a good knowledge of individual saints (or

knowledge of how to find out about them) as well as comprehension of these
mainly patristic homilies. One clear demonstration of Notker’s knowledge
of the homilies of Gregory the Great is in a supplement provided for SG
432 (pp. 464–538); this includes thirteen homilies, of which only one was
not begun by Notker (beginning on p. 484).62 Of these thirteen, nine are
attributed to Gregory.
It is in the copying of homiliaries that Notker’s interest in the saints is likely
to have been grounded. He would have known of the spiritual benefits of
studying saints’ lives and deaths on earth – from reading Hrabanus’s words
directed to Grimald, if not elsewhere, since ‘the sufferings of the martyrs
were a direct result of their Christian commitment’, and ‘readers and hearers’
of these stories would thus be convinced that they might ‘ask with confidence
for assistance from the saints in their own struggle for eternal life’.63 That
is the background against which Notker’s words directed to Salomo in the
Notatio de illustribus viris should be set. By the example of the martyrs, Salomo
should not only spurn the delights of the world, but place his soul for Christ
and grow accustomed to think nothing of the troubles of his body. Notker’s
pride in the book of homilies for saints that he himself made is observable
in the grandeur of its first main opening (SG 433, pp. 60–1), where as much
of the written area is occupied by decorated letters in red as text written in
minuscule letters and in black (see plate X).
Late in his life Notker oversaw the preparation of a short homiliary which
may well have been intended for Salomo: in WLB HB VII 57, the impressive
opening page (fol. 1r) is unmistakeably his work.64 The hands of other
scribes involved suggest that this book was made in the early tenth century,
and must thus belong to the late work of Notker, long after he had sorted

61 These last two attributions are of unclear value, although they are among the
earliest ones: see J. E. Cross, ‘“ Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis”: A Sermon for
All Saints and its Use in Old English Prose’, Traditio 33 (1977), 101–35 (pp. 127–8),
though he does not catch all the relevant manuscripts.
62 A further group of two homilies was copied on pp. 538–41, with no evidence of
involvement on Notker’s part.
63 McCulloh, ‘Benedictine Historical Martyrologies’, p. 131.
64 Reproduced in H. Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Königtum im Ottonischen und
frühsalischen Reich, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1986), II, pl. 209. I am grateful to Professor
Hoffmann for communicating this identification (as well as several others) to me.

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 Susan Rankin

out homiliaries for the abbey itself; here he made a selection for a beloved
pupil, who might himself have often experienced Notker at work on his
homiliary tasks. Finally, Basel Universitätsbibliothek B.IV.26 is, like the
Stuttgart collection, a shortened selection of homilies; in this codex Notker
has a supervisory presence, beginning sections, sometimes writing out whole
pages, or simply headings.65 That these last two homiliaries both escaped
from St Gallen is due, I think, to their having been made to be sent out; both
are shorter than the St Gallen house collections, and, in as much as can be
judged from what has survived, may have provided homilies for the whole
year in one volume.
In all of this work on homilies, martyrologies and saints’ lives, Notker
was making books for his monastic community, books which had a central
place in the daily life of that community, including its liturgical celebrations.
These books are not sacramentaries, with prayers addressed to God, or
antiphoners, with chants sung in praise of God; they are books of instruction,
holding texts which expound the meaning of scripture or invoke models of
Christian life. Notker was creating materials for teaching his community, for
their meditation in the long hours of the night Office, or while they ate. Of
scribes Cassiodorus had said: ‘et Domini precepta scribendo longe lateque
disseminant . Felix intentio laudanda sedulitas . manu hominibus predicare .
digitis linguas aperire . salutem mortalibus tacitum dare . et contra diaboli
subreptiones inlicitas calamo atramentoque pugnare ·’ (‘by writing they
spread the Lord’s teachings far and wide. A blessed purpose, a praiseworthy
zeal, to preach to men with the hand, to set tongues free with one’s fingers
and in silence to give mortals salvation and to fight with pen and ink against
the unlawful snares of the devil’).66 These are lofty claims, not to be lightly
regarded. And it is in this vision of profound individual responsibility that I
believe Notker used his abilities to support and to shape the spiritual life of
the monks of Sankt Gallen: each individual book made by him should have
strength as a weapon in the fight for salvation.

65 The Basel manuscript opens with the rubric ‘a natiuitate domini usque in
octauam pentecostes’, and that is indeed the period that it covers. In the Stuttgart
manuscript, the evidence is ambiguous: the opening rubric ‘in diebus dominicis
uel aliis festiuitatibus per circulum anni’ implies that it is intended for reading
throughout the whole circle of the year, but it seems to be drawing to a close by the
time it reaches Holy Week, with only a very brief commune sanctorum following.
66 Institutiones I.30 (SG 199, p. 102).

58
 4
Singing History:
Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Lori Kruckenberg

The collected writings of the monk Ekkehard IV of Sankt Gallen (c. 980–c. 1060)
reveal a medieval polymath at work.1 Among his opera omnia are two series
of versified ‘blessings’ and two sets of poetic inscriptions for wall paintings.
His lifelong literary activities also include scores of epitaphs, ‘carmina varia’,
translations and paraphrases, a guide for writing and hundreds of glosses.
Moreover, in addition to a group of office antiphons and responsories, several
non-liturgical Latin songs, proper tropes and a revised saint’s vita seem likely
to be his work.
It is, of course, Ekkehard’s monastic history – the Continuatio casuum
sancti Galli (c. 1050) – that has garnered him the greatest attention in
scholarship of the last two centuries and helped to secure his legacy as a
chronicler.2 For musicologists and liturgical historians, the rich discussion
of ecclesiastical chant in Ekkehard’s Casus sancti Galli is one of the great
sources on early medieval musical practice, and his approximately sixty
references to liturgical song in the Casus are unparalleled in medieval
documents in terms of the number and scope of named chant composers

1 In English-language and German-language scholarship, ‘Ekkehardus’ can be

rendered as either ‘Ekkehard’ or ‘Ekkehart’; I use ‘Ekkehard’ throughout this
chapter. For a helpful overview of the life and work of Ekkehard IV, see H. F.
Haefele, ‘Ekkehard IV. von St. Gallen’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters.
Verfasserlexikon, ed. K. Ruh, et al. 2nd edn, 12 vols. (Berlin, 1977–2007), II, cols.
455–65; and J. Duft, ‘Der Geschichtenschreiber Ekkehart († um 1060)’, in Die
Abtei St. Gallen: ausgewählte Aufsätze in überarbeiteter Fassung, ed. J. Duft, 3 vols.
(Sigmaringen, 1991), II, 211–20. While useful, these overviews do not reflect
several recent re-evaluations, attributions and bibliographic summaries; e.g. the
work of E. Tremp, S. Weber, H. Eisenhut and M. Klaper cited in nn. 6, 8, 13 and 19
below.
2 See Ekkehard IV, Casus sancti Galli, ed. and trans. Haefele (Darmstadt, 1980). Since

there are other chronicles known as instalments of Casus sancti Galli, the Continuatio
casuum sancti Galli Ekkehardi IV is the more accurate title. In the current study
Ekkehard’s Sankt Gallen history is the one under consideration and I will hereafter
use its accepted shortened form Casus sancti Galli, or simply Casus.

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and compositions, and as regards how musical detail is enlisted in the

narrative.3
As Margot Fassler has shown, for medieval historians, liturgy often
‘formed the framework for historical understanding’, and this framework is
evident in a myriad of ways.4 Furthermore, because liturgy was the purview
of cantors in particular, it is not uncommon to find that historians were often
cantors, and vice versa.5 Certainly in the case of Ekkehard, it is clear that his
musical-liturgical knowledge very much informed how he viewed history.
Thus, in this chapter, rather than treat Ekkehard’s activities as historian
and musician separately, I will explore how he merges the perspectives of
chronicler and cantor by analysing a key moment in an episode found in
Chapters 51–56 in the Casus. I will propose, moreover, that in addition to
aspects of the liturgy providing a natural underpinning for how Ekkehard
writes history, he describes sung acts and cites specific chants as an effective
means of shaping his narrative and telling his story.
One of Ekkehard’s central aims in the Casus was to provide proof that,
over the centuries and up to his day, the monks of Sankt Gallen lived in
accordance with the Rule of Benedict.6 In effect, the Casus was to serve as

3 L. Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail in the Casus Sancti Galli’, in

Medieval Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker, ed. J. A. Peraino
(Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 2013), pp. 23–57 (pp. 28–30). In that study, I listed fifty-nine
references to liturgical song; I have subsequently counted one more reference, the
sung response Tu autem (Ekkehard IV, Casus, pp. 222–4, i.e., chap. 113), which fits
the category of ‘sung occurrence’ (consult Table 3.1 in Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s
Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 28–9). A revised list of references can be found in the
table in Appendix 1 of the current chapter. For an overview of chants attributed
to medieval composers, see: T. F. Kelly, ‘Medieval Composers of Liturgical Chant’,
Musica e storia 14 (2006), 95–125; M. Fassler’s chapter in The Cambridge History of
Medieval Music, ed. M. Everist and T. F. Kelly (Cambridge, forthcoming), studies
modes of attribution.
4 Fass D, pp. 157, 167–8.
5 Ibid.
6 Ekkehard’s repeated assertion that Sankt Gallen adheres to the Rule, and his

insistence that external monastic reform was unnecessary, are noted by E. Dümmler,
‘Ekkehart IV von St Gallen’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum n.s. 2 (1869), 1–73,
further pursued by K. Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny: Studien zu den monastischen Lebens­
formen und Gegensätzten im Hochmittelalter, 2 vols. (Rome, 1950–51), I, 187–99. See
also H. E. Feine, ‘Klosterreformen im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert und ihr Einfluß auf
die Reichenau und St. Gallen’, in Aus Verfassungs- und Landesgeschichte: Festschrift
zum 70. Geburtstag von Theodor Mayer, ed. H. Büttner et al., 2 vols. (Lindau-
Konstanz, 1955), II, 77–91. More recently, see S. Patzold, Konflikte im Kloster: Studien
zu Auseinandersetzungen in monastischen Gemeinschaften des ottonisch-salischen Reichs
(Husum, 2000), 190–200; E. Hellgardt, ‘Die Casus Sancti Galli Ekkeharts IV. und
die Benediktsregel’, in Literarische Kommunikation und soziale Interaktion: Studien
zur Institutionalität mittelalterlicher Literatur, ed. B. Kellner et al. (Frankfurt, 2001),
pp. 27–50; E. Tremp, ‘Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen († um 1060) und die monastische
Reform’, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

a contemporary defence against past, putative and potential initiatives of

monastic reformers from outside the cloister. I suggest, furthermore, that
Ekkehard ‘instrumentalized’ his cloister’s musical and liturgical tradition in
order to authenticate the legitimacy of the abbey as a keeper of the Rule.7 To
that end I will consider how the sung act plays a key role in the narrative of
Chapters 51–56. Here Ekkehard describes how, in the face of tragedy, a monk’s
faith in his sacred chant and its efficacy brings about a wondrous change. At
the same time, the chronicler proves that this monk, under the most trying
of circumstances, fulfilled his monastic obligation of performing the opus Dei.
Before turning specifically to Ekkehard as historian-cantor, however, let us
briefly review his life as poet, glossator, reader and teacher – aspects of his
work that surely informed his thinking as chronicler and musician.

Ekkehard as poet, glossator, reader and teacher

The Liber benedictionum is a powerful testament to Ekkehard’s lifelong work

as poet and his ongoing interest in redacting such writings, some dating
from his youth.8 In this collection, a variety of poetic types, genres and uses
are represented, with two sets of ‘blessings’, the Benedictiones super lectores
per circulum anni and the Benedictiones ad mensas, forming the cornerstone
of the compendium. There are also two sets of tituli, the Versus ad picturas
domus domini Moguntinae and the Versus ad picturas claustri sancti Galli, which
were intended to accompany a series of wall paintings in Mainz Cathedral
and one at Sankt Gallen, respectively.9 Also found are over a dozen epitaphs,
several occasional pieces and Ekkehard’s Latin translation of Ratpert’s Old

Zweige 116 (2005): 67–88; Tremp, ‘Tradition und Neuerung im Kloster: Ekkehard
IV. von St. Gallen und die monastische Reform’, in Tradition, Innovation, Invention:
Fortschrittsverweigerung und Fortschrittsbewusstsein im Mittelalter, ed. H.-J. Schmidt
(Berlin, 2005), pp. 381–97.
7 The monks’ observance of the Rule is a strong element in the tale of Craloh and

Victor as well; see Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 38–51.
8 The Liber benedictionum is SG 393, an autograph of Ekkehard. See S. Weber,

Ekkehardus poeta qui et doctus: Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen und sein gelehrt poetisches
Wirken (Nordhausen, 2003). As is often pointed out, many of Ekkehard’s earliest
works were later revised when he was an adult, with many of these youthful efforts
serving as a source of pride. Ibid., p. 74.
9 Ibid, pp. 41–51. See also H. Leithe-Jasper, ‘Beobachtungen zur Arbeitsweise

Ekkeharts IV. in seinen Versus ad picturas domus domini Moguntinae’, in Latin Culture
in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Medieval
Latin Studies, ed. M. W. Herren et al., 2 vols. (Turnhout, 2002) II, 51–60; Leithe-
Jasper, ‘Umbra, figura, praefigurator: Typologie bei Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen’, in
Text und Bild: Tagungsbeiträge, ed. V. Zimmerl-Panagl and D. Weber (Vienna, 2010),
pp. 289–304. Ekkehard spent most of his life at Sankt Gallen, but from c. 1022 to
c. 1031 he taught in the cathedral school at Mainz, serving there until Archbishop
Aribo’s death in 1031.

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 Lori Kruckenberg

High German Galluslied. Other examples of poetry not attached to the Liber
benedictionum include his tract on poetics, the De lege dictamen ornandi, itself in
rhymed leonine verse.10 In the past century and half, modern assessments of
Ekkehard’s poetic abilities have frequently been negative, but as Stefan Weber
makes clear, Ekkehard delighted in writing poetry, and these pieces resound
with his humour and wit.11 Moreover, as regards style and diction, many of
these poems likely had a pedagogic function, and thus were designed for
pupils with limited Latinity.12
Ekkehard’s activities as glossator are also well documented, and hundreds
of glosses, marginalia, corrections, emendations and a few drawings in over
sixty sources have been identified in his hand.13 Thus, his reception of and
interaction with all manners of text can be traced, revealing the wide range
of subjects that confronted and preoccupied this learned monk. Among the
many works for which he provided glosses are writings on rhetoric, dialectics,
the quadrivial arts and histories. Martyrologies, saints’ lives, homilies,
sermons, biblical commentaries, theological tracts – all foundational sources
for the materials for the Mass and canonical Hours – also constitute a large
portion of the works he glossed. He reworked and revised writings by others,
as is likely the case with the oldest Vita sancte Wiborade, probably penned by
Ekkehard I (d. 973). Like his predecessor, Ekkehard IV took a keen interest in
the promotion of this local saint’s cult.14
In sum, Ekkehard’s poetic works and glosses point to a learned scholar,
teacher and bibliophile.15 Certainly it comes as no surprise that Ekkehard

10 Other examples of his verse include SG 146, 168, 174, 176, 211, 279, 342, 621, 626,
830 and 915. For a discussion and listing of these and sources outside of the
Stiftbibliothek’s holdings, see Weber, Ekkehardus poeta, pp. 62–7, 87–95.
11 Ibid., pp. 68–74, 80–1.
12 See, for instance, A. Grotans, Reading in Medieval St. Gall (Cambridge, 2006), p. 78.
13 For a recent assessment of Ekkehard as glossator, examples of his editing processes

and an extensive bibliography and tables on the identification of his hand and
relevant manuscripts, see H. Eisenhut, Die Glossen Ekkeharts IV. von St. Gallen im
Codex Sangallensis 621 (St Gallen, 2009); Eisenhut, ‘Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen–
Autor, Korrektor und Glossator von Codex Sangallensis 393’, in Medieval Autograph
Manuscripts: Proceedings of the XVIIth Colloquium of the Comité International de
Paléographie Latine, ed. N. Golob (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 97–110. Ekkehard added
drawings of diagrams and maps as yet another way to ‘gloss’ texts. See N. Lozovsky,
‘The Uses of Classical History and Geography in Medieval St Gall’, in Mapping
Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600,
ed. K. D. Lilley (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 65–82.
14 For revisions attributed to Ekkehart IV and a discussion on his contributions to the

cult of St Wiborada, see Vitae Sanctae Wiboradae: Die ältesten Lebensbeschreibungen

der heiligen Wiborada, ed. and trans. W. Berschin (St Gallen, 1983), pp. 13–16, 108–9;
Berschin, ‘Das sanktgallische Wiborada-Offizium des XI. Jahrhunderts’, in Studies
in Medieval Chant and Liturgy in Honour of David Hiley, ed. T. Bailey et al. (Budapest
and Ottawa, 2007), pp. 79–85.
15 Weber, Ekkehardus poeta, pp. 80–1.

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

was steeped in works representing the curriculum of the seven liberal arts
as well as theological tracts and histories, such as those by Flavius Josephus
and Paulus Orosius as well as Notker Balbulus.16 Yet he was also immersed
in works used for and supporting the liturgy, and he thought and wrote
accordingly, as can be seen his collection of verses for readings, which, as
with the items of the Mass and the Office, was ordered by Ekkehard to follow
the liturgical year: ‘Incipiunt benedictiones super lectores per circulum
anni’. Indeed, the oldest extant copy of these blessings – in Ekkehard’s
hand – shows his clear liturgical conceptualization of this cycle, with his
rubrics indicating liturgical seasons (for example, ‘De adventu Domini’, ‘In
Quadragesima’), feast days (‘In natale Domini’, ‘In natale Sancti Sephani
Protomartyre’) as well as specific moments in the liturgical rites (‘In prima
nocturna’, ‘in secunda nocturna’, ‘in evangelio’).

Ekkehard as historian and cantor

While Ekkehard’s work as poet and glossator present him as a multifaceted

writer, informed reader and devoted teacher, his most famous and fascinating
literary achievement is his monastic history, the Casus sancti Galli.17 Written
sometime in the mid eleventh century, the Casus recounts the history of the
monastery of Sankt Gallen between c. 890 and 972, and, as a ‘continuatio’, its
primary and official purpose was to resume the chronicle where Ekkehard’s
predecessor, Ratpert (d. c. 911), had left off.18 Even so, as already noted,

16 Notker Balbulus of Sankt Gallen (d. 912), himself a composer of liturgical chant,
was the author of the history On the Deeds of Charlemagne, which also includes
numerous references to chant and liturgical matters. See Notker Balbulus, Gesta
Karoli Magni Imperatoris, ed. Haefele, MGH SRG NS 12 (Berlin, 1959); for an English
translation, see Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans.
D. Ganz (New York, 2008). Notker mentions music and liturgy in Book I, Chapters
1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 18–19, 22, 31 and 33, and in Book II, Chapters 7 and 21. Although the
current study emphasizes the importance of liturgy as a framework in Ekkehard’s
historical writing, it goes without saying that other historical writings influenced
and served as models for him as well. See Lozovsky, ‘Uses of Classical History and
Geography’, pp. 65–82.
17 The prominence of the Casus is attested by its two nineteenth-century editions
(in 1826 and 1877), and by an early novel loosely based on it: J. V. von Scheffel,
Ekkehard: Eine Geschichte aus dem zehnten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1855).
Subsequently, the Casus has been mined by scholars for both its historical content
and its highly engaging narrative, illustrated well by the seven selections found in
Life in the Middle Ages, trans. G. G. Coulton, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1928–30), IV, 50–84.
18 Ekkehard states in the prologue that he intends to treat the years of eight abbots,
beginning with Salomon III (r. 890–919) and continuing up through his own time,
i.e., with the abbatiate of Norbert (1034–72). See Casus Sancti Galli, p. 16. In actuality,
Ekkehard seems not to have completed the projected chronological span, and extant
versions of the Casus end in 972. See Haefele, ‘Zum Aufbau der Casus Sancti Galli

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 Lori Kruckenberg

modern historians have often observed that Ekkehard uses the assembled
tales on late ninth- and tenth-century life in the Gallus cloister as evidence
for his house’s adherence to and unremitting preservation of the Rule of
Benedict in his own day, an important aspect to which I will return more fully
below.
Rivalling Ekkehard’s legacy as historian is his legacy as composer,
musician, music scribe/neumator and, most of all, as chronicler of past
musical events, including the musical works and deeds of others.19 Indeed,
the Casus has long been hailed as one of the most informative contemporary
witnesses to early medieval musical and liturgical practices in the Latin West,
and it contains references to sixty chants (see Appendix 2). Among these,
Ekkehard names thirteen composers of chant, ascribing to them collectively
forty-two chants or groups of chants,20 with named authors including such
Sankt Gallen notables as Notker Balbulus, Tuotilo and Ratpert, as well
as ‘outsiders’ such as Emperor Charles the Fat and the duchess Hadwig of
Swabia. Ekkehard’s attributions, though they should often be treated with
scepticism, were likely intended to assert the relevance of Sankt Gallen with
regard to chant. (Certainly, these attributions, together with his story of the
Roman cantors Petrus and Romanus, have helped to shape the late medieval
and modern views that Sankt Gallen prevailed as an important centre of
early medieval liturgical song.21) Additionally, Ekkehard mentions chant

Ekkehards IV.’, in Typologia litterarum: Festschrift für Max Wehrli, ed. S. Sonderegger
et al. (Zurich, 1969), pp. 155–66 (pp. 156–7). Ekkehard does incorporate several
details from earlier in the ninth century, and he makes a few references to eleventh-
century events as well. Cf. Ratpert, St. Galler Klostergeschichten/Casus sancti Galli, ed.
and trans. H. Steiner (Hannover, 2002), and the next instalment, the Casuum sancti
Galli continuatio anonyma: Textedition und Übersetzung, ed. and trans. H. Leuppi
(Zurich, 1987).
19 A standard assessment of Ekkehard IV’s musical contributions is A. E. Planchart,

‘Ekkehard of St Gallen’, The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Grove Music
Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/­
08676pg4 (accessed 8 June 2015). To supplement Planchart’s overview, see
M. Klaper, ‘Ekkehart IV. und die liturgische Musikpraxis des Gallusklosters: Das
Beispiel der Te Deum-Tropen’, in Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen, ed. N. Kössinger et al.
(Berlin, 2015), pp. 303–21.
20 For a summary of musical references and a discussion of types of references, see

Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 26–32. Ekkehard is both

specific and general when identifying the works of named composers. In the case
of the composer Notker Medicus, for example, he writes, ‘Then [Notker Medicus]
composed beautiful antiphons for [St] Otmar and the hymn ‘Rector eterni metuende
secli’, and certain [verses for the] reception of kings and a hymn for a non-martyred
virgin, that is, a hymn to a blessed virgin’ (translation mine). See Casus sancti Galli,
p. 238.
21 When, in 1512, the humanist Joachim Cuontz completed his massive anthology

of sequences for the 600-year commemoration of the death of Notker Balbulus,

he included names of composers and the supposed place of origin for numerous

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as part of the action in the Casus: this is the case for twenty-one references,
with three serving simultaneously as an attribution and as a sung act in the
narrative.
A handful of scholars have offered compelling reasons for identifying
Ekkehard as the author of chant texts, melodies, or (in some examples) both.
These include antiphons and responsories for an office for St Otmar,22 the
office antiphon ‘Gaudia de geminis’ for St Wiborada23 and several Te Deum
tropes.24 In some sources, Ekkehard served as both text scribe and neumator:
not only did he supply the neumes for his translation of Ratpert’s Galluslied
(as seen in SG 168, 174 and 393), but he also likely composed the tune for
his Latin version of the text – or at least he adapted a pre-existing melody
used for the Old High German original.25 Ekkehard has also been identified
as the notator of ‘Gratia de celis’, his Christmas song for the pupils of Sankt
Gallen,26 and it seems likely that he composed its melody as well.
Finally, Ekkehard has often been treated not simply as a practising
musician, but, on the basis of one particular passage in the Casus, as a de facto
cantor.27 In his eyewitness account of Easter Mass in 1030, celebrated in the
presence of Emperor Konrad at Ingelheim, Ekkehard states that a monk of

sequences, clearly relying on Ekkehard IV’s attributions. Cf. F. Labhardt, Das

Sequentiar Cod. 546 der Stiftsbibliothek von St Gallen und seine Quellen, 2 vols. (Bern,
1959–63). The combined testimony of the monastery’s unusually large cache of
notated sources and Ekkehard’s claims have helped to position Sankt Gallen—
rightly or wrongly—as a leading centre of Latin monophony. See A. Schubiger, Die
Sängerschule St. Gallens vom 8. bis 12. Jahrhundert (Einsiedeln, 1858); W. von den
Steinen, Notker der Dichter und seine geistige Welt, 2 vols. (Bern, 1948); S. Rankin,
‘Ways of Telling Stories’, in Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes,
ed. G. M. Boone (Cambridge MA, 1995), pp. 371–94; A. Haug, ‘Sankt Gallen’, in
Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. L. Finscher et al., 2nd rev. edn, 29 vols.
(Kassel, 1998), VIII, cols. 948–69.
22 W. Berschin, P. Ochsenbein and H. Möller, ‘Das Otmaroffizium: Vier Phasen seiner

Entwicklung’, in Die Offizien des Mittelalters: Dichtung und Musik, ed. W. Berschin
and D. Hiley (Tutzing, 1999), pp. 25–57 (pp. 31–9). As the title of the article indicates,
the creation of the office for Otmar occurred in phases, beginning with the Historia
sancti Otmari (c. 900), a late tenth-century expansion attributed to Notker Medicus
by Ekkehard (see n. 20 above), additional chants by Ekkehard and a later version
from the second half of the eleventh century.
23 W. Berschin, ‘Das sanktgallische Wiborada-Offizium’.
24 For the most recent and comprehensive evaluation of Ekkehard’s compositional

output, Klaper’s recent article is essential (see above, n. 19). I am grateful to the
author for providing me with a copy in advance of its publication.
25 Ibid.
26 Weber, Ekkehardus poeta, p. 84. Compare the neumes of the Galluslied on SG 393,

pp. 247–51 to those of the ‘Gratia de celis’ on SG 393, p. 253.

27 E.g., Planchart, ‘Ekkehard of St Gallen’; Planchart, ‘Ekkehard von St. Gallen’, in Die

Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. L. Finscher, 2nd rev. edn, 29 vols. (Kassel,
1998) VII, cols. 214–16 (col. 215), where he is referred to as ‘choirmaster’ and
‘Chorleiter’ respectively. Likewise Haefele speculates in a footnote to his edition

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Sankt Gallen was in charge of leading the schola cantorum of Mainz.28 Since
this event coincides with Ekkehard’s own tenure at Mainz, scholars have
presumed that he is the unnamed Gallus choirmaster. Yet, as Haefele and
Weber have noted, the identity of the choirmaster is far from unambiguous.29
I know of no extant document formally naming Ekkehard IV (or anyone else,
for that matter) as holding the office of cantor at Sankt Gallen in the eleventh
century.30 It is clear, however, that in addition to serving as a teacher in Mainz
and at Sankt Gallen, Ekkehard had extensive access to his cloister’s library,
as well as to the musical and liturgical books kept and used in the choir. As
Fassler has shown, the duties of armarius and librarian were often combined
with those of the cantor as well as of the historian,31 and the many types of
texts that occupied Ekkehard as reader and glossator – vite, martyrologies,
other hagiographical writings, biblical commentaries, sermons, homilies –
were frequently the kinds of texts that engaged cantors and historians alike.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine a figure of the Ottonian-Salian era who was
more thoroughly enmeshed in the liturgy and music of his community than
Ekkehard IV.
Ekkehard can thus be referred to as a cantor in the more generic sense of
the word – that is, as an ecclesiastical singer, rather than as the holder of a
particular clerical or monastic office. And, despite Haefele’s and Weber’s
legitimate caution, the evidence of the Ingelheim episode might still allow
us to consider Ekkehard as a ‘cantor’ in a narrower sense, that is as a musical
leader of some kind. In any event, we can be certain that Ekkehard possessed
a deep knowledge of the tradition and practice of music and liturgy at

that Ekkehard IV is presumably the director in question. See Casus sancti Galli,
p. 140, n. 98.
28 Casus sancti Galli, pp. 140–2: ‘vidi egomet ipse Chuonrado imperatore Ingilinheim

pascha agente, sancti Galli monacho scolas Magontie curante, officium, ut solitum
est, in medio chori crebro coronati inspectu agere.’ Ekkehard continues to describe
how this monk lifted his hand to depict the melody of the sequence (‘Cumque
manum ille ad modulos sequentie pingendos rite levasset’) and how three bishops
who were also present requested that they might once again sing with their former
teacher, having studied with him at Sankt Gallen. This cantor was moved to tears.
Finally, when the mass had concluded the unnamed cantor was brought before
Emperor Conrad and Empress Gisela in order to receive a gift of gold, and to be
presented with a ring by the emperor’s sister Mathilde.
29 Haefele, ‘Ekkehard IV. von St. Gallen’, in Verfasserlexikon, col. 456; Weber, Ekkehardus

poeta, p. 8.
30 While C. Page cites examples of named cantors found in documents from Latin

Antiquity and the early medieval period, Fassler has demonstrated that the offices
of the cantor, precentor and succentor were more properly phenomena of the late of
eleventh century and after. Thus that Ekkehard IV is not formally cited as ‘cantor’
does not prevent him from having acted in some related capacity. Cf. C. Page, The
Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, 2010), and
Fass A.
31 Fass A and D.

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Sankt Gallen. His authorship of chant texts and melodies and his proven
notational literacy (attested in his neumed entries in multiple manuscripts)
suggest that he had more than a passing acquaintance with chant. Finally, his
Weltanschauung concerning music and liturgy thoroughly complemented and
indeed infused his historical writing.
Let us turn now to one of the many examples revealing how thoroughly
music and liturgy informed Ekkehard’s historical narratives. As we will
see, his intersecting sensibilities as an historian and as a cantor-liturgist are
clearly on display in Chapters 51–6 of the Casus, the tale of Heribald and the
Hungarians.

Heribald and the Hungarians

Chapters 51–65 of the Casus recount the dramatic years of 926–37, a time
when bands of Hungarian raiders attacked not only Sankt Gallen, but also
settlements throughout the southern German lands and beyond, killing
many. Ernst Tremp helpfully divides the overarching story of the Hungarian
invasion into three sections; I caption these sections:
(i) The evacuation and occupation of Sankt Gallen and the Hungarians’
interaction with Heribald (chaps. 51–6)
(ii) An excursus before 926: the visits of a young St Ulrich (later bishop of
Augsburg) to the anchoress St Wiborada (chaps. 57–61)
(iii) The defeat and repelling of the Hungarians (chaps. 62–5)32
It is the first section, the Hungarians’ arrival at and subjugation of Sankt
Gallen, that will be considered here. In particular, we will explore how
Ekkehard closes this section with a vocalized prayer – the antiphon ‘Sanctifica
nos’ – and how this chant acts as a kind of numinous catalyst, marking
a crucial shift in the narrative and signalling deliverance through divine
intervention.
According to Ekkehard, though Abbot Engilbert of Sankt Gallen initially
attempted to hold off the Hungarians, he was ultimately forced to retreat.
Meanwhile many of the Gallus brethren hastily removed what property they
could, transporting most valuables to the nearby fortress at Weissburg and
to the abbey of Reichenau. With evacuation complete and the marauders
drawing ever closer, Ekkehard writes: ‘Ingruunt tandem pharetrati illi, pilis
minantibus et spiculis asperi’ [‘Finally, bearing quivers, with menacing spears

32 E. Tremp, ‘Eine Randfigur im Rampenlicht: Heribald von St. Gallen und die
Ungarn’, in Scripturus vitam: Lateinische Biographie von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart:
Festgabe für Walter Berschin zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. D. Walz (Heidelberg, 2002),
pp. 435–41 (p. 435).

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and sharpened arrows, they violently broke in’].33 Moving stealthily through
the cloister with intent to kill, the Hungarians found the abbey abandoned –
with the sole exception of Heribald, a slow-witted monk of noble birth. Despite
the repeated pleas of his fellow coenobites, Heribald had refused to leave the
cloister, since he had not yet received his annual allotment of shoe leather. The
Hungarians were puzzled to find this untroubled simpleton at the monastery,
and through an interpreter (a cleric captured along the way) they finally came
to realize the nature of his naïvety. They spared his life, and Heribald became
something of a company pet, tolerated as a figure of ridicule and a source of
amusement.
The invaders, discovering a nearly emptied treasury and church, set
about plundering what little remained, finding only candlesticks and golden
candleholders. When they came upon two intact wine barrels, however,
Heribald shooed them away, scolding that the wine must remain until his
confrères returned. Though they howled with laughter, the Hungarians
finally relented and left the cellar unmolested, with one of them bidding that
the wine casks of their fool must remain untouched.34
Though the Hungarians’ treatment of Heribald seems at times almost
benevolent, Ekkehard recounts several dishonourable and horrific actions.
Two invaders, taking the cloister’s name (‘Gallus’) as a reference to the avian
creature (gallus, rooster) rather than its missionary-founder, presumed that
the weathercock atop the abbey was a kind of titular totem, and, thinking it to
be made of some precious material, they scrambled up the tower to retrieve
it. One of them, reaching with his lance for the gallus, lost his balance and
fell to his death below. His compatriot then moved toward the cross of the
eastern spire, and, with the intent of defiling the temple, he proceeded to
empty his bowels from the pinnacle. Falling backwards, he plunged to his
death and his body shattered. Under the threshold of the church the invaders
built a funeral pyre for the fallen duo. While the church was greatly in peril –
the flames grew to reach the ceiling and even left singe marks on the lintel –
miraculously neither the templum Galli nor the nearby Church of St Mangen
succumbed to the fire.35
Ekkehard depicts the marauders as heathens, eating raw meat, gnawing
on bones and drinking immoderately. (Though they left the abbey’s cellar
untouched, they had brought their own wine reserves.) They boxed, taunted
and beat their imprisoned cleric-interpreter and Heribald, who seems to have
taken little offence at this. At the close of Chapter 54, Ekkehard depicts a mad
scene: having eaten and drunk to excess, the Hungarians then

33 Casus sancti Galli, p. 116.

34 Ibid., pp. 116–18.
35 Ibid.

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

horridissime diis suis omnes vociferabant. Clericum vero et fatuum suum

id ipsum facere coegerant. Clericus autem lingue bene eorum sciolus,
propter quod etiam eum vite servaverant, cum eis valenter clamabat.36

[all cried out in the most frightful manner to their gods. Indeed they
gathered around the cleric and their fool to force them to do the same. The
cleric, able to speak their language fairly well (for which reason they kept
him alive), began then to robustly howl with them.]

Ekkehard goes on:

Cumque iam satis lingua illorum insanisset, antiphonam de sancta cruce,

cuius postera die inventio erat, ‘Sanctifica nos’ lacrimans inceperat. Quam
Heribaldus cum eo, quamvis voce raucosus, et ipse decantabat. Conveniunt
omnes, qui aderant, ad insolitum captivorum cantum, et effusa leticia
saltant coram principibus et luctantur.37

[Now when the cleric had wildly raved in their tongue long enough,
weeping he intoned ‘Sanctifica nos’, an antiphon for the Holy Cross, since
the following day was the feast of its discovery. And Heribald, though
rough in voice, sang the antiphon to completion with him. All came together
to the unknown song of their captives, and in their rambunctiousness they
danced and wrestled before their chieftains.]

As the story concludes, the cleric-interpreter begged for mercy at the feet of
the leaders, taking the soldiers’ sport as an opportune moment to seek his
release. The chieftains mocked him and ordered the warriors to seize him.
They flew upon the cleric and began to poke their knives into his tonsured
pate, a ritual of torture before decapitation. Just as the terrified cleric was to
be beheaded, from the forest’s edge horns sounded, signalling a warning to
the Hungarians that local defenders were in the vicinity. The Hungarians
made a hasty retreat, the cleric’s life was spared and he and Heribald were
left behind.
At first blush, this episode blends elements of an adventure story and an
account of war with a few humorous touches, and it might therefore simply
be considered an entertaining or diverting anecdote. Yet this is also a story
of a steadfast monk and, in some sense, a set of miracles, arguably intended
to edify its readers – for Ekkehard uses this dramatic event to testify, in the
person of Heribald, to Sankt Gallen’s continuity as an intact Benedictine
community. Thus this simpleton, who may seem an unorthodox and even
unfit representative of monastic life, manages nonetheless to uphold the
general Benedictine principle of stabilitas amid the most trying and chaotic of
circumstances.

36 Ibid., p. 120.
37 Ibid.

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To be sure, Heribald might not have understood the subtleties of religious

life, but he had absorbed and internalized its rules, and he stood by them in
the face of a cruel enemy. His seemingly bizarre refusal to leave the abbey
without his yearly ration of shoe leather is, in fact, an attempt to live in accord
with the Rule, for, according to Chapter 55, monks are to be provided with
suitable clothing and shoes are to be replaced.38 Similarly, while his preference
to guard the wine cellar instead of any other treasures may seem dim-witted
or fickle, it can be taken to suggest Heribald’s concern with Chapter 40 of the
Rule, which deals with the daily apportioning of wine. Even when Heribald
is given meat to eat – a victual forbidden save for emergencies – he respects
monastic customs for meals, setting chairs for himself and the cleric.39 By
contrast, his heathen captors ate with their bare hands while reclining on the
ground, rather than with the benefit of utensils and vessels.
In line with this reading, the final scene with the sung antiphon might be
understood as Heribald and the cleric tending to the opus Dei, though in an
abbreviated fashion. The Hungarians had attempted to compel the pair to sing
to their gods, and the cleric sang along while Heribald was silent. Afterwards,
ashamed for his lack of faith, the cleric tearfully began the ‘Sanctifica nos’, and
now Heribald – though of a voice raw or unskilled – joins him. Uncertain of
what this music is, the Hungarians become frenzied, wrestling, leaping and
drawing their weapons, and the cleric, losing faith in the potency of his sung
prayer, prostrates himself before the warriors, begging them for his release
rather than continuing to call on his own God. He is nearly killed. In contrast,
Heribald remains steadfast, and then miraculously in the distance, a rescue
draws nigh and the Hungarians flee. Might this sung action, together with
the ensuing events, be understood as the final part of a series of occurrences
that suggest divine intervention?
To develop this suggestion, we must consider more carefully the potential
significance of ‘Sanctifica nos’. Focusing on the liturgical context, text and
melodic tradition of this antiphon at Sankt Gallen, as well as on the manner
of singing and the efficacy of the song that Ekkehard describes, will help to
clarify why this cantor-historian might have chosen to refer to this particular
chant.

38 The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. and trans. B. L. Venarde (Cambridge MA, 2011),
pp. 178–9.
39 Fitting comportment during mealtime is stressed in numerous places throughout
the Rule; cf. e.g., Chapters 32 and 35. Heribald’s setting out chairs seems somewhat
reminiscent of duties described in Chapter 35 of the Rule, i.e., concerning kitchen
servers, though his later boasts of feasting on meat contradict someone following
the guidelines of set out by the cellarer. Tremp, ‘Eine Randfigur’, p. 438, notes that
none of the known Heribalds found in confraternity lists and necrologies match
Heribald the fool, and, as Tremp surmises, Heribald may better be understood as a
construct, useful for Ekkehard’s storytelling but not an actual person.

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The musical-liturgical tradition and context of ‘Sanctifica nos’

According to the two oldest surviving antiphoners from the cloister, ‘Sanctifica
nos’ was one of forty-nine office chants for the Feast of the Finding of the
Cross, and was specifically assigned to Second Vespers.40 Might Ekkehard
have meant his citation of this one antiphon to serve, synecdochically, as a
stand-in for the whole of Second Vespers, or indeed the whole Office for this
feast? ‘Sanctifica nos’ was neither the first nor the final chant of its respective
hour, nor of the day, these being the positional placements typical in such
cases of synecdoche. And though ‘Sanctifica nos’ was the last relatively
lengthy chant of Second Vespers in the Sankt Gallen sources, nevertheless
there are still four more versicles and three additional short responsories
(responsoriola) with verses that conclude the office.41 (See Table 4.1 for chants
of the Inventio crucis in the Sankt Gallen tradition, following the arrangement
found in SG 391, from c. 990–1000.) Based on the liturgical placement of
‘Sanctifica nos’, it would be difficult to argue that the intent of Ekkehard’s
reference to this single antiphon is synecdochic.
Setting aside the four versicles and the three concluding short responsory-
verse items, there are forty-two chants, namely thirty antiphons and twelve
responsories, that can be described as moderately lengthy and comparable
to ‘Sanctifica nos’. The texts of these chants can be grouped according to
three basic textual themes: (1) Paschaltide, (2) the legend of Helena and the
finding of the cross and (3) the cross as abstract cultic object.42 Chants in the
first category are often assigned to more than one day in the liturgical year,
especially for the tempore paschali, and their texts make no explicit mention
of the cross. This is the case, for example, with ‘Surrexit pastor bonus’, the
third responsory for the first nocturn of Matins in the early Sankt Gallen
antiphoners, and first assigned to the Thursday after Easter, as well as ‘Ecce
vicit leo’, the second responsory for the second nocturn of Matins, and first
assigned to the Wednesday after Easter. They read:

Surrexit pastor bonus qui posuit animam suam pro ovibus suis et pro suo
grege mori dignatus est. alleluia alleluia alleluia.

40 These are SG 390, p. 65 (i.e., the first volume of the ‘Hartker codex’), from the very
end of the tenth century, and SG 388, p. 236. In some liturgical traditions, ‘Sanctifica
nos’ was also sung on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, but that is not the
case in the Sankt Gallen books. However, in the second part of the Hartker codex
(SG 391, p. 22), sometime in the thirteenth century a scribe added ‘Sanctifica nos’ as
a cue for St Magnus.
41 I am basing the genre designations on those used in the CANTUS database, with
some modifications.
42 For an indispensible source on the themes found in this and related liturgies for the
cross, see L. van Tongeren, Exaltation of the Cross: Toward the Origins of the Feast of the
Cross and the Meaning of the Cross in Early Medieval Liturgy (Leuven, 2000).

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 Lori Kruckenberg

[Risen is the Good Shepherd, who gave his life for his sheep and for his
flock is worthy to die. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.]

Ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda radix David aperire librum et solvere septem
signacula eius alleluia alleluia alleluia.

[Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered to
open the book and to loosen its seven seals, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!]

With its references to the resurrection, ‘Surrexit pastor bonus’ typifies the
Easter focus often found in chants of this category, while ‘Ecce vicit leo’, with
its clear reliance on Apoc. 5. 5, exemplifies the eschatological dimension
present in many of these chants.
References to the cross are common to chants of both the second and
third categories, though they occur in distinct manners in each group. In
the second category, texts refer to the cross as the object whose discovery
is described in the fifth-century legend of St Helena. Save for the Gospel
antiphon ‘Helena desiderio plena orabat’, used for the Vigil to First Vespers,
all of the texts in this category are assigned to Lauds. They are organized
sequentially, collectively forming a narrative, and these texts often include
reported speech and the names of Helena and Judas Cyriacus.43 In the final
category, the texts typically panegyrize properties of the cross, and they are
thus filled with evocative imagery, often drawing on or paraphrasing hymns
atributed to Venantius Fortunatus – ‘sweet nails’ (dulces clavos), ‘precious
wood’ (lignum preciosum), ‘wood of cedars’ (ligna cedrorum) or ‘the blessed
cross glitters’ (crux benedicta nitet). In texts in this category, the cross is
expressly hailed as a symbol of life and succour to those in need. It is to this
final category which ‘Sanctifica nos’ belongs, made clear in both its initial
phrase, ‘Sanctifica nos Domine signaculo sancte crucis’ [‘Sanctify us, Lord,
through the sign of the holy cross’], and in its concluding clause, ‘Defende
nos Domine per lignum sanctum et per pretium iusti sanguinis tui cum
quo nos redemisti, alleluia’ [‘Defend us, Lord, through the holy wood and
through the price of your righteous blood, with which you have redeemed us.
Alleluia’].
Yet, despite these similarities, the middle clause of ‘Sanctifica nos’ sets it
apart from nearly all chants assigned to the Inventio crucis at Sankt Gallen: ‘ut
fiat [crux] nobis obstaculum contra seva iacula inimicorum’ [‘that for us [the
cross] might be a shield against the cruel arrows of the enemies’]. Only three

43 See, e.g., the second antiphon for Lauds: ‘Helena sancta dixit ad iudam comple
desiderium meum et vive super terram ut ostendas mihi qui dicitur calvarie locus
ubi absconditum est pretiosum lignum dominicum Alleluia.’ [‘St Helena said to
Judas, “Fulfill my desire, and remain among the living on earth, so that you may
show me on earth that place that is called Calvary, where the precious wood of the
Lord is hidden.” Alleluia.’]

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Table 4.1 Chants and psalms for the Office of Inventio Crucis in SG 391, pp. 61–6

Rubrics (in small caps), CANTUS

genre abbreviation and chant incipit (in roman type) number
in sanctae crucis inventione . in vigilia ad vesperum
R. Hoc signum crucis * 006845
in evangelio
A. Helena desiderio plena orabat 003023
ad invitatorium
A. Surrexit dominus vere* 001166
in i nocturno
Psal. Domine dominus noster* Conserva me* Domine in virtute
[tua]* Domini est terra* Magnus dominus* Iubilate deo*
R. Hoc signum crucis V. Cum sederit filius 006845,
006845a
R. Agnus dei Christus* 006065
R. Surrexit pastor bonus* 007742
in ii nocturno
Psal. Confitebimur* Notus in iudea* Bonum est confidere*
Cantate domino i* Dominus regnavit ex[u]ltet* Cantate [domino] ii*
R. Dulce lignum dulces clavos V. Hoc signum crucis erit 006530,
006530a
R. Ecce vicit leo* 006616
R. Dignus es domine accipere* 006448
in iii nocturno
R. Crux fidelis inter omnes V. O crux admirabilis evacuatio 006351,
006351c
R. Crux benedicta nitet V. O crux gloriosa o crux adoranda 006350,
006350b
R. O crux benedicta que sola fuisti V. Mihi autem absit 007265,
007265a
R. O crux gloriosa o crux adoranda V. Mihi autem absit 007266,
007266a
in matutinis laudibus
A. Helena constantini mater 003022
A. Helena sancta dixit ad iudam 003024
A. Mors et vita apposita sunt 003809
A. Cumque ascendisset iudas 002056
A. Orabat iudas deus deus meus 004172
A. Cum orasset iudas 002020
in evangelio
A. Tunc precipit eos omnes igne 005249
ad vesperam
R. O crux benedicta* 007265

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 Lori Kruckenberg

Table 4.1 continued

Rubrics (in small caps), CANTUS

genre abbreviation and chant incipit (in roman type) number
in evangelio
A. Lignum vite in cruce tua 003628
A. Ecce crucem domini fugite 002500
A. Per signum crucis de inimicis 004264
A. Dulce lignum dulces clavos dulce pondus sustinuit 002432
A. O magnum pietatis opus mors mortua tunc est 004035
A. Salva nos Christe salvator per virtutem 004686
A. O crux benedicta quia in te 004017
A. O crux gloriosa o crux adoranda 004018
A. Nos autem gloriari oportet 003953
A. O crux benedicta que sola fuisti 004016
A. Tuam crucem adoramus domine 005227
A. Adoramus te Christe 001287
A. Salvator mundi salva nos qui 004690
A. Crux benedicta nitet dominus 001961
A. Super omne ligna cedrorum crux 005061
A. Crux fidelis inter omnes 001962
A. Adoremus crucis signaculum 001292
A. O crux viride lignum 004020
A. O crux splendidior cunctis astris 004019
A. Crux alma fulget 001960
A. Sanctifica nos domine 004744
versus unde supra .
Psal. Mihi autem absit gloriari* Omnis terra adoret te deus*
Dominus regnavit a ligno* Surrexit dominus de sepulchro*
responsoriola unde supra .
R. Omnis terra adoret te et psallat V. Psalmum dicat nomini tuo 007322,
domine 007322a
R. Dominus regnavit a ligno V. Laetentur insulae multe 006525,
006525a
R. Surrexit dominus de sepulchro V. Qui pro nobis pependit 007738,
007738a
Key:
R. responsorium; responsoriolum
V. versus; versiculus
A. antiphona
Psal. psalmus; psalmi
* cued entry, incipit only
Spelling, capitalization and punctuation follow SG 391.

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

of the Inventio chants in the Sankt Gallen antiphoners make direct reference to
‘enemies’,44 but the text of ‘Sanctifica nos’ is unique in its reference to the cross
as a shield and in its reference to the enemies’ weapons. The ‘savage arrows’
(seva iacula) of the chant recall Ekkehard’s description of the invaders’ arrival
with quivers, sharpened arrows and javelins (‘pharetrati illi, pilis minantibus
et spiculis asperi’). Likewise, the symbol of the cross as a shield (obstaculum)
evokes the scene of the invader’s attempt to defile the cross atop the church
tower. The cross prevails as God’s shield, and Sankt Gallen is spared – the
Hungarian climbers are toppled, and their cohorts fail to set the monastery
ablaze.
The significance of ‘Sanctifica nos’ for Ekkehard’s narrative is further
complicated by consideration of its melodic tradition. Though the antiphon’s
mode 4 melody is fairly stable, there is one significant melodic variant: the
antiphon concludes in one of three different ways. (For a list of sources
surveyed and their ending types, see the table in Appendix 2.)45 The first
basic type concludes with the word redemisti, which consists of groups of one
to six notes, all limited to a range of D to a before cadencing on E – as seen in
the version in Graz, Universitätsbibliothek MS 30 (St Lambrecht, fourteenth-
century) in Fig. 4.1. The second type concludes with a brief or medium-length
Alleluia. In a pair of manuscripts from Augsburg, c. 1580 (Copenhagen, Det
kongelige Bibliotek Slotsholmen MSS Gl. Kgl. S. 3449 8o VI and Gl. Kgl.
S. 3449 8o XI), this nearly syllabic Alleluia is little more than an extension
of the aforementioned deuterus plagalis cadence on redemisti. More common
to second-type sources are cadential figures ranging from as few as ten or

44 These are the antiphon ‘Ecce crucem domini’, which includes the phrase, ‘Ecce
crucem Domini: fugite partes adverse’, and the antiphon ‘Per signum crucis’, with
the phrase, ‘De inimicis nostris libera nos’. The antiphon ‘O crux gloriosa’, and
a responsory with the identical text, both name diabolus as a vanquished agent,
but the word inimicus is not used. The text reads in full: ‘O crux gloriosa, o crux
adoranda, o lignum pretiosum et admirabile signum, per quod et diabolus est
victus et mundus Christi sanguine redemptus, alleluia.’
45 As of 21 August 2015, the CANTUS database listed forty-five entries for ‘Sanctifica

nos’ (cued incipits and full-scale repetitions included) in thirty-six sources. In

addition, I was able to locate this antiphon in another seven sources not at that
time surveyed by CANTUS: a thirteenth-century antiphoner from Sankt Gallen
(SG 389), as well as sources from Einsiedeln (eleventh-century), Stift St Nikola in
Passau (twelfth-century), St Vanne Abbey in Verdun (thirteenth-century) and Stift
Schäftlarn (fourteenth-century). It is also found in a late tenth-century miscellany
from St Alban in Mainz, where it occurs in the midst of processional antiphons,
and finally in a thirteenth-century gradual from Fontevrault, where it has been
rubricated as an offertory and assigned to the Mass for the Inventio crucis. My study
of this melody was greatly facilitated by the collection found at the Bruno-Stäblein-
Mikrofilm-Archiv at the Institut für Musikwissenschaft (Universität Würzburg).
In all I consulted thirty-one sources and transcribed the melodies from twenty-
seven of these, the basis for my melodic analysis. Consulted sources are listed in
Appendix 2.

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 Lori Kruckenberg

Fig. 4.1 Graz, Universitätsbibliothek MS 30, fol. 251v (selection)

Fig. 4.2 Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale MS 129, fol. 86r (selection)

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

eleven notes to as many as twenty-seven notes. In almost all readings of

this ending-type, the Alleluia remains in the lower part of the modal range –
generally within the compass of C to G – as can be seen in a thirteenth-century
antiphoner from St Vanne in Verdun (Fig. 4.2).46
The third type of reading closes with an elaborately set Alleluia – as in
the Sankt Gallen sources, where we find a sixty-note ‘coda’. (See, for instance,
the version in SG 391, Fig. 4.3.) The melodic reading in SG 391 and two later
Sankt Gallen antiphoners are found in a subset of mainly German sources.
While the Sankt Gallen manuscripts are notated with adiastematic neumes
and thus give no pitch referents, according to the diastematic readings in this
subset the final phrase extends well beyond the tessitura found in the Alleluia
of the second type.47 In the prolix Alleluia reading of type three, the final
phrase moves into the upper register of the mode 4 range. It climbs twice to
c, the highest note of the entire antiphon and otherwise sounded only twice
preceding this coda – first in the rising figure D–a–c on the first syllable of
signaculo at the clause ‘through the sign of the holy cross’, and a second time
in the same figure at the word defende in the petition ‘Defend us, Lord’. Yet
the Alleluia of the third ending type goes even higher, reaching high d, and
thus exceeding the upper bounds of the other versions of ‘Sanctifica nos’. As
a consequence, the type-three ending actually shifts the melodic climax of
the entire chant, not only raising it by a whole step, but more importantly
delaying the musical highpoint until the last few notes of the Alleluia.
This florid ending had initially been copied in a twelfth-century
manuscript from Klosterneuburg (Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-Chor­herren­
stifts­bibliothek CCl. 1013), but, as can be seen in Fig. 4.4, it was subsequently
erased (though many of the original notational figures can still be read).
In yet another Klosterneuburg antiphoner (Augustiner-Chor­herren­stifts­
bibliothek CCl. 589) ample space had been left for entering a long Alleluia,
as indicated by the inscribed text underlay ae … uia, but the final word was
never completed notationally.48

46 The version of ‘Sanctifica nos’ found in Limoges, Bibliothèque municipale MS 2 was

transposed up–mostly up a fourth with some phrases or events up a fifth, perhaps
indicating the use of partial transposition or conjuncta. However, if this reading is
‘re-transposed’ down to E, the concluding Alleluia falls in the range of E to b-natural.
47 Diastematic readings are found in a twelfth-century antiphoner from Zwiefalten

(Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Aug. perg. 60) but notated anew in the
thirteenth century, and fourteenth-century antiphoners from Einsiedeln and
Klosterneuburg bei Wien (respectively Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek Codex 611 and
Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftsbibliothek CCl. 1018).
48 The bibliography on the Klosterneuburg chant tradition is extensive, but I point

especially to three recent studies: D. Lacoste, ‘The Earliest Klosterneuburg

Antiphoners’ (PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 2000); R. Klugseder,
‘Studien zur mittelalterlichen liturgischen Tradition der Klosterneuburger
Augustinerklöster St Maria und St Magdalena’, Musica Austriaca 27 (2008), 11–42;
M. L. Norton and A. J. Carr, ‘Liturgical Manuscripts, Liturgical Practice and

77
 Lori Kruckenberg

Fig. 4.3 St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 391, p. 65 (selection)

Fig. 4.4 Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftsbibliothek CCl. 1013,

fol. 160r (selection)

Fig. 4.5 Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek Codex 83:

(a, above) fol. 56r (selection); (b, below) fol. 56v (selection)

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

A melodic survey of ‘Sanctifica nos’ as centred on the three ending-types

shows that the elaborate Alleluia explicit of the Sankt Gallen tradition was
not universal. Indeed, it may have been ‘contested’ in some places – as
the three aforementioned antiphoners from Klosterneuburg indicate – or
the antiphon’s ending may have been subject to change over time – as the
differing solutions in the Einsiedeln books show. Based on my survey of
thirty-one sources, the transmission of this melismatic ending does not
appear to be tied especially or exclusively to the monastic cursus (as can be
observed in Appendix 2). Neither does this ending seem especially local or
regional – for it is not limited to the Bodenseeraum, Swabia or, more generally,
the southern German regions – nor is it more typical of earlier or later sources.
Thus, for instance, the antiphoner that is now Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek MS
83 offers an example of the more modest Alleluia conclusion (see Fig. 4.5).
This eleventh-century antiphoner is roughly contemporaneous with both
the oldest Sankt Gallen antiphoner and the writing of the Casus sancti Galli.
Moreover, this manuscript belonged to the neighbouring Benedictine cloister
of Einsiedeln, about 60 miles (100 kilometres) from Sankt Gallen, and, as we
know from other tenth- and eleventh-century liturgical manuscripts from
Einsiedeln, that abbey’s chant tradition was often similar to that of the Gallus
cloister, if not dependent upon Sankt Gallen.49
There is thus no way of knowing whether Ekkehard was aware that the
long concluding flourish of ‘Sanctifica nos’ sung in his house was unusual
or far from standard. At the same time, Ekkehard had experienced life
beyond his cloister’s walls, spending a decade at Mainz and, according to
a passage in the Casus, having travelled some distances (as, for example, to
Longemer in the Vosges Mountains, about 50 kilometres west of Colmar).50
Furthermore, we know he encountered liturgical traditions elsewhere, as
his Ingelheim Easter report makes clear.51 It is also worth noting that in his

the Women of Klosterneuburg’, Traditio 66 (2011), 67–169. As several authors

have noted, the differences among chant manuscripts from the double house
at Klosterneuburg may in part have something to do with their destined uses in
either the liturgy of the canons or in that of the canonesses. The Klosterneuburg
sources also show different strains of influences (diocesan, Augustinian, Swabian,
Hirsauian), and of interest for the current study are MSS CCl. 1013, 589 and 1018,
which Norton and Carr note to show different mixtures and degrees of influences
of Swabian and/or Hirsau-related Visitatio sepulchri traditions. See M. L. Norton
and A. J. Carr, ‘Liturgical Manuscripts’, pp. 96–105, 120–37. One might ask if a
similar sort of relationship could explain the presence in far-away Klosterneuburg
of the type-three ending of ‘Sanctifica nos’ known mainly in Swabian sources from
Sankt Gallen, Zwiefalten/Reichenau and fourteenth-century Einsiedeln.
49 See, for instance, the various contributions to the commentary of Codex 121
Einsiedeln. Faksimile und Kommentarband, ed. O. Lang, 2 vols. (Weinheim-Basel,
1991).
50 Casus sancti Galli, pp. 162–4.
51 Ibid, pp. 140–2.

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 Lori Kruckenberg

description of Heribald’s singing, Ekkehard uses the word decantare (‘et ipse
decantabat’), a verb that stresses that the antiphon was sung all the way
through or to its end.52 Is it possible that, as with the text of the antiphon
and its unusual mention of enemies and weaponry, Ekkehard alluded to the
melodic elaboration of Sankt Gallen’s ‘Sanctifica nos’ conclusion – the most
prolix Alleluia of all of the Inventio crucis chants in Gallus antiphoners – to
help explain the miraculous rescue of Heribald and the cleric? To that end, it
might be helpful to consider alongside the words and melody of the antiphon
Ekkehard’s description of the ‘performance’ of the chant in his narrative.
In addition to the possible significance of decantare, Ekkehard’s description
of the cleric’s singing includes a particular use of incipere: ‘antiphonam de
sancta cruce … “Sanctifica nos” lacrimans inceperat.’53 Certainly incepere
is a common verb, yet in musical-liturgical writings it has a more technical
meaning (‘to intone’), and it indicates the learnedness of the singer in a
hierarchy of musical abilities.54 In contrast, Heribald, ‘rough with voice’ (voce
raucosus) exemplifies sonic qualities most certainly not prized in a singer. As
expressed by Isidore of Seville and Aurelian of Réôme (among other medieval
writers), the voice of the ideal cantor should never be raw, raucous, husky,
hoarse or dissonant, but always resonant, clear, illustrious, melodious, sweet,
liquid and sharp.55
Ekkehard adds that when the Hungarians heard ‘Sanctifica nos’, they
were drawn to this ‘unknown song’ and reacted first with frenetic leaps and
swordplay. Their games, however, turned violent when the cleric abandoned
his sung prayer to the cross to implore his captors. Here, Ekkehard could
be suggesting the steadfastness of Heribald’s petition to the cross was the
cause of the cleric’s ultimate rescue, for Chapter 19 of the Rule of St Benedict
instructs singers on the following points:

52 Ibid, p. 120.
53 Ibid.
54 Verbs used to express ‘to intone’ include incipere, inchoare and imponere. Ekkehard
also (unusually) employs levare to mean ‘to intone’ in a pair of passages in the Casus,
perhaps to connect the actions of the cantors to the great psalmist and cantor King
David. See Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 42–7. See also H. E.
Loth, ‘A Study of the Lexicography of the “Casus sancti Galli” of Ekkehardus IV’
(PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1936). For extensive catalogues of ‘singing verbs’
as found in liturgical poetry, see G. Iversen, ‘Verba canendi in Tropes and Sequences’,
in Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century, ed. Herren et al., I, 444–73.
55 Isidore, Etymologies III.xx.10–14, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1911). For a
new English translation, see Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S. Barney et al.
(Cambridge, 2002), pp. 96–7. Isidore provides an abridged version of this in his
chapter on the ‘Psalmist’ in De ecclesiasticis officiis II.12, PL 83, 792; for the English,
see De ecclesiasticis officiis, trans. T. L. Knoebel (New York, 2008), p. 83. In the ninth
century, Aurelian of Réôme adopts similar language; see Aurelianus Reomensis,
Musica disciplina, ed. L. Gushee, Corpus scriptorum de musica 21 (Rome, 1975),
pp. 69–70.

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Ubique credimus divinam esse praesentiam et oculos Domini in omni

loco speculari bonos et malos. Maxime tamen hoc sine aliqua dubitatione
credamus, cum ad opus divinum adsistimus. Ideo semper memores simus
quod ait propheta: Servite Domino in timore [Ps. 2. 11], et iterum Psallite
sapienter [Ps. 46. 8], et In conspectu angelorum psallam tibi [Ps. 137. 1]. Ergo
consideremus qualiter oporteat in conspectu divinitatis et angelorum eius
esse, et sic stemus ad psallendum ut mens nostra concordet voci nostre.56

[We believe that the divine presence is everywhere and that the eyes of the
Lord observe the good and the wicked in every place. Let us believe this most
of all, without a trace of doubt, when we are present at the divine office.
Therefore let us always remember what the prophet says: Serve the Lord in
fear, and again, Sing psalms sagely, and I will sing to you in the sight of the
angels. So let us consider how we ought to behave in the sight of the divinity
and his angels, and stand to sing psalms in such a way that our spirits and
voices are in harmony.]

Heribald, though lacking in vocal refinement or advanced musical abilities,

nevertheless fulfils the monastic charge: psalle sapienter. As a trusting servant,
he harmonized heart, mind and voice as he offered up his chanted petition,
never losing faith or forgetting his God.

Conclusion: Reading Cited Chants

Ekkehard’s citation of ‘Sanctifica nos’ is just one of twenty-one examples of

‘sung action’ in the Casus sancti Galli. Based on the analyses of eight other
examples completed thus far, I hypothesize that Ekkehard achieves a variety
of things when he cites such acts in his narration: chant can serve as speech or
thought; present an argument or support a cause; anticipate a change of heart
or accompany a divine intervention; supply a subtext; or offer intentional
misdirection and finesse a wished-for set of outcomes.57 In all cases studied
thus far, Ekkehard uses song to assert his cloister’s continuing adherence
to the Rule of Benedict, as well as the brothers’ vows to maintain monastic
discipline. Cited chants therefore seem to have carried meaning for the

56 Rule of Benedict, ed. and trans. Venarde, pp. 90–1.

57 I have discussed two examples (‘Deus qui sedes’ and ‘Laus tibi sit, O fidelis Deus’)
at length in Kruckenberg, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 38–51, and a third
example (‘Pater iuste’) briefly in the same study, pp. 31–32. In studies currently
underway, I explore Ekkehard’s pairing of the chants ‘Cives apostolorum’ and
‘Summi conatibus’ in a story challenging an external attempt to reform Sankt Gallen,
and his citation of the contrafact ‘Thalassi ke potami’ [sic] of ‘Maria et flumina’ as
the oldest known composition by a female composer in the tradition of the Latin
West, as well as his possible allusion, by means of the ‘Deus in adiutorium’ in
Casus, Chapter 57, to a vita’s description of St Wiborada learning chant as a sign of
particular holiness and girding against temptation.

81
 Lori Kruckenberg

intended audience of monks, oblates and pupils, and these references tapped
into the audience’s musical sensibilities and aural recall, drawing on his
readers’ reservoir of musical knowledge.
In his critical edition of 1980, Hans Haefele helpfully provided extensive
footnotes indicating more than 300 quotations, paraphrases and allusions
to a variety of literary sources, including Scripture, Isidore, Benedict, and
various vite, as well as Terence, Virgil, Lucan, Ambrose and Sedulius. In only
four places in the Casus does Haefele identify cited chant or some aspect of
musical-liturgical contexts of the chant in question – yet the sixty references to
musical texts in the Casus illustrate another important portion of Ekkehard’s
‘library’, namely chant books kept there and in the choir. Understanding
the meaning and tradition of the liturgical song ‘Sanctifica nos’ and other
‘cantorial’ references in the Casus, then, may provide yet another variety of
‘textual’ references, and these sung acts underscore the close, interlocking
relationship that chroniclers, historians, cantors and liturgists enjoyed at
medieval Sankt Gallen. In such cases, Ekkehard the chronicler is clearly also
Ekkehard the singer, a monk who is steeped in the liturgy of his cloister and
who relies on his ‘cantorial’ knowledge to help tell his story.

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Appendix 1
Sixty references to chants and melodies in
Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

This table reflects a chant reference identified in the Casus sancti Galli since the
publication of my study, ‘Ekkehard’s Use of Musical Detail’, pp. 26–30. For
additional information on several of Ekkehard’s unspecified chant references
and named composers, as well as references provided with neumes in the
oldest copy of the Casus, see Tables 3.1 and 3.2 of that study. In what follows,
italic print indicates a textual incipit; small capitals a melody name.

Chapter Cited music Use of musical

citation in narrative
As As sung
attribution occurrence
or act
6 Humili prece x
6 Ardua spes mundi x
6 Hodie cantandus est x
6 unspecified sequences x
14 unspecified praises for the reception of a king (x) x
24 Pater iuste x
30 Kyrieleison (Easter morning) x
34 unspecified verses and melodies x
37 unspecified melodies x
42 Deus in adiutorium meum intende x
44 Te deum laudamus x
46 Hodie cantandus [est] x
46 Omnium virtutum gemmis x
46 Quoniam Dominus Ihesus Christus, etc. x
46 Omnipotens genitor fons origo, etc. x
46 Gaudete et cantate x
46 unspecified tropes x
46 Viri Galilei (offertory) x
46 Sollempnitatem huius devoti filii ecclesie x
46 unspecified chants x
46 unspecified sequences and tropes (x)

83
 Lori Kruckenberg

Chapter Cited music Use of musical

citation in narrative
As As sung
attribution occurrence
or act
47 metenses (i.e. minor and maior) x
47 romana x
47 amoena x
47 unspecified textings of metenses
47 unspecified texting of romana x
47 unspecified texting of amoena x
47 frigdora x
47 occidentana x
47 unspecified texting of frigdora x
47 unspecified texting of occidentana x
54 Sanctifica nos x
57 Deus in adiutorium x
59 Kyrie eleison (unspecified) x
66 unspecified sequence (Easter Sunday) x
74 Deus qui sedes x
76 Laus tibi sit, o fidelis Deus x
80 Prompta mente canamus x
80 Summum preconem Christi x
80 Qui benedici cupitis x
80 A solis occasu x
80 unspecified antiphons (St Afra) x
80 unspecified sequence (St Afra) x
80 O martyr eterni patris x
80 Ambulans Ihesus x
80 Adoremus gloriosissimum x
80 texting ‘in lidio Charlomannico’ x
86 Te Deum laudamus x
94 Maria et flumina x
94 Thalassi ke potami x x
102 Cives apostolorum x
108 Summis conatibus x x
111 unspecified hymns of blessing x

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Chapter Cited music Use of musical

citation in narrative
As As sung
attribution occurrence
or act
113 Tu autem x
119 unspecified antiphons (Assumption BVM) x
123 unspecified antiphons (St Otmar) x
123 Rector aeterni metuendi secli x
123 unspecified verses (reception of kings) x
123 unspecified hymn (unmartyred virgin) x
133 Te Deum laudamus x
146 act of composing of unspecified chants (x)

Appendix 2
Sources of ‘Sanctifica nos’ consulted, transcribed and analysed

Source Provenance Date Cursus* Ending type

long ‘Alleluia’
short/medium
‘redemisti’

unknown
‘Alleluia’

Aachen, Domarchiv, Aachen, XIII2/2 S x

G 20, fol. 259v Marienstift

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Quedlinburg, XIin S x

Preussischer Kulturbesitz, St Servatius
Mus. Ms. 40047, fol. 78v

Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Franconia XII2/2 M x

Diözesan- und Dom- (Würzburg?)
bibliothek, Cod. 215,
fol. 100rv

Copenhagen, Det Augsburg 1580 S x

kongelige Bibliotek
Slotsholmen, Gl. Kgl.
Samling, 3449 8o VI,
fols. 181v–182v

* M = monastic   S = secular

85
 Lori Kruckenberg

Source Provenance Date Cursus* Ending type

long ‘Alleluia’
short/medium
‘redemisti’

unknown
‘Alleluia’
Copenhagen, Det Augsburg 1580 S x
kongelige Bibliotek
Slotsholmen, Gl. Kgl.
Samling, 3449 8o XI,
fols. 104v–105r

Einsiedeln, Stifts- Einsiedeln XI2/2 M x

bibliothek, Codex 83,
fol. 56rv

Einsiedeln, Stifts- Einsiedeln XIV1/2 M x

bibliothek, Codex 611,
fol. 107v

Graz, Universitäts­ Sankt XIV M x

bibliothek, MS 30, Lambrecht
fol. 251v

Karlsruhe, Badische Zwiefalten, XIIex/ M x

Landesbibliothek, later XIII
Aug. perg. 60, fol. 148v Reichenau

Klosterneuburg, Kloster­ XIV S (x)a

Augustiner Chorherren­ neuburg
stift­bibliothek, CCl. 589,
fol. 20r

Klosterneuburg, Kloster­ XII S inc.b

Augustiner Chorherren­ neuburg
stift­bibliothek, CCl. 1012,
fol. 68r

Klosterneuburg, Kloster­ XII S (x)c

Augustiner Chorherren­ neuburg
stiftbibliothek, CCl 1013,
fol. 160r

Klosterneuburg, Kloster­ XIV1/2 S x

Augustiner Chorherren­ neuburg
stiftbibliothek, CCl. 1018,
fol. 36v

* M = monastic   S = secular

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 Chant in Ekkehard IV’s Casus sancti Galli

Source Provenance Date Cursus* Ending type

long ‘Alleluia’
short/medium
‘redemisti’

unknown
‘Alleluia’
Limoges, Bibliothèque Paris for XIIImed (M) x
municipale, MS 2, Fontevrault
fol. 137r

Munich, Bayerische Freising or XIII S x

Staatsbibliothek, diocese
Clm 6423, fol. 13r

Munich, Bayerische Schäftlarn XIII/ S x

Staatsbibliothek, XIV
Clm 17010, fol. 175r

New Haven, Beinecke Lambach XIIex M x

Library, MS 481–51,
fol. 102v

Bodl, Canon. Lit. 202, S. Germany, XIII S? x

fol. 66v later Sondrio

Bodl, Laud. misc. 284, Würzburg XII M? x

fol. 56r

BnF, nal 1535, fol. 105r Sens XIII S inc.d

Piacenza, Biblioteca Piacenza XII S x

Capitolari, c. 65, fol. 347v

Rouen, Bibliothèque Jumièges XIII M x

municipale, MS 248,
fol. 84v

SG 388, p. 236 Sankt Gallen XII M x

SG 389, pp. 187–8 Sankt Gallen XIII2/2 M x

SG 391, p. 65 Sankt Gallen c. 990– M x

1000

Utrecht, Universiteits­ Utrecht, XII2/2 S x

bibliotheek, Hs 406, Mariakerk
fols. 111v–112r

* M = monastic   S = secular

87
 Lori Kruckenberg

Source Provenance Date Cursus* Ending type

long ‘Alleluia’
short/medium
‘redemisti’

unknown
‘Alleluia’
Valenciennes, St Amand XII M x
Bibliothèque municipale,
MS 114, fol. 151v

Verdun, Bibliothèque Verdun, XIII M x

municipale, MS 129, St Vanne
fol. 86r

Vienna, Österreichische Mainz, Xex (M) x

Nationalbibliothek, St Alban
Cod. 1888, fol. 195r

Vienna, Österreichische Augsburg, XIII M x

Nationalbibliothek, St Ulrich and
Cod. 1890, fol. 267rv Afra

Vorau, Stiftsbibliothek, Salzburg XIV1/2 S x

MS 287, fol. 174v

a ‘Alleluia’ ending (presumably the long type) was prepared with text underlay
but never notated.
b Entered in source as incipit only: no ending given.
c ‘Alleluia’ ending (long type) was entered but subsequently erased.
d Entered in source as incipit only: no ending given.

* M = monastic   S = secular

88
 part ii
The Eleventh Century
 5
Adémar de Chabannes (989–1034) as Musicologist

James Grier

Today, Adémar de Chabannes, monk of the abbey of St Cybard in Angoulême

during the early eleventh century, is famous for two things: he was the most
respected historian of his day in Aquitaine and he advocated the apostolicity
of St Martial, patron saint of the abbey that bears his name in Limoges,
where Adémar, due to his strong family connections, spent a good deal of
time over the early decades of the eleventh century. These accomplishments
are well known to modern scholarship principally through the work of
Richard Landes, Daniel Callahan and Pascale Bourgain. The third book of
Adémar’s Chronicon remains an essential primary source for Aquitanian
history of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, and historians continue
to mine his sermons for information about the abbey of St Martial.1 A third

1 The principal text is Adémar de Chabannes, Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain et al.,

Ademari Cabannensis Opera Omnia Pars I, CCCM 129 (Turnhout, 1999). The seminal
study of his historical writing is R. Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of
History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034, Harvard Historical Studies 117 (Cambridge,
MA, 1995); see also D. F. Callahan, ‘The Sermons of Adémar of Chabannes and
the Cult of St Martial of Limoges’, RB 86 (1976), 251–95; Callahan, ‘Adémar de
Chabannes et la paix de Dieu’, Annales du Midi 89 (1977), 21–43; Callahan, ‘Adémar
of Chabannes, Apocalypticism and the Peace Council of Limoges of 1031’, RB 101
(1991), 32–49; P. Bourgain, ‘L’Aquitaine d’Adémar de Chabannes’, in L’Aquitaine des
littératures médiévales (XIe–XIIIe siècle), ed. J.-Y. Casanova and V. Fasseur, Cultures
et Civilisations Médiévales 51 (Paris, 2011), pp. 97–107; P. Depreux, ‘Adémar de
Chabannes et le souvenir des abbés de Saint-Martial de Limoges’, Bulletin de la
Société Archéologique et Historique du Limousin 137 (2009), 5–23; Depreux, ‘Réforme
monastique et discours historiographique: L’évocation par Adémar de Chabannes
de la dédicace de la basilique du Sauveur et de l’introduction de l’observance
bénédictine à Saint-Martial de Limoges au IXe siècle’, in Rerum gestarum scriptor:
Histoire et historiographie au Moyen Âge, Mélanges Michel Sot, ed. M. Coumert et al.,
Cultures et Civilisations Médiévales 58 (Paris, 2012), pp. 435–52. On Adémar’s
advocacy of the apostolicity of St Martial, see additionally L. Saltet, ‘Une
discussion sur Saint Martial entre un Lombard et un Limousin en 1029’, Bulletin
de Littérature Ecclésiastique 26 (1925), 161–86, 279–302; Saltet, ‘Une prétendue lettre
de Jean XIX sur Saint Martial fabriquée par Adémar de Chabannes’, Bulletin
de Littérature Ecclésiastique 27 (1926), 117–39; Saltet, ‘Les faux d’Adémar de
Chabannes: Prétendues décisions sur Saint Martial au concile de Bourges du 1er
novembre 1031’, Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 27 (1926), 145–60; Saltet, ‘Un
cas de mythomanie historique bien documenté: Adémar de Chabannes (988–1034)’,
Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 32 (1931), 149–65.

90
 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

area of endeavour has more recently attracted attention, namely Adémar’s

contributions to the musical community at St Martial during his sojourns
there, the subject of my own research.2
Adémar emerges from his writings as a knowledgeable and sophisticated
historian, intimately familiar with texts that remain central primary sources
for the history of the early Middle Ages, including Gregory of Tours, the Gesta
regum Francorum (which he used as the source of Book I of his Chronicon), the
Royal Frankish Annals and the Liber pontificalis.3 Moreover, his historical
writing contains a host of references to musical practices in Aquitaine and
elsewhere that unequivocally demonstrate his detailed knowledge of the art.
He bases the second book of his Chronicon on the Royal Frankish Annals, into
which he interpolated a narrative of the debate between the Frankish and
papal cantors that occurred in Rome during Charlemagne’s visit to the papal
curia of Adrian I at Easter 787.4 He in turn borrows this narrative from the
biography of Gregory the Great written in Rome by John the Deacon between
873 and 875. Adémar sharpens the historical details of John’s account by
correcting him – John, for example, states that Adrian was not yet pope
when Charlemagne first visited Rome in 774, but Adémar knew better from a
comparison of the Liber pontificalis, which he had just edited for Bishop Roho
of Angoulême, with the Royal Frankish Annals, the source of his Book II –
and by placing the debate in the context of the Frankish reform of chant, the
motivation for which Adémar attributes to this incident.5
In several other literary works, Adémar uses technical terms for genres
of liturgical music that exhibit an intimate knowledge of musical practices –
for example, his account of the music sung at Mass in the abbey of St Jean
d’Angély at the public acknowledgement of the newly discovered skull of
John the Baptist; his interpolation into the notice of Pope Adrian II in the
Liber pontificalis in which he details the musical innovations of the pontiff;
and his narrative of the music sung at the Council of Limoges in 1031, the
setting for Adémar’s fictional debate regarding the apostolicity of St Martial.6
In all of these, he identifies musical genres with technical terms such as

2 The music is now available in modern editions: Adémar de Chabannes, Opera

liturgica et poetica: Musica cum textibus, ed. J. Grier, 2 vols., Ademari Cabanensis Opera
Omnia Pars II, CCCM 245, 245A (Turnhout, 2012). See also Grier, The Musical World
of a Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (Cambridge,
2006).
3 On his use of historical sources, see ‘Introduction’ to Adémar, Chronicon, ed.
Bourgain et al., pp. lxiii–lxv.
4 Adémar, Chronicon II.8, pp. 89–90.
5 See J. Grier, ‘Adémar de Chabannes, Carolingian Musical Practices, and Nota
Romana’, JAMS 56 (2003), 43–98.
6 St Jean d’Angély: Adémar, Chronicon III.56, p. 176. Adrian II: Le liber pontificalis:
Texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. L. Duchesne, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (Paris, 1955–57),
I, clxxxii(b) n. 1. Council of 1031: [Adémar de Chabannes], Acta concilii Lemovicensis
II, PL 142, 1353–1400 (1377D–8A). See Grier, Musical World, pp. 277–80.

91
 James Grier

tropi, laudes (meaning tropes of the Gloria) and sequentiae. These terms not
only vivify his narrative prose by creating a more precise context for the
presentation of musical events, but they also verify the author’s own technical
expertise.
Similarly, Adémar shows sophisticated historical acumen in the way
he shapes the texts for the chants that constitute the Offices for SS Valérie
and Austriclinian. The cults of these two saints held strong associations
with Martial, the saint for whom Adémar strove to assert an apostolic
identity. Austriclinian accompanied Martial across the Alps on his mission
to evangelize Limoges, a journey that included six other clerics dispatched to
cities in Gaul, most notably Denis, the eventual martyr of Paris. Valérie was
Martial’s first convert in Limoges. Adémar composed the Offices to convince
Jordan, bishop of Limoges, to endorse his eccentric campaign to win apostolic
status for Martial, making Austriclinian the first bishop of the city and
therefore Jordan’s distinguished predecessor. Owing to John A. Emerson’s
pioneering work on these two Offices, we know that Adémar created the
texts for the chants by drawing on his own sermons. But behind those texts,
whether the chant texts or the sermons from which he extracted them, lies a
critical appreciation of the available historical sources for the lives of these
two saints: the uitae of Martial and Valérie herself, but above all, the history of
Gregory of Tours.7
Beyond his deep knowledge of these texts, Adémar also exhibited a fine
critical acuity as a historian, reconciling errors of fact in John the Deacon and
establishing his own narrative from a judicious reading of his sources.8 When
he turned to the production of music manuscripts during two of his stays at
St Martial, he applied many of the same critical tools to the establishment of
the musical texts, evincing the attributes of a sophisticated music historian,
combining his expertise in history and music to create extraordinary
documents in a way that makes him deserving of the anachronistic epithet,
musicologist.
The crowning achievement of these endeavours, of course, is his advocacy
for the apostolic status of Martial, whose tomb became the site of the abbey
that bears his name in Limoges, an important pilgrimage destination
already in the fifth century. Adémar, despite his knowledge of Gregory
of Tours, who identifies Martial as a third-century Roman missionary
to Limoges, recast him as a first-century Jew, intimate of Jesus, attendee
at the Last Supper, companion of St Peter and his personal delegate to

7 J. A. Emerson, ‘Two Newly Identified Offices for Saints Valeria and Austriclinianus
by Adémar de Chabannes (MS Paris, Bibl. Nat., Latin 909, fols. 79–85v)’, Speculum
40 (1965), 31–46; Grier, ‘Hoax, History, and Hagiography in Adémar de Chabannes’s
Texts for the Divine Office’, in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed.
R. A. Maxwell (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 67–72.
8 Grier, ‘Adémar and Nota Romana’, pp. 56–61.

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 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

Gaul.9 He packaged this radical revision of biblical history as told by Gregory

in an elaborate liturgy that he confected for the saint’s feast day, as well as
those of several of his companions, including Austriclinian and Valérie. These
liturgies involved the adoption of existing texts, to maintain continuity with
prevailing liturgical practices, the adaptation of chants whose texts identified
Martial as a bishop and the creation of entirely new chants, demonstrating
his abilities as a composer and musician.10
Our pathway to an appreciation of these achievements lies in the musical
manuscripts Adémar produced at the abbey of St Martial. During the
period 1027–29, Adémar twice fled difficult personal situations at his home
abbey in Angoulême for refuge at St Martial. On these visits, he inscribed
the musical notation for two elaborate liturgico-musical manuscripts in the
abbey’s scriptorium, now BnF lat. 1121 and 909.11 Why would the monks
of the scriptorium entrust this task to a monk from another abbey? Adémar,
of course, was well known at St Martial because of previous visits there,
especially his prolonged stay around 1010 when he pursued advanced
education under the tutelage of his paternal uncle Roger de Chabannes, who
eventually became the abbey’s cantor.12
The disciplines he studied with Roger would have included the liturgy,
its music and the notation used to record it. Moreover, Roger participated
in a major project to record all the liturgical music in use at the abbey, a
campaign I suspect (but cannot prove) he directed as cantor. Earlier attempts,
around the turn of the millennium, to produce music manuscripts had failed.
A fragmentary proper troper survives as the endpapers of BnF lat. 1834 and
the remnants of a processionale form the lower text of a palimpsest in the
last gathering of BnF lat. 1085.13 In the face of these apparent failures, the
musical community at St Martial renewed their efforts to create a permanent
record of their repertories early in the eleventh century, I think in its second
decade. This attempt succeeded and its results survive in BnF lat. 1085, an
abbreviated antiphoner that preserves the chants of the Divine Office, and in
BnF lat. 1120, a manuscript arranged in libelli that correspond to the liturgical

9 For a brief summary of the evidence for Martial’s life and the early history of the
abbey, see Grier, Musical World, pp. 4–6.
10 Grier, Musical World.
11 On BnF lat. 1121, see Grier, ‘The Musical Autographs of Adémar de Chabannes

(989–1034)’, Early Music History 24 (2005), 125–68 at 134–56; on BnF lat. 909, see
Grier, ‘Scriptio interrupta: Adémar de Chabannes and the Production of Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS latin 909’, Scriptorium 51 (1997): 234–50; Grier,
‘Musical Autographs’, pp. 156–9.
12 Grier, ‘Roger de Chabannes (d. 1025), Cantor of St Martial, Limoges’, Early Music

History 14 (1995), 53–119.

13 On BnF lat. 1834, see Emerson, ‘Fragments of a Troper from Saint Martial de

Limoges’, Scriptorium 16 (1962), 369–72; on the project as a whole, see Grier, ‘Roger
de Chabannes’, pp. 70–81.

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 James Grier

Table 5.1 The Libelli of BnF lat. 1120 and 1121

Libelli in BnF lat. 1120 Libelli in BnF lat. 1121

Proper tropes Proper tropes
Ordinary tropes Ordinary tropes
Prosae Sequentiae
Processional antiphons Tracts
Offertories Offertories
Antiphons Processional antiphons
Alleluias
Antiphons
Prose
Tonary
Antiphons
Office of the Trinity
Antiphons

repertories it preserves (see Table 5.1).14 In other publications, I characterize

this succession of genres as gradus ad parnassum, a progressive programme of
study for the young singer who aspires to become a soloist in the monastic
musical community, culminating in the ornate Offertories with their
verses.15
Adémar, then, received his invitation to provide the musical notation, first
for BnF lat. 1121 and then BnF lat. 909, because he was well known to the
monks of the scriptorium, who could always be assured of the quality of his
musical training, and, as the nephew of the cantor Roger, he was associated
with his uncle and the success of the project to codify the abbey’s musical
repertories. In fact, the St Martial monks received a good deal more than
they were anticipating, since Adémar used the opportunity to introduce
the key concept of accurate heighting to the Aquitanian notation in use at
the abbey.16 Previously, in BnF lat. 1120, for example, Aquitanian notation
used the vertical axis of writing to indicate melodic direction. Notes written

14 Grier, ‘Roger de Chabannes’, pp. 82–119.

15 Grier, Musical World, pp. 45–7; Grier, ‘Adémar de Chabannes (989–1034) and
Musical Literacy’, JAMS 66 (2013): 605–38 at 621–2.
16 P. Evans, The Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges, Princeton Studies

in Music 2 (Princeton, 1970), pp. 48, 121–5, first identified BnF lat. 1121 as the
earliest Aquitanian manuscript with precise relative pitch information; see also
A. E. Planchart, ‘The Transmission of Medieval Chant’, in Music in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. I. Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981),
pp. 347–63 (355). I identified Adémar as the music scribe of this manuscript, in ‘The
Musical Autographs’, pp. 134–56.

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 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

higher above the sung text sound higher on the gamut than those written
lower and closer to the text. Adémar, by regulating the height of the note
according to the musical distance from its neighbours, introduced relative
pitch information to Aquitanian notation.
Whatever the source of this innovation might have been, it is here, in its
imposition, that Adémar used many of the tools we would associate with
modern musicology. Many of the repertories for which Adémar provided the
melodies in BnF lat. 1121 also occur in lat. 1120: tropes of the Proper and the
Ordinary, processional antiphons, prosae (although the proser in lat. 1121 is
fragmentary) and Offertories. He could well have used the neumations in
lat. 1120 as at least a guide for those he inscribed in lat. 1121.17 But many of
the repertories in lat. 1121 have no parallel in lat. 1120: sequentiae, Tracts and
Alleluias. Where did he get the melodies for these chants? We shall see that
his procedure did not fundamentally differ between the two groups.
Figs. 5.1 and 5.2 show the opening of the Offertory ‘Tollite portas’ from
BnF lat. 1120 and 1121. First, 1120 gives only the incipit of the refrain, whereas
1121 provides the entire refrain, a decision made by the different text scribes
of these two manuscripts. But a comparison of the two neumations with a
transcription into modern notation (Ex. 5.1) makes it clear that the heighting
of 1120 offers only directional guidance, not specific information about pitch
relationships, while Adémar’s neumation in 1121 does show firm intervallic
data.18 The scribe of 1120 indicates direction with precision and, when the
melody moves in conjunct motion, provides accurate information, but he
writes intervals larger than a third without accuracy. It is important to note
that, for the purposes of the scribe and the users of this manuscript, this
form of notation is entirely sufficient. Those who used 1120 retained these
melodies in their memory, and from the notation derived information about
the direction of the melodic motion.
Adémar provides an entirely different graphic representation of the
melody, exploiting the vertical axis of writing to indicate precise intervallic
relations. To derive these data, it seems like that, in the first instance, he
would draw on his own memory of the chant, using the neumation of BnF lat.
1120 for a supplement. In this regard, his procedure probably resembles that
of most music scribes of the era, coordinating their own recollection of the

17 On Adémar’s use of BnF lat. 1120 as an exemplar for BnF lat. 1121 and 909, see
Grier, Musical World, pp. 159–82.
18 Compare the transcriptions in Offertoriale triplex cum versiculis (Solesmes, 1985),
no. 7 pp. 14–15; R. Hankeln, Die Offertoriums Prosuln der aquitanischen Handschriften:
Voruntersuchungen zur Edition des Offertoriumscorpus und seiner Erweiterung, 3 vols.,
Regensburger Studien zur Musikgeschichte, 2 (Tutzing, 1999), III, 18; R. Maloy,
Inside the Offertory: Aspects of Chronology and Transmission (New York, 2010), online
edition, no. 6, with commentary, pp. 253–6; and F. Ackermans et al., ‘Vorschläge zur
Restitution von Melodien des Graduale Romanum, Teil 29’, Beiträge zur Gregorianik
51 (2011), 11–56 (no. 97.4 pp. 36–7).

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 James Grier

Fig. 5.1 BnF lat. 1120, fol. 186r (selection)

melody with whatever written support was available. But more was at stake.
It would be unfair to characterize Adémar as an outsider in the scriptorium at
St Martial, but he did lack the indispensable credential to be regarded as an
insider: membership in the monastic community. So, he could not rely on his
reputation and the association with his uncle alone to convince his peers in
the scriptorium of the reliability of his neumations.
In constructing the sequentiary, the libellus of untexted and partially
texted sequences for the full liturgical year, over which he had sole discretion,
Adémar clearly strove to make his collection accord with practice at St Martial,
in regard to both the choice of pieces for each feast and the melodic fabric
of each chant.19 I strongly suspect that he canvassed the members of the

19 Grier, ‘Adémar de Chabannes and the Sequence and the Sequence at Saint-Martial
in the Early Eleventh Century’, in Medieval Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of
Richard Crocker, ed. J. A. Peraino (Middleton, WI, 2013), pp. 59–84.

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 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

Fig. 5.2 BnF lat. 1121, fol. 93r (selection)

Ex. 5.1 Offertory ‘Tollite portas’ (opening refrain and first verse only)

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ œ
‹ Tol - - li - te por - - tas

& œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ

‹ Do - mi - ni est ter - ra

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 James Grier

(a)

(b)

Fig. 5.3 (a) BnF lat. 1120, fol. 201v (selection);

(b) BnF lat. 1121, fol. 118r (selection)

abbey’s musical community to supplement, confirm and complement the

available written information regarding this repertory. So too, then, with the
Offertories, Adémar augmented his own memory and the spare written data
in BnF lat. 1120 with melodic information gleaned from his peers. Where BnF
lat. 1120 lacked a repertory, the Alleluias, for example, Adémar was obliged
to rely on memory alone to construct his neumation – his own memory and
the institutional memory of members of the community, without benefit of a
written exemplar.
Furthermore, in several places, Adémar supplements the intervallic
information he provides with indications of performing nuances. Fig. 5.3
shows a passage from the second verse of the Offertory ‘Confitebor tibi’ that
consists of six repeated notes. The scribe of BnF lat. 1120 writes them all in
a continuous row, whereas Adémar, in BnF lat. 1121, first separates them
into two groups of three notes each, and then characterizes the performing
style of each group with litterae significatiuae c, meaning celeriter, ‘fast’, and
another abbreviation (not encountered in Notker’s epistle about these litterae)
ln, presumably standing for lene or leniter, ‘gently’ or ‘mildly’.20 However
one was to interpret these two markings – and they do not seem to me to be
opposites – Adémar clearly envisages a contrast between the two groups, of
which there is no indication in 1120.
One final example further illustrates the nature of his accomplishment.
The Office of the Holy Trinity obviously held great importance for the
community at St Martial. The scribes of BnF lat. 1085, the abbey’s abbreviated
antiphoner, originally reserved one complete folio, the current fol. 70, for the
Office. When it did arrive at the abbey, a new set of scribes undertook to enter

20 For an edition of Notker’s letter, see J. Froger, ‘L’épitre de Notker sur les “lettres
significatives”: Édition critique’, Études Grégoriennes 5 (1962), 23–71.

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 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

Fig. 5.4 BnF lat. 1085, fol. 70r (selection)

it into the manuscript and simultaneously decided to provide full texts and
neumations, unlike the practice of the original scribes, who throughout the
manuscript provide for the most part only the incipits of the chant texts and
very sparing musical notation (see Figs. 5.4 and 5.5). Still, the music scribe
used heighting, as in BnF lat. 1120, that provides only directional information,
which the manuscript’s users would need to supplement with orally
transmitted information, but Adémar constructs a neumation that transmits
accurate relative pitch information, presumably, again, from his memory and
that of his peers.
We know he succeeded in this endeavour because of events of the
following year. Adémar remained at St Martial for the second half of 1027
and probably into the early months of 1028; we have no evidence of his
presence in Angoulême before 6 April, when he witnessed the mysterious
death of Count William of Angoulême. In the dynastic strife that followed,
Adémar fled for Limoges and refuge, once more, in the abbey of St Martial.21
In the meantime, the scriptorium there had embarked on an ambitious new
project, a commission of an elaborate troper-proser for the abbey of St Martin

21 Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits, pp. 178–93; and Grier, Musical World,
pp. 25–6.

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 James Grier

Fig. 5.5 BnF lat. 1121, fol. 223v (selection)

in Limoges, recently reformed under the Benedictine rule.22 The first scribe to
whom they assigned the inscription of the musical notation could not replicate
Adémar’s accurate heighting. So, when Adémar reappeared, probably in the
late spring or early summer 1028, the monks of the scriptorium immediately
set him to work writing the notation in this important manuscript, now BnF
lat. 909.

22 Grier, ‘Scriptio interrupta’, pp. 237–9.

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 Adémar de Chabannes as Musicologist

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 5.6 (a) BnF lat. 1120, fol. 50r (selection);

(b) BnF lat. 1121, fol. 30r (selection); (c) BnF lat. 909, fol. 43r (selection)

They had two reasons for inviting Adémar to complete BnF lat. 909. The
achievement of introducing accurate heighting was impressive enough on
its own merits, but I believe they were even more satisfied with the melodic
fabric of the neumations he provided for BnF lat. 1121.23 So, Adémar went
one important step beyond the accomplishments of Roger and his colleagues
in compiling the liturgical music used at the abbey in BnF lat. 1120 and 1085;
he created an accurate historical record of many of those melodies through
the precise and consistent imposition of accurate heighting to the notation,
showing the intervallic content of the melodies.
To achieve this result, Adémar must have applied many of the same tools
modern musicologists use to create a critical recension of a musical text. In
particular, he stole a page from the modern ethnomusicologist’s book of
strategies, and did field work among his peers in the musical community at
St Martial, consulting their individual and collective memories alongside his
own. For he could not rely on his memory alone, as well respected in the
community as he may have been on account of his own accomplishments
and the association with his uncle, Roger the cantor. On this collected
material, however, he also imposed his own critical awareness of the melodic
tradition.

23 Grier, ‘Adémar and Musical Literacy’, pp. 624–5.

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 James Grier

I close with two brief examples. In the prosae, the scribe of BnF lat. 1120
uses liquescence not to facilitate the enunciation of diphthongs or awkward
combinations of consonants, as most scribes do, but instead as melodic
ornaments. Adémar, exhibiting a much more utilitarian view of liquescence,
suppresses them.24 Second, he has altered the melodic fabric a number of times
to create a slightly different effect on a local level, reflecting the essentially
conservative environment in which he worked. Fig. 5.6 presents the end of a
trope element from the Mass for St Martial. It closes with the under-second
cadence familiar from the sequence repertory. On the second syllable of uota,
the scribe of BnF lat. 1120 extends the phrase with an anticipation of the note
a second below the final. Adémar, in BnF lat. 1121 and 909, suppresses this
note in order to articulate the cadential figure more cleanly. The modification
does not alter the melodic structure of the chant, and affects only this cadence,
but is the result of Adémar’s personal critical evaluation of the melodies
practised at the abbey and recorded in BnF lat. 1120.
To ensure the success of his project, Adémar needed, in the first instance,
to capture in writing the corporate memory of the St Martial community.
And he was confronting a much more difficult audience than that which the
modern musicologist does: the active participants and contributors to the
living musical tradition of the abbey. To succeed, he had to apply a critical
appraisal of that tradition in its historical context.

24 Grier, Musical World, pp. 169–74.

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 6
Cantor or Canonicus? In Search of Musicians
and Liturgists in Eleventh-Century Constance

Henry Parkes

In seeking to understand the disposition of personnel within early medieval

religious communities, we can do far worse than to consult the famous
confraternity books of Carolingian Reichenau and Sankt Gallen. In the lands
around Lake Constance, where the modern states of Germany, Austria and
Switzerland now converge, groups of ninth-century monks assembled (and
their successors expanded) extensive inventories of the members of other
Christian communities, both living and departed.1 The purpose of these
compilations was to faciliate networks of reciprocal intercession right across
Europe, in locations as widely dispersed as Provence, Normandy, Saxony,
Bavaria and Lombardy, and as far from Constance as Jerusalem. Many of the
entries were also accompanied by the specific ranks of those for whom prayer
was offered: not only the monks we might expect, but also monarchs, dukes
and counts, laymen, doctors, nuns, anchorites, priests, deacons, archpriests,
chancellors, chaplains, clerics, deans, priors, bishops, popes, patriarchs – and
cantors.
Confraternity books are not especially informative, as it turns out, about
the specific role of cantors within religious communities of this early period.
But what they lack in historical insight they make up for in methodological
counsel, because their pages exemplify an important point of ambiguity.
When we encounter the individual Purchart, who is titled ‘can’, or the
individual Ruadheri, titled ‘ca’, there is more than one possibility for the
expansion of these respective abbreviations.2 Does ‘can’ refer to the high
office of ‘cantor’, who, as later medieval descriptions tend to concur, took
charge of music and liturgy within a given institution?3 Does it simply
refer to the lowly rank of ‘cantor’, literally ‘singer’, to which young clerics
were sometimes ordained prior to the traditional entry-level position of

1 R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 156–73;
see also J. Hendrix, ‘Liturgy for the Dead and the Confraternity of Reichenau and
St Gall, 800–950’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2007).
2 Der Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau, ed. J. Autenrieth et al., MGH Libri Mem.
NS 1 (Hanover, 1979), p. 223, facsimile pp. 4, 126.
3 Fass A.

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 Henry Parkes

door-keeper?4 Or might it refer instead to a ‘canonicus’ (or ‘canon’), a

member of a community of priests associated with a cathedral or collegiate
church, whose coveted existence had a reputation – at least until the reform
movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries – as a sinecure for the sons
of the nobility?5 I cite this point of confusion not as a challenge to existing
readings of confraternity books, but as a cause for reflection in this important
collection of cantor-historian studies. To what extent can we be confident that
the ‘cantor’ we find documented in a particular historical source was always
in a position of high authority? Can we be sure that all ‘cantors’ had the same
broad remit within their respective communities, and that the normative
body of monastic customs from which our working definition of ‘cantor’
comes was indeed the norm? And how often, as the entries of Purchart and
Ruadheri gently suggest, might historical evidence of a ‘cantor’ appear
simply because we wish to find it?
The value of these questions will become clear in a chapter which tries
to shed light on the lives of early medieval canon-cantors. The intention is
not only to flesh out our incomplete understanding of musical and liturgical
activity within early communities of priests, but also to seek redress for
a historiography dominated by the achievements of monks, and by the
narratives of monks who chose to present their clerical counterparts in an
unfavourable light.6 Whether or not we accept those narratives, undisputed
is the fact that canons sang together in church. As we find out in the Regula
canonicorum of Chrodegang of Metz, an eighth-century template for canonical
life which draws heavily on the Benedictine Rule, canons were expected

4 R. E. Reynolds, ‘The De officiis vii graduum: Its Origins and Early Medieval
Development’, Mediaeval Studies 34 (1972), 113–51; R. E. Reynolds, ‘ “ At Sixes and
Sevens” – and Eights and Nines: The Sacred Mathematics of Sacred Orders in the
Early Middle Ages’, Speculum 54 (1979), 669–84.
5 For a sense of the tensions, familial and financial, among both canons and
canonesses, see H. Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social
Orders, trans. P. Geary (Chicago, 1991), pp. 224–30. Further bibliography on canons
is cited below.
6 A recent and most welcome corrective to this is J. Barrow, The Clergy in the
Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe,
c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge, 2015). Among existing studies which consider ‘cantors’
among communities of priests see G. Vecchi, ‘L’Insegnamento e la Pratica Musicale
nelle Communità dei Canonici’, in La Vita Comune del Clero nei Secoli XI e XII. Atti
della Settimana di Studio: Mendola, Settembre 1959, 2 vols. (Milan, 1962), II, 26–39;
M. Schuler, ‘Zur Geschichte des Kantors im Mittelalter’, in Bericht über den
Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress, Leipzig 1966, ed. C. Dahlhaus et
al. (Leipzig, 1970), pp. 169–73. Focused accounts of musical canons include Fass B;
Fass C; and B. Brand, Holy Treasure and Sacred Song: Relic Cults and Their Liturgies
in Medieval Tuscany (New York, 2014). See also H. Parkes, The Making of Liturgy in
the Ottonian Church: Books, Music and Ritual in Mainz, 950–1050 (Cambridge, 2015),
chs. 2, 4.

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 Cantor or Canonicus?

to perform both the Mass and the Office in community.7 Chrodegang was
famous for his musical initiatives, indeed, having been responsible for an
early attempt to import Roman chant to his cathedral at Metz. And when his
Rule was repackaged and ratified for all of Francia at the Council of Aachen in
816, one of the proclamations was concerned very specifically with canonical
‘cantors’, requiring that junior singers use their musical skills not to vaunt
their pride but to ‘encourage the people around them to meditate lovingly
upon heaven, not only by the sublime texts but also through the harmonious
sounds they produce’.8
This passage is sometimes construed as evidence for a musical official,
but there is nothing to suggest that musicians had a de facto place within
the hierarchy of clerical communities before the middle of the tenth century.
Among the earliest references to an official is that found in a disciplinary
document sent to the canons of Aschaffenburg in 976.9 An irrascible cantor
named Gozmar had lashed out in anger, we are told, resulting in the tragic
death of a school pupil who was standing too close. The story has been taken
as a symptom of the less than perfect standards in canonical communities
to this point, but no less important is the frame for this cautionary tale.
Willigis of Mainz, Gozmar’s bishop, documented the tragic events not only
to confirm the cantor’s punishment (a spell in a monastery) but also to sort
out a disfunctional community, much as bishops of the time were doing
in dioceses right across Europe.10 The new energies being injected into the
clerical life in this period help to explain a sudden profusion of references to
canon-cantors: from 986 onwards charters from Lucca Cathedral consistently
list the cantor near the top of the canonical hierarchy;11 the chronicler Richer
was in later centuries credited with having been both ‘cantor and canon’
in late tenth-century Reims;12 necrologies list two of the earliest cantors at

7 M. A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula
canonicorum in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2004). The relevant texts are edited
and translated in J. Bertram, The Chrodegang Rules: The Rules for the Common Life of
the Secular Clergy From the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (Aldershot, 2005).
8 Bertram, Chrodegang Rules, p. 164.
9 K. H. Rexroth, ‘Der Stiftsscholaster Herward von Aschaffenburg und das Schulrecht
von 976’, in 1000 Jahre Stift und Stadt Aschaffenburg: Festschrift zum Aschaffenburger
Jubiläumsjahr 1957, ed. W. Fischer, 2 vols. (Aschaffenburg, 1957), I, 203–30.
10 C. Dereine, ‘Vie commune, règle de Saint Augustin et chanoines réguliers au XIe
siècle’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 41 (1946), 365–406; J. Siegwart, Die Chorherren-
und Chorfrauengemeinschaften in der Deutschsprachigen Schweiz vom 6. Jahrhundert bis
1160, mit einem Überblick über die Deutsche Kanonikerreform des 10. und 11. Jh, Studia
Friburgensia NF 30 (Fribourg, 1962).
11 E. Kittel, ‘Der Kampf um die Reform des Domkapitels in Lucca im 11. Jahrhundert’,
in Festschrift Albert Brackmann, ed. L. Santifaller (Weimar, 1931), pp. 207–47 (p. 237).
12 J. Glenn, Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The Work and World of Richer of
Reims (Cambridge, 2004), p. 21.

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 Henry Parkes

Notre Dame as Lisiernus (d. 990) and Adelelmus (d. 1035);13 Margot Fassler
has brought to light an intriguing cantor’s book from the circle of Fulbert
of Chartres (d. 1028);14 and in the years around 1065 an individual named
Stephen identified himself in his own liturgical pocket-book as priest, cantor
and canon at Verona.15 In this period cantors (and precentors) also begin
to be named regularly as signatories in cathedral charters, with prominent
French examples including Tours (933), Chartres (950), Toul (971) and
Poitiers (1016).16 Just as seems to have happened in monastic communities
during the same period, canonical communities of the tenth and eleventh
centuries increasingly placed musically trained officials near the top of their
hierarchies.
It is not clear, however, how far the monastic parallel goes. The duties of
clerical cantors are not really described in any detail before to the end of the
eleventh century, when the new wave of disciplined, ascetic communities –
including the celebrated foundations of Saint-Ruf (founded in 1039),
Rottenbuch (1073), Marbach (c. 1090), Saint-Victor (1113) and Prémontré
(1120) – began to produce customaries which clearly take after monastic
models.17 We might wish to project these models of existence back onto
previous centuries, were it not for an intriguing eleventh-century anomaly.
In the customary which Delamare attributed to the cathedral of Rouen, the
musical, liturgical and educational responsibilities of the community are
distributed in a quite unmonastic manner, based loosely upon the Epistula
ad Leudefredum, a seventh- or eighth-century description of clerical orders

13 G. V. Birkner, ‘Notre-Dame Cantoren und Succentoren vom Ende des 10. bis zum
Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts’, in In Memoriam Jacques Handschin, ed. H. Anglès
(Strasbourg, 1962), pp. 107–26 (p. 112); H. Tischler, ‘The Early Cantors of Notre
Dame’, JAMS 19 (1966), 85–7 (p. 85).
14 Fass C, pp. 96–106.
15 L’orazionale dell’arcidiacono Pacifico e il Carpsum del cantor Stefano, ed. G. G.

Meersseman, E. Adda and J. Deshusses, Spicilegium Friburgense 21 (Fribourg,

1974).
16 This information comes from a combination of the TELMA, http://www.cn-telma.

fr/originaux/index/ (accessed 1 December 2014) and ELEC, http://elec.enc.

sorbonne.fr/ (accessed 1 December 2014) databases. For detailed personnel lists,
and for evidence of cantors’ relatively late arrival in cathedral chapters, see D. S.
Spear, The Personnel of the Norman Cathedrals during the Ducal Period, 911–1204
(London, 2006). A useful survey of English evidence is presented in D. Greenway,
‘The False Institutio of St Osmund’, in Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of
Marjorie Chibnall, ed. D. Greenway et al. (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 77–101 (p. 84).
17 On these developments see, principally, C. Dereine, ‘Vie commune’; J. Siegwart, Die

Chorherren- und Chorfrauengemeinschaften; S. Weinfurter, ‘Neuere Forschung zu den

Regularkanonikern im deutschen Reich des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts’, Historische
Zeitschrift 224 (1977), 379–97. For evidence of canons borrowing their customs
from monasteries, see J. Siegwart, Die Consuetudines des Augustiner-Chorherrenstiftes
Marbach im Elsass (12. Jahrhundert), Spicilegium Friburgense 10 (Fribourg, 1965);
Fass B.

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sometimes attributed to the milieu of Isidore of Seville.18 This rare survival

from a pre-1100 canonical community raises the serious possibility that clerics
structured their communities in different and hitherto unpublicized ways.
That finding does not play a prominent role in this chapter, except that it
gives legitimacy to the unusual approach which follows. Acknowledging that
monastically tinged customs laid down in later centuries may say nothing of
earlier practice, this chapter probes the world of the early canon-cantor from
another direction. Instead of seeking out normative job descriptions, it seeks
out the biographies of named individuals, whose musical, liturgical, scribal,
codicological and historical competencies can help us understand how
responsibilities were shared within a single institution. The fact that we can
even countenance this approach is because of the remarkable testimony of
our subject, the eleventh-century cathedral community at Constance, located
but a few miles from the Sankt Gallen and Reichenau monks with whose
books we began.

The cathedral of Constance and its scribes

In his two attempts to survey choral traditions at Constance, Manfred Schuler

demonstrated the difficulty of identifying named cantors from Constance’s
early medieval cathedral.19 Although the Reichenau confraternity book tells
us of at least thirty canons living there during the time of Bishop Salomon
(d. 871), there is no written evidence of a musical official there before 1158.
What we do have, however, is a readily reconstructible eleventh-century
library. Ordinarily, the reconstruction of such collections is fraught with
difficulty, for paleography informs us principally about writing, not reading,
and surviving catalogues are notoriously difficult to match up with the
material which survives. But the Constance collection is delimited with
unusual clarity, as Johanne Autenrieth was able to show in her brilliant
doctoral thesis of 1952, because in the years around 1070 a handful of local
scribes suddenly devoted themselves to the glossing and annotation of their
books.20 Autenrieth traced almost fifty volumes which had passed through

18 R. Delamare, Le ‘De officiis ecclesiasticis’ de Jean d’Avranches, Archevêque de Rouen

(1067–1079): étude liturgique et publication du texte inédit du manuscrit H. 304 de la
Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Montpellier (Paris, 1923); R. E. Reynolds, ‘The “Isidorian”
Epistula ad Leudefredum: An Early Medieval Epitome of the Clerical Duties’,
Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979), 252–330.
19 M. Schuler, ‘Die Anfänge der Konstanzer Domkantorei’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv
99 (1979), 45–68. For a good introduction to the Constance cathedral community,
see Siegwart, Die Chorherren- und Chorfrauengemeinschaften, pp. 204–10; see also
H. Maurer, Die Konstanzer Bischöfe vom Ende des 6. Jahrhunderts bis 1206 (Berlin, 2003).
20 J. Autenrieth, Die Domschule von Konstanz zur Zeit des Investiturstreits: Die wissen­
schaftliche Arbeitsweise Bernholds von Konstanz und zweier Kleriker dargestellt auf

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 Henry Parkes

their hands, the majority being Carolingian books produced at Reichenau or

in the general Lake Constance area, and in the years since this list has been
expanded considerably.21 Even the most conservative tally of the annotations
numbers well into the thousands.
The importance of this glossing evidence from Constance is that it informs
scholars not only of the array of authors and texts present in an eleventh-
century community, but also of the manner in which they were being read.
Since the publication of Autenrieth’s thesis, historians have feasted upon this
information, using the glosses to explore local attitudes to the burning issues
of the Investiture Controversy, among them questions of celibacy, simony
and ecclesiastical authority.22 One of the glossators identified was none other
than Bernold of Constance, one of the most vocal supporters of the Gregorian
cause.23 But this political dimension was only one part of Autenrieth’s work.
She also happened to find occasional evidence that her scribes had copied
liturgical music. These sporadic additions, usually a chant or two squeezed
opportunistically into a margin, amount to the earliest known witnesses to
musical activity at Constance, and through their notation they reveal a strong
level of musical competence within this community.24 While the glosses and
musical additions have justly received attention as separate categories of
intellectual activity, no one has yet addressed their remarkable confluence. If

Grund von Handschriftenstudien (Stuttgart, 1956). Also identifiable are some fifteen
to twenty books produced in the cathedral scriptorium in the eleventh century, as
described in W. Irtenkauf, ‘Die Dombibliothek’, in Die Bischöfe von Konstanz, ed.
E. L. Kuhn et al., 2 vols. (Friedrichshafen, 1988), II, 205–13; H. Hoffmann, Buchkunst
und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsalischen Reich, 2 vols., Schriften der MGH 30
(Stuttgart, 1986); H. Hoffmann, Handschriftenfunde, MGH Studien und Texte 18
(Hanover, 1997), pp. 97–101. Many (but not all) of these were also glossed. For
a comparable case study see T. Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral
c. 1075–c. 1125 (Oxford, 1992).
21 J. Autenrieth, Die Handschriften der ehemaligen Hofbibliothek Stuttgart, III: Codices

Iurdici et Politici (HB VI 1–139). Patres (HB VII 1–71) (Wiesbaden, 1963); H. Spilling,
‘Konstanz oder Weingarten? Ein Exemplar der Moralia Gregors des Großen aus
der Zeit des Investiturstreits’, in Litterae medii aevi: Festschrift für Johanne Autenrieth
zu ihrem 65. Geburtstag, ed. M. Borgolte and H. Spilling (Sigmaringen, 1988),
pp. 165–82; Hoffmann, Handschriftenfunde; H. Hoffmann, Schreibschulen des 10. und
des 11. Jahrhunderts im Südwesten des Deutschen Reichs, 2 vols., Schriften der MGH 53
(Hanover, 2004).
22 Examples include I. S. Robinson, ‘Zur Arbeitsweise Bernolds von Konstanz und

seines Kreises: Untersuchungen zum Schlettstädter Codex 13’, Deutsches Archiv

34 (1978), 51–122; I. S. Robinson, ‘The Bible in the Investiture Contest: The South
German Gregorian Circle’, in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory
of Beryl Smalley, ed. K. Walsh and D. Wood (Oxford, 1985), pp. 61–84; Spilling,
‘Konstanz oder Weingarten?’; Maurer, Die Konstanzer Bischöfe.
23 J. Autenrieth, ‘Bernold von Konstanz und die erweiterte 74-Titelsammlung’,

Deutsches Archiv 14 (1958), 375–94; Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 24–6, 118–34.
24 For a first attempt at an inventory, significantly expanded here, see M. Schuler, ‘Die

Musik am Konstanzer Dom um 1100’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 109 (1989), 131–39.

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our scribes were politically motivated and musically active, what else might
we surmise about their canonical lives? Drawing on the insights of Autenrieth,
the many scholarly contributions since her work appeared in the 1950s, as
well as some recent discoveries of my own, I shall introduce these individuals
one by one.

Wolferad

One of Autenrieth’s most breathtaking achievements was to deduce the names

of her scribal subjects. Identifying the hand of Bernold, already extremely
well known for his scholarly writings, was clearly the headline grabber. But
no less interesting was the discovery of a learned figure named Wolferad,
who signed his name at least once, and whose work leaps from the page
with its small, sharp-edged letterforms and backward-leaning aspect.25 This
individual was almost certainly a Constance canon. Marshalling evidence
which she had collected from a dozen or more manuscripts, Autenrieth was
able to demonstrate Wolferad’s likely clerical status (on two occasions he
commented with the words ‘nostri ordinis’), his detailed knowledge of the
Constance Cathedral chapter in the 1080s (in an extended annotation which
I shall consider at the end of this chapter), his sense of regret about ‘erring’
with the royalist Bishop Otto (who was finally replaced by the pro-Roman
candidate Bishop Gebhard III in 1086) and his interest in the Constance
patron St Pelagius, whose name he glossed as ‘noster patronus’.26 Wolferad
also copied several inventories of property, whose existence conforms to the
Aachen proclamation of 816 that only canons could ‘lawfully draw on their
own resources as well as those of the Church’.27 We may also detect a streak
of anti-monastic feeling in one gloss which, referring to a passage about
abbots being held accountable on the Day of Judgment, exclaims: ‘audiant
hoc abbas Augensis et qui dicitur Gallensis et contremiscant’ (‘the abbots of
Reichenau and Sankt Gallen should hear this and tremble’).28
There are thirty or so books on Wolferad’s reading list as it survives, of
which two-thirds are either scriptural or patristic, with as many as nine

25 For a more sophisticated characterisation, see Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 22–3.
26 This information is drawn directly from ibid., pp. 143–9. On St Pelagius and his
expanding eleventh-century cult, see K. S. Frank, ‘St. Pelagius, der unbekannte
und vergessene Diözesanpatron’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 110 (1990), 5–21; also
K. Becker, ‘Über die Herkunft der Reliquien des hl. Pelagius, des zweiten Patrons
der Konstanzer Bischofskirche’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 96 (1976), 358–60;
F. Meyer, Sankt Pelagius und Gregor der Grosse: Ihre Verehrung im Bistum Konstanz
(Munich, 2002).
27 Bertram, Chrodegang Rules, p. 145. See HLB F Aa 15, fols. iir, 215v; HLB F Aa 3, rear
endleaf; and BNF Lat. 11638, fol. 238v.
28 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 167, 177.

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volumes by Augustine: the tractates on John’s Gospel (two volumes), the

expositions of the Psalms (three volumes), De baptismo, De quantitate anime,
Enchiridion and Civitas Dei.29 Our scribe was also greatly interested in
history, judging by his attention to Eusebius’ Historia ecclesiastica in its Latin
translation by Rufinus (two copies) and the Historia tripartita of Cassiodorus,
as well as two non-Christian texts, the De bello Judaico of Flavius Josephus
(now only a fragment) and Justinus’s epitome of the Philippic histories.30 The
antique flavour of these works is underlined by Wolferad’s own propensity
to cite classical proverbs and witticisms from Virgil, Martial, Juvenal, Cicero,
Horace and Terence.31
This much speaks of an erudite scholar, but that is not all. Wolferad was
also a musician. In the margins of a ninth-century copy of Augustine on
Psalms 101–50 (HLB F Aa 24) he added two offertories with full notation:
‘Portas celi aperuit’ for Easter Wednesday (fol. 183v; Can g01030) and ‘Intonuit
de celo’ for Easter Tuesday (fol. 197v; Can g01024). The two annotations are
fascinatingly close to each other, both liturgically and in manuscript position,
suggesting that, even if Augustine’s Psalm commentaries had no obvious
place at Mass during Easter Week, Wolferad may have been reading them
at that time. Perhaps the act of notation even served as a means of preparing
a performance in his mind. Tellingly, Wolferad also copied ‘Portas celi
aperuit’ into another book (WLB HB VII 43), where it appears with almost
identical notation among a large group of chants added to spare parchment
on fol. 147r–v. The book in question is an incomplete ninth-century witness
to the De ecclesiasticis officiis and letters by Amalarius of Metz, whose very
incompleteness was Wolferad’s opportunity. Next to ‘Portas celi aperuit’
he copied two further chants for Easter Week: ‘Christus resurgens’ (the
communion for Easter Wednesday; Can g01031) and ‘Erit vobis hic dies’
(the offertory for Easter Friday; Can g01042). Although that concentration of
Easter music is not sustained among the remaining musical additions – which
collectively reveal no discernible ritual, musical or theological pattern (Table
6.1) – these two occurrences of notations alongside glosses point towards
a scenario in which liturgical singing and monastic lectio were coming into
direct daily contact.
Wolferad’s decision to gloss Amalarius is itself interesting, for it reveals
his investment in the context and interpretation of the liturgy. It appears
from his glosses that he was interested in, among other things, liturgical

29 All manuscripts described in Autenrieth, Die Domschule, with the exception of BNF
Lat. 11638 (Civitas dei), as identified in Hoffmann, Schreibschulen I, 174.
30 All manuscripts described in Autenrieth, Die Domschule, with the exception

of Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 346 (Eusebius/Rufinus), as identified in

Hoffmann, Schreibschulen I, 125.
31 See especially WLB HB VII 38, on which see Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 79–80.

A copy of Juvenal survives from Constance, on which see ibid., p. 148.

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Table 6.1 Chants in the hand of Wolferad

MS page Chant Genre Feast †

WLB Benedicta sit sancta trinitas Introit Trinity
HB VII 43, Omnes gentes plaudite Introit Pentecost VII
fol. 147r Exsurge domine non Gradual Lent III
Inmittit angelus domini Offertory Lent I, Thursday
V. Benedicam domino Offertory verse Lent I, Thursday
Sepe expugnaverunt me Tract (v. 1 only) Lent V

WLB Benedictus sit deus Offertory Trinity

HB VII 43, Benedicite deum celi Communion Trinity
fol. 147v V. Qui pro mundi salute in ligno Offertory verse Holy Cross
Alleluia V. Ave Maria gratia plena Alleluia Feasts of Mary
Iustus non conturbabitur Introit SS Hermetis/
Chrysogonus
Portas celi aperuit Offertory Easter Wednesday
Christus resurgens Communion Easter Wednesday
Erit vobis hic dies Offertory Easter Friday
Sedit angelus ad sepulcrum Procession Easter Day
V. Recordamini quomodo Procession verse Easter Day

HLB Portas celi aperuit Offertory Easter Wednesday

F Aa 24,
fol. 183v

HLB Intonuit de celo Offertory Easter Tuesday

F Aa 24,
fol. 197v
† Where there is a discrepancy I follow the assignment in Einsiedeln, Stifts­
bibliothek, Cod. 121.

procedure (comments on baptism, on processions) and discipline (a comment

on why Matins must not be skipped), as well as in Amalarius’s unusual
analogy between the singing of Graduals and Alleluias and ‘active’ and
‘contemplative’ life (fol. 60r). That last passage might well have piqued
the interest of a canon in this period of canonical revival, caught as these
individuals were between their outward-looking pastoral ministry and
inward-looking communal life. We know that communal life was an interest
of Wolferad’s, because he chose to gloss a copy of Hildemar’s commentary on
the Benedictine Rule (Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 142). Among various
glosses, Wolferad contributed one on fol. 145r which addresses the question
of whether one sings Psalmody with mouth or voice. Although the comment
is largely lost to trimming, the sentiment adds to an impression, already
apparent from the copy of Amalarius, that Wolferad’s interest in communal
life found a particular focus in matters of daily liturgy. Further musical and
liturgical concerns surface in a third manuscript, a copy of John the Deacon’s

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Life of Gregory (WLB HB XIV 3) in which Wolferad’s words point out the
iniquity of John’s famous description of Alpine voices (Wolferad’s riposte:
‘the inconsiderate and false mockery of the Romans, whose voice is like the
hen pecked at by her mate’) and clarify the histories of the Gregorian and
Gelasian recensions of the sacramentary.32
To comment on the liturgy or even to add musical chants is not itself proof
of any particular institutional responsibility, for these are skills which any
individual could learn (and perhaps even use the margins to practise) over
an extended period of time. But Wolferad also had scribal responsibilities.
Autenrieth reported how he had applied interlinear corrections to a local
Constance copy of Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah (WLB HB VII 7).33 Better
still, at the front of an apparently unfinished portion of Augustine’s De
quantiate anime (now part of ULB D 896) Wolferad took on the role of scribe,
borrowing the preceding blank page and shifting into a more formal script, in
order to copy Augustine’s retractation (a kind of postscript) to De quantitate
anime.34 Most authoritative of all was Wolferad’s role in completing the
aforementioned ninth-century copy of Amalarius (WLB HB VII 43), to which
he had added miscellaneous chants on fol. 147r–v. At a later stage he returned
to sort out the lacunae in the text. Beginning to copy on fol. 148r, he added the
missing Amalarius letters before completing the volume with De ecclesiasticis
officis book IV. Two further scribal hands contributed to this effort, and this
allows us to deduce that Wolferad was more than just a copyist. Taking over
for short bursts, frequently at the heads of pages or gatherings (among them
fols. 149r, 150r, 156r and 158r), he clearly had a supervisory, coordinating
role. This division of labour is all but confirmed by a colophon on the last
page, fol. 189v, penned by one of his co-scribes in three knotted lines of
hexameter:

Est a Wolverado semper mundana secuto

Quarta remissa prius pars scripta voluminis huius.
Addideram quartum tribus his ego Stelio librum.

[The fourth part of this volume, ever worldly

[and] previously incomplete, has been written with Wolferad’s support.
I, Stelio, had appended the fourth book to these three.]

The adjective ‘worldly’ makes good sense of De ecclesiasticis officiis book IV,
with its emphasis on daily worship; and while I have translated ‘remissa’
as ‘incomplete’ (literally ‘slackened off’), an equally plausible reading holds

32 ‘Inconsiderata Romanorum irrisio et falsa, quorum vox similis quo mordetur

gallina marito’, with veiled reference to Juvenal, Satura III.91; fols. 45r and 49v,
respectively.
33 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, p. 93.
34 Ibid., p. 82; the text is Augustine, Retractiones I.8.

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that a portion had been ‘sent back’, perhaps to a neighbouring library. As

for ‘Stelio’, this may be a name or nickname, or it may have been a learned
form of self-deprecation: Proverbs 30.28 lists the ‘stelio’ (or ‘lizard’) among
creatures which are ‘small but … exceedingly wise’; and in the eyes of Pliny
the Elder ‘stelio’ could, by extension, denote a roguish figure.35 Autenrieth
found it strange that this colophon should appear to attribute scribal agency
to Wolferad and yet not be written in his hand. (‘A Wolverado’ has an active
connotation which is not preserved in my rendering above, and confusingly
Wolferad did copy the line ‘addideram … librum’ into two other books.)36
But I would suggest that in this instance Autenrieth had not appreciated the
coordinated nature of the copyists’ collaboration, nor the reptilian professions
of an apparently subordinate scribe.

Anonymous A

A single Wolferad figure ought perhaps to have sufficed within the Constance
scriptorium. Remarkably, however, our subject was not alone. Another
individual, writing in a similar but slightly plumper script, was also busy
working in the margins of Constance’s books. Autenrieth named him
‘Anonymus A’ (which I anglicize here for the avoidance of confusion) and
she presented convincing evidence that he had interacted with Wolferad’s
glosses, and vice versa, as if they were colleagues or close contemporaries.37
Although there is no firm evidence that Anonymous A was musical, his
scribal activities have so much in common with Wolferad’s that they throw
both individuals valuably into relief.
Among the books to which Anonymous A applied his pen we can trace
at least twenty-five volumes to Wolferad’s thirty, among which patristic
texts number just under half, with a notable predilection for Gregory’s
Moralia (annotations in six of the seven surviving Constance volumes).38
The remaining books divide into legal texts (a notable absence in Wolferad’s
work), computistic and astronomical texts, hagiography and works relating
to the liturgy or communal life. Like Wolferad, Anonymous A glossed
Hildemar’s commentary on the Benedictine Rule (using a second copy,
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 203), and his unusually
barbed comments about its somnolent qualities add weight to the idea that

35 Pliny, Natural History XXX.27.

36 HLB F Aa 15, fol. iir; WLB HB VII 38, fol. 1r. In both cases the poetic addition is one
among many.
37 On the distinctive features of his script see Autenrieth, Die Domschule, p. 24; on their
collaboration see ibid., pp. 146–7.
38 All manuscripts described in Autenrieth, Die Domschule, with the exception of
certain copies of the Moralia, on which see Spilling, ‘Konstanz oder Weingarten?’.

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he too was operating outside of a monastic context: ‘nescio quid iste somniet’
(‘I know not what this man is dreaming’), he says at one stage; at another,
‘fateor lectori quia hec legendo dormitavi’ (‘I confess to the reader that I felt
drowsy reading these things’).39 Anonymous A’s institutional standing is
also suggested by the annotations (here represented in italics) with which
he clarified Hildemar’s interpretation of an abbot’s office: ‘Abbas non potest
esse sine regula. Nam si alteram canonicalem vitam duxerit, illius monachi
ordinis, non est abbas sed eius cuius vitam duxerit’ (‘The abbot cannot
exist without a rule for if he leads another, canonical life he is not an abbot
of that monastic order, but of this in which he leads his life’).40 Anonymous
A corrected this volume vigorously, in fact, often openly advertising his
text-critical credentials: on one occasion he noted that ‘aut hic deesse, aut
quod melius credo hoc versum, id est cum invocarem, post sequentem
textum inseri debere’ (‘either [something] is missing here or, which I better
believe, this verse “cum invocarem” ought to be inserted after the text which
follows’).41 Just like his colleague Wolferad, Anonymous A, too, had scribal
responsibilities which also extended to a supervisory role. In one of the
Moralia volumes (HLB F Aa 31a) he began a new gathering on fol. 96r, only
to cede to another scribe after fifteen lines.42 He also worked as text scribe in
two more Moralia copies (WLB HB VII 24 and HB VII 27), the latter of which
he appears to have begun.43 And in a local collection of saints’ lives (WLB
HB XIV 16) he was involved in texts for St Sebastian (fols. 17r–24r, seemingly
over-extensive erasure), the Invention of the Holy Cross (fols. 61r, 66r) and SS
Marcus and Marcellus (fols. 128v–89r, 131r).44
Further mirroring the work of his colleague Wolferad, Anonymous A
was also interested to point out matters of liturgical procedure, both in the
margins of Amalarius’ De ecclesiasticis officiis and in relation to a specific
Bede text found in a homiliary (WLB HB VII 58, fols. 304v–7v).45 Many of
these comments relate to the contours of the liturgical year, including
issues such as when to sing the Alleluia, the timing of Septuagesima and
Lent, the giving of alms before Holy Week and the role of the archdeacon
(a key figure in clerical communities) in preparing the wax Agni for Easter
Week. But within those contours one aspect of the year received a particular
cluster of annotations: the Lenten scrutiny rituals for baptismal candidates
on fols. 12r–13r. Here Anonymous A noted in the margin all the salient

39 Fols. 51r and 84r, respectively.

40 Fol. 54v (with other corrections incorporated).
41 Fol. 29v.
42 Hoffmann, Handschriftenfunde, p. 100.
43 Spilling, ‘Konstanz oder Weingarten?’, pp. 168–9, 174–7. Autenrieth omitted these
manuscripts from her initial survey.
44 As reported in Hoffmann, Handschriftenfunde, p. 100.
45 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, p. 103; Bede, Homilies II.16.

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organizational features of the ritual – the responsories, the lessons and the
Gospel reading – as if pondering a schema for performance. A subsequent
comment on fol. 40r, on the readings assigned to catechumens at the vigils
of Easter and Pentecost, raises the possibility that Anonymous A himself
had responsibility for initiates within his own community, perhaps as an
educator or schoolmaster. That hypothesis contextualizes two further aspects
of his work. First, Anonymous A was a prominent contributor to the many
local copies of Gregory’s Moralia, which Herrad Spilling suggested to have
been cultivated for classroom use.46 Second, Anonymous A contributed any
number of annotations to the aforementioned Hildemar commentary (Aug.
perg. 203) which suggest pedagogical intent: not only several observations on
points of grammar, noted by Autenrieth, but also the marking up of multiple
portions concerning discipline and, intriguingly, a passage on fols. 57v–8r
on the need to give due prominence to junior clerics who excel in grammar,
reading or singing.47
All of this feeds most interestingly into existing speculation about the
identity of Anonymous A, for when Ian Robinson examined these glosses he
discovered one remarkable correspondence.48 An impressive number of the
scribe’s additions, even though spread across several books, correspond to the
content of the Liber ad Gebehardum, a tract written by the Alsatian intellectual
Manegold of Lautenbach. With admirable restraint Robinson stopped short
of proclaiming that which the evidence so tantalizingly suggests, noting
that ‘if [further] investigation does not demonstrate that Anonymous A
and Manegold of Lautenbach are one and the same, it will at least show
that they were remarkably unanimous about what was most relevant in
the codices of the cathedral library of Constance’.49 Further in support of
his theory, Robinson also noted Manegold’s subsequent reputation as an
author of biblical glosses and Psalm commentary, as reported by Wolfger
of Prüfening.50 To my knowledge, however, no one has ever accepted the
invitation to explore this association further. In the light of the deductions
about Anonymous A made above, four aspects of Manegold’s biography
immediately jump out in favour of Robinson’s thesis. First, Manegold was
renowned as an educator, described by Pope Urban II in 1096 as a ‘magister
scholarum’.51 Second, he was a cleric and reformer who lived in several
canonical communities, who may have come into conflict with monks and

46 Spilling, ‘Konstanz oder Weingarten?’, esp. p. 167.

47 On the grammatical annotations see Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 149, 176–7.
48 Robinson, ‘The Bible’, pp. 69–72, 83–4.
49 Ibid., pp. 71–2.
50 Ibid., pp. 83–4.
51 Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber contra Wolfelmum, ed. and trans. Robert Ziomkowski
(Leuven, 2002), pp. 23–7, 114.

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whose scathing Liber ad Wolfhelmum was directed at one monk in particular.52

Third, what Ivo of Chartres described as the ‘many winding paths’ of
Manegold’s career suggest a life of itineracy, and evidence of his appointment
both as dean of Rottenbuch in the 1080s and as prior of Marbach in the 1090s
(both communities of canons) makes it quite possible that he sojourned at
Constance, the eminent institution located exactly midway between the
two.53 Fourth, Manegold knew and cited Bernold of Constance, who himself
addressed Manegold as ‘frater noster’ in a letter dated to before 1084.54 All of
this is a most promising fit for the glosses which we find.

Heremann

My third Constance scribe is one whom Autenrieth never properly identified,

chiefly because she was distracted by the similarity of his hand to Wolferad’s.
Noticing a small group of additions to HLB F Aa 15, a book otherwise full of
Wolferad glosses, she pondered why on fol. 214v this individual had signed
off in another name: ‘Hec Heremannus scripsit non scriptor ineptus’ (‘These
things Heremann wrote, not inept as a scribe’).55 As Hausmann and Schuler
later retorted, the obvious answer is that these additions were not penned
by Wolferad’s hand.56 The script appears to be younger, with a rounder,
more even appearance than that of Wolferad’s, and with distinctive features
including a teardrop-shaped ‘O’, ‘Q’ and ‘D’, prominent wedges on the
ascenders, backward-curving descenders and the habitual use of a ‘v’ shape
in a terminal ‘us’. Of the six books in which I have so far been able to find
Heremann’s work, no fewer than four were glossed by Wolferad, implying
that they worked in proximity, while the remaining two were probably
assembled in the Constance area. In all six manuscripts Heremann devoted
himself to the copying and notation of music.
This strong musical focus explains two of the most striking features of
Heremann’s annotations. First, almost all of his contributions were applied,
upside down, to the lower margins of their respective books. Since this
orientation obstructs the simultaneous reading of text and annotation, the
implication is that Heremann was not a glossator – as Wolferad seems to
have been – who occasionally flexed his musical musculature but simply a

52 Ibid., pp. 4–5, 21. On the conflict, between the canons of Rottenbuch and the monks
of Schaffhausen, see pp. 3, 114–15.
53 Ibid., pp. 20–3, 112–13.
54 Ibid., pp. 16–7, 106–8. As the author cautions, however, this salutation needs not
have any institutional connotation.
55 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, p. 52.
56 R. Hausmann, Die theologischen Handschriften der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Fulda bis
zum Jahr 1600 (Wiesbaden, 1992), p. xxix; Schuler, ‘Die Musik’, p. 137.

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 Cantor or Canonicus?

musician in search of blank parchment. Second, unlike Wolferad, Heremann

restricted himself to very specific genres of chant. Among the forty or so
distinct pieces or portions of pieces which I have identified in his hand among
Constance manuscripts, a remarkable thirty-two belong to the melismatic,
soloistic genres of graduals, alleluias, offertories and responsories (Table
6.2).57 Indeed, among Heremann’s contributions for the Mass I can find just
one chant which is not melismatic: a single Advent introit on fol. 224r of ULB
D 896. With such an emphasis on difficult, elaborate chants, it appears that
Herman’s self-proclaimed ‘not-ineptness’ went far beyond his role as scribe.
The remaining pieces in Heremann’s hand are no less focused in their
identity, for all are Office chants and all pertain to the veneration of two
saints, Pelagius and Nicholas. This is a most revealing pairing on two
counts. First, since the chants for these saints lay outside the main ‘Gregorian’
canon – that is, they were more regional in cultivation and more reliant on
specific local expertise – they were also likely candidates for being recorded
opportunistically on local parchment. Second, both saints demonstrably had
a role in Constance’s liturgy in this late eleventh century period. St Pelagius
was none other than a patron saint of the community, whose appearance
in Cassiodorus’s Historia tripartita was glossed by Wolferad with the words
‘noster patronus’.58 St Nicholas was notoriously the flavour of the moment,
his relics having been stolen from Asia Minor and brought to Bari in 1087. It
was in this very same period that the prior of Constance, a man named Henry,
reorganized part of the cathedral interior, apparently with the purpose of
accommodating some newly acquired relics. As the anonymous local Vita
Conradi explains:

Prioris locum monumenti altius exstructum celebri memoria decoravit,

capellam etiam antiquitus inibi constructam, sed tunc desolatam, destruxit,
aliamque in sublimi edifficavit [sic], quam in honore sancti Nicolai dedicari
fecit.59

[He adorned the area of the old monument, of celebrated memory, this
having been raised higher up; he also pulled down a chapel which had
been built in olden times but which was now unused; and he built another
in that lofty place, which he dedicated in honour of St Nicholas.]

This rearrangement took place in the time of Bishop Gebhard III (1086–1110),
and it is therefore most likely to have taken place after St Nicholas’s translation
in 1087. Only two years after that famous event, Gebhard rededicated

57 Verses are counted separately, since Heremann often copies them alone. An earlier
inventory may be found in Schuler, ‘Die Musik’, pp. 136–7.
58 Autenrieth, Die Domschule, p. 64.
59 Transcribed from HLB F D 11, fol. 35v. See also Vita Conradi altera, ed. G. Pertz,
MGH SS 4 (Hanover, 1841), p. 441.

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 Henry Parkes

Table 6.2 Chants in the hand of Heremann

MS page Chant Genre Feast †

ULB Universi qui te expectant Gradual Advent I
D 896, V. Vias tuas domine notas Gradual verse Advent I
fol. 223r
Alleluia V. Ostende nobis domine Alleluia Advent I
ULB Ad te levavi animam meam Introit Advent I
D 896,
fol. 224r
ULB Alleluia V. Surrexit pastor bonus Alleluia Eastertide?
D 896,
fol. 226v
ULB Alleluia V. Christus resurgens Alleluia Easter Tuesday
D 896,
fol. 232r
ULB Alleluia V. Domine deus meus in Alleluia ?
D 896, te speravi
fol. 233v
WLB Oratio mea munda est Offertory Vigil of
HB VII 29, St Laurence
fol. 5r V. Probavit me dominus sicut Offertory verse Vigil of
St Laurence
Timete dominum omnes sancti Gradual St Cyriac
V. Inquirentes autem dominum Gradual verse St Cyriac
Alleluia V. Surrexit pastor bonus Alleluia Eastertide?
WLB Alleluia V. Christus resurgens Alleluia Easter Tuesday
HB VII 29,
fol. 5v
WLB die [melisma from ‘Mirabilis in Offertory verse Christmas Day,
HB VII 37, excelsis’] Second Mass
fol. 37v V. Dominus regnavit decorum Offertory verse Christmas Day,
Second Mass
Alleluia V. Non vos reliqua Alleluia Pentecost
orphanos
WLB Tenuisti manum decretam Gradual Palm Sunday
HB VII 37, V. Quam bonus Israel Gradual verse Palm Sunday
fol. 78r
WLB Eripe me domine Gradual Lent V
HB VII 37, V. Liberator meus domine Gradual verse Lent V
fol. 85v

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 Cantor or Canonicus?

Table 6.2 continued

MS page Chant Genre Feast †

WLB V. Quia factus [es] adiutor Offertory verse Lent V,
HB VII 37, Wednesday
fol. 86r Herusalem [melisma from Offertory verse Lent V,
‘Memento domine’] Thursday
WLB Ave sancte egregie Antiphon St Pelagius
HB VII 37,
fol. 92v
WLB in lo[n]gitudine dierum Offertory verse Christmas Day,
HB VII 37, [melisma from ‘Mirabilis in Second Mass
fol. 147v excelsis’]
WLB Videns autem [tyrannus] Responsory St Pelagius
HB VII 37, V. Cumque athleta fortis Responsory St Pelagius
fol. 162v verse
WLB Stetit angelus iuxta aram Offertory St Michael
HB VII 37, V. In conspectu angelorum Offertory verse St Michael
fol. 177v
WLB Alleluia V. Concussum est mare Alleluia St Michael
HB VII 37,
fol. 180r
WLB Videns autem tyrannus Responsory St Pelagius
HB VII 37,
fol. 180v
WLB Ingressus Pilatus Responsory Palm Sunday
HB VII 37, V. Tunc agit illis Pilatus Responsory Palm Sunday
fol. 181r verse
WLB [‘ora’ melisma from ‘Ave sancte Antiphon St Pelagius
HB VII 37, egregie’]
fol. 181v [‘ora’ melisma from ‘Ave sancte Antiphon St Pelagius
egregie’]
ora [melisma from ‘Ave sancte Antiphon St Pelagius
egregie’]
ora [melisma from ‘Ave sancte Antiphon St Pelagius
egregie’]
Ave sancte egregie Antiphon St Pelagius
HLB O Christi pietas omni Antiphon St Nicholas
F Aa 3,
fol. 1r

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 Henry Parkes

Table 6.2 continued

MS page Chant Genre Feast †

HLB Audiens Christi confessor Responsory St Nicholas
F Aa 15,
fol. iir
HLB Alleluia V. Letamini in domino Alleluia Feast of a
F Aa 15, martyr
fol. 189r fabrice mundi [melisma from Responsory Christmas Day
‘Descendit de celis’]
HLB O Christi pietas omni Antiphon St Nicholas
F Aa 15, O per omnia laudabilem Antiphon St Nicholas
fol. 214v
WLB Dixit do[minus mulier]i Antiphon Lent II
HB VII 62, Chananee
fol. 176v [Hodie] sacratissimus Antiphon St Pelagius
† Where there is a discrepancy I follow the assignment in Einsiedeln,
Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 121.

Constance’s cathedral, during which ceremony patronal relics customarily

played a major part.60 If the cults of SS Pelagius and Nicholas had been
subject to renewed energy and exposure in the later eleventh century, much
in the way that clerics across Christendom were busy promoting their cults in
this period, it would be a surprise if musical practices had not followed suit.61
Heremann may even have been involved in their creation. While the
Office chants for St Nicholas have a complicated history which antedates the
translation of 1087, those for St Pelagius are unknown prior to Heremann’s
annotations.62 There are no further witnesses to these chants, indeed, until
the early thirteenth century, when a complete set was copied into a breviary
from the abbey of Kreuzlingen (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod.
Sal. IX.61, fols. 170r–2v), whose community of Augustinian canons had
been founded by a former bishop of Constance a little over a mile from the
cathedral church.63 The full and complete concordance of the Kreuzlingen
breviary with Heremann’s annotations concentrates the local flavour of this
musical repertory, as does the telling mention of the ‘urbs preclara Constancia’

60 A. Knoepfli, ‘Beiträge zur Baugeschichte des Konstanzer Münsters im 10. und 11.
Jahrhundert’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 109 (1989), 27–84.
61 For further examples of music and cult promotion see, among many, Fass C; Brand,
Holy Treasure.
62 C. Hohler, ‘The Proper Office of St. Nicholas and Related Matters with Reference to
a Recent Book’, Medium Aevum 36 (1967), 40–8.
63 See Meyer, Sankt Pelagius, p. 43, who also lists a scattering of later medieval sources,
all from the Lake Constance area.

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 Cantor or Canonicus?

Ex. 6.1 Heremann’s five different attempts at the ‘ora’ melisma from the chant
‘Ave sancte egregie’ in WLB HB VII 37, set against a later medieval version from
Kreuzlingen, now Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Sal. IX.61

fol. 92v

fol. 181v (1)

fol. 181v (2)

fol. 181v (3)

fol. 181v (4)

0 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ra

Kreuzlingen

(‘shining city of Constance’) in the chant ‘Ave sancte egregie’. What hints
at our scribe’s specific responsibility is the mutable shape of the chants as
recorded by his pen. The responsory ‘Videns autem tyrannus’ appears once
with the word ‘tyrannus’ and once without, and Heremann copied the
antiphon ‘Ave sancte egregie’ in two distinct versions, along with no fewer
than four separate attempts to copy its distinctive exhortatory melisma on
‘ora’. Although all four attempts coexist on the very same page, they are
identical neither in melody nor in the manner of their neumatic notation,
yielding the impression that our author was exploring multiple actuations
of that one phrase (Ex. 6.1). (No pitch-specific copy of this chant survives.)
If this is not concrete evidence of a composer at work, it is at least evidence
that Heremann exerted creative freedoms with respect to this repertory. That
points towards a situation in which he was in charge.
Until now Heremann has not been celebrated as a text scribe, but two
pieces of evidence point in that direction. The first is a ninth-century copy
of the Quadripartitus canon law collection (WLB HB VII 62), whose final
page, though highly damaged, contains an interesting mix of opportunistic
annotations, all apparently by Heremann.64 With the help of the ink offset onto
the rear binding board it is possible to identify an antiphon for St Pelagius
(‘Hodie sacratissimus’), as well as one intriguing extract of canon law:

[Cum excommunicato] nullus loquatur neque qualibet eum compassione

vel miseratione refoveat.
[Nothing should be spoken with an excommunicate, nor should anything
revive him with sympathy or compassion.]

64 See Autenrieth, Die Handschriften, pp. 219–20; L. Kéry, Canonical Collections of

the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and
Literature (Washington, DC, 1999), p. 168.

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 Henry Parkes

The text appears earlier in the Quadripartitus, which means that Heremann
had probably copied out a passage of interest while reading through. Such
behaviour would align him not only with the scholarly activities of Bernold
and Anonymous A, both highly active canon lawyers, but also with the
methods of Wolferad, who frequently copied one-line extracts from other
texts. Several of these extracts are interwoven among Heremann’s chants on
the endleaves of HLB F Aa 15.
A second observation on Heremann’s scribal activity is that, just like
Wolferad and his colleague Stelio, he too composed a colophon in rhyming
hexameters. At the conclusion of a late tenth or early eleventh century copy
of Jerome on Isaiah (WLB HB VII 6, fol. 141v), Heremann’s hand proclaims:

Omnibus expletis arcem subit ille quietis.

Gloria sit Christo pax et qui scripserat
hec qui scribebat Herimannus nomen habebat.

[Now that everything is complete, he climbs the citadel of calm.

Glory be to Christ, and peace to he who had written.
He who wrote these lines goes by the name of Heremann.]

The ‘lines’ to which Heremann refers are not his – for he had no part in
copying this manuscript – but those of the poem. The ‘completion’ is not the
scribal task, therefore, but the act of reading. Hence with his combination of
scholarly engagement, marginal intervention and, as here, self-advertising
hexameters, Heremann’s pursuits turn out to be most hamonious with those
of his Constance colleagues. Were we to perform Autenrieth’s survey anew,
we might well find that Heremann had contributed further.

The chapter of Constance Cathedral c. 1080

For each of the three scribes under consideration, the wide range of
comptencies on show constitutes the classic raw material for some kind of
‘cantor’ position, and doubtless we would describe it as such if there were an
appropriate customary to corroborate that thesis. But the individual-centred
approach of this chapter has now pushed us in another direction. For as much
as these scribes had a huge amount in common, as glossators, text scribes,
overseers and general all-round intellectuals, perhaps the most striking
finding is just how distinctly their personalities and interests shine through.
Anonymous A preferred Augustine, while Wolferad preferred Gregory; the
one focused on canon law, the other history, while Heremann specialized in
music. The first and third also had a penchant for poetry, as well as for the
copying of one-line aphorisms at the beginnings and ends of manuscripts. It
is also worth mentioning that many other scribes, as yet unidentified, also
added music to Constance manuscripts, and plenty more added markings

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and annotations for liturgical reading.65 What we seem to find, therefore, is

not one model ‘cantor’ operating in late eleventh century Constance, but a
variety of individuals exercising distinctly ‘cantorial’ responsibilities.
That point takes on an extra lustre when we examine the largest and most
celebrated annotation of Wolferad. On the final page of a ninth-century copy
of Augustine on the Psalms (ULB D 897), he listed the names of some sixty
members of the clergy in order of rank. The addition was always understood
as a roll call of the cathedral chapter in 1080s until, in a comprehensive
rereading, Karl Schmid argued that Wolferad had been manipulating
the names to take a very particular stance on local internal politics, the
community having wrestled in these very years with the competing claims of
imperially and papally appointed bishops.66 Be that as it may, three names on
the list stand out: ‘Wolferat presbiter’ (no. 22), ‘Manegolt presbiter’ (no. 30),
and ‘Hereman presbiter’ (no. 34). We have encountered all three. These
were all popular appelations in German-speaking lands, it should be said,
and plenty of the other names in Wolferad’s list are themselves duplicates.
Nonetheless, with evidence of Manegold of Lautenbach’s mysterious
itineracy in the 1080s, and with the suggestion of Heremann’s marginally
junior status (remembering that his script and hagiographical contributions
point more towards the 1090s than the 1070s or 1080s), there is a very serious
possibility that all three subjects were colleagues.
The hypothesis may be impossible to prove, but it is valuable because
behind much of our scholarship on cantors and precentors lies an assumption,
informed principally by monastic custom, that in every religious institution
there was probably a single authority figure in whose hands lay the
various responsibilities of the liturgy, music, library and making of history.
Constance suggests otherwise. Indeed, it now beckons us to explore how the
unique structures of canonical life, and in particular the role of education
within clerical communities, might have required different abilities and
responsibilities, going beyond the norms which later medieval customaries
imply. Perhaps the aforementioned Rouen arrangement, with its distinctive
division of labour between a ‘precentor primicherius’, ‘corepiscopus’ and
‘succentor’, was much more widely known.67 While that line of research is
beyond the scope of the present study, in this chapter our clerical expectations
have already gained a vivid redress: for every Gregorian polemicist, it

65 On the latter see H. Parkes, ‘Biblical Readings for the Night Office in Eleventh-
Century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice’, in Reading the Bible in the
Middle Ages, ed. J. Nelson and D. Kempf (London, 2015), pp. 77–100.
66 K. Schmid, ‘Zu den angeblichen Konstanzer Gegenbischöfen während des

Investitur­streites’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 109 (1989), 189–212. Earlier inter­

pretations can be found in E. Dümmler, ‘Mittheilungen aus Handschriften’, Neues
Archiv 11 (1886), 404–13 (p. 408) and Autenrieth, Die Domschule, pp. 59–61. Recall
Wolferad’s comment about ‘erring’ with Bishop Otto, mentioned above.
67 Delamare, Le ‘De officiis ecclesiasticis’, p. liii.

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 Henry Parkes

turns out, there was a canon busily practising his offertory verses; for every
learned scriptural exegete there was probably a poet, or Church historian, or
scriptorium supervisor or composer of patronal music; and for all of these
high-flyers there were also the glossators bored by the tedium of their texts,
strewing the margins impulsively with the comments which Autenrieth
would later dismiss as ‘uninteressant’. Just like the confraternity books of
Reichenau and Sankt Gallen, Wolferad’s list of cathedral dignitaries also
assigns clerical ranks. At the top of the page we find bishops, followed by
priests, deacons and subdeacons, and then at the bottom appear the names
Landolt ‘can’, Adelpret ‘c’, Willebolt ‘c’, Ǒdelrich ‘c’ and Henrich ‘c’. Although
we may now have our own ideas of how to expand those abbreviations,
whether canonicus, cantor or something else entirely, the experience of
Constance cathedral suggests that this is beside the point. The work of an
eleventh-century polymath was an occupation which did not always need a
name.

124
 7
Shaping the Historical Dunstan:
Many Lives and a Musical Office

Margot E. Fassler

O Magnum gloriosi presulis meritum, qui meruit vivens videre angelorum

visiones vocesque mirabiles eorundem audire!

[How great the deserts of this glorious bishop, who found fit while still
alive to see visions of angels and hear their wonderful voices!]1

The early evidence and the first lives of Dunstan

Two Dunstans (d. 988) walk through eleventh and early twelfth century
England as the most venerated of saints. One emerges through the study
of contemporary historical sources, while the other is a character that
developed over time, known through liturgical celebration as well as in
folklore and oral traditions. There is rich evidence for the transformation of
the first Dunstan into the second, evidence of changing character traits and
descriptions of historical events associated with his life. Several manuscripts
can be associated with him and his students, while letters and charters are
eyewitnesses to his life; at the same time, there are five vite from the late tenth,
eleventh and early twelfth centuries to document his saintly attributes, as
well as an office copied c. 1230 (See Table 7.1 and Appendix 1). His character
is also reflected in other contemporary histories and hagiography. This
chapter explores how a historical understanding of the saint developed over
time, from the tenth to the early thirteenth century. Throughout this long
period, several cantor-historians have roles to play, including the musician
who finally put the tradition together in its final (and only surviving) musical
office.
The outline of known milestones in the saint’s life recently sketched by
Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge draws on the two earliest
surviving vite, which they edit and translate, as well on other documents and
charters (see Table 7.2).2 The tenth-century life by a writer called simply B,
someone who knew Dunstan and was, early in the saint’s life, an eyewitness
to some of the events he reported, is justly privileged as evidence, a case
study of the major role of hagiographical writings for understanding the

1 ELD B 35, pp. 98–101.

2 ELD, pp. xiii–lxiii.

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 Margot E. Fassler

Table 7.1 The prose vite of Dunstan (up to the twelfth century)
and their probable dates of composition

1 B, of Glastonbury and Liege (=ELD B) 995–1005

Two versions: one that was kept at Glastonbury and another
revised in the first half of the eleventh century at Canterbury (see
St Gall, Kantonsbibl. 337). A possible name for B is Byrhthelm, a
deacon once in Dunstan’s entourage.

2 Old English version of B (unknown)

This version does not survive, but it was known to both Osbern
(4) and to William (6). It seems to have expanded B considerably.

3 Adelard of Mont St Blandin, Ghent (=ELD A) c. 1006-11

A life arranged in twelve lections for the Divine Office
commissioned by Abbot Ælfheah, dependent on B.

4 Osbern of Canterbury, Life and Miracles 1089-93

Osbern’s work is dependent on Adelard (3), B (1) and B’s later
recension (2). It is the most extensive of the lives, reflecting
Osbern’s times and the people he knew.

5 Eadmer of Canterbury, Life and Miracles by 1116,

A reworking of Osbern (4). probably
before 1109

6 William of Malmesbury, Life c. 1129-30

William attacks Osbern (4) even as he uses much of his material;
in fact it is usually impossible to say if William was drawing
directly from Eadmer (5) or Eadmer’s source, Osbern.

past. Information concerning Dunstan’s childhood and early upbringing

shows him to have been well born (Wessex aristocracy), a member of the
royal entourage in his twenties and appointed abbot of Glastonbury during
the reign of King Edmund, while still apparently very young.3 After a brief
time of exile, he returned to be a bishop, though retaining his relationship
to Glastonbury. As can be seen from the lack of later significant personal
events, as detailed in Table 7.2, the final twenty years of Dunstan’s life are
poorly attested; the evidence of B breaks off when Dunstan returned from
exile because the author was apparently no longer associated with him. As a
result, B created his narrative primarily from knowledge of Dunstan’s early
career, mentioning a few things he had heard about the very end of his life to
finish up the job. The work was an attempt to earn favour with Ælfric, then
archbishop of Canterbury, and it formed the basis of all later vite and much

3 Ironically, despite B’s emphasis on Dunstan’s early life, little is known about his
parents except their names.

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 Shaping the Historical Dunstan

Table 7.2 Timeline of the career of Dunstan and other major events

Date* Event
by 910 Born
mid 920s In minor orders in Glastonbury, which is apparently not yet
Benedictine
c. 934–39 Became a monk
c. 939–46 Made abbot of Glastonbury by King Edmund I (r. 939–46)
946 Eadred succeeds his brother Edmund as king
953–55 Dunstan acts as a kind of vice-regent due to the king’s illness
late 955 Death of Eadred
956 Eadwig succeeds his brother Eadred, instead of Edgar, Eadred’s
son; Dunstan driven into exile by King Eadwig; on the continent,
Dunstan learns to write Caroline minuscule and is at St Peter’s in
Ghent (reformed Benedictine)
957 Edgar becomes king of some parts of England; Dunstan is restored
to favour and named, in quick succession, bishop of Worcester and
of London
959 Eadwig dies; Edgar becomes king of all the territory; Dunstan is
named Archbishop of Canterbury and retains his post as abbot of
Glastonbury, as well as his positions as bishop of Worcester and
London
960 Travels to Rome to accept the pallium from John XII (r. 955–64)
961 New bishops installed at Worcester and London
later career Dunstan was a very successful administrator and something of
a scholar, but much of the evidence for his work as a monastic
reformer is late and circumstantial (the reform of Westminster being
an exception)
975 Edgar dies, succeeded by his son Edward
978 Murder of Edward
979 Coronation of King Æthelred
988 Death of Dunstan
* Many of these dates and ranges are estimates, as found in the Introduction to ELD.

of the history of Dunstan’s early life. But there was from the very beginning
a serious lacuna in the later part of the historical narrative. Some saints’ lives
evolved over time, as did the life of Dunstan, and many people with a variety
of needs and strategies shaped historical understanding of Dunstan’s times
through their written and sung contributions.
As a result of the partial nature of B’s vita, much of the commonly held
understanding of Dunstan’s role as a monastic reformer was based not

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 Margot E. Fassler

on tenth or early eleventh century sources, but on the third vita Dunstani,
penned by Osbern of Canterbury (d. c. 1090) in the late eleventh century, and
on other twelfth-century hagiographers and historians. It was apparently
John of Worcester (d. c. 1140) and Osbern who shaped the reforming aspect
of the saint’s character, bringing Dunstan into line with descriptions found
in vite of SS Oswald and Æthelwold.4 Winterbottom and Lapidge examined
charters and various contemporary documents, and, confirming the work
of Nicola Robertson and other recent scholars, found no firm evidence that
Dunstan ever reformed any monasteries, with the exception of his actions
at Westminster. In fact, he seems to have been content to work both with
secular canons and with monks. Other features of his character are harder to
discern. As a man of letters, it can be said that his Latin was good and he was
a competent poet, but no significant writings by him survive.5 The extent to
which ‘Hand D’ (sometimes identified as his) actually corrected and glossed a
small group of manuscripts has yet to be firmly established. Likewise, though
he seems to have been a capable preparer of royal charters and to have cared
about the liturgy, the extent of his activities in both these realms has not
been precisely determined.6 The portrait of him in the so-called ‘classbook’
is sometimes thought to have been drawn by Dunstan himself (see Fig. 7.1).
It is clear that he was a man of ‘prodigious’ energy, and that ‘a clear sense
emerges from the evidence –paleographical, liturgical, computistical – that
what we now see is merely the tip of an iceberg’.7 This early evidence shows
that Dunstan was a significant historical figure, a highly placed administrator
exercising great influence on the politics and on the religious life of his times,
but saints are not made from such profiles alone.
The second life of Dunstan, by Adelard of St Peter’s, Ghent, is actually
a series of twelve liturgical readings dedicated to Archbishop Ælfheah
(commonly spelt ‘Elphege’, r. 1006–12), demonstrating that Dunstan was
already venerated as a saint by the early eleventh century – at least in
Canterbury, and on the occasion of his deposition (19 May).8 Winterbottom

4 For detailed arguments and further bibliography, see N. Robertson, ‘Dunstan and
Monastic Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-Century Fiction?’, ANS 28 (2006):
153–67.
5 Dunstan’s known corpus of Latin poetry is transcribed and translated in ELD,
Appendix IV, pp. 163–72.
6 The evaluation of liturgical evidence by Winterbottom and Lapidge is tantalizing,
especially as it concerns the so-called Dunstan Pontifical, BnF lat. 943; see ELD,
pp. xl–xli; and J. Rosenthal, ‘The Pontifical of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan, His Life,
Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay et al. (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 143–63. On the papal
privilege that is part of the book, see ELD B, p. 84 n. 247.
7 ELD, p. xliii.
8 Adelard’s lections were apparently composed in Ghent: see ELD, p. cxxvii. For a
summary of the documents demonstrating the early development of Dunstan’s
cult, see A. Thacker, ‘Cults at Canterbury: Relics and Reform under Dunstan and
his Successors’, in St Dunstan, ed. Ramsay et al., pp. 221–45.

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Fig. 7.1 Bodl Auct. F.4.32, fol. 1r.

The additions related to Dunstan date to the tenth century

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and Lapidge suggest the likelihood that the readings were commissioned by
the archbishop in an attempt to shift emphasis from Glastonbury (as in B) to
Canterbury and to supply more details worthy of a saint’s cult in his place of
burial.9 Elphege himself would become the second most venerated saint at
Canterbury, and, unlike Dunstan, he would be deemed a martyr, killed at the
hands of the Danes. Adelard’s set of readings had a long shelf-life, as it were,
known by all subsequent hagiographers, but the set of chants he apparently
provided to travel with them does not survive.10 These chants would have
been composed at a time when pitch notation in the region was not secure,
and therefore they could only have been transmitted by a singer who could
have brought them from Ghent to England in person.11

Late eleventh and early twelfth century lives

Different kinds of hagiographical materials must have been circulating in the

century following the composition of the two earliest lives of Dunstan, both
at Canterbury, where Dunstan was archbishop for over twenty years, and at
Glastonbury, where he was abbot, at least in name, for the greater part of
his life. There must have been something specific, then, motivating the new
life and series of miracles for Dunstan written by Osbern, mentioned above,
especially given that Adelard’s lections were doubtless well established there
as office readings. As Jay Rubenstein notes, in his assessment of Osbern’s
career, Christ Church, Canterbury, had burned in 1067, and with it went the
tombs of both Elphege and Dunstan.12 New building projects always required
new or restored saints’ cults, and the young Osbern would eventually rise to
the occasion at Canterbury by supplying hagiographical materials for two of
its major saints. The story of Osbern’s opening a shrine to see what was inside
it (accompanied by Eadmer) is an example of his predilections and curiosity.
When he was sent to Bec to study with Anselm (archbishop of Canterbury,

9 ELD, pp. cxxvii–cxxx. Of the four main sources for Adelard’s readings, three are
from passionals, including the main source used for the new edition, BL Cotton
Nero C. vii, fols. 60–79. See ELD, pp. cxxxi–cxxxiv.
10 The number of lections was abbreviated to eight for The Monastic Breviary of Hyde
Abbey, Winchester, ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, 6 vols. (London, 1932–42), III, fols. 256r–7v;
for other appearances in English medieval sources, see ELD, pp. cxlii–cxliii.
11 The non-appearance of the responsories in early sources is attested by J. Billet,
The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597–c. 1000 (London, 2014), p. 194. An
overview of notation in the period is offered by S. Rankin, ‘Neumatic Notations in
Anglo-Saxon England’, in Musicologie médiévale: Notations et Séquences, ed. M. Huglo
(Paris, 1987), 129–44; and Rankin, ‘Music Books’, in The Cambridge History of the Book
in Britain, Volume 1: c. 400–1100, ed. R. Gameson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 482–506.
12 J. Rubenstein, ‘The Life and Writings of Osbern of Canterbury’, in Canterbury and
the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints, and Scholars, 1066–1109, ed. R. Eales and
R. Sharpe (London, 1995), pp. 27–40.

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1076–80) and to be disciplined for a severe but unknown fault, it might seem
that his interest in Canterbury saints and their cults was rubbing off on his
master. In a letter to Abbot Lanfranc from the period, Anselm expressed joy
at Osbern’s progress: ‘Your Dom Osbern, in fact, daily develops admirably,
both in his fervour for prayer seasoned with a sense of joy and in his progress
in knowledge through perseverance in study, coolness of thinking, and a
tenacious memory.’13 Anselm felt compassion for Osbern because he was
quite ill at the time and, in addition to other symptoms, when singing he
often experienced vertigo.14
In the same letter, immediately after describing the symptoms of Osbern’s
sickness, Anselm said that he had heard about St Dunstan’s ‘Rule of Life’
(this would be Æthelwold’s Regularis Concordia, often attributed to Dunstan)
and asked Lanfranc to send him a copy, in addition to Dunstan’s vita. After
Osbern returned to Canterbury in 1080, he said that Abbot Lanfranc asked
him to compose music for a historia for the martyred Bishop Elphege,
and that later he wrote the vita for the saint to complement his musical
composition.15 Rubenstein suggests that the character Elphege in the vita may
include several features of Osbern’s dearly beloved master, Anselm, as well
as of the abbot of the latter’s monastery, in his youth, Lanfranc. There was
certainly little else upon which to base his writing, for this saint had no early
vite. There is history in hagiography; when an author like Osbern has first-
hand knowledge of two great contemporary men, but no historical materials
for the saint for whom he was writing a life, he, of course, drew upon his
own times and people he knew and respected. Aspects of the characters of
Lanfranc and Anselm were thus woven into the vita of a bishop who had died
nearly a century before them.
In contrast, Osbern had far more material on which to draw when
establishing a cult and recreating a vita for Dunstan than for Elphege. But
as the comparative study of musical and liturgical events found in the lives
below will show, Osbern’s work is especially rich in details about the saint’s
life in Canterbury, and this is material he had to gather from oral tradition

13 The Letters of St. Anselm of Canterbury 39, trans. W. Fröhlich (Kalamazoo, 1990–94), I,
139–141 (p. 140); for the Latin, see Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, ed.
F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946–61), III, 149–51 (p. 150).
14 Ibid.
15 Although the life and translation survive, both the text and the music of the

office have been lost. The life and the translation are found in PL 149, 371–94; the
translatio is edited and translated in A. R. Rumble, The Reign of Cnut: King of England,
Denmark and Norway (London, 1994), pp. 294–315. For discussion, see P. Hayward,
‘Translation-Narratives in Post-Conquest Hagiography and English Resistance to
the Norman Conquest’, ANS 21 (1998): 67–93 (pp. 70–3). Rubenstein, ‘The Life and
Writings’, p. 35, comparing the life of Elphege to that of Dunstan, assumes that the
second is later since it is more polished in style and assured in its understanding of
the genre.

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or invent from his own experiences.16 Osbern, who spent his boyhood
as a chorister at Canterbury, was surely well supplied with knowledge
of circulating tales and associations found in the religious and liturgical
culture of his times, and he would use these to enliven the cult associated
with Dunstan’s tomb. The miracle of Dunstan protecting the choristers
from a cruel whipping traditionally administered in the week before
Christmas provides evidence that he and the boys prayed to the saint when
in need of help (which was apparently very often). Osbern reported other
incidents of beatings, one of which regularly occurred in August, and put
the Advent beating slightly closer to Christmas than does Eadmer in his
retelling of Osbern’s miracle story. The terror of the young choristers is worth
recording (here following both Osbern’s and then Eadmer’s adaptation of
Osbern), together with Dunstan’s intercession to prevent an annual beating,
administered apparently for no cause except to provide an opportunity for
teachers to vent spleen. Both Osbern and Eadmer had been child choristers
themselves and knew well the customs associated with punishment; Osbern
provided more details and tended toward repetition in his choice of phrasing;
Eadmer adapted his same story, but truncated it.

Osbern: Surgentes ergo pueri ut intrarent domum martyrii, transierunt

ante primos magistros; dormierunt. Transierunt ante secundos; dormierunt.
Transierunt ante tertios et quartos; domierunt. Post paulum vero evigilantes
et derisos se graviter dolentes, versi in furorum, statuunt sevissimam tertia
diei hora de pueris ultionem sumere, quos protegente Dunstano mane non
potuerunt contingere. Talis enim mos in ecclesia tunc temporis erat, ut quos
prima diei hora sine vindicta servaret, eos hora tertia durius puniret. Sed
Dunstanus … .

[And so the boys rising up that they might enter the house of their
martyrdom, crossed before the first group of teachers: they slept; they
crossed before the second group of teachers: they slept; they crossed before
the third and the fourth: they slept. A little while later waking up, greatly
pained to feel themselves tricked, the teachers turned in rage, and set up
the most cruel revenge for the third hour of the day for the boys who with
Dunstan protecting, they were not able to touch earlier. In those times the
custom in the church was that if punishment was escaped in the first hour,
it would be ever more severe in the third. But Dunstan … .]

16 Unlike the other medieval vite of Dunstan, only Osbern’s, the most widely copied
and important for adding flesh to Dunstan’s bones, does not exist in a modern
critical edition or English translation. For Osbern’s life and miracles of Dunstan,
one still must cite the text provided in Memorials of Saint Dunstan, ed. Stubbs
(hereafter abbreviated OsLD for the vita and OsMD for the miracula). D. Townsend,
‘The Current Questions and Future Prospects of Medieval Latin Studies’, in The
Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin, ed. D. Townsend and R. Hexter (Oxford, 2014),
p. 15, laments the lack of serious attention paid to Osbern’s Latinity, which he
rightly notes was highly influential.

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Eadmer: Iam aurora, id est hora tremenda, advenerat, cum magistri,

flagris taureis et nodatis corrigiis armati, locis sibi opprotunis pueros illo
transituros prestolabantur. Sed malivolos illos subito gravissimus sopor
simul involuit, et qui pueros per medium illorum transeuntes retineret,
vel in aliquo lederet, nullus fuit. Hinc magistros non sevitia qua fervebant
contra innocentes, sed ipsorum innocentum cantus et congratulatio a
somno excitavit et alta dies. Confusi ergo, quod effectum sevitate sue a qua
nullius prece discedere passi sunt dormiendo perdiderant, sero doluerunt.17

[And now, dawn, that is the dreaded hour, had arrived; armed with bull-
hide whips and knotted lashes the teachers stood waiting in opportune
places for the boys to pass by there. But suddenly all at once a most deep
sleep enveloped those malevolent men, so that none of them was able to
stop the boys passing through their midst, nor to inflict injury upon anyone.
It was not the viciousness which they bore against the innocent children
that roused the teachers from their slumber, but the singing and rejoicing of
these innocents, and the high feast itself. They were confused, and regretted
too late that by falling asleep they had lost their chance to indulge their
savagery.]

This example shows Osbern to be an able storyteller, transcending the narrow

range of inherited written material concerning Dunstan, and drawing on
his first-hand knowledge of the miracle tales and lives that unfolded at
Canterbury in the eleventh century, before and after the Conquest. He was
given an open window for incorporating angelic interventions as well by
B, who claimed that Dunstan ‘often learned from his divine inspirers the
melodies of sacred songs’, and by Adelard’s lofty twelfth reading, which
places Dunstan among the ranks of the saints in heaven.18
Osbern takes us on the scene, with an ear to popular culture, to what people
in the late eleventh century were interested in hearing about the past of the
institution where they prayed every day near the tomb of blessed Dunstan.
Such a story would have resonated well with the children who served in the
church as well. We cannot determine with precision when Osbern composed
his new life and the set of miracles to accompany it, but it was surely at
some point after 1080 and before his apparent death date of 1093 – by the
time Osbern wrote his vita et miracula, that is, he had already been named
precentor of the cathedral, a highly respected member of the community.
He was known widely for his musical gifts, as can be seen from a comment
by William of Malmesbury, who seemingly respected Osbern for little else
(although he helped himself liberally to his hagiographical materials in the
creation of his own life of Dunstan).19

17 OsMD 15, pp. 141–2; and EadMD 14, pp. 174–5.

18 ELD B 31.1, pp. 90–1; ELD A 12, pp. 140–5.
19 WilLD.

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Osbern’s vita and miracles ‘served as a source and model for most
subsequent hagiography of Dunstan’.20 He was the first to make Canterbury
the seat of a lion’s share of the life and miracles, highlighting Dunstan’s
tomb and events near to it, and, as noted above, he is responsible for making
Dunstan a champion of monastic reform. Osbern’s account was rewritten and
reworked, with an eye to B and Adelard as well, by two other twelfth-century
hagiographers, Eadmer, precentor of Canterbury (who wrote a set of miracles
in addition to a vita Dunstani) and William, precentor of Malmesbury (who
wrote a vita alone). Eadmer probably carried out his work while on the
continent with Anselm in the years 1097–1100 and 1103–6, and surely finished
by 1116.21 It is difficult to provide hard and fast motivations for Eadmer’s
redaction of Osbern, but it is likely that he wished to remake Dunstan more
in the mould of Anselm, and thereby give honour to his teacher and friend.22
He did correct a few details, made the prose less purple while omitting long
biblical quotations, and in general showed himself more of a Norman than
an Anglo-Saxon. In his revising of wording, he often preferred B or Adelard
over Osbern, and he sometimes omitted names of people and of places that
Osbern supplied.23 William of Malmesbury, like his friend Eadmer, was
highly critical of Osbern, but used Osbern’s materials and their narrative
structure as the framework for his own offering, tweaking numerous
details, but making few major changes.24 William’s life was commissioned
by the monks of Glastonbury, who were then advancing the preposterous
claim that Dunstan was buried in their abbey, and William probably wrote
the work c. 1120–30.25 It is not surprising that William apparently never
finished the book of miracles they also wished him to write; he was ‘keen
to fit his characters into a convincing historical framework and to get the
non-miraculous facts right’.26

20 ELD, p. cliv.
21 Ibid., pp. clvi–clvii; Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan
and Oswald, ed. and trans. A. J. Turner and B. J. Muir (Oxford, 2006), pp. lxvii–lxix.
22 S. A. Vaughn, ‘Among these Authors are the Men of Bec: Historical Writing among
the Monks of Bec’, in Essays in Medieval Studies 17: The Uses of History, ed. J. A.
Frantzen (Chicago, 2000), pp. 1–18.
23 For a more detailed comparison, see Eadmer: Lives and Miracles, pp. lxix–lxxvii.
24 ELD, pp. clvii–clviii and WilLD, pp. 159–63, with a table comparing William’s life to
that of Osbern.
25 William of Malmesbury, Saints’ Lives: Lives of SS. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus
and Indract, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002),
p. xv.
26 Ibid.,p. xxxviii.

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The role of music in the lives of Dunstan

The three lives of Dunstan from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries
were written by cantors, and two of these cantors wrote significant histories as
well as hagiography, a typical profile for those who ‘managed time’ in Anglo-
Norman book culture. William of Malmesbury, although known among recent
scholars for his comparative rigour as an interpreter of past events,27 was
engaged in strengthening some musical dimensions of Dunstan’s character
even beyond Osbern, who also made Dunstan another David in his love of
music.28 William says of Dunstan’s training at Glastonbury (particularly at
the hands of Irish teachers):

musica que appendent, gratanter addidicit et diligenter excoluit. …

Quapropter cum ceterarum tum maxime musice dulcedine captus,
instrumenta eius cum ipse libenter exercere, tum ab aliis exerceri dulce
habere. Ipse citharam si quando litteris vacaret sumere, ipse dulci strepitu
resonantia fila quatere. Iam vero illud instrumentum quod antiqui barbiton,
nos organa dicimus, tota diffudit Anglia. … Hoc porro exercebatur non ad
lenocinium voluptatum sed ad divini amoris incitamentum … .29

[he learned music with pleasure and worked at it diligently … Hence

Dunstan was captivated by music in particular; he took delight in playing
musical instruments, and thought it agreeable when they were played by
others. Whenever he had time left over from reading, he took up the harp,
and in person ‘struck the resounding strings with pleasant noise’ [cf. Statius,
Achill. II. 157]. He spread through England knowledge of what the ancients
call barbiton and we ‘organs’. … Dunstan practised on this instrument not
because of its enticing pleasures, but to arouse his love for God … .]

Because many hagiographers and historians from the central Middle Ages
were also trained in music and liturgy, these two subjects often loom larger
than might be expected in historical writings. Helgaud of Fleury, who in
the early eleventh century wrote the life of King Robert I of France, known
as the Pious, began the tendency to ascribe musical gifts and liturgical
understanding to the king, a motif which only developed over time as
more cantors continued to recreate his character.30 The same cumulative
development can be seen in the stages of Dunstan’s figure, for though B and
Adelard mention Dunstan’s training as a young scholar, there is no music

27 See Winterbottom and Thomson, n. 25, above.

28 OsLD 8, p. 78.
29 WilLD I.iv.2–4, pp. 178–81.
30 M. E. Fassler, ‘Helgaud of Fleury and the Liturgical Arts: The Magnification
of Robert the Pious’, in Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art,
Architecture, Literature, Music, ed. C. S. Jaeger (New York, 2010), pp. 102–27.

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in the curriculum they describe. Osbern, by contrast, transformed Dunstan

into a student of music and a player of many instruments, taking another
opportunity to create parallels between Dunstan and the psalmist David,
who made music for the religiosity of the art, and adding a long warning
from Amos 6. 4–6 against those who luxuriate in sounds.31 Eadmer said that
Dunstan used his musical gifts to move others ‘to meditation of celestial
harmony as much by the sweetness of the words (both in his mother
tongue and another language) interwoven in the musical measure, as by the
harmonious music he produced through them’.32 And then William, as we
have seen, added even more information, depicting Dunstan as an advocate
for organs all over the land. William, as cantor-historian, defended organ
playing by means of a newly created attribute of the man who was at that
point England’s most famous and beloved saint.
Comparative work in the lives of Dunstan from the perspective of music
and musical-liturgical understanding provides evidence for the ways that
cantors who managed the cults of the saints furthered respect for their own
expertise as musicians and promoted popular historical understanding as a
result. A handful of examples will suffice, including one showing Dunstan
involved in music and music-making at the time of miraculous intervention,
and another focusing on Dunstan’s ability to hear angelic hosts and their
music in visionary experiences, occasionally bringing the sounds he heard
back to earth – an idea initially put forward by B.
B’s vita is filled with miraculous moments occurring while Dunstan
prayed and sang, giving Dunstan’s character a musical dimension that was
later exploited by the cantors who wrote new histories and historie for the
saint. His emphasis reveals that B was steeped in chant and liturgy, and that
he manipulated this knowledge in subtle ways. Singing Compline, Dunstan
and his companions were spared from a falling stone (ELD B 8.3). When
Dunstan sang a delayed Vespers, fulfilling his obligation to sing the office, a
dove miraculously appeared from heaven (ELD B 11). When the devil came
to Dunstan in the form of a bear while the saint was at prayer, he scared
him off by singing Psalm 67, ‘Exsurgat Deus’ (ELD B 17). The devil threw
an enormous rock at Dunstan and a pupil walking outside singing psalms
(ELD B 18). In exile, Dunstan dreamed of his community back at Glastonbury
singing Vespers, but they were unable to complete the Magnificat antiphon,
although they tried again and again; Dunstan rebuked them in the dream, and
God answered explaining that this meant the plot to expel Abbot Dunstan
would not be completed (ELD B 23).33 Although B wrote primarily about

31 OsLD 8, p. 78.
32 EadLD 7, pp. 58–61.
33 ELD B 23.3–5, pp. 72–5. It is not without meaning that the Magnificat antiphon the
community tried repeatedly to sing was ‘Quare detraxistis’, the text of which is
based upon Job 6. 25–28 (Can 004448). The final two words of the antiphon, which

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Dunstan’s early life, he also describes the saint as archbishop of Canterbury

singing psalms as he walks along late at night (ELD B 36), in keeping with his
earlier musical attributes.
A dramatic example of miraculous music-making in these vite is the
story of Dunstan’s singing harp, which became well established in the
hagiographical tradition. Although later authors name the instrument a
cithera, B uses two terms; when the young Dunstan, a skilled artisan, came
to the house of a noble lady to help her design a liturgical vestment, ‘sumpsit
secum ex more citharam suam quam lingua paterna hearpan vocamus’ (‘he
brought with him as usual his harp, which we call in our fathers’ tongue
hearpa’).34 The instrument was hung on the wall while the assembled group
of women was working on the cloth with Dunstan, and it began to play, of
its own accord, the antiphon ‘Gaudent in celis anime sanctorum qui Christi
vestigia sunt secuti … ’.35 The text promises that saints who walk in Christ’s
footsteps will reign with him forever, since they have shed their blood for
his love. B describes Dunstan taking the instrument’s warning to heart, but
he does not mention this incident later, even though the eventual exile is
apparently the trouble it portends. Perhaps this is why Adelard moved the
story to later in his set of readings, placing it just before the events that would
lead up to Dunstan’s death, thereby giving the antiphon’s message greater
narrative weight.36
Later cantors reused B’s material in their vite, keeping various elements
but integrating them into the narrative. Osbern, continuing with his favoured
Old Testament conceit, has Dunstan play the same instrument for the king, a
David to a Saul. This is followed by the episode with the self-playing harp,
and immediately after that, as various jealousies abound at court, Dunstan
is accused of practising ‘sinister arts’ and it was said that his skills were
used ‘for deception of simple people rather than any kind of religion’.37
As a result, soon after the harp incident Dunstan was nearly murdered,
thrown into a pit, like a Joseph, and the prophecy of the miraculously

could not be sung, are ‘cogitis explete’ [‘finish what you have begun’]. The chant
would have been sung at second Vespers during the Old Testament historia for
Job, rendered at Matins with some other Old Testament books in the month of
September; see Ordo Romanus XIIIA 9, in M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut
Moyen Age, 5 vols. (Louvain, 1956–61), II, 484–5. This chant appears primarily in
Italian and occasionally in French sources, as can be seen from its circulation among
manuscripts represented in the CANTUS database, so it is somewhat strange that B
emphasized it.
34 ELD B 12.2, pp. 42–3. Dunstan was also known as a metalworker; a bell he
supposedly cast was hung by his tomb in Canterbury.
35 Can 002927, widespread throughout all Europe, was sung in the office for several
feast days, including for individual saints and for All Saints.
36 ELD A 9, pp. 134–5.
37 EadLD 9, pp. 60–3. In B the incident of near murder takes place before the harp
plays.

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 Margot E. Fassler

rendered antiphon rang true.38 Eadmer and William follow Osbern’s

arrangement.39
The tale of the harp suggests another important aspect of the place of
music in these vite, namely the relationship between Dunstan’s musical gifts
and the music of the heavenly hosts.40 In Osbern’s version, the harp’s music
offered the listeners a foretaste of heaven.41 In Eadmer’s version, Dunstan
realized the heavenly source of the antiphon and its prophetic power: ‘He
accepted that the performance was truly brought about by the music of angels
so that he might be taught as if in the actual presence of God what ought to
be done by him in the future.’42 The angelically produced antiphon sounded
by the harp is just one of a number of incidents in which Dunstan is privy
to the sounds of angelic song – in fact this ability became one of his chief
characteristics as he is depicted by later cantors. One of the pieces Dunstan
heard on high and brought back to earth, which seems not to have survived,
is the antiphon ‘O rex dominator gentium’. This is a surprising omission in
the liturgical sources, since, as Eadmer tells the story, Dunstan insisted that
the work be written down, and according to William Dunstan teaches the
piece to his community – both common strategies used by cantor-historian-
hagiographers to establish new pieces in the liturgy.43
While ‘O rex dominator gentium’ is unfortunately lost, another piece
featured in the Dunstan lives can be traced in the history of English liturgical
music, that is, a Kyrie that is mentioned first by Adelard in his ninth lesson:

quod nocte quadam sancto sopori deditus, tanquam ad superna raptus,

angelicis mulcebatur concentibus; ibi sanctos spiritus sanctissime Trinitati
in laudem et hominibus in salutem audivit modulantes et dicentes ‘Kyrie
eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison’.44

[One night, while deep in holy slumber, as though rapt to the heavens he
[that is, Dunstan] was soothed by angelic harmonies. He heard there the
holy spirits singing in praise of the Holy Trinity and for the salvation of
men, saying ‘Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison’.]

38 OsLD 10, 11, pp. 80–1.

39 But Eadmer brings the piece in a second time closer to the end of his vita, and in
this case he includes Osbern’s radiant light, EadLD 53, pp. 130–1.
40 See especially D. Hiley, ‘What St Dunstan Heard the Angels Sing: Notes on a
pre-Conquest Historia’, in Laborare fratres in unum: Festschrift László Dobszay zum 60.
Geburtstag, ed. D. Hiley and J. Szendrei (Hildesheim, 1995), pp.105–15.
41 OsLD 10, pp. 80–1.
42 EadLD 8, pp. 60–61. William emphasized the prophetic rather than the angelic:
WilLD I.6.2, pp. 182–3.
43 EadLD 51, pp. 128–9; WilLD II.27, pp. 284–7.
44 ELD A 9, pp. 134–5.

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Osbern tells of the angelic Kyrie as part of Dunstan’s vision of his mother in
heaven, and he says that the chant resounded in organum.45 Eadmer tells of
a royal hunting party on Sunday morning, for which Dunstan was instructed
to delay Mass past the usual hour; instead, he falls asleep in church and has
Mass with the heavenly host who teach him a Kyrie, which he in turn gives to
others to learn, ‘and today the holy church in many places sings it during the
solemn rites of the Mass’.46 William repeats this information, but not in his
vita Dunstani, though there he does note that Dunstan ‘many times heard the
heavenly choirs sweetly singing Kyrie eleison’.47 Instead, William uses the
story in his history of English bishops, where he writes: ‘I believe, and it is
no empty belief, that he also heard the song of the angels as they chanted the
Kyrie eleison, which is now gladly taught and gladly learned in the churches
of the English.’48
The end of Dunstan’s life was also filled with musical allusions, beginning
with Adelard’s tenth lesson, which told that Dunstan was called to celebrate
the celestial Mass in heaven by throngs of angels. But as Ascension Thursday
was imminent and the people needed him to celebrate Mass and preach on
this holy day, he asked them to delay so he could fulfil his priestly duties,
and the heavenly host agreed to do without him until Saturday. The angels’
speech to Dunstan in Adelard was repeated by Osbern and both Eadmer and
William, with only minor alterations – ‘Hail, our Dunstan! Come if you are
ready, and be so kind as to join our company’ – and after Dunstan’s request
for a slight delay: ‘Be ready on Saturday, to pass with us hence to Rome,
for with us you must forever chant before the highest bishop, “Holy, holy,
holy”.’49

The Dunstan office in Worcester F. 160

Worcester, Cathedral Library MS F. 160 is a compilation made up of various

liturgical books, among them both an antiphoner and a gradual. The
antiphoner, the earliest section of the manuscript, has been dated c. 1230.50
As several scholars have observed, this central source for the study of
chant of the Sarum Use contains many offices for English saints, some of
which, including that of Dunstan, survive only because this book escaped

45 OsLD 40, pp. 117–18.

46 EadLD 52, pp. 128–31.
47 WilLD II.26, pp. 284–5.
48 GPA i.19.11, pp. 40–41.
49 ELD A 10, pp.136–9; OsLD 41, pp. 120–1; EadLD 63, pp. 150–1; WilLD II.30, pp. 288–9.
50 For a facsimile, see Antiphonaire monastique: XIIIe siècle, codex F. 160 de la Bibliothèque
de la Cathédrale de Worcester, ed. L. McLachlan, Paléographie musicale 12 (Tournai,
1922).

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 Margot E. Fassler

the near-total destruction of the Worcester liturgical books in the sixteenth

century.51 The Dunstan office is a complicated work, as medieval offices so
often are, with several historical layers and with numerous connections to the
vite studied above. The full office in F. 160, fols. 220r–223r, is catalogued on
the CANTUS database, beginning with first Vespers on the eve of the 19 May
feast and ending with second Vespers on the day of the feast.52
Several characteristics are immediately notable. This is a monastic office,
and so it has twelve readings, twelve responsories and two sets of antiphons
(six each) for the night office. The ‘mode’ column on the CANTUS catalogue
shows that the two sets of antiphons for Matins are modally ordered, and
the texts of these are in fact rhythmic poetry, doubtless composed no earlier
than the second half of the twelfth century. The responsories, however, are a
different matter, not modally ordered and not expressed in accentual poetry
(see Appendix 1). The same is true for the set of five antiphons sung at Lauds.
The office thus has at least two layers, earlier and later.
To investigate the entire office is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it
is clear from Appendix 1 that the texts of the responsories were to a large
degree based on Adelard, though their language and structure also suggest
the influence of Osbern’s vita and, in one instance, Eadmer’s.53 In addition,
several of the ‘musical incidents’ in Dunstan’s life studied above are
re-enacted through the texts and their musical settings. The two earlier parts
of the office, for example, the responsories and Lauds antiphons, are closely
tied to the vite of Dunstan, but they also provide a new view of the saint –
one that is sung and thus embodies ideas about music’s role in his life. The
twelve readings of Adelard, which were employed in one guise or another
for the Sarum Use, shortened for a cathedral office or perhaps because some
of them were taken from Scripture, are the fundamental source for the texts of
the responsories, as can be seen in Appendix 1 (in which the responsories are
matched with their probable readings).
When one of Adelard’s readings did not suit the larger scheme of the
Worcester office, it was apparently cut; Adelard’s fifth reading, for example,
which concerns the burial of a king at Glastonbury, had little interest for this

51 D. Hiley, ‘The Music of Prose Offices in Honour of English Saints’, Plainsong and
Medieval Music 10 (2001), 23–37.
52 David Hiley and I are preparing a fully transcription and translation of the office,
with commentary, for the series Historiae, published by the Institute of Mediaeval
Music.
53 There is also a truncated vita for Dunstan in BL Cotton Nero E. i, part of a passional
from Worcester dating from the early thirteenth century. This manuscript will
feature in my future work, and I intend to check these readings against the F. 160
responsories more closely. Readings in Nero are labeled with the day of his feast,
and they are unusually long, including about half of Eadmer’s vita, as well as a
few texts from William. The set shows the prominence of both of these authors’
materials at Worcester in the period before F. 160 was copied.

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Canterbury office, and so apparently would not have been read with these
responsories. It would seem that the tenth reading was divided, allowing
for one entire nocturn to be devoted to the several miracles that were
associated with Dunstan’s final celebration of Mass on Ascension Thursday
at Canterbury and his reception into the heavens on the Saturday following
this grand feast. In this way, the story of Dunstan’s life in the historia has three
major parts: (1) his miraculous birth and early life, (2) miraculous events
beginning with the end of his exile and his time as Archbishop of Canterbury
and (3) the end of his time at Canterbury – this especially fitting for a feast
that honoured the shrine at the centre of his cult at Canterbury. The history of
his life is reshaped to suit the place and the architecture of the new church.
The comparisons in Appendix 1 demonstrate that the sources for the
responsory texts create a historical narrative for Dunstan, inviting the
singers (and their audience) to enter into Dunstan’s musical imagination and
experiences. Great responsories have two sections, a respond and a verse, and
since the final section of the respond is sung again after the verse, the two
must be constructed so that there is a smooth connection between the verse
and the last part of the respond which follows it. The words in parentheses at
the end of the text in Appendix 1 show where to begin the part of the respond
that serves as a refrain after the verse. In responsories that close out the end
of a nocturn, the refrain is repeated twice, once after the verse, and once
after the doxological statement that is traditionally sung. Responsory 1 is an
example of the way the form of the genre has been exploited by the composer
to add depth and new dimensions to Dunstan’s saintly character. The text of
the opening describes Dunstan as a pillar of the church, taking up that light
(Christ) which, upright in the heavens, sustains the earth, and it then contains
another statement about Dunstan as a bulwark of apostolic faith who shines
with the heavenly light mentioned in the respond. As the respond ends with
the words ‘alleluia, alleluia’, the sound of the heavenly host, this creates an
angelic refrain, bringing the sound of heaven down into the celebration of
Dunstan and his light, described through a miracle in the first reading. In this
way the chant embodied the miraculous tale of the reading.
Responsory 8 forms a musical high point of this magnificent office. As can
be seen from Ex. 7.1 the chant has been structured to emphasize the word
‘organis’ as the final section of the respond (see also Appendix 1, R.2.4). This
section was sung after the verse and again after the doxological statement.
And then, in a most unusual and dramatic musical gesture, a Kyrie chant
was sung, a mode 8 chant that was set polyphonically in the Winchester
troper. Since it was Osbern who, in his life of Dunstan, introduced the idea
that the chant was sung with organum, it is just possible that this masterful
musician may have had a hand in writing the responsories copied in F. 160.
Another musical tour de force is found in the antiphons for Lauds. The final
responsory, which depicts Dunstan feasting at the heavenly banquet of the
lamb with all the saints (cf. Apoc. 19), was an introduction to Lauds, where

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 Margot E. Fassler

Ex. 7.1 Responsory ‘Dunstanus archiepiscopus’ (transcribed by Margot Fassler

and David Hiley and engraved by Benjamin A. Stone)

    

Dun-sta - nus ar - chi - e - pi - sco - pus

  

san - cto so - po - ri de - di - tus


     

an - ge - li - cis mul

- ce - ba - tur

      

or - ga - nis sic mo - du - lan - ti - bus

     
              
     

ky - ri - e - - - - - ley - son.

  

al - le - lu - ya.

       

San - cti spi - ri - tus psal - le - bant in sul - li - mi

    

et cla - re mo du - lan - do pre - ces of - fe - re - bant

                         


san - cte tri - ni - ta - - ti.


  

Or - ga - nis.

   

Glo - ri - a pa - tri et fi - li - o

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 Shaping the Historical Dunstan


                          


et spi - ri - tu - i san - cto.

 

Or - ga - nis.

     
              
     

Ky - ri - e - - - - - ley - son.

                
         

Chri-ste - - - - - - -

     
                     

- - ley - son. Ky - ri - e - - -

        
         

- - - - - -

    

- - ley - son. al - le - lu - ya.

each antiphon celebrates a rank of saints (see Table 7.3). When coupled with
the designated psalmody, this set of chants provides commentary on the
great heavenly feast and places Dunstan at the table.
In his history of the bishops of England, William of Malmesbury describes
Dunstan’s many miracles, making it clear that they cannot be disassociated
from his character. William thus draws on his knowledge of the lives of the
saint, and surely also on his knowledge of Dunstan’s liturgical veneration,
bringing both together as he shapes an aspect of England’s past. As in the case
of Dunstan, to understand how the past was understood and recreated in the
Middle Ages often requires knowledge of three kinds of materials – written
histories and chronicles, lives of the saints, and the chants and readings of
the liturgy – and this is especially true because the cults of the saints played
a major role in the process of history-making. The three kinds of sources
worked interactively in the intellectual, religious and artistic understandings,

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Table 7.3 Subjects of Lauds antiphons for the Feast of Dunstan, Worcester F. 160

Antiphon 1 Patriarchs and Prophets (with ‘Dominus regnavit’, Ps. 98)

Antiphon 2 Apostles (with ‘Iubilate’, Ps. 99)
Antiphon 3 Martyrs (with ‘Deus Deus meus’, Ps. 62)
Antiphon 4 Confessors (with ‘Benedicite’, Ps. 102)
Antiphon 5 Virgins (with ‘Laudate Dominum’, Ps. 150)

especially of monks and clerics who sang and heard the office, and joined in
the musical events of Dunstan’s life as part of his history.
All three types of materials were subject to various kinds of transformation,
and the ways in which chronicles interact with saints’ lives, and the ways
in which chants were incorporated into histories, must be assessed on a
case-by-case basis. Early materials composed for Dunstan lacked significant
information about the Canterbury years, and since this was to become a
major site for his cult, something had to be done. Osbern of Canterbury filled
the gap initially, and his work most likely included new chants with texts
drawn from his new set of life and miracles. Eadmer of Canterbury followed
suit. The Sarum office in Worcester F. 160 shows complex dependencies on
the early lives and on the later work of the Canterbury cantors, fleshing out
Dunstan’s character so he could be understood and his miracles could be
relived through musical re-enactment. Dunstan was England’s greatest saint
in the pre-Becket centuries, and his character grew slowly and steadily from
early eyewitness observations, to Canterbury, to a Sarum office –an example
of the ways in which the past was both known and made, especially at the
hands of cantors, who sang, wrote offices and penned histories.

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Appendix 1
The responsories for Dunstan’s historia in Worcester 160
(first half of the century), with comparative references to
the readings by Adelard and to other vite of Dunstan

First Nocturn
Reading 1 The miracle of the candles on the feast of the purification before
his birth. All candles are suddenly extinguished, but then Dunstan’s pregnant
mother has her candle miraculously lit, and from its flame all the others are
reignited.
R. 1.1 (mode 1)
Presul Christi Dunstanus sanctis Prelate of Christ, Dunstan, was singled
parentibus ortus claruit quorum out, a man born of saintly parents,
animas inter angelos post excessum whose souls he merited to see among
eorum videte promeruit alleluia. the angels after their death alleluia.
V. Sancti sanctum genuere et regi V. To bear a holy man for the Holy One,
regum Christo optulere. [quorum … ] and to offer to Christ, the king of kings.
Commentary Miracle not in B; the R is very close to Adelard (bold, with some
alterations); greatly expanded in Osbern; in Eadmer and William. Language in
the verse (emboldened) is found in Osbern’s description of the miracle at the
Purification: OsLD 4, 14, p. 72.

Reading 2 His education and illness at Glastonbury. He is preserved by

climbing the walls of the church, and is found sleeping at the altar.
R. 1.2 (mode 3)
Pius adolescens Dunstanus florem The holy young man Dunstan clothed
iuuentutis flore induit virginitatis the flower of his youth with the flower
per quem complacuit et Deo et of virginity through which he was
angelis allleuia alleluia. V. Puri cordis pleasing to God and to the angels,
munditie casti corporis sociavit alleluia, alleluia. V. He joined chastity
pudiciam. [Per … ] of the chaste body to the modesty of
the pure heart.
Commentary The emphasis on chastity in R1.2 is not found in B, but it is at the
very end of Adelard’s lections: see ELD/A 12, pp. 144–5 and for Osbern, see OsLD
40, p. 119, which is paraphrased in the Responsory text.

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 Margot E. Fassler

Reading 3 King Edmund makes Dunstan head of Glastonbury and pleads his
support, and Dunstan becomes like a pillar of light for monasticism diffused
through the entire English sphere.
R. 1.3 (mode 4)
Preciosus vir Domini Dunstanus Dunstan, the godly man of great worth,
splendidum ecclesie ornamentum made into a splendid decoration
factus columpna lucis effulsit que for the church, shines forth with a
erecta in celum orbem terre sustinuit magnificent pillar of light which
alleluia alleluia. V. O robur apostolice upright in the heavens sustains the
fidei plenum lumine celi [Alleluia … ] orb of the earth, alleluia alleluia.
V. O bulwark of apostolic faith, full
with the light of heaven.
Commentary The text in Adelard is the closest, but Osbern and Eadmer follow.
Adelard (ELD/A,3, p.118) reads: ‘ut sicut dixi de lampande pregnantis genetricis
sue ceterorum per omnem ecclesiam lampades accensas, ita per eum ex hoc loco
columen religionis monastice toto Angelorum orbe diffusum sit.’

Reading 4 Dunstan has a vision in which Peter, Paul and Andrew appear to
him, offering him symbols of protection.
R. 1.4 (mode 4)
In visione sancta apparuere beato In a holy vision, the leaders of the
Dunstano principes regni Dei et kingdom of God and the judges of
iudices seculi singuli offerentes ei the age appeared to blessed Dunstan
gladium et armaturam Spiritus sancti one by one, offering him a sword and
alleluia, alleluia. V. Petrus ergo et the armour of the Holy Spirit, alleluia
Paulus cum sancto Andrea effulsere ei alleluia. V. Peter therefore and Paul
que gratiam apostolice benedictionis with blessed Andrew shone forth to
contulere. [singuli … ] V. Gloria Patri him and conveyed the grace of an
et Filio et Spiritui sancto. [singuli … ] apostolic blessing. V. Glory to the
Father and to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit.
Commentary This responsory is a paraphrase of Adelard (the vision is also in B).
The king interprets the vision (ELD/ A,4, p. 122): ‘Cum gladii quos ex apostolica
benedictione suscepisti armaturam pretendant spiritus Sancti …’. Hiley (‘What
St Dunstan Heard’, p. 111) shows that the melisma on spiritus is based on phrases
from the sequentia ‘Ostende maior’ commonly sung with ‘Salus eterna’.

Adelard Reading 5 Dunstan buries King Eadred, as he had previously buried

Edmund at Glastonbury.
No responsory relates.

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Second Nocturn
Reading 5 (Adelard 6) Dunstan is sent into exile at Mont Blandin, where he is
under the protection of Arunulf of Flanders. He is visited by the Apostle Andrew.
R. 2.1 (mode 6T)
Beatus Dunstanus exilio pro iusticia Blessed Dunstan was consigned to
est ascriptus ubi crebra sanctorum exile because of his righteousness
consolatione a Deo est relevatus. where he was sustained by God
Alleluia. V. Cui pro veritate exulanti with strong consolation of the saints,
per sanctam Andream apostolam alleluia. V. For whose exiled truth
astitit piissimiis Deus. [Ubi … ] most holy God had stand the blessed
Apostle Andrew.
Commentary B does not know the location of the exile and makes no mention of
St Andrew. The responsory text and verse is a paraphrase of Adelard, ELD/A 6,
pp. 128–9.

Reading 6 (Adelard 7) Dunstan is recalled to England and becomes bishop of

London (Paul) and of Worcester (Peter) and archbishop of Canterbury (goes with
Rochester, which is of St Andrew), fulfiling the vision of the three apostles.
R. 2.2 (mode 7)
Misertus Dominus destitute ecclesie The Lord feeling pity for the destitute
Dunstanum patrem cum gloria church recalled father Dunstan with
revocauit et ei patriarchatum prime glory and magnificently conceded
metropolis Anglorum magnifice to him the patriarchy of the first
concessit alleluia. V. Respexit metropolitan in England, alleluia.
Dominus populum suum tum beatum V. The Lord cared for his people when
Dunstanum patrie redonavit. [Et ei … ] he gave back Dunstan to the homeland.
Commentary Responsory text emphasizes Canterbury, as does Osbern, another
indication that the chant texts represent a Canterbury reworking of the sense of
Adelard. Several of the words found in the responsory text are found in Osbern,
OsLD 32, pp. 108–9.

Reading 7 (Adelard 8) Dunstan sees the mystical dove twice during liturgical
celebrations.
R. 2.3 (mode 8)
Celestium contemplator Dunstanus Dunstan, a contemplator of the
angelica atque apostolica visione et heavens and most worthy of angelic
visitatione dignissimus columbam a and apostolic vision and visitation,
Iohanne in Christi baptismate visam celebrated in the joy of his heart, a
sibi in letitia cordis sui exultavit dove shown to him by John the Baptist
ostensam alleluia. V. Dunstanus in Christ, alleluia. V. Dunstan, a son of
columbe Dei filius cordis munditie the dove of God, given over to purity
et sancte innocentie deditus. of the heart and to holy innocence.
[Columbam … ]

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 Margot E. Fassler

Commentary Not in B. The responsory refers to the apostolic vision of the sword
of Andrew and the vision of the dove with reference to John the Baptist. These
are together Adelard: ELD/A 8, pp. 132–3; see also OsLD 33, p. 109 and WilLD
i.13.2, pp. 196–7.

Reading 8 (Adelard 9) Dunstan has a vision of heaven in which the angels

sing to the Trinity, ‘Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison’; the saint’s harp
miraculously plays the antiphon ‘Gaudent in celis anime sanctorum qui Christi
vestigia sunt secuti’ and so on.
R. 2.4 (mode 8)
Dunstanus archiepiscopus sancto Dunstan the archbishop, given over to
sopori deditus angelicis mulcebatur holy sleep, was soothed by organized
organis sic modulantibus: Kyrie (that is, set in organum) modulations:
eleison alleluia. V. Sancti Spiritus Kyrie eleison, alleluia. V. Those of the
psallebant insullimi et clare Holy Spirit on high psalmodized and
modulando preces offerebant sancte offered with bright modulation to the
Trinitati. [organis … ] V. Gloria Patri Holy Trinity. V. Glory to the Father and
et Filio et Spiritui sancto. [organis … ] to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Kyrie
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.
eleison. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Commentary Not in B; Adelard emphasizes the Trinitarian aspect of the Kyrie
sung by the angelic hosts. At this point in Adelard, Dunstan’s harp plays the
antiphon ‘Gaudent in celis anima’ and so on. In Osbern the Kyrie is sung in
organum, and text proves what other materials only suggest: Osbern’s hand (or
that of someone dependent on him) is present in the development of the chant
texts; see OsLD 40, p.117. The phases of the chant relate to a mode 8 Kyrie that
was sung at Winchester in organum. (Note: The word insullimi is here taken as a
version of insublimi, ‘those on high’, which as a nominative third-person plural
noun makes grammatical sense.)

Third Nocturn
Reading 9 (Adelard 10.1) On the Ascension, Ælfgar, afterwards bishop of
Elmham, has a vision of cherubim and seraphim calling Dunstan away. (Note:
Reading 10 has been divided to make lessons 10 and 11.)
R. 3.1 (mode 8)
Transiens ex hoc mundo venerandus The venerable bishop crossing from
pontifex angelicis choris ducentibus this world with angelic choirs leading
migravit ad Christum qui ei factus est the departed to Christ who made
corona et perhenne premium alleluia. for him a crown and an everlasting
V. Cumque exitum suum dominicis reward, alleluia. V. And, so his leaving
muniret sacramentis translatus est might fortify the Sunday sacraments,
ab angelis ad auctorem luminis. [Qui he was carried by angels to the author
ei … ] of light.

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Commentary In Adelard, the bishop Ælfgar has a vision, seeing Dunstan on

high with the angels and seated in a pontifical throne. Part of the text of this
responsory is found in Eadmer, relating to the day of Dunstan’s death, thereby
breaking the chronology found in Adelard: ‘Et responso a cunctis Amen, transit,
et angelicis eum choris ducentibus, migravit ad Christum qui ei factus est corona
et perenne premium’ (EadLD 67, pp. 156–7). This is yet another sign of an ongoing
Canterbury influence on the chant texts.

Reading 10 (Adelard 10.2) Dunstan is asked if he is ready to depart; he answers

affirmatively and the angels say: Be ready on Saturday to come with us, where
you will sing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ in the presence of the great high priest forever.
R. 3.2 (mode 4)
Exultemus et letemur in Domino: ecce Let us rejoice and be glad in the Lord:
beatus Dunstanus unus candidati behold blessed Dunstan, one of the
gregis in albis agnum sequentis gleaming flock in white following the
‘Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus’ clamare non lamb, does not cease to cry ‘Holy, holy,
cessat alleluia alleluia. V. Conscriptus holy’, alleluia, alleluia. V. Enrolled in
numero eorum qui sequuntur agnum the number of those who follow the
Dei quocumque ierit. [Sanctus … ] lamb of God wheresoever he goes.
Commentary From Adelard: The angels said to Dunstan: ‘Paratus esto die
Sabbati nobiscum hunc Romam transire, quia opertet te coram summo pontifice
nobiscum “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” eternaliter canere’ (ELD/A, 10, pp. 138–9).
The same is paraphrased in Osbern, OsLD 41, p. 121, and quoted from Adelard in
Eadmer (EadLD 63, 150–1); the text is not in William.

Reading 11 (Adelard 11) Last sermons; last farewell; Dunstan celebrates last
communion.
R. 3.3 (mode 1)
Translate ad celestia benigne pater Taken to heaven, blessed father
Dunstane suspirantes ad te filios noli Dunstan, do not desert your sons
deserere sed ad te transferre satage sighing to you but be energetic to
ut tecum coram Christo mereamur bring them to you so that with you in
gaudere alleluia. V. Dum enim in the presence of Christ we may merit
corpore peregrinamur a Domino tuo eternal joy. V. For while we journey in
quesumus non destituamur auxilio. the body we beg your Lord that we not
[Ut tecum … ] be left without help.
Commentary Adelard emphasizes his care for the people. Osbern expands
Dunstan’s farewell speech.

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Reading 12 (Adelard 12) Dunstan enters into the company of the angels,
patriarchs, prophets, martyrs and virgins (as is made clear in the antiphons, see
below).
R. 3.4 (mode 1):
Beatus es care Dei Dunstane qui in cena You are blessed and beloved of God,
nuptiarum agni discumbis qui gaudio Dunstan, who recline at the nuptial
Domini tui letus perfrueris gaudebis meal of the lamb, who joyful has full
ergo cum angelis et in ligno vite cum enjoyment of the praise of your Lord,
sanctis epulaberis alleluia. V. Ecce therefore you will rejoice with the
sicut sol in conspectu Dei emicas ubi angels and feast with the saints on
cotidie ‘Sanctus’ clamare non cessas. the tree of life. V. Behold you shine
[gaudebis …] V. Gloria Patri et Filio et forth as the sun in the view of God
Spiritui sancto.[gaudebis] where daily you do not cease to cry
‘Holy’. V. Glory to the Father and to
the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Commentary: Compare Adelard: ‘Et ideo cum hiis qui non inquinaverunt
vestimenta sua agnum Dei sequeris. Ideo in cena nuptiarum agni letus discumbis.
Ergo cum talibus et tot civibus in perpetuum feliciter gaudebis, et in ligno vite
eternaliter epulaberis’ (ELD/A, 12, pp. 144–5).

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 8
Female Monastic Cantors and Sacristans
in Central Medieval England: Four Sketches

Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis

Until Margot Fassler’s study of the multifaceted office of the medieval

monastic cantor, this office had received little scholarly attention.1 Through
her investigation of extant monastic rules and customaries from the ninth
through the eleventh centuries, Fassler was able to uncover the development
of this office over the course of the central Middle Ages. Though the
Benedictine Rule made no explicit provision for the cantor as a monastic
officer, later customaries written in the tenth and eleventh centuries as
elaborations on the Rule, particularly those issued from the abbey of Cluny,
increasingly articulated and expanded upon this office so that it encompassed
a variety of liturgical and scriptorial responsibilities.
Fassler’s study focused exclusively on the office of the cantor in
communities of male Benedictine religious. Not until Anne Yardley’s recent
study did the office of cantrix in communities of women religious receive
sustained consideration.2 Yardley devoted a chapter to detailing not only
the liturgical responsibilities of the cantrix, but also those of the abbess,
sacristan (editva or secretaria) and weekly cantrix, as they were described in
monastic rules, customaries, ordinals and visitation records from Benedictine,
Bridgettine, Dominican and Franciscan houses. Given the nature of the extant
sources, she limited the scope of her study to the fourteenth through the
sixteenth centuries, though a few sources from the twelfth and the thirteenth
centuries were referenced when instructive. In her discussion of the cantrix,
she divided this officer’s responsibilities under four headings: general
oversight of liturgical practices, regulation of music, vocal instruction of
community members and soloistic roles.3 And her account of the sacristan’s
responsibilities attended primarily to the maintenance of the community’s
liturgical space, eucharistic vessels, vestments, books, candles and reliquaries,
as well as to her keeping of time during the daily cursus.4

1 Fass A.
2 A. Yardley, Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (New
York, 2006).
3 Ibid., pp. 53–66.
4 Ibid., pp. 69–72.

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 Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis

Yardley’s work has done much to reveal the liturgical histories of late
medieval English women religious, but those of women religious from earlier
centuries must still be recovered. Though the sources for this earlier period are
often more scarce, fragmentary and male-mediated, they nonetheless contain
tesserae that can be pieced together to form a mosaic of the liturgical lives
of women religious and the monastic officers who directed them. Mortuary
rolls, saints’ lives, miracle collections and calendars bear traces of the cantors
and sacristans who commissioned or undertook their initial production. They
offer glimpses of the various ways that these women created, preserved
and passed on their communities’ memoria through the copying of liturgical
books, the writing and preservation of charters and other documents, the
maintenance of necrologies and mortuary rolls, the creation of texts and
music for the Divine Office and Mass, the ornamentation of sacred spaces,
the production of vite and miracula for patron saints, the custody of their
relics and the proper observance of both the calendar and the hore of prayer
throughout the year’s liturgical cursus.
Though some of the women engaged in these activities were explicitly
identified as cantors or sacristans, more often the titles of their offices and
even their names were not recorded. Thus simply searching for the incidence
of those invested with the title of cantor or sacristan and then detailing the
activities that these women performed will yield only a partial account of
how the liturgy was orchestrated in women’s monastic houses; attention
must also be given to the women who performed the kinds of liturgical
activities scripted for these offices in monastic rules and customaries, even
if they are untitled or unnamed. Taking this dual approach will ensure that
the contributions of many more of the women figured as their communities’
custodians of the liturgy are culled for consideration. Determining whether
they were ‘officially’ cantors or sacristans, in many respects, matters less than
showing that they performed the cantor- or sacristan-like duties of directing
the music of the liturgy, preparing the Eucharist, guarding saints’ shrines and
serving as scribes for their communities.
Three women were explicitly assigned to the office of cantor or sacristan
in the extant sources: Eadburh of Nunnaminster, Wulfruna-Judith of Barking
and Edith of Nunnaminster. In the Life of Eadburh by Osbert of Clare
(d. c. 1158), he names the mid tenth century saint as the ‘precentrix’ of her
community.5 And though Susan Ridyard questions the historical accuracy of
his attribution, wondering whether it simply means that ‘her love of singing
was such that she seemed to be like a precentrix’, it is clear from his references
to the liturgical responsibilities that Eadburh assumed that she exercised both
cantor- and sacristan-like roles.6 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (b. c. 1040, d. after

5 Ridyard provides an edition of Osbert’s text in The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon

England (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 255–308 (p. 281).
6 Ibid., p. 34 n. 89 (emphasis mine).

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1107) identifies the eleventh-century woman religious Wulfruna-Judith as an

‘editva’ at Barking.7 In his Lives of two of the abbey’s abbess-saints, Æthelburh
(d. c. 693) and Wulfhild (d. after 996), Goscelin features Wulfruna-Judith as
a central character in and witness to various miracles, and his accounts of
these miracles provide rich evidence for the range of liturgical and scribal
duties entrusted to her care. Finally, Nunnaminster’s titulus for the mortuary
roll for Vitalis, abbot of Savigny (d. 1122), lists among the obituaries of the
community the name ‘Edita’, and in the interlinear space above her name,
the title of her office was supplied: ‘cantrice’.8 The importance of her office is
revealed by the high rank accorded her within the litany of Nunnaminster’s
departed; her name was listed immediately after the names of the abbess and
prioresses and before the names of the other sisters that bear no title.

Liturgical leaders

Review of the extant sources relating the life of Eadburh of Nunnaminster

provides the most comprehensive, though admittedly idealized, portrait of
a precentrix’s musical leadership and ability. In Osbert’s Life, the first hints of
her devotion to the performance of the Divine Office are found in the chapter
concerning her practice of the virtue of patience. He claims that the saint was
so steadfast in her dedication to the hours of sung prayer that ‘psalterium
David nusquam minibus virgineis excidit, nusquam decacordum legis divine
ab eius intentione recedit’ (‘David’s Psalter never was taken from her virginal
hands, and the ten-stringed instrument of the divine law never departed
from her intention’).9 Both night and day she was dedicated to the cursus of
prayer, ‘et siquid minus impletum in Dei laudibus diurna luce meminerat,
nocturnis excubiis devota sedulitate’ (‘and if she remembered that anything
was unfulfilled in the praises of God during the day, she supplied the night
watches with devout assiduity’).10 According to Osbert, early in her formation,
Eadburh was so zealous in her devotions that she often remained in the

7 M. L. Colker, ‘Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which Relate to the History of Barking

Abbey’, Studia Monastica 7 (1965), 383–460 (pp. 412, 433).
8 Rouleau mortuaire du B. Vital, abbé de Savigni, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1909), no. 184. For

the edition of this mortuary roll, see Recueil des rouleaux des morts (VIIIe siècle-vers
1536), ed. J. Dufour, 4 vols. (Paris, 2005), I, 580, no. 122.184. Edita may also be the
‘Ediva’ named among the dead remembered in Nunnaminster’s titulus for Matilda,
abbess of La Trinité, Caen (d. 1113), listed among the ‘monache’ (ibid., I, 405,
no. 114.11). The identification of Edita and Ediva is strengthened by the fact that
all the other names listed among Nunnaminster’s deceased in the rotulus for Vitalis
also appear in the rotulus for Matilda, but it must be emphasized that in the rotulus
for Matilda, Ediva was not identified as a cantrix.
9 Royal Saints, p. 266. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
10 Ibid., p. 267.

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oratory beyond the hours of the Office in order to continue praying in private.
The prioress of the community ultimately had to punish Eadburh for this
practice, because she wished to teach the community ‘ut nulla earum privatis
in oratorio vacaret officiis, neque publicis abesset conventibus eiusdem
congregationis’ (‘that no one should be idle in private offices in the oratory
and be absent from the public gatherings of the congregation’).11 Though the
prioress came to repent of her action after discovering that Eadburh was the
daughter of the king, the saint vowed ‘nec ultra transcurrere, nec instituta
regule aliqua prevaricatione transire’ (‘neither to hasten farther nor to pass
over anything instituted by the rule through transgression’).12 Osbert insists
that Eadburh remained faithful to her vow, and when he next praises her
devotion to prayer, he marvels: ‘nocteque ac die horis insistens canonicis’
(‘day and night she persevered in the canonical hours’).13
A unique reference to Eadburh’s devotion to the performance of the Office
appears in an anonymous Latin vita found in an early fourteenth century
collection of saints’ lives from Romsey Abbey (BL Lansdowne 436). It not only
recounts her strict discipline of psalmody, but also claims that she expressed
divine praise through the singing of hymns:

Macerabat namque corpus suum vigiliis et orationibus, psalmos assidue

canens nocte ac die, intendens animum ad Psalmiste dictum: ‘Septies in die
laudem dixi tibi’. Studebat per septenarium numerum hymnorum cotidie
perficere.14

[For she wore down her body in vigils and prayers, assiduously singing
psalms day and night, exerting her soul according to the dictum of the
Psalmist: ‘Seven times a day have I praised you’. She strove to complete
seven hymns daily.]

Only the Lansdowne vita refers to Eadburh’s hymnody, which fact likely
reveals that the author of this vita did not depend on Osbert’s exclusively.
Though the number of daily hymns credited to Eadburh may reflect
hagiographical hyperbole, it could be the case that the author of the vita had
recourse to other source materials, perhaps a Life written at Nunnaminster,
and enriched Osbert’s portrait of the saint as a model precentrix with details
composed and/or preserved by her consorores.

11 Ibid.
12 Ibid. It should be noted that the Benedictine Rule does permit the practice of private
prayer in the oratory beyond the hours of the Divine Office: see La Règle de saint
Benoît, ed. A. de Vogüé and J. Neufville, Sources chrétiennes 181–6 (Paris, 1971–7),
II, 610.
13 Royal Saints, p. 274 (emphasis mine).
14 L. Braswell, ‘Saint Edburga of Winchester: A Study of her Cult, AD 950–1500 with
an Edition of the Fourteenth-Century Middle English and Latin Lives’, Mediaeval
Studies 33 (1971), 292–333 (p. 330). Cf. Ps. 118. 164.

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Eadburh’s exemplarity in the performance of the Office may have

merited her the office of precentrix, since, in the same scene in which Osbert
mentions the office which she held, he recalls that, even near the moment
of her death, she directed her community in song: ‘Ceteras in antiphonis
sorores preveniens inchoandis, Daviticos ructabat favos in psalmis, horam
sue imminentis prestolans migrationis’ (‘Coming before the other sisters in
antiphons to be sung, awaiting the hour of her imminent passing, she poured
out the Davidic honeycombs in psalms’).15 For ‘quamdiu vitalis spiritus
lingue loquentis habuit instrumentum’ (‘as long as her vital spirit had the
instrument of a speaking tongue’), she would not cease to sing the praise of
God.16 Even after she was no longer physically present to lead her sisters,
they continued to honour her memory by persevering in the singing of
psalms during her burial.17
Eadburh was remembered as having been more than just a leader of
liturgical song; she was also a highly skilled singer of chants that were
assigned to cantors in earlier and contemporary monastic customaries
and liturgical books. According to Osbert, once during a banquet held at
Nunnaminster for the saint’s father, King Edward the Elder (899–924), he
commanded her ‘ut aliquod celeste melos suavi modulatione concinat,
alleluia videlicet cuius vocali concordia celestis aula Dei terrestrisque resultat’
(‘to sing some heavenly melody with sweet modulation, namely the alleluia,
whose vocal harmony resounds in the heavenly and earthly court of God’).18
Despite her initial resistance, both the crowd’s encouragement and her
father’s promise of a fitting reward ultimately persuaded Eadburh to accede
to their request. She sang: ‘Alleluia, eripe me de inimicis meis’, the Alleluia
and verse based on Psalm 58, which was often listed as the chant to be sung at
Mass before the Gospel reading on one of the Sundays following Pentecost.19
So resonant was Eadburh’s voice ‘cum harmonie celestis organum, omnium

15 Royal Saints, p. 281.

16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 283: ‘Curat exequias virginis caterve plebs congrua virginalis, et dum iste

modulis insistunt et psalmis, lacrimis ille et querulis suspirant in lamentis.’

18 Ibid., p. 272.
19 Ibid. No manuscript containing the repertory of Proper chants for the Mass survives

from Nunnaminster; thus it is difficult to determine when ‘Alleluia, eripe me de

inimicis meis’ was to be sung during the liturgical year there in the second half of
the tenth century, if it was indeed to be sung at all. The Alleluia series found in Bodl
Bodley 775, a mid eleventh century manuscript from nearby Old Minster and one
of the famous Winchester tropers, may shed light on when ‘Alleluia, eripe me de
inimicis meis’ was to be sung at Nunnaminster. According to Bodley 775, it was to
be sung on the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Notably this assignment conflicts
with the Proper repertory found earlier in the manuscript, which designates
‘Alleluia, Dominus regnavit’ (Ps. 92) for this Sunday instead. Susan Rankin has
discussed this inconsistency, along with many others that can be detected through
comparative analysis of the cycles of Proper chants in Bodley 775, in ‘Making the

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in se rapuit animos auditorum’ (‘with the organum of celestial harmony, she

seized the souls of those listening to her’).20 With her audience held captive by
the beauty of her singing, the saint was able to make a successful plea to the
king on her community’s behalf. Suffering from want of sufficient material
provision, Nunnaminster required additional financial support. To impress
upon the king his obligations toward the community, Eadburh reminded him
of the responsibility that he had inherited from his mother, Ealhswith (d. 902).
This ‘virago’ had initiated the construction of Nunnaminster but was unable
to complete it before her death, and it consequently fell to the king to finish
the good work begun by his mother.21 Roused by Eadburh’s speech, Edward
granted in perpetuity a tract of land at All Cannings in Wiltshire, which had
recently come into his possession. Even in Osbert’s day, Eadburh’s successors
at Nunnaminster enjoyed the benefits of this tribute.22

Eucharistic ministers

While Eadburh seems perfectly to have embodied (or was later fashioned to
embody) the normative ideal for the office of cantor, her liturgical activities
were also believed to extend beyond those prescribed for this office in
monastic rules and customaries. Osbert reports that she performed an
important role in the celebration of the Eucharist in her community too. He
describes this role in his account of the first translation of the saint’s relics
at Nunnaminster. After the women had learned through a series of miracles
that they had not buried Eadburh’s body in a location befitting her sanctity,
they decided to translate her relics to a site near the choir so that she could
be near the place where she had spent so much time in prayer. Apparently
the plan was agreeable to all, except to the saint herself. While her sisters
were sleeping, Eadburh appeared to them in a vision to identify her preferred
resting place: ‘Secus mensam collocari dominicam appetebat cui dum carnem
circumferret spirituales cibos ipsa paraverat’ (‘She desired to be positioned
alongside the Lord’s table for which she herself had prepared spiritual foods
when she was still moving about in the flesh’).23 Though Osbert’s seemingly
euphemistic use of ‘spirituales cibos’ for the eucharistic elements of bread and
wine deflects the full force of what Eadburh allegedly communicated in her
vision, it is still evident that her ministry of the altar was viewed as significant
enough to her community to justify the translation of her relics to a location

Liturgy: Winchester Scribes and their Books’, in The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon
Church, ed. H. Gittos and M. B. Bedingfield (London, 2005), pp. 29–52 (p. 47).
20 Royal Saints, p. 272.
21 Ibid., p. 273.
22 Ibid., p. 274.
23 Ibid., pp. 288–9.

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proximate to it. What the saint’s eucharistic ministry entailed is difficult to

recover from Osbert’s oblique language. Preparare could encompass a range
of activities related to the eucharistic rite: Eadburh may have performed
the sacristan-like duties of making the hosts and ensuring that hosts, wine
and water were readily accessible before every Mass; she may have brought
forward the hosts and wine at the offertory; she may have assisted with the
consecration of the Eucharist and helped to distribute it at communion; or
she may have taken out the Eucharist held in reserve for communion in the
absence of a priest.
Near the vita’s beginning, in Osbert’s account of Eadburh’s vocation to
the religious life as a child, he mentions that her father gave Nunnaminster
gifts of a gospel book and chalice – the very ecclesiastical ornaments that his
daughter had chosen over secular riches – in anticipation of when she would
be committed to the care of this monastic community.24 Though perhaps King
Edward intended for all these gifts to be used by the chaplains or visiting
clerics associated with Nunnaminster – if he did indeed grant these gifts at
all – the possibility that they were meant for and used by the women religious
themselves should not be ruled out. Evidence from manuscripts of gospel
books and prayerbooks, other saints’ lives and wills bequesting patens and
chalices indicates that some women religious did assume the liturgical roles
of proclaiming the gospel and preparing the Eucharist.25 It is not implausible,
then, to suspect that Eadburh made good use of the very gifts with which her
father had endowed her community when she prepared spiritual foods for
the altar.
In its reference to eucharistic preparation, Osbert’s account of Eadburh
bears comparison to what we know of Margaret, the biological and spiritual
sister of the twelfth-century holy woman, Christina of Markyate. The Life of
Christina relates a series of miracles in which Christ appeared as an unknown
pilgrim at both Markyate and St Albans. His telling of the pilgrim-Christ’s
second appearance at Markyate seamlessly conflates Luke’s accounts of
Christ’s visit to the home of Martha and Mary in Bethany and Christ’s
appearance to two apostles on the way to Emmaus. Through this conflation,
the writer transforms Christina and Margaret into both ‘aliam Mariam et
Martham’ and hosts at a eucharistic meal.26 Like another Martha, Margaret
‘laboriosius circa necessaria discurrit’ (‘ran about more busily concerned with
the necessary things’), while her sister, like another Mary, ‘attentius assidet

24 Ibid., p. 265. Cf. William of Malmesbury’s accounts of the same episode; GPA
ii.78.3–6, p. 274; GRA ii.217.1–2, p. 400.
25 This evidence is examined in Bugyis, ‘Ministers of Christ: Benedictine Women
Religious in Central Medieval England’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Notre Dame, 2015), chs. 5 and 7.
26 The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse, ed. C. H. Talbot (Oxford,
1959; repr. Toronto, 1998), p. 182.

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viro’ (‘attended to the man more intently’).27 But unlike Luke, the writer of
Christina’s Life does not value the saint’s repose over her sister’s busyness;
both ministries are shown to be necessary in the offering of hospitality to the
pilgrim (cf. Luke 10. 42). In fact, the writer’s description of both the setting
of the table and the feeding of the pilgrim suggests that Margaret not only
prepared the bread for the meal but also placed it in the pilgrim’s mouth, just
as she would have done had she been administering the Eucharist: ‘mensa
parata ori panis apponitur et quasi cibum sumere videbatur’ (‘when the table
was prepared, the bread was placed in his mouth, as if he was seen to accept
the food’).28 Though the writer of Christina’s Life does not explicitly name
Margaret as Markyate’s sacristan, or show her performing other eucharistic
roles in a less allegorical mode, its figuration of her as ‘another Martha’ in the
account of the pilgrim-Christ’s visit to her community may hint at the other
sacristan-like roles that she assumed. Margaret thus merits mention in the
litany of cantrices and editve from central medieval England.

Guardians of shrines

As noted above, the only woman explicitly named as an ‘editva’ in the extant
sources is Wulfruna-Judith of Barking. In the prologue to Goscelin’s vita of
Wulfhild, Barking’s late tenth century abbess-saint, he singles out Wulfruna-
Judith as a witness of singular importance to the holy deeds he recorded.29
Though she was not always remembered as having performed her duties as
sacristan perfectly – the Life of Wulfhild recalls an occasion when she lost
the keys to the sacristy and had to pray to Æthelburh for their miraculous
recovery – two features of her office seem to have enhanced her credibility
in Goscelin’s estimation: she was the custodian of the saints’ shrines and
therefore a first-hand observer of and even a participant in a number of
miracles, and she was a scribe of a deluxe liturgical book.30 Goscelin recounts
her special care of the relics of Barking’s abbess-saints in the Lives of both
Æthelburh and Wulfhild. In the Life of Wulfhild, during the rebuilding of
the abbey’s church after the Danish invasions in the early eleventh century,
Wulfruna-Judith questions Æthelburh about the construction of her shrine
compared to those housing her consorores: ‘Quare sancte Hildelithe sancteque

27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 ‘Texts of Barking Abbey’, p. 418. See too the discussion of her role as scribe below.
Wulfruna-Judith’s contributions to the literary culture at Barking Abbey during the
eleventh century have attracted recent scholarly interest. See especially the essays
by Stephanie Hollis and Thomas O’Donnell in Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary
Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. J. N. Brown and D. A.
Bussell (York, 2012).
30 Ibid., pp. 433–4.

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Vulfilde porticus solummodo est cortinata et circa te pauperascit domus

nuda? Acquire, inquam, tibi unde et tua parentur loca’ (‘Why is only the
portico of St Hildelith and St Wulfhild vaulted while the naked house around
you is scantily endowed? Acquire for yourself whence your place may also
be furnished’).31 Seemingly in response to Wulfruna-Judith’s command, the
next day, a certain matron presented Æthelburh’s shrine with a vault that
amply covered her choir.32 Goscelin does not moralize the significance of
Wulfruna-Judith’s solicitude for Æthelburh’s proper memorial, but so cast,
Wulfruna-Judith’s efforts not only exemplify the office of sacristan for her
later successors at Barking, but also encourage future lay donors to be as
prompt and generous in their gifts to the abbey as the anonymous matron.
In one of the miracles recorded in the Life of Æthelburh, in which the saint
heals a girl with a severe physical disability, Wulfruna-Judith appears as a
kind of gatekeeper to the saint’s shrine. The girl’s parents frequently took her
to Barking so that they could pray to Æthelburh for their daughter’s health,
but on the vigil of the saint’s feast day, the girl especially wished to pray
before Æthelburh’s shrine. The girl is said to have asked Wulfruna-Judith for
permission to spend the night in prayer before the shrine, but the sacristan
denied her request, saying, ‘Foris ora, foris te curet sancta Ethelburga si vult,
nam interius te non admittemus’ (‘Pray outside. May holy Æthelburh cure
you outside, if she wishes, for we may not admit you inside’).33 Wulfruna-
Judith’s reasons for denying the girl’s request are not specified, but her actions
do not elicit negative commentary from Goscelin. In the sentence building
to her direct speech, he calls her ‘admirabilis fidei femina’ (‘a woman of
admirable faith’), motivated to act ‘quasi pio zelo indignata’ (‘as if indignant
with pious zeal’).34 Perhaps Wulfruna-Judith’s seemingly callous response to
the girl’s request was considered justifiable, even necessary, to guard against
unfettered access to Barking’s most sacred spaces by visitors, especially at
night, for the safety of the women religious (and the girl, too) depended on
such security measures. External threats to Barking’s sanctuary were real
and, indeed, a part of the community’s not-too-distant past. In the chapters
of the vita preceding this one, Goscelin recounts the Danes’ plundering of
Barking.35 The devastation of this hostile invasion was likely recalled by the
women religious at Barking because, even in Goscelin’s day, the damage
that Æthelburh’s shrine suffered ‘adhuc conspicuum est in ipso lapide’
(‘was still visible in the stone itself’).36 With the possibility of unwanted

31 Ibid., p. 434.
32 Ibid.: ‘Hec ea suggerente sequenti die quedam matrona cortinam honorificam beate
Æthelburge optulit que chorum suum late ambiit’.
33 Ibid., p. 415.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., pp. 413–15.
36 Ibid., p. 414.

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visitors threatening, entrance to the saints’ shrines had to be controlled, and

Wulfruna-Judith, as sacristan, may have been charged with this responsibility.
Fortunately for the girl seeking healing, Æthelburh’s power could extend
easily beyond the monastery’s doors and restored her that very night to
‘rectos gressus’ (‘right steps’).37
Wulfruna-Judith’s cura of Barking’s shrines also seems to have included
ensuring that relics were transported properly during translation. Exactly
thirty years after the deposition of Abbess Wulfhild’s body, c. 1030, her
community decided to translate her relics to a location next to the principal
altar, but on the vigil of the proposed translation, the saint appeared to a
certain woman in the community and asked, ‘Cum proxime tumba mea in
translatione reserabitur, hanc mihi fac gratiam ut ea tuo panno operiatur ne
corpus meum a turba conspiciatur’ (‘When my tomb is nearly opened in the
translation, please do me this favour, that it is covered with your cloth, lest
my body be seen by the crowd’).38 On the following morning, the woman
reported the vision to her fellow sisters, whereupon Wulfruna-Judith, that
‘mirabilis fidei soror’ (‘sister of marvelous faith’), immediately took action.39
For the translation, she is said to have ‘maforam quam habebat optimam ac
nitidissimam in votivum parat obsequium’ (‘prepared in vowed obedience
the best and brightest kerchief that she had’),40 and when the lid to the tomb
was removed, she stepped in front of the crowd to place the white cloth
over the saint’s body. To the amazement of all, the body was discovered to
be incorrupt, and though several of the sisters and their abbess, Leofflæd,
beheld this marvel with their own eyes, ‘sola Iudith fidelissima ausa
contingere cognovit solidum corpus mira integritate’ (‘only the most faithful
and daring Judith knew to touch the intact body with wonderful integrity’).41
Whether Wulfruna-Judith intervened in Wulfhild’s translation in her capacity
as Barking’s sacristan is not made clear in the vita, but her fellow sisters
apparently did not question her authority or ability to do so. The service
Wulfruna-Judith rendered to the saint was deemed so faithful that Wulfhild
later miraculously provided her handmaid with money to purchase a new
vestment for herself, during the time when Barking desperately suffered
from lack of provisions in the wake of the Danish depredation.42
The vita of Eadburh of Nunnaminster also contains hints of another
woman religious’s custody of a saint’s shrine. Though unnamed, the
woman is identified as ‘custos sacrorum vasorum’ (‘the guardian of the holy

37 Ibid., p. 415: ‘At illa orans forinsecus ante ianuam monasterii subito in rectos
gressus restituta est.’
38 Ibid., p. 432.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., chap. 15, p. 433.

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vessels’).43 Osbert’s use of this epithet suggests that this woman exercised
a sacristan-like role at Nunnaminster, and his characterization of her care
of Eadburh’s first burial site as an officium lends greater plausibility to this
conclusion.44 Eadburh was initially buried along with the other departed
from Nunnaminster in an atrium beside the monastery’s church, where there
was a window that overlooked the saint’s grave. It was the responsibility of
the custos to make sure that this window was opened during the day and
closed at night, likely to prevent anyone from plundering or desecrating the
graves. One night, when the woman tried to perform her office, she found
that she could not close the window; her hand itself seemed to be repelled
from the act by some force. Unable to find a natural cause for the window’s
resistance, she prayed for a spiritual explanation. Through her attentive vigils,
she (and later her fellow sisters) learned that they were ‘gloriose corpus
Edburge de loco ad locum celebriorem transferre’ (‘to translate the glorious
body of Eadburh from that place to a more celebrated place’).45 Owing to
the guardian’s zealous care of Eadburh’s grave and her faithful reading of
the miraculous sign, the saint’s relics were translated, ultimately to the very
location that Eadburh desired – next to the church’s altar.

Scribes and authors

Wulfruna-Judith also captivated Goscelin’s interest as a renowned scribe

of liturgical books. A missal that she copied is prominently featured in the
final miracle recounted in his Vita Æthelburge. During the Conquest, when a
band of Norman soldiers descended on Barking, the women fled to London,
leaving behind their community’s greatest treasures. Among the possessions
left exposed to plundering was a missal, ‘quem memorabilis Vulfruna
scripserat’ (‘which the famous Wulfruna had written’), visibly displayed
on the altar dedicated to Æthelburh.46 A priest accompanying the band
of troops is said to have found this missal and stolen it; he took it back to
his parish in Normandy and dared to celebrate Mass with the holy object,
even though it had become sacrilegious by his theft.47 After eight years, he
decided to return to England, not to return the missal, but to visit another
parish. During his voyage across the Channel, a violent storm unexpectedly
erupted and threatened to capsize his ship. The storm persisted for five days,
and it was not until the priest remembered his guilt, prayed to Æthelburh for
forgiveness, and vowed to return the missal to its rightful home that it finally

43 Royal Saints, p. 286.

44 Ibid.: ‘Huius officii sedula quedam virtutis erat femina flameo Christi insignita …’
45 Ibid., p. 287.
46 ‘Texts of Barking Abbey’, p. 416.
47 Ibid.

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relented. Once his ship landed in Dover, he immediately set out for Barking.
At the saint’s shrine, he took off his shoes and assumed the posture of a
penitent. There, he prayed to the saint for forgiveness, returned the missal to
its proper place on the altar dedicated to her name, and gratefully explained
to all the miracle that had transpired. Upon recovering the stolen treasure,

Fit ingens cunctis ecclesie pignoribus exultatio maximaque Deo laus

et gratiarum actio, non tantum pro optimi codicis officio sed et longe
eminentius pro materno miraculo, que tam in pelago et longinquis terris
adest rogata quam ubi corporali rutilat presentia.48

[Mighty exaltation was made for all the relics of the church, and the greatest
praise and act of thanks was made to God, not only for the office of the best
codex but also, by far more eminently, for the maternal miracle, who, when
asked, was as present in the sea and in remote lands as where she blazed
with her bodily presence.]

Goscelin’s use of the adjective optimus to describe the missal is striking,

especially since he probably had seen it, maybe even used it to celebrate Mass
at Barking. From first-hand experience, he would have been able to attest to
the quality of Wulfruna-Judith’s craftsmanship as a scribe. The restoration
of the stolen book occurred circa 1074, just over a decade before Goscelin
wrote the vite of Barking’s abbess-saints circa 1086. Undoubtedly this event
was still fresh in the memories of the women that Goscelin enlisted for
information about the abbey’s history. Wulfruna-Judith likely provided her
own recollection of what had transpired, given that she outlived the reign of
at least William the Conqueror (1066–87).49 The spiritual value of her optimus
codex surely increased appreciably after its allegedly miraculous recovery,
becoming a relic of Æthelburh’s vast power, but it should be recalled that
the book already had been accorded a venerable position among the
ornamenta of Barking’s church prior to its theft; it was on perpetual display
on top of the altar dedicated to the monastery’s founding saint. The missal’s
prominence must have owed in part to its superlative making – it certainly
caught the eye of the Norman priest, who probably had his pick of the
plunder.
Wulfruna-Judith’s missal is no longer extant. Most likely it was a casualty
to the advance of time and liturgical innovation, but the devastation that
Barking’s library met during the abbey’s dissolution in 1539 cannot be

48 Ibid., p. 417.
49 Ibid., p. 418: ‘Notissima est adolescentioribus eius sanctimonialis discipula
Vulfruna, Iudith cognominata, a primevo flore sub ipsa educata, que ad nostri regis
Vuilielmi supervixit sceptra.’ It is not clear whether the ‘King William’ Goscelin
refers to here is William the Conqueror or William Rufus (1087–1100). If it were the
latter, Wulfruna-Judith would have lived into very old age, since Abbess Wulfhild
died near the beginning of the eleventh century.

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ruled out as a culprit. Yet another liturgical book, dating to the time that she
flourished, exhibits the kind of scribal skill and knowledge of the liturgy that
she would have possessed: Bodl Bodley 155, an eleventh-century gospel book
from Barking. Though none of the hands responsible for the initial copying
and later correction, annotation, neumation and re-punctuation of this gospel
book can be ascribed to Wulfruna-Judith with certainty, the paleographical
and codicological analysis of this manuscript that I have detailed elsewhere
shows that scribes similar in monastic office and training to Wulfruna-Judith
must have been behind the later additions, for only scribes fully versed in the
musical and dramatic performance of the liturgy would have possessed the
skills necessary to supply them so expertly.50
The scribal handiwork and poetic creations of cantors and sacristans
also may be preserved in the entries (tituli) from various cathedral chapters,
schools, anchorholds and monastic houses on two twelfth-century mortuary
rolls (rotuli) that travelled widely throughout France and England for
Matilda, abbess of La Trinité, Caen (d. 1113), and for Vitalis, abbot of Savigny
(d. 1122).51 Among the extant rotuli from the central Middle Ages, these
two are notable because they visited female monastic houses in England as
well as neighbouring male ones in La Trinité’s and Savigny’s confraternities
of prayer. Typically, a titulus includes a promise to pray for the soul of the
person for whom the rotulus was issued and a request for prayer for the
deceased of the community in which the particular titulus was composed.
Most tituli list the names of their recently deceased, and some even contain
elegiac poems. In the rotulus for Matilda, the tituli from Nunnaminster,

50 See Bugyis, ‘Ministers of Christ’, chap. 5.

51 The rotulus for Matilda has received considerably more scholarly attention than
that for Vitalis. The tituli written on behalf of female monastic communities have
been mined for prosopographical information as well as evidence of the scribal
productions and poetic creations of women religious. See R. N. Sauvage, ‘Rouleau
mortuaire de Marie, abbesse de la Trinité de Caen’, Bibliothéque de l’école des Chartes
61 (1910), 49–57; H. Feiss, ‘The Poet Abbess from Notre-Dame de Saintes’, Magistra
1 (1995), 39–54; D. Sheerin, ‘Sisters in the Literary Agon: Texts from Communities
of Women on the Mortuary Roll of the Abbess Matilda of La Trinité, Caen’, in
Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe, ed. P. Brown,
L. Churchill and J. Jeffrey, 3 vols. (New York, 2002), II, 93–132; J. Stevenson, ‘Anglo-
Latin Women Poets’, in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon
Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard, 2 vols.
(Toronto, 2005), II, 86–107; and T. Leslie, ‘“ Orate pro nobis”: The Mortuary Roll
Ritual and its Texts’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 2005).
Though Leslie’s dissertation focuses on the rotulus for Matilda, she also examines
the rotulus for Vitalis in considerable detail. More generally, see G. Signori,
‘Introduction: The Rotulus’, in Bruno the Carthusian and his Mortuary Roll: Studies,
Text, and Translations, ed. H. Beyer et al. (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 3–10, with further
essential bibliography.

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Amesbury and Shaftesbury incorporate such poems,52 as did Wilton’s titulus

for Vitalis’s rotulus.53 In all four tituli, the names of the poems’ authors were
not disclosed, but in Nunnaminster’s, a heading precedes its third and final
poem and provides a clue regarding its authorship: ‘versus cuiusdam neptis
sue’ (‘verses of a certain female relative of hers’).54 This line reveals that the
author of the verses was a woman, an admission which (when read alongside
additional evidence from the tituli from French female monastic houses)
helps to discredit the entrenched scholarly assumption that women religious
enlisted their chaplains or outside scribes to craft these elegiac poems.55 This
heading also highlights the poet’s personal connection with the deceased;
she was Matilda’s relative, perhaps her niece. Without the poet’s name, it is
difficult to determine the details of this relationship, but clearly it was close
enough to motivate her to write the poem and to make known to her fellow
sisters at Nunnaminster and to other viewers of the rotulus her affiliation
with La Trinité’s abbess. At the time when Nunnaminster appended its
titulus to Matilda’s rotulus, it was under the direction of a Norman abbess,
as was Shaftesbury.56 Indeed, after the Conquest, the population of many
English monastic houses became increasingly Norman. Nunnaminster had
at least one of Matilda’s relatives among its members, but there may have
been more women in the community, originally of Norman extraction, who
were acquainted in some way with the deceased abbess and interested in
honouring her memoria.
Though we cannot definitively ascribe the writing of either the tituli
or elegiac poems from communities of English women to their cantors or
sacristans, it should be noted that, according to the monastic customary

52 Recueil des rouleaux des morts, I, 404–5 (no. 114.11), 406 (no. 114.13), and 407
(no. 114.18), respectively. Poems do not accompany the other surviving entries from
communities of English women religious; see the entries from Wherwell (p. 405,
no. 114.12) and from Wilton (p. 406, no. 114.15). The original roll is no longer extant,
but most of the texts survive in a copy prepared for Jean Mabillon (BnF lat. 12652,
fols. 87–132). The concluding tituli on the original roll, including those of Barking
and Romsey, were not copied in full; thus, it is possible that the tituli of these two
communities did include elegiac poems.
53 Ibid., p. 571 (no. 122.153). Poems do not accompany the entries from Barking (p. 558,

no. 122.99), Nunnaminster (p. 580, no. 122.184), Romsey (p. 580, no. 122.185) or
Shaftesbury (p. 581, no. 122.187).
54 Ibid., p. 405 (no. 114.11). The poem consists of twelve lines and employs antistrophe

throughout. Each line ends with the vocative ‘Maria’.

55 See, for example, C. Fell et al. Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066

(Bloomington, 1984), p. 164.

56 S. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill, 1988), p. 6; Leslie,

‘Mortuary Roll Ritual’, p. 207. For more general studies of the ‘Normanization’ of
the English ecclesiastical hierarchy, see H. Loyn, ‘Abbots of the English Monasteries
in the Period Following the Conquest’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages,
ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), pp. 95–103; B. Golding, Conquest and
Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066–1100 (New York, 1994), pp. 146–76.

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composed by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury (1070–89), the cantor was

charged with the ‘cura brevium’, sending out a notice (perhaps a rotulus, if
the deceased were an abbot or personage of significant status), requesting
prayers for a deceased community member, and the sacristan was responsible
for the burials of monks and lay affiliates.57 Given their respective care for
the community’s dead, either the cantor or sacristan would likely have been
held responsible for preparing a titulus when his community received a
rotulus. Though he may have enlisted another scribe or pupil as a copyist, he
still would have directed the task. A similar protocol for preparing a titulus
likely obtained for communities of women religious. As we have seen, some
of the women who held the offices of cantor and sacristan were versed in
Latin (Eadburh) or trained as accomplished scribes (Wulfruna-Judith).58
Internal evidence from the two twelfth-century rotuli also attests that there
were women religious capable of performing the same literary and scribal
tasks as their confrères; they could battle with keen metrical, rhetorical and
allusive skill in the ‘literary agon’ of poetic creation, and this fact was not lost
on their competitors.59 The poems in tituli inscribed by male communities
often contain veiled (or outrightly misogynistic) barbs against the poems
that women religious penned. For example, the poem in the titulus for the
students of Bath on Matilda’s rotulus decries:

Quid furitis nonne? Quid amastis carmen inane?

…
Quid teritis tempus, ventosaque verba rotatis,
Insuitis versus et ploratus pueriles?

[Why do you rave, nuns? Why do you love inane poetry?

…
Why do you waste time and wield windy words,
And sew on verses and puerile laments?]60

57 The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles, rev. C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford,

2002), p. 122.
58 See also the praise Muriel, a poet at Wilton Abbey, received in the letters of Baudri

of Bourgueil (c. 1046–1130), Hildebert of Le Mans (c. 1055–1133) and Serlo of

Bayeux (c. 1050–1113×22). A. Boutemy, ‘Muriel: note sur deux poèmes de Baudri
de Bourgeuil et de Serlon de Bayeux’, Le Moyen âge, 3rd ser. 6 (1935), 241–51;
A. Wilmart, ‘L’élégie d’Hildebert pour Muriel’, Revue bénédictine 49 (1937), 376–80;
Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina, ed. K. Hilbert (Heidelberg, 1979), pp. 137, 189–90.
For a review of the surviving evidence on Muriel, but with a less than generous
assessment of her presumed poetic abilities, see J. S. P. Tatlock, ‘Muriel: The Earliest
English Poetess’, PMLA 48 (1933), 317–21. For a more insightful assessment, see
J. Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender and Authority from Antiquity to the
Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), p. 124; Stevenson, ‘Anglo-Latin Women Poets’.
59 The characterization of the poetic competition on rotuli as a ‘literary agon’ is Daniel

Sheerin’s (‘Sisters in the Literary Agon’, pp. 98–9).

60 Recueil des rouleaux des morts, I, 409 (no. 114.28).

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Such invectives, though arguably riddled with elements of humour, become

necessary only when engaging in a verbal contest against a worthy rival, and
the versatrices provoked in this poem were viewed as just that by their male
agonists.
One final piece of evidence, exhibiting the cantor- or sacristan-like scribal
activities of a woman religious, warrants close examination: two additions
made to the liturgical calendar that opens the St Albans Psalter (Hildesheim,
Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1), a deluxe codex produced at St Albans
c. 1123 and subsequently adapted for Christina of Markyate’s use.61 Three
separate sets of scribal additions were made to the psalter’s calendar. The
earliest hand, identified as scribe 3 by Otto Pächt, Francis Wormald and
C. R. Dodwell, entered the obituary for Christina’s first spiritual mentor at
Markyate, Roger (12 September), sometime after his death c. 1121.62 Scribe
5, possibly the next earliest hand, added the feast days of St Margaret (20
July) and the dedication of Markyate Priory (27 May);63 the inclusion of the
dedication of Christina’s community may help to date these additions to after
1145, the year in which Alexander, bishop of Lincoln (1123–48), performed
the dedication. Scribe 4, likely the latest hand in the calendar, entered the
obituaries of Christina’s close relations: neighbouring men and women
religious, family members (her father, mother, brothers and, possibly, aunt),64
Geoffrey, abbot of St Albans (1119–46), and Christina herself.65 This hand also

61 The question of the psalter’s production and ownership has enjoyed lively debate
since Pächt, Dodwell and Wormald claimed Christina as the psalter’s intended
recipient: The St Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter) (London, 1960). For a recent
detailed account of the scholarly arguments both for and against the assignment
of a Markyate provenance to the psalter, see K. Bugyis, ‘Envisioning Episcopal
Exemption: The Life of Christina of Markyate’, Church History 84 (2015), 32–63
(p. 48 n. 71). I am persuaded by arguments in favour of a Markyate provenance.
62 Roger’s obituary reads: ‘Obiit Rogeri heremite monachi sancti Albani apud

quemcumque fuerit hoc psalterium fiat eius memoria maxime hac die’; Hildesheim,
Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1, p. 11. I agree with Jane Geddes that the words
‘apud quemcumque’ are ‘quite neutral about both the location and ownership
of the psalter’, contrary to Donald Matthew’s assertion that this obit ‘proves
unequivocally’ that Christina was not the first owner of the psalter, and that Roger
very likely was; Geddes, ‘The Calendar and Liturgical Apparatus’, The St Albans
Psalter Project, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/essays/calendar.
shtml (accessed 2 June 2015); Matthew, ‘Incongruities’, p. 401.
63 Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1, pp. 7 and 9: see The St Albans Psalter

Project, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/commentary/page007.
shtml, and https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/commentary/
page009.shtml (accessed 2 June 2015).
64 The identification of the obituary for ‘Ailiva mater Michaelis’, found on 23 January,

as Christina’s aunt, Alveva, mistress of Ranulf Flambard (c. 1060–1128), is more

tentative. For the Life’s reference to Alveva, see Life of Christina, p. 40.
65 Scribe 4’s addition of Christina of Markyate’s obit appears on p. 14 of Hildesheim,

Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1: see The St Albans Psalter Project, https://www.

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added the feast days of the Circumcision of the Lord, All Saints and several
universal and more local Anglo-Saxon saints.
The additions of scribe 5 are particularly relevant to this discussion of
cantor- and sacristan-like liturgical activities performed by women religious,
since they may have been added by Christina’s sister, Margaret. We have
already seen that Margaret was figured as an important supporting character
in Christina’s Life, possibly as a kind of sacristan at Markyate, and elsewhere
I have investigated the possibility of Margaret’s contributions to the first
written accounts consulted for and incorporated into the Life.66 Despite the
important role that Margaret exercises in the Life’s narrative and Markyate’s
history, however, her obituary was not added to the calendar along with those
of Christina’s other immediate family members. Perhaps Margaret was still
alive when the last set of additions was copied in the calendar, and no effort
was made at Markyate to record deaths after the date of these additions. But
there is a hint in Christina’s Life that suggests that Margaret died before her
sister. The writer refers to her once as ‘sororem beate memorie virginem .M.’
[the virgin M[argaret], sister of blessed memory’].67 This epithet is not used
for any other character in the Life, including Christina. Thus the inclusion of
Christina’s obituary in the psalter’s calendar and the exclusion of her sister’s
must be explained.
A possible explanation is that the feast day of St Margaret was to double
as an obituary for Margaret of Markyate. Though the feast day of St Margaret
appears in all the extant twelfth-century calendars from St Albans,68 and its
addition to the calendar opening Christina’s psalter may thus have simply
been an attempt to make Markyate’s liturgical year conform more closely
to St Albans’, we know that the saint held special significance for Christina
and possibly for her sister as well.69 Notably, Christina’s own obituary
coincides with another important feast day – the Conception of Mary (8
December). Like Henrietta Leyser, I do not believe that the collocation of
these memorials is accidental.70 The Feast of the Conception of Mary was

abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/commentary/page014.shtml (accessed 2 June

2015).
66 See Bugyis, ‘Ministers of Christ’, chap. 1.
67 Life of Christina, p. 154. It is clear from the narrative context that the initial ‘M’ refers

to Margaret.
68 Extant twelfth-century St Albans calendars include: St Petersburg, Public Library,

MS Q.v.I, 62 (s. xiimed); BL Egerton 3721 (s. xiimed); BL Royal 2.A.x (s. xiimed); Bodl
Auct. D.2.6 (s. xiimed). These calendars are collated in English Benedictine Kalendars
after A.D. 1100, vol. I: Abbotsbury-Durham, ed. Francis Wormald, HBS 77 (London,
1939), pp. 31–45.
69 St Margaret makes a dramatic appearance in the only healing miracle included in

the Life (pp. 118–20).

70 See Leyser’s introduction to Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman,

ed. S. Fanous and H. Leyser (New York, 2005), pp. 1–11 (p. 11 n. 20).

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 Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis

promoted increasingly in England beginning in the late eleventh century,

especially at St Albans,71 and the alignment of Christina’s obituary with
this feast day probably sought to enhance her sanctity further by placing it
under the Virgin Mary’s aegis. In the case of Margaret, the identity of her
name and the saint’s would have allowed for a more complete, even univocal,
affiliation between the two holy women, and the Markyate community may
therefore have simply allowed the entry for St Margaret’s feast to double as
Margaret’s obituary. The celebration of the two holy women’s memorials may
have seemed fitting not only because Margaret was specially devoted to the
saint, but also because Margaret herself may have added the saint’s feast day
to the calendar.
The hand in which both St Margaret’s feast and the dedication of Markyate
Priory were added does not appear elsewhere in the St Albans Psalter, nor
does it feature in the two charters that pertain to Markyate’s foundation and
dedication in 1145,72 nor can it be linked definitively with Margaret’s own
hand, since no written evidence explicitly ascribed to her name survives. But
if she indeed effectively functioned as a sacristan at Markyate, then she could
have been charged with properly accounting for the days of the liturgical
year in both practice and writing, including making additions to any calendar
of feast days and memorials that Markyate possessed. Certainly Margaret’s
involvement in the full range of liturgical and scribal activities that were
incumbent on the office of sacristan should not be discounted without further
paleographical evidence to the contrary, because this is the very reading of
her duties within the Markyate community that her sister’s Life promotes.

Conclusion

Sometimes explicitly named as cantors or sacristans, more often recognized

by the fruits of their labours, the women highlighted in this chapter were
liturgical directors, skilled singers, eucharistic ministers, custodians of saints’
shrines, scribes of liturgical books and mortuary rolls, wardens of sacred
space and time, and keepers of their communities’ memoria. Uncovering the
various responsibilities and activities of these women has been essential
in my larger study of the liturgical and pastoral ministries of Benedictine
women religious in central medieval England, from which this chapter is
drawn.73 They were the orchestrators of the very liturgical performances that

71 R. M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, 1066–1235, 2 vols. (Cambridge,

1992), I, 38–9. See also K. D. Hartzell, ‘The Musical Repertory of St Albans, England,
in the Twelfth Century’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester,
1970), I, 68–73.
72 BL Cotton Ch. xi.6 and Cotton Ch. xi.8, respectively.
73 See Bugyis, ‘Ministers of Christ’.

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 Female Monastic Cantors and Sacristans in Central Medieval England

I examine in detail, and they likely contributed to the production of many of

the manuscripts that offer the best witnesses to those performances. Though
too often unsung in the histories of medieval women religious, they take
centre stage in mine.

169
 part iii
England in the Twelfth Century
 9
Cantor, Sacrist or Prior?
The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman England

Teresa Webber

The account of the office and duties of the cantor in the monastic customs
compiled during the late 1070s or early 1080s by Archbishop Lanfranc for
Henry, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, ends by assigning to him general
responsibility for the community’s books: ‘He takes care of all the books
of the house, and has them in his keeping, if his interests and learning are
such as to fit him for keeping them.’1 By the later eleventh century it had
become common in England and on the Continent for the duties of the cantor
to be combined with those of the armarius, to whom several late tenth and
eleventh century customaries had assigned custody of the community’s
books in addition to oversight of the liturgical and other readings, together
with certain other duties.2 For Anglo-Norman England, the norms described
in customaries can be supported by other forms of documentary evidence
from the twelfth century onwards, recording the allocation of revenues to
the cantor for various purposes associated with the production, custody
and upkeep of books.3 The identification of the handwriting of a number
of cantors acting at some point in their career as copyists, annotators and
correctors has also been seen to reflect the close relationship between the
cantor and the production and custody of books.4 In a volume that examines
the activities of those involved in the practice of the liturgy, its music and the
writing of history, and seeks to understand and explain how such activities

1 Decreta, pp. 122–3: ‘De universis monasterii libris curam gerat, et eos in custodia
sua habeat, si eius studii et scientie sit, ut eorum custodia ei commendari debeat’.
2 See Fass A. For the description of the armarius’s responsibilities in the late tenth
century customs of Fleury and those recorded in Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek MS 235,
fols. 1–19, see now also ‘Consuetudines Floriacenses antiquiores’, ed. A. Davril and
L. Donnat, and ‘Redactio Sancti Emmerammi dicta Einsidlensis’, ed. M. Wegener
and C. Elvert, in Consuetudinum saeculi x/xi/xii monumenta non-Cluniacensia, ed.
K. Hallinger, CCM 7.3 (Siegburg, 1984), pp. 16–17 and 207.
3 M. Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England’,
English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 7 (1998), 1–24; R. Sharpe, ‘The Medieval
Librarian’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume I: to
1640, ed. E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 218–41.
4 Sharpe, ‘Medieval Librarian’, pp. 221–2. Additionally, in the present volume,
see especially the contributions of Aspesi, Bugyis, Fassler, Hayward, Jeffery,
Kruckenberg and Rozier.

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 The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman England

might be connected, it may be helpful to consider in more detail to what

extent and in what ways the duties of the combined office of cantor-armarius
encompassed the provision of books within Anglo-Norman monastic
communities, which other offices were associated with the provision of books
and why the amalgamation of the roles of cantor and armarius continued to
endure throughout the twelfth century and beyond.5

The production and custody of books

Lanfranc’s assigning of the care of the community’s books to the cantor, like
much else in his customs, reflects the influence of the customs of Cluny.6 That
influence is also evident in the majority of customaries and other records
of customs that survive from later medieval England, although it remains
unclear to what extent it was Lanfranc’s own customs (copies of which were
in circulation before and after 1100) that were the channel for this diffusion,7
or an earlier, presumably Norman, source from which Lanfranc also drew.8
Common to all post-Conquest English customaries that describe the duties
of specified officials is the allocation of general responsibility for the care
and maintenance of the community’s books to the cantor, assisted, in some
instances, by a deputy, the succentor.9 Lanfranc’s customs, however, do not

5 The discussion here is limited to Benedictine houses and thus excludes those of
the new orders of monks and canons introduced to England during the twelfth
century. For a comparison of the customs of the different orders regarding the office
of cantor and the provision of books, see P. Lefèvre, ‘A propos de la “lectio divina”
dans la vie monastique et canoniale’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 67 (1972), 800–9;
Le coûtumier de l’abbaye d’Oigny en Bourgogne au XIIe siècle, ed. P. F. Lefèvre and A. H.
Thomas (Louvain, 1976), pp. l–liii.
6 Decreta, pp. xxxix–xlii. The earliest surviving Cluniac customary, the mid eleventh
century Liber tramitis, ed. P. Dinter, CCM 10 (1980), sometimes distinguishes
between the duties of cantors and those of the armarius, but it also contains
evidence indicating that the process whereby the two came to be combined was
already underway during the first half of the eleventh century: Fass A, pp. 44–8.
7 Decreta, pp. xxx–xxxiii.
8 C. A. Jones, ‘Monastic Custom in Early Norman England: The Significance of
Bodleian MS. Wood Empt. 4’, RB 113 (2003), 135–68, 302–36.
9 Descriptions of the office of cantor and/or his duties or allocated revenues are
found in customaries or records of more restricted scope from the following
houses (listed chronologically). Abingdon abbey: a brief compilation of customs
dating from the late twelfth century, appended to a thirteenth-century copy of
the Abingdon Chronicle, printed as ‘De obedientiariis abbatiae Abbendonensis’
in Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols. (London, 1858), II,
335–417 (pp. 371–4). Glastonbury abbey: revenues allocated to the cantor (but
without specific mention of books or materials involved in their production and
upkeep) recorded in an abbatial survey of 1189: Liber de Henrici de Soliaco abbatis
Glaston. et vocatur A, ed. J. E. Jackson (London, 1882), p. 8. Evesham abbey: customs

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elaborate as to how that responsibility was to be discharged. The greater

detail found in some of the later English customaries displays a mixture of
shared norms and variation in levels of specificity and in certain particulars.
The limited nature of the evidence that survives from the twelfth century,
and the number of houses from which no medieval customary survives at
all, make it perilous to generalize unreservedly from what has survived,
or to discount the possibility that different customs, deriving from earlier
traditions, may have been followed in houses from which no such record
survives, or persisted for some decades or more after the Conquest in those
for whom the surviving customs are of a later date.10
Unfortunately, of all the English written customs that provide significant
detail about the cantor’s responsibility for book provision, only perhaps
those from Abingdon Abbey demonstrably pre-date the thirteenth century.
These, which are dateable to the late twelfth century, refer to oversight of the
production and renewal of books as well as to the custody and maintenance
of the book collections.11 Provision for parchment, ink and everything
else required was to be met from the revenues allocated to the cantor; if a
professional scribe was employed, the cantor was to reward his labour.12
He was permitted to inspect books during the canonical Hours and at Mass,

instituted by Abbot Randulf in 1214 and recorded in Thomas of Marlborough’s

History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. J. E. Sayers, trans. L. Watkiss (Oxford, 2003),
pp. 387–411 (pp. 394–5). These only specify the allocated revenues; the duties
belonging to the office of precentor are recorded in a damaged fourteenth-century
register (BL Cotton Vitellius E.xvii, fols. 226–52), quoted in English Benedictine
Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe et al., CBMLC 4 (London, 1996),
pp. 132–3. Eynsham abbey: a thirteenth or early fourteenth century customary:
The Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Eynsham in Oxfordshire, ed. A. Gransden,
CCM 2 (Siegburg, 1963), pp. 16 and 20 (for the date), pp. 164–8. Westminster
abbey: a fourteenth-century customary probably transmitting customs drawn up
in the 1260s: Customary of the Benedictine Monasteries of St Augustine, Canterbury and
St Peter, Westminster, ed. E. M. Thompson, HBS, 23, 28 (London, 1902–4), II, vi–vii
(for the date), 28–42. St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury: an early fourteenth century
customary, closely related to that from Westminster, and probably also transmitting
customs drawn up some decades earlier: ibid., I, vi–vii (for the date), 90–101. A
miscellaneous twelfth-century collection of notes on various monastic customs in
Bodl Wood Empt. 4 (of unknown English origin and medieval provenance), only
mentions the cantor in a note that briefly elaborates upon the regulation concerning
the lists that he compiled of those appointed as readers, singers and other ministers
of the liturgy: Jones, ‘Monastic Custom’, p. 314.
10 Jones, ‘Monastic Custom’, p. 148.
11 For the date of the text, see G. Lambrik, ‘Abingdon Abbey Administration’, Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 17 (1966), 159–83 (p. 167 n. 7).
12 ‘De obedientiariis’, pp. 370–1: ‘De redditibus cantori assignatis cantor inveniet
parcamenam, incaustum, et omnia que ad preparationem librorum conventus
sunt necessaria. … Si fuerit scriptor exterius dispositione abbatis et cantoris ad
commodum ecclesie scribens, abbas inveniet victum corporis, cantor mercedem
laboris.’

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except those books assigned for Mass, and he was to repair damage to the
book-cupboards and books, and find the cloth for the overcovers of the
‘books of the library’.13 The daily distribution of the books assigned to each
monk at the start of Lent and the books of chant, however, was delegated to
the succentor, who had custody of the keys to the relevant cupboards.14 The
cantor was also responsible for the writing of the names of the deceased in
the martyrology and for the parchment and administration of the breves that
provided notification of their demise (duties also recorded by Lanfranc),15
as well as of all the abbey’s charters.16 Abbot Randulf’s statutes of 1214 for
Evesham Abbey indicate a similar range of responsibilities in their allocation
of revenues to the cantor for ink for all the monastery’s scribes, pigments for
illumination and all necessary materials for binding the books (as well as for
the repair of the organs), but do not elaborate further on this aspect of the
cantor’s duties.17
The surviving customaries of the abbeys of Eynsham, Westminster and
St Augustine’s, Canterbury, dating in their surviving copies from the early
fourteenth century but probably all transmitting sets of customs drawn up
in the thirteenth,18 describe these same responsibilities but in greater detail.
Passages common to all three may represent extracts from the source from
which they all ultimately derive, which is unlikely to have been later than the
mid twelfth century (and may have been somewhat earlier);19 details present

13 Ibid., p. 373: ‘Bibliotheca erit sub cantoris custodia’. Ibid., pp. 370–1: ‘Cantori
licet sine reprehensione horis canonicis et ad missas in libros inspicere, exceptis
libris ad officium misse assignatis. … Cantor almaria puerorum, iuvenum, et
alia in quibus libri conventus reponentur, innovabit, fracta preparabit, pannos
librorum bibliothece reperiet, fracturas librorum reficiet.’ On textile overcovers,
see M. Gullick, ‘The Binding Descriptions in the Library Catalogue from Leicester
Abbey’, in Leicester Abbey: Medieval History, Archaeology and Manuscript Studies, ed.
J. Story et al. (Leicester, 2006), pp. 147–72 (150–1, 160).
14 Ibid., p. 374: ‘Claves armariorum, in quibus libri annuales et libri cantus recluduntur,

custodie succentoris assignabuntur’.

15 Decreta, p. 122: ‘Cura brevium, qui foras mitti solent pro defunctis fratribus, et cura

numerandi tricenaria, et septenaria, ad eum pertinet.’

16 ‘De obedientiariis’, p. 372. See also the later Customary of Eynsham, p. 164:

‘Percamenum et incaustum ad brevia defunctorum et ad cetera communia que

necessaria fuerint a cantore invenire debent’. No such stipulation is included in
the St Augustine’s, Canterbury and Westminster custumals, in which responsibility
for writing the death-notice breves is said to lie with the succentor: Customary of
St Augustine’s, I, 99–100, II, 40–1.
17 Thomas of Marlborough, History, p. 394: ‘Ad officium precentoris pertinet quedam

terra in Hamptona de qua percipit precentor annuatim quinque solidos, et decime

de Stokes, et quedam terra in Alincestre. De hiis invenire precentor incaustum
omnibus scriptoribus monasterii, et colores ad illuminandum, et necessaria ad
ligandos libros, et necessaria ad organa.’
18 See above, note 9, and Jones, ‘Monastic Custom’, pp. 145–6.
19 Jones, ‘Monastic Customs’, pp. 143–9.

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in only one of these customaries or in only the textually very closely related
customaries from St Augustine’s and Westminster may represent later, local
developments.
The Eynsham customary replicates almost word for word two
prescriptions in the Abingdon customary regarding the cantor’s oversight
of the maintenance of the books: those permitting him to inspect all but the
‘libris ad officium misse assignatis’, and those that require him to provide
from his revenues the parchment, ink and everything else necessary for the
repair of books.20 A subsequent clause adds that it was for the cantor to decide
when parchment was to be manufactured and books were to be corrected or
bound,21 but allowance was also made for the repair of books to be assigned
to a different individual (to be called armarius) should the cantor be deficient
in carrying out these duties (an allowance that might also be inferred from
Lanfranc’s customs concerning the competence of the cantor in such matters).22
The two closely related customaries from St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and
St Peter’s, Westminster, are generally far more comprehensive in their scope,
describing in great detail the administration of both liturgical and extra-
liturgical ritual and other customs of each abbey. Both replicate the late
eleventh century Cluniac customs’ reference to the cantor’s alternative name
of armarius from his custody of the books in the armaria, and assign all those
books to his custody.23 As at Abingdon and Eynsham, he was to provide ink
and parchment to the monks,24 and was responsible for the renewal, binding
and repair of all of the books in his custody, in the church or the choir, but
with the specified exception of the psalters (or other ‘necessary books’) and
antiphoners which at St Augustine’s and Westminster were assigned to the

20 Customary of Eynsham, pp. 164–5 (with verbal concordance with the Abingdon
customs indicated in bold): ‘Cantori licet sine reprehensione horis canonicis et
ad missas libros inspicere exceptis libris ad officium misse assignatis, quod aliis
non licet. … De redditu cantori assignato inveniet ipse parcamenum et incaustum
et omnia, que ad reparacionem librorum sunt necessaria.’ It is unclear here and
in other sources that refer to ‘reparatio’ whether responsibility for the repair of the
books encompassed more than the restoration of their binding and other exterior
elements to include also their correction.
21 Ibid., p. 168: ‘Cantoris est providere quando parcamena incidenda sunt vel radenda
vel libri emendandi aut ligandi aut aliquid huiusmodi, quod ad officium cantoris
pertineat faciendum’.
22 Ibid., p. 166: ‘Sciendum tamen est quod, si cantor circa librorum reparationem
librorum negligens fuerit, poterit abbas alicui diligentiori fratri curam librorum
assensu capituli committere et ille frater armarius vocabitur.’
23 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 90, 96, II, 28, 36: ‘Cantor, qui et alio nomine armarius
appellatur, eo quod de libris curam habere solet, qui in armario [armariis: Westm.]
continentur. … Et de [Et insuper: Westm.] universis armariorum libris curam geret,
et eos in custodia habebit’. See Fass A, p. 48 and n. 86.
24 Ibid., I, 96, II, 36: ‘Cantor [Qui similiter: Westm.] incaustum fieri faciet, quotiens
opus fuerit. … Similiter [Atque: Westm.] fratrum necessitatibus de membrana
providere tenetur.’

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master of the novices.25 At all three houses, as at Abingdon, a deputy, the

succentor, was given responsibility for access to the books required on a daily
basis (such as the books of chant and, as specified in the Eynsham customs,
also those assigned at the annual Lenten distribution).26 The St Augustine’s
customary also provides for the cantor and succentor to have their own seats
and carrels by the armarium so that they can be on hand to respond to any
request from one of the brethren. 27
None of these three customaries, nor the briefer record from Abingdon,
describe how the Lenten distribution of books itself was to be observed.
Lanfranc’s customs describe the ritual but refer to the person who presided
by the more general description of ‘librorum custos’,28 the wording perhaps
reflecting the transitional period when the roles of cantor and armarius
were still in the process of becoming combined.29 The St Augustine’s and
Westminster customaries allude briefly to the observance but without
mentioning the officer involved,30 nevertheless one may assume that once
the cantor had taken on the responsibilities of armarius, he would also
have presided over the Lenten distribution, as is the case in the remarkably
detailed description of the observance in a late fourteenth century customary
from Peterborough Abbey.31
The Eynsham customary stands alone among surviving English
Benedictine recorded customs in deriving certain elements of the cantor’s
role as armarius from the Liber ordinis, the twelfth-century customary of the
Augustinian house of St Victor, Paris.32 These comprise the requirement to
record individually the titles of every book, to set out or make account of
all the books and to examine them carefully once or twice a year to ensure

25 Ibid., I, 96–7, II, 36: ‘Omnes vero libros qui in sua et succentoris custodia sunt,
tam in ecclesia quam in claustro, necnon psalteria [libros necessarios: Westm.] ac
antiphonarios qui magistri noviciorum cure commendantur, renovare, ligare,
et quotiens opus fuerit, sumptibus suis resarcire faciet. It is unclear whether
‘renovatio’ refers only to the renewal of the exterior of the books or more broadly to
their repair, replacement and perhaps also correction.
26 Customary of Eynsham, p. 166; Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 98, II, 37–8.
27 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 202–3. For a fourteenth-century description of how

the precentor at Evesham Abbey was to discharge his responsibility for supervising
the daily reading in the cloister, see English Benedictine Libraries, p. 132; Sharpe,
‘Medieval Librarian’, p. 223.
28 Decreta, p. 30.
29 For an apparent confusion of the two roles in the Liber tramitis, and for an apparent

separation of duties of armarius and cantor in the Lenten distribution as described

in the late eleventh-century customs of Fruttuaria, see Fass A, pp. 44–6, 48 n. 85.
30 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 39, II, 90.
31 A. Gransden, ‘The Peterborough Customary and Gilbert de Stanford’, RB 70

(1960), 625–38 (pp. 632–8), and Peterborough Abbey, ed. K. Friis-Jensen and J. M. W.
Willoughby, CBMLC 8 (London, 2001), xxviii–xxix, xliii–xlvi.
32 Fass A, p. 51 n. 102; Customary of Eynsham, pp. 164–8.

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against damage or injury from insects or decay. The armarium itself was also
to be lined with wood and partitioned to protect the books from damp and
other damage.33 It was also the cantor’s responsibility to decide which books
were to be made available for daily consultation for rehearsal of either the
chants and readings of the daily services or for those which he deemed useful
and necessary for the instruction and edification of the brethren.34 These
and other customs of St Victor were adopted not only by houses that were
members of the Victorine congregation, but also by other communities that
followed the Augustinian rule, including the Dominicans. It is impossible,
however, to determine whether they had already been adopted at Eynsham
before the thirteenth century.35
Although all of the later medieval English customaries assign general
oversight of the community’s books to the cantor, one category of books is
treated as an exception: those used by officiants in the liturgy of the Mass. The
Abingdon customs, for example, allowed the cantor permission to inspect all
the books during the canonical Hours and the Mass, except the Mass-books
themselves, and exactly the same provision is also found in the Eynsham
customary.36 Elsewhere in the Eynsham customary and in the customaries of
St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and Westminster, it is explained that these books
were reserved to the custody of the sacrist, who was also responsible for their

33 Ibid., p. 166: ‘Armarius omnium librorum titulum singillatim annotatum habere

debet et libros, qui anno illo pre manibus non habentur, per singulos <annos>
semel aut bis exponere aut recensere et, ne in eis aliquid vel tinea vel alia
qualibet corruptela infectum vel excessum fuerit, diligenter considerare. Ipsum
autem armarium intrinsecus ligno vestiri debet, ne humor parietum membranas
rubigine aliqua sive humectatione inficiat, in quo etiam diversi ordines distincti et
convenitenter coapti esse tenentur, in quibus libri separatim ita collocari possint
et distingui ab invicem, ne vel nimia compressio ipsis libris noceat vel confusio
aliquid in eis specialiter querenti moram afferat vel impedimentum.’ Cf. Liber
ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis, ed. L. Jocqué and L. Milis, CCCM 61 (Turnhout,
1984), pp. 78–9 (‘De officio armarii’); and The Observances in Use at the Augustinian
Priory of S. Giles and S. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, ed. and trans. J. W. Clark
(Cambridge, 1897), pp. xlii–xlvi, 62–3. The reference to the lining of the armarium
suggests that it comprised a recessed wall cupboard. Armaria could also take the
form of free-standing (and presumably wooden) cupboards.
34 Customary of Eynsham, p. 167: ‘Debet cantor sive armarius inter libros, qui ad
cotidianum officium ecclesie necessarii sunt etiam de aliis, aliquos, quos ad
instructionem vel ad edificationem fratrum magis commodos et necessarios esse
perspexerit, in commune proponere.’ Cf. Liber ordinis, p. 82, which specifies the
following books: ‘bibliothece et maiores expositores et passionarii et vite patrum et
homeliarii.’
35 Customary of Eynsham, p. 17, noting the proximity of Eynsham to the Augustinian
communities at Osney and St Frideswide’s, Oxford. For Victorine influence upon
customs regulating the care of books, see D. Nebbiai-dalla Guarda, ‘La bibliothèque
commune des institutions religieuses’, Scriptorium 50 (1996), 254–68 (pp. 257–60).
36 Customary of Eynsham, p. 164: ‘Cantori licet sine reprehensione horis canonicis et ad
missas libros inspicere exceptis libris ad officium misse assignatis.’

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repair and renewal, and more detailed specification is provided concerning

the books in question. All three specify those that pertained to the service of
the altar and were used by the celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon: the gospel-
books, epistolaries, lectionaries and benedictionals.37 The Eynsham customs
include the (presumably liturgical) books of the guesthouse (‘libri hospitii’),38
while the St Augustine’s and Westminster lists add a volume containing the
rites for exorcisms and blood-letting, and the collectars. The Westminster
customary also includes non-notated ordinals, a lectionary for the Saturday
Ember Days and a martyrology, while at St Augustine’s it was also the
sacrist’s responsibility to ensure that the high altar never lacked the gospel-
book containing the community’s Liber vite.39 Perhaps in acknowledgment
of the cantor’s expertise and wider responsibility for the conventual books,
the sacrist at both Westminster and St Augustine’s was required to carry
out his responsibility for assembling and repairing all these books with the
advice and active assistance of the cantor.40 At all three houses, the repair
of these books was the responsibility of the sacrist, while the cantor saw
to the repair of the other books of the choir as well as those in the armaria,
with the exception of the cloth overcovers, which fell to the chamberlain.41
Nevertheless, these general norms need not have precluded the sacrist’s

37 Customary of Eynsham, p. 165: ‘Sacrista tamen de missalibus, evangeliariis,

epistolariis curam gerat et lectionariis et libris hospitii et benedictionali’. Customary
of St Augustine’s, I, 106, II, 49: ‘… quotiens opus fuerit, sumptibus suis reparare
et renovare tenetur omnia missalia, … et quecumque alia [alia: om. Westm.] ad
missas celebrandas fuerint necessaria, necnon et textos atque librum evangeliorum,
epistolarium, librum exorcismorum, et quoscumque benedictionarios, collectaria,
[ordinalia divini officii et consuetudinum plane videlicet scripta absque nota
cantus,: add Westm.] librum minutorum, [librum super quem legi solet in nocte et
in octabis Pasche, et librum super quem lectiones legi solent in Sabbatis quattuor
temporum, atque martyrologium,: add Westm.] et si qua sunt alia ad altarium
volumina [volumina ad altarium: Westm.] sive sacerdotum ministerium specialiter
pertinentia, de cantoris consilio et industria, componere, et quotiens opus fuerit,
decenter reparare tenetur.’
38 These may have included books for the Office as well as the Mass: mentions of
books in the guesthouse in twelfth-century booklists include volumes described
as ‘breviaria’, i.e. books containing materials for the Office: for example, English
Benedictine Libraries, B37.12, B71.146.
39 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 112: ‘… et quod magnum altare nunquam debet
esse, quod absit, sine … libro continente quattuor evangelia et nomina fratrum
nostrorum defunctorum et benefactorum in eo scripta, ut sacerdos in eo celebrans
memoriam eorum habeat specialiter, sicut et omnium fratrum et benefactorum
nostrorum defunctorum quorum nomina in presenti libro sunt scripta.’
40 Ibid., I, 106, II, 49.
41 Customary of Eynsham, 165: ‘Pannosque et cetera omnia ad horum librorum
reparationem necessaria inveniet. Cantor reparabit ceteros libros tam chori quam
armariorum et corium in ceteris necessariis inveniet. Camerarius vero pannos
tantum ad libros quorum cantor curam gerit in choro reperiet’. Customary of
St Augustine’s, I, 197, II, 150 (on the office of the chamberlain): ‘Panniculos vero ad

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revenues being used on occasion to meet expenses for other kinds of books,
as when Hervey (sacrist at Bury St Edmunds from sometime after 1121 until
c. 1136) provided the means for his brother, Prior Talbot, to commission a
great Bible for their community.42
The assignment of responsibility to the sacrist for the books used by the
celebrant, deacon and sub-deacon in the Mass in the Eynsham, St Augustine’s
and Westminster customaries may reflect a practice already recorded in
the eleventh- or twelfth-century customary from which all three derive. In
Lanfranc’s customs the sacrist is assigned custody of ‘all the ornaments and
utensils and furnishings of the church’,43 but there is a hint that among these
‘ornaments’ may have been certain books associated with the altar, since it was
the duty of the sacrist to transfer the gospel-book from the altar to the vestry
during the night office on Sundays and major feasts (in readiness for its use
by the abbot or weekly priest) and then return it to the altar.44 A description
of the duties of the sacrist among the various customs jotted down perhaps
during the mid twelfth century at an unknown English house (now Bodl
Wood Empt. 4),45 goes further in specifying the ornamenta, among them
the ‘textus’, a term used for the gospel-books used in liturgical and extra-
liturgical ritual.46 The minor differences in the more extended lists of books
found in later English custumals may therefore reflect local applications of
a widely shared practice of perceiving certain liturgical books to be among
the ornamenta of the church, and hence the responsibility of the sacrist. One
might speculate that it was the precious metals, ivories and jewels applied to
the exterior of the bindings (to form treasure bindings) that provide the most
obvious explanation for their inclusion. The St Augustine’s and Westminster
customaries reproduce a very similar list of ornamenta to that in Wood Empt. 4,
including the textus, which is prefaced by the comment that all the ornaments

psalteria aliosque libros parvi voluminis ex eodem [ex eodem: om. Westm.] eisdem
[ex gratia: add West.] invenire solet.’
42 Recorded in the abbey’s thirteenth-century Gesta sacristarum, in Memorials of
St Edmund’s Abbey, ed. T. Arnold, 3 vols. (London, 1890–6), II, 289–96 (p. 290): ‘Iste
Herveus frater Taleboti prioris omnes expensas invenit fratri suo priori in scribenda
magna bibliotheca …’; see R. M. Thomson, The Bury Bible (Woodbridge, 2001),
pp. 25–7. A fifteenth-century Bury register precedes a record of this endeavour
with a reference to the rents ‘quos antiquo iure sacrista iam habet in villa Sancti
Edmundi comparavit’; see English Benedictine Libraries, 94.
43 Decreta, pp. 122–3: ‘Ad secretarii officium pertinet, omnia ornamenta monasterii,
et omnia instrumenta et suppellectilem, que ad ipsum monasterium pertinent,
custodire; horas providere.’
44 Ibid., and n. 313. On this reading, see also T. Webber, ‘Monastic Space and the Use
of Books in the Anglo-Norman Period, ANS 36 (2014), 221–40 (p. 231).
45 Jones, ‘Monastic Custom’, 139–140, 315–6, §23.
46 Ibid., pp. 315–6: ‘Secretarius curam habere debet omnium ornamentorum totius
ecclesie, immo super omnia que ad eam pertinent, id est cruces, philacteria, feretra,
textos, candelabra, thuribula, et si qua sunt alia circa altare versentur.’

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of the church were by ancient custom assigned to the sacrist – all the ‘centum’
or treasure in gold, silver and precious stones.47 By the thirteenth century, if
not before, however, that rationale had been supplemented or superceded
by a more functional relationship between certain categories of book and the
performance of sacerdotal roles in the Mass. As a result the books involved
came to include not only those in treasure bindings but also more plainly
bound volumes.48
The evidence provided by customaries for the Anglo-Norman cantor’s
responsibility for book provision can be supplemented by the more
numerous records of grants allocating revenues or other resources to the
cantor for this purpose that date from the twelfth century onwards.49 Such
records reflect the growing tendency to formalize and record in writing
both arrangements already in existence and those arising from the gradual,
piecemeal and sometimes acrimonious process whereby the property and
revenues of the head of the house became more sharply distinguished from
those of the community, and portions of the community’s revenues became
allocated to particular offices, including that of the cantor.50 As with the
surviving written customs, the extant records of grants vary in how much
and precisely what aspect of book provision is specified, although in general
the kinds of responsibility outlined correspond with the norms described
in the customaries. Certain grants provide revenues for the making of
books (for materials and/or scribes),51 others specify their correction and

47 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 101, II, 42: ‘Secretarius sive sacrista ex veteri

consuetudine curam habere debet omnium ornamentorum totius ecclesie, immo
super omnia que ad eam pertinent; omnem ecclesie censum sive thesaurum tam
in auro et argento quam in lapidibus preciosis. Cruces vero et philacterias, feretra,
textos …’
48 A late twelfth century booklist from Reading Abbey differentiates between the

missal with a silver-gilt cover used on the most important feasts, one with just
a silver cover used on other major feasts and Sundays, one with an unspecified
(presumably plain) cover used on ferial days, and another (also presumably with
an unornamented binding) used for the morrow mass: English Benedictine Libraries,
B71.152.
49 The evidence is collated and assessed by Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, and Sharpe,

‘Medieval Librarian’. No obedientiaries’ account rolls survive from before the

thirteenth century; for the later medieval rolls from Ely and Norwich cathedral
priories, see M. Gullick, Extracts from the Precentors’ Accounts of Ely Cathedral
Priory concerning Books and Bookmaking (Hitchin, 1985); English Benedictine Libraries,
pp. 291–2, 299; and J. Greatrex, The English Benedictine Cathedral Priories: Rule and
Practice, c. 1270–c. 1420 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 176–86.
50 For the particular example of Ely, an abbey that had become a cathedral priory in

1109, see N. Karn, EEA XXXI. Ely 1109–1197 (Oxford, 2005), pp. xcviii–xcix.
51 For example: a grant of Bishop William Giffard of Wincester of the church of

Wroughton (Wilts.) to the monks and cantor ‘ad faciendos libros’ in 1107 was
subsequently restored and confirmed c. 1128, restored again by Bishop Henry of
Blois in 1142–3 (‘ad conscriptionem librorum et ad reparationem organorum’) and

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 Teresa Webber

repair.52 However, the greater specificity provided by the grants

sometimes indicates variation from the norms recorded in the customaries.
Arrangements put in place by one grant were sometimes subsequently
discontinued and had to be restored (and perhaps revised). At Ely, for
example, a grant of lands and tithes that had been made sometime between
1134 and 1144 by Bishop Nigel to Aluric the cantor ‘for the making and
correction of books of our church’ was later renewed in perpetuity in slightly
different terms, and allocated not to a named cantor nor to the office of cantor,
but to the ‘scriptorio ecclesie Elyensis ad libros eiusdem ecclesie faciendos et
emendandos’.53 In this instance, the change (as Nicholas Karn suggests) may
reflect a deliberate decision not to assign certain property and revenues to the
office of cantor. Other examples of restorations or reconfirmations of earlier
grants may reflect fluctuations in need.54
Nevertheless, as Richard Sharpe has observed, such funds would not
on their own have been sufficient to make provision for additions to the
community’s holdings on the scale that took place at so many religious houses
in England at various times during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Additional resources must have come either from the unassigned revenues
of the community or from those in the hands of the abbot or bishop, where
a separation between the two had already taken place,55 or from unspent

reaffirmed in 1171: Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, 2–3; M. J. Franklin, EEA VIII.

Winchester 1070–1204 (Oxford, 1993), nos. 17, 21, 126, 132.
52 For example: revenue from Halstow (Kent) was assigned to the cantor at Christ
Church, Canterbury ‘ad emendationem et reparationem librorum’, in an actum of
Archbishop Hubert Walter (no longer extant but quoted in an actum of Archbishop
Stephen Langton) that restored Halstow to the community some time between
1198–1205: Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes’, pp. 3–4; C. R. Cheney and E. John, EEA
III. Canterbury 1162–1190 (Oxford, 1986), no. 388. K. Major, Acta Stephani Langton
Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi AD 1207–1228, Canterbury and York Society 50 (1959),
no. 10.
53 Karn, EEA XXXI. Ely, nos. 32, ‘ad faciendos et emendandos libros ecclesiȩ nostrȩ ’)
and 44 (c. 1158×1169), ‘in perpetuam elemosinam scriptorio ecclesie Elyensis ad
libros eiusdem ecclesie faciendos et emendandos’.
54 See, for example, Gullick, ‘Professional scribes’, pp. 3–4, on the history of Halstow
(above n. 52), originally granted by Archbishop Theobald to Prior Wibert between
1153 and 1161 for unspecified purposes, but perhaps for the making of books, then,
in 1186, granted by Archbishop Baldwin to John of London, nephew of Thomas
Becket, before it was restored to the community over ten years later.
55 For the institution of professional scribes to copy the works of the Fathers at
Abingdon by Abbot Faritius (1100–17), see English Benedictine Libraries, pp. 4–7,
and for his allocation of the tithes from the manor of Dumbleton to the purchase
of parchment to renew the books of the church, ‘Ad pergamenum emendum, pro
librorum ecclesie renovatione’, see Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the
Church of Abingdon, ed. and trans. J. Hudson, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2002–7), II, 216–7. At
this date, the revenues of the abbot may not yet have become fully separated from
those of the community at Abingdon: ibid., II, lxxxiv–lxxxvii. For the acts of a series
of late eleventh and twelfth century abbots of St Albans by which revenues were

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revenues allocated to other obedientiaries.56 Reference is also made in the

documentary records from a number of houses to the involvement of the prior
in the provision of books which may reflect his role as the abbot’s deputy
and, after the separation of the property and revenues of the community
from those of the abbot, its effective head, and hence with an overarching
responsibility for how the community’s resources were deployed.
The Rule of St Benedict itself makes no mention of the production or
acquisition of books, nor of a specific individual to whom their custody was
assigned. Responsibility for the delegation of such duties lay with the abbot,
presumably falling within the prescriptions of chapter 32 of the Rule, which
states that ‘the goods of the monastery, that is, its tools, clothing or anything
else, should be entrusted to brothers whom the abbot appoints and in whose
manner of life he has confidence. He will, as he sees fit, issue to them the
various articles to be cared for and collected after use’.57 In the following
chapter, which elaborates upon the evils of private ownership, books and
writing materials are used as examples, and the overarching responsibility
of the abbot is reinforced: ‘Without an order from the abbot, no one may
presume to give, receive or retain anything as his own, nothing at all – not a
book, writing tablet or stylus – in short, not a single item. … For their needs,
they are to look to the father of the monastery, and are not allowed anything
which the abbot has not given or permitted.’58
The prior, as the abbot’s deputy, might also act on the abbot’s behalf in
distributing the community’s resources, including books. This may account
for the role assigned to the prior by the Aachen decrees of 23 August 816
(and repeated in subsequent legislation) in both carrying out the Rule’s
prescription for the Lenten distribution of books and having responsibility for
all other personal use of books.59 It may also lie behind the ‘ancient custom’

assigned for professional scribes and their sustenance, the fabric of a designated
space for producing books was maintained and books were commissioned, see
the evidence from the Gesta abbatum sancti Albani assembled in English Benedictine
Libraries, pp. 538–41, and discussed by R. M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans
Abbey 1066–1235, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1982).
56 See, for example, Abbot Randulf of Evesham’s customs, which made allowance for
such viring of unspent income: Thomas of Marlborough, History, pp. 388–91.
57 RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, ed. T. Fry (Collegeville,
1981), pp. 228–9: ‘Substantia monasterii in ferramentis vel vestibus seu quibuslibet
rebus prevideat abbas fratres de quorum vita et moribus securus sit, et eis singula,
ut utile iudicaverit, consignet custodienda atque recolligenda.’
58 Ibid., pp. 230–1: ‘ne quis presumat aliquid dare aut accipere sine iussione abbatis,
neque aliquid habere proprium, nullam omnino rem, neque codicem, neque tabulas,
neque graphium, sed nihil omnino … omnia vero necessaria a patre sperare
monasterii nec quicquam liceat habere quod abbas non dederit aut permiserit.’
59 ‘Synodi primae Aquisgranensis decreta authentica’, ed. J. Semmler, in Initia
consuetudinis Benedictinae, consuetudines saeculi octavi et noni, ed. K. Hallinger, CCM
1 (Siegburg, 1963), p. 461: ‘Ut in Quadragesima libris de bibliotheca secundum

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 Teresa Webber

recorded in the late thirteenth century Westminster customary whereby the

cantor would bring the ink he had made to the prior for inspection,60 as well
as the charging of numerous expenses for parchment, books and scribes to
the master of the cellar at Norwich Cathedral Priory (who kept the record of
the prior’s expenses) in the ‘camera prioris’ section of his accounts.61
Several examples can be cited of twelfth-century priors acquiring books for
their communities, including three from the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, the
most well known being the commissioning of the famous Bury Bible by Prior
Talbot (with resources provided by his brother, Hervey, the sacrist).62 The two
others are manuscripts that contain inscriptions attributing responsibility
for their production to Baldwin, prior from c. 1112 to c. 1125.63 One may
have been produced by a professional scribe, but the other, a copy of three
works of Anselm, was produced in-house by several scribes whose hands are
found in other Bury manuscripts of the first quarter of the twelfth century
and who are more likely to have been monks. In this latter case, therefore,
the prior presumably provided the material resources for producing the
manuscript. At Evesham, the prior was formally allocated specified revenues
in connection with the production of books in the customs instituted in 1214
by Abbot Randulf, and recorded in the history of the abbey by Thomas of
Marlborough, himself then prior: ‘To the prior’s office belong the tithes of
Bengeworth, the great as well as the small, from all the lands and men of the
monks, and these are for parchment and the maintenance of the scribes who
write the books.’64 Thomas also recorded in his history the books that he had
had made for the community after becoming prior, including a large breviary,
a large psalter and four notated antiphoners (these last written by members
of the community), as well as books he had purchased, among them several
glossed books of the Bible.65

prioris dispositionem acceptis aliis nisi prior decreverit expedire non accipiant’;
Fass A, p. 35 and nn. 25 and 26.
60 Customary of St Augustine’s, II,19: ‘Antiquitus vero cantor, quando incaustum erat
facturus, illud priori claustri premonstrare consuevit.’
61 English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe, 292–9.
62 See above, n. 42.
63 Cambridge, St John’s College MS D. 19 (94) and Bodl e Musaeo 112: P. R. Robinson,
Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 737–1600 in Cambridge Libraries,
2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1988), I, no. 298; A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable
Manuscripts c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984), I, no. 657.
64 Thomas of Marlborough, History, pp. 392–3: ‘Ad prioratum pertinent decime
de Beningwrthe tam maiores quam minores de omnibus terris et hominibus
monachorum ad parcamenum et exhibitionem scriptorum pro libris scribendis.’
65 Ibid., pp. 490–3.

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The cantor-armarius and the provision of books for public reading

The descriptions of the duties of variously the armarius, cantor and cantor-
armarius from the eleventh century onwards are dominated less by detail
concerning their role as librarians66 than by prescriptions for the correct
performance of the liturgy and other rituals.67 In this context, the ‘provision’
of books has a meaning that extends beyond the range of duties more usually
associated with the management of libraries to include the preparation of
both books and readers for reading aloud to the assembled community in the
church, refectory and chapterhouse.
Lanfranc’s customs require the cantor to ensure in advance (‘providere’)
that nothing, whether sung or read, should be done negligently, to rehearse
the readers and singers if necessary and to select each week the readers and
singers based upon his own judgment of their suitability for the task in hand:

Quicumque lecturus aut cantaturus est aliquid in monasterio, si necesse

habet, ab eo priusquam incipiat debet auscultare. Ipsius est omni hora
sollicite providere, ne eveniat neglegentia in quocumque obsequio quod
fit in monasterio. … Ipsius est omnes fratres in tabula ad omnia officia
annotare, non considerato conversionis ordine, aut voluntate eorum, sed
secundum quod ei visum fuerit, honestatem et edificationem in hoc
vigilanter consideranti.68

[Whenever anyone is to read or chant anything in the church the cantor

shall, if need be, hear him go over his task before he perform it in public. It
is the cantor’s business to watch carefully at all times, so that no negligence
occurs in any service in the monastery. … It is his task to put down the
brethren for all duties (that is, chants and readings) on the tabula, paying
no attention to their seniority or their personal wishes, but according to
his best judgment having careful regard only to good performance and
edification.]

Supervision of the liturgical readings was one of the duties of the armarius
which, over the course of the eleventh century, had become combined with
the cantor’s oversight of the chant.69 Correct performance of monastic
observance, and especially the liturgy, was a recurrent concern of monastic
reformers throughout the Middle Ages, although what it was understood
to involve and how it was to be achieved, might differ. Lanfranc’s own
stipulation that the cantor’s choice of readers (and singers) should be based
on their suitability may reflect an extrapolation from the Rule’s teachings in

66 Sharpe, ‘Medieval Librarian’, p. 224.

67 For the eleventh-century background and continental evidence, see Fass A, pp. 42–9.
68 Decreta, pp. 118–21.
69 Fass A, pp. 39–46.

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 Teresa Webber

chapter 38 on the weekly reader in the refectory: ‘the reader should not be
the one who just happens to pick up the book, but someone who will read
for a whole week, beginning on Sunday. … Brothers will read and sing, not
according to rank, but according to their ability to benefit their hearers.’70
Elsewhere (and perhaps also, in practice, at Canterbury), it was commonly
the custom for the readings of the Mass and the night office to be assigned to
specific ranks and officers within the community, usually in ascending order
of importance.71
Customaries also vary in their requirements concerning rehearsal, insofar
as those who were no longer novices were concerned.72 The late tenth
century customary in Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek MS 235 had gone so far as
to insist that no one might deliver a reading in the church, refectory or in
chapter without previously being heard by the armarius or someone else.73
Lanfranc’s customs, however, allow the cantor some discretion, an allowance
also reflected in the later customaries of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and
Westminster.74
The cantor’s duty to correct the community’s books, mentioned frequently
in the records assigning revenues to his office, must have been associated
especially with their preparation for oral delivery. This is made explicit, and
coupled with a requirement to punctuate them appropriately, in the Eynsham
customary, in a passage derived from the Victorine Liber ordinis concerning
the ‘libri communes’, the books of chants and readings that were to be made
available each day for consultation in some suitably accessible place. It
was these books in particular that the cantor or armarius was to correct and

70 RB 1980, pp. 236–8: ‘… nec fortuito casu qui arripuerit codicem legere ibi, sed
lecturus tota hebdomada dominica ingrediatur. … Fratres autem non per ordinem
legant aut cantent, sed qui edificant audientes.’ William of Hirsau, in his customs
for Hirsau, extended this requirement to the evening reading at collation, Willehelmi
abbatis Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, ed. C. Elvert and P. Engelbert, 2 vols., CCM
15 (2010), I, 382: ‘Cavendum est armario, ne umquam cuiquam minus sciolo id
iniungat, ut ad collationem legat; sed tam convenienti et intelligenti persone que ita
legat, ut audientes edificet.’
71 Fass A, p. 41.
72 For the rehearsal of readings as part of the training of the novices, see S. Boynton,

‘Training for the Liturgy as a Form of Monastic Education’, in Medieval Monastic

Education, ed. G. Ferzoco and C. Muessig (London, 2000), pp. 7–20 (pp. 9–13).
73 ‘Redactio Einsidlensis’, p. 207: ‘Nullus in ecclesia, in refectorio, in capitulo vel

quolibet conventu audeat quicquam legere inprovise, quod ante non habuerit ab
armario vel ab aliquo auscultatum. Similiter cantare non presumat, quod a cantore
prius non audiatur’. See also Fass A, p. 47 and n. 81, for the same, albeit differently
worded, stipulation in the Liber tramitis.
74 Customary of St Augustine’s, I, 90, II, 28: ‘Quicumque lecturus est in conventu aut

aliquid cantaturus, si necesse habet, ab eo priusquam incipiat debet ascultari. Ipsius

est omni hora solicite providere ne aliqua in obsequio divino eveniat negligentia.’

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 The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman England

punctuate lest the brethren stumble when singing or reading aloud.75 The
reading in question comprised not only the lections of the liturgy of the Mass
and the Office but also those delivered in the refectory at mealtimes and in
the chapterhouse during the morning chapter-office and the evening collation.
The volumes involved likewise went beyond those specially produced for
liturgical purposes (gospel-books or gospel-lectionaries, epistolaries, plenary
missals, office lectionaries and breviaries) and those regularly used for the
night office readings – Bibles, homiliaries and passionals – to include books
now more usually associated with a modern conception of library: patristic
and later exegesis and doctrinal exposition, ecclesiastical history, works of
spiritual advice and monastic edification and smaller compilations of saints’
lives,76 all of which needed to be properly corrected and marked up as
required prior to the rehearsal and/or delivery of the passages allocated by
the cantor to be delivered as readings.
In her study of the evolution of the office of the cantor in the period up
to the end of the eleventh century, Margot Fassler suggested that it was the
introduction and increasing use of notated chant books during the eleventh
century that contributed to the combining of responsibility for the chant
with that of oversight of the library and scriptorium.77 A further practical
consideration may have played a part. Whereas the pericopes for the readings
of the Mass had become more or less established by at least the eleventh
century (with the important exception of the sanctoral, which remained more
variable), the readings for the Office were not yet fixed but were determined
locally in accordance with a common framework of an annual cycle of reading
the books of the Bible, related patristic exegesis, a choice of gospel homilies
corresponding to the pericope of the day, and, as considered appropriate to
the feast, hagiography. Within these parameters, the decision as to where to
begin and end each reading had come to be the responsibility of the armarius.
In late tenth and early eleventh century customaries, for example, his task of
correcting the books is commonly coupled with a requirement to determine
the length of the readings.78

75 Customary of Eynsham, p. 167; Liber ordinis, pp. 81–2: ‘Libri communes, [id est: Lib.
ord.] qui cotidie ad manum habendi sunt sive ad cantandum sive ad legendum, in
loco competendi reponendi [exponendi: Lib.ord.] sunt, ut [ubi: Lib.ord.] competens
accessus omnium fratrum esse possit. Quos precipue cantor vel [cantor vel: om.
Lib.ord.] armarius diligenter emendare debet et punctare, ne fratribus [fratres:
Lib.ord.] in cotidiano officio ecclesie, sive in cantando sive in legendo aliquod
impedimentum faciant [inveniant: Lib.ord.].’
76 I am preparing a study of public reading and its books in English monastic practice
to be delivered as the Lyell Lectures in Bibliography in the University of Oxford in
2016. For a preliminary survey, see Webber, ‘Monastic Space’.
77 Fass A, p. 46.
78 For example, ‘Consuetudines Floriacenses’, p. 17: ‘Emendatio librorum et termini
lectionum et responsio fidei catholice et hereticorum confutatio et, si quid sane

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 Teresa Webber

The issue was not simply one of judgment concerning length but also of
coordination. In principle, the scriptural readings of the night office (and
those of the refectory which dovetailed with and supplemented them)
had to be made to fit within the framework of the annual cycle of reading
the books of the Bible, as recorded (with minor variations) in a number of
ordines.79 Coordinating this programme of readings was not easy, involving
both the negotiation of a number of variables (the length of time each year
between Epiphany and Septuagesima, the length of the hours of darkness,
the number of Sundays in the summer months) and a flexible response to
progressive incremental change to festal observance, which might entail the
substitution of the seasonal biblical readings with readings proper to the
feast. But in addition to all of this, the organization of the biblical readings
not only in the Office but also in the refectory needed to be coordinated as far
as possible with the longer-established liturgical cycle of scripturally derived
responsories that dovetailed with each set of readings within the night office.
In the early thirteenth century ordinal of the Norman abbey of Fécamp, even
the timing of the ordo of refectory reading is signposted in several places with
the incipits of the series of responsories. The commencement of the reading of
the Apocalypse after Easter, for example, is cued to the responsory ‘Dignus es
domine’ (cf. Apoc. 5. 9), and the Canonical Epistles, which were to follow, to
‘Si oblitus fuero tui’.80
In view of the problems of coordination that might arise in adapting the
cycle of biblical reading to the broadly similar but not identical cycle of chants,
it is easy to see why the custom of having a single master of ceremonies, in
charge of assigning both chants and readings, became widespread within
monastic practice, and why it endured. Even the readings of the evening
collation, which usually comprised a diet of texts advocating or exemplifying
the monastic virtues,81 had sometimes to be coordinated with the festal
liturgy. In the customary drawn up by William of Hirsau, for example, the
prompt used to signal such exceptions is the manner of performance of the

doctrine obstiterit, illum attinet’; ‘Redactio Einsidlensis’, pp. 200–1: ‘Breve

can­torum et lectorum seu servitorum pridie antequam in capitulo recitetur scribi
debet. …. Similiter lectiones ab armario pridie ante sint terminate vel correcte.’
79 For a detailed examination of the complexities involved and the fluidity of practice
that could arise at the local level, see H. Parkes, ‘Biblical Readings for the Night
Office in Eleventh-Century Germany: Reconciling Theory and Practice’, in Reading
the Bible in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Nelson and D. Kempf (London, 2015), pp. 77–100.
As Parkes shows, these complexities were not only a matter of concern for monastic
communities, but for cathedral clergy as well.
80 The Ordinal of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity Fécamp (Fécamp, Musée de la Bénédictine,
Ms 186), ed. D. Chadd, HBS 111–12 (London, 1999–2002), II, 675. For issues of
coordination arising from differences in the ordering of the New Testament books
of the Bible in the period between Easter and Ascension, see Parkes, ‘Biblical
Readings’.
81 Webber, ‘Monastic Space’, pp. 235–6.

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 The Provision of Books in Anglo-Norman England

chants: ‘On the major feasts on which the Venite is sung by four, or on feasts
‘in cappis’, a proper sermon is to be read at collation, if there is one.’82 In such
circumstances, combining the roles of cantor and armarius made good sense,
and thus ensured, as Ulrich of Zell put it in the chapter on the cantor-armarius
in the customary he compiled at William’s request, ‘what he should wish to
be sung shall be sung, what he should wish to be read is to be read, in the
church, in the refectory and at collation, and all should be obedient to him in
this regard’.83

82 Willehelmi abbatis Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, I, 382: ‘In precipuis festivitatibus, in

quibus quattuor Venite cantant, aut etiam in cappis, si habent proprium sermonem,
inde legitur ad collationem …’
83 Ulrich, Consuetudines Cluniacenses, PL 149, 749: ‘Quod voluerit ut cantetur, cantatur;
quod voluerit ut legatur, legitur et in ecclesia, et in refectorio, et ad collationem; et
ad huiuscemodi omnes debent semper ei esse obedientes.’

189
 10
Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian
at Durham Cathedral Priory, c. 1090–1129

Charles C. Rozier

The discussion which follows examines Symeon of Durham’s activities as

cantor and as historian at the cathedral priory of Durham, c. 1090–1129. By
analysing Symeon’s additions to Durham manuscripts of the late eleventh and
early twelfth centuries, it seeks to augment our understanding of Symeon’s
work as Durham cantor, and considers some of the possible links between
his roles as cantor and historian. In order to do so, it is divided into two main
parts. The first part reconstructs Symeon’s work as cantor. It suggests that,
having worked alongside the previous incumbent from the 1090s onwards,
before his likely appointment as cantor c. 1115–20, Symeon practised a form
of cantorship which appears to have been closely related to that outlined
in the Decreta of Archbishop Lanfranc, comprising responsibilities for
supervising the accurate delivery of the liturgy, commemorating the dead,
measuring time and for co-ordinating the acquisition, production and care
of books. Following this, the second part links these duties with Symeon’s
work in copying, compiling and composing historical texts. It will be argued
that Symeon’s work as both cantor and historian made a number of essential
contributions to the development and consolidation of the institutional
identity of Durham’s cathedral priory – an identity which was informed by
the carefully selected and officially ratified vision of the community’s past
as featured in Symeon’s writings, and which was broadcast and enhanced
by the forms of liturgical commemoration to which Symeon contributed as
cantor.
This study contributes to a wider discourse surrounding historical
consciousness in medieval Durham, attempting to understand how much of
the past was known by Symeon and his contemporaries, how they learned of
their past, how they adapted this knowledge for use in their present and why
their past mattered to them.1 Analysis of Symeon’s role as cantor at Durham

1 A. J. Piper, ‘The First Generations of Durham Monks and the Cult of St Cuthbert’,
in St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to AD 1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. W. Rollason
and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 437–46; W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the
Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998); essays in Symeon
of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. W. Rollason (Stamford, 1998),
especially A. J. Piper, ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, pp. 301–32;
Charles C. Rozier, ‘Contextualizing the Past at Durham Cathedral Priory,

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 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory

provides an ideal focus for developing this line of enquiry. It will be seen
that much of his work, both before and after the earliest known date of his
cantorship, appears to have been directed towards an overarching aim to
present a historically informed vision of what the community of St Cuthbert
believed it was, where it came from and what it stood for. The discussion
which follows aims to demonstrate that the cantor and the historian played
a leading role in this initiative, and will suggest that by serving in both roles,
Symeon was ideally suited to the cultivation and consolidation of Durham’s
place at the forefront of secular and ecclesiastical politics in Anglo-Norman
Northumbria.
Symeon of Durham is best known to modern scholars as an author of
historical texts which record events of northern English history during the
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods.2 Of these, the most famous is
his account of the community of St Cuthbert produced between 1104 and
1115, and which, following the incipit to the two earliest manuscripts, is
now usually referred to as the Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est
Dunhelmensis ecclesie (Tract on the Origins and Progress of this, the Church of
Durham).3 Other historically oriented texts attributed to Symeon include a set
of annals added to the margins of Easter tables,4 and a longer collection of
annals relating to English and Frankish history,5 both of which were copied
in his hand. During the 1120s, Symeon also co-ordinated the production of a
more substantial chronicle of English history down to 1129 known according
to the rubric within the earliest surviving manuscript as the Durham Historia
de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum (1129).6

c. 1090–1130: 107 Uses of History in the Annals of Durham, Dean and Chapter
Library, MS Hunter 100’, Haskins Society Journal 25 (2013), 107–23.
2 The authoritative studies of Symeon’s life and works are A. J. Piper, ‘The Durham

Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)’, in Anglo-Norman

Durham, 1093–1193, ed. D. W. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge,
1994), pp. 79–92; Piper, ‘The Scribes of the Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham,
Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)’, pp. 93–109; Piper, ‘The Hand of Symeon
of Durham: further reflections on the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, in Symeon:
Historian, ed. Rollason, pp. 14–31; LdE, pp. xliii–l.
3 Symeon, LdE, p. 16, note a.
4 Now Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian 85 (T.4.2), edited in W. Levison

and H. Eberhard Meyer, ‘Die Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses: kritisch

untersucht und neu herausgegeben’, Deutsches Arvhiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters
17 (1961), 447–506. For discussion, see J. E. Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’, in Symeon:
Historian, ed. Rollason, pp. 202–13.
5 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.22, fols. 3–5; Story, ‘Symeon as

Annalist’.
6 For the text, see Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols. (London,

1882–5), II, 3–284, and the forthcoming edition by M. Lapidge and D. W. Rollason,
Symeon of Durham, Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, incorporating Byrhtferth
of Ramsey, Historia Regum, with John of Hexham, Historia xxv annorum, and Anonymous,
De obsessione Dunelmi et de probitate Uhtredi comitis, et de comitibus qui ei successerunt,

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 Charles C. Rozier

The paleographical research of Michael Gullick has greatly augmented

our knowledge of Symeon’s life and the wider corpus of his works.7 Gullick
suggested that the character of Symeon’s hand suggests that he was of
northern French, probably Norman, origin, and noted that the earliest
evidence dates his arrival in Durham to the early 1090s.8 Identifying
Symeon’s additions to over forty extant manuscripts and documents, Gullick
has shown Symeon as one of the most prominent scribes within the surviving
corpus of late eleventh and early twelfth century Durham manuscripts,
profiling his work as the main scribe, editor and rubricator of around
thirty manuscripts containing patristic and medieval theology and biblical
exegesis,9 observing Symeon’s production of seven extant charters on behalf
of the monastic community and Bishops of Durham,10 and noting his various
additions of names and confraternity agreements in Durham’s Liber vitae.
Gullick also highlighted Symeon’s additions to a number of manuscripts
incorporating historical and hagiographical texts, including two manuscripts
containing Bede’s Vita Cuthberti, the Historia Lausiaca, William of Jumièges’s
Gesta Normannorun ducum and one small marginal addition to Durham’s copy
of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica.11
Symeon’s status as cantor is known from two principal sources. The earliest
is a letter dated to November 1126, which records the vision of a young boy
named Orm, and which was sent to Durham addressed to ‘Symeon, precentor
of the church of Durham’.12 No other Symeon is known to have been present
in Durham at this time. Only one individual of this name features in the list
of Durham monks which was added to one of the two earliest manuscripts of
the Libellus de exordio, and in the near-contemporary list found in Durham’s
commemorative Liber vitae.13 It is almost certain that Symeon, author of the

and De primo Saxonum aduentu siue de eorundem regibus, Oxford Medieval Texts
(Oxford, forthcoming). For discussion of Symeon’s role, see Symeon, LdE, p. xlviii;
P. Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon
of Durham’, in Celt and Saxon, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 63–118;
Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’; and D. W. Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de
regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a product of twelfth-century Historical Workshops’,
in Long Twelfth-century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. M. Brett and D. A.
Woodman (Aldershot, forthcoming).
7 Gullick, ‘Scribes’ and ‘Hand’. See also the summary in Symeon, LdE, pp. xliv–l.
8 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
9 For a list of Symeon’s manuscript additions, see ibid., pp. 24–31.
10 Ibid., pp. 26, 28, 30, items 12, 13, 24, 32, 33, 35 and 36.
11 Ibid., p. 24 items 1, 2 and 4; p. 27 item 18; and p. 41 item 41. Gullick locates

Symeon’s note in Durham’s copy of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica on fol. 38v, when in
fact it appears on fol. 39v.
12 Symeon, LdE, p. xliii; D. H. Farmer, ‘The Vision of Orm’, Analecta Bollandiana 75

(1957), 72–82.
13 DUL Cosin V.ii.6, fol. 7v, printed in Symeon, LdE, pp. 8–9, and also in Piper

‘Lists’, pp. 176–85 and BL Cotton Domitian A.vii, fol. 45r, printed in Piper ‘Lists’,
pp. 176–85. For the Durham Liber vitae see also, The Durham Liber Vitae: London,

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 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory

Libellus de exordio and scribe at Durham, was the intended recipient of this
letter and, therefore, that he had been appointed cantor some time before
1126.
The second record of Symeon’s cantorship is a rubric which appears at the
beginning of a late twelfth century copy of his Libellus de exordio, now CUL
Ff.1.27, p. 123. The text reads: ‘Here begins the preface of the holy Symeon,
monk and precentor of the church of St Cuthbert, in Durham.’14 Rollason
underlined the reliability of this rubric by concluding that the manuscript had
almost certainly been produced at Durham in or just after 1188, and therefore
by Symeon’s successors, the oldest of whom may just have known him active
in the cantor’s role.15
Although the letter of 1126 gives a terminus post quem for Symeon’s
cantorship, the precise date of his appointment is more difficult to establish.
Gullick has argued that Symeon was probably not cantor before 1104 due to
the fact he is not named as such in Reginald of Durham’s later twelfth-century
account of the translation of Cuthbert. While Reginald noted Symeon’s
presence and gave others their due rank, Symeon was mentioned by name
alone, with no accompanying note of office, and so it follows that he probably
had none at that time.16 The identification of Symeon’s likely predecessor
in the role sheds some further light on this issue. Gullick identified him as
the individual recorded in Symeon’s additions to the Durham martyrology
as ‘Willelmus cantor’, and observed that like Symeon, this William had also
been brought to Durham at the beginning of the 1090s.17 Gullick noted that
William’s additions within the calendar and martyrology of the Durham
‘Cantor’s Book’ (now Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.24) and
within the Durham Liber vitae suggest that William had been Durham’s cantor
before Symeon took over after William’s death between c. 1110 and 1120.18
As is the case with many of the medieval cantor-historians discussed in this
volume, assessing Symeon’s activities as Durham cantor requires a judicious
reading of the available evidence. Despite recent progress, it is still difficult
to know exactly what the cantor’s role entailed within a specific religious

British Library MS Cotton Domitian A.VII, ed. D. W. and L. Rollason with A. J. Piper,
3 vols. (London, 2007).
14 ‘Incipit prefatio reuerendi Symeonis monachi et precentoris ecclesie sancti
Cuthberti Dunemli’. See also Symeon, LdE, pp. xxiv–vii, 16–17.
15 Ibid., pp. xxvi–xxvii, xliii.
16 Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 21. For the text, see Reginaldi monachi Dunelmensis libellus de
admirandis beati Cuthberti uirtutibus quae novellis patratae sunt temporibus, ed. James
Raine, Surtees Society 1 (London, 1835), p. 84.
17 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.24, fol. 37r; Piper, ‘Lists’, p. 200.
18 Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 20–1. See also M. Gullick, ‘The Scribe of the Carilef Bible: a new
look at some late eleventh-century Durham Cathedral manuscripts’, in Medieval
Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, 1990),
pp. 61–83 (pp. 68–9 and n. 44).

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 Charles C. Rozier

community in the early and high Middle Ages.19 While much can be learned
by amalgamating descriptions of the role within contemporary customaries,
the level of detail provided by these texts is frequently low, and is insufficient
when seeking to reconstruct the hourly, or even the daily, routine of the
medieval cantor. In addition, attempts to reconstruct the cantor’s remit
through the study of manuscript additions in known cantors’ hands carry the
potential to mislead due to the fact that it is often quite impossible to prove
that any additions were made only as a direct result of his or her cantorship.
As a consequence, the following reconstruction of Symeon’s work as Durham
cantor reads his contributions to the manuscript evidence with caution in this
attempt to provide tentative conclusions about the office during his probable
years of service.
A copy of Archbishop Lanfranc’s Decreta arrived in Durham at the
beginning of the 1090s, with large sections having been written by another
leading Anglo-Norman cantor-historian, Eadmer of Canterbury.20 At Durham,
this copy of the Decreta was soon bound together with two copies of the Rule of
St Benedict (one in Latin and one in Anglo-Saxon English) and a martyrology,
to form what is now Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.24. Piper
christened the manuscript the ‘Durham Cantor’s Book’, on account of its
contents and the additions by Symeon and his predecessor, William.21 The
fact that Symeon and William added to the contents of the volume, which
at that time is likely to have already included Lanfranc’s Decreta, allows a
speculative examination of the extent to which Symeon attempted to follow
the recommendations relating to the cantor’s role as featured therein.

19 F. Wormald, ‘The Monastic Library’, in The English Library before 1700, ed.
F. Wormald and C. E. Wright (London, 1958), pp. 15–31; Fass A; D. Hiley, ‘Thurstan
of Caen and Plainchant at Glastonbury: Musicological Reflections on the Norman
Conquest’, Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986), 57–90; J. Grier, ‘Roger de
Chabannes (d. 1025), cantor of St Martial, Limoges’, Early Music History 14 (1995),
53–119; J. Grier, The Musical World of a Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in
Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (Cambridge, 2006), especially chapter 6; A. Yardley,
Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (New York, 2006).
20 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.24, fols. 47r–71v. This manuscript

provided the base-text for The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles
with C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 2002) in which the manuscript is discussed at
p. xliv. On Eadmer’s role in copying the text, see M. Gullick, ‘The Scribal Work of
Eadmer of Canterbury to 1109’, Archaeologia Cantiana 118 (1998), 173–89 (p. 183).
On Eadmer’s status as cantor, see Margot Fassler’s essay in this volume and The
Historical Woks of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1879–80) I,
7; II, 374. For discussion, see R. W. Southern, Anselm and his Biographer: a study of
Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 237; Southern, Saint
Anselm: a Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 418–21; Eadmer, The Lives
and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, ed. A. Turner and B. Muir (Oxford,
2006), p. xxvi.
21 Piper, ‘The Durham Cantor’s Book’.

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 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory

The type of cantor depicted in chapter 86 of Lanfranc’s Decreta was one

primarily responsible for the planning and accurate delivery of the liturgy.
His main duties were to provide rehearsals of readings and chants prior
to performance in church, to lead and to correct immediately any errors in
readings and chant in church, where necessary to choose readers, and to
distribute special copes on feast days.22 Due to the ephemeral nature of these
tasks, it is almost impossible to know how far Symeon followed Lanfranc’s
prescriptions in these areas. A generally poor survival rate of liturgical
manuscripts from Anglo-Norman Durham, coupled with an absence of
additions by Symeon in those which do exist, prevents further conclusions on
Symeon’s exact role in supervising the delivery of Durham’s liturgy.23
In contrast to his poorly attested liturgical role, the remainder of Symeon’s
likely cantorial duties are better represented in the surviving evidence, most
prominently in his additions to obit-lists and confraternity records and
apparent supervisory role in the production and care of books. Lanfranc’s
description of the role concluded with the following short instructions in
these areas:

It also pertains to his office to supervise the letters sent out to ask for prayers
for the dead brethren and to keep count of the week’s and month’s mind.
He takes care of all the books of the house, and has them in his keeping, if
his interests and learning are such as to fit him for keeping them.24

Symeon’s involvement in the care of Durham’s books is recorded in several

surviving manuscripts. He compiled the first inventory of Durham’s books,
listing all those given to the monastic community by Bishop William of
Saint-Calais on the front flyleaf of a large two-volume Bible, under the
heading: ‘Here are the names of the books which Lord Bishop William gave
to St Cuthbert.’25 In addition, Gullick has shown that Symeon corrected and

22 Lanfranc, Constitutions, pp. 118–23.

23 The surviving manuscripts are Durham, Cathedral Library, MSS B.iii.10, inside
cover (fragments of a breviary, s. xiex); B.iii.11, fols. 136–159 (antiphonal, s. xiex);
B.iii.32 (collection of hymns and canticles glossed in English, s. xiex) and DUL
Cosin V.v.6 (gradual, s. xiex with additions to s. xii1/4). See R. A. B. Mynors, Durham
Cathedral Manuscripts to the End of the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1939); Richard
Gameson, Manuscripts of Early Norman England, c. 1066–1130 (Oxford, 1999).
Symeon’s list of books present in Durham by 1096 records the possession of two
breviaries, two antiphonals, one gradual, three missals, two books of readings for
Matins and three missals.
24 Lanfranc, Constitutions, pp. 122–3.
25 Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A.ii.4, fol. 1r: ‘Ista sunt nomina librorum quos
dominus Wilelmus episcopus sancto Cuthberto dedit’. The list was edited with
commentary in A. C. Browne, ‘Bishop William of St Carilef’s Book Donations to
Durham Cathedral Priory’, Scriptorium 42 (1988), 140–55. A facsimile of the list
appears in plate 15. The present manuscript is the first of two volumes, with the
second now lost.

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 Charles C. Rozier

added incipits and explicits and short introductory sections of text to a total
of nineteen surviving manuscripts.26 This apparent supervisory role in the
upkeep and production of Durham’s books is strongly reflective of Lanfranc’s
stipulation that the cantor should ‘take care’ of books and, moreover, echoes
the more detailed instructions on armarius-style cantorship found in other
near-contemporary customaries such as the Liber ordinis and the Liber
tramitis.27
Knowing the exact points in time by which Symeon was carrying out
this activity has strong implications for the analysis of his role as a cantor
at Durham. Gullick dated much of Symeon’s correcting and editing to an
intensive period of book production and acquisition which lasted from c. 1090
to 1110.28 He dated Symeon’s composition of the William of Saint-Calais’s
book-list to just after the death of the bishop in 1096.29 This would suggest
that Symeon supervised the care and production of books before the death
of his likely predecessor, William (d. c. 1110–20), perhaps as an assistant-
cantor, or as part of a small team of experienced bibliophile-scribes whose
activities were similar, but not necessarily directly linked, to those depicted in
Lanfranc’s Decreta.
Several of Symeon’s manuscript additions show him carrying out work
which fits Lanfranc’s instruction that cantors should ‘supervise the letters
sent out to ask for prayers for the dead brethren’.30 Although no such
letters survive in Symeon’s hand, his involvement in similar processes of
memorialization and commemoration can be seen in the pages of Durham’s
Liber vitae and martyrology. The Liber vitae is an elaborate confraternity book
containing over 3,000 names arranged according to secular and ecclesiastical
rank, and which was first made in an unknown ninth-century Northumbrian
monastery, likely Lindisfarne or Wearmouth-Jarrow.31 The book may have
been inherited by the Durham community at any point, but was certainly

26 These are Cambridge, Jesus College, MSS Q.A.14 (14) and Q.B.8 (25), fols. 1–18;
Durham, Cathedral Library, MSS A.i.10; A.iv.16, fols. 6–109; B.ii.6; B.ii.7; B.ii.8;
B.ii.21; B.iii.9; B.iv.5; B.iv.7; B.iv.12; B.iv.13; B.iv.16, fols. 110r–190v, and Durham,
Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 100; BL Harley 491; 526; 3864 and 4688;
Bodl Bodley 819; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 18.4.3,
fols. 1r–122v; and Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian 85 (T.4.2). For
discussion, see Gullick, ‘Scribes’ and ‘Hand’.
27 Liber tramitis aevi Odilonis abbatis, ed. P. Dinter, CCM 10 (Siegburg, 1980); Liber
ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis, ed. L. Jocqué and L. Milis, CCCM 61 (Turnhout,
1984).
28 Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 15–28.
29 Ibid., p. 25.
30 Lanfranc, Constitutions, pp. 122–3.
31 J. Gerchow, ‘The Origins of the Durham Liber Vitae’, in The Durham Liber Vitae and
its Context, ed. D. W. Rollason, A. J. Piper, M. Harvey and L. Rollason (Woodbridge,
2004), pp. 45–61; L. Rollason, ‘History and Codicology’, in The Durham Liber Vitae,
ed. Rollason, I, 5–42 (pp. 31–4).

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 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory

there by c. 1099, when Cantor William added, amongst other sections, the
names of the three earliest Norman bishops of Durham, including Ranulf
Flambard, appointed in 1099, and a list of the monks who made up the
cathedral priory (fols. 45r–45v).32 Like William, Symeon also added to the
list of Durham monks and recorded confraternity agreements such as the
following entry featured on fol. 36v:

Hec est conventio inter Dunelmensem conventum et Wilfravenum

canonicum ecclesie Sancti Pauli Lundonie, ut pro singulis monachis
defunctis Dunelmensis ecclesie dicat .xxx. missas, et pro eo defuncto singuli
monachi dicant .xxx. missas.33

[Here is the agreement between the monastery of Durham and Wilfravenus,

Canon of the Church of Saint Paul in London. For each dead monk of the
Durham church, Wilfravenus will say thirty masses, and upon his death,
each monk will say thirty masses.]

Durham’s martyrology now occupies fols. 12r–39v of the Durham Cantor’s

Book.34 Like William, Symeon also added a number of obits in the margins,
including individuals from within the community such as ‘David the monk,
subdeacon’ (fol. 18v), the aforementioned ‘William, cantor’ (fol. 37r) and of
those from without, including ‘King Alexander of Scotland and his sister
Matilda, Queen of England’ (fol. 21r).35 The similarities in the nature of
Symeon’s and William’s additions to the martyrology and Liber vitae, suggest
that both may have been working in their capacity as Durham’s cantor. Since
Gullick judged William to have been working in these books before Symeon,
it seems likely that William led this exercise, before Symeon took over at a
later date after the death of William and his own appointment as lead cantor.36
There is strong evidence to support the suggestion that Symeon was able
to carry out Lanfranc’s precept that the cantor was ‘to keep count of the
week’s and month’s mind’. This essential requirement that Symeon should be
a competent student of computus, can be demonstrated in several surviving
sources. Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 100 is a collection
of computus materials originally bound in up to four separate booklets.37
Symeon copied sections of a computus guide by Robert of Losinga, which

32 Gullick, ‘Scribe of the Carilef Bible’, pp. 68–9; and ‘Hand’, p. 21.
33 Durham Liber Vitae, fol. 36v. On the attribution of this addition to Symeon, see
Gullick, ‘Scribes’, p. 106, n. 53.
34 A comprehensive list of its contents is featured in Piper, ‘The Durham Cantor’s
Book’, p. 94.
35 Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 31, noting additions on fols. 18v, 20v, 21r, 23v, 26v, 31v, 33v, 37r
and 38v.
36 Ibid., p. 21.
37 For discussion, see Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, pp. 49–50; Gameson,
Manuscripts of Early Norman England, pp. 86–7; Rozier, ‘Contextualising the Past’,
pp. 108–10.

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 Charles C. Rozier

now appears on fol. 19v of the current volume, lines 11–26.38 While this
provides only a small hint of Symeon’s possible knowledge of the discipline,
his additions within Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian 85 (T.4.2)
are much more substantial. He annotated and rubricated the bulk of the
manuscript, and added annals within the Easter tables of fols. 18r–24v.39
Symeon’s compilation of the annals in particular provides firm evidence that
he understood the machinations of the adjacent tables. As such, Symeon’s
work within these two Durham computus manuals suggests that he may have
had a good working knowledge of the main treatises on the calculation of
time, and that he would have been able to meet Lanfranc’s stipulation that
the cantor should be able to organize the liturgical cycle according to the
Christian calendar.
Study of the manuscripts featuring the hands of Symeon and his likely
predecessor, cantor William, facilitates several conclusions on the likely
nature of the cantor’s role at Durham cathedral priory in the period c. 1090–
1129. Symeon and William both worked as lead scribes and editors of
Durham manuscripts from the 1090s onwards. During this time, Symeon also
wrote the list of Bishop William’s book-donations, perhaps as chief custodian
of Durham’s books. William and Symeon both added to the cumulative
storehouses of commemoration housed within the Durham martyrology and
Liber vitae, and it appears that William may have had the leading role in this
process until his death, at which point Symeon took on a similar role. Finally,
Symeon’s work as scribe, editor and compiler of annals within the Easter
tables of Glasgow, Hunterian 85 confirms that he would have been able to
co-ordinate the Durham calendar.
In conclusion, there is good evidence that first William, and then Symeon
after him, practised a form of cantorship which was similar to that prescribed
in the copy of Lanfranc’s Decreta known to have been present at Durham
by 1096. In addition, Symeon’s work as editor, corrector and rubricator of
Durham manuscripts, and compiler of Bishop William’s book-list before the
end of the 1090s, suggests that he may have been working towards the remit
of an armarius prior to the death of Cantor William. Since this William was
also engaged in the production of Durham books, Symeon may have worked
alongside him, perhaps informally as an assistant to the cantor, or as an
armarius-cantor to William, the head liturgical-cantor.
The second half of this chapter considers the potential significance of
Symeon’s status as both historian and cantor to the monks of Durham. In
order to do so, it is first necessary to provide a brief outline of his work as
historian. The evidence suggests that Symeon’s activities in this area may
be placed within two distinct phases. During the first, Symeon worked to
provide texts which underlined the presentation of his community and

38 Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 27.

39 Ibid., p. 29.

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 Symeon of Durham as Cantor and Historian at Durham Cathedral Priory

its past alongside several well-known narratives of Roman, Norman and

Christian history dated c. 1090–1115. Having completed this work, Symeon
then appears to have begun a second phase of historical studies in 1120,
contributing to the production of shorter chronicles and annals until his
death in 1129×30.
Symeon’s earliest work as a historian was directed towards the production
and circulation of materials related to the foundation and development of
Northumbrian Christianity and the cult of Durham’s patron, St Cuthbert.40
Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica provided an important foundation to this process
following its acquisition at some point before the production of Bishop
William’s book-list in 1096.41 Although Symeon had no role in the production
of the only surviving contemporary manuscript of the text (now Durham,
Cathedral Library, MS B.ii.35, fols. 38–118), his access to it is demonstrated by
a small addition to the margins of fol. 39v and by his regular use of the text
in the composition of the Libellus de exordio.42 Gullick showed that Symeon
led the production of two additional volumes of Cuthbert materials, also
before c. 1096.43 In Bodl Digby 175, he copied Bede’s prose and verse Lives
of St Cuthbert, and the Lives of SS Aidan and Oswald derived from Bede’s
Historia ecclesiastica.44 Additions in Bodl Bodley 596 (fols. 175–214), again
show Symeon copying Bede’s prose Life of Cuthbert, which in this case
was also included alongside extracts from Bede’s verse Life, and the earliest
surviving copy of the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto.45
Symeon’s best-known work, the Libellus de exordio, must be read within
this drive to refine and circulate the existing narratives of Cuthbert’s
life, posthumous cult and community. Dated by Rollason to the period
1104–1107×15, Symeon’s Libellus amalgamated material from Bede’s
hagiographical texts and Historia ecclesiastica, alongside various localized
chronicles, administrative documents and the eleventh-century cartulary-
chronicle known as the Historia de sancto Cuthberto, into a narration of the
history of Cuthbert’s community from the seventh century down to the end
of the 1090s, and will be discussed in more detail below.46
Symeon also made a number of additions in other Durham manuscripts of
historical texts, which have been dated by Gullick to Symeon’s earliest years

40 On the history of the community, see Historia de sancto Cuthberto: a History of Saint
Cuthbert and a record of his patrimony, ed. T. J. South (Woodbridge, 2002); Symeon,
LdE; and Aird, Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 9–59.
41 Browne, ‘William of St Carilef’s Book Donations’, p. 155.
42 Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 31, item 41, recorded Symeon’s addition as fol. 38v.
43 Ibid., p. 24.
44 Ibid., p. 24, item 2.
45 Ibid., p. 24, item 4.
46 Ibid., p. xlii, where Rollason dated the text based on its narration of the translation
of St Cuthbert in 1104 and observation that Prior Turgot had been in office at the
time of its writing. On Symeon’s sources, see ibid., pp. lxviii–lxxvi.

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 Charles C. Rozier

in Durham and may also be placed within this first initial phase of historical
studies. He corrected the whole of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum
ducum,47 and made minor scribal and editorial additions to Palladius’s account
of the Desert Fathers (the Historia Lausiaca) and Eutropius’s Breviarium historie
Romane.48 Symeon’s use of these grand narratives of Roman, Norman and
Christian history sheds important light on his status as historian and the aims
of his writing. While Bede provided the base narrative for much of Symeon’s
Libellus, Symeon made no use of the narratives of William of Jumièges,
Palladius or Eutropius, despite their apparent availability in Durham at the
time of writing, and his near-contemporaneous contact with them as scribe
and editor. As such, his additions within these manuscripts may provide
better evidence of Symeon’s activities as Durham scribe and editor than they
do of his work as historian.
The second stage of Symeon’s historical studies saw him involved in the
study and production of historical annals. As noted by Story, it is possible
to identify a marked revival of interest in the study of early medieval annals
during the first half of the twelfth century at Durham.49 Symeon copied two
sets of annals. One detailed series of records of English and Continental
events included across six folios of Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.iv.22,
and a series of marginal notations within the Easter tables in Glasgow,
Hunterian 85. On paleographical grounds, Gullick dated the former to
c. 1115–30 and the latter to c. 1125.50 A further text, which, until recently, has
been usually referred to as the Durham Historia regum, is widely thought to
have been produced under Symeon’s supervision. It consists of a lengthy
chronicle of Anglo-Saxon history from the death of King Ethelbert of Kent
(616), comprising some noted events from wider early medieval European
history, such as the life and successors of Charlemagne, and runs to 1129.
Although the original manuscript is now lost, the Historia de regibus Anglorum
et Dacorum has been commonly attributed to Symeon, largely thanks to incipit
and explicit within the earliest surviving manuscript, and due to the fact that
its termination in 1129 is directly contemporaneous with Symeon’s probable
date of death.51
Neither Lanfranc’s Decreta nor any other near-contemporary monastic
customary suggests that cantors were expected to write history. Despite
this, Symeon ranks alongside a number of other Anglo-Norman authors
of historical texts who were also named as cantors or who appear to have

47 BLHarley 491; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 27, item 18.

48 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 18.4.3 and BL Harley 2729,
respectively. Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 24, item 1; 31, item 43.
49 Story, ‘Symeon as Annalist’.
50 Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 29–30, items 30 and 34.
51 CCCC 139, fols. 51v and 129v. For discussion of Symeon’s role, see Symeon, LdE,

p. xlviii; Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum’; and Story, ’Symeon as
Annalist’.

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engaged in the kinds of activities which may reflect a possible cantor’s remit,
including Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis,
not to mention the numerous other authors whose works are discussed
within this volume.52 This consistency suggests that there may be grounds
for linking the two roles, even if the precise nature of cantorship and the exact
circumstances through which each figure came to write history may have
differed across the various religious communities in which each individual
operated. Although it cannot be concluded that Symeon wrote history
because he was Durham’s cantor, or that he was appointed cantor because he
had experience in the study and writing of history, it is nevertheless clear that
some of Symeon’s historical works exhibit features which appear well-suited
to the cantor’s role or to have been the results of it, and that some of his
duties as cantor were of obvious relevance towards the study and ordering of
the past.
The annals added by Symeon to Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.iv.22,
and Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian 85 (T.4.2), in addition to his
work on the Durham Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, were almost
certainly produced after his appointment as Durham’s main cantor in c. 1115–
20. Since there is no surviving evidence to suggest that Symeon worked to
produce any other known annals before his appointment as cantor, his role
in producing these texts deserves to be considered as a potential offshoot of
the duties of his office. Most importantly, all three texts may be linked with
the cantor’s responsibility for the study and calculation of time. Symeon’s
annals in Hunterian 85 appear in the margins of Easter tables whose primary
function was to assist in the calculation of the dating of Easter. Appearing
alongside Bede’s, De temporum ratione and letter to Witchelm on the dating of
Easter, Dionysus Exiguus’s letter on the dating of Easter and Abbo of Fleury’s
Computus, the codicological context of the Easter-table annals in Hunterian
85 establishes that they functioned within the process of time-reckoning.53
Hayward’s identification of eleven comparable sets of Easter-table annals
from Anglo-Norman contexts, all within computus manuals (including
those in Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 100, which are
closely related to those in Hunterian 85), suggests that the compilation of
such annals provided a regular element of studies in this area during the

52 For Eadmer, see n. 21 above. For William as cantor, see Paul Hayward’s and Sigbjørn
Sønnesyn’s essays in this volume and R. W. Hunt, ’English Learning in the Late
Twelfth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4th s. 19 (1936), 19–42
(pp. 31–2); R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 6, 74. For
Orderic’s activities in this area, see Charles C. Rozier ‘Orderic Vitalis as Librarian
and Cantor of Saint-Évroult’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed.
Charles C. Rozier, D. Roach, G. E. M. Gasper and E. M. C. van Houts (Woodbridge,
2016), pp. 61–77.
53 For details on this manuscript, see Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, p. 55.

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 Charles C. Rozier

period.54 It is therefore possible to posit a hypothesis that Symeon added

annals to the margins of these Easter tables because, as cantor, he was
expected to engage in the study of time-reckoning, and that he added the
annals as an aid or embellishment to this process.
By adding obits, confraternity agreements and names in lists of individuals
associated with Cuthbert’s community within the Durham martyrology
and Liber vitae, it is likely that William and Symeon were working towards
Lanfranc’s stipulation that the cantor should co-ordinate the commemoration
of the dead. While the primary function of such collections was to provide
a symbolic representation of the host community in prayer, it has also been
argued by Rosamund McKitterick that such commemorative lists served as
basic historical records, in that each list recorded the names of numerous
historical individuals, many in chronological order, and as such could be
used to formulate a skeletal outline of the past.55 Elements within Symeon’s
Libellus de exordio suggest that this relationship also worked in the opposite
direction, and that sections of this ostensibly historical text could be used
within the commemorative memorial of the dead, in a similar way to the
contents of Durham’s martyrology and Liber vitae. One of the two earliest
copies of Symeon’s Libellus, now housed in DUL Cosin V.ii.6, was produced
at Durham and corrected by Symeon in various places.56 It included on
fols. 6r–8v, two lists, which are representative of Symeon’s vision of the
Durham community and its origins. The first, appearing on fols. 6r–6v,
presents the names of all the bishops of Lindisfarne and Durham down to
Ranulf Flambard (d. 1128). The second, which is featured on fols. 7r–8v, lists
members of the cathedral priory from its foundation in 1083.57 Prior to the
list of Durham monks, a short preface explained its presence in the Libellus
manuscript in the following manner:

Hic scripta continentur nomina monachorum in hac ecclesia ad incorrupti

corporis sanctissimi Cuthberti presentiam iam professorum, quorum
nominibus prescriptis etiam illorum nomina qui futuris temporibus
annuente Christo ibidem professionem facturi fuerint, ut scribendo
adiungat, posterorum quesumus sollertia semper meminisse studeat.
Pretera lectorem petimus, ut tam pro illo qui hoc opus fieri iusserat, quam
pro illis qui obediendo iussis id studio et labora perfecerunt, Domino Iesu
Christo preces fundere dignentur. Sed et pro omnibus quorum hic nomina

54 On this topic, see P. A. Hayward, The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto
Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, 2 vols. (Tempe, 2010), I, 20–4;
and Rozier, ‘Contextualising the Past’.
55 R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004),

pp. 156–8.
56 Symeon, LdE, pp. xvii–xxii, xliv, liii; Gullick, ‘Hand’, p. 27, item 17; M. Gullick,

‘The Two Earliest Manuscripts of the Libellus de exordio’, in Symeon: Historian, ed.
Rollason, pp. 106–19.
57 Symeon, LdE, pp. 4–15; Piper, ‘Lists’, p. 161.

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viderit, divine pietatis abundantiam invocare meminerit, uiuis quidem

postulans sancte professionis augmentum et bone perseverantie in futuro
premium, et defunctis, ut precepta venia peccatorum mereantur videre
bona Domini in terra viventium.58

[There now follows a list of the names of the monks who presently make
profession in this church in the presence of the incorrupt body of St Cuthbert,
and we urge that those who come after us may have the conscientiousness
to remember to add to this list the names of those who, Christ willing, will
have made profession in the same place in the future. Moreover, we beg
the reader that he should deign to offer prayers to our Lord Jesus Christ,
both for him who ordered this work to be composed and for those who, in
obedience to him, laboured and studied to bring it to completion. May he
also remember to invoke the abundance of God’s mercy for all those names
he will see here, asking for the living that they may adhere more fully to
their holy profession and may in the future receive the reward of their
virtuous perseverance, and for the dead that they may receive forgiveness
for their sins and be found worthy ‘to see the good things of the Lord in the
land of the living’ (Ps. 26. 13).]

The addition of these two lists at the beginning of Symeon’s Libellus

provided a highly visible reminder of the community whose story was
described in the remaining pages of the manuscript. By adding the names
of the first Anglo-Norman bishops to those of the bishops of Lindisfarne
and Chester-le-Street, the lists summarized the main argument of Symeon’s
narrative from the outset, and provided a prelude to his claims to show
the Durham community as rightful inheritors of the spiritual, cultural and
political legacy of the seventh-century episcopal church of Lindisfarne.
Furthermore, by requesting that the lists should be updated to include
subsequent generations of Durham’s monks, this opening section of the
Libellus provided a visible reminder that the interests of the community
depended on the successful transmission of the foundation-narrative
depicted in the text which followed.
The list of Durham monks included in the copy of the Libellus de
exordio, now contained in DUL Cosin V.ii.6, is almost identical to the near-
contemporaneous additions which recorded the names of Durham monks in
the Durham Liber vitae.59 As noted above, these additions were begun first by
Cantor William and undertaken later by Symeon, and may have been added
as part of their duties as Durham’s cantors. There is no precise indication
of when the list of Durham monks was added to the Cosin manuscript of
the Libellus. Although Piper judged it broadly contemporaneous with the
completion of the main text, the absence of the list within BL Cotton Faustina

58 Symeon, LdE, pp. 4–7.

59 For extensive comparison of the two, see Piper, ‘Lists’.

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 Charles C. Rozier

A.v suggests that it was not an original feature of the project.60 The list,
therefore, may have been a slightly later addition, which was inspired by the
assimilation of the Durham Liber vitae into the project of presenting Durham’s
historical identity, and by Cantor William and/or Symeon’s involvement in
this. Like Symeon’s Libellus, the resurrected Liber vitae presented the Durham
monks as direct continuators of Northumbria’s Anglo-Saxon church, thereby
providing a textual representation of what they believed to be their historical
identity. By simply adding to the lists of Anglo-Saxon monks to include
those of Durham’s cathedral priory, William, Symeon and the successors
who continued their additions, provided the simplest representation of these
claims.
Consideration of how DUL Cosin V.ii.6 and the Liber vitae were to
be used sheds further light on the relationship between the two books.
The late sixteenth century text known as the Rites of Durham provided a
detailed description of the monastic church and cathedral priory before the
reformation. Its anonymous author observed that the Liber vitae was kept on
the high altar of Durham Cathedral, and described its intended purposes as
follows:

There did lye on the high altar an excellent fine booke verye richly covered
with gold and silver conteininge the names of all the benefactors towards
St Cuthberts church from the first originall foundation thereof, the verye
letters for the most part beinge all gilded as is apparent in the said booke
till this day the layinge that booke on the high altar did show how highly
they esteemed their founders and benefactors, and the dayly and quotidian
remembrance they had of them in the time of masse and divine service
did argue not onely their gratitude, but also a most divine and charitable
affection to the soules of theire benefactors as well dead as livinge, which
booke is as yett extant declaringe the said use in the inscription thereof.61

It is entirely plausible that the Liber vitae was kept on the high altar of
Durham Cathedral during both William and Symeon’s tenures as cantor. It is
not possible to know whether the list in the Cosin Libellus was used or kept
in a similar way within the cathedral church. However, additions to the list
of monks on fols.7r–8v suggest that the original instructions were followed,
and that the book was updated down to at least the mid 1160s.62 Given its
evident importance in the cultivation of Durham’s historical identity at that
time, it is possible that the Cosin Libellus may also have served a symbolic and
ceremonial role similar to that of the Liber vitae. It was written in a large neat

60 Ibid., pp. 172–3.

61 Rites of Durham: being a description or brief declaration of all the ancient monuments,
rites and customs belonging or being within the monastical church of Durham before
the suppression, written 1593, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society 107 (London, 1902),
pp. 16–17 (spelling unaltered from original).
62 Piper, ‘Lists’, pp. 174–5.

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hand, with large coloured capitals introducing subdivisions within the text.63
More importantly, a number of the numerals which appear in the main text
were given an interlinear gloss, through which the figures in the numerals
were then spelled.64 This provides strong evidence that at least some of the
text was being read aloud, and that like the Liber vitae, DUL Cosin V.ii.6 may
have had a performative and ceremonial function.
Reviewing Symeon of Durham’s likely activities as cantor and historian
at Durham sheds important light on some of the main themes discussed in
this book. Analysing the well-established corpus of Symeon’s surviving
manuscript additions has given flesh to the possible nature of the cantor’s
role at Durham during the period c. 1090–1130. It has been argued here that
much of Symeon’s work matches Lanfranc’s description of the ideal cantor.
However, the fact that much of this work predates the death of Cantor
William (c. 1115–20) suggests that at least during William’s and Symeon’s
tenures, Durham’s cantors might be regarded as working within a team of
scribes and administrators who were together responsible for the production,
upkeep and, in some cases, including the Libellus de exordio, the composition
of new texts.65 His surviving manuscript additions suggest that Symeon was
required to fulfil a broad range of scribal duties. He wrote out two grants
from King Edgar of Scotland to the Durham monks in 1097 and 1107 (Durham
Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Muniments Misc. ch. 556 and 558), copied two
precepts from bishop Ranulf Flambard between 1122 and 1128 (Durham
Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Muniments 2.1 Pont. 10 and Pont. 11) and two
charters from Ranulf to Durham’s monks in 1128 (Durham Cathedral, Dean
and Chapter Muniments 2.1 Pont. 1 and Pont. 2).66 This, in addition to his
scribal and editorial work in around twenty Durham manuscripts featuring
a range of texts including patristic and medieval theology and exegesis,
computistics and history, suggests that Symeon seems to have been required
to work on whatever was required whenever it was required.
Symeon’s status as one of Durham’s intellectual elite suggests that he
may only have worked as a historian and cantor because his skills in reading,
copying and original writing rendered him one of the few individuals
qualified to meet the demands of the two roles. This does not, however, negate
the importance of studying the two roles in tandem. Symeon’s engagement
with the cantor’s tasks for the duration of his time at Durham provides an
important reminder that his works were written within and for the monastic
context. Study of Symeon’s additions to Durham’s Liber vitae, martyrology,
computus guides and confraternity agreements highlight the various ways
in which Durham’s past was manifested in the daily life of the monastery.

63 Examples of these are numerous, such as those on fols. 12r–13r, 14v, 15r, etc.
64 See Symeon: Historian, plate 51, which shows the example on fol. 26v.
65 Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 18–22; Rollason, ‘Erasures’, pp. 140–1.
66 Gullick, ‘Hand’, pp. 26, 30.

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 Charles C. Rozier

Comparison with Symeon’s historical texts suggests that as both cantor and
historian, his work contributed to the formation and promotion of Durham’s
historically informed monastic institutional identity. As has been argued by
W. M. Aird, the possession of Cuthbert’s body and the promotion of his cult
provided the essential ‘corporeal title deed’ to these inheritances through
various manifestations of the community.67 By emphasizing what Symeon
described as the ‘origin and progress’ of Cuthbert’s cult and community
through the circulation of Cuthbert’s vita, the assimilation of the Liber vitae
and the production of his Libellus de exordio, Symeon and his contemporaries
were able to formulate a substantive claim to the entire historical, cultural,
intellectual, devotional and financial inheritance of all the previous
embodiments of Cuthbert’s community, dating back to its foundation in 635.
Symeon himself claimed this in the opening preface to his text, which stated
the following:

Licet enim causis existentibus alibi quam ab ipso sit locata, nichilominus
tamen stabilitate fidei, dignitate quoque et auctoritate cathedre pontificalis,
statu etiam monachice habitationis que ab ipso rege et Aidano pontifice
ibidem instituta est, ipsa eadem ecclesia Deo auctore fundata permanet.68

[Although for various reasons this church no longer stands in the place
where Oswald founded it, nevertheless by virtue of the consistency of its
faith, the dignity and authority of its episcopal throne, and the status of the
dwelling-place of the monks established there by himself and Bishop Aidan,
it is still very much the same church founded by God’s command.]

To prove this interpretation of Durham’s origins, Symeon was required to

use all of his skills in the judicious selection and presentation of historical
evidence, and in adapting the sensibilities of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors,
including Bede and the anonymous author of the Historia de sancto Cuthberto.
In order to promote and consolidate this interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon
past and the Anglo-Norman present, Symeon and his contemporaries drew
on the deep cultural resonances of history and combined them with the
symbolism of a commemorative liturgy, in order to provide a consistent
presentation of who the Durham monks thought they were, where they had
come from and what they hoped to be in the future. As historian, assistant to
Cantor William and later cantor in his own right, Symeon’s involvement in
this process, and its successes, were assured.

67 Aird, Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 34–5.

68 Symeon, LdE, pp. 16–17.

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 11
Reshaping History in
the Cult of Æbbe of Coldingham

Lauren L. Whitnah

In the early 680s a member of the monastic community at Coldingham named

Adomnan had a vision. Because ‘the cells that were built for praying and for
reading have become haunts of feasting, drinking, gossip and other delights’,1
God’s judgment would fall upon the double monastery and it would be
destroyed. Coldingham’s abbess, Æbbe, would be spared from these dire
consequences, and she was assured that the destruction of the monastery
would happen after her death. Events transpired as Adomnan had predicted;
shortly after Æbbe’s death, the monastery burnt to the ground. When he
recounted the incident in his Historia ecclesiastica, Bede observed darkly that,
although the fire seemed like an accident, ‘tamen a malitia inhabitantium in
eo, et praecipue illorum qui maiores esse videbantur, contigisse omnes qui
novere facillime potuerunt advertere’ (‘all who knew the truth were easily
able to judge that it happened because of the wickedness of those who dwelt
there and especially of those who were supposed to be its leaders’).2
This is hardly an endorsement of the holiness of the monastery’s abbess.
Yet in the twelfth century, Æbbe was the focus of a significant cult. Women
and men, young and old, trekked up the steep paths along the North Sea,
north of the river Tweed, and spent Saturday nights in prayer at an oratory
on the site of her monastery, waiting for visions and healing through their
devotion to the saint.3 Æbbe often responded to their veneration, loosing
knots in tongues tied by the devil,4 opening clenched and crippled hands,5
and miraculously removing a goose bone from the throat of a choking man.6
In response, cripples left their crutches on the site ‘as a memorial of this great
miracle’.7 The saint’s reputation spread; at the end of the twelfth century, a

1 HE IV.xxv, pp. 424–5: ‘domunculae, que ad orandum vel legendum factae erant,
nunc in comesationum, potationum, fabulationum et ceterarum sunt inlecebrarum
cubilia conuersae.’
2 Ibid., pp. 420–1.
3 The Miracles of Saint Æbbe of Coldingham and Saint Margaret of Scotland, ed. and trans.
R. Bartlett (Oxford, 2003), p. 38.
4 Ibid., p. 50.
5 Ibid., p. 52.
6 Ibid., pp. 34–6.
7 Ibid, pp. 40–1: ‘ob tante virtutis memoriam.’

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 Lauren L. Whitnah

local monk at Coldingham priory, a dependency of Durham, observed that

‘crowds throng here from nearby and from distant regions’ for miraculous
cures.8 So how did an abbess with no particular reputation for holiness in the
seventh and eight centuries – indeed, quite the opposite – become a popular
saint in the twelfth century? How did worshippers and writers reshape
history for the purposes of forming and promoting this cult?
There is virtually no evidence for an Anglo-Saxon cult, although Æbbe
is well-attested in early historical sources. Stephen of Ripon describes her
as sanctissima and sapientissima in his Vita S. Wilfridi, where he says that she
interceded with the king for the rights of the embattled bishop Wilfrid.9
Although Æbbe is simply mentioned as the head of the monastery of
Coldingham in the anonymous Vita S. Cuthberti, she plays a larger role in
Bede’s rewritten vita of the bishop of Lindisfarne. Bede elaborates on the story
related by the anonymous author, providing more detail both about Æbbe’s
biography and about her holy virtues, changes which are typical in Bede’s
transformation of the anonymous vita. He says that Æbbe, the ‘mother of the
handmaidens of Christ’ was honoured both for her religious practice and for
her status as the soror uterina of Oswiu, king of Northumbria.10 She was not
only the sister of kings and the friend of bishops, but the teacher of other
monastics as well. Bede first mentions Æbbe in the Historia ecclesiastica as the
mentor of Æthelthryth, the queen who entered monastic life under Æbbe’s
supervision at Coldingham and then went on to an illustrious and saintly
abbatial career of her own at Ely.11 However, the story of the prophecy and
destruction of Coldingham is the most extensive discussion of Æbbe in the
Historia ecclesiastica.
It is not surprising that an abbess whose monastery was destroyed as
punishment for sin would be slow in developing a reputation for sanctity,
even though she was credited with some virtues in early sources. Æbbe’s
name does not appear in the surviving litanies of Anglo-Saxon saints, in
the resting-place lists or in calendars.12 After the eighth century, the next
mention of Æbbe comes in the history of Durham by its cantor, Symeon, who

8 Ibid., pp. 42–3: ‘Ad hunc quoque locum … plures tam de vicinis quam remotis
aliarum regionum partibus, catervatim conveniunt.’
9 Stephen of Ripon, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge,
1927), p. 39.
10 Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti, in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave
(Cambridge, 1940), p. 188–9: ‘erat sanctimonialis femina et mater ancillarum Christi
nomine Ebbe, regens monasterium quod situm est in loco quem Coludi urbem
nuncupant, religione pariter et nobilitate cunctis honorabilis.’
11 HE IV.xix, p. 392.
12 M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, HBS 106 (Woodbridge, 1991);
R. Rushforth, Saints in English Kalendars Before AD 1100, HBS 117 (Woodbridge,
2010); D. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 7
(1978), 61–93.

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includes her relics in a list of the bones of saints brought to Durham in the
early eleventh century.13 However, Symeon simply includes Æbbe’s name in
a longer list and provides no direct evidence for any particular veneration or
celebration.
Despite the paucity of evidence for veneration for nearly four centuries
after Æbbe’s death, the late twelfth century saw the rapid development of
a cult at Coldingham and the production of liturgical and literary texts to
accompany it. Some of the surviving liturgical calendars from Durham and
Coldingham include Æbbe’s name for 25 August or 2 November.14 It is unclear
which feast was the primary one. Bartlett draws attention to 2 November as
a feast on the eve of the nativity of John the Baptist, mentioned in the miracle
collection; he suggests that the feast on 25 August was a secondary and
later development.15 Bartlett’s hypothesis is complicated, however, by the
appearance of Æbbe’s feast on 25 August in the Winchcombe calendar, copied
in the middle of the twelfth century. Bartlett suggests that the Æbbe in this
southern calendar should be identified with a different person altogether, but
there is northern evidence for the feast on 25 August as well. Æbbe’s name,
like the names of many other Anglo-Saxon saints, was inserted in the margin
of the martyrology in the manuscript known as the ‘Durham Cantor’s Book’
(Durham, Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24) in the late twelfth or early thirteenth
century for 25 August: ‘item festivitas sancte Ebbe virginis’.16 Her name
does not appear in the martyrology in November. Although the origins of the

13 LdE III.vii, p. 164. Æbbe’s relics are included in Durham relic lists in Cambridge,
Trinity College, MS O.3.55 (Durham, s. xii); CUL Ff.1.27 (Durham, s. xii); Bodl
Digby 41 (Durham, s. xii); York, Minster Library MS XVI.I.12 (Durham, s. xiv).
On relic lists, see I. G. Thomas, ‘The Cult of Saints’ Relics in Medieval England’
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1974).
14 The feast on 25 August is found in Cambridge, Jesus College MS Q.B.6 (23) (Durham,

s. xii, although Æbbe’s name seems to be inserted in an early thirteenth-century

hand); BL Cotton Tiberius E.iv (Winchcombe, s. xii); BL Harley 4747 (Coldingham?,
s. xiii); BL Harley 1804 (Durham, s. xv). Since Harley 4747 is missing the folio for
November, it is not clear if it once included both feasts. Durham, Chapter Library,
End Paper Frag. 17 (Durham, s. xiii), which was apparently unknown to Bartlett,
includes Æbbe’s name for 2 November, not for 25 August. Three feasts for Æbbe
are noted in the ‘Coldingham Breviary’, BL Harley 4664 (Coldingham, s.xiii): 22
June, 25 August and 2 November. The 22 June feast, the dedication of the altar of
Æbbe in the church at Coldingham (‘dedicatio altaris sancte Ebbe in Coldisburh’), is
attested nowhere else that I have found.
15 Miracles of Æbbe, pp. xxvi–xxvii.
16 On MS B.IV.24, generally, see A. J. Piper, ‘The Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham,

Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed.

D. Rollason et al. (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 79–92; M. Gullick, ‘The Scribes of the
Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24) and
the Durham Martyrology Scribe’ in Anglo-Norman Durham, pp. 93–109. For the
additions to the martyrology specifically, see A. J. Piper, ‘The Early Lists and Obits
of the Durham Monks’, in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed.

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 Lauren L. Whitnah

November feast are mentioned in the miracula, it seems that the August feast
was celebrated in both Coldingham and Durham as well.
Not only is there calendrical evidence for the celebration of Æbbe’s feast,
but a full night office provides additional information about the liturgical
celebration of the saint. Although it only survives in a mid thirteenth century
manuscript, the Coldingham Breviary,17 the evidence discussed below will
suggest that the office was almost certainly compiled before the Vita et
miracula S. Ebbe virginis was written at the end of the twelfth century. The
office for Æbbe contains antiphons and responsories for Vespers, Matins,
consisting of three nocturns, and Lauds, as well as eight prose lessons.
Although the Coldingham Breviary contains musical notation elsewhere,
Æbbe’s office is not neumed. The office follows the general outline of
Æbbe’s life and death and the burning of the monastery as described by
Bede, adding a brief mention of the first translation of the relics in the final
reading.
The main surviving narrative source for the cult of Æbbe is a Vita et miracula
dateable to c. 1190.18 The text has four distinct sections: a preface, an account
of the saint’s life, a description of two translations of the relics and a collection
of forty-three miracles which occurred at several shrines.19 In the sole
surviving manuscript, a fourteenth-century Durham compilation of saints’
vitae,20 the explicit says the text is taken ‘ex compilatione Reginaldi Dun[e]
lm[ensis]’ monachi’.21 Reginald of Durham, a prolific hagiographer, probably
did not compose the text as it survives, but he may have been involved at
an earlier stage of its production.22 His hagiographical output includes vitae

D. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 161–201. See also Rozier’s chapter on Symeon in
this volume.
17 BL Harley 4664, fols. 261r–263r.
18 The author describes the vision that inspired the rebuilding of the oratory as

occurring in 1188: ‘anno ab incarnatione Domini millesimo centesimo octogesimo

octauo, qui est annus deposicionis sancte Ebbe quingentesimus sextus’, confirming
the date of Æbbe’s death as 683. He seems to be writing very shortly after the
reconstruction of the oratory, referring to miracles at the oratory as occurring nuper.
Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 30. Also, as Bartlett points out (p. xxii), the first miracle
benefited the daughter of a local noble who appears in charters of Coldingham and
St Andrews between 1160 and 1203.
19 Several sites in the immediate vicinity of Coldingham were linked with Æbbe’s

cult: two fontes (a seasonal one at the top of the headland and a constant one at the
bottom), the priory church of St Mary in Coldingham (about two miles from the
headland) and the oratory constructed on the headland first by a layman and then
rebuilt by monks from Coldingham shortly after 1188.
20 Bodl Fairfax 6, fols. 146r–173v.
21 The explicit dates from the sixteenth century. See A. I. Doyle, ‘William Claxton

and the Durham Chroniclers’, in Books and Collectors, 1200–1700: Essays Presented to
Andrew Watson, ed. J. P. Carley and C. G. C. Tite (London, 1997), pp. 335–55.
22 For the evidence for and against Reginald’s authorship of the Vita et miracula

Ebbe, see V. Tudor, ‘Reginald’s Life of St Oswald’, in Oswald: Northumbrian King

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of the Anglo-Saxon king Oswald – Æbbe’s half brother – and the twelfth-
century hermit Godric of Finchale, as well as an extensive collection of
miracles that occurred at the shrine of Cuthbert at Durham. Whether or not
Reginald was responsible for the Vita et miracula S. Ebbe virginis, it is clear
that the author had spent time in the monastic community of Coldingham’s
mother house of Durham and was writing for his brethren there. The author
declares that the proximity of his readers to the incorrupt body of Cuthbert
gives them protection, strength and delight; he says that he longs to be
there with them, but since he cannot be, he seeks the patronage of Æbbe
instead.23 The author does not say who, if anyone specifically, commissioned
the work; the vos of the preface are neither precisely named nor described in
more detail.
Unfortunately, the sources employed by the author do not bring us closer
to identifying him. He seems to have used sources that were widely available
as well as some that were highly local and specialized, both written and
oral. Like the author of the office, the author of the Vita et miracula certainly
had access to – and quoted extensively from – Bede’s Vita S. Cuthberti and
Historia ecclesiastica. He mentions several other sources, including a ‘liber …
de conuersatione et operibus eiusdem uirginis’ [‘a book … about the virgin’s
life and works’], which has not been identified.24 The author is ostensibly
sceptical of the reliability of this liber, saying that ‘quam multa uulgo tantum
dictante uidebantur inserta; a nonnullis nostrorum ferebantur incerta, quia
nulla maiorum auctoritate suffulta’ (‘a great deal seemed to be included
only on the basis of popular report and was said by [some] of our people
to be uncertain, because [it was] not supported by the authority of our
predecessors’).25 Bede’s account of the abbess would hardly have qualified
as vulgo dictante and it certainly would not have been incerta, as the author
describes the liber. In addition, the author mentions a libellus about Æbbe’s
first translation; this also has not been identified and seems likely not to have
survived. His interest in Æbbe’s family tree suggests that the author had
genealogical sources beyond what appears in Bede, although it is uncertain
precisely which texts he was able to access.26 As we shall see, he knew the
office and used it extensively.

to European Saint, ed. C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (Stamford, 1995), pp. 178–94
(p. 178 n. 4); V. Tudor, ‘The Cult of St Cuthbert in the Twelfth Century: The
Evidence of Reginald of Durham’, in Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD
1200, ed. G. Bonner et al. (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 447–67 (p. 448); Miracles of Saint
Æbbe, pp. xvii–xx; M. Coombe, ‘Reginald of Durham’s Latin Life of St Godric of
Finchale: A Study’ (unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2011),
pp. 172–203.
23 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 2.
24 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
25 Ibid., with modifications to Bartlett’s translation signaled with square brackets.
26 See ibid., p. xix.

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The author of the Vita et miracula was well acquainted with the office
and used it repeatedly in his text, sometimes quoting it directly, sometimes
augmenting its language and sometimes borrowing its metaphors. Direct
quotations occur periodically. For instance, the third antiphon verse for the
first nocturn states:

Claris exorta natalibus

Mundum fide et formam moribus
Et sexum vicit virtutibus.27

[Born from illustrious origins, she conquered the world by faith, and beauty
by character, and her sex by virtues.]

The author includes this verse completely in his biography of Æbbe, adding
only a postpositive siquidem.28 More frequently, the author of the Vita et
miracula quotes from the office and then elaborates on the quotation, adding
specific details or some interpretation. The final verse of the antiphon, for
example, reads:

Puellis matrem instancia

Et viris patrem constancia
Quam mira se dedit gratia.29

[By wonderful grace he gave her the earnestness of a mother for the girls
and the constancy of a father for the men.]

The author of the Vita et miracula both clarifies the virtues and adds
specificity: the grace is one of ‘wonderful powers of discretion’, the frequency
is of ‘exhortation’ and the constancy is ‘of her mind’.30 On one occasion, the
author of the vita explicitly acknowledges that he is quoting another source.
He observes, ‘Sicut enim, ut ait quidam, vitis uvam profert in vinea aut
florem ex se producunt lilia, sic ex nobili regum prosapia, felix Ebbam felicem
protulit Britannia’ (‘Just as, as someone says, the vine brings forth grapes
in the vineyard or lilies produce flowers from themselves, in the same way
happy Britain brought forth happy Æbbe from a noble line of kings’).31 This
is almost a direct quotation of the first antiphon for the first nocturn:

27 BL Harley 4664, fol. 261v. The office is printed in Historiae Rhythmicae, ed. G. M.
Dreves, AH 13 (Leipzig, 1892), pp. 114–17, but the shortcomings of this edition
have made it preferable to quote from the manuscript.
28 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 6: ‘Claris siquidem exorta natalibus mundum fide et
formam moribus et sexum vicit virtutibus’.
29 BL Harley 4664, fol. 261v.
30 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 10–11: ‘que se admirabili discrecionis gracia et puellis
matrem exhortacionis instancia, et uiris patrem exhibuit animi constancia.’
31 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

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Sicut florem vitis in vinea

Sic Ebbam in stirpe regia
Felix produxit Britannia.32

[As a vine in a vineyard produces a flower, so blessed Britain brought forth

Æbbe from a royal lineage.]

However, it is also an expansion of the antiphon: the author adds the lilies,
uses felicem to modify Æbbe and includes the nobili regum prosapia.
Even in instances where the vita does not quote directly from the office,
the author of the vita still seems to have been using the office as a source for
his work. For instance, where the final versicle of the second nocturn says,
‘Relinquens terre corpusculum / et inferens celo spiritum’ (‘Leaving her body
to the earth and rendering her spirit to heaven),33 the author of the vita says
‘et beatum celo spiritum, relicta terre sancti corporis gleba, intulerit’ (‘and
[she] rendered her blessed spirit to heaven, leaving the clay of her holy body
to the earth’).34 There are shared, albeit general, metaphors as well, such as
when both the office and the vita transition from describing monastic life at
Coldingham to recounting its destruction by a reference to the serpent in
paradise.35
Likewise, though the prose readings of the office are primarily compilations
of direct quotations and summaries of Bede’s Vita S. Cuthberti and Historia
ecclesiastica, the few instances of similarities between the office readings and
the Vita et miracula also seem to reflect a quotation of the office by the vita.
Thus, when the office reading states that Æbbe’s monastery was ‘edificiorum
sublimitate preclarus, nunc in solitudinis planitiem conuersus’ (‘resplendent
with tall buildings, now turned into a level wasteland’),36 the author of the
vita quotes, ‘Erat olim mons ille edificiorum sublimitate preclarus postea a
malicia habitancium in eo in solitudinis planitiem conuersus’ (‘That headland
was once resplendent with tall buildings but afterwards was turned into a
level wasteland by the wickedness of those who lived there’).37 More rarely,
the similarities may reflect quotation of a shared source. For example, both
the office readings and the Vita et miracula quote and expand upon Bede’s
Vita S. Cuthberti.38 Finally, the office readings do not describe any of the

32 BL Harley 4664, fol. 261v.

33 BL Harley 4664, fol. 263r.
34 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 10–11.
35 BL Harley 4664, fol. 262r; Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 12.
36 BL Harley 4664, fol. 262v.
37 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 8–9.
38 Bede declares that ‘Nanque erat soror uterina regis Oswiu’, while the first office
reading states, ‘Erat enim soror uterina noblissimi regis Oswiu qui sanctissimo regi
et martyri Oswaldo successit in regnum’, and the Vita et miracula S. Ebbe declares
that ‘Erat enim regis Oswyu soror uterina, Egfridi Deo devoti regis amita’. Two
Lives of Cuthbert, p. 188; BL Harley 4664, fol. 261v; Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 4.

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forty-three miracles that occur at the end of the Vita et miracula. The final
reading declares that miracles occurred in the church after the relics were
translated there in general terms, but no miracles are described.
It therefore seems clear that the entire office – antiphons, responsories,
versicles and readings – was composed before the Vita et miracula. Rather
than the narrative text operating as the foundation source for the office, the
office is a critical source for the vita. Bartlett has suggested that Æbbe’s cult
conforms to a model of cult development articulated by Pierre-André Sigal:
cults generally begin with lay devotion and are then appropriated by clerical
communities.39 However, the relationship between the office and the Vita et
miracula complicates this model. Since the office was composed before the
vita (and thus almost certainly before the rise of popular interest in Æbbe’s
cult prompted by the construction of an oratory in 1188), we can see evidence
for monastic veneration before we can see direct evidence for lay devotion.
Although ‘spontaneous popular piety’ may play a role in the development
of cults, and although local tradition and lay veneration were important in
Æbbe’s cult, the monks who composed the office for Æbbe’s feast were not
merely responding to lay pressure or co-opting an existing cult. By composing
the office, they were in fact producing a cult with their liturgy.
The author of the Vita et miracula not only used material from Bede, from
written accounts of the translation, and from the office, but he seems to
incorporate local oral knowledge about the saint as well. The author says in
several places that he is reporting contemporary miracles described for him
by their beneficiaries.40 His remark that some components of the liber were
vulgo dictante suggests some kind of ongoing local oral tradition. He also tells
a story about Æbbe which he describes as ‘vulgo tritum est et a maioribus
traditum’ (‘a familiar story among the populace and has been handed down
by our forefathers’).41 In that anecdote, Æbbe was pursued by a Scottish king,
and when she fled to the rocky promontory, the sea rose up to protect her and
cut her off from her pursuer.42 The author is repeating a local oral tradition
with detail and attention to his sources.

39 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. xxii; Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le miracle dans la France
médiévale (XIe–XIIe siècle) (Paris, 1985), pp. 167–76.
40 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 38, 54, 56.
41 Ibid., pp. 6–7. The event is mentioned in the office as well: BL Harley 4664, fol. 261v.
42 The Liber Eliensis, probably composed in the 1170s, contains a remarkably

similar story: Æthelthryth flees her husband, king Ecgfrith, and retreats to
‘Coldeburcheschevet, quod Latine caput Coldeburci dicitur’. The sea rises, effectively
shielding Æthelthryth and the nuns from Ecgfrith. There is an appeal to local
knowledge in the Liber Eliensis as well: ‘Hoc de scriptis Bede non cepimus, sed
quicumque locum Coludi norunt cum assertione huius rei testes existunt’. It seems
clear that this story is a local one, attributed to the holy women—whether Æbbe
or Æthelthryth—who could leave imprints in the physical topography of the site
itself. There is no evidence that the Liber Eliensis was known to the Coldingham

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From evidence in the office and the vita, it is possible to reconstruct the
major events in the twelfth-century development of the cult. Æbbe seems
to have died in 683, and the monastery burned down shortly thereafter.
The author of the vita says that ‘post multa temporum curricula’ (‘after a
long passage of time’), shepherds discovered Æbbe’s tomb on the rocky
promontory. They carried her wooden coffin into the church at Coldingham
where it was examined by the fratres there. The land and church at
Coldingham had been granted to the monks of Durham by Edgar, king of
Scots (d. 1107), and the priory of Coldingham was established some time
before 1139, when monachi are first mentioned in a charter,43 so the finding
of the relics by the shepherds and their subsequent internment in the church
probably took place around or after 1139. This first translation is mentioned
in the final reading for the office as well.44 Sometime thereafter, the maiores of
the community wrote a libellus about it.45
A second translation occurred in the church after the ‘venerable abbess’
spoke in a vision to ‘a certain older monk, who is still alive’ and encouraged
him to undertake another translation.46 Since the author of the Vita et miracula
took care to note that the monk was still alive when he was writing, it is
unlikely that the second translation, described in detail in the Vita et miracula,
could have occurred much before 1160. The office was probably composed
between the first and second translations – while the first is mentioned in the
office, the second is not. From the extensive description in the vita, the second
translation seems to have been a major event for the community. In 1188, a
simple-minded peasant named Henry had a vision of Æbbe and built an
oratory on the headland approximately two miles from Coldingham itself.47

hagiographer; rather, both authors seem to be retelling a popular oral story about a
holy woman and the topography of that particular landscape. Liber Eliensis I.xi, ed.
E. O. Blake, Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962), pp. 27–28.
43 See J. Donnelly, ‘The Lands of Coldingham Priory 1100–1300’ (unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Cambridge University, 1989), pp. 250–4, and Miracles of Saint Æbbe,
p. xv.
44 BL Harley 4664, fols. 262v–263r: ‘Transiit autem beata Ebba temporibus Ægfridi
regis, cuius mausoleum post multa tempora a pastoribus inuentum est, et a
fidelibus in ecclesiam sancte Marie de Coldingham translatum et ad australem
partem altaris positum.’
45 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 22: ‘Et hec quidem quasi omnibus manifesta et veritati
consentanea in libello maiores redegerant.’
46 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 22–5.
47 For the site itself, see L. Alcock et al., ‘Reconnaissance Excavations on Early
Historic Fortifications and Other Royal Sites in Scotland, 1974–84: 1, Excavations
near St Abb’s Head, Berwickshire, 1980’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland 116 (1986), 255–79; S. Stronach, ‘The Anglian Monastery and Medieval
Priory of Coldingham: Urbs Coludi Revisited’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland 135 (2005), 395–422; C. Ferguson, ‘Bernicia and the Sea: Coastal
Communities and Landscape in North-East England and South-East Scotland,
c. 450–850 AD’ (unpublished D.Phil dissertation, University of Oxford, 2010).

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The oratory was the site of miraculous cures, and the monks of Coldingham
then tore Henry’s oratory down and built a new one in the same place. ‘Cuius
amplitudo prioris angustias dilataret et divinis obsequiis commodior’ (‘Its
proportions were larger than the cramped spaces of the earlier one and more
suitable for divine service’), according to the author of the Vita et miracula,
implying that some of the Coldingham monks were praying the office at
the oratory as well as at the priory.48 Neither oratory is mentioned in the
office, again suggesting it was composed before the construction of the first
oratory in 1188. Shortly after the rebuilding of the oratory, the author of
the Vita et miracula composed his text. In a fairly brief period, a cult with a
full complement of liturgical materials, popular devotion and sophisticated
literary output had emerged, a cult which was appealing to monks, the
‘simple-minded peasant’ and the many young women who were healed at the
shrines.49
To return to the apparent conundrum with which we started: how does
an abbess with no particular reputation for holiness in the eighth century
become a major local saint in the twelfth century, inspiring this sort of
liturgical production and popular devotion? The authors of the office
and of the vita reworked the history they had been given (both as it was
written, particularly in Bede, and as it was passed down orally) to fashion
and refashion the cult. Both the creator of the office and the author of the
Vita et miracula needed to account for the blatant fact of the monastery’s
destruction and make that event consonant with Æbbe’s holiness. Bede, the
main source of history available to the twelfth-century authors, was explicit
about the didactic purpose of the incident: the monastery’s destruction was
to provide his readers with a salutary warning against sin generally. He
included the story, Bede said, ‘so as to warn the reader about the workings
of the Lord’: the wrath of God that could result in either ‘temporal loss’ or
‘everlasting perdition’ or both.50 In this case, the divine wrath is stirred up
because

Nam et domunculae, quae ad orandum uel legendum factae errant, nunc in

comesationum, potationum, fabulationum et ceterarum sunt inlecebrarum
cubilia conuersae; uirgines quoque Deo dictae, contemta reuerentia suae
professionis, quotiescumque uacant, texendis subtilioribus indumentis

48 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 30–1.

49 Bartlett has drawn attention to the fact that the cult was ‘marked by the unusual
prominence of pilgrims who were female, poor and young’. Miracles of Saint Æbbe,
p. xxv.
50 HE IV.xxv, pp. 426–7: ‘Hec ideo nostre historie inserenda credidimus, ut
admoneremus lectorem operum Domini, quam terribilis in consiliis super filios
hominum; ne forte nos tempore aliquot carnis inlecebris servientes, minusque Dei
iudicum formidantes, repentina eius ira corripiat, et vel temporalibus damnis iuste
seviens affligat vel ad perpetuam perditionem districtius examinans tollat.’

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operam dant, quibus aut se ipsas ad uicem sponsarum in periculum sui

status adornent, aut externorum sibi uirorum amicitiam conparent.51

[And the cells that were built for praying and for reading have become
haunts of feasting, drinking, gossip, and other delights; even the virgins
who are dedicated to God put aside all respect for their profession and,
whenever they have leisure, spend their time weaving elaborate garments
with which to adorn themselves as if they were brides, so imperiling their
virginity, or else to make friends with strange men.]

In part, as Hollis observed, the sin is ‘monastic women’s involvement with

secular society’.52 However, there is also a liturgical failure here: both men
and women are failing to keep the appropriate vigils. Bede draws a contrast
between the holy man Adomnan, who has the vision of future destruction
while praying the middle of the night, and the somnolent monks and nuns
who neglect their vigils.53 Although Bede hints at sexual misconduct between
the men and women of the community, it is worth noting that he does not
explicitly list it in his catalogue of offences. Feasting and inadequate liturgical
discipline seem to be greater concerns.
Bede’s history was shaped and reshaped by the authors who wrote about
Coldingham in the twelfth century. Symeon of Durham revises Bede’s
interpretation of the story by emphasizing that the interaction between
monastic men and woman is the primary sin. Although he quotes extensively
from Bede’s description of Coldingham, Symeon adds a brief account of the
double monastery and cites the interaction between men and women in the
monastic house as the primary sin:

Erant siquidem in eodem loco diversis tamen separate mansionibus

monachorum sanctimonialiumque congregationes, qui paulatim a regularis
discipline statu defluentes, inhonesta invicem familiaritate decipiendi
occasionem inimico prebuerant.54

[There were congregations of monks and nuns, albeit living separately in

different dwellings, who had gradually fallen away from the discipline of
the Rule and had by their improper familiarity with each other given the
Enemy the opportunity of ensnaring them.]

Symeon says that the destruction of Coldingham inspired Cuthbert’s twofold

prohibition: no interaction between the monks of his community and women

51 Ibid., pp. 424–7.

52 S. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge,
1992), p. 245.
53 However, as Hollis points out, the malitia that sparked the devastation was
apparently not conspicuous enough for Æbbe or for Adomnan to be aware of it
without divine revelation. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, pp. 101–2.
54 LdE II.vii, pp. 106–7.

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 Lauren L. Whitnah

and no women present in his church.55 Symeon goes on to provide several

salacious stories about women who had violated the shrine of Cuthbert.56
The office modifies the moral of the story as well. It takes Cuthbert’s
prohibition against consorting with women for granted, but emphasizes that
Æbbe is so worthy and so beloved by Cuthbert that he can relax his usually
strict standards. In the first nocturn, the author of the office states:

Cuthbertus Ebbam precipuo

Amore complectens assiduo
Subiectos sibi instruere
Et hanc gaudebat inuisere
Licet ut uirus consorcia
Devitaret muliebria.57

[Constantly embracing Æbbe with particular love, Cuthbert rejoiced to visit

her and to instruct those under her care, though he avoided fellowship with
women like poison.]

There is no link in the office between the destruction of the monastery and
Cuthbert’s supposed strictures on women.
The Vita et miracula makes no such concession to virtue or friendship
between a bishop and a nun, and it gives the interaction between the sexes as
the explicit reason for the monastery’s destruction. The author’s concern with
appropriate monastic practice is evident even in the description of Adomnan.
According to Bede, Adomnan ‘led a life devoted to God in austerity and
prayer’,58 but the author of the Vita et miracula calls him a uir exsimie sanctitatis
and adds that he was a priest.59 By adding this information to his account,
the author is bolstering Adomnan’s visionary credentials and formalizing his
role within the community. After describing the destruction of the monastery,
the author announces, ‘Liquet namque ex hiis quam uitanda sit bonarum
etiam cohabitacio mulierum’ (‘It is clear from this how important it [is] to
avoid living with women, even good women’).60 In fact, he follows Symeon
in saying that the destruction of Coldingham was the impetus for Cuthbert’s
prohibition against women in his presence. The author declares:

Qui, accepto quanta facta fuit in domo Domini per feminas confusio,
creditur, etsi non legitur, celebre condidisse decretum, lege perpetua seruis

55 This prohibition has no evidence in the early sources for Cuthbert. See V. Tudor,
‘The Misogyny of Saint Cuthbert’, Archaeologia Aeliana 5th series 12 (1984), 157–67;
Tudor, ‘The Cult of Cuthbert in the Twelfth Century’.
56 LdE II.viii–ix, pp. 108–11.
57 BL Harley 4664, fol. 262r.
58 HE IV.xxv, pp. 422–3: ‘ducens uitam in continentia et orationibus multum Deo

deuotam.’
59 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 14, 16.
60 Ibid., pp. 18–19.

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suis obseruandum, quo non solum eis quocumque sui sancti corporis
presencia fuerit consortia feminarum prohibuit, uerum etiam earum
introitus et accessus et aspectus abscidit.61

[Learning of what great confusion had arisen in the house of the Lord
through women, [Cuthbert] enacted the famous decree (as we believe, even
though it is not recorded in writing), to be observed as a perpetual law
by his servants, according to which not only was the company of women
forbidden to them wherever his holy body was present but even the entry,
access and sight of women were prohibited.]

The monks were consciously overturning the past. The author of the Vita et
miracula took what was a common expression of religious life in Anglo-Saxon
England, the double monastery of men and women, and rejected it.
The authors of the office and the Vita et miracula had a challenging task:
to demonstrate the holiness of a woman whose monastery was destroyed
on account of the sin of its inhabitants. Both of these writers emphasize the
fact that Æbbe was informed of the destruction before it happened as a sign
of her virtue. They both make the connection even more explicit than Bede
had done.62 ‘Think what her merit was’, the Vita et miracula author declares,
‘whom, for her consolation, the Lord deigned to inform through His servant
of the desolation of her place’.63 That is, for the author of the Vita et miracula,
the revelation of the impending destruction had to become more spiritually
significant than the destruction itself.
Not only was the community at Coldingham faced with the problem of
a saint with very little claim to holiness in her biography, but they were not
even the only claimants to the presence of her relics – and so history had to
be reshaped, both textually and practically. The veneration of the saint, and
particularly the miracles that occurred at her shrines, worked to overcome
the dubious claims to sanctity in her biography. As we have seen, Symeon of
Durham reported that Æbbe’s relics were among those gathered by Alfred
Westou and moved to Durham in the early eleventh century. Although the
author of the Vita et miracula boldly declares that her ‘mausoleum apud nos
est’ (‘tomb is in our midst’) at Coldingham, he goes on to admit that ‘id suum
profecto esse non tam ex traditione seniorum quam frequentia didicimus
virtutum et beneficio consolationum’ (‘we have learned that it [i.e., the
tomb] is indeed hers not so much from the tradition of our elders as from

61 Ibid., pp. 20–1.

62 BL Harley 4664, fol. 262v: ‘Reuelabat Ebbe postea peritura flammis omnia sed id
habebat solacii ipsa uiuente non fieri. Tanti quippe erat meriti quod possent casus
tam miseri’.
63 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 18–19: ‘Pensandum itaque est cuius ista meriti fuerat,
quam ad ipsius consolacionem de loci sui desolacione per servum suum Dominus
dignatus est edocere.’

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the frequency of miracles and the gift of aid’).64 The author acknowledges
that the relics are disputed and addresses the doubters directly, charging
them to consider the miracles at her shrine and the presence of the dust he
has described.65 The author of the Vita et miracula has to navigate between
conflicting traditions about the location of Æbbe’s relics and bemoans a lack
of concrete evidence that her relics rest in Coldingham. However, he argues
that the present miraculous events are enough to supplant any concerns
about the past tradition of the relics’ location. Regardless of the presence of
the relics, the miracles provide a new incentive for veneration. The healing of
a cripple is a demonstration of ‘the duty of a new glorification of the virgin’,66
clearly implying both that the miracles were not entirely continuous with the
past and that they ought to inspire devotion. So the present takes precedence
over the past; the contemporary miracles become more compelling than
the ambiguous sanctity in Æbbe’s biography. Even the structure of the
Vita et miracula bears this out; while the first three components of the text
(the introduction, the account of her life and the descriptions of the two
translations) occupy fols. 164r–168r in the manuscript, the forty-three
miracles begin on fol. 168r and end on fol. 173r. That is, the author takes
slightly more space to describe her miracles in the late twelfth century than
he had used to introduce his subject, describe Æbbe’s biography, narrate the
two translations and account for the gap in time between her life and his own.
Since the authority of the miracles mitigated against any uncertainty about
the power of the relics or the sanctity of her life, ultimately the biography and
the relics became less significant than the miracles for the development of the
cult to those shaping it, both clerical and lay.
History was superseded by miracles. It was also intensely local. Æbbe was
no longer a vague figure from the misty and unspecified past. Rather, she had
become present, inhabiting the very landscape surrounding Coldingham. The
authors of the office and the Vita et miracula took care to identify Æbbe with
particular geographical and topographical features in the region, shaping her
history into something deeply and intimately local. In the office Britannia is
credited with producing such a saint, the sea and mountain protect her and
the locus shines with her holiness and that of all the saints who lived with
her.67 The author of the Vita et miracula makes the connection between the
saint and the place even more explicit, attributing the formation of particular

64 Ibid., pp. 20–1.

65 Ibid., p. 26: ‘Alii igitur sacras eius reliquias sibi blandiantur et habere gaudeant
et uenerari letentur; nos earum immunes non esse gaudeamus et manibus
tractasse gratulemur, quos sua iugiter constat protectione muniri et in omnibus
tribulacionibus nostris uberibus sue consolationis lactari.’
66 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 50–1: ‘et exhibendum uirgini noue exaltacionis
obsequium’.
67 BL Harley 4664, fols. 261r–262r.

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 Reshaping History in the Cult of Æbbe of Coldingham

geographical features in the landscape to God’s power working through

Æbbe. When he describes the sea rising up to protect her from the unwanted
advances of the local lord, the author declares that the incident ‘seems to have
left a trace in the nature of the terrain’; the ebb and flow of the water carved
out the headland.68 The miracles Æbbe works in the twelfth century have the
consequence of resanctifying the location. That author of the Vita et miracula
links the miracles to the particular place; the faithful should understand that
‘by the attestation of miracles, divine goodness had mitigated the state of
sinfulness that had inflicted desolation upon the sacred places until now’.69
The land is formed by the holiness of her life, corrupted by sin and ultimately
restored by the miracles Æbbe works. Reshaping history meant emphasizing
the saint in this particular locality. For the writers and the worshippers, Æbbe
was powerful and she was present.
Liturgy, narrative and cultic practice all reshape history. The authors of
these texts did not attempt to remove the destruction of Coldingham, the
most conspicuous event in the history of the monastery and its abbess, from
their celebration. Instead, they reworked it and reinterpreted it, and the lay
beneficiaries of the miracles supplanted that history with their own stories of
the saint’s power. Ultimately, history itself mattered less than Æbbe’s power
in the late twelfth century present.

68 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, pp. 6–7: ‘cum etiam ex loci qualitate uideatur habere
uestigium’. In the version of the story attributed to Æthelthryth and told in the Liber
Eliensis, there is a similar impact on the local terrain: Æthelthryth’s footprints left
imprints in the rock. ‘Insuper memoriale et pre ceteris mirabile est, quod vestigia
pedum illius ascendentis et descendentis in latere montis infusa, tanquam in calida
cera, nunc usque ostenduntur ad laudem domini nostri Iesu Christi.’ Liber Eliensis
I.11, ed. Blake, p. 28.
69 Miracles of Saint Æbbe, p. 46: ‘Quod culpam que hactenus sacris locis solitudinem
intulit, divina bonitas signorum attestatione relaxavit’ (my translation above).

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 12
William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian

Paul Antony Hayward

William of Malmesbury would seem, at first sight, to represent the perfect

example of a ‘cantor-historian’. The author of three major histories, an
extensive collection of Marian miracles and five finely constructed saints’ lives,
he is often acclaimed as one of the greatest historians of his era.1 There is also
no doubt that he spent some part of his career as his monastery’s cantor. To
be sure, William nowhere presents himself to his readers as such. The closest
that he comes to doing so is in the preface to the Historia novella, where he
styles himself as bibliothecarius Malmesberie, as ‘the librarian of Malmesbury’.2
Many customaries place the care of a monastery’s book collection among
the cantor’s usual duties,3 but this task was sometimes detached from the
core role of managing the delivery of the liturgy. Lanfranc’s decrees provide,
for example, for the delegation of this job if the cantor lacks the skills and
character to discharge it properly: ‘De universis monasterii libris curam gerat,
et eos in custodia sua habeat, si eius studii et scientie sit, ut eorum custodia
ei commendari debeat’ (‘[The cantor] takes care of all the books of the house,
and has them in his keeping, if his interests and learning are such as to fit him
for keeping them’).4 It follows that the words which William has chosen leave
open the possibility that he fulfilled the duties of librarian without being
a cantor in the usual sense. Evidence that he was indeed his community’s

1 This is the view of historians such as J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of

the Anglo-Saxon Past’, Peritia 3 (1984), 135–50 (p. 136); D. A. Carpenter, The Struggle
for Mastery: Britain, 1066–1284 (Harmondsworth, 2004), p. 543; V. H. Galbraith,
Historical Research in Medieval England (London, 1951), p. 15; J. Gillingham, ‘A
Historian of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance and the Transformation of English
Society, 1066–ca. 1200’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed.
T. F. X. Noble and J. Van Engen (Notre Dame IN, 2012), pp. 45–74 (p. 46); P. Wormald,
The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1999–
2001), I, 137. William’s career is also evaluated in the chapters by Fassler and by
Sønnesyn in this volume.
2 William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, pref., The Contemporary History, ed. E. King
and trans. K. R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), p. 2. See also GPA v.271.2, p. 644.
3 On the duties of the armarius/cantor in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see
Fass A; S. Boynton, ‘Training for the Liturgy as a Form of Monastic Education’,
in Medieval Monastic Education, ed. G. Ferzoco and C. Muessig (London, 2000),
pp. 7–20 (esp. pp. 9–10).
4 Decreta, pp. 122–3 (emphasis mine).

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 William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian

cantor emerges from an external source, Robert of Cricklade. Writing in or

soon after 1137, while William was still alive and active, Robert defines him
as a monk and cantor of the ecclesia at Malmesbury.5 Since he had read some
of William’s works and was a canon of Cirencester, a collegiate community
located some twelve miles from Malmesbury, before going on to become
abbot of St Frideswide’s in Oxford,6 it is reasonable to assume that he is an
authoritative guide to the truth of the matter.
That being a cantor informed William’s activities as an author and scribe
also seems clear enough, but from texts and remains that might be considered
peripheral to his achievement. Neil Ker detected William’s hand in several
books, one of which is especially relevant to the cantor’s office, that is, Bodl
Auct. F.3.14 (SC 2186).7 As can be seen from this book’s contents in Table
12.1, Bede’s guides to the calculation of dates occupy the core of Auct. F.3.4,
around which appear shorter, auxiliary tracts on the nature of the world,
astronomy and problems in computus. This arrangement is typical of
computistical collections produced in twelfth-century England.8 The book
is, more to the point, the sort of reference collection for which a cantor may
well have felt a need. In the course of working out his community’s liturgical
programme he may often have had to remind himself of some of the more
arcane aspects of time-reckoning, such as the problem of why the phases
of the moon sometimes appear more advanced than the usual method
of reckoning its progress would predict;9 he will also have required such
a volume when teaching computus to oblates and novices – a topic in the

5 Robert of Cricklade, De connubio patriarche Iacob, ii.22, quoted from Bodl Laud.
misc. 725, fol. 129va, in R. W. Hunt, ‘English Learning in the Late Twelfth Century’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th s. 19 (1936), 19–42 (pp. 31–2 n. 1). This
passage is quoted at length in the opening to Sigbjørn Sønnesyn’s chapter. The
dating depends on the preface, printed in T. E. Holland, ‘The University of Oxford
in the Twelfth Century’, in Collectanea, ed. M. Burrows, Oxford Historical Society
Publications, 16, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1890), pp. 137–92 (pp. 161–2), with further variants
in Hunt, ‘English Learning’, p. 31 n. 3. Here Robert says that he has just heard
about the death of Godfrey, abbot of Winchcombe, an event which took place on
6 March 1137: Heads, p. 79, with R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 2nd edn
(Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 74, 169 n. 8, 199.
6 Robert was abbot of St Frideswide’s from before 8 January 1141 until 1174 or soon
afterwards: see Heads, pp. 180, 284.
7 N. R. Ker, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Handwriting’, EHR 59 (1944), 371–6 (esp.
pp. 374–5). For a paleographical analysis, see Thomson, William, pp. 82–5. See also
M. B. Parkes, Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation
and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London, 1991), p. 87 n. 48.
8 For a discussion, based on fifteen examples, see The Winchcombe and Coventry
Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, ed. and trans.
P. A. Hayward, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 373, 2 vols. (Tempe,
2010), I, 44–8.
9 Bede covers this topic in De temporum ratione 43, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B
(Turnhout, 1977), pp. 241–544 (pp. 412–8).

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 Paul Antony Hayward

Table 12.1 Contents of Bodl Auct. F.3.14 (SC 2186)

Item Text Folios

1 Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum 1r–19v
2 Bede, De natura rerum 20r–27v
3 Bede, De temporibus liber primus 27v–33r
4 Bede, Episola ad Wicthedum de pascha celebratione 33r–35v
5 Bede, De temporibus liber secundus [i.e. De temporum ratione] 35v–102r
6 Helperic of Granval, De calculatoria arte [i.e. De computo] 102r–114r
7 Proterius of Alexandria, Epistola ad papam Leonem primum de 114r–115v
ratione pasche
8 Paschasinus of Lilybeum, Epistola ad papam Leonem de ratione 115v–116v
pasche
9 Dionysius Exiguus, Epistola ad Petronum episcopum de ciclo 116v–118v
quingentorum .xxxii. annorum
10 Dionysius Exiguus, Epistola de eodem ad Bonifatium primicerium 118v–120ar
11 [Argumenta titulorum paschalium] 120av
12 [Magnus cyclus paschalis cum annales] 120av–132v
13 Robert de Losinga, Exceptio[nes] de chronica Mariniani [i.e. 133r–148v
Mariani Scoti]
14 Liber Igini de spera celesti † 148v–153r
15 Regule de astrolabio ‡ 153r–157v
† Known as ‘Hyginus Philosophus’, this work comprises an epitome of
Hyginus, De astronomia, ed. G. Viré (Leipzig, 1992), beginning ‘Duo sunt
extremi vertices mundi quos appellant polos …’ and ending ‘…cuius et
gubernaculum et rectam puppem secans ad octavam partem cancri redit’.
A briefer version of the same text is printed in E. Maass, Commentariorum in
Aratum reliquiae (Berlin, 1898), pp. 309–12. Cf. A. Dell’Era, Una caeli descriptio
d’età carolingia (Palermo, 1974), pp. 41–70.
‡ This work comprises an assortment of items about the astrolabe and its uses,
ultimately derived from Arabic sources: ‘Quicumque astronomice discere …
fabricare horologia’ (fols. 153r40–156r20), comprises much, but not all, of a
tract that N. Bubnov edits as a work of Gerbert of Aurillac in Gerberti postea
Silvestri pape opera mathematica (Berlin, 1899), pp. 114–38, 146–7; the remainder,
from ‘Iarius Apollo dum sibi pariter in lucem …’ to ‘et lector relege et
relectum iterate’ (fols. 156r21–157v41), echoes a number of the tracts that
J. Millàs Vallicrosa edits in Assaig d’història de les idees fisiques i matemàtiques a
la Catalunya medieval (Barcelona, 1931), pp. 288–90, 324–5, 304–5, 307–8, 322–4.

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 William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian

monastic curriculum that often fell under the cantor’s remit.10 Ker thought
that William was responsible for inserting the table of contents on folio iiv
and at least one entry among the annals in the margins of the Easter Tables
that appear on folios 120br to 132v.11 He suspected, moreover, that this book,
whose texts were copied by no less than fourteen scribes, was produced
under William’s supervision – a theory that Rod Thomson has developed.12
The likelihood that William himself added annals to the Easter tables is
particularly interesting, because this practice seems to have been associated
with the teaching of computus. That is, one of the most credible explanations
for the insertion of chronological notes in such tables is that cantors put them
there to clarify the significance of these opaque grids of numbers – to make
their relationship to time-reckoning less abstract for the novices whom they
were training to use them.13
In the prologue to the Historia novella, furthermore, William tells us that he
wrote ‘three little books’ to which he has given ‘the name chronica’. Here he
tells Robert, earl of Gloucester (1121–47), that in this work, as well as in the
fifth book of the Gesta regum Anglorum, he has set down many of the deeds
of his illustrious father Henry I.14 Judging by this reference to the coverage
of the reign of Henry I, it seems almost certain that this chronicle is the same
work as that discussed in the final paragraph of the final version of Gesta
regum – in the version that was prepared for Earl Robert in the late 1130s.
Here, speaking directly to the earl, he says that rather than continue to amend
and extend Gesta regum’s coverage of his father’s reign on a year-by-year
basis, he has decided to begin a new work that will comprise these additions.
The writing of this work will occupy, he says, the rest of his life: it ‘will

10 For an example of the former approach to the function of these books, see A. J. Piper,
‘The Durham Cantor’s Book (Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)’, in
Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. D. W. Rollason et al. (Woodbridge, 1994),
pp. 72–92; for an example of the latter, see H. Bober, ‘An Illustrated Medieval School
Book of Bede’s De natura rerum’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 19–20 (1956–7),
65–97 (esp. pp. 73, 81–6). Cf. Winchcombe and Coventry, I, 47–8.
11 The addition attributed to William appears at the foot of fol. 120vb: ‘Henricus rex

Anglorum, regnavit annis .xxxv. 7 super hoc a nonis Augusti usque ad kl. Decemb.’,
a note that echoes his Historia novella i.11, p. 22. W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary
Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR 22 (1907), 73–84 (pp. 81–2), printed
the annals for AD 1066–1139 found on fols. 120br–120cv, and identified various
parallels in Williams histories. Note: three folios bear the number 120 in Auct. F.3.14,
distinguished as 120a, 120b and 120c.
12 ‘The “Scriptorium” of William of Malmesbury’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and

Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (London,

1978), pp. 117–42; rev. in Thomson, William, p. 84: ‘He was the initiator and
supervisor, evidently deciding what was to go in it and supplying the exemplars; it
is his collection.’
13 Winchcombe and Coventry, I, 42–3.
14 Historia novella prol., pp. 3–4.

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 Paul Antony Hayward

end only with life itself’.15 These details imply that this history was a set of
annals – that is, a list of events arranged in chronological order according to
the years in which they fell. Yet it seems not to have survived. Some residues
may underpin the Eulogium historiarum, a vast world history in five books
compiled at Malmesbury in the 1360s, but it is impossible to ascertain their
precise extent.16 Still, there is enough information in William’s references to
this work to suggest that it was typical of the annalistic chronicles associated
with cantors, like the set of annals that was compiled at the neighbouring
abbey of Winchcombe in the 1140s.17 Chronicles of this sort seem, for the
most part, to have been used to teach oblates and novices about the shape of
history on a larger, macroscopic, scale – about the ways in which one reign,
pontificate and abbacy gave rise to another, about the span of the Sixth Age of
the World, and so on.18
That William took the time not just to abbreviate but also to revise the Liber
officialis by Amalarius of Metz can also be read as evidence for an interest
in the liturgical education of his abbey’s pueri – a task over which cantors
often presided.19 To be sure, the preface implies that this work was written
for one monk in particular – for a certain Robert whom William had observed
picking up a copy of Amalarius, but then being deterred by ‘the difficulty of
the words and the complexity of the contents’. Yet the preface also places the
work in a pedagogical context in which the priority was to equip a newcomer
to the monastic ‘profession’ with a basic knowledge of the Divine Office:

In historicis nos narrationibus occupatos detorsit a proposito tua, Rodberte

amice, voluntas. Nuper enim cum in bibliotheca nostra sederemus et
quisque pro studio libros evolveret, impegisti in Amalarium De ecclesiasticis
officiis. Cuius cum materiam ex prima statim tituli fronte cognosceres,
amplexus es occasionem qua rudimenta nove professionis animares, sed

15 GRA v.449, pp. 800–1.

16 Eulogium historiarum sive temporis: Chronicon ab orbe condito usque ad annum Domini
M.CCC.LXVI., ed. F. S. Haydon, 3 vols. (London, 1858–63). The first book ranges
from the creation to the ascension of Christ, the second covers the apostles and the
saints, the third the ‘four empires’, but especially the Roman Empire, the fourth the
geography of the world and the fifth the history of England to 1366. Brief extracts
from the known works of William of Malmesbury appear in the third and the fifth
books.
17 Winchcombe and Coventry, II, 356–543.
18 Ibid., esp. 37–42 and 60–1. See also D. E. Greenway, ‘Historical writing at St Paul’s’,

in St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, ed. D. Keene et al. (New
Haven CT, 2004), pp. 151–6 (p. 151); and for the alternative theories, see S. Foot,
‘Annals and Chronicles in Western Europe’, in The Oxford History of Historical
Writing, vol. 2, 400–1400, ed. S. Foot and C. F. Robinson (Oxford, 2012), pp. 346–67,
and the literature cited there.
19 I say ‘presided over’ because it was normal for the cantor to assess the boys’

performance while the actual training was delegated to his assistant, the succentor.
See Fass A, pp. 44–6; Boynton, ‘Training’, pp. 9–11.

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 William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian

quia confestim animi tui alacritatem turbavit testimoniorum perplexitas

et sermonum asperitas, rogasti ut eum abreviarem. Ego autem qui semel
proposuerim deferre tibi ut homini dilectissimo munus iniunctum non
aspernanter accepi. In quo experiare licebit quantum propter faciliorem
intellectum in deiciendo sermone laboravi qui cultius fortassis loqui potui.
Est enim res de qua tractatur per necessaria et cuius ignorantia sit cunctis
sacerdotibus pudenda.20

[Your wish, my friend Robert, has diverted us, [formerly] occupied in

historical narratives, with a purpose. For recently when we were seated
in our library and someone was taking out books for study, you fastened
on Amalarius’s On Ecclesiastical Offices. Since you could tell its subject
straightaway from the title on the front cover, you embraced an opportunity
by which you might enliven the rudiments of your new profession; but
because the difficulty of the words and the complexity of the contents
swiftly threw the liveliness of your mind into turmoil, you asked that I
might abbreviate it. And I, who intended there and then to set aside a gift
for you as the dearest of men, accepted this obligation without disdain – in
that I, who can speak perhaps more elegantly, have laboured for the sake of
easier understanding in cutting the wording as much as is permissible. For
it is a matter which needs to be investigated, and ignorance of it is shameful
in every priest.]

The preface to the Defloratio Gregorii, a collection of extracts from the works
of Gregory the Great, provides further evidence that William was concerned
with the provision of educational materials for his fellow monks:

Dominis suis et fratribus Meldunensis cenobii monachis Willelmus fide

frater, professione conservus. Ad instructionem communem deflorationes
ex libris precellentissimi pape Gregorii in hoc volumine compegi, ea
potissimum intentione ut si quis nostrum vel valetudine vel occupatione
vel etiam desidia impediente multis legendis non vacat, hic impromptu
inveniat, quibus et animam pascat et vitam componat.21

[To our lords and brothers, the monks of the monastery of Malmesbury,
William your brother in faith, a fellow-servant by profession. For general
instruction I have compiled in this book flowers from the books of the most
excellent pope, Gregory, with the intention of the strongest that if any of our
own should be without the capacity for much reading – infirmity, business,
or furthermore, slackness being an obstacle – he may readily find here that
with which he may feed his soul and compose his life.]

20 William of Malmesbury, Abbreviatio Amalarii prol., ed. R. W. Pfaff, Recherches de

théologie ancienne et médiévale 48 (1981), 128–71 (p. 128). Pfaff details the extent of
William’s editing and revision of the Liber officialis in the introduction to his edition:
idem, ‘The “Abbreviatio Amalarii” of William of Malmesbury’, ibid. 47 (1980),
77–113.
21 CUL Ii.3.20, fol. 1r; D. H. Farmer, ed., ‘William of Malmesbury’s Commentary on
Lamentations’, Studia monastica 4 (1962), 283–311 (p. 309).

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 Paul Antony Hayward

The inclusion of material that defines the proper extent of episcopal authority
associates the Defloratio Gregorii with a core issue of William’s histories of
the English, Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum, and raises the possibility that
this work may also have been aimed at external readers – at an audience, say,
of bishops and canons22 – but the educational agenda set out in the preface
and largely fulfilled in what follows align the work with the cantor’s role
as a manager of books and provider of materials for the edification of his
community.
There survive, then, a number of compositions that William might
well have produced in order to fulfil the obligations of a cantor. It is hard,
however, to identify passages in his narrative works where he has invested
his text with allusions to the liturgy of the sort that one might expect from
an author who was also a cantor, a finding that is especially true of the three
great monographs on which his reputation rests: Gesta regum Anglorum, Gesta
pontificum Anglorum and Historia novella.
It cannot be denied that there are passages in these works where he cites
liturgical or musical materials, but these are relatively rare, and these citations
typically turn out to have been required by the story that is being told – they
turn out to have been unavoidable. Music figures strongly, for example, in
Gesta pontificum’s account of the life of Archbishop Dunstan. William reports
that the saint heard his harp, hanging on its peg, playing the antiphon
‘Gaudent in celis anime sanctorum’ without anyone touching it;23 that during
a visit to St Augustine’s Abbey Dunstan had a vision of the Mother of God
leading a choir of women in singing Sedulius’s hymn Cantemus Domino
sotie;24 and that he had a vision of the angels singing a version of the Kyrie
eleison that he passed on to his companions and which is still sung in English
churches.25 But Dunstan, his subject in this passage, was famed for his interest

22 Note esp. how William refers to these passages in his preface (ibid.): ‘de tolerandis
uel ammonendis proximis, subeci sententias de prelatis et subditis, in quibus
discant prelati quantum tuitionis et ammonitionis debeant subiectis imponere’ [‘next
to [the sections] on toleration and on admonition I have appended passages about
prelates and their subjects, in which prelates may learn about how much protection
and admonition they ought to impose on their subjects’] (emphasis mine).
23 GPA i.19.3, pp. 40–1; for the antiphon, see Can 002927. William’s sources were

Osbern of Canterbury, Vita S. Dunstani (BHL 2344) 10, Memorials of St Dunstan,

Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1874), pp. 69–128 (p. 80); and
Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita S. Dunstani archiepiscopi et confessoris (BHL 2346) 8, Lives
and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, ed. and trans. A. J. Turner and B. J.
Muir (Oxford, 2005), pp. 44–159 (pp. 60–1).
24 GPA i.19.10, p. 40, quoting from Sedulius, Hymn 1, lines 1–2; Sedulii opera omnia,

ed. J. Huemer, CSEL 10 (Vienna, 1885), p. 155. William’s sources were Osbern, Vita
Dunstani 40, pp. 118–9; and Eadmer, Vita Dunstani 54, pp. 132–3.
25 GPA i.19.11, p. 36, following Eadmer, Vita Dunstani 52, pp. 128–31. For the

possibility that this episode refers to ‘Kyrie rex splendens’, a trope associated with
the saint, see Stubbs’s introduction to his Memorials of St Dunstan, pp. cxiv–cxv.

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in music,26 and the hagiographical tradition had long illustrated this element
in his piety with these episodes. The stories about the harp and the vision of
the Virgin leading a choir, for example, first appeared in B’s Vita Dunstani, a
work composed between 997 and 1002,27 within two decades of its subject’s
death. Though he reworks Sedulius’s verses a little, William’s versions of
these scenes scarcely suggest a deep interest in the liturgy.28
In general, William’s histories favour the rhetorical devices, style and
attitude of the classical historian.29 This is true even of the hagiographical
passages in his work – even of the passages where he is writing about saints.
Consider, for example, the digression on English royal saints which appears
in Gesta regum (§§ 207–19); it incorporates allusions to Virgil, but none to
any liturgical text.30 The way in which William’s res gestae favour classical
and poetic rather than biblical allusions stands in sharp contrast, moreover,
to much high-medieval historiography. There are, of course, many passages
where William references verses or scenes in the Bible,31 but they are greatly
outnumbered by those in which he quotes from or alludes to literary texts,
especially ancient Roman texts.32 Orderic Vitalis, in contrast, often quotes
from the Bible and adduces parallels between its stories and recent events – a
practice which seems to have been central to his understanding of history:
‘Multa intueor in diuina pagina, quae subtiliter coaptata nostri temporis
euentui uidentur similia’ (‘I see many things in divine Scripture which, if
they are subtly accommodated, appear similar to the happenings in our own
time’).33 William nowhere expresses a similar view. He tends to avoid biblical

26 See William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Dunstani (BHL 2348) 4.3, Saints’ Lives, ed. and
trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2002), pp. 166–303 (p. 178):
‘cum ceterarum tum maxime musice dulcedine captus’; Osbern, Vita Dunstani 8;
Memorials of St Dunstan, p. 78.
27 ELD B 12, 36.2–3 (pp. 40–3, 100–1). William went on to develop the three scenes in

greater detail in his own Vita Dunstani i.6.1–2 and ii.26.5–28, pp. 182–3, 284–9.
28 For further discussion of William of Malmesbury’s Vita Dunstani, see Margot

Fassler’s chapter in this volume.

29 Cf. GRA i.prol.4, p. 14, where he declares that his aim was ‘exarata barbarice

Romano sale condire’ (‘to season the barbaric jottings [of English History] with
Roman salt’).
30 Quotations from Virgil’s Georgics iv.529, and Aeneid vi.835, appear in GRA 213.5–6,

p. 396. There is also a faint echo of Prudentius, Peristephanon iii.5, in GRA 218, p. 402.
It is worth noting also that William’s preference was for quantitative rather than
the rhythmic verse forms: see M. Winterbottom, ‘William of Malmesbury versificus’,
in Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honour of A. G. Rigg on his 64th Birthday, ed.
S. Echard and G. R. Wieland (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 109–27.
31 E.g. Historia novella i.20, p. 38, quoting from Gen. 16. 12. King Stephen had to fight

against so many enemies ‘that what was said of Ishmael might justly be applied to
him, having “every man’s hand against him and his hand against every man” ’.
32 See further the indices of sources in GRA II, 457–68; GPA II, 389–94.
33 Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica viii.16, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968–

80), IV, 228; but for the translation, E. Mégier, ‘Divina pagina and the Narration of

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quotations and allusions. Compare, for example, his treatment of the siege of
Jerusalem with that found in Baudri of Bourgueil’s Historia Ierosolimitana, a
work drafted in 1105. Whereas William invests an account based on Fulcher
of Chartres with quotations from Vegetius and Lucan,34 Baudri populates an
account based on the Gesta Francorum with six allusions to the Bible as well as
two to classical texts – one to Sallust’s Iugurtha and one to Virgil’s Eclogues.35
The classicism of William’s histories is clearest, however, in the passages
where they use loaded alternatives and innuendo – devices that were crucial
to rhetorical history.36 Consider, for example, the much misunderstood
passage in the preface to book three of Gesta regum where William says
that he will maintain an even-handed approach when speaking about the
Conqueror, because he draws his blood from both peoples – because he is
Norman as well as English.37 Some scholars read this aside as a statement of
neutrality, but in William – as in Sallust and Tacitus – declarations of balance
and objectivity signpost innuendo, and this passage is true to this tradition.
For William goes on to declare that he will bring forth the king’s good deeds
without applying make up (sine fuco), that he will touch on his wrongful acts
only as far as is necessary, and ‘nec illum nota inuram censoria cuius cuncta
pene, etsi non laudari, excusari certe possunt opera’ (‘he will not brand with
a censorious note a man almost all of whose works can certainly be excused,
even if they cannot be praised’).38 The insinuation is that deeds which needed
to be defended vastly outnumbered those that could naturally or easily be
praised – a damning comment.
The provocative content of many passages in William’s histories would
seem, moreover, to be at odds with the propriety expected of a monk. Gesta
regum tells, for example, about how crusaders forced their Turkish captives

History in Orderic Vitalis’ Historia ecclesiastica’, RB 110 (2000), 106–23 (p. 108).
34 GRA iv.369, pp. 646–50, reworking Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana i.27,
ed. H. Hagenmayer (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 292–301. William adds quotations from
Lucan, Pharsalia ii.227–8, 655–6; vi.88–89; and Vegetius, De re militari iv.15. There is
also a faint echo of Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina ii, 69–72. There are no allusions to
the Bible. See Thomson’s commentary in GRA II, 326–7.
35 Baudri of Bourgueil, Historia Ierosolimitana iv.9–14, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades:
Historiens occidentaux, ed. C. Thurot, vol. 4 (Paris, 1879), pp. 1–111 (pp. 96–103).
See, likewise, Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana ix, ed. D. Kempf and M. G.
Bull (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 96–100, whose account of the same events has three
biblical references as opposed to one allusion to Ovid.
36 The present author treats William’s use of these devices in greater detail in ‘The
Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of
Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum’, ANS 33 (2011), 75–102;
and Power, Rhetoric and Historical Practice in Twelfth-Century England: From William of
Malmesbury to Geoffrey of Monmouth (forthcoming), ch. 3.
37 GRA iii.pref.1, p. 424: ‘Ego autem, quia utriusque gentis sanguinem traho, dicendi
tale temperamentum seruabo’.
38 Ibid. (my emphasis). See, likewise, GRA ii.228.12, p. 422.

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to give up the coins that they had hidden on their persons – a tale which
implies that these good Christians went about hitting women to force the
coins from their vaginas.39 He tells a tale, in a more playful mode, about three
monks at Lanfranc’s school in Caen who cast oracles to see who among them
would become an abbot or a bishop by flipping the pages of a Bible. The
outcome generated resounding laughter! One of the monks, Gundulf, went
on to become bishop of Rochester (1077–1108); another, Walter, went on to
become abbot of Evesham (1077–1104); and the third returned to the world –
as predicted.40 Here William chooses to mock Gundulf and Walter in a gentle
fashion; elsewhere he destroys reputations. All that is reported, for instance,
about Hugh d’Orival, bishop of London (d. 1085), is a tale about how he had
himself castrated:

The royal sickness covering his entire body with purulent ulcers, and he
was brought to a shameful remedy. For, believing those asserting that his
one and only recourse would be to have his scrotum, the receptacle of his
humours – plainly, that which ought to be feared – removed, he did not
refuse. Thus, a bishop bore the shame of the impotent, and he found no
remedy: [he remained] leprous while he lived.41

The fat-shaming of Samson, bishop of Worcester (1096–1112), and his son

Thomas II, archbishop of York (1109–14), is equally aggressive:

From adolescence [Archbishop Thomas II was] free, so it was believed, of

women and also of every obscenity. In his example to everyone [he was]
feast-providing (dapsilis), and of fatty and loathsome corpulence, such that,
breathing heavily, he could hardly walk.

Not meagrely educated, but urging his stomach forward with extreme
feasting, [Bishop Samson] was said to be the one and only gorge for meals
(unicus gurges escarum) in this age! He would never leave un-bought
anything that was up for sale if it would enable him to fill a space in his
stomach with something rather spicy. He would have placed before him
plates holding twenty-four chickens and a side of pork so that, when his
greed had been indulged from the middle [of the plate], he might send
out or give away to bystanders the rest that was on the dish without
impropriety.42

These are just a few of the many passages where William uses literary
invention and rhetorical artifice to ridicule and denounce the failings and
pretensions of the higher clergy – an activity that scarcely aligns his work
with the normal duties of a cantor.

39 GRA iv.380.4, p. 678.

40 GPA i.72.12–14, p. 218.
41 GRA ii.73.18–19, p. 230.
42 GRA iii.121.2β and iv.150β.1–2, pp. 398, 440.

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William’s evolution as a monk would seem, at first sight, to provide a way

of explaining the contrast between his histories and his ‘monastic works’, the
hypothesis being that his grasp of his vocation deepened over time leading
him towards literary activities that were more fully informed by monastic
ideals and eventually his work as a cantor at Malmesbury. Gesta regum and
Gesta pontificum can be dated relatively precisely: their first editions were
completed in late 1125.43 A number of the works that seem to reflect the
preoccupations of a cantor can be placed, on the other hand, in the 1130s – in
the middle phase of his career. The ‘three little books’ that he called chronica
were certainly written after the histories. There is nothing to say exactly when
the Abbreviatio Amalarii was compiled, allowing us to infer that it may post-
date these histories, even if we cannot rule out the possibility that it pre-dates
them.44 Since Robert of Cricklade mentions the Defloratio in the same passage
where he identifies William as a cantor,45 it has to be dated to before March
1137, but it may nevertheless post-date Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum by
several years.
There is, moreover, a passage in the preface to book two of Gesta regum,
which suggests that William acquired his love of history prior to entering the
monastery:

It is a while since I became accustomed to books, owing to my parents’ care

and my own persistence. Their pleasures have been with me ever since, from
my childhood, and their seductions have matured just as I have. For I had
been so informed by my father that, if I turned away to contrary pursuits,
it would be at the expense of my soul and perilous to my reputation … I
expended labour on many kinds of study, but on some rather than others …
Again, I investigated aspects of ethics in depth: I surged towards its majesty,
because it lays itself open to students and composes souls for living
well. But history especially because, seasoning habits with an agreeable
knowledge of definite deeds, it spurs readers to follow the good and to
guard against the bad. Thus, when I had obtained with my private funds
(domestica sumpta) not a few histories of foreign peoples, I proceeded in my
household leisure (familiaris otium), to ask if something memorable could be
discovered about our people for posterity…46

43 In the final section of GPA (v.278.3) William notes a series of events that happened
‘in 1125’, the latest of them being the death of the Emperor Henry V (23 May 1125).
The latest event mentioned among the passages that belonged to the first edition of
GRA is the release of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem from captivity, an event which
took place on 29 August 1124 (GRA iv.386). See further Thomson’s comments in
GRA II, xvii–xviii, 343.
44 Cf. Pfaff, ‘The “Abbreviatio Amalarii”’, pp. 79–80.
45 See n. 5 above.
46 GRA ii.prol.1–2, p. 150.

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This is not the only in the preface in Gesta regum in which William presents
himself in as a private gentleman, one accustomed to the privileges of great
wealth. In the preface to book four he speaks about how retreated to a life
defined by the Roman concept of otium – of private, philosophical, leisure –
rather than face the hostile responses of his critics or the efforts of others to
force him to adopt this or that interpretation:

I had long since retired to a life of leisure (in otium concesseram), content
to remain silent; but after a period of idleness, my old love of study
(amor studium) plucked me by the ear and laid its hand on my shoulder
for I was incapable of doing nothing, and knew not how to devote myself
to those business cares (ista forenses) that are so unworthy of a man of
letters.47

Much of this clashes with a monastic context; monks were not supposed
to own books, nor did they have their own ‘domestic funds’, nor was their
education and reading unsupervised.48 Of course, later records, book lists
and commemorative texts, suggest that it was normal for erudite monks like
William to retain books within their own control while they lived – typically
books housing texts which they had copied for their own use.49 But since the
Rule expressly forbade the possession of books,50 it seems unlikely that this
practice was ever regarded as ownership. This preface would seem to imply,
therefore, that William acquired and developed his passion for history while
still in his father’s household and at a time when he still had access to private
funds which he could spend on the acquisition of books – and that William
entered his monastery, not as a child-oblate, but as a young adult, in his late
teens or twenties.51
With its account of how, having reached forty years of age, he has decided
to abandon history in order to pursue exegesis and spiritual enquiry, the
preface to the Commentary on Lamentations, a work that William finished

47 GRA iv.prol.1–2, p. 540.

48 For the strict supervision of ‘private’ reading in the cloister, see Benedict, Regula 48,
ed. R. Hanslik, CSEL 75, 2nd edn (Vienna, 1977), pp. 125–30.
49 Nigel Wireker, for example, retained and glossed his own copy of Peter Comestor’s

Historia Scholastica (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.15.5): see Nigel of Canterbury,

The Passion of St Lawrence, Epigrams and Marginal Poems, ed. and trans. J. M.
Ziolkowski, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 14 (Leiden, 1994), pp. 282–3. For
other examples, see L. Cleaver, ‘The Monks’ Library at Christ Church, Canterbury
c. 1180–c. 1250’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Canterbury, ed.
A. Bovey (Leeds, 2013), pp. 156–66; St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. B. C.
Barker-Benfield, CBMLC 13, 3 pts. (London, 2008), I, lxiii.
50 Benedict, Regula 33.3, p. 99.
51 Cf. the introduction to William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum libri

quinque, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1887–9), I, xii, and the final paragraph
below.

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before March 1137,52 seems to provide further evidence for his evolution
towards a more spiritual outlook:

In the past, when I amused myself with histories, the charm of the subject
suited my greener years and happy lot. Now advancing age and worsening
circumstances demand a different type of expression (aliud dicendi genus).
The ideal will be something able to warn me off the world and set me
on fire towards God. Hitherto I have lived for myself, enough and more
than enough. Henceforth I must live for my Maker. It is only right to show
my gratitude to Him who has granted me life for so many years without
punishing me too severely. … This is why, from the whole range of possible
topics, you have chosen for me the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah,
that through their exposition the grace of compunction might be more
abundant and the flame of divine love more inspiring …53

It is worth noting also that liturgical references figure in this Commentary to

a much greater extent than in William’s histories. The prologue refers at one
point, for example, to ‘the splendid lament of David for Saul and Jonathan’
whose ‘fame can never be dimmed, so often is it sung by the choirs of the
Church’.54 That William’s attitudes were gradually transformed by the
performance of his duties as a monk and cantor seems, then, like a promising
explanation.
There are, however, significant problems with this hypothesis, perhaps
the most glaring being the existence of Historia novella, the third of William’s
pseudo-classical monographs. Here he took up once again many of the
stylistic devices that characterize Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum, and there
is no question that the Historia was one of his final works. It was begun in
about 1140, and the latest event mentioned in it is the Empress Matilda’s
escape from the siege of Oxford in December 1142.55 So, the chronology of
William’s career is at odds with the idea of a single direction of travel; he
would seem to have switched back and forth from one mode of historical
expression to another. There are hints, furthermore, that William’s
work as a cantor began at an early stage, well before he embarked on the
composition of Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum. The immaturity of the
hands found in Auct. F.3.14, for example, led Thomson to infer that William’s
computus collection was copied at an early stage in the organization

52 Robert of Cricklade also names the commentary as one of the three works by
William that he has read: see n. 5 above.
53 William of Malmesbury, Liber super explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae prol., lines
7–21, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson with S. O. Sønnesyn, CCCM 244
(Turnhout, 2011), p. 3. The present translation modifies that found in William of
Malmesbury, On Lamentations prol.1–2, trans. M. Winterbottom, CCT 13 (Turnhout,
2013), p. 35.
54 Explanatio Lamentationum prol., lines 45–8, p. 4.
55 Historia novella prol. and iii.79, pp. 2, 132.

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of his scriptorium – at a time when his scribes were still learning their
craft.56
Another issue is that there are good grounds for doubting the claims that
William makes about himself in his prefaces. There is no sign, for example,
that he ever had the domestic funds to purchase his own manuscripts: all
of the sixteen manuscripts that he is known to have added to the library at
Malmesbury seem to have been produced in a monastic scriptorium – none
of them appear to have been made by a professional scribe.57 It is a mistake,
moreover, to read any of these prefaces as a guide to William’s life story. For
the function of the preface in the classical rhetorical tradition was not to give
a plain account of what is going on, but to render the intended audience
receptive to the opinions that will follow. As Cicero says in his De inventione –
a rhetorical manual that informed much twelfth-century practice – the
purpose of a prooemium was to make the listener benevolus, docilis and attentus,
‘well-disposed’, ‘tractable’ and ‘attentive’.58 Flattering the audience was
one way of doing this; expressing concern for the audience by declaring a
commitment to brevity – by expressing the desire to avoid causing boredom –
was another. Constructing an image of the author himself as a like-minded
soul with whom the reader could identify and sympathize could be even more
effective.59 The author might talk about the adversities that have delayed the
completion of the work till now, about the immense difficulties involved in
doing justice to the subject matter and about his fear of rejection – his fear

56 Thomson, William, pp. 84–5; idem, ‘The Manuscripts of William of Malmesbury

(c. 1095–c. 1143)’, in Manuscripts at Oxford: An Exhibition in Memory of Richard
William Hunt, ed. A. C. de la Mare and B. C. Barker-Benfield (Oxford, 1980), pp. 27–9
(p. 27). It cannot be considered certain, however, that William derived the account
of Robert de Losinga’s acts at Hereford which appears in GPA i.164.1, p. 458 from
this manuscript’s copy of his Excerpta Mariani. Its exemplar might also have had
the peculiar variant (‘MariNani’) which has given rise to this theory: see Stevenson,
‘Contemporary Description’, pp. 83–4, together with A. G. Watson, A Catalogue of
Dated and Datable Manuscripts, c. 435–1600, in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984),
I, 10.
57 Consider, for example, Oxford, Lincoln College, MS lat. 100, a book containing

Vegetius’s De re militari, Julius Frontinus and Eutropius. The work of six scribes, its
contents were corrected by William himself as though it were produced under his
supervision. William’s hand appears on fols. 3 (verses and table of contents) and
91b7–93r (genealogical tables). See Ker, ‘Handwriting’, p. 375; Thomson, William,
pp. 86–7.
58 Cicero, De inventione i.15.20, ed. H. M. Hubbell (Cambridge MA, 1949), p. 40. See,

likewise, Quintilian, Institutio oratoria iv.1.5, ed. H. E. Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge

MA, 1920–2), II, 8.
59 See T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964),

esp. pp. 67, 70–1, 120–1; C. W. Mendell, Tacitus: The Man and his Work (New Haven
CT, 1957), pp. 109–19; D. den Hengst, ‘The Preface to Livy’s Ab urbe condita’, in
Emperors and Historiography: Collected Essays on the Literature of the Roman Empire, ed.
D. W. P. Burgersdijk and J. A. van Waarden (Leiden, 2010), pp. 52–67.

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that his work will be received with derision and contempt – and so on. Many
of the usual tricks can be found in William’s prefaces. Sometimes they are
deployed in a perfunctory fashion. In the preface to book one of Gesta regum,
for example, William borrows and reworks a brief version of the rejection
theme found in the preface to Justin’s epitome of the Historia Philippice.60 But
William goes well beyond mechanical recycling of the usual topoi. In the
manner of the best rhetoricians, of Quintilian and Cicero, he constructs and
sustains throughout his histories an image of himself, an authorial voice, that
is precisely tailored to the values and prejudices of the intended audience.
It is clear from the dedicatory letters that were discovered and first printed
by Ewald Könsgen in 1975 that the monks of Malmesbury presented copies
of Gesta regum to two leading figures at the court of Henry I – namely, his
daughter the Empress Matilda (1102–67) and his brother-in-law David,
king of Scotland (1124–53).61 A revised text was presented to Robert, earl of
Gloucester (1121/2–47), at some point in the mid to late 1130s.62 It is clear
from the letters to Matilda and David that William was hoping that they
would intervene on the monks’ behalf in their dispute with Roger, bishop
of Salisbury (1102–39), who had usurped the abbacy. That is, Gesta regum
was addressed to certain lords who were chosen largely because they could
present the monks’ concerns to the king without having to go through Roger,
who was then second only to the king.63 Elsewhere, also, William praises
both David and Robert for being well-bred gentlemen devoted, not just to
military pursuits, but to good manners and, in Robert’s case, literature and
philosophy.64 Much less is known about the actual reading habits of twelfth-
century lords than is known about those of contemporary religious,65 but
the evidence, such as it is, confirms that there were some bibliophiles among

60 Compare GRA i.prol.8, p. 16, with Justinus, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei
Trogi pref., ed. O. Seel (Stuttgart, 1972), p. 2. The verbal echoes were first noticed by
B. Guenée, ‘L’Histoire entre l’éloquence et la science: Quelques remarques sur le
prologue de Guillaume de Malmesbury à ses Gesta regum Anglorum’, Comptes rendus
des séances de Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 126 (1982), 357–70 (pp. 359–63).
61 GRA epp. i and ii, pp. 2–9. Cf. E. Könsgen, ‘Zwei unbekannte Briefe zu den Gesta
regum Anglorum des Wilhelm von Malmesbury’, Deutsches Archiv 31 (1975), 204–14.
62 GRA ep. iii, pp. 10–12.
63 See Hayward, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous’, esp. 93–6; idem, Power,
Rhetoric and Historical Practice, chs. 1–2.
64 GRA epp. i.1–2 and iii.2, pp. 2–4, 10; ii.228.2, p. 416; v.400.2 and 446–9, pp. 726,
798–800. For David’s grasp of the conventions of amicitia, see also William of Saint-
Denis, Vita Sugerii abbatis i, Suger: Œuvres, ed. and trans. F. Gasparri, 2 vols. (Paris,
2008), II, 292–373 (p. 311).
65 On the private libraries in England and France and the difficulties involved in
reconstructing their contents, see J. Stratford and T. Webber, ‘Bishops and Kings:
Private Book Collections in Medieval England’, in The Cambridge History of
Libraries in Britain and Ireland, vol. 1, To 1640, ed. E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber
(Cambridge, 2006), I, 178–217 (esp. pp. 178–83, 197–9).

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them. Hue de Rotelande says, for instance, that his patron Gilbert fitz
Baderon, lord of Monmouth (1176/7–1190/1), had many books in his castle
e de latyn e de romaunz, ‘in both Latin and French’.66 There are even grounds
for thinking that the surge of interest in Senecan ethics – one of the century’s
most important cultural trends – owed much to the enthusiasms of the
secular elite.67
No dedicatory letters survive for Gesta pontificum, but from its design it
seems likely that it was intended, in the first instance, for an audience of higher
clergy, and in the mid 1120s, when it was completed, that meant an audience
which included many bishops. Most of the bishops who presided in England
and Wales at this time were unreconstructed secular clerics: Chichester was
the only diocese to have a monk as its bishop (Seffrid I); Canterbury had a
regular canon (William de Corbeil); sixteen were ruled by seculars.68 The
preference of the later Anglo-Saxon kings for electing monastic bishops had
been almost entirely reversed. Many of these bishops had concubines;69 a
few maintained large military retinues;70 and several built castles in the style
of great country houses – that is, symmetrical structures with courtyards
and towers arranged as much for decorative as for defensive purposes, and
furnished with deer parks so that they and their guests could indulge the
pleasures of the hunt.71
That William presented himself as a quasi-secular figure in works directed
at these sorts of readers – that he hardly appears here as a monk, let alone as
a cantor – is surely no coincidence. In these rhetorical histories he was trying,
at least at the outset, to elicit the sympathies of a secular elite by presenting
himself as a self-driven gentleman with a love of books and the Roman ideal

66 Hue de Rotelande, Protheselaus lines 12707–11, ed. A. J. Holden, Anglo-Norman

Texts 47–9, 3 vols. (London, 1991–3), II, 174.
67 See P. A. Hayward, ‘The Earls of Leicester, Sygerius Lucanus and the Death

of Seneca: Some Neglected Evidence for the Cultural Agency of the Norman
Aristocracy’, Speculum 91 (2016), 328–55.
68 This analysis is based on the evidence assembled in the relevant volumes of

EEA; and Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ed. D. E. Greenway et al. (London,
1968–). The figures exclude St Asaphs, owing to its uncertain status at this time. Cf.
R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000),
pp. 395–9; E. U. Crosby, The King’s Bishops: The Politics of Patronage in England and
Normandy, 1066–1216 (New York, 2013), esp. pp. 38–9.
69 See Crosby, King’s Bishops, pp. 54–8.
70 For Bishop Roger’s bodyguard, see Gesta Stephani i.34, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter

and R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1976), p. 72.

71 For Bishop Roger’s castles, see Historia novella ii.22, p. 44; R. A. Stalley, ‘A

12th-Century Patron of Architecture: A Study of the Buildings Erected by Roger,

Bishop of Salisbury, 1102–39’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd
s. 34 (1971), 62–83 (pp. 65–70). On the secular clergy’s enthusiasm for aristocratic
pastimes, such as hunting and courtly love, see also H. M. Thomas, The Secular
Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 42–8.

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of otium – as a kindred spirit with whom a great prince might happily share
an irreverent joke about the eunuch-bishop of London or about how the
crusaders dealt with Turks who hid coins in their ‘unmentionables’. But in the
works that he wrote for religious audiences – and here the intended audience
would seem, on the evidence of Robert of Cricklade’s comments,72 to have
extended beyond his own house to include other religious communities – he
attempts to render his readers receptive by presenting himself as a fatherly
advisor sincerely motivated by monastic ideals. The contrast between
William’s histories and his monastic works is best explained, in short, not by
bringing in his personal evolution, but by considering the audience, context
and purpose of each text. The histories were written during periods in his
career when his concerns as a cantor had to be set aside.
For the purposes of the present volume there is a useful conclusion to be
taken from this case study. One of the core issues before us concerns the ways
in which being a cantor may have shaped certain historians’ approaches to
the past: to what extent did it favour certain methods and styles of history? It
is tempting to simplify the problem by arguing that cantors had a particular
mentalité, that holding this office channelled them towards definable ways
of thinking about the past that we can reconstruct and use to control the
interpretation of their texts.73 The work of some cantor-historians, not least
those who confined their literary activities to the production of saints’ lives
and annals, lends itself to this approach; but it is hardly adequate for the
purposes of comprehending William’s work. Armed with an agile mind, he
had the capacity to move from one way of processing ideas and observations
to another as the needs of the moment required.74 As Lanfranc himself
recognized when he provided for the delegation of various duties associated
with the role, the abilities of those who fulfilled the office of cantor could and
did vary.75

72 Notice also that Robert makes no mention of GRA or GPA: see n. 5 above.
73 On the construction of ‘con-texts’, see R. M. Stein, ‘Literary Criticism and the
Evidence for History’, in Writing Medieval History, ed. N. Partner (London, 2004),
pp. 67–87; and for a critique of the concept of mentalité, see S. Reynolds, ‘Social
Mentalities and the Case of Medieval Scepticism’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 6th s. 1 (1991), 21–47.
74 On literary genres as expressions of differing ‘modes of thought’, ‘interpretive
frameworks’, and ‘patterned’, ‘narrativised’ or ‘rule-governed forms of thinking’,
see C. F. Feldman, ‘Genres as Mental Models’, in Psychoanalysis and Development:
Representations and Narratives, ed. M. Ammaniti and D. N. Stern (New York, 1994),
pp. 111–21. See also C. F. Feldman and D. A. Kalmar, ‘Autobiography and Fiction
as Modes of Thought’, in Modes of Thought: Explorations in Culture and Cognition,
ed. D. R. Olson and N. Torrance (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 106–22 (esp. pp. 113–18);
J. Bruner, ‘Frames for Thinking: Ways of Making Meaning’, in Modes of Thought,
pp. 93–105 (esp. pp. 97–8, 102).
75 See n. 4 above.

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 William of Malmesbury as a Cantor-Historian

Another point follows from these findings. William’s ability to vary his
mode of expression so radically may have been unusual, but there are good
grounds for thinking that he acquired his skills in his own monastery – not
in a private, non-monastic context, as suggested by the preface to book two
of Gesta regum. It seems almost certain that he had become a Benedictine in
the usual manner for this time: as an oblate whose parents had given him
to his community in his infancy.76 He all but admits as much at one point in
Gesta regum,77 and his comments about the improvements in teaching that
took place at Malmesbury under Abbot Godfrey (1087×91–1101×5) suggest
that he himself witnessed this development.78 It seems unlikely that many
monasteries could offer an education as empowering as that provided at
Malmesbury, but William’s intellect and range show that they could, if their
abbots and teachers were sufficiently adept and open-minded, do much
to enrich and expand the imaginative world and literary skills of their
monks. The present case study suggests, then, that we should be open to
the possibility that monasteries were enabling environments that could help
individuals to broaden their minds rather than as structures that worked to
confine thought to particular channels – even though that complicates the
task of explicating their histories.

76 On the practice of oblation, see M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford,
1984), pp. 73–6; and for its origins, see M. de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation
in the Early Medieval West (Leiden, 1995).
77 GRA ii.170.1, p. 288.
78 GPA v.271.3, p. 644. In several chapters he says that he himself witnessed a miracle
which took place during Godfrey’s abbacy (GPA v.272.10, 273.6–7, 274.3–4), but
if the images of himself found in his prefaces are questionable, then these claims
must also be considered vulnerable. Cf. Thomson, William, pp. 4–5.

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 13
Lex orandi, lex scribendi?
The Role of Historiography in the
Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury

Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

In the late 1130s, the Augustinian canon Robert of Cricklade found cause to
underscore his credentials as a reader of monastic works of devotion.

Nam et que in manus nostras venerunt scripta venerabilis abbatis

Clarisvallensis legi; et viri summe eruditionis Guillelmi Meldunensis
ecclesie monachi et cantoris preclarum opus quod super Lamentationes
Ieremie compilavit non tantum legi, verum ut et in nostra ecclesia scriptum
haberetur exegi.1

[I have read whatever writings of the venerable abbot of Clairvaux that

has come into my hands; and the brilliant work that the man of supreme
learning, William, monk and cantor of Malmesbury, compiled on the
Lamentations of Jeremiah I not only read, but even caused to be copied for
our church.]

Robert goes on to praise William’s miracles of the Virgin and his florilegium
of Gregory the Great. This is, as far as I know, the only preserved reference
to William of Malmesbury written in his own lifetime, and the focus and
emphasis of Robert’s portrayal offers a striking contrast to the prevailing
image of William found in contemporary scholarship.2 Though in recent

1 Robert of Cricklade, De connubio Patriarche Iacob II, 22; Bodl Laud. misc. 725, fol. 129v.
Printed in R. W. Hunt, ‘English Learning in the Late Twelfth Century’, Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society 4th s. 19 (1936), 19–42 (p. 32).
2 The fundamental study of William of Malmesbury remains R. M. Thomson, William

of Malmesbury, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 2003). For William as a historian and man of
letters see also e.g. J. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of
William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research 74 (2001), 17–43; R. M.
Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited’, Proceedings
of the British Academy 129 (2005), 383–93; N. Wright, ‘ “ Industriae Testimonium”:
William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry Revisited’, RB 103 (1993), 482–531;
N. Wright, ‘William of Malmesbury and Latin Poetry: Further Evidence for a
Benedictine’s Reading’, RB 101 (1991), 122–53; P. A. Hayward, ‘The Importance
of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s
Gesta Regum and Gesta Pontificum Anglorum’, ANS 33 (2011), 75–102; A. Plassmann,
‘Bedingungen und Strukturen von Machtausübung bei Wilhelm von Malmesbury

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 The Role of Historiography in the Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury

times William has been known and perceived mainly through his historical
works, his monumental works on the deeds of the kings and bishops of the
English are not even mentioned by Robert. Rather William the historian
is overshadowed by William the cantor and monk, placed alongside no
less a figure than Bernard of Clairvaux as a supreme exponent of monastic
spirituality and devotion. The apparent tension between William the
empirical, classicizing historian as we know him today and William the
spiritual and liturgical master highlights the question I will address in what
follows: to what extent did William’s liturgical and other monastic practices
and obligations influence, inform and direct his work as a historian and
collector of classical literature? We know that William performed many of the
tasks commonly associated with the office of cantor in this period, such as
directing the library at Malmesbury.3 But what interests me is not the exact
extent of his activities as cantor, but the extent to which these informed his
historiographical works, that is to say, the extent to which the principles and
aims inherent in the role of monachus et cantor are commensurate with the
principles and aims of his writing of history.4
The question of how and even if we may reconcile these two seemingly
divergent perceptions of William is, of course, crucial to our understanding
of his celebrated historiographical works, but it also has more general
import given William’s position as arguably the most accomplished of the
great wave of monastic historians active in the first half of the long twelfth
century. Though William’s historiography has been studied in great detail,
his theology has received comparatively scant attention.5 In what follows I

und Heinrich von Huntingdon’, in Macht und Spiegel der Macht, ed. N. Kersken
and G. Verchamer (Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 145–71; J. Gillingham, ‘A Historian of
the Twelfth-Century Renaissance and the Transformation of English Society, 1066–
c.1200’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. T. F. X. Noble and
J. Van Engen (Notre Dame, 2012), pp. 45–74. For a somewhat different approach see
e.g. K. A. Fenton, Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury
(Woodbridge, 2008); B. Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury, Henry I, and the Gesta
Regum Anglorum’, ANS 31 (2009), 157–76; and S. O. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury
and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012).
3 See Thomson, William, pp. 5–8; cf. Fass A, as well as many of the chapters featured

in this volume, especially Paul Hayward’s chapter on William of Malmesbury and

Charles Rozier’s and Teresa Webber’s chapters on other twelfth-century English
cantors.
4 I have set out what I take to be the guiding principles of William’s writing of

history in Sønnesyn, Ethics of History. See also the perceptive analysis in S. Bagge,
‘Ethics, Politics, and Providence in William of Malmesbury’s Historia Novella’, Viator
41 (2010), 113–32.
5 The most comprehensive studies of William’s theology are found in the context

of editions of his theological works. See in particular D. H. Farmer, ‘William of

Malmesbury’s Commentary on Lamentations’, Studia Monastica 4 (1962), 283–311;
William of Malmesbury, De Laudibus et Miraculis Sanctae Mariae, ed. J. M. Canal, El
libro ‘De Laudibus et Miraculis Sanctae Mariae’ de Guillermo de Malmesbury (Rome,

241
 Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

will argue that William’s scattered comments on the liturgy and its role in
the monastic life amounts to a strong affirmation of a theology of liturgy that
was central to monastic spirituality in the early and high Middle Ages and,
furthermore, that his historiography can be, and even needs to be, seen in
the light of this organic, comprehensive concept of the good monastic life.
The structure of theology and ethics that William invokes issues from and is
consummated in a spirituality of living and embodied faith expressed and
nourished in prayer, especially in the singing of the Divine Office and the
reading of Scripture. It is within such an overarching scheme, I will argue,
that the apparent incommensurability of liturgy and history in William’s
works may be overcome.
William’s collected œuvre offers rich materials for analysing the principles
and tendencies of his thought on the liturgy and its significance for what he
conceived of as the good and upright life. The notion of the good human life
arguably played a guiding and fundamental role in William’s intellectual
and literary endeavours. The richness and comprehensiveness of this notion
means that a full exposition of its constituent parts would be beyond the
scope of this chapter; for our present purposes, the key feature of William’s
concept of the good human life is the embodiment of the virtues that actualize
the human potential for goodness, and that direct and order the human love
of and search for God.6 While William drew on his extensive knowledge of
classical thought to conceptualize and express his ethical ground views, the
substance of his notion is summed up in the Christian concept of holiness.
Throughout William’s collected œuvre, strict, devout and assiduous liturgical
observance is presented both as the supreme outward sign of individual and
communal holiness, and as the most efficacious way through which such
holiness is attained. A clear example here is William’s surprisingly detailed
and laudatory account of the emergence of the Cistercian way of life, the
religio Cistellensis, which constitutes a substantial digression in the fourth
book of his Gesta regum Anglorum. William was clearly impressed with these
monks’ renouncement of material possessions, but certainly also with their
liturgical observance:

Vestiti dormiunt et cincti, nec ullo tempore post matutinas ad lectos redeunt;
sed ita horam matutinarum temperant ut ante laudes lucescat, ita regule
incubantes ut nec iota unum nec apicem pretereundum putent. Statim

1968); and William of Malmesbury, Abbreviatio Amalarii, ed. R. W. Pfaff, ‘The

“Abbreviatio Amalarii” of William of Malmesbury’, Recherches de théologie ancienne
et médiévale 48 (1981), 128–71. See also S. O. Sønnesyn, ‘Theology’, in William of
Malmesbury, Liber super Explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae Prophetae, ed. R. M.
Thomson and M. Winterbottom, with Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, CCCM 244 (2011),
pp. xviii–xxiii.
6 See Sønnesyn, Ethics of History, pp. 21–95 for a fuller exposition of William’s moral

outlook.

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 The Role of Historiography in the Liturgical Life of William of Malmesbury

post laudes primam canunt, post primam in opera horis constitutis exeunt;
quicquid fatiendum vel cantandum est, die sine aliena lucerna consummant.
Nullus ex horis diurnis, nullus ex complectorio umquam deest, preter
infirmos … Horas canonicas indefesse continuant, nulla appenditia
extrinsecus aditientes preter vigiliam pro defunctis. Cantus et himnos
Ambrosianos, quantum ex Mediolano addiscere potuerunt, frequentat
in divinis officiis. Hospitum et infirmorum curam habentes, importabiles
corporibus suis pro animarum remedio comminiscuntur cruces.7

[They sleep fully clothed and wearing their girdles, and do not return to
their beds anytime after Matins, but so arrange the time of Matins that
daybreak may precede Lauds, keeping so closely to the Rule that they
think it wrong to diverge by one letter, one iota. Immediately after Lauds
they sing Prime, and after Prime go out to work for the prescribed number
of hours; all work or singing in choir is completed by daylight without
artificial light. No one ever misses the day-hours or Compline except the
sick. … They maintain the canonical hours without flinching, adding
nothing further from outside sources except the Vigils of the Dead. In the
Divine Office they normally use the chants and hymns of the Ambrosian
rite, so far as they have been able to learn them from Milan.]

Here, William shows some insight into the reforms of Cistercian music
underway in the 1120s,8 but he does not commend the Cistercians for the
aesthetic beauty of their liturgical celebration, but rather for their quest for
authenticity and devotion, markers of identity that are also prominently
featured in the documents preserving the Cistercians’ own articulations of
reform.9 It is clear that it is this austere and intensely focused way of life that
is much admired by William.
In keeping with the Benedictine tradition within which he lived and worked,
William insisted that the Divine Office – and particularly its backbone, the
Psalter – was crucial for proper monastic observance.10 In the same way that
strict and devout liturgical observance marked out the Cistercian way of life
as particularly holy, so too William consistently uses this feature as a marker
of holiness in individuals. Unfailing devotion to the Psalter and the canonical
hours was a main feature of the lives of such important figures as Wilfrid and
Bede, William’s chief model.11 William’s lengthy depiction of Bishop Wulfstan

7 GRA iv.336, pp. 581–4.

8 See in particular C. Waddell, ‘The Origin and Early Evolution of the Cistercian
Antiphonary: Reflections on Two Cistercian Chant Reforms’, in The Cistercian Spirit:
A Symposium in Memory of Thomas Merton, ed. M. B. Pennington (Washington, 1973),
pp. 190–223.
9 See Waddell, ‘Origin and Early Evolution’.
10 See all the essays collected in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology

and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography, ed. M. E. Fassler and R. A.

Baltzer (Oxford, 2000).
11 See, respectively, GPA, I, 328–49 and GRA i.59–60, pp. 88–91.

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 Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

of Worcester, both in the Gesta pontificum and in the vita dedicated to the saint,
will suffice as a representative sample. William emphasizes that Wulfstan
‘non enim, ut tunc et nunc quidam, missa cursim mane cantata, tota die post
hec gule vel questibus inhiabat, sed morosiore cura debitum consummans
offitium orationes cotidianas et diuturnas aditiebat’ (‘did not, as some then
and still do, sing the Mass cursorily in the morning, and proceed to spend
the rest of the day intent on appetite and profit; instead, he completed the
set office with scrupulous care, and supplemented it with prayers for long
periods of the day’).12 As this statement illustrates, exterior observance of
communal prayer was dependent upon and organically linked to interior
devotion. Only in so far as it was sincerely and devoutly performed could the
liturgy fulfil the central role William marks out for it in his narratives.
The role played by the liturgy in William’s conception of the good and
upright life is consistently and explicitly emphasized in this way in his
narrative works. He privileges the practice of religio as the crucial constituent
of moral and political progress.13 As we have seen, the supporting pillar of
the religio Cistellensis was the liturgy, and this is a crucial feature of William’s
usage of the term. The sense of religio centring on a life of prayer is recurrent
in his depictions of individual holiness, and in general it would not unduly
strain evidence or etymology to say that, to for William, the ligature of religio
was the lex orandi.14
This also emerges from William’s account of the importance of learning,
both in a monastic context and in a broader social and political milieu. From
an early age William worked closely with a certain Godfrey, who was abbot
from 1081 to 1107 and brought the vibrant Norman monasticism from his
native Jumiéges to Malmesbury.15 William informs us that his prodigious
efforts to continue Abbot Godfrey’s labours to expand the library at
Malmesbury was ordered towards providing the requisite level of learning
for carrying out the Opus Dei:

ego ad legendum multa congessi, probitatem predicandi viri in hoc

dumtaxat emulatus. Ipsius ergo laudabili cepto pro virili portione non
defui. Utinam sit qui labores nostros foveat! Monachi, qui vulgares
tantum litteras balbutiebant, perfecte informati. Servitium Dei institutum
liberaliter, actitatum instanter, adeo ut monasterium per Angliam nullum
Malmesberiensi excelleret, multaque cederent.16

12 GPA iv.137, pp. 422–3.

13 Most notably in his depiction of the progress of the English before their slide into
decadence prior to the Norman Conquest; see GRA iii.245, p. 456–7.
14 Cf. the aphorism, lex orandi, lex credendi, often misatributed to Prosper of Aquitaine.

See e.g. E. Palazzo, ‘Foi et croyance au Moyen Âge: Les méditations liturgiques’,
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 53 (1998), 1131–54 (p. 1135).
15 Cf. Thomson, William, pp. 5–7.
16 GPA v.271, pp. 644–5.

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[I have collected much material for reading, approaching the prowess of my

excellent predecessor at least in this respect; I have followed up his laudable
start as best I could. Let us hope there may be someone to cherish the fruits
of our labours! The monks, who had been mere stutterers in common or
garden learning, were now given a proper education. The service of God
was liberally endowed and put into effect as a matter of urgency, with the
result that no monastery in all England excelled Malmesbury, and many
yielded precedence to it.]

This passage is crucial in several respects. It quite clearly subordinates

William’s hard work as a librarian to the needs of the liturgy, and presents
the rejuvenated observance at Malmesbury as the most important fruit of this
labour. This not only illustrates how and why it had become expedient to
merge the offices of cantor and armarius in this period,17 but it also shows
the importance William attached to the monastery as a space dedicated to a
living tradition focused on communal, informed and devout worship. The
entire length of the substantial fifth book of the Gesta pontificum is devoted
to an account of Malmesbury Abbey from its origins, through its growth
to maturity under Aldhelm’s leadership, and finally to the resurgence of
learning and prayer in William’s own time. William’s obvious pride and
veneration for the tradition with which he was entrusted, and his fervent
desire for this tradition to continue after his own time, suggest the motivation
behind his various activities and the aim toward which these activities were
directed.
The Bible may seem to occupy a radically relegated position within the
scheme I have outlined so far. But nothing, indeed, could be farther from the
full picture I am trying to sketch out here. The Word of God was absolutely
central and fundamental to William, as it was to the monastic tradition he
strove to maintain and develop, but the liturgy and the reading of the Bible
formed one organic whole, rather than distinct and competing practices.
Biblical exegesis was never an academic discipline in monastic culture –
never aimed purely at adding to a reified body of knowledge. On the contrary,
reading – and in particular the reading of Scripture – was a discipline oriented
toward the total transformation of the reader.18 The model of the multiple
senses of Scripture that dominated medieval exegesis saturates William’s

17 See Fass A.
18 See in particular D. Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading
(Collegeville, MI, 2011); cf. E. Morgan, The Incarnation of the Word: The Theology of
Language of Augustine of Hippo (London, 2010); J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and
the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York,
1961), particularly pp. 15–22; and H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of
Scripture, trans. E. M. Macierowski, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 1998–2009),
here e.g. I, 230–67. See also B. Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge
and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge MA, 1996).

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 Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

works in the very way that it saturated his intellectual culture.19 As Henri de
Lubac has shown, medieval exegesis started out from the historical or literal
meaning of Scripture as a necessary and inescapable starting point, but the
goal of exegesis was to uncover the spiritual senses, the ways in which the
Spirit spoke through the text to the heart of the Church and of the individual
believer to effect inner reformation.20 The spiritual senses of Scripture were
not reached through philological, historical and reductively rational analysis,
but through lectio divina, an ascent of the individual spirit to a contemplation
of God and subsequent transformation of life.21
As the research of Susan Boynton has shown, the performance of the Bible
in liturgy was a crucial part of the how the Word of God was embodied in
a monastic context,22 and in William’s various works we find numerous
examples of this.23 William took great pains to show that the unceasing,
responsive reading of Scripture was held to be constitutive of monastic
life in England from the arrival of Christianity onwards.24 But this study
of Scripture is never described as an academic pursuit producing abstract
knowledge; on the contrary, it is always presented as issuing from a life lived
in Christ. Reading, prayer and meditation form an indivisible whole ordered
towards reforming the soul. This comes to the fore in William’s portrait of
Bede. William quotes Bede’s own account of his life: ‘omnem meditandis
scripturis operam dedi, atque inter observantiam discipline regularis et
cotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut discere aut docere aut
scribere duce habui’ (‘I devoted all my pains to the meditation on Scripture.
In the intervals of regular monastic observance and the daily task of singing
in choir, to learn, to teach or to write have ever been my joy’).25 William

19 The fundamental account here is of course de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis. William

employs the tripartite division of senses found, for instance, in Gregory I and Bede,
but, as de Lubac clearly shows, the superficial differences between a threefold and
a fourfold scheme of meanings rest on a fundamental unity of purpose and method
(Medieval Exegesis, I, 132–4).
20 See, again, de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, I, 266–7 and passim.
21 Robertson, Lectio Divina, passim; Leclercq, Love of Learning, pp. 15–22.
22 S. Boynton, ‘The Bible and the Liturgy’, in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages:
Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. S. Boynton and D. J.
Reilly (New York, 2011), pp. 10–33. Cf. I. Cochelin, ‘When Monks Were the Book:
The Bible and Monasticism (6th–11th Centuries)’, in Boynton and Reilly, ed., The
Practice of the Bible, 61–83.
23 The most explicit example here is the Abbreviatio Amalarii, in which William shows
how the liturgical unity of the individual Sundays and feast days bring out the
implications of the Biblical readings. In light of the practice set out in the Abbreviatio,
see also e.g, the singing of Psalms mentioned in GPA ii.94, pp. 314–15; iii.100,
pp. 330–1; v.213, pp. 538–9.
24 See for instance the constitutions of the council at Clovesho in 743, extensively
quoted in GPA i.5, pp. 10–13 (esp. pp. 12–13).
25 GRA i.55, pp. 86–7.

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places Bede’s attitude to Scripture squarely within the monastic tradition of

meditative reading described by Jean Leclercq and, more recently, by Duncan
Robertson.26 William’s portrait of Bede illustrates well that the framework
within which such meditation was carried out was liturgical. William
adds: ‘Nam et fidei sane et incuriose sed dulcis fuit eloquentie, in omnibus
explanationibus divinarum scripturarum magis illa rimatus quibus lector
Dei dilectionem et proximi combiberet quam illa quibus vel sales libaret vel
lingue rubiginem limaret’ (‘His faith was sound, his style unpretentious but
agreeable; in all his biblical commentaries he sought out material from which
his reader might absorb the love of God and his neighbour, rather than the
means of displaying a pretty wit or sharpening a rusty pen’).27 The purpose
of studying the Bible was to be called and equipped to serving God and the
wider community.
This approach to the Bible is not restricted to William’s reports of the
teachings of others; it recurs throughout his own teachings. William
echoes his description of Bede in the preface to his Commentary on
Lamentations, stating that while he had spent his youthful years playing
at history, he penitently vowed to devote his more mature years to
another kind of writing, the sort that, more than any other, could enflame
the heart with the love of God.28 William’s commentary is certainly
modelled on those of Bede in that it does not primarily provide analytical,
abstract knowledge of the text; rather, it is a spiritual exercise, a protracted
meditation on the text, guiding the reader to engage with the text as
something interior, to let the soul be moved with the movements of the
lament.29
Closely paralleling the methods of biblical exegesis are William’s allegorical
interpretations of the prayers, ceremonies and sacraments of the liturgy.30 His
Abbreviatio Amalarii offers the clearest example of such allegoresis. Here, he
repeatedly shows how the set prayers, chants and readings for specific days
in the liturgical calendar form organic wholes that reciprocally enhance the
mysterious sense hidden in the texts:

In sexagesima vero sicut septuagesima tribulationibus premimur. Unde et

introitus est Esurge quare obdormis Domine. Oratio, Deus qui conspicis,
quia ex nulla nostra virtute subsistimus. In epistola bonus athleta nos

26 See Leclercq, Love of Learning; Robertson, Lectio Divina.

27 GRA i.5, pp. 88–9.
28 Liber super explanationem Lamentationum, p. 3.
29 See Sønnesyn, ‘Theology’.
30 J. Monti, A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages (San
Fransicso, 2012); Claude Barthe, ‘The “Mystical” Meaning of the Ceremonies of
the Mass: Liturgical Exegesis in the Middle Ages’, in The Genius of the Roman Rite:
Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspectives on Catholic Liturgy, ed. Uwe Michael
Lang (Chicago, 2010), pp. 179–97.

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hortatur exemplo qui tribulationes patienter suffere. … Et qui in evangelio

septuagesime missi sumus in vineam Domini, in evangelio ammonemur
sexagesime ut simus boni agricole tale semen iaciendo quod afferat
fructum in patientia. Sic de ceteris potest studiosus lector intelligere
quod constitutor officiorum nostrorum nichil otiosum in eis voluit
constituere.31

[On Sexagesima Sunday, as on Septuagesima, we are pressed down by

tribulations. Therefore the introit is ‘Arise; why do you sleep, O Lord’, and
the collect is ‘God, you who see’, because we are not in any way sustained
through our own virtue. In the Epistle the good athlete who suffers
tribulations patiently exhorts us through his example. … And we, who in
the Gospel for Septuagesima are sent into the vineyard of the Lord, are in
the Gospel for Sexagesima admonished to be like the seed scattered by the
good farmer that brings forth fruit in patience. In the same way may the
assiduous reader understand that the composer of our Office would not
compose anything idle in them.]

The liturgy, then, is the framework within which the Gospel is understood
and applied in the lives of the monks – the various parts of the liturgy guide
the devout soul through a set of movements designed to allow the Word
of God to take root in the individuals who take part in it. And just as the
various parts of the liturgy for individual days mutually inform each other,
so does the recurring, rhythmical pattern within which these parts find their
appointed place. Concerning the construction of the liturgical cycle, William
writes:

Item lectio significat vetus testamentum quod non multum clare auditum
est dum tantum in iudea notus Deus. Responsorium designat novum
testamentum, cuius sonus exivit in omnem terram. Sicut cantus dulcior est
auditu quam lectio, ita evangelium quod promittit vitam eternam dulcius
est lege que promittit felicitatem caducam.32

[Likewise the reading signifies the Old Testament which is not heard very
clearly while God is known only in Judea. The responsory designates the
New Testament, the sound of which goes out to all the ends of the earth.
Just as singing is sweeter than reading to the hearing, so too the Gospel
that promises eternal life is sweeter than the law that promises perishable
happiness.]

William goes on to explain that while the responsory answers the reading
of the Old Testament law with the teaching of the Gospel, the verse in the
responsory requires the inward application of the Gospel teaching: ‘in versu

31 Abbreviatio Amalarii I.ii, pp. 132–3.

32 Ibid., II.ix, p. 156.

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ad nos versi nos ipsos castigamus’.33 The Alleluia then signifies the joy of the
life to come, not in hope but in actuality.34

Pulcherrimus ergo ordo, ut qui in lectione didicimus, in responsorio

docuimus, in versu teneamus disciplinam, in Alleluia pro talibus studiis
perpetuam habeamus letitiam. Quod ideo repetitur, quia duplex letitia erit
ibi anime et corporis.35

[This is therefore the most beautiful order, that we who learn in the reading,
teach in responsory and maintain discipline in the verse, possess perpetual
joy on account of these pursuits in the Alleluia.]

Again, William highlights how the liturgy guides and motivates the
movements of the participant’s soul. In the jubilant melismas of liturgical
song one experiences a foretaste of the perfect felicity of the life to come:

Cantus quem vocant sequentiam, quem sine ullis verbis quondam uibique,
nunc in aliquibus ecclesiis post Alleluia, solent canere, illam laudem figurat
qua in futura vita sancti Deum laudabunt, magis conscientie puritate quam
sono articulato.36

[The song that they call the sequence, which, without any words was once
performed everywhere, and now in some churches after the Alleluia, is a
figure of the praise with which the saints worship God in the life to come,
more through the purity of their conscience than through the sound they
make.]

It is always for the sake of this inner disposition, and not for exterior
conformity, that the liturgy is performed. The choir should not merely sing
with their voice, but fulfil the sense of the song through their voice;37 their
song acquired mystical meaning not through the sound they made, but
through the purity of their conscience.
This reference to purity of conscience should also remind us that, for
William, participation in the liturgy and meditation on Scripture had
an irreducible moral component. Again his portrayal of Bede offers an
instructive example. Bede’s ability to penetrate into the mysteries of
Scripture within the framework of liturgical observance rested precisely on

33 Ibid.: ‘Quod ideo responsorium dicitur, quia respondet et consonat veteri legi, ut
impleat spiritualiter quod illa carnaliter prefigurat. Habet et versum, quia omnis
bonus predicator postquam aliis predicaverit ad mentem quam convertitur, ne cum
aliis predicat ipse reprobus inveniatur. In lectione ergo discimus, in responsorio
aliis predicamus, in versu ad nos versi, nos ipsos castigamus.’
34 Ibid.: ‘Alleluia vero significat gaudium future vite non in spe sed in re.’
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., p.157.
37 Ibid.: ‘Tenent ergo cantores tabulas, ut ammoneantur non solum voce canere sed
etiam sensum cantus voce explere.’

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 Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

the purity of his character. In fact, his prodigious wisdom was proof of the
blamelessness of his character, just as the biblical adage that into a malicious
soul Wisdom shall not enter promises. Bede’s moral purity allowed him to
penetrate into the deepest mysteries in meditation, and to pour forth the
fruits of these meditations in his teaching: ‘defecatus itaque vitiis subibat
in interiora velaminis, que intus exceperat in animo fora efferens sermone
castigato’ (‘purified from his sins he entered within the veil, and what he
received within it in his heart, he brought forth to the world with disciplined
speech’).38
In the tradition of thought and spirituality to which both Bede and
William belonged, the liturgy, and particularly the cyclical and unceasing
repetition of the Psalms, was both the supreme method for attaining the
purity of spirit which made Bede so receptive to the promptings of the
Spirit, and the best approximation, in this temporal existence, to the ultimate
goal for human development. Such a convoluted statement is in need of
some unpacking. The Christian Middle Ages had inherited from classical
moral philosophy a conception of ethics aimed at realizing the telos, the
highest good and ultimate aim of human nature.39 In the most influential
incarnations of this mode of thought the ultimate end of human nature was
not the satisfaction of the passions or full possession of reified goods, but by
a good way of life, a good way of being-in-act.40 By inculcating the virtues,
that is, stable habits of character disposing those who embodied them to act
in accordance with their telos, one could institute a way of life that would
realize the full potential and the ultimate end of human nature.41 While
this fully realized mode of human life in classical thought was attainable
by human resources alone and in temporal immanent human communities,
Christian dogma had entailed the transposition of this ultimate end to
the transcendent realm, which could only be attained through the gift of
divine grace.42 The perfection of human existence was no longer a life of
civic virtue in a political community, but communion with God through

38 GRA i.59, pp. 90–1.

39 I have described this in detail in Sønnesyn, Ethics of History, pp. 21–41.
40 It would be beyond the present scope to go into detail here. My reading of medieval
ethics on this point is laid out in Sønnesyn, ‘Ut sine fine amet summam essentiam:
The Eudaemonist Ethics of St. Anselm’, Mediaeval Studies 70 (2008), 1–29; and ‘Qui
Recta Quae Docet Sequitur, Vere Philosophus Est: The Ethics of John of Salisbury’,
in A Companion to John of Salisbury, ed. C. Grellard and F. Lachaud (Leiden, 2014),
pp. 307–38.
41 See e.g. I. P. Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought
from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century (Leiden, 2011).
42 On this I am fundamentally influenced by the thesis argued in H. de Lubac, The
Mystery of the Supernatural (London, 1967); see Sønnesyn, ‘Ethics of John of
Salisbury’, pp. 323–30.

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grace – in a glass darkly during earthly life and face to face in the life to
come.43
For our present purposes, it is crucial to note that prayer, and
particularly liturgical prayer centred on the Psalms, constituted the closest
approximation to human beatitude within temporal existence.44 Catherine
Pickstock has suggested that ancient as well as Christian moral philosophy
was consummated not in a system of doctrine, but in liturgical praise, and
the Church Fathers, to whom William constantly professed his allegiance,
certainly saturated their written works with references to such an idea.45
Augustine, who more than any other single thinker translated classical
eudaimonism into a Christian framework, emphasized the uniquely
transformative power of liturgical prayer, and described liturgical praise
as the only adequate response on the part of human beings to the salvific,
gratuitous love offered by God.46 Benedict admonished his monks to put
nothing above the Opus Dei, and this admonition was in turn based on the
scriptural injunction to pray unceasingly. William, in his role as cantor, will
have been responsible for translating this into practice at Malmesbury. In the
fifth and final book of the Gesta pontificum William’s pride in the tradition
of prayer and learning established by Aldhelm shines through, and there
is every reason to believe that William was familiar with the theological
underpinnings and implications of liturgical celebration. For example,
William likely knew the following passage from Gregory the Great’s
Homilies on Ezekiel also disseminated to medieval monks through Alcuin’s
de usu psalmorum:

Vox enim psalmodie cum per intentionem cordis agitur, per hanc
omnipotenti Domino ad cor iter paratur, ut intente menti vel prophetie
mysteria vel compunctionis gratiam infundat. Unde scriptum est:
Sacrificium laudis honorificabit me, et illic iter est quo ostendam illi
salutare Dei … In sacrificio igitur laudis fit Iesu iter ostensionis, quia dum
per psalmodiam compunctio effunditur, via nobis in corde fit per quam ad
Iesum in fine pervenitur.47

43 Cf. Sønnesyn, Ethics of History, pp. 24–30.

44 See R. Fulton, ‘Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice’,
Speculum 81 (2006), 700–33; M. A. Edsall, ‘Learning from the Exemplar: Anselm’s
Prayers and Meditations and the Charismatic Text’, Mediaeval Studies 72 (2010),
161–96; S. Boynton, ‘Prayer as Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-
Century Monastic Psalters’, Speculum 82 (2007), 896–931.
45 See Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy
(Oxford, 1998).
46 Among an enormous number of relevant passages, cf. e.g. Augustine, Enarrationes
in Psalmos XLIX.21, CXXXIV, ed. D. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, 2 vols. (Turnhout,
1990), I, 590–1; II, 1937–57.
47 Gregory the Great, Homeliae in Hiezechihelem propheta, 1.1.15, PL 76, 793.

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 Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

[When the voice of the Psalms is expressed from the intention of the heart,
a path is made for God to the heart through this act, so that he may fill the
attentive mind with the mysteries of prophecy or compunction. Thus it is
written: The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me, and there is the way by which I
will show him the salvation of God (Ps. 49. 23). In the sacrifice of praise, then, a
path or way of showing is made for Jesus; for while compunction is poured
out through the psalmody, a way is made through our hearts by which we
may ultimately reach Jesus.]

Thus, the life of praying the liturgy and meditating on Scripture was, within
monastic thought, envisioned as the supreme way to inculcating virtue and
embodying the Word of God, to opening up one’s own life to the workings
of grace. In this way, the monk participating in the singing of the Divine
Office devoutly, with proper interior disposition, cooperates with divine
grace in a movement of the soul that allows it to reach its appointed end in
an encounter with the living Word of God. The liturgy was a school of prayer,
an apprenticeship of virtue – the adage ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ points to
the symbiotic unity of liturgical prayer and the faithful Christian life. And it
was not only in the practice of the psalmody, but also in the Eucharist that the
Church effected the union of individual believers into one body.48
Ultimately, William’s consistent emphasis on a way of life informed by
and centred on the liturgy needs to be read in the context of the tradition
of thought illustrated by the passage from Gregory. On several occasions
William refers to the movement of the soul made possible through
participating in the liturgy. In the Abbreviatio, concerning the prayers recited
after the readings, William explains: ‘post lectiones sequuntur orationes in
quibus rogat sacerdos spiritualiter in nobis complendum quod lector dixit
corporaliter factum’ (‘after the readings follow prayers, in which the priest
asks that what the lector has spoken of as a corporeal fact be fulfilled in us in
a spiritual way’).49 He also mentions reports of Bishop Ælfwold of Sherborne,
who was especially devoted to St Cuthbert: ‘Peneque semper antiphonam
illam de Sancto tenebat corde, ruminabat ore, exercebat opere: “Sanctus
antistes Cuthbertus, vir perfectus in omnibus, in turbis erat monachus, digne
cunctis reverendus”’ (‘The well-known antiphon concerning the saint he
would almost always have in mind, rehearse aloud, and put into practice:
“Holy Bishop Cuthbert, a man perfect in all things, was a monk amid such
crowds and worthy of respect from all”’ ).50 William’s terminology here
is resonant with the theology of prayer and liturgy that was revitalized in

48 See e.g. H. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle
Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds (London, 2006); Monti, A Sense of the Sacred; Barthe,
‘The “Mystical” Meaning of the Ceremonies of the Mass’.
49 Abbreviatio Amalarii I.xii, p. 143.
50 GPA ii.82.4–5, pp. 282–5. For the antiphon, ‘Sanctus antistes Cuthbertus’, cf. Can

204487.

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Benedictine monasticism during the twelfth century: tenebat corde, ruminabat

ore, exercebat opere. By devoutly internalizing Scripture and the prayers of the
liturgy, by meditating repeatedly on these texts and by making it the rule for
living, one could develop the virtues that led to true happiness. The purpose
of the whole exercise was not the perfunctory and mechanical repetition of a
set of texts, but the incarnation of the Word in the lives of believers.
Still to be addressed is the purpose that the writing and reading of
history serves within such a framework. William’s scholarly pursuits need
not be disengaged from his spiritual life, for the liturgical life, to which he
was evidently committed, readily accommodated his historiographical
enterprises. It would be far beyond the present scope to demonstrate that
William’s scholarly endeavours can be harmonized with the monastic theory
and practice of Opus Dei, although I have made a beginning here. I would
instead like to suggest for future work some elements of what a resolution of
the apparent tension between history and liturgy should contain.
Firstly, we should remember what the ultimate purpose of writing and
reading history was according to William. History’s primary function was
moral. The formation of character and a good way of life was the chief benefit
William wanted his readers to attain through the reading of his works.51 As
we have seen, the theology of liturgy underpinning liturgical observance
within the tradition to which William belonged presented the transformation
of character and the attainment of the supreme good for human beings as
the ultimate purpose of liturgical prayer as well. The two practices, then,
converge in their ultimate purpose.
Secondly, history and liturgy relied on the same didactic principles and
methods to attain their aims. I have argued elsewhere that the only way
in which history could realize its purported moral-didactic function was
through being embodied in practice by the reader through imitation of
examples and meditation leading to new and reformed ways of living based
on a deeper understanding of the human condition in time.52 Such imitatio
and meditatio correspond very closely to the mode through which the lectio
divina and the liturgy exercise their perfective functions. The liturgy was not
merely aimed at teaching the best possible way of human activity and living;
it was the perfect way of being human. History and liturgy also converge
in their methods. It was only through embodiment in practice that their fruits
could be harvested. While the liturgical life represents the grace-filled fullness
of human existence, history could still play an important role as a discipline
preparing human beings for the lofty heights of meditative contemplation
through inculcating the virtues necessary for informed participation in the
liturgy.

51 See GRA ep. iii, pp. 10–13; GRA ii. prol., pp. 150–3; Polyhistor, ed. H. T. Oullette
(Binghampton, NY, 1982), p. 37; cf. Sønnesyn, Ethics of History, pp. 82–3, 89–95.
52 See Sønnesyn, Ethics of History, passim.

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Thirdly, the liturgy provided a framework within which history could

be understood, and within which the moral lessons of history could be
discerned. Historical narratives could be included within the liturgical
framework, as readings for Matins and possibly for Chapter.53 But even
narratives unsuitable for liturgical usage could and, I would argue, would
have been read within the powerful overarching matrices of interpretation
formed by the liturgy and scriptural exegesis.54 The same God could be seen
active in secular affairs just as much as in overtly spiritual events, and the
meaning of God’s providential acts and its significance for human lives could
be extracted from historical narratives using the interpretive framework
developed in the monastic way of life.55
A liturgical rhythm governed monastic life in a fundamental, all-embracing
way. In monasteries, the writing of history and the pursuit of learning often
unfolded within liturgical contexts. The theological tradition to which
William was heir presented a theology of liturgy capable of governing one’s
entire life, of using the services of learning and scholarship to progress
towards the ultimate end of humankind. History, on the other hand, was
consciously written and read in order to guide readers towards these ultimate
ends, using didactic methods that prepared its audience for participation in
the transformative practices of liturgical prayer. The basic principles of the
liturgy thus converge with the basic principles of the reading and writing of
history, but the actual unity of the two disciplines are not found on the level
of principles and concepts, but only in the organic wholes of human lives. It
was ultimately in its practice within an overall conception of the monastic life
that history could be placed at the service of liturgy.
The temporal sphere of history was, in and of itself, incommensurable
with the transcendent and eternal aims of the liturgy, but it was an explicit
aim and joyful hope of the monastic life that this incommensurability could
be overcome through grace and the transformative efficacy of prayer. The
view of liturgy that emerges from William’s writings, read in the light of
his theological context, suggests that the lex orandi that governed his life as
monachus et cantor was also the lex scribendi in his historiographical practice.

53 As David Ganz’s chapter in this volume demonstrates, it is difficult to draw strict

boundaries between historiographical texts and other genres dealing with events
and people of the past. For the use of historical material in a liturgical context, see
e.g. R. D. Ray, ‘Orderic Vitalis and his Readers’, Studia Monastica 14 (1972), 17–33.
54 See Robertson, Lectio Divina; Stock, Ethics of Reading.
55 See Bagge, ‘Ethics, Politics, and Providence’.

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 14
Of the Making of Little Books:
The Minor Works of William of Newburgh

A. B. Kraebel

Among the most celebrated historians of twelfth-century England, William of

Newburgh (1135/6–c. 1200) has a long-standing reputation for bookishness.
According to Rachel Fulton: ‘The world came to William in books, and it was
through books that he was most comfortable making sense of it.’1 Fulton
follows the Rolls Series editor, Richard Howlett, in adducing a long list of
sources used by William in his Historia Anglorum, including the histories of
Symeon of Durham (d. after 1129) and Henry of Huntingdon (d. c. 1157).2 Yet
there is good reason to doubt whether William’s reading was as extensive as
Howlett suggested – and this not just because of the apparently negligible
size of Newburgh’s library.3 Indeed, John Gillingham has demonstrated that
many of William’s alleged sources, Symeon and Henry included, almost
certainly reached him second-hand, mediated through the compiling
efforts of another Yorkshire historian, Roger of Howden (d. c. 1201).4 This
dependence on another northern writer, one whose history could be found
in the library at nearby Rievaulx (now London, Inner Temple, MS 511.2),
suggests the local and limited nature of William’s bibliographical resources.
This sense of regional limitation is reinforced by his other major work, a
Marian commentary on the Song of Songs. Though he could find in patristic
writings ‘quomodo … vel in ecclesiam vel in excellentis meriti animam
idem nuptiale carmen intelligi debeat’ (‘how this nuptial song should be

1 R. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200
(New York, 2002), p. 433.
2 Ibid., citing Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett,

Rolls Series, 4 vols. (London, 1884–5), I, xxv–xxxvi. See, similarly, N. F. Partner,

Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago,
1977), pp. 60–1; J. Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge,
1999), pp. 294–5.
3 In addition to the manuscript of William’s Historia, discussed below, only two other

extant volumes can be tied to Newburgh, and all three Newburgh books date from
around the time of William’s death. See N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain:
A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London, 1964), p. 133; A. Lawrence-Mathers,
Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, 2003),
p. 269.
4 J. Gillingham, ‘Two Yorkshire Historians Compared: Roger of Howden and William

of Newburgh’, Haskins Society Journal 12 (2002), 15–37.

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 A. B. Kraebel

understood either in regard to the Church or a soul of distinguished merit’),

William was apparently unaware of the more recent Marian commentaries
on the Song by such writers as Rupert of Deutz (d. c. 1129) or Honorius
Augustodunensis (d. 1154).5 In light of these limitations, William’s elaborate
historical and exegetical writings are all the more impressive, revealing that
even with a small library one can still be bookish.
Were he to be judged solely on the basis of these two major works, William
might seem to present a split authorial personality. At the very least, his
Historia and his commentary could almost be read as unrelated productions,
each composed in response to a specific request by a different Cistercian
official: the Historia for Ernald, abbot of Rievaulx (r. 1189–99), and the
commentary for Walter, abbot of Byland (r. 1142–96).6 Working to overcome
this division, Fulton has emphasized the degree to which, in William’s
commentary, Christ and the Virgin become ‘historical actors’ and the Marian
reading of the Song is treated as ‘not a figure of history but history itself’.7 Yet,
though there is certainly some validity to the continuities that Fulton seeks to
trace, it is possible to trace them more precisely. In particular, consideration
of William’s minor works – three short texts that are designated homilie or
sermones in the surviving manuscripts – reveals not only continuities, but also
a sense of a developing career and of distinct, though at times overlapping,
authorial interests.8 The range of interests expressed in William’s writings,
especially British and English history (seen in the Historia and homily
on St Alban) and liturgical song (seen in the commentary on the Song of
Songs and the homily on the Trinity) suggests that William may have been
his priory’s cantor. Further, his short texts indicate that, lacking access to a
larger supply of books, William became his own best source, and, across his
full corpus, he tended to focus his efforts on elaborating a limited range of
recurrent ideas.
Certainly the most prominent recurring concern in William’s writing
is, very generally, praise of the Virgin Mary. In addition to his commentary
on the Song, one of his homilies is focused on giving literal and spiritual
readings of Luke 11. 27, when an anonymous woman cries to Christ: ‘Beatus
venter qui te portavit et ubera que suxisti’ (‘Blessed is the womb that bore
thee and the paps which gave thee suck’). Unsurprisingly, William borrows

5 William of Newburgh, Explanatio sacri epithalamii in matrem sponsi: A Commentary

on the Canticle of Canticles, ed. J. C. Gorman (Fribourg, 1960), p. 71. Throughout the
following, I have silently repunctuated editions of Latin texts. William’s Marian
commentary is compared to these other works at length by Fulton, Judgment to
Passion, esp. chapters 6 and 8.
6 See the prefatory letters to the two works, Explanatio, pp. 71–2; Chronicles, I, 3–4. For
the dates of Ernald and Walter’s abbacies, see Heads, pp. 129, 140.
7 Fulton, Judgment to Passion, p. 441.
8 I provide an edition of these works in The Sermons of William of Newburgh, ed. A. B.
Kraebel (Toronto, 2010).

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images and phrases from one of his texts on this subject when composing the
other. As part of his literal reading in the homily, for example, attempting to
recover what the woman meant by her pithy exclamation, William writes:

Beatus inquam ille venter non quia virgineus, nam multi sunt ventres
virginei, nec quia plenus, nam multi sunt ventres pleni, sed quia virginea
simul et plenus, quod scilicet nullus alius. Et beata illa ubera non quia
virginea, nam multa sunt ubera virginea, nec quia plena, quia multa
sunt ubera plena, sed quia virginea simul et plena, quod scilicet nulla
alia.9

[That womb is blessed not because it is virginal, for there are many virgin
wombs, nor because it is full, for there are many full wombs, but because
it is at once virginal and full, which is true of none other. And those breasts
are blessed not because they are virginal, for there are many virgin breasts,
nor because they are full, for there are many full breasts, but because they
are at once virginal and full, which is true of no others.]

Similarly, in the prologue to his commentary, William explains that the Virgin
alone is able to sing the Song of Songs,

Non quia virgo est, quod commune habet cum multis, sicut nec quia mater
est, quod itidem commune habet cum tam multis, sed quia fecunda virgo et
virga puerpera, quod scilicet in ea unicum et singulare est.10

[Not because she is a virgin, which she has in common with many, nor
because she is a mother, which she similarly has in common with just as
many, but because she was a fecund virgin and a flowering rod, which is
unique and singular in her.]

Deferring for the moment the question of which of the two is the source for the
other, it is apparent that some borrowing has occurred. The ideas expressed
in each passage are conventional enough, but the common structure of the
phrases – setting the Virgin apart from other women not because she has one
or the other of two common though usually mutually exclusive features, but
because she has both simultaneously – would seem to be one which William
especially favoured.11
In the prologue to William’s commentary, this notion of Mary’s ‘unique
and singular’ ability to sing the Song of Songs forms part of a larger
discussion of the different types of song which creation offers in praise of the
divine. William first distinguishes between what he calls the ‘old song’ and
the ‘new song’:

9 Sermons, p. 68.
10 Explanatio, p. 75.
11 For other correspondences between the homily and commentary, see the notes to
my edition.

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 A. B. Kraebel

Canticum vetus est ad quod invitatur omnis intellectualis creatura, cum

dicitur: Benedicite Domino omnia opera eius (Ps. 102. 22). Canticum vero
novum est ad quod invitatur tantummodo omnis terra, id est omnis ex
redemptis hominibus ecclesia, cum dicitur: Cantate Domino canticum novum:
cantante Domino omnis terra (Ps. 95. 1). Utrumque sane canticum cantat
omnis terra, id est redempti homines, sed cum sanctis angelis canticum
vetus cantat creatori; sola vero canticum novum cantat redemptori. Sola
inquam terra cantat canticum novum, quia veritas de terra (non de celo)
orta est, id est verbum caro (non angelus) factum est et habitavit in nobis (cf.
Ps. 84. 12 and John 1. 14).12

[The old song is the one to which every intellectual creature has been
invited, when it is said: Let all his works bless the Lord (Ps. 102. 22). The new
song is the one to which the whole earth, i.e., the whole Church of those
who have been redeemed, has been invited, when it is said: Sing to the Lord
a new song: sing to the Lord all the whole earth (Ps. 95. 1). The whole earth, i.e.,
the redeemed people, sings both of these songs, but it sings the old song
together with the holy angels to its creator, and it sings the new song alone
to its redeemer. Indeed, the earth alone sings the new song, since the truth
has sprung out of the earth (not out of heaven), i.e., the Word was made
flesh (not angel) and dwelt among us (cf. Ps. 84. 12 and John 1. 14).]

While the general canticum novum is sung by all redeemed humanity, William
goes on to describe a special form of this song which can only be voiced by
the virgin chorus described in Apoc. 14. 3–4, ‘qui non solum integritatem
mentis cum ceteris sed etiam integritatem carnis pre ceteris agno mente
et carne integro dicarunt’ (‘who dedicated to the Lamb, itself untouched
in mind and flesh, not only the integrity of their mind like the rest of the
redeemed, but also, beyond the rest, the integrity of their flesh’).13 Without
doubt, William says, Mary is one of the virgins who follow the Lamb and
recite this song, but she also stands apart from this crowd, singing (as we have
seen) the Song of Songs, ‘quod nemo potest dicere agno nisi illa que peperit
agnum’ (‘which no one is able to sing to the Lamb except for the one who
gave birth to the Lamb’).14 With this schema in mind, William can then begin
his interpretation of the Song as a dialogue between the Virgin and her son.15
Beyond the suggestion that it is a song which humanity redeemed
shares with the angels, William says very little about the canticum vetus in
this prologue. A fuller treatment of this topic does appear, however, in the
second of his minor works, a homily explaining the significance of the lesser
doxology, ‘Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto’, together with another

12 Explanatio, p. 73.
13 Ibid., pp. 74–5.
14 Ibid., p. 75.
15 The distinction among different types of songs offered in the commentary’s
prologue is also discussed by Fulton, Judgment to Passion, pp. 436–7.

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Trinitarian versicle, ‘Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum Sancto Spiritu’.16

Though the phrase canticum vetus is never used in the homily, it seems clear
enough that William is describing the same type of song in both of these
works. It is a song, he says in the homily, shared by both humanity and the
angels, though it is sung ‘multo sollemnius atque suavius ab angelis quam ab
hominibus’ (‘much more solemnly and sweetly by angels than by people’).17
In response to their creation, William writes, the angels ‘in gratiarum actione
se totos dederunt, et pro sue beatificationis letitia sollemnes choros ducentes
claris vocibus cantare coeperunt: Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum Sancto
Spiritu’ (‘devoted themselves wholly to giving thanks, and, rejoicing over
their beatification, they began to lead solemn choirs and with clear voices
to sing: Let us bless the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit’).18 At the
opening of his homily, William suggests that, since the beginning of time, the
angelic choirs have been singing a Trinitarian verse that is now, in his present,
also sung by his fellow canons.
This assertion creates a problem for William, namely how it is possible
to know that humanity and the angels share this specific song of praise. To
address this problem, William turns to scriptural accounts of visionaries and
prophets – writers who claim to have peered (or, indeed, to have been taken)
into the heavens and who, therefore, must have some knowledge of angelic
song. At the same time, William also adapts the interpretive commonplace
of the three Augustinian modes of sight (visionum genera tria), using this
schema to explain the discrepancies among the different visionary accounts
and to weigh their relative authority accordingly.19 William follows earlier
commentators in identifying Paul as the most authoritative biblical seer, since,
as the Apostle suggests in II Corinthians 12. 2, he was taken up into the third
and highest heaven. Here, William writes, pushing the visual focus of the
commentary tradition in a distinctly auditory direction, the Apostle ‘interfuit
choris angelicis et … angelos audivit sollemniter canentes’ (‘was in the midst
of the angelic choirs and … heard the angels solemnly singing’).20 Paul heard
in a purely intellectual and unmediated manner (the third Augustinian

16 See Sermons, p. 10 n. 30, for the use of these texts in the liturgy.
17 Ibid., p. 37.
18 Ibid., p. 38.
19 I discuss these modes of sight, and their adaptation in the early medieval

commentary tradition, in the introduction to Richard of St Victor, ‘On the

Apocalypse of John (Selections)’, in Interpretation of Scripture: Theory, ed. F. T.
Harkins and F. A. Van Liere (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 329–70 (pp. 330–6); see too
Sermons, p. 12. At various points in his homily, William’s language indicates that he
is adapting this visual scheme to suit his auditory interests: e.g., Sermons, p. 41, ‘Ibi
sane hoc ipsum audivit angelos canentes quod Paulus in tertio celo, sed aliter, sicut
et hoc ipsum ibi vidit quod Paulus in tertio celo, sed aliter. … Porro in medio celo
corpus sed quasi corpus cernitur, nec sonus sed quasi sonus auditur.’
20 Ibid., p. 39.

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 A. B. Kraebel

mode), but this lack of mediation also made it impossible to convey

adequately in human language or with a human voice what he had heard –
herein lies the difference between the clear singing of the angels (canunt clare)
and human hoarseness (canunt rauce).21 Despite these limitations, however,
William believes that Paul was able to communicate something of the angelic
singer’s voice (vox canentis) and the heavenly song’s form (forma canendi),
and he suggests that the Apostle attempted this translation in Romans 11. 36,
‘Quoniam ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia, ipsi gloria in secula’
(‘For of him and by him and in him are all things, to whom be glory for
ever’).22 Like the liturgical texts quoted at the beginning of the homily, Paul’s
rendering of angelic song is Trinitarian in its form and focus.
William supports this notion by turning to the accounts of Isaiah and John,
visionaries who reached the second heaven and therefore perceived in the
second Augustinian mode (called alternately spiritual or imaginary). In their
case, William writes, ‘per quantas imaginum figuras menti prophetice veritas
refulgebat’ (‘the truth flashed in their prophetic mind by means of great
figures of images’).23 This figural mediation, again in a specifically auditory
form, is foregrounded in John’s account, at Apoc. 14. 2, when he writes that
he hears a voice as the voice of many waters, and like harpists harping on
their harps. Responding to this verse, William comments:

Non dicit se audisse vocem aquarum multarum aut tonitrui magni aut
cytharedorum, sed per ‘tanquam’ et ‘sicut’ indicat se non tales sonos aure
corporali, sed talium similitudines sonorum aure hausisse spirituali.24

[He does not say that he heard the voice of many waters or of a great
thunder or of harpists, but by means of ‘as’ and ‘like’ he indicates that he
did not hear sounds with his bodily ear, but rather he imbibed similitudes
of such sounds with his spiritual ear.]

The reference to a ‘spiritual ear’ indicates that John is hearing in the second
Augustinian mode: he discerns heavenly (that is, non-bodily) things
represented to him under the cover of sensory experiences derived from the
physical (that is, bodily) world, though without any physical bodies actually
being present. This level of mediation underscores the notion that Isaiah
and John, like Paul, were not able to capture the words of true angelic song
(there being no words as such to capture), but William can nevertheless use
the threefold angelic sanctus reported in both Isaiah 6. 3 and Apoc. 4. 8 to
confirm that the Trinitarian doxology of Romans 11. 36 was Paul’s attempt to
reproduce what he heard in the heavens. Admittedly, the liturgical texts which

21 Cf. ibid., p. 37.

22 Cf. ibid., p. 39.
23 Ibid., p. 41.
24 Ibid., p. 43.

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William cites at the beginning of his homily represent more rudimentary

forms of these angelic songs, written in this way ‘propter simpliciores … qui
apostolicorum profunditatem verborum penetrare non poterant’ (‘on account
of simpler people … who were unable to grasp the depth of the Apostle’s
words’).25 Insofar as they preserve this Trinitarian quality, however, all of
these different songs can fall under the category of the canticum vetus.
Though their content does not overlap in the same way as his Marian
homily and his commentary on the Song, the Trinity homily does serve to
complement the commentary’s prologue, and taken together these two texts
present William’s full account of biblical, liturgical and heavenly song. Their
interdependent quality suggests that one was composed with the other in
mind – yet, before turning to address the order of their composition, it will be
useful to give some consideration to the remaining homily as well.
William’s third short text is an account of the conversion and death of
the British proto-martyr, Alban, believed to have been killed c. 300 in the
Diocletian persecutions. The homily alternates between brief descriptions
of scenes from Alban’s life (on which, more below) and longer passages
developing the general theological or moral significance of those scenes.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in these elaborative reflections the content
of the homily sometimes coincides with material in William’s commentary on
the Song. For example, after opening the homily by exclaiming, ‘Inter rosas
martyrum rutilat insigniter noster Albanus’ (‘Our Alban’s redness shines
brilliantly among the roses of the martyrs’), William then asks, ‘Numquid
rubet inter rosas et non candet inter lilia?’ (‘Could his redness shine among
the roses and his whiteness not glow among the lilies?’). He finds his answer
in the Song of Songs:

Loquitur sponsa in Canticis de summo martyre, martyrum capite, Dilectus,

inquiens, meus candidus et rubicundus (Song 5. 10). Quale autem caput, talia
et membra. In tantum enim membra, in quantum similitudo capitis in eis. …
Ergo quale caput martyrum, tales et martyres. Ergo et ipsi non tantum
rubicundi sed etiam candidi, distincte tamen. Quippe illi ideo candidi quia
candidati, ille vero ita candidus quod non candidatus. Ille inquam candidus
natus et ideo minime candidatus, illi vero tetri nati sed renascendo candidati.
Quia ergo similitudo hominis in eis, illius inquam hominis de quo dicitur,
Dilectus meus candidus et rubicundus, etiam ipsi sunt candidi et rubicundi.
In vita candidi, in morte rubicundi. Candidi remissione peccatorum et
munditia morum, rubicundi vero cruore martyrii.26

[In the Song the Bride speaks of the highest martyr, the head of the martyrs,
saying, My beloved is white and ruddy (Song 5. 10). As with the head, so with
the members. For they are members insofar as they have the image of the

25 Ibid., p. 40.
26 Ibid., pp. 87–8.

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 A. B. Kraebel

head within them. … Therefore as with the head of the martyrs, so with
the martyrs. Therefore too they are not only red but also white, but with
a difference. For they are white because they were made white, and he
is white because he was not made white. He, I say, was born white and
therefore was not at all made white, while they were born ugly but were
made white in their rebirth. Therefore, because they have the similitude of
that man within them (the man about whom it is said, My beloved is white
and ruddy), they are white and red. In their life white, in their death red.
White in the remission of their sins and the cleanness of their lives, red in
the blood of their martyrdom.]

Indeed, the same language appears in William’s commentary on Song 5. 10,

with a similar (not to say similarly excessive) play on the differences between
candidus and candidatus.

Candidus, id est sine macula peccati, et rubicundus, id est occisus pro peccatis
nostris in similitudine carnis peccati. Ita candidus quod non candidatus, ita
mundus quod non mundatus. … Ideo autem non tantum est candidus sed
etiam rubicundus, ne solus sit candidus. Rubuit enim sanguine passionis,
et in eo laventur et super nivem dealbentur (Ps. 50. 9) quos preordinavit ad
vitam, fiantque ex atris candidi, et ideo candidi quia candidati. Solus ergo
est ita candidus, quod non candidatus, per quem et in quo alii candidantur.
Solus est in semetipso singulariter candidus, qui ad candidandos alios
salubriter est rubicundus.27

[White, i.e., without the stain of sin, and ruddy, i.e., killed for our sins in the
similitude of the flesh of sin. Thus white, since he was not made white: thus
clean, since he was not made clean. … But he is therefore not only white but
also ruddy, lest he alone be white. He was made red with the blood of his
Passion, and in that blood those preordained to life are washed and made
whiter than snow (Ps. 50. 9), and from their blackness they are made white,
and therefore they are white because they have been made white. He alone
is white without being made white, through whom and in whom others are
made white. He alone is in himself singularly white, who is reddened to
make others white for their salvation.]

The commentary’s rationale for describing Christ as ‘white’ without

qualification is matched, in the homily, by the account of Alban as ‘white’
only by virtue of Christ’s whiteness and sacrificial redness: for everyone but
Christ, being ‘white’ is (as it were) an acquired characteristic. Even in the
homily, William is clear that Song 5. 10 should be understood as pertaining
primarily to Christ, and it is descriptive of the martyrs, Alban included, only
insofar as they present in themselves a similitudo Christi.
Though Fulton and the commentary’s editor, John Gorman, take William
at face value when he claims that his Marian reading offered ‘novam et

27 Explanatio, p. 249.

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intentatam ab omnibus … explanationem’ (‘a new exposition, untried by

anyone’), his gloss on Song 5. 10 indicates the extent to which he could in
fact depend on what he calls the ‘egregios maiorum labores’ (‘exceptional
work of older writers’).28 Whether these maiores identified the sponsa as the
Virgin, the Church, or the individual pious soul, they would nevertheless
agree with William that, in verses like this one, the sponsa was describing
Christ – and this agreement is crucial, not least because it can help to indicate
whether the commentary or the homily on Alban is the earlier of William’s
works. The interpretation of Song 5. 10 in William’s commentary reflects
an understanding of this verse found in the work of Bede (d. 735), whose
exegesis was the source for similar interpretations in the commentary of
Haimo of Auxerre (d. c. 878) and, in William’s own century, the Glossa
ordinaria.29 In the Glossa, the verse is met with two brief interlinear notes,
the first explaining that the Bridegroom is candidus ‘quia peccatum non fecit’
(‘because he did not commit any sin’) and the second that he is rubicundus
‘quia in sanguine suo peccatores lavit’ (‘because he washed sinners in his
blood’), as well as a slightly longer marginal gloss: ‘Primo mundus et sanctus
venit in mundum, postmodum passione cruentus exivit de mundo’ (‘He
first came into the world clean and holy, and later he went out of the world
bloody from his Passion’).30 William appears to have seized upon the ideas
and language of traditional glosses like these and developed them in original
ways in his commentary, and he subsequently extended this notion of Christ
as candidus et rubicundus to describe Alban as well. William’s commentary,
that is, seems to have served as a source for his later homily on the British
martyr.31
Sources like his commentary on the Song thus supplied William with
material for reflecting on the significance of Alban’s life, but they could
not provide the details of the life itself. To that end, William turned to
Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica I.vii, a work which he calls ‘veracis Bede
historiam’ (‘the history of truthful Bede’).32 William’s account of Alban’s
life and death appears to be drawn almost exclusively from the Historia
ecclesiastica, and he often borrows words and whole phrases from this

28 Ibid., pp. 364, 71. See, e.g., Fulton, Judgment to Passion, p. 434: ‘William was left
with only meditation and prayer to guide him.’ Similarly, Gorman devotes only
a single paragraph in his introduction to discussing William’s sources, asserting
(not incorrectly) that ‘William shows a great deal of independence in his writing’
(Explanatio, p. 35).
29 For Bede, see PL 91, 1161cd; for Haimo, PL 70, 1085.
30 Glossa ordinaria in Canticum canticorum, ed. M. Dove, CCCM 170, pars 22 (Turnhout,
1997), p. 299. As Dove indicates, all of these glosses are drawn, ultimately, from
Bede.
31 For a second example supporting this conclusion, compare the interpretations of
Song 2. 16 in Explanatio, p. 141, and Sermons, p. 89.
32 Sermons, p. 91. For Bede’s account of Alban, see HE I.vii, pp. 28–35.

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 A. B. Kraebel

source.33 His description of the pagan judge hearing rumours that Alban
offered refuge to a Christian cleric –

Pervenit ad aures nefandi presidis quod penes Albanum latere vir Dei,
iussitque eum diligenter perquiri. Tum Albanus magistrum dimisit, ipsum
quidem utilitati plurimorum servare intendens, se autem passioni pro eo
constanter exponens.34

[It reached the ears of the wicked ruler that the man of God was hidden in
Alban’s household, and he ordered him diligently to be sought out. Alban
then sent his master away, resolutely putting himself forward to suffer in
his place in the hope that his master could help many more people.]

– begins by following Bede closely, with the added reference to the priest’s
future utility anticipating William’s next major elaborative passage, in which
he discusses when it is appropriate to flee from such persecution.35 In other
cases, William seizes on small details in Bede’s narrative and develops them
imaginatively. While Bede simply notes, for example, ‘Contigit autem iudicem
ea hora qua ad eum Albanus adducebatur aris adsistere ac demonibus hostias
offerre’ (‘It happened that, when Alban was taken to him, the judge was
standing before the altars and offering sacrifices to demons’), William adds
a description of the judge’s anger at having his devotions interrupted by the
captive Christian.36 He writes:

Exhibetur a militibus presidi aris tunc forte adsistenti atque immolanti

demonibus. … Impius enim iudex, funestis illis sacris specialiter intentus,
in eorum contemptorem illo loco et illa sibi hora exhibitum gravius erat
seviturus, ut quanto diis suis gratia loci et temporis videretur esse devotior,
tanto etiam hostibus eorum … infestior redderetur.37

[The soldiers present him to the ruler, who was then by chance standing
before the altars and offering sacrifices to demons. … Especially intent on
those deadly sacrifices, the impious judge, presented with someone who
scorned them, became more gravely enraged, so that he might be made all
the more threatening to the enemies of his gods, the more he appeared to be
devoted to them.]

33 At the end of the homily, however, William does quote the brief mention of Alban
in a hymn by Fortunatus: see Sermons, p. 109.
34 Sermons, p. 94.
35 Cf. HE I.vii, p. 28: ‘Pervenit ad aures nefandi principis confessorem Christi, cui
necdum fuerat locus martyrii deputatus, penes Albanum latere; tugurium martyris
pervenissent, mox se sanctus Albanus pro hospite ac magistro suo ipsius habitu, id
est caracalla qua vestiebatur, indutus militibus exhibuit, atque ad iudicem vinctus
perductus est.’ Other instances of William’s close adherence to Bede’s text are noted
in my edition.
36 Ibid., p. 30.
37 Sermons, p. 98.

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Responding to Alban’s obvious disbelief in the validity of his sacrifices, the

judge’s rage is either feigned or calculated, an attempt to appear more devout
in order to intimidate his prisoner even before their interview begins. Such
embellishments are common in the homily – William regularly enlivens the
events described by Bede by imagining the complex thoughts that lie behind
them.38
In its adherence to ‘the history of truthful Bede’, this homily bears
comparison with the prologue of William’s second major work, the Historia
Anglorum, which includes a lengthy discussion of Bede as the fons et origo of
all English historiography. The prologue begins, straightforwardly, by noting,
‘Historiam gentis nostre, id est Anglorum, venerabilis presbyter et monachus
Beda conscripsit’ (‘The venerable priest and monk Bede committed the history
of our people, the English, to writing’), but this dry observation quickly gives
way to effusive praise.39 Bede is an historian ‘de cuius sapientia et sinceritate
dubitare fas non est’ (‘whose wisdom and honesty cannot be doubted’), and,
though other writers have recorded the history of England after Bede, ‘illi
quidem minime comparandi’ (‘they pale in comparison to him’).40 One of
these more recent historians is so mendacious and willfully deceptive that
he must be singled out for censure. This, of course, is Geoffrey of Monmouth
(d. c. 1155). William describes Geoffrey as writing ‘impudenti vanitate’ (‘with
shameless vanity’), such that ‘quam petulanter et quam impudenter fere per
omnia mentiatur nemo nisi veterum historiarum ignarus, cum in librum
illum inciderit, ambigere sinitur’ (‘only someone ignorant of the old histories,
were he to encounter his book, could be unsure of how insolently and
shamelessly he lies throughout almost all of it’).41 According to Monika Otter,
this ‘celebrated attack’ is based on the observation ‘that there is simply no
room in the accepted history of the country for Geoffrey’s Arthurian stories’.42
For William, that ‘accepted history’ has been provided by Bede:

Hec cum iuxta historicam veritatem a Venerabili Beda expositam constet

esse rata, cuncta que homo ille de Arturo et eius vel successoribus vel post
Vortigirnum predecessoribus scribere curavit partim ab ipso, partim et ab
aliis constat esse conficta.43

38 Similarly, according to Gillingham, ‘Two Yorkshire Historians’, p. 24, in the Historia

Anglorum William ‘constructed his own very different history’ around ‘the essential
skeleton of information provided by Roger of Howden’s Gesta Henrici II et Ricardi I’,
treating that work ‘as a useful repository of facts around which to weave his own
interpretation’.
39 Chronicles, I, 11.
40 Ibid., p. 18.
41 Ibid., pp. 11, 13.
42 M. Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical

Writing (Chapel Hill, 1996), p. 95.

43 Chronicles, I, 14.

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 A. B. Kraebel

[Since these things [i.e., the succession of Anglo-Saxon kings] are shown
to be authoritative, in accord with the historical truth expounded by the
Venerable Bede, all of the things which that man [i.e., Geoffrey] took pains
to write about Arthur, and about those who succeeded him and preceded
him after Vortigern, are clearly fabricated, in part by him and in part by
others.]

To find room for these figures in the historical record, Geoffrey has had to
describe some Anglo-Saxons as the mere vassals of his fictitious British rulers,
when the former in fact included some ‘quos Venerabilis Beda fortissimos
dicit fuisse reges Anglorum, universe Britannie nobiliter imperantes’ (‘whom
the Venerable Bede says were the kings of the English, nobly wielding power
over the whole of Britain’).44 As Nancy Partner writes, William regards Bede
as ‘the standard against which all other historians must be measured’, and he
has found Geoffrey wanting.45
William devotes the bulk of the Historia’s prologue to correcting various
errors in Geoffrey’s writing, and it seems possible that his homily on Alban
could be related to this effort. In the Historia regum Britannie, Geoffrey
includes a brief discussion of Alban’s martyrdom, closely following the De
excidio Britannie of Gildas (d. c. 570), and, though Geoffrey’s account is quite
short, it does introduce at least one unprecedented detail. The fugitive priest
responsible for Alban’s conversion had been anonymous in the writings of
Gildas and Bede, but Geoffrey names him ‘Amphibalus’, perhaps punning
on the garment that Alban borrows to impersonate him.46 This name
is subsequently taken up in the new legend of Alban and Amphibalus
composed by another William, a monk of St. Albans, sometime during the
abbacy of Simon (r. 1167–83).47 The Benedictine William states that he found
the name of Alban’s priest ‘in historia quam Gaufridus Arturus de Britannico

44 Ibid., p. 18.
45 Partner, Serious Entertainments, p. 63. Further excellent discussions of William’s
critique of Geoffrey are offered by D. Rollo, Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and
French Romance in Twelfth-Century England (Lexington, 1998), pp. 305–7, and Rollo,
‘Three Mediators and Three Venerable Books: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Mohammed,
Chrétien de Troyes’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 100–14.
46 Historia regum Britanniae, ed. N. Wright and J. Crick, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1985–

91), I, 50. In the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham
et al., 17 vols. (London, 1975–2013), I, 79, ‘amphibalus’ is defined as a ‘rough
cloak’. Note, however, that neither Gildas nor Bede uses this word to describe
the garment belonging to Alban’s priest: Bede, Ecclesiastical History I.vii, p. 28,
refers to it as a ‘caracalla’ [‘long tunic’], and Gildas, De excidio Britanniae I.xi, ed.
H. Williams (London, 1899), p. 28, simply says ‘vestimenta’ [‘robes’]. J. S. P. Tatlock,
The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae
and Its Early Vernacular Versions (Berkeley, 1950), pp. 235–6, suggests that the name
may derive from Geoffrey’s misreading of a later (and unrelated) portion of the De
excidio.
47 For the dates of Simon’s abbacy, see Heads, p. 67.

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in Latinum se vertisse testatur’ (‘in the history which Geoffrey Arthur swears
he translated from the British language into Latin’), and he likewise adapts
Geoffrey’s infamous account of his supposed source, the ‘Britannici sermonis
librum vetustissimum’ (‘ancient book in the British language’), to justify his
own historical fabrication. Addressing Abbot Simon, he begins his preface,
‘Cum liber Anglico sermone conscriptus passionem beati martyris Albani
continens ad nostram notitiam pervenisset, ut eum verbis Latinis exprimerem
precepistis’ (‘You ordered me to translate into Latin a certain book that had
come to our attention, written in English and containing the passion of the
blessed martyr Alban’).48 William of Newburgh gives no indication that he
was familiar with the other William’s text when he wrote his Alban homily,
and he likewise makes no mention of Geoffrey’s Historia regum, but, in light
of the criticisms he offers in the prologue to his own Historia, it is just possible
that he had one or both of these texts in mind when he wrote his short work
on the martyr. Showing the same deference to Bede that he expresses, at
length, in the Historia Anglorum, William could have intended his homily as a
corrective to this recent Galfridian tradition.49
Each of William’s minor works can therefore be tied to one (or both, in the
case of the Alban homily) of his major writings, whether through their shared
language or their complementary discussions. Internal evidence has already
indicated that the homily on Alban derives material from the commentary
on the Song, but otherwise the nature of the relationships among the works
remains to be established. In this regard, details of the manuscripts preserving
William’s texts can be especially helpful, though we must first eliminate one
promising but ultimately misleading piece of evidence. London, Lambeth
Palace Library 73 is an early thirteenth-century manuscript which contains
the Historia Anglorum (fols. 1r–103r; 103v blank), William’s three homilies
(104r–121ra) and the Latin text of the Shepherd of Hermas (121rb–145v), all
copied in what appears to be a single book hand. The manuscript was either
prepared at the Cistercian house at Buildwas (Shropshire) or it was at least
in that abbey’s library soon after its production.50 Before the second homily

48 AASS, 5 June, 149. For Geoffrey’s account of his source, see Historia regum I, 1.
Convenient discussions of the larger hagiographic tradition surrounding Alban
are offered in two editions of the Middle English verse life by John Lydgate: The
Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal, ed. J. E. Van der Westhuizen (Leiden, 1974),
pp. 26–44, and Saint Albon [sic] and Saint Amphibalus, ed. G. F. Reinecke (New York,
1985), pp. xviii–xxiv.
49 Other continuities between the Alban homily and the Historia must be passed over
due to constraints of space. But note, for example, the indictment of British perfidy
present in both texts: Sermons, p. 87; Chronicles, I, 11.
50 For descriptions, see M. R. James and C. Jenkins, A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge, 1930–2), pp. 117–29;
J. Sheppard, The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English
Cistercian Monastery, 1165–c. 1400 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 114–19; Sermons, pp. 26–8.

267
 A. B. Kraebel

in Lambeth, on fol. 110ra, the scribe has included a colophon: ‘Item tractatus
eiusdem ad eundem super hunc versum: Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum
Sancto Spiritu’ (‘A treatise by the same to the same on this verse: Let us bless
the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit’), and a similar note appears in
the main scribe’s hand before the final homily, on fol. 115va: ‘Item tractatus
eiusdem ad eundem de sancto Albano’ (‘A treatise by the same to the same on
St. Alban’). In his discussion of Lambeth, Howlett concluded that these notes,
which are preserved in none of the other manuscripts, demonstrate that the
homilies were written to be presented, along with the Historia, to Ernald of
Rievaulx (ad eundem), at whose request William undertook his history.51 Since
the Historia seems to have been left unfinished at William’s death, breaking
off abruptly after describing events dateable to May 1198, this would then
indicate that the homilies were all late works – and that all three of them,
like the Alban homily, share material or thematic interests with the Song
commentary because they are all drawing on (or responding to) that earlier
text.52 Yet, as we will see, the evidence of the Lambeth colophons should not
be trusted so readily, and any conclusions based on them are likely to be
incorrect.
As Howlett himself recognized, Lambeth was almost certainly copied from
BL Stowe 62, a manuscript prepared at the beginning of the thirteenth century
at William’s own priory of Newburgh.53 That Stowe lacks the Lambeth
colophons should already cast doubt on their authority, and this scepticism is
reinforced by other details of Stowe’s production. In what is likely an attempt
to reproduce the appearance of his exemplar (near-facsimilar copying), the
scribe of Lambeth planned his work with the Historia such that the text
would end in the first column of a recto (fol. 103ra), and he then left the
remainder of that recto and the entirety of the verso blank, beginning his
copy of William’s Marian homily at the top of the next recto (fol. 104ra; see
Figs. 14.1 and 14.2).54 The same pattern appears at the end of the Historia
and the beginning of the homilies in Stowe (the Historia ends on fol. 158ra;
158rb–v blank; the homilies begin on 159ra; see Figs. 14.3 and 14.4), but while
this arrangement is part of the Lambeth scribe’s planned and uninterrupted
copying of his exemplar (made clear by the observation that the break occurs
in the middle of a quire), in Stowe the textual break reflects a material break,
evidence of the manuscript’s discontinuous production. That is, the recto on

51 Chronicles, I, xli–xlii.
52 On the incomplete state of the Historia, see Chronicles, I, xxiii–xxiv; Gillingham,
‘William of Newburgh and Emperor Henry VI’, in Auxilia Historica: Festschrift für
Peter Acht, ed. W. Koch et al. (Munich, 2001), pp. 51–71 (pp. 68–70).
53 Chronicles, I, xlii: ‘There can be little doubt that L[ambeth] is a copy taken direct

from S[towe].’ For a description of Stowe, see Sermons, pp. 24–6.

54 As is evident in Fig. 14.1, a later annotator has filled some of the blank space

originally left on fol. 103r; on this addition, which helps to place the book at
Buildwas, see Sheppard, Buildwas Books, pp. 117–18.

268
 The Minor Works of William of Newburgh

which the Historia ends in Stowe is the final folio of a quire and originally
the end of the book, the scribe evidently having planned his work with care,
and the homilies were added in a new and distinct fascicle, copied, as R. W.
Hunt observed, ‘in a later hand of the thirteenth century’.55 The (presumably)
Newburgh canon who assembled Stowe in its final form seems to have meant
it as a collection of the then-deceased author’s writings, drawing into a
single volume works that could have been prepared at various points across
William’s career. The Lambeth scribe, however, must have regarded Stowe as
a single, coherent production, and the colophons he added to the homilies are
most likely his own invention, an attempt to reinforce this sense of coherence
and explain the inclusion of the shorter texts.
Though Stowe is useful for discounting the claims made in Lambeth, it
offers little evidence for the relative dating of homilies. Fortunately, the only
other manuscript of William’s short texts is more useful in this regard. Bodl
Rawlinson C.31 is made up of what were originally three distinct booklets:
William’s Trinity homily is copied into a quire of three bifolia (fols. 1r–6v),
the Marian homily occupies a separate quire of four bifolia with the last folio
trimmed (7r–13v), and then the volume concludes (in its present form) with
glosses on Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica through Exodus 28, copied
across two quires (14r–31v). The last item, in a small book hand from roughly
the beginning of the thirteenth century, is clearly unrelated to the first two
texts, copied in charter scripts which Rodney Thomson dates to the third
quarter of the twelfth century.56 Though, as Thomson notes, the hands of the

55 R. W. Hunt, ‘The Library of the Abbey of St Albans’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts

and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson
(London, 1978), pp. 251–77 (p. 265 n. 77). The three sermons in Stowe were
originally copied continuously across three quires, the second of which (between
fols. 166 and 167) has been lost. The notion that Stowe’s copy of the Historia was
executed carefully and deliberately is challenged by Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William
of Newburgh and the Northumbrian Construction of English History’, Journal
of Medieval History 33 (2007), 339–57 (p. 343), who draws attention to ‘signs of
haste in the writing [of Stowe], with errors sometimes forthrightly marked in red,
suggesting an attempt to complete this fair copy before the author’s death’. This last
claim is completely speculative, and it is probably misleading to interpret the errors
highlighted and corrected by the scribe as signs that he was particularly rushed:
useful on this point is D. Wakelin, Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English
Manuscripts, 1375–1500 (Cambridge, 2014). Lawrence-Mathers’s discussion of the
apparent Cistercian influence on Stowe’s execution remains extremely useful –
indeed, the possibility that the small priory of Newburgh lacked its own house
style (and, relatedly, did not produce many manuscripts) could help to explain the
errors she observes in Stowe. See further Lawrence-Mathers, ‘The Artistic Influence
of Durham Manuscripts’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason
et al. (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 451–69 (p. 469); Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in
Northumbria, pp. 187–8.
56 R. M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, 1066–1235, 2 vols. (Woodbridge,
1982), I, 109; see also Sermons, pp. 22–4.

269
270

Fig. 14.1
The conclusion
to Book 5 of
the Historia
Anglorum
in London,
Lambeth Palace
Library MS 73,
fols. 102v–103r
 271

Fig. 14.2
The beginning
of the Luke
homily in
Lambeth 73,
fols. 103v–104r.
Note that
Lambeth is
quired in eights,
with fols. 103
and 104 being
the seventh and
eighth folios in
the thirteenth
quire
272

Fig. 14.3
The conclusion
to Book 5 of
the Historia
Anglorum in
BL Stowe 62,
fols. 157v–158r
 273

Fig. 14.4
The beginning
of the Luke
homily in
BL Stowe 62,
fols. 158v–159r.
Note that
fol. 159r starts
a new quire
 A. B. Kraebel

two homilies are ‘very similar’, the differences between them are sufficient to
indicate that, if they did belong to the same scribe, each represents a discrete
stint of copying (see Fig. 14.5).57 Although I suspect that Thomson’s dating
is slightly too early, the evidence of Rawlinson still makes it clear that these
two homilies circulated as loose fascicles well before the composition of the
Historia Anglorum.58
In light of what we can learn from Rawlinson, the details of William’s
career become somewhat clearer. Quite rightly, Fulton questions why the
abbot of Byland would have turned to an Augustinian canon from a relatively
small (if neighbouring) house with his request for a Marian commentary
on the Song.59 However, if Abbot Walter had been familiar with William’s
Marian homily, circulating as a little book like the second quire of Rawlinson,
then the request becomes immediately explicable.60 The abbot liked what he
read in the homily, and he wanted more. As William wrote his commentary,
he incorporated material from his Marian homily into his new interpretation
of the Song, and he also built upon ideas explored in his Trinity homily, now
classifying the liturgical texts discussed there as the canticum vetus, against
which the canticum novum of the Song could be defined. In his third homily,
as we have seen, William developed further some of the material previously
included in his commentary, that is, the Alban homily was almost certainly
written at least several years after the other two. The endpoint of William’s
career is, of course, the Historia, and yet it is difficult to tell whether the final
homily predates that larger project or was composed in conjunction with it.
The high esteem in which Bede is held in the homily could easily represent
an extension of the discussion in the Historia’s prologue. Then again, if the

57 Hunt, ‘St Albans’, p. 265, does not observe the scribal and material distinctions
between the two homilies.
58 Rawlinson seems to have been assembled in its present form by Fabian, subprior
of St Albans from c. 1214 until his death in 1223, and it was Fabian who gave
the manuscript to St Albans. On Fabian and his books, see Hunt, ‘St Albans’,
p. 265; Thomson, St Albans, I, 46–7, 54, 63. Fascicular circulation has tended to be
considered with regard to later medieval book history, but there are some notable
recent exceptions: see esp. Richard Sharpe, ‘Anselm as Author: Publishing in
the Late Eleventh Century’, Journal of Medieval Latin 19 (2009), 1–87; Sharpe and
Teresa Webber, ‘Four Early Booklets of Anselm’s Work from Salisbury Cathedral’,
Scriptorium 63 (2009), 58–72. More generally, see Alexandra Gillespie, ‘Medieval
Books, Their Booklets, and Booklet Theory’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700
16 (2011), 1–29.
59 Fulton, Judgment to Passion, pp. 302–3.
60 Unfortunately, though this scenario seems especially likely, it cannot be established
with complete certainty. The only criterion for dating the commentary is the
dedication to Walter of Byland, whose abbacy was unusually long (1142–96,
according to Heads, p. 129), and so, even if Rawlinson had been copied at the
beginning of the range of dates proposed by Thomson (third quarter of the twelfth
century), it would still be conceivable, though doubtful, that the commentary
antedated the two homilies Rawlinson contains.

274
 275

Fig. 14.5
The end of the
Trinity homily
and the begin­
ning of the
Luke homily in
Bodl Rawlinson
C.31, fols. 6v–7r.
Note that fol. 7r
begins a new
quire.
 A. B. Kraebel

homily were composed earlier and circulated in a loose fascicle like William’s
other short texts, it could have come to the attention of the abbot of Rievaulx
in that form and inspired him to commission the Historia. Either option is
conceivable.
The range of topics represented in William’s writings, especially the
liturgical exposition of the Trinity homily and his interest in English history,
fit well with what we might expect from a late twelfth century cantor, and
it seems possible that William held this office at Newburgh.61 If he did,
however, the reconstruction of his authorial career offered here should serve
as a reminder that these interests need not always cohere in a single, unified
mentalité. Indeed, though he apparently wrote about liturgical song from an
early date, William’s concern with historiography seems to have developed
only later, perhaps in response to a specific request from Ernald of Rievaulx,
or perhaps growing out of his engagement with the hagiographical content of
Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. Very generally, then, William fits the description of
a cantor offered long ago by David Knowles, who observed that, by William’s
lifetime, ‘the post became the perquisite of the most gifted man of letters in
the community, … the intellectual leader of the house’.62 Building from one
text to the next, William’s intellectual undertakings led him to return to, and
elaborate upon, a narrow range of ideas, and his major works need to be
understood in light of the little books that supported them.63

61 In addition to the other chapters in the present volume, see Fass C, p. 24: ‘Cantors
and the scribes who were normally under their auspices had charge of two essential
kinds of materials: those that belonged to the liturgy, including the obituaries and
martyrologies, and the chronicles and other written histories.’
62 D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the
Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge,
1963), p. 428.
63 After this chapter went to press, I discovered a previously unnoted fourth copy of
William’s sermons, in The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 73 E 20, fols. 14vb–
24vb. This copy appears to support my argument concerning the circulation of the
sermons, and I plan to discuss its position in the textual history of the sermons
more extensively in a separate essay.

276
 part iv
On the Continent:
Five Case Studies
 15
The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre
and their Contribution to Crusade
History and Frankish Identity

Cara Aspesi

The Western Christians who arrived to Jerusalem in June 1099 came as

conquerors intent on freeing the holy places from Muslim rule. When they
succeeded in taking Jerusalem on 15 July, they inflicted damage not only to
Jerusalem’s walls and buildings, but also to its existing social and religious
infrastructure, slaughtering or expelling Jerusalem’s Muslim and Jewish
inhabitants, electing their own secular and religious rulers and appropriating
most of the holy shrines of the city.1 They also suppressed the rights of their
co-religionists; the first act of the new Latin patriarch Arnulf of Chocques
was to drive the Orthodox Christians out of the Holy Sepulchre and place
the church entirely under the control of Latin clergy.2 It was these very
clergy, however – especially the cantors of the Holy Sepulchre Ansellus ‘de

1 Historians contemporary to the First Crusade testify to the enormous number slain
in the siege, though the accounts may exaggerate, since they are written as religious
narratives rather than historical reports. See B. Kedar, ‘The Jerusalem Massacre of
July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades’, Crusades 3 (2004), 15–75.
The following year the city was emptied of Muslims and Jews when Baldwin I
banned all remaining non-Christians from the city. See William of Tyre, Chronicon
XI.27, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 63 (Turnhout, 1986), p. 536. The establishment
of new leadership occurred immediately; eight days after the capture Godfrey of
Bouillon was elected the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, and, on 1 August, Arnulf
of Chocques the first Latin patriarch. See J. Riley‐Smith, ‘The Title of Godfrey of
Bouillon’, Historical Research 52 (1979), 83–6; B. Hamilton, The Latin Church in the
Crusader States: The Secular Church (London, 1980), p. 12. Daniel the Abbot, who
visited between 1106 and 1107, reports that the Dome of the Rock was then used by
the Franks as a church, named the Templum Domini, which accords with the report
of William of Tyre, who attributed its foundation to Godfrey. See The Pilgrimage of
the Russian Abbot Daniel in the Holy Land, trans. C. W. Wilson, PPTS 4 (London, 1895),
pp. 20–1; William of Tyre, Chronicon IX.9, p. 431. The al-Aqsa Mosque became the
royal residence in 1104 and later the headquarters of the Templars. See A. J. Boas,
Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape, and Art in the Holy City under
Frankish Rule (New York, 2001), pp. 79–80. The Franks also began to administer all
the major Christian shrines: the Church of the Assumption, Mount Sion and the
church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. See Hamilton, The Latin Church,
pp. 95–6.
2 Hamilton, The Latin Church, p. 14.

278
 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre

Turre’, Giraldus, Bernardus, Peter and Bartholomeus – who contributed

significantly throughout the twelfth century to the reconstruction of
Jerusalem and its fractured society. The cantors’ tool in this regard was the
liturgy, especially a new feast adopted by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre
early in the century, the Festivitas sancte Hierusalem.3 This feast, celebrated
annually on 15 July in commemoration of the capture, presented a new
vision of Crusade history. It referred explicitly to the capture by combining
chants from the Latin liturgical repertory with selections from the Historia
Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres, and it presented the conquest as the
restoration of Jerusalem foretold in the Old Testament and the descent of the
Heavenly Jerusalem foreseen by the Apostle John. This liturgical recasting of
Crusade history had specific implications for Frankish identity, making the
Franks the foretold vessels of God’s saving power, liberators and heralds of
the New Jerusalem.4 Yet the Frankish identity constructed through the liturgy
was not entirely stable, and the Jerusalem feast underwent two full revisions
in the twelfth century. In the second version, the Franks were depicted as
Jerusalem’s righteous watchmen, while the third version portrayed the
Franks as ordained ministers of Jerusalem, with the city interpreted as the
Church. Insofar as these liturgically constructed views of the Franks had the
potential to be transformative, shaping Crusader identity through the power
of ritual performance, the cantors of the Holy Sepulchre can be considered
some of the most influential history-writers and social architects of twelfth-
century Jerusalem.
To determine the extent of the influence exercised by these cantors, we
must first reconstruct their careers as fully as the surviving evidence will

3 My work on the Jerusalem feast elaborates on and occasionally challenges

that of Amnon Linder, who has provided the most extensive evaluation of the
history, themes and significance of the Jerusalem feast. His analysis can be found
in a number of articles including ‘The Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem’,
Mediaeval Studies 52 (1990), 110–31; and ‘“ Like Purest Gold Resplendent”: The
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Jerusalem’, Crusades 8 (2009), 31–51.
More recently, see S. Salvado, ‘The Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre and the Templar
Rite: Edition and Analysis of the Jerusalem Ordinal (Rome, Bib. Vat., Barb. Lat.
659) with a Comparative Study of the Acre Breviary (Paris, Bib. Nat., Ms. Latin
10478)’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2011), pp. 171–81;
and M. C. Gaposchkin, ‘The Echoes of Victory: Liturgical and Para-Liturgical
Commemorations of the Capture of Jerusalem in the West’, Journal of Medieval
History 40 (2014), 237–59. While carrying out independent research on the feast, I
reached some conclusions similar to those expressed by Salvado and Gasposchkin,
though my view of its developmental stages, thematic evolution, and implications
(discussed below) is essentially different from theirs, and I remain extremely
grateful to both scholars for their generosity in sharing their most recent work and
ideas.
4 This discussion adopts the legal definition of a ‘Frank’ as anyone who celebrated
the Latin rite; see Hamilton, The Latin Church, p. 162.

279
 Cara Aspesi

allow. Once this is established, our attention can turn to one of the most
elaborate examples of the cantors’ ability to shape perceptions of the past,
namely the liturgy for a new feast written to commemorate the Crusaders’
capture of Jerusalem. Surviving manuscripts preserve this liturgy in a variety
of forms, all clearly related and apparently representing the development of
the feast over the course of the century. After reconstructing the stages of this
development, we will see that all of the revisions to the feast can be tied to the
Holy Sepulchre, most likely the work of different cantors. With the relative
dating of each version tentatively established, it will then be possible to
suggest which cantors were responsible for each stage in the feast’s history,
thereby indicating some of the ways in which specific cantors helped to shape
Crusade history and Frankish identity.
The cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre provides the names of five of the
twelfth-century cantors of the Holy Sepulchre: Ansellus, Giraldus, Bernardus,
Peter and Bartholomeus. A sixth figure, William, may also have held the
office. The most is known of Ansellus. In a charter of the Holy Sepulchre
dated 1124, ‘Ansellus de turre’ is listed among the canons of the Holy
Sepulchre who witnessed a gift made to the church of the Quarantaine in
1116, and ‘Anselmus de turre David’ subscribes another royal charter, this
dated 1114.5 It is likely, therefore, that Ansellus lived in the Tower of David
in the north-west corner of Jerusalem,6 at least until 1121, when he finally
submitted to the reform of the canons instituted by Patriarch Arnulf seven
years earlier.7 Geneviève Bresc-Bautier points out that two letters sent from
‘Ansellus, gloriosissimi Sepulcri cantor et presbyter’ to Notre Dame in Paris
indicate he had belonged to that church before departing on Crusade. In the
first he recalls how he was ‘nutritus et eruditus’ there.8 His fondest memories
of his former chapter concerned celebrating the liturgy: ‘I often dream that I
am back with you, taking part in the processions on great feasts and singing
the night office.’9
Recent scholarly consensus would indicate that Ansellus took up his

5 See Le Cartulaire du Chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre de Jérusalem, ed. G. Bresc-Bautier

(Paris, 1984), no. 94; Regesta regni Hierosolymitani: Additamentum, ed. R. Röhricht
(Innsbruck, 1904), no. 76a.
6 Many different people used the Tower was used as a residence, including Baldwin I.
See Boas, Domestic Settings: Sources on Domestic Architecture and Day-to-Day Activities
in the Crusader States (Boston, 2010), p. 72.
7 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre were placed under the Augustinian Rule in 1114.
See Le Cartulaire, ed. Bresc-Bautier, no. 20.
8 These letters accompanied a fragment of the True Cross which Ansellus sent to
Notre Dame. Formerly thought to date to 1108/09, Bresc-Bautier argued for a date
of 1120. See Bresc-Bautier, ‘L’envoi de la relique de la vraie Croix à Notre-Dame de
Paris en 1120’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 129 (1971), 387–97. Ansellus’ letters
can be found in PL 162, 729–32.
9 Quoted in Hamilton, The Latin Church, p. 113.

280
 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre

office in 1112, but it is more likely he was cantor as early as 1099.10 ‘Ansellus,
precentor’ subscribed to a charter that can be securely dated to 1108 on the
grounds of the absence of the subscription of the patriarch of Jerusalem
and the presence of the dual subscription of the ‘Evremar and Gibelin,
archbishops’, a state of affairs that existed only in 1108 when, due to the
connivances of Baldwin I, the Patriarchate was disputed and therefore briefly
unoccupied.11 Ansellus was therefore acting cantor at least as early as 1108.
Further, in the first letter Ansellus sent to Notre Dame in 1120, he mentions
that he had been absent from them for twenty-four years. As Cristina Dondi
points out, this suggests he left Europe in 1096 and was likely present at the
siege of Jerusalem.12 Corroborating this, Cecilia Gaposchkin notes that the
readings for the Reception of the Cross in a fourteenth-century breviary of
Notre Dame in Paris refer to the canon ‘who joined the knights in the liberation
of Jerusalem and who, after the city was captured and freed from “filthy
idolatry”, sent back the relic so that the church of Notre Dame and indeed all
of “Gaul might shine more brightly”.’13 If Ansellus was present at the siege,
then it is possible he was one of the twenty secular canons appointed by
Godfrey of Bouillon in August 1099 to serve at the Holy Sepulchre, especially
given the paucity of qualified clergy at the time.14 He might have been made
cantor immediately, for a charter of the Holy Sepulchre dating to 1102 refers
to the cantor’s wages (though without specifying who held the post).15 If
Ansellus was indeed the first Latin cantor of the Holy Sepulchre, he would
have held the office for nearly forty years, from c. 1099 to sometime after 1138
when his name disappeared from charter subscriptions.16
Less is known about the careers of the remaining cantors. After Ansellus,
no cantor of the Holy Sepulchre appears in the subscriptions of the documents
of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem until 1151, when the cantor ‘Giraldus’
subscribed a charter of the Holy Sepulchre, witnessing charters again in 1153
and 1155.17 This Giraldus may have been the canon who was once a deacon
and on occasion a scribe, as indicated by a charter of 1130–33 (‘Giraldus, S.

10 This on account of Bresc-Bautier’s redating of Ansellus’ letters, with 1112 being the
date of next documents of the Latin Kingdom that refer to him as cantor. See Regesta
regni Hierosolymitani, ed. Röhricht (Innsbruck, 1893), no. 68; Regesta: Additamentum,
no. 68a.
11 The dispute over the patriarchate is discussed by Hamilton, The Latin Church, 56–7.
The charter appears in Regesta: Additamentum, no. 56a.
12 C. Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study
and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Turnhout, 2004), p. 58.
13 Gaposchkin, ‘Echoes of Victory’, p. 241.
14 Hamilton, The Latin Church, pp. 113–14.
15 Cartulaire du Chapitre du Saint-Sépulcre, no. 19.
16 ‘Ansellus, precentor’ last appears in the subscriptions of a charter of February 1138.
See ibid., no. 34.
17 Ibid., nos. 69, 114 and 115.

281
 Cara Aspesi

Sepulchri diaconus, qui chartam composuit’), especially since the duties of

a scribe and deacon would have prepared Giraldus to take up the tasks of
the cantorship.18 After Giraldus, Bernardus became cantor, almost certainly
assuming the office sometime between 1155 and 1159, the year when
Bernardus’s name first appears in charters. His name only appears through
1160, however.19 Peter was the next known holder of the office, appearing
in the cartulary and other documents of the Latin Kingdom between 1170
and 1175.20 Finally, the name ‘Bartholomeus’ appears with the title of cantor
in 1178; he may have remained cantor until the fall of the city to Saladin in
1187.21
The largest gap in knowledge of the twelfth-century cantors of the
Holy Sepulchre comes in the period between the cantorships of Ansellus
and Giraldus, 1138–51. It is possible that Giraldus succeeded Ansellus
directly, though it is equally possible that a certain William was cantor in
the intervening period. One notes that a ‘Willelmus, succentor’ subscribed
after Ansellus in a charter of 1112, confirming the rights of Patriarch Arnulf.22
William’s name and title then appear again in a charter of 1123.23 He was
therefore succentor under Ansellus for at least eleven years, and if he survived
Ansellus, he could easily have succeeded him in the office of cantor. William,
therefore, may have been the second cantor of the Holy Sepulchre, from 1138
to around the middle of the century.
Though further details of the cantors’ careers are not known, as identifiable
holders of the office they can be presumed to have been persons of both
actual and ideological power within their sphere of liturgical influence.
This is in part due to historical circumstance, since these men occupied
their office at a time when the power of the cantor was waxing. As Margot
Fassler has demonstrated in her study of medieval customaries, by the
twelfth century, cantors had come to exercise significant authority over the
liturgy in many places, both its production and performance. Over time, the
offices of armarius and cantor had merged, so that by the twelfth century, the
cantor was in charge of the library and often the scriptorium, overseeing
the composition of liturgical books. He also controlled the presentation of
the liturgy as a kind of liturgical ‘master of ceremonies’, correcting musical
errors, controlling pitches, selecting the readers and singers, ruling the
choir and ordering the processions, to name a few of his responsibilities.24

18 Ibid., no. 98.

19 Ibid., nos. 52, 124, 126 and 129.
20 Ibid., nos. 158, 159 and Appendix 4; Regesta, no. 528.
21 Cartulaire, Appendix 5.
22 Regesta: Addimenta, no. 68a
23 Regesta, no. 10.
24 Fass A, pp. 48–51.

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 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre

In short, the liturgy – its existence and effective communication – was in the
hands of the cantor.25
The liturgical authority of individuals such as Ansellus, Giraldus and Peter
put them in a prime position to shape perceptions of history and identity.
Liturgy, by nature commemorative and sacramental, mixes linear and cyclical
dimensions of time; it remembers distinct events that have come and gone,
but it also makes them immanent through liturgical reenactment that is
not bound to sequence.26 It is, in this sense, a mediator between past and
present, conveying not the past itself, but an interpretation of it. This means
that different liturgical uses and celebrations were ‘practiced, living, singing
models of time’, and that cantors, as composers and organizers of the liturgy,
may be understood as history writers, creators and stewards of models of the
past.27
In addition to shaping perceptions of the past, the ritual performances
overseen by cantors could transform the identities of worshippers.
Anthropologists have long noted that ritual is transformative, a characteristic
grounded in its nature as performance.28 Ritual does not merely convey an
idea or cause a belief; as Catherine Bell has aptly noted, ‘Ritual is the thing
itself. It is power; it acts and it actuates’.29 Nathan Mitchell argues that this
actuating power applies to identity: ‘As performance, ritual redefines the
self by embodying thoughts and emotions never before known, risked or
felt. These coincide with (rather than are shaped or evoked by) the ritual
performance.’30 Liturgy, as ritual action, allows a worshipper not merely to
assent intellectually to the views of reality or history that it advocates; rather,
it instantiates those views in the bodies of participants, accomplishing an
actual transformation of identity. Medieval cantors, then, as stewards of the
liturgy, can be understood as having enormous potential to shape the identity
of liturgical participants.
The twelfth-century cantors of the Holy Sepulchre possessed a particularly
powerful liturgical tool for shaping history and identity in the new Office
and Mass of the Festivitas s. Hierusalem. This novel feast, primarily built

25 As there are identifiable cantors of the Holy Sepulchre, this work assumes that
what can be known in general about the power of the office applies to them in
particular, though it should be acknowledged that the cantor’s duties were not
always exclusively carried out by holders of the office.
26 See, generally, Fass D.
27 Ibid., p. 151.
28 See, for example, the works of M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 1966); V. W. Turner, The Ritual Process:
Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, 1969), pp. 95–129.
29 C. M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford, 2009), p. 195 (italics in original).
30 N. Mitchell, ‘New Directions in Ritual Research’, in Foundations in Ritual Studies: A
Reader for Students of Christian Worship, ed. P. F. Bradshaw and J. A. Melloh (Grand
Rapids, 2007), pp. 103–30 (p. 117).

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 Cara Aspesi

out of existing liturgical material, was composed early in the century to

commemorate a new miracle, the Crusaders’ capture of the city. It was
explicitly about the Crusades, the Franks and their relationship to Jerusalem.
By overseeing its liturgical celebration, the cantors of the Holy Sepulchre
were able to contribute to the ‘reconstruction’ of the city and its society, first,
by presenting a coherent story of how the Crusade figured into the city’s
sacred history, and second, by helping worshippers become unified through
a sense of identity generated through the liturgy.
But the cantor’s influence can only be understood when the new Jerusalem
feast’s origin and development are properly understood. A charter of the Holy
Sepulchre from 1130 to 1133 lists a feast for Jerusalem alongside Christmas
and Easter as a day on which alms are to be distributed.31 This suggests that
the feast was adopted by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre by at least the third
decade of the twelfth century. In fact the feast appears in the earliest known
manuscript sources for the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre – a sacramentary
dating to between 1128 and 1132 and a sacramentary-evangeliary composed
shortly thereafter.32 Both have entries in their calendars on 15 July: ‘Festivitas
Hierusalem quando capta fuit a Christianis’ and ‘capta fuit a Francis’,
respectively. True to form, the first sacramentary records only the prayers of
the Jerusalem Mass, while the second provides identical prayers but also the
Gospel, Matthew 21. 10–17, the account of Jesus cleansing the Temple and
healing the people.33 The texts of a complete Jerusalem Office, along with
a Mass with the introit Letare Hierusalem, appear in four early manuscripts,
three of which were certainly produced in the Latin Crusader Kingdoms. The
first, an ordinal copied for the use of the Templars in Jerusalem, is Vatican
Library, MS Barb. lat. 659. In his extensive study of this manuscript, Sebastian
Salvado argues that it was copied after 1173, reflecting a reworking of the
liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre that took place between 1149 and 1153.34 The
second is an early thirteenth century ordinal of the Holy Sepulchre, Barletta,
Archivio della Chiesa del Santo Sepolcro, MS s.n., which contains (among
many other things) a copy of the breviary also preserved in the Templar
ordinal.35 In the sanctoral of these ordinals the feast is entitled, ‘In Liberatione

31 Cartulaire, no. 98.

32 For the first, see Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 477, with the canon of the Mass in
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 49, fos. 70v–83v. For the second, see
BnF lat. 12056. For further discussion, see Dondi, Liturgy of the Canons, pp. 61–63,
146–62.
33 Rome 477, fol. 159r, contains prayers for a Mass titled In festivitate civitatis s.
Hierusalem. BnF lat. 12056 provides the Gospel for the feast, Matt. 21. 10–17 under
In liberatione Ierusalem (fols. 31v–32v) and the prayers under Missa de Hierusalem
(fol. 250rv).
34 Salvado, ‘Liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre’, esp. pp. 27–35.
35 Barletta is an ordinal in the true sense, a compendium of the liturgy of the Holy
Sepulchre which includes a breviary (fols. 33r–136r), a collectar (fols. 150r–212v)

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 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre

sancte civitas Hierusalem’.36 The third manuscript is a breviary appended to

an abbreviated pontifical, compiled in Outremer in the twelfth century, Lucca,
Biblioteca Arcivescovile MS 5.37 Finally, the texts for the Jerusalem Mass
and the hours of Vespers through Lauds appear under the title ‘In Festivitas
Sancte Hierusalem’ at the conclusion of a thirteenth-century collection of
histories of the First Crusade, BL Add. 8927, fols. 134r–135r.38
Together, these manuscripts suggest that there were at least three complete
versions of the Jerusalem feast celebrated by the Holy Sepulchre in the twelfth
century, each recasting Crusade history and each placing a different emphasis
on the essential identity of the Franks. As it appears in the thirteenth-
century collection of histories, the Festivitas s. Hierusalem focuses on the
city’s liberation, drawing on imagery associated with Advent – over three-
quarters of its material explicitly refers to the city ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Sion’, while
just under half is borrowed from pre-existing Advent liturgy, including the
Gospel, Matthew 21. 1–9, Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Additionally,
material from Epiphany and Dedication liturgies make up 15 and 10 per cent

and various other liturgical documents usually appearing in a pontifical or

ritual. The breviary portion appears to have been copied from the same source
as the Templar ordinal and therefore reflects the same time period (s. xiimed). The
collectar, however, provides various additions and may reflect a slightly later
period. A chronicle of the Crusades from 1097 to c. 1202 (the end of the chronicle is
illegible) gives a terminus a quo of the early thirteenth century for the composition
of the manuscript, and this date is confirmed by the thirteenth-century hand. This
disorganization suggests the manuscript was probably not intended for liturgical
use, rather being copied as a historical record of the rite of the Holy Sepulchre after
the loss of Jerusalem: see C. Kohler, ‘Un ritual et un bréviaire du Saint-Sépulcre de
Jérusalem (XIIe–XIIIe siècle)’, Revue de l’Orient latin 8 (1900–1), 383–500 (pp. 458–9).
My thanks to Gaposchkin and Salvado for sharing photographs of the manuscript.
36 In MS 659 the Mass is fols. 132r–132v and the Office fols. 101r–102r. In Barletta, the
Office and Mass are fols. 109v–110v. The Barletta collectar, fols. 188v–189r, includes
these additions for the feast: the prayer for the Vespers Magnificat, the full text of
the prayer used for the Little Hours and the notation for the Magnificat antiphon
for second Vespers.
37 Buchthal and Wormald place the creation of Lucca 5 in Jerusalem, believing it to
be the earliest manuscript of the Latin Kingdoms. Dondi describes it as breviary
compiled in Caesarea around 1200 for Peter of Limoges, archbishop of Caesarea; she
states that the breviary reflects the use of Chartres. Salvado dates the manuscript
to between 1173 and 1228 and disagrees with Dondi concerning its production
for the archbishop. However, all scholars seem to take the essential unity of the
manuscript for granted, agreeing that it is was written in the Crusader kingdoms
because it includes a chronicle of the Crusades (fol. 18v) and a petition for the
patriarch in its litany (fol. 55r). See H. Buchthal and F. Wormald, Miniature Painting
in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1957), p. xxx n. 5; Salvado, ‘Liturgy of the
Holy Sepulchre’, p. 51; Dondi, Liturgy of the Canons, pp. 73–5, 181–8. My detailed
analysis of this neglected source is forthcoming.
38 Linder’s fullest analysis of the feast is based primarily on this manuscript. See
Linder, ‘The Liturgy of the Liberation’.

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 Cara Aspesi

of the borrowed material, respectively. The version in Add. 8927 is especially

distinctive, drawing on Fulcher’s Historia Hierosolymitana for its nine Matins
readings – specifically, his account of the topography, siege and capture of
Jerusalem. Add. 8927 also includes a new sequence for the Mass, ‘Manu
plaudant’.39
The Festivitas s. Hierusalem is essentially a celebration of an event. It
is a story that presents the Crusading venture in epic terms, using biblical
quotations and allusions to cast the conquest as the liberation of an enslaved
Jerusalem (as foretold by Old Testament prophets) and the descent of the
Heavenly City foreseen by the Apostle John. The chants of Vespers are a
good example of the feast’s dramatic quality, since they are structured as a
tale of deliverance in which God and a personified Jerusalem are the main
characters. The first antiphon introduces God, ‘Behold! The name of the Lord
comes from afar and his renown fills the world’, quoting Isaiah 30. 27–28.40
The next antiphon addresses Jerusalem: ‘Jerusalem, raise your eyes and see
the power of the king. Behold, the Savior comes to release you from bondage’
(Isaiah 60. 4a).41 Subsequent antiphons alternate according to this pattern,
using Scriptural allusions to speak of God’s impending Advent and to exhort
Jerusalem to hope. The Vespers hymn, ‘Urbs Hierusalem beata’, highlights
the significance of the city’s liberation, describing Jerusalem as the ‘vision of
peace built in heaven out of living stones, and encircled by angels just as a
bride for her companion’ (cf. Apoc. 21. 2).42 In this liturgy, then, the capture
on 15 July fulfilled biblical prophecy of God’s liberation of Jerusalem and
heralded the marriage of the Lamb to his eschatological Bride, the New
Jerusalem.
While the chants for Vespers thus focus on God’s liberation of the city,
the feast’s liturgy more generally presents the Crusade as the prophesied
liberation signalling the final descent of the Heavenly City. The liturgy’s
compiler makes this explicit in Matins in his use of readings from Fulcher of
Chartres. These readings, woven together with chants alluding to scriptural
promises of Jerusalem’s salvation, unambiguously present the Crusaders
and their deeds as the particular referents of sacred prophecy and vision.
For example, when Fulcher’s account of the moment when the Crusaders
breeched the wall is repurposed as a Matins reading and paired with the
responsory quoting Jeremiah 31. 5–7, ‘Rise, Sion, turn to your God. Rejoice
and be glad, Jacob, because your salvation comes in the midst of the nations’,
the juxtaposition presents the Crusaders as God’s divine agents in his
foretold liberation drama.43 The rest of the feast’s material likewise aids in

39 Also in AH, XL, 71. See also Fass C for discussion of this sequence.
40 Can 002527.
41 Can 003606.
42 Can 008405.
43 Can 007033.

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 The Cantors of the Holy Sepulchre

this representation of the conquest and the Crusaders as a foretold salvation.

Likewise, the newly composed prose ‘Manu plaudant’ explains that the
conquest is indeed the subject of ancient prophecy: ‘Behold, your sons and
daughters come from afar today, to you the gate of glory for pardon of their
faults. Behold, due honor is rendered to the tomb, which the foreknowing
prophet spoke of.’44 At the same time, the Gospel of the feast likens the
capture to Christ’s Palm Sunday entrance, culminating in his Passion. The
eschatological interpretation of the Crusade also continues to be emphasized,
as in the Matins responsory, ‘This is Jerusalem, the great city from heaven
adorned just as a bride for the Lamb’.45 In sum, the Festivitas focuses on the
event of the city’s capture, interpreted as the fulfilment of prophecy and
vision – and it suggests that the Franks should understand themselves as
divinely ordained liberators, heralds of the New Jerusalem descended from
heaven.
The very different Jerusalem feast in the ordinals, the Liberatio s. Hierusalem,
shares only half its chant and a third of its psalmody with the Festivitas,
even when comparing only the hours that the two versions share. It also
introduces a significant structural change, adding a procession after Prime
with three stations: the west entrance to the Templum Domini, the point on
the north wall where the Crusaders breached the city and the Aedicule in the
Anastasis Rotunda of the Sepulchre.46 This version of the liturgy focuses less
on the event of the capture of Jerusalem itself, with only a third of its material
explicitly mentioning ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Sion’. Instead, it is largely a celebration
of God’s nature as revealed by the events of the capture; the greatest portion of
its material, just over a third, is borrowed from liturgy for Epiphany, less than
a quarter from Advent and just over a tenth each from the Feast of the Trinity
and the Dedication liturgy. The Liberatio is certainly still a commemoration,
but focuses on using history to praise God, his righteousness, power and
compassion. For instance, it shares a number of its Vespers antiphons with
Add. 8927, which (as discussed) introduce the theme of God’s foretold
deliverance of Jerusalem. Yet, responding to these antiphons, the Vespers
prayer in the Liberatio praises God for revealing the glory of the eternal Trinity,

44 Translation taken from Fass C, pp. 154–5.

45 Can 006803.
46 The first station, ‘in introitum templi’, was likely at the west entrance, since the
first chant sung at the station, the antiphon ‘Pax eterna’ (Can 004252) corresponds
to the inscription which was placed over this entrance. See John of Würzburg, in
Peregrinationes tres, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 139 (Turnhout, 1994), pp. 79–141
(p. 94); Theodericus, in Peregrinationes tres, pp. 143–97 (p. 160). The point of the
breech is marked with a red cross and the words ‘Hic capta est civitas’ on a map
of Jerusalem in Cambrai, Médiathèque municipale MS 437 (c. 1140–70), reprinted
in Les Croisades: l’Orient et l’Occident d’Urbain II a Saint Louis, 1096–1270, ed.
M. Rey-Delque (Milan, 1997), p. 236. A optional station was held at the entrance to
the Holy Sepulchre if the feast fell on a Sunday.

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 Cara Aspesi

rather than simply thanking him for renewing the anniversary of the capture
(as does the prayer of the Festivitas).47 A different Gospel reading (Matthew
21. 10–17, as noted above) showcases the distinct emphasis on the revelation
of God’s character, suggesting that the Crusade was an example of God’s
righteousness and mercy, not merely his advent. Similarly, the chants of the
Liberatio’s procession would have filled the city with the exaltation of God
and his triumphs: On the way to the Temple, the Crusaders sang ‘Blessed is
the Lord God of Israel who alone performs miracles!’ and ‘What God is great
like our God?’; at the wall they proclaimed, ‘Thanks be to you God! Thanks
be to you, truly one Trinity’; and before the Sepulchre, ‘The Lord arose from
this place!’48
The Liberatio’s focus on the capture as an epiphany, as the revelation of
God’s nature, presents the Franks as beloved sons entrusted with the Holy
City and charged with representing God’s glory. This is especially clear in the
Matins readings: Isaiah 60–62, the Gospel of the day, and the credal ‘symbol’
of Leo III.49 They begin with the capitulary also used in the Festivitas, ‘Arise,
shine, O Jerusalem, for your light has come’ (Isaiah 60. 1–6), but continue
through Isaiah 62, thus providing the entire extended prophecy. The Isaiah
readings encourage Jerusalem to rejoice, since ‘her sons will come from afar,
and your daughters will rise up at your side’ (Isaiah 60. 4b). This does not
merely refer to the Crusading army converging on the city, as it would in the
Festivitas, but to people dwelling within Jerusalem: ‘Your people shall all be
righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the
work of my hands, that I might be glorified’ (Isaiah 60. 21). These people are
the Franks, who are ‘oaks of righteousness’ dwelling in the land (Isaiah 61. 3).
Their righteousness will be a light to the nations, which will be a ‘crown of
beauty in the hand of the Lord’ seen by all (Isaiah 62. 2). The Franks are the
watchmen on the wall who will give the Lord ‘no rest until he establishes
Jerusalem and makes it the praise of the earth’ (Isaiah 62. 6–7). In the Liberatio,
then, the ‘glory’ of the Lord that will rise upon Jerusalem is not simply the
city’s liberation, but its inhabitation by its true sons and daughters, the
Crusaders, righteous offspring blessed by the Lord.
In the third version of the Jerusalem feast, reflected in the Templar and
Barletta ordinals, Crusade history and Frankish identity are given yet another
distinct interpretation. This is a combined Jerusalem and Dedication feast: the

47 The prayer is ‘Omnipotens sempiterne Deus qui dedisti famulis’, the oratio In
Festo Sanctissime Trinitatis. See Les oraisons du missel romain, ed. P. Bruylants, 2 vols.
(Louvain, 1952), II, 219. The prayers of the Festivitas are discussed below.
48 For the first three, see Can 006249, Can 007498 and Can 002977; the fourth,
apparently unique, is not recorded in the Cantus database.
49 This is a summary of Trinitarian doctrine sent by Pope Leo III to the Orthodox
churches in the ninth century, printed in H. B. Swete, On the History of the Doctrine
of the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Apostolic Age to the Death of Charlemagne
(London, 1876), p. 230.

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15 July calendar entry in the Templar ordinal is the ‘Liberatio s. Hierusalem’

while the Barletta ordinal gives ‘Dedicatio ecclesie Dominici Sepulcri’ for the
same day.50 Within the sanctoral of the breviaries of both ordinals, however,
the Jerusalem feast appears immediately before a Dedication Office and
Mass with the heading ‘The very same day, the Dedication of the Church
of the Lord’s Sepulchre which we solemnly celebrate according to the will
and precepts of the Lord Patriarch Fulcher’.51 Fulcher of Angoulême was
patriarch of Jerusalem from 1146 to 1157, and on 15 July 1149, the fiftieth
anniversary of the city’s capture, Fulcher rededicated the Crusaders’ newly
constructed choir and altars.52 The canons of the Holy Sepulchre thus appear
to have celebrated a double feast from 1149 onwards.
Yet the rubrics of the Jerusalem Office indicate that the celebration of this
double feast was in some ways limited. Thus, in the Templar ordinal between
the final two antiphons of the procession, one rubric notes: ‘Regarding this
Liberation [feast]: We do nothing according to this new arrangement except
the procession and early morning Mass, on account of the Dedication of the
church.’53 In keeping with this, the Templar ordinal heads the Jerusalem Mass
‘early morning Mass’ and the Dedication Mass ‘great Mass’. Both ordinals also
have a rubric at the conclusion of the Jerusalem feast: ‘Only the early morning
Mass of the Capture is sung. The procession is never diminished, however,
but carried out festively.’54 These details show that the Jerusalem feast was
combined with the Dedication liturgy after 1149, specifically the Jerusalem
Office was replaced with a Dedication Office, the procession was retained,
the Jerusalem Mass became an early morning Mass and the High Mass was
a Dedication. This accords with the testimony of John of Würzburg, who
visited the city as a pilgrim sometime between 1150 and 1164.55 Regarding 15
July he wrote:

Eadem quoque die in eodem mense, licet longe iam anteriori tempore, cum
iam dudum eadem sancta civitas sub dominatu Sarracenorum diversorum
generum detineretur captiva, ab excercitu Christianorum est liberate. Ad
cuius liberationis commemorationem eandem diem post consecrationis

50 MS 659, fol. 4; Barletta fol. 16r.

51 MS 659, fol. 102r; Barletta fol. 110v: ‘Eodem die dedicatio ecclesia dominici
Sepulchri quam sollempniter celebramus iuxta voluntatem et preceptum Fulcherii
patriarche.’
52 This according to an inscription placed in the Holy Sepulchre: for the text of
the entire reconstructed inscription, see Linder, ‘Like Purest Gold Resplendent’,
pp. 31–2.
53 MS 659 fol. 101v: ‘De hac liberatione, secundum novam institutionem, nihil facimus
preter processionem et missam matutinale propter dedicationem ecclesia.’
54 ‘Missa matutinalis de captione tantum canitur, sed procession nunquam dimittitur,
sed festive peragitur’, MS 659 fol. 102; Barletta MS. fol. 110v; Barletta [peragitur]: ut
prescriptum est add.
55 Linder, ‘Like Purest Gold Resplendent’, pp. 43–4.

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 Cara Aspesi

renovationem cum spirituali offitio reddunt celebrem in priori missa

decantando, Letare Hierusalem, maiorem vero missam celebrant de
dedicatione, Terribilis est locus.56

[At the time the Holy City itself was held in captivity under the power
of Saracens of various kinds, it was set free by a Christian army. For the
commemoration of this liberation, that same day, after the renewal of
the consecration [of the church] through the divine rites, they continue
the celebration in the mass by singing Letare Hierusalem, etc. Indeed, they
celebrate the high mass – or more solemn service of the Dedication – which
begins Terribilis est locus.]

Thus the feast celebrated by the canons on 15 July after 1149, and presumably
until 1187, was a combined Liberation-Dedication. Accordingly, it would
seem that the Liberatio was the version celebrated by the Holy Sepulchre prior
to the mid-century, probably preserved in full in the breviaries on account
of the conservative nature of the copying of liturgical books. (For the sake
of convenience, my reconstruction of the relationship among these three
versions of the feast is summarized in Table 15.1.)
With the three versions’ differences in mind, then, we can turn to consider
the development of the Jerusalem liturgy celebrated by the canons of the Holy
Sepulchre. The earliest form of the feast was likely the Festivitas s. Hierusalem
now preserved in Add. 8927. Of course, there is no calendar in the manuscript,
nor any other external indication of the community to which the feast was
attached, but the wording of the prayers of the Mass, revisions of prayers for
the common Gallican Missa in anniversario dedicationis basilice, indicate that the
Festivitas version was celebrated in Jerusalem on 15 July as a commemoration
of the capture of the city.57 Furthermore, the fourth prayer (super populum) is
new composition, and it strongly suggests that the Festivitas was celebrated
by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre and not another church in the city. It
clearly refers to Christ’s sepulchre at the conclusion of the prayer: ‘grant to
us, we pray, that through the august and glorious sepulchre of the same our
Redeemer, we may merit to be raised from the grave to victory and achieve
the blessedness of eternal happiness.’58 Given the other internal evidence
pointing to the circumstances of the feast’s celebration, the most probable

56 Peregrinationes tres, pp. 123–4; trans. A. Stewart, PPTS 5 (New York, 1971), p. 51.
57 These revisions consistently replace references to the ‘temple’ with ‘Jerusalem’ or
the ‘Holy City’, and they also replace references to celebrating the anniversary
of the dedication with references to celebrating the anniversary of the day of the
‘acceptio’ of Jerusalem. For the original prayers, see Concordances et tableaux pour
l’étude des grands sacramentaires, ed. J. Deshusses 3 vols. (Fribourg, 1982), II, p. 332,
nos. 1085, 193 and 976.
58 Add. 8927, fol. 135r: ‘… prebe nobis, quesumus, ut per venerabile atque gloriosum

eiusdem redemptoris nostri sepulcrum, a vitiorum sepulcris resuscitari mereamur

et felicitatis eterne gaudia consequemur.’

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Table 15.1 The three stages of the 15 July feast celebrated

by the Holy Sepulchre in the twelfth century

Stages Festivitas sanctae In Liberatione sanctae Combined Dedication &

Hierusalem civitas Ierusalem Liberation
Date 1106–c. 1130 c. 1130–49 1149–87
MS sources BL Add. 8927 Rome, Bib. Ang. MS 477 BAV MS Barb. lat. 659
BnF MS lat. 12056 Barletta, Santo Sepolcro,
BAV MS Barb. lat. 659 MS s.n.
Barletta, Santo Sepolcro, John of Wurzburg
MS s.n.
Lucca, Bib. Arc. MS 5
Mass type Festivitas (revised Liberatio (new prayers) Dedicatio
Dedication prayers)
Office type Festivitas Liberatio Dedicatio
Early Mass – – Liberatio
Procession – after Prime after Prime (Liberatio)
Gospel Matthew 21. 1–9 Matthew 21. 10–17 Luke 19. 1–10 (Jesus
(triumphal entry) (cleansing the Temple) visits Zacchaeus)
Luke 6. 43 (Good and
bad trees)
Matins Fulcher of Chartres’s Isaiah 60–62 Sermon of St Augustine
readings Historia Hierosolymitana Matthew 21. 10–17 Quotienscumque
‘Symbol’ of Leo III Luke 19. 1–10/
Luke 6. 43
Primary Advent liturgy (76%) Epiphany liturgy (35%) Dedication liturgy
sources Epiphany liturgy (15%) Advent liturgy (22%)
Dedication liturgy Dedication liturgy
(10%) (11%)
Feast of the Trinity
(11%)
Theological The feast depicts the The feast is primarily The feast portrays
& historio- capture as the liberation a celebration of God’s the city of Jerusalem
graphical of enslaved Jerusalem nature as revealed as a kind of church,
concerns foretold by Old by the events of the sanctified through the
Testament prophets capture ‘ritual’ of the capture
and the descent of the
Heavenly City foreseen
by the Apostle John
Frankish Foretold liberators and ‘Watchmen on the walls’ Priests of the Lord,
identity heralds of the New representing God’s ministers of God
Jerusalem glory to the nations

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 Cara Aspesi

author of so straightforward a reference to the tomb of Christ was a liturgist

writing for the Holy Sepulchre.
There are other reasons for thinking that the Festivitas was celebrated by
the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. The work of Cristina Dondi has emphasized
the liturgical pre-eminence of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, demonstrating
that when the Templar and Hospitaller orders adopted a liturgical use, they
followed that of the Sepulchre.59 Furthermore, three of the four major shrine
churches of Jerusalem in the twelfth century (Mount Sion, the Templum Domini
and the church of the Ascension) were served by Augustinian canons from an
early time, and it is possible (perhaps even likely) that these canons were in
liturgical agreement with the Augustinian canons of the cathedral church, the
Holy Sepulchre.60 The possibility of liturgical agreement among these four
major Augustinian establishments is made more probable by a document
stipulating the mutual obligations of the churches upon the death of a canon.61
Since the liturgical formation in Jerusalem’s major secular churches thus
tended toward agreement with the Holy Sepulchre, it is therefore unlikely
that one of the other secular churches would create a rival version of the
feast, in competition with the Holy Sepulchre’s. Indeed, there is evidence that
even the Benedictine establishments – such as church of the Assumption in
Josaphat, the convent of St Mary Major and St Mary Latin in the Hospitallers’
quarters – participated in the liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre during important
processions and on high feast days, an observation which becomes all the
more relevant in light of the aforementioned cartulary document paralleling
Christmas, Easter and the Jerusalem feast.62 The Holy Sepulchre should thus
be understood as the church out of which the Jerusalem feast was written
and revised, and all early versions of the feast, including that of the Festivitas,
should be understood as most likely reflecting the Sepulchre’s liturgical use.
The likely origin of the Festivitas in the Holy Sepulchre is reinforced by
the circumstances under which liturgical books were produced in Crusader
Jerusalem. There was only one known scriptorium in twelfth-century
Jerusalem – the Holy Sepulchre’s – and, lacking evidence for another
scriptorium, we can tentatively conclude that most of the secular liturgical
books used throughout the city (and certainly any new books) were produced,

59 Dondi, Liturgy of the Canons, pp. 40–2.

60 Indeed, even where there was independence of custom–as in the case of the funeral
rite of the Augustianian house of Saint-Jean-en-Vallée–the house still adopted the
liturgical texts of the cathedral church of the diocese, Chartres. See M. McLaughlin,
‘The Twelfth-Century Ritual of Death and Burial at Saint-Jean-en-Vallée in the
Diocese of Chartres’, RB 105 (1995), 155–66.
61 Hamilton, The Latin Church, p. 96. See MS 659, fol. 12v; Barletta fol. 138rv.
62 Participation is indicated for the feasts of the Assumption, Palm Sunday, the Cena

domini and Pascha: MS 659 fols 33r, 65rv, 69r, 76r; Barletta fols. 40r, 69v–70r, 73r, 78r.

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repaired, modified or expanded there under the general supervision of the

Sepulchre’s cantor.63
Since the Festivitas was a feast of the Holy Sepulchre, the time during
which it was composed and celebrated can be discerned with some degree
of certainty. For the reasons discussed above, it could not have been in use
between 1149 and 87, nor during the period immediately prior to 1149.
Instead, the Festivitas is either an early twelfth century form or one developed
after 1187. The general tone of the feast could support an early date; it is
exuberant and triumphant, suggesting both the freshness of the Crusaders’
success and that the city still belonged firmly to the West at the time of
composition. Furthermore, since new liturgies for the liberation of Jerusalem
were being spontaneously celebrated and officially promulgated by the Pope
after 1187, it seems less likely that a revision of the feast of the liberation of
Jerusalem, especially a revision in the direction of greater enthusiasm, would
take place at the same time.64 Indeed, BL Egerton 2902, a thirteenth-century
sacramentary of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, shows that the Jerusalem
Mass was itself then revised to become a liturgy for the liberation: Egerton
contains a calendar entry for 15 July, ‘Dedicatio ecclesie s. Sepulchri et
liberatio Hierusalem’, but the Mass of the Jerusalem feast is now called the
‘Missa pro libertate Hierusalem de manu paganorum’, and the Gospel has
been changed to Luke 19. 41, the account of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.65
The Festivitas thus seems very likely to be the earliest version celebrated by
the Holy Sepulchre, composed sometime after 1106, when copies of Fulcher’s
Historia first became available.66
The approximate date of the revision of the Festivitas into the Liberatio can
also be determined with some confidence. The sacramentaries’ new prayers
and new Gospel indicate that Mass of the feast was revised by the early
1130s, though the revision of the office appears to have been undertaken even
earlier. This is suggested by Lucca MS 5, which contains an early twelfth
century breviary appended to a late twelfth century collection of bishop’s
liturgy and other material. The first part of the manuscript, written in many
different hands, presents liturgy reserved for a bishop intertwined with a
Psalter and other material for the Office, as well as a petition for the patriarch
of Jerusalem in the litany and a short chronicle of the Crusade ending with

63 On the scriptorium of twelfth-century Jerusalem, see Buchthal and Wormald,

Miniature Painting, pp. xxx–xxxi, 21–2.
64 Linder, ‘Individual and Community in the Liturgy of the Liberation of Jerusalem’,
in Information, Kommunikation Und Selbstdarstellung in Mittelalterlichen Gemeinden,
ed. A. Haverkamp (München, 1998), pp. 28–34.
65 BL Egerton 2902 fol. 93rv.
66 Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. H. Hagenmeyer
(Heidelberg: 1913), pp. 42–8.

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 Cara Aspesi

the capture of Tyre in 1124.67 The breviary portion of the manuscript, written
in a hand from the second quarter of the twelfth century, reflects a liturgical
use with close ties in several instances to the Augustinian house of St-Jean-
en-Vallée, Chartres, and it is notated with Chartrain neumes also dateable to
the second quarter of the century.68 But the liturgy of the Lucca 5 breviary is
ultimately distinct from any known European use, and it may represent the
Office liturgy celebrated by the canons of Sidon (or Tyre) in the first half of
the century.
One important aspect of Lucca 5, suggesting its ties to the Holy Sepulchre,
is a heretofore unidentified series of incipits of the Jerusalem office, copied
on the last leaf of the material preceding the breviary. The chant programme
indicated by these incipits corresponds to the Liberatio version, though
lacking a title, office prayers and Matins readings.69 Instead, the only
instruction regarding the Matins readings appears at the conclusion of the set
of incipits: ‘Lectiones require in epiphania’. This lack of specificity is unlike
other copies of the Jerusalem office appearing in later medieval manuscripts,
such as the version preserved in Erfurt, which, while corrupted, does include
the prayers and Matins readings of the Liberatio.70 Thus the Lucca office could
be an early intermediary form of the Jerusalem office, reflecting the point at
which a liturgist had worked out a new chant programme without yet adding
the prayers and readings to fully realize the Liberatio’s new vision. The
instruction to use readings for Epiphany suggests that the liturgist is moving
toward the Liberatio version, but since the incipits fail to identify Matthew 21.
10–17 as the Gospel text for the seventh Matins reading, the Jerusalem office
preserved in Lucca could date from sometime prior to the composition of the
sacramentaries.
There were therefore three complete versions of the Jerusalem feast
celebrated by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in the twelfth century – a
version likely dating between 1106 and around 1130, another from c. 1130
to 1149 and a post-1149 version, while Lucca 5 demonstrates that an

67 In my forthcoming analysis of this tangled opening, I identify the various sections

and provide a paleographical study of each.
68 The hand of the breviary closely resembles that of BnF lat. 2900, p. 58, the De
pignoribus sanctorum of Guibert of Nogent written at Notre Dame de Nogent-sous-
Coucy sometime between 1120 and 1124. The breviary hand also bears comparison
to BnF lat. 1918, fol. 49, the Opera Augustini copied at St-Amand-en-Pevèle
between 1107 and 1121. The neumes of Lucca 5 are very similar to those of Troyes,
Médiathèque du Grand Troyes MS 894, an early twelfth century noted missal of
the Benedictine abbey of St-Père-en-Vallée, Chartres. My study of the breviary is
forthcoming.
69 The Jerusalem Mass is written in the lower margin and appears to be a later
addition. It reflects the Mass as described by John of Würzburg, in Peregrinationes
tres, p. 139.
70 UB Erfurt, Dep. Erf. CA. 8° 44, fol. 19r. My thanks to Professor Gasposchkin for
sharing this material with me.

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intermediate revision also existed, representing a stage between the first and
second full versions. The early version, the Festivitas, presented the Franks as
the foretold liberators and heralds of the New Jerusalem, while the second
complete version, the Liberatio, reflected more on the theological import of
the Crusaders’ success and on the full prophetic message of Isaiah 60–62.
Here the Franks are ‘watchmen on the walls’, beloved sons of Jerusalem
entrusted with showing forth God’s righteousness to the nations. The final
form of the 15 July liturgy, as we have seen, interweaves the commemorative
aspect of the earlier versions with a Dedication. Indeed, the choice of 15 July,
a day that remembered the entire city, as the day on which to rededicate the
Holy Sepulchre, the shrine which was the heart of the city, could hardly be
coincidental, signalling that the writers responsible for the office had come to
understand the entire city as a kind of church and themselves as its priestly
citizens. The retention of the specific elements of the Jerusalem Mass and
procession after Prime indicates this new understanding also, for those two
elements parallel the structure of the medieval Ordo ad benedicendam ecclesiam,
with its Dedication mass and sanctifying procession without and within
the church.71 Indeed, the Jerusalem procession served the same purpose
as the dedicatory procession, which was to consecrate space through ritual
attention. At the same time, the Jerusalem procession – with stations at places
significant to the capture – served to integrate the event of the Crusade into
the sanctifying ritual; the Crusade came to be understood as itself a ritual
essential to Jerusalem’s transformation into a kind of church.
If Jerusalem was a kind of church, made so by the Crusade, then the Franks
were its clergy. According to the final version of the 15 July Jerusalem liturgy,
the Franks were not merely liberators, or even witnesses, but something
more: citizens of a type of the Heavenly Jerusalem whose task it was to
dwell in the city as ordained minsters, bringing the nations into an encounter
with a holy God. As the passage read at Matins for decades prior to the
final transformation of 15 July liturgy had proclaimed, ‘you shall be called
the priests of the Lord; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God’.
And indeed, the final version of the Office would seem to realize that priestly
role.
The figures behind these visions and identities were the cantors of the
Holy Sepulchre. Bernardus, Peter and Bartholomeus presided over the
combined form after the mid-century, and Giraldus (or possibly William)
oversaw the transformation of the Jerusalem liturgy into this combined
form after 1149. It was Ansellus ‘de Turre’, however, who may have been
responsible for the initial creation of the Festivitas and then its revision into
the Liberatio. If, as argued above, the Festivitas s. Hierusalem was composed

71 Le Pontifical romain au Moyen-Age, ed. M. Andrieu, 3 vols. (Città del Vaticano, 1938) I,
176–95.

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 Cara Aspesi

sometime after 1106, the Mass of the feast was apparently revised by the early
1130 and the Office was revised shortly before that, then it could be telling
that all of these dates fall within the cantorship of Ansellus. This cantor was
a Crusade enthusiast, one of the first to depart Europe for the Holy Land.
Present at the siege of Jerusalem, he would have experienced at first hand the
euphoria of the Crusaders’ triumph. Furthermore, as a resident of Jerusalem,
he was likely to have early access to Fulcher’s text.72 Finally, Ansellus seems
to have had a reputation for independence and willfulness with regard to
the administration of the liturgy; as Pope Calixtus II pointed out in a letter
he sent to Patriarch Garmundus in 1121, Ansellus and the succentor William
‘preside over the chorus of regular brothers, and instruct about the celebration
of the divine office according to their own pleasure, by means of whatever
person they choose’.73 It would hardly be surprising, then, were Ansellus to
be the liturgist responsible for the Festivitas.
Ansellus, perhaps assisted by the succentor William, may also have
undertaken the first revision of the Jerusalem feast as well, for the first
cantor did not remain independent and unconventional. The letter which
Pope Calixtus sent to the patriarch was in fact a letter of chastisement, and
in it the Pope threatened to remove both Ansellus and William from office
should they refuse to abandon a secular way of life. One surmises that they
submitted to reform, since both maintained their offices. Thus it is possible
that the revision of the Festivitas carried out near the end of the 1120s was an
extension of Ansellus’s personal reform.
Regardless of the question of who composed the liturgy for the feast, and
who was responsible for its various revisions, it was the cantors of the Holy
Sepulchre who oversaw its performance throughout the century. In this way,
these cantors exercised considerable influence over Crusade history and
Frankish identity in twelfth-century Jerusalem. They were the ones who
brought to Jerusalem the three versions of the 15 July feast, rebuilding the city
in stages and potentially unifying the Franks around an evolving identity as
liberators, watchmen and ministers.

72 Fulcher, chaplain to Baldwin of Boulogne, moved to Jerusalem in 1100 when

Baldwin became king, and he made it his home until his death in 1127. Historia
Hierosolymitana, pp. 1–19.
73 Cartulaire, no. 3.

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 16
Shaping Liturgy, Shaping History:
A Cantor-Historian from
Twelfth-Century Peterhausen

Alison I. Beach

August 27, 1134 was a momentous day for the Benedictine monastery of
Petershausen.1 It was the 139th anniversary of the death of the community’s
founder, Bishop Gebhard II of Constance (979–95), and after years of
preparation the community stood ready to witness his canonization.2 At
the invitation of Abbot Conrad (1127–64), Bishop Ulrich II of Constance
(1127–38) and the abbots of seven of the area’s monasteries gathered to take
part in the festivities. ‘With tremendous joy and exultation, with hymns and
praises’, the sarcophagus containing Gebhard’s relics was carried at the head
of a great procession of clerics, monks and lay people, starting at the soon-
to-be saint’s old tomb, circling the entire monastic precinct and culminating
with their placement with great honour in a newly prepared resting place in
Petershausen’s freshly restored basilica.3

1 For historical background on Petershausen, see S. Appuhn-Radtke, ed., 1000 Jahre

Petershausen: Beiträge zu Kunst und Geschichte der Benediktinerabtei Petershausen in
Konstanz (Constance, 1983); H. Walther, ‘Gründungsgeschichte und Tradition im
Kloster Petershausen vor Konstanz’, Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees
und seiner Umgebung 96 (1978): 31–67; F. Quarthal, ed., Die Benediktinerklöster in
Baden-Württemberg, Germania Benedictina 5 (Ottobeuren, 1975), pp. 484–502.
2 H. Maurer, Das Bistum Konstanz, 2: Die Konstanzer Bischöfe vom Ende des 6. Jahr­
hunderts bis 1206, Germania Sacra Neue Folge 42/1 (Berlin, 2003), pp. 142–3. While
Bishop Conrad of Constance’s canonization was confirmed by Pope Calixtus II in
1123, no such papal bull survives for Gebhard II. On the continued role of local
bishops in awarding the title of saint in the early twelfth century through the
translation of relics, see A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean
Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 22–7.
3 CP 5.4: ‘Anno a condito monasterio centesimo quinquagesimo secundo advenit
Oudalricus episcopus et ex monasteriis patres septem invitati a Cuonrado abbate
iam sepe dicti monasterii. Sed et turba clericorum et monachorum aliorumque
fidelium affuit non modica, et cum immani gaudio et exultatione, cum hymnis et
laudibus honorifice transtulerunt ossa et cineres beati confessoris Christi atque
pontificis Gebehardi de loco prioris sepulchri et in sarchofago posita ambitum
monasterii lustraverunt et postea cum magno honore in novo tumulo condiderunt.’
For a German translation, see Die Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, ed. O. Feger,
Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 3 (Sigmaringen, 1978).

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 Alison I. Beach

The occasion was clearly significant for all of the monks, lay brothers and
religious women who comprised this dual-sex monastic community just
across the Rhine from the city of Constance, but one among them stood at the
centre of the day’s liturgical events. Preparation had begun in the preceding
months. There was an office for the new saint to compose, hymns and
readings to choose, singers and readers to select and an order to set for the
various processions. In the days just before, this monk would have presided
over a dress rehearsal, checking the singing of the community’s boys, readied
for their role by his assistant, and correcting any errors in the music or in the
pitch of the singers. On the day itself, he would have functioned as a kind
of ‘master of ceremonies’, distributing the copes to all the members of the
community in order of rank, ministering to the arriving bishop and intoning
the chants.4 This anonymous monk was Petershausen’s cantor (precentor or
armarius), a person of high rank within the hierarchy of monastic communities
in the central Middle Ages, following only the abbot, prior and claustral prior
in importance.5
According to the Constitutions of Hirsau, which had governed life at
Petershausen since its reform in 1085, the cantor was ideally to be chosen
from among the nutriti, those monks (or presumably nuns, in the case of a
female community) raised from childhood within the monastery.6 A nutritus,
steeped in the liturgy – having lived its sounds, sights, rhythms, movements,
gestures and postures over many years – would have gradually absorbed
the deep training needed to manage the intricacies of the Mass and Office.
By the central Middle Ages, the cantor was charged not only with the
making of music and all other aspects of the celebration of the liturgy, but
also with overseeing the work of the monastery’s scriptorium and book
collections.7
As many of the contributions to the present volume attest, the individual
who held the office of cantor sometimes also took responsibility for keeping
the memoria of his or her community. At communities associated with Hirsau,
the cantor was specifically charged with keeping the memory of the dead

4 Fass A, pp. 49–50.

5 On the duties of the armarius/precentor in the late eleventh and early twelfth
century in communities, including Petershausen, that followed customs patterned
after those of Cluny, see Fass A, especially at pp. 47–51; and S. Boynton, ‘Training
for the Liturgy as a Form of Monastic Education’, in Medieval Monastic Education, ed.
C. Muessig and G. Ferzoco (London and New York, 2000), pp. 7–20 (pp. 8–10); on
the role of the librarian/cantor in the Hirsau context, see also F. Heinzer, ‘Hirsauer
Buchkultur und ihre Ausstrahlung’, in 700 Jahre Erfurter Peterskloster: Geschichte und
Kunst auf dem Erfurter Petersberg, 1103–1803 (Regensburg, 2004), pp. 98–104 (p. 98).
6 Willehelmi Abbatis Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, ed. P. Engelbert, CCM 15, 2 vols.
(Siegburg, 2010), II, 113.
7 For the duties assigned to Hirsau cantors, see Willehelmi Abbatis Constitutiones, II,
113–19; on the gradual evolution of the office of cantor from the early to the central
Middle Ages, see Fass A.

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 A Cantor-Historian from Twelfth-Century Peterhausen

by maintaining the necrology, the calendric list of the names of the departed
for whom the community was expected to pray. This job entailed entering
names in the home monastery’s necrology, seeing to it that a list of those
names was circulated periodically to affiliated communities for reciprocal
prayer and entering names arriving from other houses.8 Many cantors also
wrote historical chronicles, maintained annals and composed the lives of
saints of special importance to their communities. Some monastic cantor-
historians such as William of Malmesbury and others profiled in this volume
were prominent figures in their own time.9 Others laboured anonymously.
Some are identified in contemporary sources as cantor while others are only
made visible through their performance of the duties associated with the
office within their communities. Most left just faint traces of their activities,
perceptible only through the careful study of the surviving texts and
manuscripts that they used and produced.
I present a case here for identifying the impresario of the Translation of
1134 – the monk who served as Petershausen’s cantor (in function if not also
in title) from the 1130s to the 1160s – as the very same monk who had recently
written the Life of Gebhard, and who would begin to compile the monastery’s
historical chronicle, the Casus Monasterii Petrishusensis in the years following.
His reconstructed œuvre shows a twelfth-century cantor-historian at work,
and complements the more spectacular cases from Malmesbury, Durham,
Canterbury and elsewhere, bringing to light the interplay between liturgy,
history and community identity at a more ordinary monastery in the central
Middle Ages.

Hagiographer and chronicler

Although Petershausen’s cantor-historian (hereinafter CHP) was a person

of no great renown beyond his own community, he was the author of two
surviving historical works. He completed the first of these, the Life of
St Gebhard, before 1134, in preparation for the canonization.10 This Life,
which CHP modelled closely after the Life of St Conrad (written around
1123 by Udalschalk, Abbot of St Ulrich and Afra (c. 1125–49) for the bishop’s
canonization), survived the Middle Ages only in a single fifteenth-century

8 Willehelmi Abbatis Constitutiones, II, 118; see also Fass A, p. 50.

9 See especially the essays in this volume by Katie Bugyis, Margot Fassler, Paul
Hayward, Charles Rozier, Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, Teresa Webber and Lauren Whitnah.
10 University of Heidelberg, Codex Salemitani IX 9, fols. 1r–20r. For a digitized version
of this manuscript, see http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX9/0003; the
Life was edited by G. Pertz in MGH SS 10:582–94; see also K. Spahr, ‘Das Leben
des heiligen Gebhard’, in Bewahren und Bewähren. Festschrift zur St. Gebhard-
Tausendjahrfeier (Bregenz, 1949), pp. 31–43.

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 Alison I. Beach

manuscript.11 It is in his second work, the Casus monasterii Petrishusensis, that

he reveals himself as the author of the first, commenting that because he had
already detailed Gebhard’s life in another work, he now would touch on it
only briefly.12 His assertion that he had found a previously unknown epitaph
for the bishop in ‘an old book in the monastery of Stein’, a community around
thirty kilometres from Petershausen, suggests that he was accustomed,
perhaps because of his status as cantor, to have access to the book collections
of other monastic communities in the area, and this may have facilitated his
research for both the Life and the Chronicle.13
Only a single copy of the Chronicle, preserved in University of Heidelberg,
Codex Salemitani IX 42a, fols. 35r–98r, has survived from the twelfth
century.14 This text is primarily an autograph, written at Petershausen by
CHP himself between circa 1136 and the 1160s.15 His mature and regular
Caroline minuscule can also be seen at work in a number of other manuscripts,
including three necrologies, a martyrology, a Rule of St Benedict, a computus
table and in the earliest surviving copy of the Office for St Gebhard. His
engagement in the production of texts, and particularly texts related to the
liturgy, offers further evidence for his role as cantor.
In addition to providing a scribal fingerprint for CHP, the Chronicle also
offers textual evidence for its creator’s interest in both the performance
and material culture of the liturgy within his community. He anchors
Petershausen’s history in Gebhard’s noble Alemannic ancestry, details his
portentous birth by caesarean section, traces his path to the episcopacy and
describes his foundation and endowment of Petershausen. But it is Gebhard’s
Translation that he highlights as the crowning event in the history of the
community. Although CHP would later add an irregular series of folios and
gatherings to the text in order to make room for additional notices about
subsequent events, the Chronicle originally ended with the Translation,

11 See the Vita S. Cuonradi Constantiensis Episcopi. MGH SS 4:429–36.

12 CP 1.6: ‘Cuius vitam quoniam alio opera ut potuimus executi sumus, nunc paucis
attingemus’.
13 CP 1.54: ‘Sed et aliud epitafium inveni in antiquo libro apud Steinense monasterium
de hoc Dei famulo conscriptum, quod se habet in hunc modum …’
14 A digitized version of the entire manuscript is available online through the
University of Heidelberg: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42a
(accessed 19 June 2015). The Chronicle begins at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/
diglit/salIX42a/0083.
15 Based on my own analysis of the manuscript, I agree with Franz Josef Mone,
Quellensammlung der badischen Landesgeschichte 1 (Karlsruhe, 1848), p. 112; and Feger,
Die Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, pp. 8–9, who both argued that the manuscript
is the autograph of the author. For an argument that the manuscript is not the
work of a single author-scribe, see Walther, ‘Gründungsgeschichte und Tradition’,
pp. 37–9; and Irene Schmale-Ott, ‘Der Bodenseeraum’, in Wilhelm Wattenbach and
Franz-Josef Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, vol. 1 (Darmstadt,
1976), p. 28.

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which stands alone in a section in the manuscript, heralded, like each of the
five that lead up to it, with a decorative initial and incipit in red ink.16
He described in full detail the liturgical implements and vestments that
Gebhard had provided to the monastery at its founding, lamenting their
alienation, theft and destruction; the custos discovers the theft of a precious
censer while preparing to celebrate Matins (CP 4.13); and an incompetent
cellarer resorts to handing over valuable liturgical vestments to pay off
outstanding debts (CP 4.15); the wrath of God rains down on Gebhard’s
successor, Bishop Lambert (c. 995–1018), in the form of maggots (pediculi)
that pour out of his ears ‘like a swarm of bees, and from each limb like a
multitude of ants, until he breathed his last breath under this loathsome
torment’, for taking away, among other precious objects, ‘two dorsals, two
combs, one ivory comb adorned with gold, seven altar cloths, one hand-
towel, one tapestry, one silver chalice, one golden stole…’ (CP 2.4–5). And
the only detail he recorded about Conrad’s attendance at the Second Lateran
Council in 1139 was that the abbot had brought two black cloaks that were
used to make copes (CP 5.22).
He also detailed the renovations made to accommodate the intensified
liturgy that the Hirsau reformers had introduced in 1085:

Et quia chorus erat brevis, quoniam gradus, per quos in sanctuarium

ascendebatur, locum occupabant, gradus diminuit lapidum et numerum
ampliavit canentium, et lapides abstulit atque homines pro eis in locum eorum
constituit. Chorum quippe sanctuario pene coequavit, uno tantum gradu
sanctuario supereminente, atque ita in choro stantibus locum dilatavit.17

[Because the choir was short, since the steps leading up to the altar occupied
the space, [Abbot Theodorich (1085–1116)] had removed some of the stone
steps and increased the number of singers—[and he thus] took away stones
and put men in their place. Indeed, he made the choir almost level with the
altar, which was only raised by one step, and he thus enlarged the space for
those standing in the choir.]

16 Book 4 ends on fol. 81v with the same explicit that signals the end of the prologue
and all three of the previous books. The Translation then opens with its own incipit:
‘Incipit de Translatione Beati Gebehardi Episcopi’ (‘Here begins the Translation of
Blessed Bishop Gebhard’) in the same format and with a decorative initial similar
to those used for the Prologue and Books 1 through 4. See http://digi.ub.uni-
heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42a/0175. The creation of this book without a number
would result in some confusion with the numbering of the subsequent books. With
the ad hoc extension of the text following the Translation, the chronicler failed to
indicate the beginning of a new book; the text simply continues with no further
designation or rubrication. The end of this section (fol. 92r), however, was signalled
with the explicit ‘Here ends Book 5’. The confusion is immediately apparent when
the incipit – on that same line – announces, ‘Here begins Book Five’. See http://digi.
ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42a/0197.
17 CP 3.7.

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 Alison I. Beach

He then went on to note that ‘ad hanc capellam … omni die post vesperos et
matutinos in honore sancte Marie solemniter procedit ibique post canticum
et antiphonam atque orationem eius vesperos sive matutinos de omnibus
sanctis et pro defunctis canit’ (‘solemnly processes every day to this chapel
of the convent dedicated to St Mary and there, after the hymn, antiphon, and
prayer of this Vespers or Matins, they sing the for all the saints and for the
dead’).18
Further, his discussion of Abbot Theodorich’s accomplishments on
behalf of the monastery suggests an individual with intimate knowledge
of the community’s book collections. He itemizes the manuscripts, both
liturgical and non-liturgical, that the great reformer had procured for the
monks:

Missales libri quinque, quorum duo cum gradualibus, tres autem de

sanctis et pro necessitatibus continentes. Liber evangeliorum unus, argento
et osse decoratus. Libri lectionum duo. Officialis unus. Benedictionale
unum. Graduale unum. Antiphonarium unum. Breviarium operis Dei.
Liber consuetudinum. Gregorius super Ezechielem. Tertia pars moralium
et quinta ex parte et sexta ex integro. Dialogus unus. Augustinus super
Iohannem. Augustinus de consensu evangelistarum. Augustinus super
primam partem psalmorum. Augustinus super epistolam Iohannis.
Augustinus de opere monachorum, de bono coniugali, de virginitate,
de viduitate, de orando Deo, de agone christiano in uno volumine. Item
enchiridion Augustini. Flores Augustini. Augustinus de fide. Augustinus
super quindecim gradus. Orienis super vetus testamentum. Regula sancti
Benedicti. Pentateucum. Actus apostolorum. Exameron Ambrosi. Vita
sancti Oudalrici. Matutinales libri duo. Omeliarum liber hiemalis.19

[Five missals, two of which with graduals and three with sanctorals and
for necessities; one book of the Gospels, decorated in silver and ivory;
two lectionaries; one Liber officialis; one benedictional; one gradual, one
antiphoner; a breviary for the Divine Office; a customary; Gregory’s
Commentary on Ezekiel; Book Three of the Morals on Job, part of Book Five,
and all of Book Six; one copy of the Dialogues; Augustine’s Commentary on
John; Augustine’s On the Harmony of the Gospels; Augustine’s Commentary
on the first part of Psalms; Augustine’s Commentary on the Epistle of
John; Augustine’s treatises on the work of monks, good marriage, virginity,
widowhood, praying to God and the suffering of Christ all in one volume;
Augustine’s Enchridion; a florilegium of works by Augustine; Augustine On
Faith; Augustine on the Five Levels; Origen on the Old Testament; the Rule
of Saint Benedict; the Pentateuch; the Acts of the Apostles; the Hexameron
of Ambrose; the Life of St Ulrich; two matutinals; [and] a book of winter
homilies.]

18 CP 3.11.
19 CP 3.49.

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And he notes with the eye of a librarian that while some of these books had
been sold, the majority of them still remained there.20

Apprentice at Wagenhausen, Cantor at Petershausen?

In his chronicle, CHP also offers an autobiographical detail that sheds

light both on his possible apprenticeship for the role of cantor and on the
dating and composition of a surviving manuscript from the monastery of
Wagenhausen, a martyrology, necrology and Rule of St Benedict (Budapest,
Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek Codex Latinus 514).21 He states that he had
been a monk at this small and struggling community, some thirty kilometres
west along the shore of the lake and up the Rhine, under Abbot Folchnand
(1105–19). Although the spiritual oversight of Wagenhausen was hotly
contested in the late eleventh and twelfth century, Petershausen had charge
of Wagenhausen both during the abbacy of Folchnand (who had served
as a monk at Petershausen before he was sent to serve as abbot) and again
from 1127 until the 1170s. Throughout this tumultuous era, Wagenhausen
maintained a necrology, now preserved in Budapest MS 514, fols. 73r–88v.
During Folchnand’s abbacy, two scribes entered the names of the dead into
this book, one of the duties, as noted above, that the Hirsau Constitutions
specifically assigned to the cantor. The first scribe laid out the calendar itself,
and entered the majority of the names. The second scribe, who alternated
with the first, entered individual names more sporadically. While the first
hand has not been identified, the second hand is that of CHP.22 The pattern
of interaction between the two, in which first hand and the second hand
alternate in places, shows that both were active during the same period,
suggesting the kind of interaction that one might expect from a cantor (Hand
1) and his assistant (CHP, Hand 2).23

20 CP 3.49: ‘Hos abbas Theodericus libros conscribi fecit, quorum aliqui iam venundati
sunt, maior vero pars adhuc manet’ (‘Abbot Theoderich had these books copied;
some of them were sold, but the majority remain’).
21 A. Vizkelety, Mittelalterliche Lateinische Handschriften der Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek
(Cod. Lat. 405–556), Fragmenta et Codices in Bibliothecis Hungariae 6 (Budapest,
2008), pp. 156–9.
22 B. Meyer, ‘Das Totenbuch von Wagenhausen’, Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte
des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung 86 (1968), 87–187 (p. 98); H. Tüchle, ‘Ein
Wagenhausener Nekrolog aus Petershausen’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte
13 (1963), 196–205 (p. 203). Tüchle argued (p. 204), contra Meyer, that the necrology
was produced at Petershausen between 1127 and 1134 and sent to Wagenhausen,
probably in the hands of monks returning to take charge of the community after
Bishop Ulrich deposed Abbot Uto and replaced him with Gebino. CHP was at
Wagenhausen under Abbot Folchnand (c. 1105–19) and not under his uncle, Abbot
Gebino (1127–35).
23 Meyer, ‘Totenbuch von Wagenhausen’, pp. 97–8.

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 Alison I. Beach

This necrology, however, is but one component of this composite

manuscript, which was assembled from a variety of units dating from the
ninth and the twelfth centuries. 24 One of these, written entirely by CHP
himself, is a copy of the ninth-century Roman Martyrology of Usuard
(fols. 7v–77v), supplemented with entries for three regional saints: Ulrich
I of Augsburg (canonized in 993), Conrad I of Constance (canonized in
1123), and Gebhard II (canonized in 1134).25 The inclusion of Gebhard in
the Martyrology provides a terminus post quem of 1134, by which time CHP
would already have left Wagenhausen for Petershausen, and possibly begun
serving as cantor there.
The manuscript as it is now bound thus contains the hand of CHP at
two distinct phases in his monastic career: as assistant to the cantor and as
cantor. This juxtaposition can be explained by taking into account both CHP’s
movement from one community to the other and the likely trajectory of his
monastic career. As a young monk at Wagenhausen, CHP seems to have
served as assistant to the cantor, leaving traces of that supporting role in the
community’s necrology. The necrology, of course, remained at Wagenhausen
after his departure for Petershausen. At some point later, between his arrival
at Petershausen around 1119 and the 1130s, CHP took up the duties of cantor,
which may have been a natural step for a monk who had been trained as a
cantor’s assistant. His transfer into the community would not have been an
obstacle, as the Constitutions of Hirsau stipulate that a committed transfer
with the appropriate skills could be assigned to the office.26 In any case, CHP
had presumably lived the Hirsau liturgy at Wagenhausen, where he may
have even been a nutritus.
If he was, in fact, cantor, it may have been part of his job to provide
needed liturgical texts to Petershausen’s daughter houses. Liturgical books
commonly moved from mother to daughter house, or from the house of the
reformers to the house to be reformed. For example, Waltram, sent from
Petershausen to serve as abbot (1138–46) of the newly founded daughter
house Fischingen, brought with him a number of service books, including
a missal, evangeliary, lectionary, liber officialis, benedictional, antiphoner,
Psalter and Rule—all presumably copied from Hirsau-based models at
Petershausen. It may have been in his capacity as cantor (or simply as

24 Vizkelety, Mittelalterliche Lateinische Handschriften der Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek,

pp. 156–9; H. Juhász-Hajdu and A. Bruckner, ‘Zwei Handschriften aus dem
Bodenseeraum in Ungarn’, Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner
Umgebung 86 (1968), 189–98 (pp. 190–6); Meyer, ‘Totenbuch von Wagenhausen’,
pp. 94–5, 98, 163; Tüchle, ‘Ein Wagenhausener Nekrolog aus Petershausen’.
25 My attribution of this section of the manuscript to CHP is based on Meyer, ‘Das
Totenbuch von Wagenhausen’, pp. 93–5, Vizkelety, Mittelalterliche Lateinische
Handschriften der Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek, p. 157; and my own examination of
the manuscript in Budapest in October 2014.
26 Willehelmi Abbatis Constitutiones, II, 113.

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scribe) and in connection with the restoration of Petershausen’s oversight of

Wagenhausen in 1127 that CHP copied the Wagenhausen martyrology, and
also replaced the first folio (fol. 89) of the manuscript’s ninth-century copy of
the Rule of St Benedict. He seems also to have had some hand in producing
a manuscript, Fischingen Pfarrarchiv C XV sig. 13, which contains a similar
combination of texts (a martyrology, necrology and Rule) for Petershausen’s
new daughter house, Fischingen, founded in 1138. Unfortunately, this
manuscript has gone missing in recent years and the few photographs that
survive can provide only a limited basis for paleographical analysis. Albert
Bruckner, who examined the manuscript and published images of several of
its folios in the 1960s, attributed parts of it, including the Rule, to scribes at
Petershausen.27
CHP also helped to meet the local need for manuscripts. Most of
Petershausen’s own liturgical books burned in the spring of 1159, when
a massive fire destroyed the monastery. Some of the community’s most
treasured books, he lamented, were destroyed in the flames, among them ‘a
rather nice Rule containing the two martyrologies, one of the saints and the
other of the dead’—a book that sounds very similar to those that had been
sent to Wagenhausen and Fischingen.28 These books had to be replaced if the
monks were to begin again to celebrate the Mass and Office. CHP can be seen
at work in the community’s new necrology, University of Heidelberg, Codex
Salemitani IX 42, for which he established the columnar layout and entered
the base ‘layer’ of names.29 He also transferred much of the information
about donors and their associated feasts from the Chronicle, which had made
it safely out of the fire, into the tops of the columns.30 The lost martyrology
was replaced by a new one, University of Heidelberg, Codex Salemitani IX 57,
perhaps a gift from another community in the area.31 From folios 53v to 56v, in

27 My preliminary assessment of the identity of the scribe who established the layout
for the necrology is based only on the description and photographs in A. Bruckner,
Schreibschulen der Diözese Konstanz: Thurgau, Solothurn, Klein-Basel, Bern, vol. 10,
Scriptoria Medii Aevi Helvetica (Genf, 1964), pp. 21–7. For its provenance at
Petershausen, see especially pp. 26–7.
28 CP 5.42: ‘Tunc consumptum est principale altare cum omnibus ornamentis suis…
capitulum, cuius omnes sedes utpote in sollemnitate pentecoste erant ornate variis
velaminibus, et regula satis bona continens duo martyrologia, unum sanctorum,
alterum defunctorum, et evangelia, et Ysidorus sententiarum …’
29 See http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42/0009.
30 See, for example, CHP’s hand at work on fol. 5r, where he enters the names and
donations of Gerunc (left column) and Wolfirat (right column): http://digi.ub.
uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42/0013.
31 The hand in University of Heidelberg, Codex Salemitani IX 57 (http://digi.ub.uni-
heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX57) bears a strong resemblance to those of Zwiefalten’s
contemporary female scribes, who seem to have specialized in copying liturgical
books. While CHP notes in the Chronicle that Zwiefalten sent liturgical vestments
(another specialty of Zwiefalten’s religious women), they may later have sent

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space left blank by the scribe of the martyrology, CHP copied a computational
table, used to calculate the dates for Easter and other important feasts—a tool
essential for the proper performance of the liturgy.32

Liturgical poet and composer

CHP also played a key role in the production of the rhymed office composed
for Gebhard’s feast. This office, preserved in its earliest form in University
of Heidelberg, Codex Salemitani IX 42a, fols. 1v–10r, seems to draw its
biographical material from CHP’s Life of Gebhard. For example, the second
antiphon of the first of the six nocturns for Matins—‘Non consuete enixum .
sed vulva matris constat excisum . Domino premonstrante quod ipsum scivit
et ante’—shares the account of Gebhard’s birth as detailed in the Life. The Life
describes how, at the command of his dying mother, the premature Gebhard
was cut from her womb upon her death and smeared with a protective
coating of warm fat—a story that CHP would recount again a few years
later in his chronicle.33 The Life, which references Jeremiah 1. 5—‘Before I
formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest
forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the
nations’—and the antiphon share an understanding of this event as a sign of
God’s foreknowledge of Gebhard’s great future in the church. CHP was also
the scribe who copied the text of the office, including the hymns, antiphons
and responsories with their accompanying neumes, as well as the readings.34
While CHP’s role as scribe does not prove that he composed the music
for the office, it is certainly possible, and consistent with his likely role as
cantor.

this manuscript also. On Zweifalten’s female scribes, see A. Beach, ‘ “ Mathild de

Niphin” and the Female Scribes of Twelfth-Century Zwiefalten’, in Nuns’ Literacies
in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue, ed. V. Blanton, V. O’Mara and P. Stoop
(Turnhout, 2013), pp. 33–50. The inclusion of Gebhard in the martyrology provides
a terminus post quem of 1134 for the copying of the manuscript.
32 See http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX57/0111.
33 CP 1.6: ‘Iunior igitur supra memoratorum fratrum, sed ornamentum eorum,
Gebehardus ex defuncte matris [Diepirge] utero excisus et quibusdam fomentis
obvolutus est usque ad tempus nativitatis, Deo eius vitam ad multorum salutem
reservante. De talibus tamen excisis litere testantur, quod si vita comes fuerit felices
in mundo habeantur’ (‘Therefore Gebhard, the younger of the aforementioned
brothers, but their jewel, was cut out of the womb of his deceased mother [Diepirge]
and he was wrapped in a certain poultice up until the time of birth, with God
sparing his life for the salvation of many. It is written concerning such excisions
that if the youth should survive, these things should be considered auspicious’).
34 See http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/salIX42a/0016.

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Did CHP become Abbot Gebhard I (1164–70)?

Who was CPH? His chronicle offers the strongest clues. At various points
in the text, he mentions a forefather (avus) Gebhard, who was a monk at
Petershausen in the last decades of the eleventh century. He also repeatedly
mentions his uncle Gebino (a diminutive form of the name Gebhard), a
fellow monk who left Petershausen around 1127 to serve first as abbot of
Wagenhausen (1127–34) and then of Fischingen (c. 1135–38).35 The persistence
of the name Gebhard/Gebino in the chronicler’s family line suggests strongly
that he was a descendent of the monastery’s founder and thus related in some
way to the powerful Udalrichinger counts of Bregenz, the ruling comital
family of the Voralberg from the tenth to the twelfth century.36
CHP’s noble lineage and familial connection to the founder is not
surprising given the importance of the cantor in the central Middle Ages.
This was such an important office within Hirsau communities that, according
to Felix Heinzer, it often functioned as a springboard to the abbacy.37 While it
is not known if Conrad served as cantor prior to his election, it is a tempting
suggestion, given that the abbot was remembered in the Chronicle as a poet
and musician, and credited with copying the Hexameron of St Ambrose.
Around the time that Conrad’s successor took office, a new scribe-editor also
took over the work of the Chronicle. It is possible that CHP was elected abbot
in 1164 and served as Gebhard I (1164–71), a name strongly associated with
CHP’s family line. He may, of necessity, have left his decades old work-in-
progress in the hands of a successor, who to judge by the similarity of their
hands, may have been his assistant. If we estimate that CHP was born around
1095 and then served as assistant to the cantor at Wagenhausen until he was
around 25, he would have been about sixty-nine at time when he became
abbot—certainly a good old age in the twelfth century, but not an impossible
one. If CHP did take up the office of abbot as Gebhard I, then this might help
to explain why there is no person identified in Petershausen’s necrology as
armarius or precentor: he would have been remembered, in the end, as abbot.38
This must remain, however, only an interesting possibility.

35 CP 2.17, 3.28, 3.45, 4.32; on Gebino as Abbot of Wagenhausen and Fischingen, see
CP 3.14, 3.15, 3.16.
36 Walther, ‘Gründungsgeschichte und Tradition’, pp. 42–3; the CP is an important
(though problematic) source for the history of the Bregenzer comital family. See
B. Bilgeri, Bregenz. Geschichte der Stadt: Politik, Verfassung, Wirtschaft (Vienna, 1980),
pp. 22–31.
37 F. Heinzer, Klosterreform und mittelalterliche Buchkultur im deutschen Südwesten,
Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 39 (Leiden, 2008), p. 389.
38 The lack of individuals identified in Hirsau necrologies as precentor or armarius
generally, requires further explanation. In my database of over 7,000 names from
communities with connections to Hirsau, only two such individuals are specifically

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Conclusion

Although it is not possible to educe his specific personal identity from the
extant sources, CHP emerges from the surviving manuscripts produced at
Petershausen as both a skilled and prolific copyist of liturgical books and
as an historian. While he performed many of the duties that the customs
of Hirsau assigned to the precentor or armarius, he is never identified with
that title. Even so, with his clear engagement in both the liturgical life of
the community and in imagining and preserving its history, he neatly fits
the profile of the cantor-historian that stands at the centre of many of the
chapters in the volume. Whether CHP was Petershausen’s cantor in name or
in function only, his surviving work illustrates the power of one individual –
with both the skill and resources to deploy the powerful and interacting tools
of memoria and liturgia – to shape the identity of a monastic community in the
Middle Ages.

named: Adelheit armaria (22 May) and Gotscalchus armarius (17 August) – both
from the monastery of Admont in Steiermark. See MGH Necrologia Germaniae 2.
The near complete absence of identified cantors in Hirsau necrologies is puzzling
in view of the apparent importance of the office within those reform circles.

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Appendix 1
Manuscript Evidence for CHP’s Activities as Cantor-Historian

Manuscript Text(s) Scribal Role Authorial Role

University of 1 Rhymed Office 1 Copied music 1 Poet/Composer
Heidelberg, for St. Gebhard and text of Office of Office (?)
Cod. Sal. IX 42a (fols. 1v–10r)
2 Chronicle of 2 Primary scribe 2 Author of
Petershausen Chronicle
(fols. 35r–98r)
Budapest, 1 Martyrology 1 Sole scribe 1 Added entries for
Széchényi- of Usuard Ulrich, Conrad
National­ (fols. 7v–77v) and Gebhard (?)
bibliothek 2 Necrology 2 Assisted with
Cod. Lat. 514 (fols. 78r–88v) entry of the
names
3 Rule of 3 Copied first folio
St Benedict of Rule (fol. 89)
(fols. 89r–166v)
Fischingen, 1 Martyrology 1 Scribe (?)
Pfarrarchiv (fols. 1–110)
C XV sig. 13 2 Rule of
(missing) St Benedict
(fols. 111–218)
3 Necrology
(fols. 219–252)
University of 1 Necrology 1 Set out columns, 1 Drew on
Heidelberg, (fols. 4v–55r) added names Chronicle for
Cod. Sal. IX 42 and donations information about
(in arches above) patrons
2 Monastic 2 Scribe (?)
Capitulary of 817
(fols. 55v–56r)
University of Computus table Primary scribe
Heidelberg, (fols. 53v–56v)
Cod. Sal. IX 57

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 17
The Roman Liturgical Tradition According
to a Twelfth-Century Roman Cantor

Peter Jeffery

From the contents of this volume, one might get the impression that the
cantor-historian was primarily a northern European phenomenon. Yet there
is at least one known individual from southern Europe who composed a
liturgical ordinal, performed liturgical music, studied liturgical history, wrote
a chronicle of sorts and identified himself as a cantor. His name was Benedict,
and he was a canon of St Peter’s basilica at the Vatican in Rome. The book
he wrote is entitled Liber politicus in the manuscripts. Paul Fabre, its modern
editor, apparently thought this was a corrupt misspelling of Liber polyptychus,
which would describe the book as many-sided, a polyptych or miscellany. Yet
Fabre also thought this was a poor description of the book’s actual content.1
Another possible emendation is the one published by Jean Mabillon in the
editio princeps: Liber pollicitus, apparently ‘the promised book’.2 I propose we
assume that Benedict meant what he wrote, and that we should understand
the title to mean, ‘Book of the City’, an attempt to render Liber Urbanus into
Greek. Urbanus would in fact be an accurate title, since the entire book is
about Urbs, the city of Rome.
There are three extant manuscripts. The twelfth-century manuscript in
Cambrai is the closest chronologically, but the farthest away geographically,
and Fabre considered it the least faithful copy of the text.3 He preferred

1 P. Fabre, ed., Le Liber Censuum de l’église romaine, publié avec une préface et un
commentaire, tome I, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2e
série, vol. 6 (Paris, 1889–1901), Introduction, pp. 3–4. This volume was actually
completed by L. Duchesne, whose name is not mentioned on the title page. The
edition of the text itself will be found in P. Fabre, ed., Le Liber Censuum de l’église
romaine, publié avec une préface et un commentaire, tome II, Bibliothèque des Écoles
françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 2e série, vol. 6.5 (Paris, 1905), pp. 141–74, 90–1.
See Table 17.1 below for more exact information. A third volume of Tables des
matières, ed. L. Duchesne, P. Fabre and G. Mollat, was published in 1952.
2 Hence the work is better known as Ordo Romanus XI, from its position in J. Mabillon,
Musei Italici Tomus II, complectens Antiquos Libros Rituales sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae,
cum Commentario praevio in Ordinem Romanum (Paris, 1724), pp. 118–54; reprinted in
PL 78, 1025–54.
3 Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 554 (512). LC, I, 3–4. A. Molinier, Catalogue
général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départements 17: Cambrai
(Paris, 1891), p. 211.

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 The Roman Liturgical Tradition According to a Twelfth-Century Roman Cantor

the two fifteenth-century Roman manuscripts.4 These two begin with a

dedicatory epistle not found in the Cambrai MS, which has the following title:

Benedicti Beati Petri Canonici Liber Politicus ad Guidonem de Castello tunc

Cardinalem Sancti Marci, postmodum factus est Celestinus secundus.

[Liber politicus of Benedict, Canon of Blessed Peter, to Guido of Castello,

then Cardinal of St Mark, after that he was made (Pope) Celestine II.]

Guido de Castello was appointed cardinal priest of S. Marco, in what is now

the Piazza Venezia, in 1134. He reigned as Pope Celestine II in 1143–44. Thus
the epistle was written after 1134, and its title shows awareness of the papal
election of 1143. More information about the dating comes from a chronicle of
the popes that forms part of the Liber politicus. The chronicle ends with Pope
Innocent II, who reigned in 1130–43 and is called ‘dominus meus’.5 Since
the chronicle also mentions repairs that were made to the church of S. Maria
in Trastevere in 1140, we can conclude that the Liber politicus was written
between 1140, the time of the repairs, and 1143, the year Pope Innocent died
and the dedicatee Guido was elected to succeed him. The chronicle in the
Cambrai manuscript substitutes Pope Alexander III for Innocent II, indicating
that this manuscript was written during Alexander’s reign, 1159–81, by
someone who had no hesitations about modifying the text.
Benedict’s Liber politicus incorporated material from the canonical
collection of Deusdedit, published in 1087.6 Excerpts from the Liber politicus
were subsequently incorporated into a work known as the Gesta Pauperis
Scolaris Albini, evidently written after 29 October 1188, but before Albinus
was appointed cardinal bishop of Albano, between 18 May and 6 June
1189.7 The poor scholar Albinus tugs at our hearts with sad tales of how his
parents died when he was young and left him an orphan,8 but he did all right.
Appointment as Cardinal Bishop made him one of the seven highest-ranking
cardinals, and gave him the alliterative appellation Albinus of Albano. In

4 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS F.73 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica

Vaticana, MS latinus 5348. LC, I, 3–4. P. Salmon, Les Manuscrits liturgiques latins de la
Bibliothèque Vaticane 3: Ordines Romani, Pontificaux, Rituels, Cérémoniaux, Studi e Testi
260 (Vatican City, 1970) p. 125 no. 424. Mabillon is less than perfectly clear about
his sources, but refers to an ‘alius codex’ in the footnotes on pp. 141, 143, ‘duobus
codicibus’ on p. 152 note a, and has an ‘Additio ex cod. Valli-cellano’ on pp. 153–4.
Since the material on pp. 153–4 (sections 2 and 3 in Fabre’s edition) also occurs in
Vaticanus 5348, it would appear that Mabillon did not have the Vatican manuscript,
but was using a different manuscript that did not contain sections 2 and 3.
5 LC, II, 169; Mabillon, Musei Italici, p. 127.
6 LC, I, 4. L. Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): A
Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature (Washington DC, 1999) 228–33.
7 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Ottobonianus 5057 (late s. xii); LC,
II, 87–137.
8 LC, II, 87.

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 Peter Jeffery

1192 some of Albinus’s work was, finally, incorporated into the great listing
of papal properties and rents known as the Liber Censuum, compiled by a
certain canon Cencius, papal chamberlain, in 1192. Because of this, the only
modern edition of Benedict’s Liber politicus can be difficult to use, because it
was published among the appendices to Fabre’s edition of the Liber Censuum,9
with some of Benedict’s work appearing as sections within the Gesta of
Albinus (see Table 17.1).
In any case it is clear that we are dealing with twelfth-century material,
indeed material written between 1140 and 1143. As for Benedict, he describes
himself in the dedicatory epistle as ‘Benedictus, beati Petri apostoli indignus
canonicus et Romane ecclesie cantor’ (‘Benedict, unworthy canon of blessed
Peter the Apostle, and cantor of the Roman church’).10 Table 17.1 shows the
contents of Benedict’s Liber politicus, with section numbers and page numbers
from Tome II of Fabre’s edition, and page numbers from Mabillon’s edition.
There has been some scholarly attention to item 1b, the ordinal for
St Peter’s;11 the second and third items have been studied for their
information about papal processions.12 Attention has also been given to the
remarkable folkloric practices described in the seventh item.13 But it is clear
that Benedict was not merely describing the practice of his own time. He
must also have been a researcher, consulting Roman liturgical sources from
earlier centuries. For example, Table 17.2 shows a passage from the ordinal
that is clearly dependent on the eighth-century text known as Ordo Romanus
Primus, the earliest description of how the pope celebrated stational Masses,
as he visited one Roman church after another over the course of the liturgical
year.14
On Easter morning, as the papal procession approaches the basilica
of St Mary Major, a regional notary stands in Merolana street, waiting to

9 LC, I, 1–600 (edition).

10 LC, II, 141.
11 For example: J. Dyer, ‘The Double Office at St Peter’s Basilica on Dominica de
Gaudete’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed.
T. Bailey and A. C. Santosuosso (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 200–19; J. F. Romano, ‘The
Ceremonies of the Roman Pontiff: Rereading Benedict’s Twelfth-Century Liturgical
Script’, Viator 41 (2010), 133–50.
12 S. Twyman, Papal Ceremonial at Rome in the Twelfth Century, HBS Subsidia 4
(Woodbridge, 2002); P. Montaubin, ‘Pater Urbis et Orbis: Les cortèges pontificaux
dans la Rome médiévale (VIIIe–XIVe siècles)’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 63
(2009), 9–47.
13 M. Boiteux and I. Sordi, ‘Cornomania e carnevale a Roma nel medioevo’, La
Ricerca Folklorica 6 (1982), 57–64; M. Harris, ‘Claiming Pagan Origins for Carnival:
Bacchanalia, Saturnalia, and Kalends’, European Medieval Drama 10 (2006), 57–107
(pp. 90–5).
14 Mabillon, Musei Italici, II, 1–16. The best edition is now: M. Andrieu, ed., Les
Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge 2: Les Textes (Ordines I–XIII), Spicilegium Sacrum
Lovaniense: Études et documents 23 (Louvain, 1938), pp. 65–108.

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 The Roman Liturgical Tradition According to a Twelfth-Century Roman Cantor

Table 17.1 The contents of Benedict’s Liber politicus

1a Epistola ad Guidonem de Castello (LC, II, 141; Musei Italici, pp. 118–19)
1b Incipit de ordine Romane ecclesie et sacri Palatii dignitatibus (ordinal for the
liturgical year at St Peter’s, including papal ceremonies; LC, II, 141–59;
Musei Italici, pp. 119–53)
2 Hec sunt festivitates in quibus papa debet coronari (days on which the pope
wears a crown; LC, II, 90, 165; Musei Italici, p. 153)
3 Hec sunt stationes sancti Petri nocturnales (days when the pope attended night
office at St Peter’s) and Hec sunt sancti Petri diurne stationes (days when
the pope attended the day office at St Peter’s; LC, II, 90, 165; Musei Italici,
pp. 153–4)
4 (Untitled chronicle of the popes, with special interest in their liturgical
innovations and matters related to St Peter’s basilica; LC, II, 65–9)
5 In ordinatione cardinalium et diaconorum et episcoporum qualiter agendum sit
(ordination rites for cardinals, deacons and bishops; LC, II, 90–1, 171)
6 Incipit laudes festis diebus quando laudes canende sunt (litanies to be sung at
ordinations; LC, II, 91, 171)
7 De laudibus Cornomannie (popular customs and songs of the schola cantorum;
LC, II, 171–4)
8 Liber regionarius (census of notable sites in Rome, found only in the Cambrai
MS, possibly not originally part of Benedict’s Liber politicus; LC, II, 175–7)

Table 17.2 Comparison of the Liber politicus with the Ordo Romanus Primus

Ordo Romanus Primus Liber politicus

(Ordines Romani, pp. 71–2) (LC, II, 152)
Die autem resurrectionis dominice, Cum autem venerit in Merolanam,
procedente eo ad Sanctam Mariam, stat notarius ibi et alta voce dicit:
notarius regionarius stat in loco qui Jube, domne, benedicere. Pontifex
dicitur Merolanas et, salutato pontifice, benedicit eum.
dicit: Notarius dicit:
In nomine domini nostri Iesu Christi, In ecclesia sancte Marie in hac nocte
baptizati sunt hesterna nocte in sancta Dei baptizati sunt tot masculi et tot femine.
genitrice Maria infantes masculi numero
tanti, feminae tantae.
Respondit pontifex: Deo gratias. Pontifex respondet: Deo gratias.
Et accipit a sacellario solidum unum; Et notarius accipit a sacellario unum
pontifex autem pergit ad stationem. bizantium.

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 Peter Jeffery

address the pontiff. The actual words are slightly different in the two sources,
but he announces how many males and females were baptized during the
Easter Vigil the night before. The pontiff responds Deo gratias and the papal
treasurer, known as the sacellarius or ‘bag man’, gives the notary a coin. In the
eighth-century text this is a solidus, a gold coin with the emperor’s image
on it; in Greek it was called nómisma. This denomination was created by
Emperor Constantine I in the fourth century and continued to be minted in
Constantinople up to the reign of Emperor John I (969-76),15 but the mint at
Rome ceased stamping them out about the year 776.16 In the twelfth-century
Liber politicus the coin is no longer called a solidus, but instead is called a
bizantium. Perhaps this is derived from the vernacular word bisanti or bezant,
which was used in medieval Italy for gold coins minted in the Crusader
kingdoms of the Middle East.17 Benedict may have thought the oriental bezant
of his time was equivalent to the coin used back in the eighth century, when
Rome was under the rule of the Byzantine emperors. The change from solidus
to bizantium cannot be explained by the current practice of Benedict’s own
time, because, elsewhere in Benedict’s ordinal, the pope still uses solidi to pay
officials for their ritual performances.18 It is hard to be sure exactly what kind
of solidus Benedict’s pope would have used for this purpose, for the papacy
did not mint its own money at the time Benedict was writing his ordinal
(1140–3). Perhaps it was a coin bearing the likeness of one of the German
monarchs who claimed the title of emperor. Or perhaps Benedict used the
word solidus to represent one of its vernacular derivatives, like the French sou
or Italian soldo, a word which was evolving toward its more general modern
meaning of ‘coin’ or ‘money’.19 In any case, Benedict’s account of a regional

15 P. Grierson, Byzantine Coins (London,1982), pp. 8, 180; F. Füeg, Corpus of the

Nomismata from Anastasius II to John I in Constantinople 713–976 (Lancaster PA, 2007).
16 On the Roman mint, with some examples of eight-century solidi printed there,
see: P. Grierson, Byzantine Coins (London, 1982), pp. 169–70, and plates pp. 39–40;
P. Grierson, Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in
the Whittemore Collection 3: Leo III to Nicephorus III 717–1081, Part I: Leo III to Michael
III (717–867) (Washington DC, 1973), pp. 82, 87–91, 237–9, 271–5, 288–9, 296–7,
317–20, 327, plates VI, VII, XI.
17 L. Travaini, Monete e storia nell’Italia medievale (Rome, 2007), pp. 92n, 248, 286, 325;
P. Grierson, ‘A Rare Crusader Bezant with the Christus Vincit Legend’, American
Numismatic Society Museum Notes 6 (1954), 169–78, and plate XVIII, 1–2; reprinted
in P. Grierson, Later Medieval Numismatics (11th–16th Centuries): Selected Studies
(London, 1979), item IX; P. Grierson and L. Travaini, Medieval European Coinage with
a Catalogue of the Coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 14: Italy (III) (South Italy,
Sicily, Sardinia) (Cambridge, 1998), p. 456.
18 For example, LC, II, 150, left column line 35; p. 151 left column line 27; a wider
variety of coins on p. 156 right column, p. 158 right column.
19 ‘No Popes [sic] are known to have issued coins from 983 to 1294’ according to A. G.
Berman, Papal Coins (South Salem NY, 1991), p. 47, and other sources. The Roman
Senate began issuing provisini and grossi in 1184, according to Corpus Nummorum
Italicorum: Primo Tentativo di un Catalogo Generale delle monete medievali e moderne

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 The Roman Liturgical Tradition According to a Twelfth-Century Roman Cantor

notary receiving a bizantium for announcing the number of Easter baptisms

is not a description of an actual practice, but an imaginative interpolation
derived from Benedict’s reading of an early liturgical source.
We see more of Benedict as a historian in item 4 (see Table 17.1), his chronicle
of the popes, in which he deals mostly with their liturgical innovations.
Benedict’s chronicle is clearly based on the Liber pontificalis and other familiar
sources, but Benedict’s use of his sources would receive a failing grade from
any modern history teacher. Particularly strange is Benedict’s section on Pope
Gregory I (590–604),20 which gives him credit for things that (according to the
Liber pontificalis) were actually done by other popes. A sentence-by-sentence
analysis of this section demonstrates his ways of working and suggests an
underlying agenda.

Gregorius primus statuit ut quadragesimali tempore V feria ieiunium atque

missarum celebritas fieret in ecclesiis, quod non agebatur.

[Gregory I decreed that, on the fifth feria in the time of Lent, a fast and a
celebration of Mass be done in the churches, which was not being done (at
the time).]

These words are taken from the Liber pontificalis, but from the life of
Gregory II (715–31), for it was Gregory II, not Gregory I, who added the
Thursdays of Lent to the Roman stational calendar.21

Hic constituit intra missarum sollempnia domini nostri Jesu Christi

sancteque ejus genitricis, sanctorum apostolorum et omnium sanctorum
martyrum ac confessorum perfectorumque justorum toto orbe terrarum
requiescentium memoriam agere.

[He instituted that, during the solemnities of the Mass, a memorial be made
of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his holy mother, of the holy apostles and of
all holy martyrs and confessors and perfect just men resting throughout the
world.]

coniate in Italia o da Italiani in altri paesi 15/1: Dalla caduta dell’impero d’occidente al 1572
(Rome, 1934; repr. Bologna, 1971), pp. 98–100. On the coinage of twelfth-century
central Italy, see Travaini, Monete, pp. 44–53; P. Grierson, The Coins of Medieval
Europe (London, 1991), pp. 93–6. On medieval meanings of the word solidus and
its vernacular derivatives, see J. Belaubre, Dictionnaire de numismatique médiévale
occidentale (Paris, 1996), pp. 132–3; Grierson and Travaini, Medieval European Coinage,
p. 473.
20 LC, II, 168–9.
21 LP, I, 402. For comment see R. Davis, Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber
Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of Nine Popes from AD 715 to AD 817, rev. ed.,
Translated Texts for Historians 13 (Liverpool, 2007), p. 8; J. F. Baldovin, The Urban
Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational
Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), pp. 122, 125, 128, 131 n. 14,
154.

315
 Peter Jeffery

This is derived from a statement in the Liber pontificalis, which actually says
that Pope Gregory III (731–41) established an oratory at St Peter’s basilica,
full of relics of all these saints, in which both vigils and Masses were to be
celebrated on their feasts, and in which Gregory III himself was eventually
buried.22 This oratory still existed in Benedict’s day; indeed portions of
Gregory III’s inscriptions survive even now in the Vatican grottos.23 For
some reason Benedict refashioned the description of Gregory III’s chapel into
something ‘instituted’ by Gregory I.
The three statements that follow refer to innovations that were traditionally
credited to Gregory I.

Hic augmentavit in precatione canonum ‘diesque nostros in tua pace

dispone’ et cetera.

[He expanded (the text to be used) in praying the canons (of the Mass, by
adding the words) ‘and dispose our days in your peace’ etc.]

The Liber pontificalis does indeed state that Gregory I added these words to
the canon of the Mass.

Hic fecit supra corpus beati Petri et beati Pauli iugiter missas celebrari a
cardinalibus.24

[He made for Masses to be celebrated continuously by cardinals above the

body of blessed Peter and of blessed Paul.]

Gregory I is known to have rebuilt the area around St Peter’s tomb so

that an altar for Mass stood directly above Peter’s body. The Liber pontificalis
briefly mentions this, and says that Gregory did the same at the church of
St Paul (Outside the Walls). Portions of Gregory’s structures at St Peter’s still
exist.25 But Benedict’s Liber politicus says something new when it asserts that
the Masses were to be said ‘continuously by cardinals’. The term ‘cardinal’,

22 LP, I, 417; Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, p. 22.

23 P. Jeffery ‘The Roman Liturgical Year and the Early Liturgy of St. Peter’s’, in
Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick et al. (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 157–76
(pp. 161–3, and illustrations pp. 95, 157).
24 LP, I, 312. R. Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of

the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, rev. ed., Translated Texts for Historians
6 (Liverpool, 2000), p. 63. B. Botte, ed., Le Canon de la messe romaine: édition critique,
Textes et études liturgiques 2 (Louvain, 1935), pp. 36–7.
25 LP, I, 312; E. Kirschbaum, The Tombs of St Peter & St Paul, trans. J. Murray (New

York, 1959), pp. 156–64, 190–2, with many photographs from the excavations
of the 1940s–50s; D. J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: Continuity and
Change (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 27–37; H. Brandenburg, ‘Petrus und Paulus in
Rom? Die archäologischen Zeugnisse, die Basilika S. Paul vor den Mauern und der
Kult der Apostelfürsten: Ein Beitrag zur jüngsten Diskussion um die Präsenz der
Apostol in Rom’, in Marmoribus Vestita: Miscellanea in Onore di Federico Guidobaldi

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meaning the ‘principal priest’ of a church, had been around for centuries,
although in Benedict’s time the Roman cardinals had not yet emerged fully
as the Sacred College of papal electors.26 But Benedict will have more to say
about the liturgical duties of cardinals, and the word ‘iugiter’ (‘continuously’),
will be encountered again. Its meanings are difficult to understand from this
passage alone.

Hic fecit Romanum cantum et ordinavit primicerium et scolam cantorum.

[He made the Roman chant, and he ordained a primicerius and a school of
singers.]

The tradition that Gregory I ‘made’ the Roman chant and founded the
Roman schola cantorum does not go back to the Liber pontificalis, though it was
asserted in the ninth-century life of Gregory written by John Hymmonides
the Deacon (c. 825–c. 882).27 The word primicerius, meaning ‘the first one
[listed] on the wax [tablet]’, was already used in the late Roman imperial
court to apply to the chief notary;28 it continued in use for the papal schola
notariorum.29 When Gregory the Great organized the defensors (aristocrats
who served as patrons and attorneys) of the Roman church into a schola, the
leader of this organization was also known as a primicerius.30
The origins of the schola cantorum are not so easily traced; we first hear
of a prior cantorum in the seventh century.31 A letter of Pope Paul I (757–67)
to the Frankish King Pippin refers to a prior scholae cantorum.32 However, in
the first document that offers us concrete information about what the schola
cantorum did, the eighth-century Ordo Romanus Primus, the person who leads

1, ed. O. Brandt and P. Pergola, Studi di Antichità Cristiana 63 (Vatican City, 2011),
pp. 213–62.
26 P. Jugie, ‘Cardinal: Up to the Council of Trent’, The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, ed.

P. Levillain, 3 vols. (New York, 2002), I, 239–43; P. Jugie, ‘Sacred College’, The Papacy,
III, 1356–8.
27 PL 75, 59–242, with the claims about chant and the schola in Liber II.6–10, cols. 90–2.
28 Theodosian Code 6.10.2, see C. Pharr, et al., The Theodosian Code and Novels and

the Sirmondian Constitutions, The Corpus of Roman Law (Corpus Juris Romani)
1 (Princeton, 1952), pp. 129–30. A. Cutler and A. P. Kazhdan, ‘Notary’, and A. P.
Kazhdan, ‘Primikerios’, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols. (New York, 1991)
III, 1495, 1719–20.
29 Thus it appears frequently in Ordo Romanus Primus. See also P. Rabikauskas, ‘Notary,

Apostolic’, The Papacy, II, 1054–5.

30 R. L. Poole, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery down to the Time of Innocent III

(Cambridge, 1915), pp. 6–7, 12–20.

31 P. Jeffery, ‘Rome and Jerusalem: From Oral Tradition to Written Repertory in Two

Ancient Liturgical Centers’, in Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David Hughes,

ed. G. M. Boone, Isham Library Papers 4 (Cambridge MA, 1995), pp. 207–47
(pp. 227–30).
32 PL 89, 1887; 98, 200; MGH Epp. III, 553–4.

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 Peter Jeffery

the choir is known as the ‘quartus scholae subdiaconus’ (‘fourth subdeacon

of the schola’), implying that there were three people ranking above him who
are not described as actually involved in the music performances. The fourth
subdeacon’s other title, archiparafonista,33 seems to confirm that the three
people above him did not actually sing, since it indicates he was the highest
ranking of the parafonistae, the adult ‘side-sounders’ who stood next to the
infantes of the schola.34 However Benedict’s terminology, in which the choir
leader is called primicerius, reflects the practice of his own time, for his ordinal
often refers to the singers as primicerius cum scola or primicerius et cantores.35 In
a twelfth-century music manuscript reflecting the use of St Peter’s, the verses
of the archaic Easter Week Vespers are alternately assigned to the primicerius
and the scola [sic],36 indicating that the choir leader was now known as
primicerius.

et docuit et ordinavit stationes propter penitentes, quas cum cantoribus et

primicerio et regionariis faciebat, aliter in Quadragesima usque ad Pascha
et aliter in Albis et in dominicis diebus et festivitatibus sanctorum.

[and he taught and ordained stations for penitents, which they did with
cantors and the primicerius and the regionaries, one way in Lent up to Easter
and another way during the Easter season and on Sundays and feasts of the
saints.]

The annual calendar of stations is attributed to Gregory I in the vita by

John the Deacon,37 and this belief is enshrined in the fact that the book of
prayers for papal stational Masses was traditionally known as the Gregorian
sacramentary.38 On the other hand, the titles of Gregory’s preserved sermons
on the Gospels, which name the Roman church in which they were delivered,
suggest that Gregory knew an earlier form of the stational calendar than the
one enshrined in the sacramentary named after him.39 Once again Benedict
refers to the singers as ‘the cantors and the primicerius’, but his mention of
the ‘regionaries’ sounds like an allusion to Ordo Romanus Primus, where each

33 Ordines Romani, pp. 80, 31 n. 1.

34 Ibid., p. 81.
35 LC, II, 143 left column lines 19–20, 32–3, right column line 31; p. 144 left column line
31; p. 145 left column line 10, right column line 1; etc.
36 BL Additional MS 29988, fols. 74r–76v, 77v. See M. Huglo, ‘Le chant “vieux-romain”:
liste des manuscrits et témoins indirects’, Sacris Erudiri 6 (1954), 96–124 (pp. 112–3).
My opinion that this manuscript originated within the orbit of St Peter’s will be
spelled out in another publication.
37 PL 75, 93–4.
38 J. Deshusses, ed., Le Sacramentaire grégorien: ses principales formes d’après les plus
anciens manuscrits 1, 3rd edn, Spicilegium Friburgense 16 (Fribourg, 1992), pp. 50–60.
39 Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, pp. 124, 151–2. See now
Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae in Evangelia, ed. R. Étaix, CCL 141 (Turnhout, 1999),
lix–lxx.

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 The Roman Liturgical Tradition According to a Twelfth-Century Roman Cantor

of the lower clergy was subordinate to one of the seven regional subdeacons
of the city of Rome, and the notaries and defensors were also organized by
ecclesiastical regions.40 The statement that Gregory ordained the stations ‘for
penitents’ echoes what the Liber pontificalis says about Pope Simplicius (468–
83). However, what Simplicius was actually credited with instituting was not
‘stations’, but a particular way of staffing the basilicas of St Peter, St Paul and
St Lawrence. Each of these would be served by priests from the local region
who would rotate on a weekly basis, for the purpose of hearing confessions
and baptizing.41 On the other hand, Benedict’s claim that stational Masses
were celebrated ‘one way’ during Lent and ‘another way’ the rest of the
year seems to follow the practice Benedict knew. His ordinal states that, on
Ember Days, which had a penitential character, the pope ‘cantat missam
more quadragesimali’ [‘sings Mass in the Lenten manner’]. The ordinal also
recounts some practices that were only followed during Lent.42 Benedict
seems to have assumed that the practice of his own time extended back to
Gregory I.

Et statuit has antiphonas processionales in IIIIor tempora et in

Quadragesima: ‘Deprecamur te, Domine’; ‘Multa sunt, Domine, peccata
nostra’; ‘Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo’. Et in letanias maiores alias
antiphonas: ‘Domine Deus noster’ et ceteras.

[And he instituted these processional antiphons on Ember Days and in

Lent: ‘Deprecamur te, Domine’; ‘Multa sunt, Domine, peccata nostra’;
‘Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo’. And on Major Rogations other antiphons:
‘Domine Deus noster’ and so on.]

Here again, Lent and the Ember Days are linked, this time by the same series
of processional antiphons. There is a different series for the Rogation Days,
another type of penitential day. The Rogation series, beginning with ‘Domine
Deus noster’, is given in full in the ordinal, so that it was enough for Benedict
to cite only its first antiphon here.43 The other list is given in full here since
it does not occur in the ordinal. There is no reason to attribute either list to
Gregory beyond the belief that he produced the chant repertory.

Et fecit sanctum Stephanum orphanotrophium Lateranis, ubi primicerius et

cantores manerent, de quibus jugiter essent cum pontifice, et de episcopis,

40 Ordines Romani, pp. 67–70.

41 LP, I, 249: ‘Hic constituit ad sanctum Petrum apostolum et ad sanctum Paulum
apostolum et ad sanctum Laurentium martyrem ebdomadas ut presbyteri manerent,
propter penitentes et baptismum: regio III ad sanctum Laurentium, regio prima ad
sanctum Paulum, regio VI vel septima ad sanctum Petrum.’ For translation see Book
of Pontiffs, p. 43.
42 LC, II, 144 left column lines 35–6; pp. 149–50, esp. p. 150 left column lines 4–6.
43 LC, II, 155–6.

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 Peter Jeffery

cardinalibus, diaconibus subdiaconibus, regionariis et de acolitis et

cubiculariis, qui eum custodirent et essent ei bonum testimonium.

[And he made the orphanage of St Stephen at the Lateran, where the

primicerius and cantors would live, some of whom would be with the pontiff
continually, and some bishops, cardinals, deacons, subdeacons, regionaries
and some acolytes and cubiculars, who would take care of him and be a
good testimony to him.]

According to John the Deacon, Gregory founded two houses for the
singers.44 The one at the Lateran, which John mentioned second but Benedict
mentions first, was also known as an orphanage; it seems to be of more recent
origin than the house at St Peter’s, which Benedict mentions second. Popes
Stephen II (752–7) and his brother Paul I (757–67) are the earliest known
alumni of the Lateran orphanage.45 By Benedict’s time it was evidently
dedicated to St Stephen. As for the other clergy, who are listed in descending
hierarchical order, it is interesting to see ‘bishops, cardinals, deacons’. That
means that, for Benedict, the word ‘cardinal’ by itself still implied ‘cardinal
priest’, the main priest assigned to a church. Again we find the word
‘continually’. It seems that the pope, who lived at the Lateran, was always
accompanied by some cantors from the Lateran schola, who seem to have
served the pope in shifts.

Et constituit sicut papa Gelasius ordinavit, ut essent per regiones de

diaconibus, subdiaconibus, regionariis et notariis, ut si quod ecclesiasticum
negotium oriretur in regione et diffinire non possent, representarent
archidiacono ut ipse poneret finem.

[And he constituted, as Pope Gelasius had ordained, that there would be

some deacons, subdeacons, regionaries and notaries (organized) by regions,
so that if some ecclesiastical business arose in a (particular) region and they
were not able to settle it, they could represent to the archdeacon that he
should bring it to a conclusion.]

44 PL 75, 89–90. J. Dyer, ‘The Schola Cantorum and its Roman Milieu in the Early
Middle Ages’, in De Musica et Cantu: Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik
und der Oper: Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Kahn and A.-K. Heimer,
Musikwissenschaftliche Publikationen: Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende
Kunst Frankfurt/Main 2 (Hildesheim, 1993), pp. 19–40; J. Dyer, ‘Boy Singers of the
Roman Schola Cantorum’, in Young Choristers (650–1700), ed. S. Boynton and E. Rice,
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 7 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 19–36;
J. Dyer, ‘Roman singers of the later Middle Ages’, in Cantus Planus: Papers Read
at the 6th meeting, Eger, Hungary, 1993, ed. L. Dobszay, 2 vols. (Budapest, 1995), I,
45–64.
45 LP, I, 440, 463; Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, pp. 52, 79.

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This summarizes the organization of the clergy described at the beginning

of Ordo Romanus Primus, in which all the lesser clergy serve under the
subdeacon and deacon of each region, but have the right to appeal decisions
to the Roman archdeacon because he is ‘vicarius pontificis’ (‘vicar of the
pontiff’).46 It is not clear to what extent this system still functioned in
Benedict’s time, but it was formally abolished only by Pope Alexander VII
(1655–67).47 Why Benedict would attribute this system to Gelasius and
Gregory is not clear. One manuscript of the Ordo Romanus attributes it to
Pope Silvester (314–35); the Liber pontificalis ascribes the division of Rome into
seven regions to as many as three popes: Clement I (first century), Fabian I
(236–50) and Gaius (282–95).48

Hic scripsit ordinem qualiter ecclesia regeretur et statuit ut quando pontifex

extra Urbem iret, archidiaconus et archipresbyter cardinalis et primicerius
representent vicem eius.

[He wrote the order for how the church should be ruled, and he instituted
that, when the pontiff goes outside the City, the archdeacon and cardinal
archpresbyter and primicerius (of the notaries?) represent him.]

In the document by which Gregory set up the schola of seven defensors,

establishing a certain Boniface as the first-ranking primicerius, Gregory ‘per
absentiam pontificis et sedendi in conuentu clericorum habere licentiam et
honoris sui priuilegia in omnibus statuimus obtinere’ (‘established that, in
the absence of the pontiff, they have the freedom of sitting in the assembly of
the clergy and they retain the privileges of their honour in all things’).49 It is
only later, in an epistle of Pope Martin I (649–53), that we find the statement
that ‘in absentia pontificis archidiaconus et archipresbyter et primicerius
locum presentant pontificis’ (‘in the absence of the pontiff the archdeacon and
the archpriest and the primicerius are present in place of the pontiff’).50 Again,
a statement from a later pope is being attributed to Gregory I.

Et fecit xenodochium sancti Gregorii juxta gradus beati Petri, et constituit

ut tres cantores cum primicerio jugiter officiarent missam ad altare beati
Petri, qui indutus pluviali et mitra et virga staret juxta altare cum secundo,
tercio et quarto; et pro beneficio haberet sicut in privilegio ejus legitur.

46 Ordines Romani, pp. 67–8.

47 See the motu proprio Nuper certis ex causis of 26 October 1655 and Alias nos of 10
June 1657 in Bullarum Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum
Taurinensis Editio, XVI: Alexander VII, ed. A. Bilius et al. (Turin, 1869), pp. 86–7,
279–80.
48 LP, I, 123, 148, 161; Book of Pontiffs, pp. 3, 8, 12.
49 S. Gregorii Magni Registrum Epistularum VIII.16, ed. D. Norberg, CCL 140A
(Turnhout, 1982), p. 535.
50 PL 87, 201A; LP, I, 148, n. 4.

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 Peter Jeffery

[And he made the hospice of St Gregory near the stairs of blessed Peter,
and he instituted that three cantors with the primicerius would continually
officiate Mass at the altar of blessed Peter. Vested with cope and mitre and
staff he would stand by the altar with the second, third and fourth; and for
a benefice they would have as stated in his privilege.]

Here Benedict mentions the other house for a schola cantorum, which stood
by the stairs leading up to St Peter’s basilica. It is not clear if a building still
stood there in Benedict’s time. What is interesting, though, is the statement
that the primicerius and three cantors would officiate at Mass at the altar over
St Peter’s tomb. The number of four cantors reminds us that, in Ordo Romanus
Primus, the choir leader is the fourth subdeacon of the schola, suggesting
some unspecified role for the other three. In Benedict’s text, however, the
four are now bishops, vested in cope, mitre and staff – items which are never
mentioned in Ordo Romanus Primus. Since they seem to stand by the altar
together, it is less clear that the word iugiter in this case refers to a rotation. If
Benedict knew or thought he knew of a privilege from Pope Gregory stating
how much the four would be paid, that document remains unidentified.

Et IIII cantores statuit ad sanctum Paulum et IIII ad sanctam Mariam

maiorem, et IIII ad sanctum Laurentium foras murum pro servicio
missarum cardinalium cum benefitiis ipsarum ecclesiarum. Et precepit
primicerio et cantoribus ut nullo modo deviarent ab ordine quem docuit in
Romana ecclesia.

[And he established four cantors at St Paul and four at St Mary Major and
four at St Lawrence-outside-the-walls, for service at the Masses of cardinals,
with benefices of these same churches. And he decreed to the primicerius
and cantors that they deviate in no way from the order he taught in the
Roman church.]

Thus Benedict believed that Gregory had also established four cantors at
these three other Roman basilicas, who had learned an order of service taught
by Gregory himself. This raises the question of what Benedict meant when he
called himself ‘cantor of the Roman church’. Was he one of four at St Peter’s,
or one of sixteen at the four basilicas? Was he a primicerius? The ordinal does
not mention all these resident cantors when the pope arrives at one of the
basilicas for stational Mass.

Precepit ut ad altare beati Petri nulla consecratio fieret nisi Romani

pontificis; et quando pontifex facit consecrationem ibi, descendat ad
sanctum Andream et ibi faciat consecrationem; postea revertatur ad missam.

[He prescribed that, at the altar of blessed Peter, no consecration would

be made except by the Roman pontiff; and when the pontiff makes a
consecration there, let him descend to St Andrew and make a consecration
there; after that let him return to the Mass.]

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‘Consecration’ here refers to the ordination of a bishop. Since only a pope

could be consecrated at the main altar above the body of St Peter, Benedict’s
ordo directs that, on Ember Saturdays when a new bishop is to be consecrated,
that pope should begin the Mass at the altar of St Peter, then move to the
oratory of St Andrew and consecrate the new bishop there, then return to
the altar of St Peter to complete the Mass.51 The practice is not mentioned
in sources earlier than Benedict, but it is mentioned, and attributed to Pope
Gregory, by two later writers.52

Et constituit IIII diaconos cardinales esse ad sanctum Petrum, qui legerent

evangelia ad missam et predicaret unusquisque in ebdomada sua, et
presbiter cardinalis ebdomadarius similiter esset ibi, propter penitentes et
baptismum et propter missas peregrinorum ad altare sancti Petri.

[And he established four cardinal deacons to be at St Peter, who would read

the Gospels at Mass and preach, each in his own week. And similarly a
weekly cardinal priest would be there, for the sake of penitents and baptism
and for the sake of pilgrims’ Masses at the altar of St Peter.]

The presence of a presbyter hebdomadarius at papal celebrations (not necessarily

at St Peter’s) is already attested in Ordo Romanus Primus,53 though the rotation
of four cardinal deacons is not. However the responsibilities of this cardinal
priest, to hear confessions and perform baptisms, is clearly dependent on
what the Liber pontificalis attributes to Pope Simplicius (468–83):

Hic constituit ad sanctum Petrum apostolum, et ad sanctum Paulum

apostolum, et ad sanctum Laurentium martyrem hebdomadam, ut
presbyteri manerent ibi propter penitentes, et baptismum.

[He established at St Peter the apostle, and at St Paul the apostle and at
St Lawrence the martyr a weekly rotation, so that priests would remain
there for the sake of penitents and baptism.]

Benedict’s account of the liturgical innovations of Gregory the Great is

a remarkable stew of contemporary practice, research into the liturgical
tradition of Ordo Romanus Primus, historical information from texts that
recounted Gregory’s life and texts by or about other popes. The methodology
is completely different from that of another Italian chronicler of the popes,
the canonist Bonizo of Sutri (d. 1095).54 In Book 4 of Bonizo’s Liber de Vita
Christiana, the account of Gregory I is based more closely on Gregory’s

51 LC, II, 144 right column.

52 M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge IV: Les textes (suite) (Ordines
XXXV–XLIV), Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 28 (Louvain, 1956), pp. 127–9.
53 Ibid., p. 93.
54 Kéry, Canonical Collections, pp. 234–7

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 Peter Jeffery

own writings and on medieval writings about him.55 Why was Benedict’s
approach so different?
One reason might be that Benedict simply assumed that most of the
Roman liturgy was ‘made’ by Gregory – both what Benedict knew from
contemporary practice and what he found in ancient sources like Ordo
Romanus Primus. But I think he also had a view of the papacy as uniform in its
teaching across time; and if this were the case, then it wasn’t really necessary
to identify which pope actually said or did what. There is some other
evidence for such a view among Benedict’s contemporaries. For one thing,
nearly all the popes and antipopes of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth
centuries took names that seem intended to emphasize the continuity of the
papacy (see Table 17.3). Following the chaotic reign of Benedict IX (1032–
55/6), who was deposed and restored twice, most popes chose a name from
the early Christian period, followed by the numeral II, III or IV. Those who
didn’t, chose a traditional papal name: Leo, Stephen or especially Gregory.
Indeed for over a millennium, between Pope Lando (913–14) and Pope
Francis (2013– ), no pope chose an original name, that is, one that had never
been used before.
Something that happened near Benedict’s time seems to illustrate the idea
of treating multiple popes as if they were one larger-than-life personality.
Pope Paschal II (1099–1118) moved the sarcophagus of Pope Leo I (440–61),
to place it near the bodies of Popes Leo II (682–3), Leo III (795–816) and Leo
IV (847–55), who had been buried together in Old St Peter’s basilica. In 1607,
during the building of the new basilica, Pope Paul V (1605–21) moved the
bodies of all four to the altar known as Our Lady of the Column, though
in 1714 Pope Clement XI (1700–21), reburied Leo I separately under his own
altar a few feet away. It was in front of this altar of Leo I that Pope Leo XII
(1823–9) also chose to be buried.56 The place where the four popes Leo rested
up to 1607 is still marked by a seventeenth-century fresco in the Vatican
Grottos, on the ceiling to the right of the altar in what is now known as the
Capella delle Partorienti.57

55 Bonizo, Liber de Vita Christiana, ed. E. Perels (Berlin, 1930), with an appendix by W.
Berschin (Hildesheim, 1998), p. 127.
56 W. J. Reardon, The Deaths of the Popes: Comprehensive Accounts, Including Funerals,
Burial Places and Epitaphs (Jefferson NC, 2004), pp. 40–1, 54–5, 61, 62–4, 229; V. Noè,
Le tombe e i monumenti funebri dei Papi nella basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano (Modena,
2000), pp. 235–44, 257–66.
57 For reproductions see: V. Lanzani, Le grotte vaticane: memorie storiche, devozioni, tombe
dei papi (Vatican City and Rome, 2010), p. 48; Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo
Museale Romano, Roma Sacra: Guide to the Churches of the Eternal City, Itineraries
26–27: The Vatican Grottoes, ed. V. Lanzani (Rome, 2003), p. 88, plate 151.

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Table 17.3 Popes of the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries

Clement II (1046–7) Lucius II (1144–5)

Damasus II (1048) Eugene III (1145–53)
Leo IX (1049–54) Anastasius IV (1153–4)
Victor II (1055–7) Hadrian IV (1154–9)
Stephen IX (1057–8) Alexander III (1159–81) (replaces
Benedict X (antipope 1058–9) Innocent II in the Cambrai
Nicholas II (1058–61) manuscript)
Alexander II (1061–73) Victor IV (antipope 1159–64)
Honorius II (antipope 1061–4) Paschal III (antipope 1164–8)
Gregory VII (1073–85) Callistus III (antipope 1168–78)
Clement III (antipope 1080, Innocent III (antipope 1179–80)
1084–1100) Lucius III (1181–5)
Victor III (1086–7) Urban III (1185–7)
Urban II (1088–99) Gregory VIII (1187)
Paschal II (1099–1118) Clement III (1187–91)
Theoderic (antipope 1100–1) Celestine III (1191–8)
Albert (antipope 1101) Innocent III (1198–1216)
Silvester IV (antipope 1105–11) Honorius III (1216–27)
Gelasius II (1118–19) Gregory IX (1227–41)
Gregory VIII (antipope 1118–21) Celestine IV (1241)
Callistus II (1119–24) Innocent IV (1243–54)
Honorius II (1124–30) Alexander IV (1254–61)
Celestine II (antipope 1124) Urban IV (1261–4)
Innocent II (1130–43) (dominus meus Clement IV (1265–8)
in Benedict’s papal chronicle) Gregory X (1271–6)
Anacletus II (antipope 1130–8) John XXI (1276–7)
Victor IV (1138)
Celestine II (1143–4) (dedicatee of
the Liber Politicus)

For Benedict’s view of the liturgy, then, the most revealing word might be
iugiter, ‘continuously’. He saw the Roman liturgical tradition as uninterrupted.
Whether textually reviving practices he had read about in ancient texts,
describing the usage of his own time or recounting the innovations of the
one multi-personality that was the Roman papacy, the liturgy was always
a seamless whole, done over and over again without pause or even much
change. We don’t know how many people, if any, shared his title ‘Cantor of
the Roman Church’. But in his ‘Book of the City’ he sang the praises of the
Roman church and its liturgical tradition better than anyone.

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 18
A Life in Hours:
Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

Anna de Bakker

Sometime in the 1230s, Goswin of Bossut, cantor of the Cistercian monastery

of Villers-la-Ville, wrote a vita for a lay brother of his abbey, Arnulf. Goswin
was an accomplished biographer, and the three surviving hagiographies
attributed to him reveal an author as attentive to lyrical prose and scriptural
allusions as to lively anecdotes displaying the virtues of his subject.1 His
stint as a hagiographer seems to have been undertaken at the behest of his
abbot, William, who presided over the apex of a period of growth of Villers
and was likely invested in promoting the monastery’s status through the
vite of several holy persons associated with it – in this instance, a conversus
who had come to Villers some thirty years earlier and earned renown for the
extremes of his penitential conduct as well as his generosity toward others.
Goswin likely met Arnulf only toward the end of the lay brother’s life, but his
description is nevertheless vivid; over the course of two books, Goswin first
lays out Arnulf’s extraordinary exercises of self-mortification and then (as
if to temper the somewhat grotesque image of Arnulf’s physical sufferings)
uses the second book to describe his charity, obedience and humility.2
Goswin’s commemorative work did not end with the vita; a liturgical
office for Arnulf also survives, presumably as part of the same hagiographical
programme. In it, Goswin was able to use his skills as cantor to shape the
memory of Arnulf in a different way. In writing an office for Arnulf, Goswin
had a second mode for retelling the past, one with its own formal constraints
as well as opportunities to emphasize and authorize new aspects of its
subject. Careful study of this office reveals, first, the methods by which a
cantor such as Goswin worked to transform a prose historical work into a

1 In addition to Arnulf’s life, Goswin has long been associated with the life of
Abundus, a monk of Villers, and was proposed as the author of the life of Ida of
Nivelles in 1947: see S. Roisin, L’Hagiographie Cistercienne dans le Diocèse de Liège
au XIIIe Siècle (Louvain, 1947), p. 55. More recent work has confirmed that the
similarities in style between the three vite make Goswin’s authorship of all three
‘all but proven’. See M. Cawley, Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of
Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers,
by Goswin of Bossut (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 7–8.
2 The vita exists in two editions: ed. D. Papebroeck, AASS (Antwerp, 1709) June, VII,

pp. 606–31; (Paris, 1867), pp. 558–79. Citations refer to the 1867 AASS.

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 Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

liturgical one and, secondly, the different images of Arnulf promoted through
Goswin’s two historical undertakings. Medieval history writing, particularly
hagiography and chronicles, has been the subject of much recent scholarly
study, yet it is uncommon to be able to see the process of liturgical-historical
composition as clearly as Goswin’s work allows. The office for Arnulf has the
unusual virtue of being associated with a reasonably well-defined time and
place, as well as with a vita by the same author. It is thus a rare witness to two
individuals and their ties to the community at Villers: the holy man whose
life was told in both prose and music, and the cantor responsible for shaping
his memory.
Goswin’s office for Arnulf survives uniquely in a modest libellum that is
now Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS II 1658, alongside an office
for Mary of Oignies.3 It can be dated on paleographical and codicological
grounds to the second quarter of the thirteenth century, probably not
long after Arnulf’s death in June 1228.4 The two offices appear in reverse
calendrical order, and numerous erasures and revisions appear throughout;
the parchment is of uneven thickness and damaged in places, and the size
of the folios as well as the size of the staff is variable, though the same scribe
seems to have been responsible for both text and music. It thus seems possible
that the manuscript, made of scrap parchment, was used by the composer to
work out his ideas rather than to preserve a polished product for communal
use. As the chief musician and rhetorician at the monastery at the time of
Arnulf’s death, it was presumably Goswin who gave the primary direction
to this compositional undertaking. If so, his purpose is not entirely obvious;
Mary’s office seems to have been completed in some haste, suggesting a
formal occasion which presented a deadline of some sort – but no clear
possibilities present themselves. It seems likely that the Arnulf vita and office
were both intended for ‘a kind of local celebration within the order’,5 and
that the office was composed roughly contemporaneously with the vita as
an extension of the same commemorative project. The office thus allowed
Goswin to recast the vita in a new mode, extracting and emphasizing portions
of Arnulf’s life according to what seemed most important for the community,
allowing the juxtaposition of other texts to shape his meaning and employing
the constraints and possibilities of various chant forms to promote history
through musical means. Goswin was creating two parallel and interrelated
narratives, one in prose and one in song.

3 For more on Mary’s office, see P. Mannaerts, ‘An Exception to the Rule? The
Thirteenth-Century Cistercian Historia for Mary of Oignies’, Journal of the Alamire
Foundation 2 (2010), 233–69. Mannaerts considers the revisions in that office to
reflect ‘the composer at work’, and the same could be said of the Arnulf office.
4 The manuscript is described by D. Misonne, ‘Office liturgique neumé de la
bienheureuse Marie d’Oignies à l’Abbaye de Villers au XIIIe siècle’, in Album
J. Balon (Namur, 1968), pp. 267–86.
5 Mannaerts, ‘An Exception’, p. 248.

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 Anna de Bakker

The historical context of both vita and office is relatively well documented.
Goswin was cantor of Villers from roughly 1225 to 1260, while Arnulf entered
Villers in 1202 and remained there until his death in 1228.6 Villers, some
twenty-five miles south of Leuven in the district of Liège, was a daughter
house of Clairvaux, and in Goswin’s (and Arnulf’s) time it flourished under
a series of charismatic abbots, some of whom would be promoted later in
their careers to Clairvaux.7 These abbots of the first half of the thirteenth
century presided over something of a golden age of Villers, one which saw
the foundation of two daughter abbeys and the regional blossoming of a
remarkably varied hagiographical corpus.8 The latter is a consequence of
the Villers abbots’ particular interest in promoting the spirituality not only of
choir monks, but also of local communities of Beguines, nuns and lay people,
as well as their own lay brothers.9 Most of Arnulf’s penitential activities, for
example, took place during the abbacy of Conrad of Urach, who in his own
novitiate had cultivated a relationship with a saintly lay brother at nearby
Aulne.10 Perhaps it was this early friendship with an unusual lay brother that
made Conrad sympathetic to Arnulf’s vigorous pursuit of self-mortification.
Villers’s gesta relate many anecdotes of other more or less contemporary lay
brothers at the abbey, presented as examples of holy activity.11
Arnulf stood out among these other lay brothers owing to the extreme
quality of his spiritual activities. As Goswin writes in the vita, after wasting
his youth in ‘levis moribus et verbis’ (‘trifling behaviour and speech’), Arnulf
abruptly felt a calling to religion.12 He spent two years in different religious
circles in his native Brussels before deciding, at the age of twenty-two, to
enter more fully into religious life as a lay brother at Villers. In his first year,
however, Arnulf came to feel that life as a novice was much more lax than he
had anticipated, and he therefore devised the first of his penitential practices:
horsehair ropes tied so tightly against his body ‘ut de carne eius putrefacta

6 The precise dates of Goswin’s cantorship are not known; see Cawley, Send Me God,
pp. 7–8.
7 See Cawley, ‘Four Abbots of the Golden Age of Villers’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly

27 (1992), 299–327.
8 On the foundations, see Chronica Villariensis monasterii, ed. E. Martène and

G.Durand, in Thesaurus novum anecdotorum (Paris, 1717), III, 1280. B. Newman,

‘Goswin of Villers and the Visionary Network’, in Cawley, Send Me God, p. xxx,
discusses the hagiographic output.
9 B. P. McGuire, ‘The Cistercians and the Transformation of Monastic Friendships’,

Analecta Cisterciensia 37 (1981), 34–6.

10 This episode, in which Simon predicts Conrad’s ultimate rise to the rank of cardinal,

is related in Caesarius of Hesterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum/Dialog über die Wunder

iii.33, ed. N. Nösges and H. Schneidger, 5 vols., Fontes Christiani 86 (Turnhout,
2009), II, 614–16.
11 Other than Arnulf, twelve lay brothers earn a notice in the Gesta, six of them named.

See Chronica Villariensis, III, 1359–1374.

12 Vita I.1.4, p. 559.

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 Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

vermes ebullirent’ (‘that worms bubbled up from his rotten flesh’).13 Arnulf
only ceased this activity as a courtesy to others who complained about
the resulting stench, and he moved on to other less pungent forms of self-
mortification. The rest of the first book of the vita Arnulphi is taken up with
what has been called a ‘virtual catalogue of self-torture’, and ‘a most extreme
and detailed account of self-mortification, even by the standards of medieval
hagiography’.14 Goswin takes pains to note that all of Arnulf’s superiors had
given him permission to undertake all of these activities.15 Indeed, since his
disciplines ran counter to the usual policy that ‘ordinis simplicitas sufficiat’
(‘simplicity of the order should suffice’),16 and since these activities must
have excused him from carrying out the normal duties of a lay brother, the
support of his superiors must have been considerable. Modern readers have
had more difficulty with this aspect of Arnulf’s life, finding the memory of
Arnulf ‘distorted’ by ‘an excessive stress on [his] austerities’ and cautioning
not to ‘get bogged down in the elaborate descriptions of torture in the first
book’.17
Yet, if the office is any indication, this stress on Arnulf’s austerities was
especially important to Goswin. The longest of his hymn texts, ‘Gaude mater
ecclesia’, offers a succinct story of Arnulf’s life that is focused almost entirely
on his penitential practices, from rolling in nettles and donning hair boots
to wearing a vest made of hedgehogs (presumably with the spines facing
inward). (The hymn, with relevant parallels from the vita and a translation,
is given in Table 18.1.) This basic summary provided the essential account of
Arnulf’s life in the Villers gesta.18 It presents these striking aspects of Arnulf’s
life as a kind of base layer for Goswin’s project of memorializing Arnulf’s
saintliness.
Both the text and the music of ‘Gaude mater ecclesia’ appear to have
been newly composed for Arnulf’s feast, which perhaps accounts for its
music having been written out in full (rather than merely one strophe, as
was common for hymns in contemporary practice). Goswin’s compositional
strategy in this hymn seems to aim at imprinting the basic facts of Arnulf’s

13 Ibid. I.1.10, p. 560.

14 Newman, ‘Goswin of Villers’, p. xl; J. France, Separate but Equal: Cistercian Lay
Brothers, 1120–1350 (Collegeville, 2012), p. 181.
15 Vita I.3.21, p. 562.
16 The particular policy of Abbot Charles of Villers, according to Caesarius, Dialogus
vi.1, III, 1135.
17 Cawley, Send Me God, p. 12; McGuire, ‘Self-Denial and Self-Assertion in Arnulf of
Villers’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 28 (1993), 241.
18 Drawing on these sources, modern commentators have presented similar
summaries of Arnulf’s life. See, e.g., McGuire, ‘Self-Denial’, p. 259: ‘Arnulf found
his way from a middle-class family in Brussels to the great Brabantine foundation
of Villers. … He imposed pain on himself in order to be part of the world’s pain
and to act as intercessor.’

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 Anna de Bakker

Table 18.1 ‘Gaude mater ecclesia’

Hymn* Source text in the vita Translation

Gaude, mater ecclesia, Rejoice, mother church,
Pro Arnulphi presentia, for the presence of Arnulf,
Cuius sacra solemnia whose sacred feast is
Celebrentur cum gloria. celebrated with glory.

Qui in Bruxella genitus I.1.1: Fuit in … Bruxella Who, it is said, was born
Fertur de mediocribus … adolescens quidam, in Brussels of middle-
Fuisse et fidelibus Arnulfus nomine, class parents, faithful and
Ac honestis parentibus. quem a mediocribus honest.
parentibus duxisse
ferunt.

Hic in iuventutis flore Hic in primo In the flower of his youth,

Perfusus celesti rore adolescentie sue flore … sprinkled with celestial
Declinavit ab errore cepit erraticus viator dew, he turned from the
Mundi pro Dei amore. incedere. error of the world to the
love of God.

In vicesimo secundo I.1.7: Anno etatis sue In his twenty-second

His etatis sue anno vicesimo secundo, year, he was joined to the
Iunctus fratrum collegio venit ad monasterium company of the brothers
Fuit Villari optimo. Villariense. of Villers.

In sue conversionis I.1.9: Fecit namque sibi In that first most difficult
Anno primo dirissimis furtim duos funiculos … year of his conversion,
Ligavit se tirunculus I.1.10: Fecit alium the new follower of
Christi tribus funiculis. funiculum longiorem … Christ bound himself
with three cords.

Corpus suum pro Domino I.3.17: … caligas cilicinas He conquered his body
Crura pedesque satino in cruribus, et pedules for the Lord, his legs and
Domavit cum cilicio cilicinos … his feet always in the
Continue asperrimo. roughest haircloth.

Percussitque cum ferula I.2.15: Fecit namque He hit his flesh with a
Carnem suam dirissima, sibi ferulam ligneam very hard staff, to which
Ad quam erat conglobata agglutinans illi pellem was attached the pelt of a
Ericii pellicula. ericii. hedgehog.

Rusco quoque se et virgis I.2.15: Quotiescumque He also struck himself

Magnis cedebat ictibus autem tam virgis quam with brush and sticks
Et volutavit in spinis rosco sive ferula … with great blows, and
Semet ipsum cum urticis. cecidisset … etiam … rolled himself in thorns
nudum se volutabat in and stinging nettles.
urticis.

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Table 18.1 continued

Hymn* Source text in the vita Translation

Catenis etiam tribus I.3.19: Tres catenas He also girded his flesh
Cinxit carnem sub vestibus ferreas sibi acquisivit … with three chains under
Loricaque sub pellibus I.3.20: Quesivit sibi his clothes, and wore a
Ericiorum erat usus. pelles ericiorum … cuirass of hedgehog pelts.

Nunc ergo sit altissimus Now therefore let God

Deus atque benignissimus most high be blessed by
In sui servi actibus all, most merciful in his
Per omnia benedictus. works to his servant.

Sit laus Patri cum Filio Praise be to the Father

Sanctoque simul Paraclito with the Son and to the
Nobisque donet Filius Holy Paraclete, and may
Gratiam Sancti Spiritus. the Son give us to grace
Amen. of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
* Hymni Inediti: Liturgische Hymnen, ed. G. M. Dreves, AH 12 (Leipzig, 1892),
no. 143, pp. 87–8.

life in the memory of the listener and singer. His technique here, as well as
in the other Arnulf hymns and several antiphons, is to summarize some of
the basic events of the vita and condense them in rhymed paraphrase. The
repetitive and participatory aspects of hymns make them a good vehicle
for committing things to memory – indeed, the hymn was one of the latest
genres of chant to transfer from an oral tradition, one dependent for melodies
on communal remembering, to a written practice.19 The hymn’s emphasis
on penance is carried over from the vita, in the preface of which Goswin
promises to spend the first book describing ‘non solum corporales afflictiones
sed etiam instrumenta afflictionem tantummodo’ (‘his bodily afflictions and
the instruments with which he inflicted them’).20 Evidently these chapters
formed the core of how Goswin wanted Arnulf to be remembered in the
office, too, and the strophic aspect of the hymn gave him a convenient means
of assuring that these afflictions would be committed to memory.
In other parts of the office, however, Goswin employs more rhetorically
intricate tools to transform the prose vita into chant. The use of direct
quotation allows him to preserve much of the vita’s prose, while also
employing his skills to underscore specific aspects of Arnulf’s larger story.
In this office, Goswin limits the use of these quotations to five responsories,
strategically placed at the beginning of Vespers and Matins and the end

19 See S. Boynton, ‘Orality, Literacy, and the Early Notation of Office Hymns’, JAMS
56 (2003), pp. 99–168.
20 Vita I.Pref.3, p. 558.

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 Anna de Bakker

of each nocturn in Matins. Aside from a few occasional changes of diction,

apparently for the sake of clarity while singing, the texts of these responsories
are essentially taken word for word from the vita. Rather than simply being
derivative, however, the melismatic nature of responsories allows Goswin
to place considerable emphasis on specific portions of the text, stretching
individual words over many of notes and, as it were, slowing down time
to allow for concentration on certain ideas. Goswin uses this technique
sparingly, preferring to save his longest melismas for final cadences, but on a
few occasions he indulges in this type of melodic underscoring to strengthen
particular themes. For example, the final responsory of the third nocturn – the

Ex. 18.1 Responsory ‘Egressus igitur nobis’

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ œ
E - gres - sus i - - - - gi - tur

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ bœ œ œ
no - - - - - - bis Chri - sti

& œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ
ty - - - - - - - - run - cu - lus

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
cum A - bra - ham

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
de ter - ra et de cog-na - li - o - ne su - a.

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Ut i - - ret in ter - - - - ram

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
quam mon - stra - - - - ver - at

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
e - - - - - - - - - - -

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ
- - - - - - - - - - -

& œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
-i de - - - us.

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 Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

Table 18.2 Third Nocturn, fourth responsory and verse

Text* Source in the vita Translation

Egressus igitur novus I.1.7: Egressus igitur Christ’s new little novice
Christi tyrunculus cum novus Christi tyrunculus set out like Abraham from
Abraham de terra et cum Abraham de terra his land and kin, so he
de cognatione sua, ut et cognatione sua, ut might enter the land that
iret in terram quam iret in terram quam God had shown him.
monstraverat ei Deus. monstraverat ei Deus.
V. Anno etatis sue Anno etatis sue vicesimo V. In the twenty-second
vicesimo secundo reliquit secundo, venit ad year of his life he left his
parentes et valedixit monasterium Villariense. parents and bid farewell
seculo. [ut iret …] to the world. [so that …]
V. Gloria Patri et Filio V. Glory to the Father and
et Spiritui Sancto. [ut to the Son and to the Holy
iret …] Spirit. [so that …]
* Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS II 1658, fol. 5r.

last of these direct quotations – presents Arnulf’s entry as a ‘little novice’

(tyrunculus) into Villers. Goswin compares this to Abraham leaving his home
and entering the Promised Land. The word tyrunculus receives moderately
melismatic treatment despite being mid-sentence (see Ex. 18.1). The high-
pitched melisma draws attention to Arnulf’s status as a beginner, thus putting
melody in the service of rhetoric.
Goswin also makes full use of the rhetorical structure inherent to a
responsory, namely its internal repetition: the verse is framed by a kind of
chorus, repeated a third time when a doxology occurs. The fourth responsory
for the third nocturn, mentioned above, has such a doxology, and part of its
text is emphasized through strategic repetition (see Table 18.2).21
The passage quoted from the vita uses a parallel structure to build from
the comparison with Abraham to the conclusion of Arnulf’s journey at the
monastery of Villers. As it appears on the manuscript page, the responsory
abandons this parallelism, replacing the clause about Arnulf’s coming to
Villers with one repeating his departure from his family. In performance,
however, it becomes apparent how Goswin has adapted his rhetoric to
the form of the responsory, since the repeated clause describes Arnulf’s/
Abraham’s entry into ‘the land God had shown him’. This clause gains
additional meaning with each repetition; at first, it seems to refer primarily to
Abraham’s Promised Land, but when it is repeated after the verse it becomes

21 See also Fassler’s chapter in this volume where there is further discussion of the
use of the form of the great responsory and its repeating sections to score rhetorical
points.

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 Anna de Bakker

more clearly about Arnulf, while after the doxology it becomes a kind of
thanksgiving for the equation of monastery and Promised Land. Through
both musical and structural aspects of the responsory, Goswin transforms
his portrait of Arnulf, dramatically highlighting the saint’s status as a new
convert as well as the prominent place of Villers in the story. While the hymn
focused on Arnulf as a disciplined and perhaps somewhat isolated penitent,
in the responsory we thus find a community uniting around a conversus and
affirming their own spiritual role in his story.
This focus on Arnulf’s conversion, and on the role of Villers therein, is
shared by the other responsories that quote from the vita – once even through
reference to the conversion of St Paul, whose feast Arnulf shares.22 The four
responsories used in Matins present, in order, his origins and conversion to
faith, his calling, his friendship with religious persons and separation from
the secular world and, finally, his entry to Villers, all taken from the vita. The
responsory for first Vespers disrupts this sequence, however, anticipating the
Matins texts and drawing on a passage from the vita after Arnulf’s entry to
the monastery. This responsory thus gives a broader context for the specific
events related in the Matins responsories – a placement perhaps suggested by
the metaphors of birth and infancy employed by Goswin (see Table 18.3). As it
appears in the vita, the passage used in the Vespers text is Goswin’s interjected
reflection on Arnulf’s first penitential acts at Villers, those involving festering
wounds incurred by tying ropes around his body. After narrating the details
and circumstances of Arnulf’s actions, Goswin allegorizes the instruments of
his affliction by comparing them to the swaddling bands of Mother Grace,
while also comparing the trials of his first year to spiritual circumcision.
Goswin’s treatment of the text in the office allows time for careful reflection
on this complex collection of images; the melismas are some of the longest in
the office, and the repetition is placed so that the responsory turns back from
Arnulf’s piercing cords to, once again, the nurturing mother. The responsories
thus suggest how Arnulf’s penitential practices should be understood: not as
acts to be imitated literally, but as physical reminders of his spiritual grace.
The other aspects of Arnulf’s spiritual grace are the subject of the second,
and longer, book of Arnulf’s vita, beginning with themes of charity, humility
and patience in an account of Arnulf’s interactions with (and prayers for)
members of the monastery and the larger community. Arnulf’s actions in this
second book are generally more outwardly directed than those of the first, as
he advises and (occasionally) reproves both clerics and laity, makes prophetic
predictions and sends grace to those requesting it from afar. Such anecdotes
make clear the respect in which Arnulf was held, at the same time as they
justify Goswin’s contempt for those who regarded the lay brother’s spiritual

22 The last responsory for the first nocturn, ‘Cum autem placuit’, is taken from Vita
I.4, where, in turn, it is a quotation from Gal. 1. 15, which sometimes serves as the
responsory for the feast of Paul (June 30).

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Table 18.3 First Vespers, responsory and verse

Text* Source in the vita Translation
O vere felicem puerum I.1.10: O vere felicem O truly happy child,
Arnulphum, de quo puerum, de quo recenter Arnulf, recently reborn,
nuper renato tam nato tam soliciter est for whom Mother Grace is
sollicita est mater gratia mater gratia, ut non so concerned that she not
ut non solum nutriat solum nutriat eum only feeds him with the
eum lactis dulcedine, sed lactis dulcedine, sed sweetness of milk but also
etiam myrratum vinum etiam myrratum sets him with wine mixed
propinet ei ad bibendum, vinum propinet ei ad with myrrh to drink,
dum alligat eum in cunis bibendum, dum alligat while she swaddles him
infantie sue. eum in cunis infantie in his infant cradle.
V. Carnalem in eo sue tam pungentis fascia V. She circumcises away
circumcidit lasciviam funiculi et cultro tam fleshly lust in him with
tam pungentis fascia acutissimo carnalem in the bands of pungent
funiculi et cultro eo circumcidit lasciviam. cords and with the
acutissimo. [dum sharpest knife.
alligat …]
* Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique MS II 1658, fol. 1v.

ecstasies in malo.23 Through this second book, Arnulf is presented not only as
someone prone to extreme penance, but also as a sympathetic figure whose
spiritual virtues were held in esteem by his community.
However, nothing from Book II of the vita appears in the office. Indeed,
the office barely manages to cover the events of Book I (mostly through the
aforementioned hymn), and it gives disproportionate weight to the very
beginning of Arnulf’s story – his upbringing and conversion. This preference
for earlier episodes of Arnulf’s life can be explained in both historical and
rhetorical terms. At the time of Arnulf’s death in 1228, Villers was under
the guidance of Abbot William of Brussels (in office from 1221 to 1237), who
seems to have been a great supporter of both Goswin and Arnulf.24 Goswin
became cantor under William’s abbacy, and he mentions the abbot’s role
as commissioner for another of his works, the vita of Ida.25 It seems likely
that William gave an abbatial mandate to write Arnulf’s vita, too, perhaps
preferring to keep his role in it anonymous. This anonymous promotion of
Arnulf would be in keeping with the kind of support he showed Arnulf while
he was alive; for example, Goswin relates that under a certain abbot (abbas
quidam – almost certainly William), Arnulf secretly asked permission to give

23 Vita II.3.23, p. 570.

24 For more on William, see Cawley, ‘Four Abbots’; Chronica Villariensis, III, 1278–85;
and J. Burton and J. Kerr, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011),
p. 158.
25 Cawley, Send Me God, p. 29.

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 Anna de Bakker

away food to the poor. The abbot allowed him to do so, but the secrecy of this
arrangement caused problems for both when the almsgiving was reported by
those less sympathetic to unauthorized charity.26
William also likely admired Arnulf’s personal austerity. He is mentioned
in the abbey’s chronicle as having been particularly frugal in his use of food
and clothing; one of the chief accomplishments of his successor was to finally
acquire new clothing for the monks, something which the less materially
concerned William had presumably avoided despite the monastery’s
income.27 Arnulf’s spiritual ambitions seem to have been cultivated under
William’s supervision, and in his later years Arnulf was allowed to be ‘pene
a cunctis forensibus curis liber’ (‘free from almost all outward cares’) to
pursue his life of prayer.28 Many of the events of Book II seem to have taken
place at this time. Abbot William was also noted for his engagement with lay
brothers, local holy women and other members of the greater Villers spiritual
community – the same sort of engagement seen in Arnulf’s life, and which
Arnulf was perhaps, as lay brother, better-placed to carry out than most of
the cloistered monks.29 If William’s admiration was the driving force behind
Arnulf’s memorialization, the emphasis on Arnulf’s origins could have
served a political purpose. Like William, Arnulf hailed from Brussels, a fact
mentioned five times over the course of his office. Given the alignment of
Arnulf’s and William’s values, it seems as if one man of Brussels is standing
in for another, with the praise of Arnulf’s austerity serving to promote
William’s vision of the abbey. The emphasis on origins and separation from
material comfort is not accidental; Goswin made sure that Arnulf’s memory
aligned with his abbot’s ideals.
But neither William nor Goswin wanted Arnulf to be remembered only
for his physical afflictions. Arnulf’s other virtues are still present in the office,
but in a different way; Goswin changes the means of representing Arnulf’s
character, but not his conception of that character. Just as Goswin adapted his
prose for the responsories, he could also adapt the idea of spiritual virtues
to the possibilities of quotation and juxtaposition in the office. In addition
to citation and paraphrase, Goswin also worked to interweave biblical
texts with the strictly biographical material of the vita, making deliberate
use of biblical quotations in the remaining elements of the office. Almost
every antiphon and responsory which is not directly about Arnulf himself
is a quotation from the book of Ecclesiasticus. This does not seem to have
been a common practice; there is no evidence for these antiphons and
responsories in the usual Cistercian collections (or indeed in non-Cistercian
ones), and little reason for Goswin to have written them out if they were well

26 Vita II.1.8, p. 567.

27 Chronica, p. 1285.
28 Vita II.2.11, p. 568.
29 France, Separate but Equal, p. 186.

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 Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

known.30 The selection and adaptation of verses from Ecclesiasticus for use
in the liturgy appears to have been Goswin’s work, or else it is a deliberate
following of an otherwise unusual and unfamiliar model. A fondness for
biblical allusion and citation is in keeping with his writing in the vita, where
Ecclesiasticus is one of his more favoured books, but its use in the office is
much closer to the text and much more consistent than any of his allusions
in the vita.
The manner in which these texts are modified from their sources tends
to be fairly consistent, and usually no more than a few words are changed.
For example, in the third antiphon in the first nocturn of Matins, Ecclus
1. 18 is adapted to read: ‘Religiositas custodivit et iustificavit cor viri sancti,
et Dominus iucunditatem atque gaudium dedit ei’ (‘Religiousness kept and
justified the holy man’s heart, and the Lord gave him joy and gladness’).31
The few words that are changed – especially the shift from the biblical
text’s future tense (custodiet, iustificabit) to the office’s perfect, and the added
reference to the vir sanctus – help to make the verse apply to the present
situation. Similarly, the abstract statements common to Wisdom literature
have been modified to more concrete statements, using epithets which are
themselves taken from elsewhere in Ecclesiasticus.32 Thus in the fourth
antiphon in the first nocturn, the generalized Ecclesiasticus 2. 9 – ‘Qui
timetis Dominum, sperate in illum’ (‘Ye who fear the Lord, hope in him’) –
becomes more concrete: ‘Timuit Dominum vir venerabilis’ (‘the venerable
man feared the Lord’).33 While in the vita Arnulf’s virtues were illustrated
through anecdotes demonstrating charity, humility, patience and obedience,
the office relates his virtues through this series of Ecclesiasticus verses, which
invoke his humilitas, timor and religiositas. Most remarkably, Arnulf – hardly a
learned man – has become a vir sapiens, excelling in spiritual wisdom.34
The Wisdom-based verses may seem to abstract Arnulf’s character, but
there are ways in which this material, too, might have resonated with a
community who knew Arnulf personally. For example, in the first nocturn
the verses used for the first and last antiphon have even been modified
slightly to make the whole nocturn begin and end on the word opera – not a
major change, but one that might have been heard as a nod to Arnulf’s status
as a lay brother, working on the granges. The relationship of choir monks

30 In contrast, in the office for Mary of Oignies he simply refers the cantor to the
office for Mary Magdalene: see Brussels MS II 1658, fol. 9r (‘… sicut de beata Maria
Magdalena’).
31 Brussels II 1658, fol. 3v; cf. the biblical text: ‘Religiositas custodiet et iustificabit cor;
iucunditatem atque gaudium dabit.’
32 The epithets such as vir sanctus are common in Wisdom literature, as well as in
other medieval hagiographical works, but Ecclesiasticus is the only biblical book to
contain six of the seven used. The seventh, vir venerabilis, is not biblical.
33 Brussels II 1658, fol. 2v.
34 Ibid., fol. 6r.

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to the labourers who supported them was occasionally a tense one, and in
other places occasionally erupted into revolts.35 Consequently, Cistercian
exempla literature often contrasted an ideally meek and diffident lay brother
with a rebellious one who overstepped his bounds. Arnulf was neither of
those things, making him a particularly complex character, potentially a
model for choir monks and lay brothers alike. In this light, another aspect
of Goswin’s presentation of Arnulf becomes potentially significant; in two
different antiphons, texts from Ecclesiasticus have been altered to include
the phrases ‘in medio fratrum suorum’ and ‘in fratribus suis’, changes which
introduce an emphasis on community not found at the corresponding points
in the biblical text.36 Only a few years later, a general statute would forbid
lay brothers from referring to themselves as fratres, but here the term is being
voiced by the choir monks who participated in the office to refer to one of
their lay brethren.37
Goswin’s use of scriptural quotations transforms Arnulf into something
of an eternal figure, and in this respect it is useful to remember that the
antiphons in which this abstraction is accomplished are further interwoven
with psalms. Though the choice of psalms is of course prescribed by
convention, the relationships between the psalms and antiphons are not
inconsequential, since the antiphon presumably (at least in part) directed the
interpretation of the psalm. This is perhaps most obvious in the first antiphon
and psalm of the first nocturn, where the antiphon describes the opera viri
sancti, and the psalm (Ps. 1) describes the actions of a different holy man, one
who is blessed not to walk in the way of the wicked.38 Similarly, Ps. 4 reflects
on the good things due to those who hope in the Lord, and its antiphon in the

35 On the economic and social relations of Cistercian monks and lay brothers, see
B. Noell, ‘Expectation and Unrest among Cistercian Lay Brothers in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of Medieval History 32 (2006), 253–74, and D. Zurro,
‘We All Work in Common: Medieval Cistercian Lay Brothers in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame,
2015).
36 For the first, see the second antiphon in the second nocturn, Brussels II 1658, fol. 3v:

‘In medio fratrum suorum erat vir prudens disciplinatus et non murmurabat cum
corripet’; cf. Ecclus 10. 28: ‘Vir prudens et disciplinatus non murmurabit correptus.’
For the second, see the antiphon for None, Brussels II 1658, fol. 6r: ‘In fratribus suis
vir sapiens hereditavit honorem et nomen eius erit vivum in eternum’; cf. Ecclus
37. 29: ‘Sapiens in populo hereditabit honorem, et nomen illius erit vivens in
eternum.’ McGuire, ‘Self Denial’, p. 255, detects a similar sense of the importance of
lay brothers in Goswin’s approach to the vita.
37 Noell, ‘Expectation and Unrest’, p. 271. One wonders how many of the illiterate

conversi, listening to the office from the side aisles, were able to appreciate that one
of their own was celebrated not only not through scenes from his Life, but through
the lens of biblical citations. (As Cawley, Send Me God, p. 166 n. 104, notes, the
abbey church was not complete at this time, and the entire community would have
been gathered in the first four bays of the nave.)
38 Brussels II 1658, fol. 2r.

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 Goswin of Bossut’s Office for Arnulf of Villers

office echoes these sentiments by proclaiming that religion brings joy to the
heart.39 An apparently avid reader of the Old Testament, it seems likely that
Goswin would have delighted in such juxtapositions, putting Ecclesiasticus
and the psalms into conversation, and using the same sort of rhetorical back-
and-forth as in his responsories. These psalms and Ecclesiasticus verses thus
serve to give an Old Testament authority and gravity to Arnulf’s biography,
underlining his virtues rather than his suffering.
Taken together with the sections of the office derived from the vita, the
Ecclesiasticus antiphons and responsories complete the picture of Arnulf
as a saintly figure. While the texts taken from the vita supply a chronology
of his life, conversion and self-affliction, the other chants provide a more
metaphorical biography, one that takes place in the spiritual or eternal realm.
Rather than attempting to describe Arnulf’s virtues in so many anecdotes,
Goswin has equated him with an abstract ‘holy man’ whose humility and
wisdom made him an important member of the brotherhood at Villers.
Goswin’s musical and rhetorical skill help to craft Arnulf into a complex
figure who is capable of suiting different purposes. Arnulf’s most striking
traits, especially his severe penitential practices, are versified in the hymns,
where they can be most readily memorized by participants in the liturgy.
His origins and rejection of worldly things, however, are given at least as
great an emphasis, likely because of the influence of Abbot William. These
aspects of the vita are quoted directly and put into responsories that impart
a certain solemnity and allow them to be appreciated by those considering
Arnulf’s life more deeply. Finally, Arnulf’s connection to those around him is
illustrated not, as in the vita, through any direct illustrative anecdotes from his
life, but rather by weaving his hagiography with verses from Ecclesiasticus
that put him in communion with eternal and holy virtues. The result is a
varied portrait of a remarkable lay brother, complementing the prose of his
biography – a skilful collection of music and texts which together compose a
saint.

39 Ibid., fol. 2v.

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 19
Writing History to Make History:
Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

Claire Taylor Jones

A fifteenth-century manuscript from the Dominican convent of Adelhausen

in southern Germany bears a brief account of the convent’s history from
the time of its founding to the Observant reform, so called because of the
insistence on strict observance of the Order’s Rule and Constitution.1 After
copies of the letters and bulls establishing the convent and incorporating
it into the Dominican Order, the narrative begins by referring the reader to
another chronicle. ‘Das andechtig selig geistlich leben der heiligen swestern
des wirdigen closters’ (‘The devout, blessed, spiritual life of the holy sisters
of the worthy convent’) was recorded in the early fourteenth century by
Adelhausen’s prioress Anna von Munzingen.2 This text, however, concerns
the aftermath of the nuns’ descent into disorder and disobedience. From such
remarkable holiness the convent had fallen so far that in 1410 God sent a fire
that burned the convent to the ground as punishment for their willfulness.
After begging for the means to restore their grounds and staying for years
as guests in the convents of St Katherine and Klingental, the Adelhausen
sisters finally went home. Yet the years spent in exile had made them used to
commerce with the outside world, and upon their return to the rebuilt convent,
the sisters failed to rebuild a spiritual life. Even after a divine admonition as
extreme as the fire of 1410, the nuns persisted in their fallen way of life for
another fifty years. The convent was not reformed until 1465, when a priest of
the Dominican Order brought nuns out of Observant convents in Alsace and
Basel to teach their sisters in the three Freiburg convents to live in enclosure

1 See, in particular, E. Hillenbrand, ‘Die Observantenbewegung in der deutschen

Ordensprovinz der Dominikaner’, in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen
im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. K. Elm (Berlin, 1989), pp. 219–71;
B. Neidiger, ‘Die Observanzbewegungen der Bettelorden in Südwestdeutschland’,
Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 11 (1992), 175–96.
2 Freiburg im Breisgau, Stadtarchiv, B1 (H) 107, fol. 227v. In my transcriptions from
the manuscript I have supplied abbreviated letters but have not otherwise altered
or regularized the text. For more on the Adelhausen sisterbook, see J. König, ‘Die
Chronik der Anna von Munzingen nach der ältesten Abschrift mit Einleitung und
Beilagen’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv 13 (1880), 129–236; G. J. Lewis, By Women,
For Women, About Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto,
1996), pp. 10–12, 286.

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 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

and observe the Rule as devoutly as their fourteenth-century predecessors

had done.
The story of Adelhausen’s fall and reform is preserved in an autograph
manuscript written at the convent by the reforming priest himself a little more
than fifteen years after the reform and re-enclosure. Johannes Meyer (1422–
1485) had spent the years after 1465 serving as confessor and reforming other
Dominican convents throughout southwestern Germany and Alsace before
returning to Adelhausen as confessor in 1482. Despite the fact that Meyer was
not only present but also responsible for the events of 1465, he does not name
himself and speaks only of ‘ein priester unsers orden’ (‘a priest of our order’).3
Much of the account of the fire is constituted by contemporary letters of the
mayor of Freiburg and the prioress of the convent, which Meyer copied out
himself in the appropriate place chronologically. Furthermore, while the Latin
documents concerning the convent’s foundation are written in a different
hand, Meyer’s hand follows each with a brief German-language explanation
of the document’s contents. Meyer’s narrative insertions in effect bind
together several primary historical documents (bulls and letters) pertaining
to important moments in the convent’s history. More than recounting, this
text preserves.
This history of Adelhausen represents the first in a series of short texts
in Meyer’s own hand which have been collected in the religious miscellany
Freiburg im Breisgau, Stadtarchiv, B1 (H) 107. The texts comprise the last
works of his life, composed from around the time he was reassigned to
Adelhausen until his death in 1485. The four brief and likely incomplete
works are German-language historical texts, two pertaining directly to
Adelhausen and two with broader content. Meyer’s propagandistic goals
in furthering the Observant reform are clearly discernable in all four texts.
He repeatedly mourns a Golden Age of the Order when all Dominicans
observed the Rule and all nuns understood the Latin they sang.
Yet Meyer’s attitude towards his contemporary female audience
was more sympathetic than it initially appears. The chronicles in this
manuscript misrepresent certain historical events and figures in an attempt
to accommodate the concerns of his female readership. Furthermore, while
Meyer certainly praises humility and piety in strict observance of the Rule,
he also foregrounds women who took greater initiative in serving their
convent, their Order and the Church at large. Concentrating on these late
texts out of Adelhausen, I will argue that Meyer did not merely encourage
devotion and obedience but also literacy and leadership among Dominican
women. Through the exemplary women of the past, Meyer encouraged nuns
in the present to engage actively in shaping the history of the Dominican
Order.

3 B1 107, fol. 232r.

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 Claire Taylor Jones

The Observance began as a reform movement in the late fourteenth century

within the mendicant orders and spread eventually to other monastic orders,
as well.4 The movement’s guiding principle was a return to the monastic life
as the founders had intended it to be pursued. What this meant in practice
for female convents was a stricter enforcement of enclosure that went hand in
hand with a liturgical reform and a renewed effort to improve Latin literacy.
Despite the Dominican emphasis on higher education, the attempt to restore
Latin literacy among the Dominican nuns was not meant to enable the women
to participate in the intellectual life of the Order. Much more simply, it was
feared that the nuns could no longer understand what they sang during the
Office.5
The first female Observant Dominican convent was founded in 1397 at an
abandoned site at Schönensteinbach near Colmar in Alsace. After the success
of this first experiment, other convents were reformed by sending sisters from
an already reformed convent to instruct their sisters in correct Observance.
These delegations of reforming nuns brought both liturgical and devotional
books with them in order to reinforce their own instruction.6 The sisters who
travelled as part of the reforming effort maintained long-distance friendships
and mentoring relationships with the women in the convents where they
had been in residence previously. St Katharina in Nuremberg reformed
St Katharina in St Gallen entirely through letters which the St Gallen sisters
collected into a handbook of the Observance.7 Sister-city relationships
sprang up, in which convents would send each other books or artwork
as presents.8 As more Dominican convents embraced stricter enclosure

4 K. Elm, ‘Reform- und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordens­

wesen: Ein Überblick’, in Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen, pp. 3–19.
5 Ehrenschwendtner has examined the literacy of southern German Dominican

nuns in depth in M.-L. Ehrenschwendtner, Die Bildung der Dominikanerinnen in

Süddeutschland vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2004).
6 G. Muschiol, ‘Migrating Nuns—Migrating Liturgy: The Context of Reform in

Female Convents of the Late Middle Ages’, in Liturgy in Migration: From the Upper
Room to Cyberspace, ed. T. Berger (Collegeville, 2012), pp. 83–100.
7 This manuscript is now preserved in the Dominican convent of St Katharina in Wil.

http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/kaw/SrBuch/ (accessed 15 January 2015).

8 A. Willing, Die Bibliothek des Klosters St. Katharina zu Nürnberg: synoptische

Darstellung der Bücherverzeichnisse (Berlin, 2012), pp. lxxi–cii; S. Mengis, Schreibende

Frauen um 1500: Scriptorium und Bibliothek des Dominikanerinnenklosters St. Katharina
St. Gallen (Berlin, 2013), pp. 204–36. The St Gallen sisters sent works by Meyer to the
Augustinian canonesses of Inzigkofen. W. Fechter, Deutsche Handschriften des 15. und
16. Jahrhunderts aus der Bibliothek des ehemaligen Augustinerchorfrauenstifts Inzigkofen
(Sigmaringen, 1997), p. 120. Reformed Dominican and Clarissan convents within
the same city also exchanged devotional objects. See A. Winston-Allen, ‘Networking
in Medieval Strasbourg: Cross-Order Collaboration in Book Illustration Among
Women’s Reformed Convents’, in Schreiben Und Lesen in Der Stadt: Literaturbetrieb
im Spätmittelalterlichen Straßburg, ed. S. Mossman, N. F. Palmer and F. Heinzer
(Berlin, 2012), pp. 197–212; A. Winston-Allen, ‘ “ Es [ist] nit wol zu gelobind, daz ain

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 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

from the surrounding city they created, almost paradoxically, a thriving

network of reformed convents, spread out over Alsace, German-speaking
Switzerland and southern Germany, who maintained contact through
written correspondence with their sisters in distant cities. These long-distance
relationships, the selection of women reformers and the transportation of the
reforming nuns to new communities was facilitated and overseen, of course,
by Dominican friars, some of whom made names for themselves through
their work.
In the third quarter of the fifteenth century Johannes Meyer had a hand in
reforming many of the women’s houses in south-west Germany and this zeal
fuelled a vast literary output, albeit mostly as compiler.9 Much of Meyer’s
œuvre consists of editions and translations of earlier works, including four of
the nine surviving Dominican sisterbooks.10 These works, produced during
the fourteenth century, constituted histories of a single convent and record
the lives of illustrious nuns with particular emphasis on visionary experience
and miracles. In addition to editing these German texts, Meyer translated
Latin works that he considered important for the Dominican Observance. In
line with his interest in the sisterbooks, Meyer translated into German Gerard
de Fracheto’s Vitae fratrum, a collection of lives of prominent Dominican friars
collected in the thirteenth century and on which the sisterbooks were largely
modeled. In translating Humbert of Romans’s Liber de instructione officialium,
Meyer heavily adapted the descriptions of convent duties to the needs of
nuns. In addition to transmitting and translating the works of others, Meyer
profusely wrote chronicles both in Latin and German, largely as compilations
from older Latin works, although he included material from both his own
personal experience and the accounts of contemporaries. The most interesting
of these is the Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens, the Book of the Reformation of
the Order of Preachers, which recounts the history of the Observant reform, the
first Observant convent at Schönensteinbach and a collection of exemplary
lives for the sisters who will pursue strict Observance on the model of the
sisterbooks.
Most interpretations of Meyer’s relationship to and representation of
women in his works rely on his programmatically selective editing of the
sisterbooks, some of which survive both in their original form and in his
edited version. Jeffrey Hamburger highlights how Meyer edits out more
radical visionary material from the Adelhausen sisterbook and interprets

frowen bild so wol kan arbaiten”: Artistic Production and Exchange in Women’s
Convents of the Observant Reform’, in Frauen - Kloster - Kunst: Neue Forschungen
zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. J. Hamburger (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 187–95.
9 For a survey of Meyer’s life and works, see V. Zapf, ‘Meyer, Johannes OP’, in
Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter, ed. W. Achnitz (Berlin, 2012), cols. 754–62.
10 R. Meyer, Das ‘St. Katharinentaler Schwesternbuch’: Untersuchung, Edition, Kommentar
(Tübingen, 1995), pp. 65–72.

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 Claire Taylor Jones

this as indicating opposition to private visionary devotion.11 Reviewing

Meyer’s work on all four sisterbooks, Ruth Meyer identifies exemplarity as
his guiding principle and points out that in the Book of the Reformation Meyer
himself confirms Hamburger’s evaluation of his practices.12 In compiling the
lives of Schönensteinbach sisters, Meyer reports having left out most of the
visions because they are less useful to hear about than virtues and because
it is easy to be deceived by false visions.13 Anne Winston-Allen offers a more
moderate picture of Meyer, noting his collaborations with prioresses in
gathering information about the history of their convents. Yet she concludes
that Meyer edited these same women out of reform history, downplaying
their agency and emphasizing the initiative of male advisors.14 This conforms
to the short narrative with which I opened. Even though Meyer is not named,
his divine calling is emphasized over any desire the Adelhausen nuns may
have had to reform.
Yet understanding Meyer as a controlling, anti-visionary reformer
obscures what he was trying to accomplish by missing the context in which
he was working. Comparing Meyer’s versions of women’s stories to the
female-composed originals will necessarily leave us disappointed, if only
because they were composed 150 years later in a different cultural context.15
Furthermore, modern scholars often view ecstatic behaviour as a vehicle for
female agency, whereas Meyer was concerned with the reality of half-starved
novices.16 We should not interpret his injunctions and excisions as a negative
attitude toward women but as concern for the nuns’ physical health as well
as their spiritual well-being.
Comparing Meyer’s German translations for female audiences to their
Latin male-oriented originals conveys a different picture. Meyer’s translations
deviate widely from the original in response to the needs and interests of his
audience. His translation of Humbert of Romans’s Book of Offices reorganizes

11 J. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval
Germany (Cambridge MA, 1998), pp. 427–67.
12 Meyer, St. Katharinentaler Schwesternbuch, p. 67.
13 Meyer, Buch der Reformacio III, 59.
14 A. Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the
Late Middle Ages (University Park PA, 2004), pp. 114–17.
15 Winston-Allen makes this point and furthermore notes that, in comparison to his
fifteenth-century male contemporaries, Meyer’s position on female spirituality is
remarkably mild; ‘Rewriting Women’s History: Medieval Nuns’ Vitae by Johannes
Meyer’, in Medieval German Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function
of Medieval German Studies for German Studies, ed. A. Classen (Amsterdam, 2000),
pp. 151–2.
16 In the Book of the Reformation Meyer mentions excessive fasting in particular as an
exemplum ex negativo and admonishes his readers that ‘an uf sechen ist zů haben
zů den iungen und nüwen brůder und swöstren’ (‘the young and new brothers and
sisters must be watched after’). Meyer, Buch der Reformacio III, 95. Note that it is not
only women who are susceptible to devotional excess.

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 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

many of the official duties to reflect the differences between the hierarchical
structures of male and female communities. His Lives of the Brothers cherry
picks from the Vitae fratrum and Thomas of Cantimpré’s De apibus only what
he believes will serve and interest women. Even his Latin-language Book
of Illustrious Dominicans includes a book devoted entirely to women’s lives.
Rather than writing women out of his texts, Meyer consistently writes them
into genres that had been oriented towards men.
Meyer accomplishes this in a number of subtle ways in the texts collected
in the Freiburg manuscript. These works seem to have been kept separately
as works in progress and bound together, perhaps posthumously, as a
single booklet before being bound in between two other codices.17 The
entire sequence of texts in Meyer’s hand bears a continuous foliation from
1 to 100 that predates its inclusion in the larger codex and its renumeration
as folios 225r–325r. The greater part of the texts comprising the rest of the
miscellany are related to the liturgy, including hymn translations, sequence
commentaries, office texts for saints Dorothy and Agnes and liturgical
regulations handed down from the Dominican general chapter meetings.
Although not a liturgical book itself, the miscellany gathers texts that promote
not only correct observance but also knowledgeable spiritual engagement in
liturgical practice.18
Their appearance in the manuscript suggests that these texts are much
closer to drafts than to finished compositions. Empty spaces in between
entries, numerous scribbles in the middle of lines and marginal additions in
the same hand all contribute to the impression that these texts were works
in progress. The collection of historical material pertaining to Adelhausen
occupies part of the first quire with the rest left blank (225r–240r). The
next two quires (240v–267v) are occupied by the Chronicle of 1484, so called
because of the dated colophon in its prologue. This text begins with the death
of Bernard of Clairvaux in 1153 and records significant religious events and
notable people into the mid fourteenth century. The foundation of important
Dominican women’s houses in Germany as well as events of significance
only to Adelhausen are integrated into the course of the history.
Meyer’s prologue and the alphabetical list of Adelhausen nuns occupy
most of two quires from 268r–287r. This list is not merely a reorganization
and abbreviation of Anna von Munzingen’s sisterbook but includes later
nuns, as well. For example, Edelin de Ow is commemorated as having been

17 A thorough description of the manuscript may be found in W. Hagenmeier,

Die deutschen mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek und die
mittelalterlichen Handschriften anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Freiburg im Breisgau
und Umgebung (Wiesbaden, 1988), pp. 342–9.
18 C. T. Jones, ‘Rekindling the Light of Faith: Hymn Translation and Spiritual Renewal
in the Fifteenth-Century Observant Reform’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies 42 (2012), 567–96.

345
 Claire Taylor Jones

prioress at the time of the reform in 1465. Following the sisters is a brief list
of Dominican friars who ministered to the nuns of Adelhausen. The folio
following this has been left blank except for a rubrication explaining that the
space is for recording the names confessors, priests and lay brothers who
died on the convent grounds. The quire and the collection of texts close with
a note that the numerous gravestones on Adelhausen grounds memorialize
the devout laypeople who supported the convent, before listing off miracles
granted to Adelhausen sisters, albeit anonymously.
Two pages in a different hand have been inserted before the next quire
picks up in Meyer’s hand again. These pages bear a prologue and table of
contents for the following Chronicle of 1481, which records the Masters General
of the Dominican Order along with other notable Dominicans. This chronicle
also takes its name from the date in the prologue, although it concludes with
the death of Master General Salvus Cassetta in 1483. It is nevertheless clear
from the variation in pen size and ink, as well as a brief insertion in a hand
other than Meyer’s, that the events between 1480 and 1483 represent later
additions.19 The final quire begins on 318r with a list of reformed Observant
convents in German lands, followed by a list of Observant German men’s
houses, unreformed men’s houses, unreformed women’s houses and finally
a list of convents that had either closed or transferred to other Orders, that is
become canonesses or Premonstratensians. The old foliation ends with the
text and the rest of the quire is blank.
However these texts came together, they were all produced some time in
the four or five years before Meyer’s death in 1485, the approach of which
he appears to have been anticipating. In the prologue to the Chronicle of 1481,
we read ‘nu [ich] von kranckheit vnd alter wol mercken solt die nähe mÿnes
endes’ (‘now that I may well see, from sickness and age, the approach of
my end’).20 Towards the end of this chronicle, Meyer makes touching note
of the commendation he received for his service from the Dominican Master
General in 1482: ‘Diser meister des ordens Salvus hatt mich úwern brůder
jubilarium gemachet von wegen dz ich einhalbhundert jar in predier orden
gewesen bin und von miner arbeit und sorg die ich in ettlichen clöstern
getragen hab’ (‘This master of the Order Salvus acknowledged me, your
brother, because I have been in the Order of Preachers for half a century and
for the work and worry that I have borne in many convents’).21 After fifty

19 C. Heimann, ‘Beobachtungen zur Arbeitsweise von Johannes Meyer OP anhand

seiner Aussagen über die Reform der Dominikanerkonvente der Teutonia,
besonders der Natio Austriae’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 72 (2002), 187–220
(pp. 201–2). Heimann also examines a number of other autograph manuscripts that
bear Meyer’s works in progress.
20 B1 107, fol. 292r.
21 Ibid., fol. 317r. Writing of Meyer’s Open Letter to Dominican Sisters, Seebald notes
that Meyer’s self-description as ‘your brother’ suggests ‘eine besondere Nähe bzw.
Verbundenheit’ (‘an especial closeness or affinity’) to his readership; ‘Schreiben

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 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

years in the Order, these works represent his last service to the sisters not only
in Adelhausen but throughout the Dominican convents of Teutonia. While
it might be unsurprising that the texts pertaining to Adelhausen celebrate
virtuous and exemplary women, both chronicles also reveal a cultivated
interest in women’s place in history and a commitment to women’s place in
the Order.
First and foremost, Meyer writes for his audience, that is to say, when
he narrates events or describes people of great importance for the Order or
even the Church at large, he focuses on aspects that would have been more
important or more familiar to his female readership. For example, although
he notes the dates of Thomas Aquinas’s birth, entry into the Order and death,
the only thing Meyer mentions Aquinas having written is the Office for
Corpus Christi.22 The nuns of Adelhausen were certainly familiar with this
text even as the rest of Aquinas’s work remained inaccessible to them. Three
of the hymns from this Office are glossed and translated into German in an
earlier section of the miscellany.23 Therefore even those nuns with limited
facility in Latin would presumably have been able to familiarize themselves
with the content and meaning of the hymns.
While Aquinas gets rather short shrift, Meyer devotes an enormous
amount of space to Albert the Great, perhaps largely because he was German
but also out of local interest. Meyer writes that in the 1260s Albert presided
over a consecration of priests in Strasbourg and consecrated the church of the
Dominican convent in Basel as well as, closer to home, the parish church of
the village Adelhausen.24 Meyer also credits him with founding the convent
of Paradies bei Soest and personally presiding over the enclosure of the nuns
there.25
More interestingly, Meyer attributes to Albert a form of Marian devotion
that sounds more mystical than scholastic.26 He would often go into the
garden or some other private place and, with heavy sighs and weeping eyes,
sing songs to the Virgin. Meyer goes on to claim that Albert not only sang

für die Reform: Reflexionen von Autorschaft in den Schriften des Dominikaners
Johannes Meyer’, in Schriftstellerische Inszenierungspraktiken – Typologie und
Geschichte, ed. C. Jürgensen and G. Kaiser (Heidelberg, 2011), pp. 33–53 (p. 40).
22 B1 107, fol. 254r. For an overview of the extant liturgical manuscripts from the

convent of Adelhausen, see H. Wachtel, ‘Die liturgische Musikpflege im Kloster

Adelhausen seit der Gründung des Klosters 1234 bis um 1500’, Freiburger Diözesan-
Archiv N.F. 39 (1938), 1–96.
23 The hymns are ‘Pange lingua gloriosi’, ‘Sacris sollemniis’ and ‘Verbum supernum

prodiens’ (AH 50, nos. 386–8) and appear on folios 82v–90v as ‘O du menschlich
zunge du besing’, ‘Die fröiden sigent zů gefügt’ and ‘Das öberst wort’.
24 B1 107, fols. 258v–259r.
25 Ibid., fol. 261r.
26 For Albert’s mariology, see M. Burger, ‘Albert the Great – Mariology’, in A

Companion to Albert the Great: Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, ed. I. Resnick
(Leiden, 2013), pp. 105–36.

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 Claire Taylor Jones

privately in his devotion but also wrote sequences in honour of Mary, which
are sung on Saturdays. The episode closes with the narration of a vision that
is worth quoting at length.

Hier um do er den schönen sequentz machet den man im predier orden

singt an un[ser] lieben frowen tag: assumpcionis der also anfacht Salve
mater saluatoris: Gegrüsset sÿest du můtter unser behalters und kam an
den verse Salve mater pietatis: Gegrüsset sÿest du můter der gütikeit und
sich ein wenig bedacht wie er den verse ordenlich volbrecht do satz er zů
Et tocius trinitatis nobile triclinium und der gantzen drÿfaltikeit ein edele
triskamer / Do erschein im die aller süssiste jungfrow Maria und sprach
Danck sÿe dir lieber Alberte won also bin ich vor von nie keinem menschen
gegrüsset worden.27

[For this reason, when he was writing the beautiful sequence that we
sing in the Dominican Order on the Feast of the Assumption that begins:
‘Salve mater salvatoris’ (Hail, mother of our savior), when he got to the
verse: ‘Salve mater pietatis’ (Hail, mother of compassion), he thought a
little how he could complete the verse appropriately. Then he added: ‘Et
totius trinitatis nobile triclinium’ (and a noble treasury of the whole Trinity).
Upon this, the sweetest Virgin Mary appeared to him and said: Thank you,
dear Albert, because no one has ever before hailed me in that way.]

The attribution of Marian sequences to Albert may well be authentic, leaving

to one side ‘Salve mater salvatoris’, although other medieval sources also
ascribe this particular sequence to him. Meyer’s contemporary Peter of
Prussia, aware of this legend, explains in his Vita beati Alberti (1487) that
this sequence belongs in fact to Adam of St Victor.28 The thirteenth-century
Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré recounts this miraculous appearance of the
Virgin to the poet Adam in his Bonum universale de apibus, a text which Meyer
knew and cites alongside Gerard of Fracheto’s Vitae fratrum as one of his

27 B1 107, fol. 262v. All sections (and only those sections) of the Chronicle of 1484
concerning Albertus Magnus are printed in P. Albert, ‘Zur Lebensgeschichte des
Albertus Magnus’, Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv N.F. 3 (1902), 283–98. The German is
hastily written enough to be garbled. Albert supplied the missing abbreviations
in his transcription. I have added nothing to the German but have translated
according to what Meyer clearly means rather than what he wrote.
28 A. Fries, ‘Albertus Magnus Prosator’, in Albertus Magnus. Doctor Universalis

1280/1980, ed. G. Meyer and A. Zimmermann (Mainz, 1980), pp. 141–65 (p. 141);
M. E. Fassler, ‘Who Was Adam of St. Victor? The Evidence of the Sequence
Manuscripts’, JAMS 37 (1984), 233–69. The sequence was already appearing in
the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and could not have been written by
Albert. For text and translations of the sequence, see Adam of Saint-Victor, Sequences,
ed. J. Mousseau (Paris, 2013), pp. 178–83; J. Grosfillier, Les séquences d’Adam de
Saint-Victor: Étude littéraire (poétique et rhétorique), textes et traductions, commentaires
(Turnhout, 2008), pp. 415–20.

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 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

sources.29 Meyer’s version of the tale is more detailed and fanciful than
Thomas’s, in which Mary does not speak but merely inclines her head.
Ironically, Meyer follows up this misattributed vision with a comment that
he has written so much about Albert in order to combat ‘untruths’ that are
circulating about him.
Whether Meyer knowingly recounted a story about Adam of St Victor
as if it had been Albertus Magnus or whether he simply failed to notice the
discrepancy between De apibus and the Albert legends, Meyer’s motives
in inserting the story are clear. He values liturgical piety and liturgical
production over scholastic thought and expects the women of his readership
to respond similarly. In all his works, Meyer concentrates on Dominicans
from the province of Teutonia and evidently held a fondness for Albert
as a son of German lands who became renowned throughout the Order.
Imagining Albert’s works of natural philosophy to be of little interest to nuns,
Meyer paints a picture of the great bishop weeping over the composition of
‘andechtiges gesang’ (‘devout song’), which he furthermore locates within the
liturgical life of his readership.
Albertus Magnus is not the only figure to undergo unhistorical
embellishment. Meyer feels compelled to mention the thirteenth-century
controversy over cura monialium but is simultaneously unwilling to admit
that any prominent members of the Dominican Order may ever have spurned
their sisters. Although a decision to halt incorporation of women’s houses
was first made at the General Chapter in 1228, and the controversy was not
officially settled with papal approval until 1267, Meyer chooses 1245 and
the First Council of Lyon to expound upon the matter.30 The reason for his
choice is twofold: first, this moment represents the stage of the controversy
at which the women themselves were most directly involved, and second,
the women’s engagement led to papal incorporation of numerous German
convents into the Dominican Order, including Adelhausen.
Although in fact the Order had been struggling with its role in regard to
women’s houses for decades already, Meyer recounts that in 1245 it came to
the sisters’ attention that some of the brothers had petitioned Innocent IV
that the nuns be disassociated from the Order. In response to this, numerous
sisters ‘sunder von tützschen landen’ (‘especially from German lands’) were
sent to the Council of Lyon on behalf of their home convents to petition the

29 In this manuscript, he mentions De apibus as one of his sources for Jordan of

Saxony’s life (B1 107, fol. 294v).
30 For expositions of the battle between the papacy and the Order over women, see E. T.
Brett, Humbert of Romans: His Life and Views of Thirteenth-Century Society (Toronto,
1984), pp. 57–79; O. Decker, Die Stellung des Predigerordens zu den Dominikanerinnen
(1207–1267) (Leipzig, 1935). U. Denne reviews this history with particular attention
to its effect on Adelhausen in Die Frauenklöster im spätmittelalterlichen Freiburg im
Breisgau: ihre Einbindung in den Orden und in die städtische Kommunität (Freiburg,
1997), pp. 69–72.

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 Claire Taylor Jones

pope directly that they be confirmed in the Dominican Order. Protesting

against the request of the brothers to be freed from cura monialium,

do erworben sÿ durch gůtt güner vnd durch sich selb … dz die swestern
mit iren clöstern dem orden krefftenklichen worden incorporiert vnd
vereÿnget / mit allen frÿheiten vnd gnaden des orden als vor ie vnd bas.31

[through their own efforts and through good patrons they achieved … that
the sisters with their convents were officially incorporated and united with
all the privileges and honors of the Order as ever before and after.]

Meyer attributes the success of the women’s papal petition for inclusion
to their own efforts and, in particular, to the sisters from German lands.
After the account of the conflict, the grounds for it and its resolution at the
Council, Meyer records that Adelhausen itself was confirmed on 12 June
1245. He notes that Adelhausen possesses no less than ten papal bulls from
Innocent IV, two of which are copied at the head of the material pertaining
to Adelhausen on folios 225v–227r. Meyer thus not only acknowledges the
presence and effectiveness of women at the council but places representatives
from Adelhausen at the historic event.
Innocent IV did declare in favour of the women in 1245 and the decision
brought hordes of nuns demanding and receiving confirmation of their
incorporation into the Dominican Order.32 The women’s active role in
acquiring these privileges for their communities is recounted in a number of
the sisterbooks.33 Meyer only deviates from historical record when describing
the attitude of the early Dominican Masters General to the care of the sisters.
At the end of the entry on the Council of Lyon, Meyer refutes that Jordan
of Saxony, the second Master General, ‘den swestern nit ze vil geneigt sÿe
gewesen’ (‘was not particularly inclined to the sisters’) with a simple ‘dz
ist nit’ (‘that’s wrong’).34 In matter of fact, Jordan of Saxony had overseen
the initial decision to halt incorporation of women’s houses at the General
Chapter in 1228, although he believed that the friars should continue to
oversee the houses already relying on them.35 Meyer furthermore writes that

31 B1 107, fol. 248r.

32 Although the other Freiburg convents had not yet been founded, the event was of
massive significance for Adelhausen’s region. Of the seven convents in Strasbourg
alone, six were incorporated in 1245. A. Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in
Reformation Germany (Chicago, 2005), p. 17.
33 Lewis, By Women, pp. 181–6.
34 B1 107, fol. 248v.
35 Decker notes that Jordan did not actively foster the foundation of new women’s
houses, despite extensive correspondence with a nun of St Agnes in Bologna
(Stellung, p. 51). For more on this exchange, see G. Vann, To Heaven with Diana! A
Study of Jordan of Saxony and Diana d’Andalò with a Translation of the Letters (London,
1960).

350
 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

the women’s cause was supported in 1245 by the current Master General,
John of Wildeshausen, who brought his influence in the curia to bear on the
decision. This can hardly be true, since the Order continued to fight against
cura monialium with ordinances punishing friars for ministering to religious
women.36 Nevertheless, Meyer repeats in the Chronicle of 1481 that John
supported the incorporation of the women’s houses.37 The only Dominican
who appears to deserve Meyer’s praise in this regard is Hugh of St Cher, who
exercised his authority not from within the Order but as cardinal and papal
legate.38
Meyer’s propaganda is more forced here than in his fanciful panegyric on
Albertus Magnus. Writing in support of a reform that urged a return to the
early life of the Order, Meyer is of course constrained to show that the early
life of the Order included women. The entries for the 1240s make repeated
reference to an initial observant spirituality among all Dominican brothers
and sisters.39 In outlining the history according to which his fifteenth-century
female readers should reshape themselves, Meyer is confronted with the
imperfections and animosities of an Order struggling with its female branch.
Meyer chooses to write women into this history by painting all his male
protagonists as sympathetic to the nuns.40
While the men’s side of narrative must be finessed, Meyer can truthfully
attribute agency and initiative to the early Dominican sisters. In the entry
on the Council of Lyon Meyer does not name any women of Adelhausen
who were particularly active in acquiring the papal bulls of incorporation
but many women are commemorated by name elsewhere, especially for
the foundation and reformation of their own and neighboring convents.
For example, Meyer describes how Adelheit, countess of Freiburg, founded
Adelhausen by petitioning the bishop of Constance for permission to
remain enclosed on her own estate. He makes clear that Dominican
friars played no role in her decision, since at the time there was no men’s

36 Ironically, such ministrations specifically included translating Latin works into the
vernacular. Brett represents John as remarkably virulent in his opposition to the
women; Humbert of Romans, pp. 63–5.
37 B1 107, fol. 295r.
38 Meyer notes Hugh’s support of women on fol. 255v. Brett, Humbert of Romans, p. 65.
39 For example, Jordan of Saxony left the Order ‘in grosser geistlicheit der observantz

jn allen clöstern der brüdern und swestern des gantzen ordens’ (‘in great holiness
of observance in all the convents of brothers and sisters of the whole Order’)
and at the time of Adelhausen’s incorporation ‘wz observantz der geistlicheit in
dem gantzen orden’ (‘observance of spirituality was in the whole Order’) (B1 107,
fols. 247v, 249r).
40 Heinonen also ascribes conciliatory intent to Meyer in that he admonishes friars

to responsibility in their care of nuns as much as he calls the women to obedience;

‘Between Friars and Nuns: The Relationships of Religious Men and Women in
Johannes Meyer’s Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens’, Oxford German Studies 42
(2013), 237–58 (p. 257).

351
 Claire Taylor Jones

convent in Freiburg. Friars had to travel from Strasbourg to provide for the
Adelhausen sisters.41 There is similarly no hint of brotherly intervention in
the foundation of St Agnes in Freiburg by Berchta and her companions from
Breisach.42 Meyer notes that when a men’s house was founded in Colmar
in 1277, the prioress of Unterlinden, Hedwig, and her nuns greatly assisted
the fledgling community of friars.43 Far from relying on the support of men,
women both establish their own communities and advise the friars in their
foundations.
Meyer celebrates reforming prioresses as enthusiastically as founders
of convents. In the Chronicle of 1481, Meyer commends a Gertrude who
served as Observant prioress of St Katherine’s in Nuremberg for forty years.
During this time, he writes, she accepted 104 sisters into obedience and
sent successful reforming parties to four different convents. Meyer resorts
to bridal mysticism to express his admiration: ‘Dis ist ein fruchtbari mütter
gewesen die ir gemahel Christo so vil kindern geborn hatt selig si sÿ’ (‘She
was a fruitful mother who bore so many children for her husband, Christ.
May she be blessed’).44 He also praises Agnes, prioress of St Nicholas-in-
Undis in Strasbourg, for having talked most of her charges into requesting
reform.
When reform initiative is not credited to women, it is almost always
laypeople, who request that the convents in their region be reformed and
not Dominican friars. The greatest exception proves the disastrous attempt
to reform Klingental, initially undertaken with all male and female convents
in the city of Basel in anticipation of the Council to begin there in 1431.
Unwilling to submit, Klingental managed to remove itself from the care of
the Dominicans and under that of the bishop. The convent was returned to
the Order for a second attempted reform that began in 1480 and failed with
the expulsion of the Observant nuns already in 1482.45 Regarding the initial
reform, Meyer wrote simply that Klingental had left the order, before adding
a marginal correction that ‘der juristen / der bösen cristen’ (‘lawyers, bad
Christians’) had helped the nuns.46 His entries on the second reform are
so current that the remarks about its failure constitute a later addition. He
records that almost none of the sisters wanted the reform, but innumerable
Church officials insisted, ‘ioch nit von predieren sunder von andern örden’

41 B1 107, fol. 247r.

42 Ibid., fol. 254r. These foundation histories are largely legend, as outlined in Denne,
Frauenklöster, pp. 24–35.
43 B1 107, fol. 260r.
44 Ibid., fol. 310v.
45 For an overview of this unfortunate history, see J.-C. Winnlein, ‘1477–1539: Les
derniers combats pour l’Observance féminine en Haute Alsace’, in Dominicains et
dominicaines en Alsace: XIIIe–XXe S., ed. J.-L. Eichenlaub (Colmar, 1996), pp. 37–52
(pp. 37–40).
46 B1 107, fol. 309v.

352
 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

(‘but not the Preachers, rather other Orders’).47 After adding the expulsion of
the reforming sisters, Meyer comments bitterly, ‘wz aber her us werde weist
got’ (‘God knows what will come of this’).48 Simultaneously disapproving of
the undisciplined sisters, Meyer seems to be asserting that the Dominicans
would not force an entire convent into something the women did not want.
In addition to female Dominican leadership, Meyer includes other
exemplary religious women, usually among lists of the notable people in a
given era. For example, the very first entry in the Chronicle of 1484 records
the death of Saint Bernard in 1153. The rest of the entry consists of a list of
important people who lived at the time along with their contribution to
Christendom. After Peter Lombard, Peter Comestor and Hugh of St Victor,
Meyer informs us that ‘in tützschen landen wz Sant Hildegardis ein
closterfrow ze pingen am rin / ein grosse prophetin / vnd in saxenland
öch ein heilige closterffrow vnd prophetin / Elizabeth von Schönow’ (‘in
German lands there was Saint Hildegard, a nun at Bingen on the Rhine and
a great prophetess, and in Saxony there was also a holy nun and prophetess,
Elisabeth of Schönau’).49 Meyer includes these two women in the list of
luminaries living during the time of Bernard and importantly also identifies
them as being German and Saxon respectively. Hildegard and Elizabeth not
only represent famous and important women to be honored and emulated,
but also renowned German nuns and therefore spiritual ancestors of Meyer’s
audiences from before the Dominican Order even existed.
Meyer continues to include important or exemplary women throughout
the chronicle, demonstrating a particular interest in royal women who took
the veil. He names a number of Hungarian princesses in St Elisabeth’s family
such as St Hedwig of Silesia, Margaret of Hungary and Elizabeth of Sicily. The
relatives of Holy Roman Emperors also receive note. Rudolf of Habsburg, he
says, had a sister in Adelhausen and Henry VII’s sister Margaret was prioress
of Mariental. The entries on these women are not extensive and often note
little more than the date of their death and their royal connections. On the
one hand, this can be read as indicating that the women’s only importance
consists in their male relations. On the other, since such familial connections
are not noted for men, the only link connecting the Order’s past to secular
history resides with the women.
In addition to royal women, Meyer mentions notable mystics who were
not necessarily Dominican. For example, he writes at length about Elisabeth
of Spalbeek, mentioning both her stigmata and her trance states. Her life
is recorded in ‘ein schönes büchli’ written by an abbot of Clairvaux, ‘der ir
heiligen gnade vil gesehen und eÿgenlich enphunden hatt’ (‘who had seen

47 Ibid., fol. 316v.

48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., fol. 242r.

353
 Claire Taylor Jones

and experienced her holy grace firsthand’).50 Meyer evidently knew Philip of
Clairvaux’s vita of Elisabeth, but his decision to include a graphic depiction of
her stigmata rings oddly.
In the Chronicle of 1481, Meyer focuses more exclusively on Dominican
women. In a list of fourteenth-century personalities (including most notably
Meister Eckhart) Meyer includes Elizabeth of Hungary (grand-niece of
St Elizabeth of Hungary), Elsbeth Stagel, Elsbeth of Oye and Katherina von
Gebersweiler. Meyer would have been familiar with the visions of Elizabeth
of Hungary (a nun of Töß) and Elsbeth of Oye (from Ötenbach) from his
work editing the Dominican sisterbooks.51 The other two women are not only
recorded by sisterbooks but are authors themselves. Elsbeth Stagel is credited
with composing both the Töss sisterbook as well as the first half-destroyed
version of the important Dominican mystic Henry Suso’s life.52 Suso is
mentioned with Stagel but must wait another two folia before featuring in a
short entry of his own.
Katherina von Gebersweiler composed the Unterlinden sisterbook, the
only surviving sisterbook in Latin, and Meyer makes particular note of her
learnedness.

Katherina von gebenswiler priorin des closters genant Subtilia: oder in

tützsch geheisen vnderlinden / der statt Colmar baseler bistům / ze mal
ein wise clůge vnd wol gelerte jungfrow: als man wol mercken ist an iren
schönen latinschen büchern / vnd epistelen / die sÿ nützlichen gescriben
hatt.53

[Katherina von Gebersweiler, prioress of the convent called Subtilia or in

German Unterlinden in the city of Colmar in the bishopric of Basel. She
was a wise, intelligent and well-educated virgin, as one may well see by her
beautiful Latin books and letters, which she wrote to the benefit of others.]

Although Katherina is the only woman in these pages praised by name for
knowing Latin, Meyer also comments elsewhere that the early German nuns
were able to communicate with Dominican luminaries from other provinces

50 Ibid., fol. 258r.

51 W. Schneider-Lastin, ‘Leben und Offenbarungen der Elsbeth von Oye. Textkritische
Edition der Vita aus dem Ötenbacher Schwesternbuch’, in Kulturtopographie des
deutschsprachigen Südwestens im späteren Mittelalter. Studien und Texte, ed. B. Fleith
and R. Wetzel (Berlin, 2009), pp. 395–467; Das Leben der Schwestern zu Töß beschrieben
von Elsbeth Stagel samt der Vorrede von Johannes Meier und dem Leben der Prinzessin
Elisabet von Ungarn, ed. F. Vetter (Berlin, 1906), pp. 98–120.
52 For debate over her authorship, see D. Tinsley, ‘Gender, Paleography, and the
Question of Authority in Late Medieval Dominican Spirituality’, Medieval Feminist
Forum 26 (1998), 23–31. That Meyer, in any case, viewed Elsbeth as sole author is
clear from his prologue to the Töß sisterbook. Das Leben der Schwestern zu Töß, p. 2.
53 B1 107, fol. 302v.

354
 Johannes Meyer’s Chronicles of Reform

in that language, most notably Peter Martyr, who apparently preached at

Adelhausen.54
As in the list from the Chronicle of 1484, women fall after the men but are
nevertheless included in the same paragraph and actually have more space
devoted to them. This method of dealing with women’s history represents
somewhat of a departure from Meyer’s earlier works in which he had for
the most part dealt with the lives of men and women separately. In the Book
of Illustrious Dominicans exemplary women are restricted to the sixth and
final book and the Book of the Reformation devotes Book 3 to the lives of the
Schönensteinbach sisters and Book 4 to the history of the male reformers.
Furthermore, the women featured here are not only German nuns, but
German Dominican nuns, all of whom contributed to the spiritual life of the
order either through an exemplary visionary and devotional life or through
their magisterial and expansive accounts of the holiness of their fellow sisters
and even, in the case of Elsbeth Stagel, one of the brothers.
Meyer thus writes women into these final chronicles partially by
(untruthfully) shaping that history into something more palatable and
welcoming to women but also by commemorating both the women who
influenced Dominican history and the women who recorded it. The sense
achieved is that even, and perhaps especially, within enclosure, women can
accomplish spiritual works that speak to audiences beyond the walls of their
convents and even beyond their own time. Meyer does not idealize mere
submissive obedience to male supervision but rather celebrates the women
who took initiative in striving for spiritual perfection under the Dominican
Rule. He presents these historical women as role models for enclosed nuns,
assuring them that through their reform they were making history and that,
by following the examples of the past, they could themselves become worthy
of inclusion in such a chronicle – or, perhaps, write one themselves.
Meyer actively encouraged this kind of activity even earlier in his career.
During the composition of the Book of the Reformation, he both interviewed
elderly nuns at Schönensteinbach for their personal memories of the early
Observance and solicited written accounts of the reform from the prioresses
of other Observant convents.55 In his Open Letter to Dominican Sisters, Meyer
praises the prioress of Strasbourg convent St Nicholas-in-Undis for expanding
his chronicle with more complete accounts of the reform for which she had
also laboured.56 In the Book of the Reformation Meyer had already asked of his
readers that they carry on his work.

54 Ibid., fol. 269r.

55 Meyer describes interviewing the older sisters for their memories in Meyer, Buch
der Reformacio III, 58. For the solicitation of written accounts, see Winston-Allen,
Convent Chronicles, pp. 114–17.
56 Printed in H. C. Scheeben, ‘Handschriften I’, Archiv der deutschen Dominikaner 1
(1937), 149–202 (p. 188).

355
 Claire Taylor Jones

doch beger ich von ainem yetlichen gotförchtigen menschen / der dis
büchli hört lesen / daz er us tů und zů setz / waz billich und recht ist / und
besunder ob hier nach kain closter unsers ordens in disen tüschen landen
werd reformiert / daz er daz selb och an daz end dis bůches schrib.57

[I ask of every God-fearing person that hears this book read that he expand
and add whatever is appropriate. Especially if any convent of our Order
in these German lands is reformed, he should write that at the end of this
book.]

Meyer conceives of his chronicles as open and, like the history they record, to
be shaped by future Dominican nuns.
The empty spaces left in the texts in B1 107 invite the readers to carry on
the work that Meyer would be unable to finish at the end of his life. After
the lists of Adelhausen nuns and the friars who ministered to them, Meyer
has left a folio blank except for the instructions: ‘Hie na mag man bescriben
/ die bichvetter und ander brüder / sÿ siend priester oder conuersen die uf
dem hoff dis closters Adelhusen von zitt scheiden / und bÿ disem closter
begraben werden’ (‘Hereafter one may record the confessors and other
brothers, whether priests or lay brothers, who leave this world on the
grounds of this convent Adelhausen and are buried here’).58 The empty space
has a melancholy effect, given that in the prologue to the lists of names Meyer
anticipates his own approaching death. He is glad to be in Adelhausen, ‘won
ich enphing vrkünd vnd zeÿchen: dz mir der tod nit fer syn mag / hier vm
begrifft mich der tod hie so ist es mir ein fröd in got / dz ich sol bÿ disen
gůtten gottes fründen bestattet vnd begraben werden’ (‘since I have received
a sign that my death may not be far. If death seizes me here, it will be a joy for
me in God that I should be laid to rest and buried with these good friends of
God’).59 Meyer did, in fact, die at Adelhausen in 1485 and was buried in the
convent church, although no one ever entered his name into his own book.
Still it seems as though, after a lifetime spent writing chronicles for women,
he was asking the women to write him into their history.

57 Meyer, Buch der Reformacio V, 44.

58 B1 107, fol. 288r.
59 Ibid., fol. 268v.

356
 Index of Manuscripts

Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, B.IV.26, 58

Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS II 1658, 327
Budapest, Széchényi-Nationalbibliothek, Codex Latinus 514, 303
Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS554 (512), 310 n.3, 311
Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Ff.1.27, 193
Cologne, Dombibliothek, MS 16, 13
Copenhagen, Det kongelige Bibliotek Slotsholmen, MS Gl. Kgl. S. 3449 8° VI, 75
Copenhagen, Det kongelige Bibliotek Slotsholmen, MS Gl. Kgl. S. 3449 8° XI, 75
Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, 896, 112.
Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, 897, 123.
Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.ii.35, 199
Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.iv.22, 200, 201
Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.iv.24, 193, 194, 209
Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 100, 201
Durham Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Muniments Misc. ch. 556 and 558, 205
Durham Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Muniments 2.1 Pont. 1 and Pont. 2, 205
Durham Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Muniments 2.1 Pont. 10 and Pont. 11, 205
Durham, University Library, Cosin V.ii.6, 202
Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 83, 79
Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 235, 186
Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 142, 111
Fischingen, Pfarrarchiv, C XV sig. 13, 305
Freiburg im Breisgau, Stadtarchiv, B1 (H) 107, 341
Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 15, 116, 122
Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 24, 110
Fulda, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek, Aa 31a, 114
Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian 85 (T.4.2), 201
Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 30, 75
Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Salemitani IX.42a, 300, 305, 306
Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Salemitani IX.57, 305
Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Salemitani IX.61, 120
Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St Godehard 1, 166
Holy Sepulchre, Barletta, Archivio dela Chiesa del Santo Sepolcro, MS s.n, 284
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 18, 48
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 60, 77 n.47, 86
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 144, 48
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. 203, 113
Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, 94, 48
Klosterneuberg, Augustiner-Choreherrenstiftsbibliothek, CCl. 589, 77

357
 Index of Manuscripts

Klosterneuberg, Augustiner-Choreherrenstiftsbibliothek, CCl. 1013, 77

Leiden, Universiteitsbibliothek, Scaliger 49, 39
London, British Library, Add. 8927, 285–6, 287, 290
London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A.v, 203–4
London, British Library, Egerton 2902, 293
London, British Library, Harley 4664, 210
London, British Library, Lansdowne 436, 154
London, British Library, Stowe 62, 268
London, Inner Temple, MS 511.2, 255
London, Lambeth Palace Library, 73, 267
Lucca, Biblioteca Arcivescovile, MS 5, 285, 293–4
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F.3.14, 223, 234
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 155, 163
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 596, 199
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 175, 199
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Fairfax 6, 210
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C.31, 269
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Wood Empt. 4, 180
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 909, 93, 94, 100, 102
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1085, 93, 98–9
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1120, 93, 94–8, 102
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1121, 93, 94–8, 102
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1834, 93
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 2400, 38
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 7530, 15
Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS F.73, 311 n. 4
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 14, 45, 49
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 23, 50
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 39, 45–6
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 53, 50
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 54, 50
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 168, 65
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 174, 65
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 242, 43
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 250, 53
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 391, 71, 75
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 393, 65
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 430, 54–7
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 431, 54–7
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 432, 45–6, 54–7
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 433, 45–6, 47, 54–7
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 434, 54–7
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 451, 53
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 454, 46, 53, 54

358
 Index of Manuscripts

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 456, 52

Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 458, 45, 53
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 551, 54
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 553, 47, 56
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 562, 50
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 566, 53
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 571, 50, 52
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 577, 52, 53
Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 614, 46
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 6, 122
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 7, 112
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 16, 114
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 24, 114
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 27, 114
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 43, 110, 112
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 57, 57
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 58, 114
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, VII 62, 121
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, XIV 3, 112
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS lat. 5348, 311 n.4
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb. lat. 659, 284
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1877, 14
Worcester, Cathedral Library MS F. 160, 139

359
 General Index

Abingdon Abbey, 174, 176–7, 178 Amalarius of Metz, 110, 112, 114, 226
Abraham, 333–4 De ecclesiasticis officiis, 114, 227
Adam of St Victor, 348 Liber de divinis officiis, 38, 111, 226–7
Adelard of St Peter’s (Ghent), 128, 139–40 Amos 6.4–6, 136
Adelelmus, cantor (Notre Dame), 106 Anacletus, pope, 32
Adelhausen, 340, 345, 346, 353, 356 angels, singing, 137–8, 141, 259–60
consecration by Albert the Great, 347 Anna von Munzingen, prioress of
displacement at St Katherine and Adelhausen, 340
Klingental, 340 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 130–1,
Dominican Order at, 341 134, 184
fire, 340 Ansellus ‘de Turre,’ cantor (Holy
foundation, 351 Sepulchre), 278–9, 280–1, 295–6
Observant Reform, 340, 341 Apocalypse (Book of Revelation)
Adémar of Chabannes, 38–9, 90–6 Apoc. 4.8, 260
Apoc. 5.5, 72
Chronicon, 90
Apoc. 5.9, 188
as historian, 92
Apoc. 14.2, 260
notations, 98–9, 101
Apoc. 19, 141
Adeodatus II, pope, 35
Apoc. 21.1, 286
Ado of Vienne, 53
Aquinas, Thomas, 347
Adomnan of Coldingham, 207, 217, 218
Aquitanian notation, 90, 94–5
Adrian I or II, see Hadrian I or II
Ardo, 21
Advent, feast of, 39, 117, 132, 285–6
armarius, 2–4, 66, 172–3, 177, 185–7, 189,
Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury, 126
196, 198, 245, 282, 298, 307–8
Ælfwold, bishop of Sherborne, 252
book repair, 176
Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, 131
see also cantor; precenter; succentor
Agnes, prioress of St Nicholas-in-Undis
Arnulf of Chocques, patriarch of
(Strasbourg), 352
Jerusalem, 278, 280, 282
Agnus Dei, 31, 32
see also Holy Sepulchre
Ascension, feast of, 33
Albinus, cardinal bishop of Albano, Aschaffenburg, 105
311–12 Ash Wednesday, feast of, 32
Albert the Great, 347, 348 Augustinian canons, 120, 240, 292, 294
as composer, 348 see also Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem);
Alcuin, 39 Kreuzlingen; Robert of Cricklade;
St-Jean-en-Vallée (Chartres);
de usu psalmorum, 251–2
St Victor (Paris); William of
history as genre, 14, 21 Newburgh
Aldhelm of Malmesbury, 245, 251
Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, 166 Bartholomeus, cantor (Holy Sepulchre),
Alexander III, pope, 311 279, 280, 282, 295
Alexander VII, pope, 321 Baudri of Bourgueil, 165 n.58, 230

361
 General Index

Bede, 46, 192, 223, 243, 246–7, 250, 263–5 cantor, continued
De sex aetatibus mundi, 38 known cantors, 200–201
Historia ecclesiastica, 11–12, 192, 207, see also Adelelmus (Notre Dame);
208, 211, 216–17, 263–4 Ansellus ‘de Turre’ (Holy
on hagiography, 21, 211 Sepulchre); Bartholomeus
homilies, 47, 56, 57 (Holy Sepulchre); Benedict of
St Peter’s (Rome); Bernardus
In Lucae Evangelium Expositio, 12
(Holy Sepulchre); Eadburh
Vita s. Cuthberti, 192, 208, 211, 213 of Nunnaminster; Eadmer
Benedict II, pope, 34 of Canterbury; Edith of
Benedict IX, pope, 324 Nunnaminster; Ekkehard; Fulbert
Benedict of St Peter’s (Rome), cantor, 310, of Chartres; Giraldus (Holy
312 Sepulchre); Goswin of Bossut;
Liber politicus (Liber urbanus), 310–12 Gozmar; Lisiernus (Notre Dame);
Benedictines, 69, 151, 154 n.12, 252, 292, Notker Balbulus; Orderic Vitalis;
297 Peter (Holy Sepulchre); Richer
of Reims; Roger de Chabannes;
see also Rule of St Benedict Stephen (Verona); Symeon of
Bernard of Clairvaux, 240–1, 345 Durham; William of Durham;
Bernardus, cantor, 279, 280, 282 William of Malmesbury; William
Bernold of Constance, 108, 116, 122 of Newburgh
Bible, use of, 24–5, 336–7 status of, 106, 123, 318
Bonizo of Sutri, 323–4 terminology for, 317–18
Bonus, bishop of Ferentinum, 34 training of, 123, 225, 304
Book of the Reformation of the Order of see also armarius; precenter; schola
Preachers, see under Meyer, Johannes cantorum; succentor
breviaries, 120, 179 n.38, 184, 210, 281, cardinal bishop, 316–17, 320, 323
284–5, 289–90, 293–4, 302 Cassiodorus
see also Coldingham Breviary Historia tripartita, 110, 117
Brussels, 328, 335, 336 Institutiones, 58
Bury St Edmunds, 180, 184 Castle s. Angelo (Rome), 36
Byzantium, 32, 34, 35, 314 Celebritas hodierne diei admonet, 46
Greek monks, 38 Celestine I, pope, 30
coins, 314–15 Celestine II, pope, 311, 325
chapter meetings, 2, 123, 163, 187, 345
Calixtus II, pope, 296 Charlemagne, 23, 26, 36–7, 39, 43, 55, 91
cantor, 103–4, 105, 245, 282 missi, 33
cantrix, duties of, compared to cantor, see also Franks; Notker Balbulus
151, 155
Chlotild, wife of Clovis, 24
as composer, 327, 329, 331
Christian of Stavelot, 16–17
computus reckoning, 3, 197–8, 201, 205,
223, 225, 234 Christina of Markyate, 157, 166, 167–8
duties of, 2–3, 105, 122–4, 151, 172–4, choir as burial place, 155
176–8, 185, 195–6, 201–2, 222, 226, Chrodegang of Metz, 104, 105
282, 298–9 Regula canonicorum, 104–5, 109
book production, 2–3, 172, 293, 303 Cicero, 10, 15, 235
as singers, 105, 151 Cistercians, 242–4, 267, 326, 336, 338
history, production of, 60, 136, 138, 144, see also Goswin of Bossut; Villers-de-la-
201, 211–14, 238 Ville; William of Malmesbury

362
 General Index

Clairvaux, 328, 353–4 Damascus I, pope, 30

see also Bernard of Clairvaux David, king of Israel, 153
Clement I, pope, 32, 321 David, king of Scotland, 236
Clement XI, pope, 324 Dominican order, 178, 340, 346, 355
Clio, muse of history, 9 history of, 349–51
Clovis, king of the Franks, 24–5 Vitae fratrum, 343, 345, 348
Coldingham, 207, 210–11, 213, 215, 219 see also Adelhausen; Observant
destruction of, 207–8, 218 Reform; Thomas de Cantimpré
geography, 220–1 Durham Cathedral, 190–206, 210–11, 215
translation of St Æbbe, 215 see also liber vitae (Durham); Reginald
of Durham; Symeon of Durham;
see also St Æbbe
William of Durham
Coldingham Breviary, 210
Compline, 136, 243
Eadburh of Nunnaminster, 152, 160–1
composers, see Adémar of Chabannes;
Life of Eadburh, 152
Goswin of Bossut; Heremann of
Constance; Notker Balbulus; Ratpert Eadmer of Canterbury, 130, 132, 134, 194
of St Gallen Ealhswith, queen of England, 156
computus, see under cantor Easter, 3, 23, 26, 30, 56, 65, 72, 91, 110,
confraternity books, 49, 70, 103–4, 107 114–15, 285, 292, 312–14, 318
Conrad I, abbot of Constance, 297, 299, baptism on, 315
301, 304, 307 calculation tables, 191, 198, 200–2, 225,
Conrad of Urach, cardinal bishop of 306
Porto and Santa Rufina, 328 Ecclesiasticus
consecration, 33–4, 290, 295, 322–3, 347 Ecclesiasticus 1.18, 337
Constance, 107 Ecclesiasticus 2.9, 337
Anonymous A, annotator, 113–16, 122 Edith of Nunnaminster, 152, 153
see also Bernold; Conrad I; Heremann; editva, see sacristan
Manegold of Lautenbach Edmund, king of England, 126
Constantine, anti-pope, 33 Edward, king of England, 155, 156
Constantine I, Emperor, 314 Einhard, definition of history, 12
Constantinople Einsiedeln, 79
patriarch of, 35 Ekkehard I of St Gallen, Vita sancte
Photius of, 38 Wiborade, 62, 65
Corinthians Ekkehard IV of St Gallen, 59
I Corinthians 10.11, 13 as cantor, 65–67
II Corinthians 12.2, 259 Casus sancti Galli, 79, 81
Cornelius, pope, 31 Continuatio casuum sancti Galli, 59
councils, ecumenical De lege dictamen ornandi, 62
Aachen (816), 104, 109, 183–84 Elisabeth of Schönau, 353
Limoges (1031), 91 Elisabeth of Spalbeek, 353–4
Lyon (1245), 349–50, 351 Elphege, see St Ælfheah
Trullo (680), 35 Eleutharius, pope, 30
Crusades (1095–1291), 230, 238, 278–80, Ely, 182, 208
284–9, 292–3, 295–6, 314 Ember Days, 32, 179, 319, 323
Cyprian, description of Paul’s acension, Engilbert, abbot of St Gallen, 67
12 Epistula ad Leudefredum, 106–7

363
 General Index

Esdras III (apocryphal), 49 Glastonbury, 126, 134, 135

Ethelbert, king of Kent, 200 Godescalc, lectionary of, 26
Eugenius I, pope, 35 Godfrey, abbot of Malmesbury, 239,
Eusebius, 110 244–5
Eutropius, 201 Godfrey of Bouillon, 281
Evaristus, pope, 32 Godric, hermit (Finchale), 211
Evesham Abbey, 175, 184, 231 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, 152–3, 158–61
Eynsham Abbey, 175, 176–80, 186 Goswin of Bossut, cantor (Villers), 326,
328
Fabian I, pope, 321 as cantor, 326, 327, 328, 335
fasting, 30 as hagiographer, 326, 328, 339
Fischingen, 304, 307 Gozmar, 105
Folchnand, abbot of Petershausen, 303 Gregorian antiphoner, 38–9
Folcuin, 17 Gregorian sacramentary, 112, 117, 318
Fortunatus, Venantius, 72 Gregory I, pope, 31, 56, 57, 91, 227, 251,
Francis, pope, 324 315
Franks, kingdom of the Moralia on Job, 113, 114
construction of historical memory, 26 Gregory II, pope, 315
identity construction, 279, 284, 287, 288, Gregory III, pope, 32, 34, 316
296 Gregory of Tours, 24, 25, 92
Royal Frankish Annals, 91 Grimald, abbot of St Gallen, 52–3
see also Charlemagne; Clovis; Pippin Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, 231
Freculf, 11
Fredegar, 10–11
Hadrian I, pope, 33, 36, 91
chronicle of , 23
Hadrian II, pope, 38, 91
Fulbert, cantor (Chartres), 106
hagiography, 21, 131, 221, 326
Fulcher of Angoulême, 289
Haimo of Auxerre, 263
Fulcher of Chartres, 230, 279, 286
hedgehogs, 329, 330–1
Helgaud of Fleury, 135
Gaius, pope, 32, 321
Henry I, king of England, 236
Garmundus, patriarch of Jerusalem, 296
Henry of Huntingdon, 12, 20, 255
Gebhard I, abbot of Petershausen, 307
Gebhard II, bishop of Constance, 297, 304 Heremann of Constance, 116–22, 123
Gebhard III, bishop of Constance, 117, Heribald, 67–70
120 Hildegard, abbess of Bingen, 353
Gelasius I, pope, 31, 320 Hirsau, 188, 298, 301, 303–4, 307, 308
General Chapter (Dominican), 349–50 see also William of Hirsau
Geoffrey, abbot of St Albans, 166, 168 historiography, 107, 199–200, 211, 229
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 265, 267 role of liturgical collaboration, 28–34,
Gerard de Fracheto, 343 93
Gertrude, prioress of St Katherine’s re-enactment, 30
(Nuremberg), 352 see under William of Malmesbury
Gilbert fitz Baderon, lord of Monmouth, Holy Cross, feast of (14 Sept.), 32, 69, 71
237 Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem), 278, 290, 292
Gildas, 266 Augustinian canons, 292
Giraldus, cantor, 279, 280, 281–2 cantors of, 280, 295

364
 General Index

Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem), continued Jerome, 112

In festivitas Sancte Hierusalem, 285, Adversus Helvidium, 12
286–7, 290, 293 Jerusalem, 278
In liberatione sancte civitas Hierusalem, feast of (15 July), 279, 283–295
284–5, 286–8, 290, 293 seige of (1099), 281, 287, 288, 290
see also Ansellus; Bartholomeus; see Arnulf of Chocques; Garmundus
Bernardus; Peter; William (Holy
Johannes Meyer, see Meyer, Johannes
Sepulchre)
John (Gospel)
homiliary compilations
John 1.14, 258
Anonymous A (Constance), copying,
114 John I, emperor of Byzantium
(Tzimiskes), 314
Ekkehard, copying, 66
John III, pope, 31
Notker, copying, 44–7, 49, 52–8
John XII, pope, 127
St Gallen, 54–55
John, bishop of Perugia, 34
William of Newburgh, copying, 269,
John Chrysostom, 57
274
John the Deacon (Hymmonides), 91, 92,
Hospitaller, order, 292
111–12, 317, 318
Hrabanus Maurus, 9, 11, 45, 52–3, 57
John of Wildeshausen, 351
Hue de Rotelande, 237
John of Worcester, 128
Hugh of Macon, 9
John of Würzburg, 289
Hugh d’Orival, bishop of London, 231
Jordan, bishop of Limoges, 92
Hugh of St Cher, 351
Jordan of Saxony, Master General, 350–1
Hugh of St Victor, 353
Josephus, Flavius, 63, 110
Humbert of Romans, 343, 344–5 Justinus, Epitome of Phillipic History, 110

Innocent I, pope, 30 Katherine von Gebersweiler, 354

Innocent II, pope, 311 Klingental convent, 353
Innocent IV, pope, 349–50 see under Adelhausen
introits, 36, 39, 117, 248, 284 Kreuzlingen abbey, 120
Investiture Controversy, 108 see also Augustinian canons
Isaiah Kyrie, 39, 138–9, 141, 148, 228
Isaiah 6.3, 260
Isaiah 30.27–28, 286 Lambert, bishop of Constance, 301
Isaiah 60.4a, 286 Lando, pope, 324
Isaiah 60–2, 288, 295 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 131,
165, 172, 180, 190, 222, 231
Isidore of Seville, 80, 107
Lateran Palace (Rome), 33, 320
classification of Lucan, 11
Lent, 30, 114, 175, 177, 183, 315, 318–19
rejection of oral sources, 12
Leo I, pope, 31, 324
historia, 14–15
Leo II, pope, 34, 324
Etymologies, 11, 12, 14–15
Leo III, pope, 32, 34, 288, 324
Differentiae, 21
Leo IV, pope, 31, 35, 324
Leo XII, pope, 324
Jeremiah Liber historiae francorum, 23–5
Jeremiah 1.5, 306 see also Charlemagne; Franks; Notker
Jeremiah 31.5–7, 286 Balbulus

365
 General Index

Liber ordinis, Abbey of St Victor (Paris), melisma, 79, 116–21, 146, 249, 332–3, 334
2–3, 177–8, 186–7, 196 Meyer, Johannes, 341, 343, 346–7
Liber pontificalis, 25–40, 91, 315–17, 319, biography, 341
321, 323 Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens (Book
date & origin, 27 of the Reformation of the Order of
liber vitae (Durham), 196, 203–4 Preachers), 343, 344
libraries, medieval, 177, 185, 237, 302 historiography, 355–6
Constance cathedral library, 107–8, 110 Miltiades, pope, 30
Notker, librarian (St Gallen), 44, 47 misogyny, 165, 217–19, 230, 349–51
see also William of Malmesbury monastic identity, 243–4
Linus, pope, 32
Lisiernus, cantor (Notre Dame), 106 nocturns, 63, 71, 141, 210, 212–13, 218,
litanies, 32, 35–6, 49 306, 332–3, 337–8
liturgical year, cycle of, 29–30 notation, musical, 5, 67, 77, 93–5, 99–101,
liturgy 108, 110, 116, 121, 130, 210, 285 n.36
liturgical time & sacred space, 26, 220, Notker Balbulus (Notker of St Gallen,
282 Notker the Stammerer), 42–4, 63
function of, 30, 34, 214, 247–9, 251–2 letter to Salamo, 42
memory preserved in, 40, 92–3, 101, Notatio de illustribus viris, 45
282, 349 historiography, 53
Lombard, Peter, see Peter Lombard as librarian, 44, 47
Louis II, king of the Franks, 37
Lucca Cathedral, 105 Observant Reform (Observance) , 342–3,
Luke (Gospel) 353–4
Luke 10.42, 157–8 emphasis on Latin literacy, 342, 354–5
Luke 11.27, 256 Schönensteinbach, 342, 344, 355
Luke 22.19, 1 see also Dominican Order
Lupus, 11 Ordo Romanus Primus, 312–13, 317, 318,
321
Manegold of Lautenbach, 115–16, 123 Orosius, Paulus, 9, 63
Margaret of Markyate, 157–8, 167–8 Historiam adversum paganos, 17
Marius Victorinus, 11 Osbert of Clare, 152
Mary, Virgin, 256–7 Osbern of Canterbury, 128, 132
Marian devotion, 32, 347–9 Ostia, 32, 34
see also Assumption; Nativity Oswald, king of Northumbria, 211
Mary of Oignies, 327 Oswiu, king of Northumbria, 208
Matilda, abbess of La Trinité (Caen),
163–4 pagans, 30
Matilda, Empress, 234 Palladius, 201
Matthew (Gospel) Papacy, the, 324–5
Matthew 14.9, 13 duties of, 36, 319, 322–3
Matthew 21.1–9, 285 election & consecration, 32, 323
Matthew 21.10–17, 284, 288, 294 papal leadership, 29, 30–4, 349
Matins, 71, 111, 140, 210, 243, 254, 286–8, vestiarium (Rome), 28
294–5, 301–2, 306, 331, 334 virtue, 33, 37
Maximus of Turin, 56 see individual popes listed by name

366
 General Index

Papacy, the, continued Ratleik, abbot of Seligenstadt, 52–3

see also Table 17.3 (p. 325) “Popes of the Ratpert, Gallusleid, 61–2, 63, 65
eleventh through the thirteenth Reginald of Durham, 193, 210–11
centuries” Reginbert, librarian (Reichenau), 47
Paschal I, pope, 34 Regino, 17
Paschal II, pope, 324 Reichenau, 47, 103, 107
passiones, 53–4 see also Reginbert
Paul the Deacon, 55–6 rhetorical devices, 235–6, 238, 331–2
Paul I, pope, 33, 317, 320 Rhetorica ad Herrenium, 11
Paul IV, pope, 324 Richer of Reims, 105
pedagogy, 62, 65, 115, 223–5, 226 Richard of St Germano, 9
Pelagius I, pope, 34 Rites of Durham, 204
penitential practices, 326, 328–9, 334 ritual, 1, 25, 30, 176, 283, 295, 314
Pentecost, feast of, 32 Robert, earl of Gloucester, 225, 236
performance, 96–8, 114–15, 154, 246 Robert I, king of France, 135
Peter, cantor, 279, 280, 282 Robert of Cricklade, abbot of St
Peter Comestor, 353 Frideswide (Oxford), 222, 238, 240
Peter Lombard, 353 see also Augustinian canons
Petershausen Rogation Days (Rogationtide), 319
cantor of, 299 Roger, bishop of Salisbury, 236
Casus Monasterii Petrishusensis, 299, 300 Roger de Chabannes, 93, 101, 194 n.19
fire, 305 Roger of Howden, 255
library holdings, 302–3 Romans 11.36, 260
see also Folchnand, Gebhard I Rule of St Benedict, 60–1, 69–70, 80–1, 100,
Pippin, king of the Franks, 317 151, 183, 194, 233, 251, 300
pope, see papacy; individual popes listed source for Regula canonicorum, 104–5
by name commentary on, Hildemar’s, 111, 113
primicerius, 24, 28, 224, 317–22 see also Benedictines
precenter, 3, 66, 106, 123, 133–4, 192–3, Rupert of Deutz, 256
281, 298, 307–8
see also armarius; cantor sacellarius, 314
Prime, 2, 243, 287, 295 sacristan, 159–60, 165
prior, prioress, 183–4 duties of, 151, 155, 178–9, 180
prior cantorum, 317 St Æbbe, abbess of Coldingham, 207, 219
Proverbs 30.28, 113 cult of, 214–16
Psalms feast of, 209–10
Psalm 1, 338 miracles of, 207–8, 220
Psalm 4, 338–39 office for, 210, 212
Psalm 18.37–8, 24 Vita et miracula S. Ebbe virginis, 210, 211
Psalm 49.23, 251 St Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury,
Psalm 50.9, 262 128, 130, 131
Psalm 58, 155 St Æthelburh, abbess of Barking, 153, 158,
Psalm 67, 136 161
Psalm 84.2, 258 St Æthelthryth (Ely), 208
Psalm 95.1, 258 St Agnes, 345
Psalm 102.22, 258 St Agnes, cloister (Freiburg), 352

367
 General Index

St Alban, 256, 260, 263–5 St Dunstan, continued

passio, 261–3, 266–7 script of, 127
see also Christina of Markyate St Gall, feast of, 56
St Albans abbey, 157, 167–8, 182 n.55 St Gallen, 103, 342
St Albans Psalter, 166, 168 founding saints, 42
St Arnulf of Villers, 326 St Helena, 71–2
penitential practices, 326, 328–9, 334 St-Jean-en-Vallée (Chartres), 294
spiritual grace, 334–5 St Katherine convent, see Adelhausen
St Augustine, 109, 259–60 St Lawrence, feast of (10 Aug), 46
on history, 13, 17, 19 St Lawrence’s basilica (Rome), 31
homilies, 51, 57 St Lucy, feast of (13 Dec.), 32
Indiculum, attributed to Possidius, 50–2 St Martial, 90, 92
on liturgy, 251 feast of, 102
modes of sight (visionum genera tria), St Michael the Archangel, feast of, 45
259–60 St Nicholas, 117
works St Otmar, feast of, 65
Confessiones, 19 St Paul’s basilica (Rome), 31, 316
De civitate Dei, 18, 21, 49 St Pelagius, 109, 117, 120–1
De doctrina Christiana, 19 Ss Peter & Paul, feast of (29 June), 31
De quantiate anime, 112 St Peter’s basilica (Rome), 31, 32, 34, 35,
De Trinitate, 18 312, 316
De vivendo Dei, 19 consecration of popes, 323
Ennarrationes in psalmos, 110, 123 St Peregrinus, Frankish hotel (Rome), 36
vita, 50–1 St Valerie, 92
St Augustine’s abbey (Canterbury), St Victor (Paris), 177
175–80, 228 see also Adam of St Victor; Augustinian
St Austriclinian, 92–3 canons; Hugh of St Victor; Liber
St Bartholomew, homily for the feast of ordinis
(24 Aug.), 46 St Wiborada, vita, 62, 65, 67
Ss Bartholomew & Andrew (monastery), St Wilfrid, bishop, 208, 243
33 St Wulfhild, abbess of Barking, 153, 158
S[t] Crisogono (Rome), 32 Sallust, 10
St Cuthbert, 191, 199, 202–3, 206, 208, 252 Salomon, bishop of Constance, 107
shrine, 211 Samson, bishop of Worcester, 231
ban on women, 217–18 ‘Sanctifica nos’, 71–81
St Cybard, 90 sanctorale feasts, 54, 55–6
St Dorothy, 345 Sanctus, singing of, 37
St Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome), 35
125
Sarum, use of, 139, 140, 144
abbot of Glastonbury, 126
schola cantorum (Rome), 34, 312, 317, 320
cult of, 132
schola cantorum (Mainz), 66
deposition (19 May), 127
Schönensteinbach, see under Observant
harp (cithera), 137 Reform
miracles of, 131–2, 136 scribal practice, 46–47, 48, 50–2, 54, 95–6,
musical interests, 135, 136, 228–9 98, 110, 112, 116, 195–6, 205, 267–9,
office of, 139–44 303

368
 General Index

scriniarius, 33 Theodorich, abbot of Constance, 301–2

Second Lateran Council, 301 Thomas II, archbishop of York, 231
self-mortification, see penitential Thomas de Cantimpré, 345, 348
practices Thomas of Marlborough, prior of Bury St
sequences, 15, 39, 43, 64 n.21, 65, 96, 102, Edmunds, 184
283, 348 translation of saints’ bodies, 117, 156,
Sergius I, pope, 31, 32, 34 159–60, 160–1, 193, 210–11, 215,
Sergius II, pope, 34, 37 220–1, 297
Servius, 11 Tyre, 294
Silvester I, pope, 30, 321
Simon, abbot of St Albans, 266–7 Udalschalk, abbot of St Ulrich and Afra,
Simplicius, pope, 31, 319, 323 299
singers, 155 Ulrich II, bishop of Constance, 297
Albert the Great, singing, 347 Ulrich I of Augsburg, 304
career training, 93, 135 Ulrich of Zell, 189
Latin literacy (Latinity), 342
popes as singers, 34 vernacular, 341, 343, 347
singing, obligatory, 30–1, 33, 37, 39, 104–5, Vespers, 71, 72, 136, 140, 210, 285–6, 287,
136, 302, 317 302, 318, 331, 334
singing, technical direction, 80, 92, 98, Victor I, pope, 30
121 Vigilius, pope, 34
Sixtus I, pope, 37 Villers-la-Ville, monastery of (Villers),
Song 5.10, 261–2 326, 328, 334
Stephen, cantor (Verona), 106 see also Cistercians; Goswin of Bossut;
Stephen of Ripon, 208 St Arnulf (Villers)
Stephen II, pope, 320 Vitalis, abbot of Savigny, 153, 163
Stephen III, pope, 32 vulgo dictante, 214
Stephen V, pope, 33, 34 see also vernacular
stigmata, 353–4
succentor, 123, 173, 175, 177, 282, 296 Wagenhausen, 303–4, 307
Sulpicius, on hagiography, 21–2 Walafrid Strabo, 57
Suso, Henry, 354 Walter, abbot of Byland, 256, 274
Symeon, cantor-historian of Durham, 190, Walter, abbot of Evesham, 231
196–8, 208–9, 255 Waltram, abbot of Fischingen, 304
as scribe, 191 Westminster Abbey, 176–80
Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, William, bishop of Saint-Calais, 195–6
191, 192, 199, 202–5, 217 William, king of England (William the
Historia de regibus Anglorum et Dacorum, Conqueror), 162, 230
191, 201 William, succentor (Holy Sepulchre), 282,
Symmachus, pope, 31 296
Synod of 853, 36 William of Brussels, abbot of Villers,
335–7
Telesphorus, pope, 30 William of Durham, cantor, 196, 197–8,
telos, 250–2 205
Templar, 292 William of Hirsau, 188–9
temporale feasts, 54, 55–6 William of Jumièges, 192, 200

369
 General Index

William of Malmesbury, 240 William of Villers, abbot, 326, 339

Bede, use of, 12, 246–7 Wolferad of Constance, 109–13, 116, 122,
cantor-historian, 136, 222, 229–30, 299 123
on Cistercians, 242–3 women, 344–5, 353–5
on Dunstan, 133, 134, 139, 143 as audience, 344–5, 347
historiography, 242, 253–4 as authors, 164, 344
as librarian, 222 being healed, 216
love of history, 232–4 Cuthbert’s ban, 217–18
works on mortuary lists, 163, 345–6
Abbreviatio Amalarii, 247–8, 252–3 as reformers, 342–3, 350, 352–3, 355
Defloratio Gregorii, 227–8, 232 role in religious community, 152, 347,
Gesta pontificum, 227, 232, 237, 245, 352–3
251 as scribes, 165, 306 n. 31
Gesta regum Anglorum, 20, 225, 232, as sinners, 217
242–3
Wulfruna-Judith of Barking, 152, 153
Historia novella, 228, 234
Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, 243–4
William of Newburgh, 255, 267–9
as cantor, 256, 257–8, 276
xenodochia, 33
Historia Anglorum, 255, 265–7
Explanatio, 257
Sermones, 257

370
 Writing History in the Middle Ages

1 Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation

and Memory, Benjamin Pohl (2015)
2 The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham: ‘Worldly Cares’ at
St Albans Abbey in the Fourteenth Century, Sylvia Federico (2016)