Conclusion

Summary

Tallis concludes his Voluntaria pars (free voice) of his Miserere nostri (possibly co-written with Byrd) at the exact midpoint between the final notes of the four-voiced canonic depiction of evil – in the form of Four Horsemen – and the two voiced canon portraying the good – in representations of martyrs and saints. In this way he leaves the set's auditors uncertain about the very fate of the protagonist and thus unsure about how the story itself will end, as the answer lies in the future. But it is this sense of leaving the question open to the actions of one's Free Will (voluntas) that closes off the full jurisdictive case presented in the Cantiones, in that it completes the theological recipe hinted at throughout but explicitly stated only three numbered works earlier, in Byrd's Te deprecor supplio (31), the central piece of his tripartite Tribue Domine (30–2). The latter contends that “through [God’s] grace,” if one remains “steadfast in faith and effective in works,” one will “come … through … Thy mercy, to eternal life.”

The Pseudo-Augustinian Te deprecor sets the matter up so that merciful grace and faith are necessary. But, at the same time, the text makes it clear that works will count. Prior to this moment, too – as Tallis and Byrd reveal in the latter's Diliges domine (25) – such meritorious acts are associated with Christ's Love Commandment and the whole process of eradicating post-baptismal sin, including, most emphatically, auricular confession with a priest. Christ's own teachings are thereby marshalled into the argument when it comes to human acts of mercy and their role in justification. It was a position that skirted any Pelagian accusation of downplaying the role of faith and grace. It also stood in complete agreement with the following assessment of late-medieval thought on works, and particularly that of the Thomists, for whom

there is a true intrinsic proportion and a kind of analogical condignity between the grace-informed acts of Christ's mystical members and the final glorious consummation which they merit. The just man's good works are so elevated and quasi-divinized by the grace of Christ that they bear an intrinsic relation to their reward in heavenly beatitude.