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FRIAR WILLIAM HEREBERT’S CAROLS RECONSIDERED
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2023
Abstract
William Herebert’s Middle English poems, which appear in his Commonplace Book (c. 1314), have been undervalued by scholars. Yet, far from being a lonely purveyor of an ungainly series of translations, Herebert instead was a skillful adapter of Latin hymns into dance songs. Echoing his contemporaries and following the example of St Francis, Herebert revised the forms of two Latin poems, ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ and ‘Popule meus, quid feci tibi’, into two English lyrics: ‘Wele, heriȝyng and worshype’ and ‘My volk, what habbe y do þe?’ In doing so, he dealt imaginatively with poetic form, liturgical content, concepts of time and matching words to music – and he ended up producing early examples of English carols. Herebert’s achievements in dance song demonstrate that the seemingly outrageous idea of the dancing friar is not as alien to religious devotions as one might expect. We conclude with speculations concerning the performance of Herebert’s songs.
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References
1 See P. V. Loewen, ‘Harmony, the Fiddler, Preaching, and Amazon Nuns: Glosses on “De musica”, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum’, in The English Province of the Franciscans (1224–c.1350), ed. M. Robson (Leiden, 2016), pp. 148–74.
2 See discussion below.
3 See H. Deeming, ‘Songs and Sermons in Thirteenth-Century England’, in Pastoral Care in Medieval England: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. P. D. Clarke and S. James (London, 2019), pp. 101–22; eadem, ‘Record-Keepers, Preachers and Song-Makers: Revealing the Compilers, Owners and Users of Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Insular Song Manuscripts’, in Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners, and Users of Music Sources Before 1600, ed. L. Colton and T. Shephard (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 63–76.
4 See especially R. L. Greene (ed.), The Early English Carols (Oxford, 1935; rev. edn, 1977; hereafter EEC), chaps. 5, 6; F. Ll. Harrison, ‘Benedicamus, Conductus, Carol: A Newly Discovered Source’, Acta Musicologica, 37 (1965), pp. 35–48, at pp. 40–1.
5 J. Wyclif, ‘Of the Leaven of Pharisees’, in The English Works of Wyclif, rev. and ed. F. D. Matthew (London, 1902), pp. 8–9. The establishment of historical evidence for friars who danced in the Middle Ages is difficult because the widespread anticlericalism of the day resulted in many fanciful or distorted claims about various orders and clerics, particularly friars. For anticlericalism, see L. Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 54, 176; W. Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anti-clericalism (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 16, 137–60.
6 On the early history of the Franciscan province of England, see Thomas de Eccleston, Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. A. G. Little (Manchester, 1951); Thomas of Eccleston, Chronicle of Brother Thomas of Eccleston: The Coming of the Friars to England, in XIIIth Century Chronicles: Jordan of Giano; Thomas of Eccleston; Salimbene degli Adami, trans. P. Hermann, introd. and notes M.-T. Laureilhe (Chicago, 1961), pp. 79–191.
7 J. V. Fleming, ‘The Friars and Medieval English Literature’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. D. Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 349–75, at p. 351.
8 See Greene, EEC, pp. 149, 155, 271.
9 R. L Greene (ed.), The Lyrics of the Red Book of Ossory, Medium Aevum Monographs, new series, 5 (Oxford, 1974), p. iv.
10 Deeming, ‘Songs and Sermons’, app. 1, includes a useful list of pastoral miscellanies from England that include music.
11 Fasciculus morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. S. Wenzel (University Park, PA, 1989).
12 T. Turville-Petre (ed.), Poems from BL Harley 913, ‘The Kildare Manuscript’ (Oxford, 2015).
13 For a recent study of these carols, see L. McInnes, ‘Social, Political and Religious Contexts of the Late Medieval Carol’ (PhD diss., University of Huddersfield, 2013), pp. 243–52. For a detailed analysis of the manuscript, see A. Fletcher, Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 33–66.
14 E. J. Dobson identified Arundel 248 as Franciscan, based on the evidence that the manuscript’s content seemed useful to preachers: see E. J. Dobson and F. Ll. Harrison (eds.), Medieval English Songs (London, 1979), p. 162. As Deeming, ‘Songs and Sermons’, pp. 107–8, notes, Benedictines and Cistercians also collected pastoral miscellanies such as this manuscript, and recent research has drawn a tentative association between Arundel 248 and the Cistercian abbey at Kirkstall.
15 For a more complete description of the songs in Arundel 248, see H. Deeming (ed.), Songs in British Sources, c. 1150–1300, Musica Britannica, 95 (London, 2013), pp. 197–203.
16 See D. L. Jeffrey, ‘St. Francis and Medieval Theatre’, Franciscan Studies, 43 (1983), pp. 321–46, at pp. 335–8.
17 The Works of William Herebert, OFM, ed. S. R. Reimer (Toronto, 1987), pp. 2, 4, 12. We use Reimer’s edition for all references to Herebert’s texts.
18 Fletcher, Popular Preaching, pp. 14–17, compares Bodley 26 to Herebert’s Commonplace Book.
19 ‘Istos hympnos et Antiphonas, quasi omnes, et cetera, transtulit in Anglicum, non semper de uerbo ad uerbum, sed frequenter sensum, aut non multum declinando, et etiam manu sua scripsit frater Willelmus Herebert’ (BL Add. MS 46919, fol. 205r; Fig. 1 below): The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, p. 19. For the tradition of ‘sense for sense’ translation, see I. Nelson, Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2017), p. 79.
20 S. Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric (Princeton, 1986), pp. 4, 111, describes a range of sources used by medieval preachers in England, including commonplace books. D. Pezzini, ‘“Velut gemmula carbunculi”: Le versioni del francescano William Herebert’, in Contributi dell’Istituto di Filologia Moderna, Series Inglese, 1 (Milan, 1974), pp. 3–38, has argued that Herebert’s aim in his vernacular poetry was to support his preaching.
21 See Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, p. 137; R. Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), p. 150, n. 1, pp. 383–8; R. Mullally, The Carole: A Study of Medieval Dance (London, 2011), p. 117. Most recently, Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 80, suggests carol form for both of our chosen texts.
22 Greene, EEC, pp. xxiii, cxxxiii, defines the carol as ‘A song … composed of uniform stanzas and provided with a burden’, and the burden as ‘an invariable line or group of lines which is to be sung before the first stanza and after all stanzas’.
23 Medieval people regarded reading as a more complicated, multi-level task than is generally acknowledged. See S. Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67, 73–4, 88.
24 Significantly, Herebert’s working methods contrast with translations of Latin works by other English poets. For example, John Grimestone’s translation into Middle English of ‘Popule meus’ would seem to ignore completely the music of the original. See C. Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, 2nd edn, rev. G. V. Smithers (Oxford, 1952), pp. 88–9 (lyric no. 72). We shall address Herebert’s broader musical aims and spell out the results of our research into other translations by him, for instance, of ‘Vexilla’, ‘Conditor’ and ‘Eterne rex’ in another publication.
25 See Pezzini, ‘“Velut gemmula carbunculi”’. A good introduction to the relationship between literary creation and preaching in medieval England is Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, pp. 3–20, 61–100.
26 See J. V. Fleming, From Bonaventure to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis (Princeton, 1983), pp. 3–31.
27 F. Gennrich (ed.), Die Kontrafaktur im Liedschaffen des Mittelalters, Summa Musicae Medii Aevi, 12 (Langen bei Frankfurt, 1965), p. 68.
28 Ibid.
29 See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters & of the English People (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 41–7; Fleming, ‘The Friars’, pp. 365, 370; D. L. Jeffrey, Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (Lincoln, NE, 1975); B. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960); C. M. Waters, Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 2–7. A specific example c. 1272 occurs when friar Thomas of Hales warns a maiden against earthly love by addressing to her a ‘Love Rune’ in the form of an English popular song: see Fleming, ‘The Friars’, pp. 363–4; for an edition of the ‘Love Rune’, see Brown, English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, pp. 68–74 (lyric no. 43).
30 See Mullally, Carole, pp. 19–28.
31 ‘And ek he can carolles make,/Rondeal, balade and virelai’ (and he can also compose carols, rondeaux, ballades and virelais). Trans. Mullally, Carole, p. 116. See J. Gower, Confessio Amantis, in The Complete Works of John Gower, II: English Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1900; repr. 1979), pp. 35–129, at lib. I, lines 2708–9. If the first comma (which is applied editorially) in this passage is changed to a colon, one may interpret the passage as indicating that rondeaux, ballades and virelais are types of carols.
32 See Mullally, Carole, p. 41. Cf. C. Page, The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France, 1100–1300 (Berkeley, 1990), p. 111.
33 See Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de Charrette, in Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes, ed. M. Roques et al., 6 vols. (Paris, 1957–75), III, pp. 1–216, at lines 1645–6. For other references, see Mullally, Carole, p. 29.
34 See R. H. Robbins, ‘Middle English Carols as Processional Hymns’, Studies in Philology, 56 (1959), pp. 559–82, at pp. 567, 576; Greene, EEC, chap. 2, at pp. xlvii–xlviii, lv, lxi–lxiii.
35 D. Fallows, Henry V and the Earliest English Carols: 1413–1440 (London, 2018), p. 6.
36 See Greene, EEC, p. xxxi; also Mullally, Carole, pp. 45, 65, 71, 76, 116.
37 Greene, EEC, p. lxiii.
38 C. Page, ‘The Carol in Anglo-Saxon Canterbury?’, in Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell: Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography, ed. E. Hornby and D. Maw (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 259–69.
39 K. R. Palti, ‘“Synge We Now and Sum”: Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song’ (PhD dissertation, University College London, 2013), p. 36; see also Fallows, Carols, p. 12.
40 Palti, ‘“Synge We Now”’, pp. 45–6.
41 L. Colton and L. McInnes, ‘High or Low? Medieval English Carols as Part of Vernacular Culture, 1380–1450’, in Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages, ed. K. W. Jager (London, 2019), pp. 119–49, at p. 125. Fallows, Carols, pp. 5–6, and chaps. 3 and 4.
42 See S. Wenzel, ‘The Moor Maiden: A Contemporary View’, Speculum, 49 (1974), pp. 69–74, at p. 71. One should note that ‘Mayde in the moore lay’ does not have a carol form, at least not as the song has come down to us in the manuscript tradition.
43 McInnes, ‘Social, Political and Religious Contexts’, p. 249, echoing the words of J. Stevens, The Mediaeval Carols, Musica Britannica, 4 (London, 1958; 3rd rev. edn, ed. D. Fallows, 2018), p. xiv. S. Chaganti, Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 2018), pp. 227–76, demonstrates thoroughly how this carol could be performed as a highly ceremonial round dance.
44 J. C. Mews, ‘Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona’, Church History, 78 (2009), pp. 512–21.
45 Ibid., p. 517.
46 Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 67; see also E. E. Leach, Sung Birds: Music, Nature and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2007), pp. 175–237.
47 Medieval writers appear sometimes to have distinguished between the circular carole and a tresche, which is a linear dance: Mullally, Carole, pp. 59–61.
48 G. Perault, Summae virtutum ac vitiorum, 2 vols. (Paris, 1629), II, p. 265.
49 See Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, p. 115. Perault’s invective against carolling and extravagance is captured in his extensive treatises ‘De Luxuria’ and ‘De Superbia’ in Summae, II, esp. pp. 41–3, 255–88. Around Herebert’s time, Pope John XXII and the Dominican Pierre de Baume condemn the use of secular songs in liturgy and sermons respectively; see Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 70.
50 See Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, p. 111.
51 See Perault, Summae, II, pp. 41–3; Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, p. 120. Thomas Waleys (1287–1350) admonishes preachers not to speak too rhythmically lest they appear to be acting too much like minstrels; see Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 72.
52 Jacques de Vitry, ‘Sermones Vulgares’, fol. 146v, trans. Mullally, Carole, p. 49.
53 Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, ed. and trans. C. J. Mews et al. (Kalamazoo, 2011), 9.8, pp. 68–9.
54 ‘Lors sans delay/Encommensai ce virelay/Qu’on claimme chanson baladee./Einsi doit elle estre nommee’ (Not delaying,/I began with this virelai,/Also referred to as a dance song;/And that’s what it should be called): G. de Machaut, ‘Le remede de Fortune’, in The Complete Poetry & Music, II: The Boethian Poems, ed. R. B. Palmer (Kalamazoo, 2019), pp. 278–9, at lines 3447–50; Mullally, Carole, pp. 76–9.
55 The Queen Mary Psalter, commissioned from a French scriptorium around 1310 by Isabella of France or her consort, Edward II of England, contains many illustrations of people and other animals dancing to instrumental accompaniment. Meanwhile, scholars have already considered the prospect of dancing friars to be at least possible. H. E. Wooldridge, Oxford History of Music, I: The Polyphonic Period, 2nd rev. edn, ed. P. C. Buck (London, 1929), p. 289, writes that, as a singer of a descant (a liturgical piece) got more and more involved in the rhythm of the music, he ‘perhaps … does not restrain himself … from sympathetic movements of the feet and contortions of the body’; see also C. M. Waters, Angels and Earthly Creatures, pp. 2–7.
56 Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, in Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes, I, pp. 1–209, at line 1993. See, for example, the depictions of girls and noblemen carolling (or perhaps performing a tresche) on fol. 178v of the Psalter; lower-class men and girls carole on fol. 181v; men carole to the beat of a drum on fols. 196v–197r. Mullally, Carole, p. 41, observes that accounts of women carolling together are common in French medieval literature.
57 This illustration recalls Saint Dunstan’s vision c. 960 of ‘heavenly maidens singing in a round dance’: see Page, ‘The Carol in Anglo-Saxon Canterbury?’, p. 263.
58 By multilayered, we mean the large general questions concerning the historical ‘value’ of the various life records concerning Francis and his identity, what scholars in recent decades have referred to as the ‘Franciscan Question’. P. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Leiden, 2013), pp. 19–24, summarises the debate. See also M. Cusato, ‘“The Umbrian Legend” of Jacques Dalarun: Toward a Resolution of the Franciscan Question; Introduction to the Roundtable’, Franciscan Studies, 66 (2008), pp. 495–505; J. Dalarun, La malavventura di Francesco d’Assisi, Fonti e Ricerche, 10 (Milan, 1996); R. Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict: Saint Francis and Giotto’s Bardi Chapel (University Park, PA, 1988), p. xvi. For Francis and dancing, see K. Dickason, Ringleaders of Redemption: How Medieval Dance Became Sacred (New York, 2021), pp. 66–7.
59 Thomas of Celano, Vita prima sancti Francisci, in Fontes Franciscani, ed. E. Menestò et al. (Assisi, 1995), pp. 275–424, at p. 277; The Life of St. Francis, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. and trans. R. J. Armstrong et al., 4 vols. (New York, 1999–2002), I: The Saint, pp. 180–297, at p. 183.
60 For the exemplarity of the saints, see R. Waugh, The Genre of Medieval Patience Literature: Development, Duplication, and Gender (New York, 2012), pp. 152–3.
61 This earliest account occurs in Celano’s Vita secunda, copied 1246–7 from an earlier eyewitness: ‘Dulcissima melodia spiritus intra ipsum ebulliens, exterius gallicum dabat sonum, et vena divini susurri, quam auris eius suscipiebat furtive, gallicum erumpebat in iubilium.’ Vita secunda sancti Francisci, in Fontes Franciscani, pp. 443–639, at p. 559; The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, II: The Founder, pp. 239–393, at p. 331. The ‘vena’, ‘vein of a divine whisper’, interior to Francis that breaks out into a French song associates this song with his pulse, a natural rhythm that hints at dancing.
62 ‘Lignum quandoque, ut oculis vidi, colligebat e terra ipsumque sinistro brachio superponens arculum filo flexum tenebat in dextera, quem quasi super viellam trahens per lignum, et ad hoc gestus repraesentans idoneos, gallice cantabat de Domino. Terminabatur tota haec tripudia frequenter in lacrimas, et in passionis Christi compassionem hic jubilus solvebatur.’ Vita secunda, p. 559; Remembrance, p. 331. We translate ‘viellam’ as ‘vielle’ rather than ‘viola’.
63 A similar reconsecration of secular song occurs when Francis asks a friar to play a cithara for him (perhaps a lute or harp) in order to relieve the saint’s pain: Vita secunda, p. 558; Remembrance, p. 330.
64 According to editors of the ‘Canticle of the Creatures’, this represents the first of three phases in the evolution of the song. See Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, I, pp. 113–14, at p. 113.
65 Compilatio Assisiensis, in Fontes Franciscani, pp. 1471–690, at p. 1598; Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, II, pp. 113–230, at p. 186. Speculum perfectionis, in Fontes Franciscani, pp. 1849–2053, at pp. 2012–13; A Mirror of the Perfection of the Status of a Lesser Brother, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, III: The Prophet, pp. 253–372, at p. 348. Bonaventure and the authors of several of the florilegia note that, in secular life, Pacifico had been called the ‘king of verses, … a nobleman and courtly master of singers’: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Legenda maior sancti Francisci, in Fontes Franciscani, pp. 777–911, at p. 809; The Major Legend, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, II, pp. 525–683, at p. 556.
66 Bonaventure, Legenda maior, p. 809; Major Legend, p. 556.
67 Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, 9.8, 12.3, pp. 68–9, 72–3. Taking on the persona of a low-caste jongleur has associations of social debasement that fit with Francis’s much vaunted humility and concern that his followers avoid pride in their positions. See Thomas of Celano, Vita prima, p. 312; Life of St. Francis, p. 217.
68 ‘Nam spiritus ejus erat tunc in tanta consolatione et dulcedine quod volebat mittere pro fratre Pacifico, qui in saeculo vocabatur rex versuum et fuit valde curialis doctor cantorum; et volebat dare sibi aliquos fratres bonos et spirituales, ut irent simul cum eo per mundum praedicando et cantando laudes Domini. Dicebat enim quod volebat quod ille qui sciret melius praedicare inter illos prius praedicaret populo, et post praedicationem omnes cantarent simul laudes Domini, tanquam joculatores Domini. Finitis autem laudibus, volebat quod praedicator diceret populo: “Nos sumus joculatores Domini, et pro iis volumus in hoc remunerari a vobis, videlicet ut stetis in vera paenitentia.”’ Speculum perfectionis, pp. 2012–13; Mirror, p. 348. We translate ‘joculator’ as ‘jongleur’ rather than ‘minstrel’.
69 See M. Leonardi, Storia della lauda (Turnhout, 2021), p. 41.
70 Ibid., p. 38.
71 Ibid., p. 62.
72 The account of Francis bursting out into French song opens with the signalling phrase, ‘Francis sometimes did this’, which emphasises his action as a deed, a performance: Speculum perfectionis, p. 2000; Mirror, p. 340. Cf. Vita secunda, p. 559; Remembrance, p. 331.
73 Speculum perfectionis, p. 2013; Mirror, p. 348.
74 Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, pp. 41–2. See also L. C. Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor (Chicago, 1968), p. 12; H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St. Louis, 1937), p. 252.
75 Loewen, ‘Harmony, the Fiddler’, pp. 148–74.
76 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (Frankfurt, 1601; repr. Frankfurt, 1964), 19.132–46, pp. 1251–60. For English translations, see On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, ‘De proprietatibus rerum’, ed. M. C. Seymour et al., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1975–88), 19.132–46, II, pp. 1386–95; [S.] Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke De proprietatibus rerum (London, 1582; repr. Hildesheim, 1976), fols. 419v [sic; correctly 421v]–426r. Johannes Aegidius de Zamora, Ars musica, ed. M. Robert-Tissot, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 20 (Rome, 1974). William of Middleton, Opusculum super missam, ed. A. van Dijk, in Ephemerides Liturgicae, 53 (1939). For Haymo, see S. J. P. Van Dijk and J. H. Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (Westminster, MD, and London, 1960), pp. 292–320; S. J. P. Van Dijk, Introduction to Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Ordinals by Haymo of Faversham and Related Documents (1243–1307), ed. idem, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1963), I, pp. 1–154.
77 William of Middleton, Opusculum super missam, pp. 306–7.
78 Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, pp. 83–92; see also William of Middleton, Opusculum super missam, p. 317.
79 See Loewen’s justification for this dating in Music in Early Franciscan Thought, pp. 201–3.
80 Johannes Aegidius, Ars Musica.
81 M. C. Seymour, Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia (Aldershot, 1992), p. 11, suggests a date sometime between 1242 and 1247.
82 H. Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von ‘De proprietatibus rerum’ (Munich, 2000), s.vv. Paris and Oxford.
83 Seymour, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, p. 263; Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie, p. 206.
84 See Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, pp. 167–96; ‘Harmony, the Fiddler’, pp. 148–74.
85 C. Cullen, Bonaventure (Oxford, 2006), p. 8. In fact, the number is probably far greater, but many documents that concern the earliest foundations have been lost. See also J. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, History Series, 4 (St Bonaventure, NY, 1983).
86 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. G. Scalia, 2 vols., Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis, 125, 125a (Turnhout, 1998), I, p. 102; The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, ed. and trans. J. L. Baird, G. Baglivi and J. R. Kane, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 40 (Binghamton, NY, 1986), p. 47.
87 Salimbene, Cronica, I, p. 103; Salimbene, Chronicle, p. 48.
88 Ibid.
89 Salimbene, Cronica, I, p. 104; Salimbene, Chronicle, p. 48.
90 Salimbene, Cronica, I, p. 104; Salimbene, Chronicle, p. 49.
91 Leonardi, Lauda, p. 42.
92 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS Q 32, sup.; see N. Bertoletti, ed. Ave Maria, Clemens et pia: Una lauda-sequenza bilingue della prima metà del duecento (Rome, 2019).
93 Leonardi, Lauda, pp. 59–60.
94 Herebert habitually uses chivalric and courtly love themes in his poetry; see e.g. ‘Holy wrougte of sterres brryht’, lines 10–14, ed. Reimer, pp. 123–4, at p. 124.
95 ‘A motivare questa scelta vi fu con ogni probabilità la convergenza di concomitanti ragioni, anzitutto pragamatiche: trasponendola in forma di ballata, infatti, si rendeva la lauda facilmente accessibile al popolo, che già conosceva e apprezzava le forme della canzione a ballo e spesso della danza ad essa correlata.’ Leonardi, Lauda, p. 62; our translation.
96 See P. Loewen, ‘Pecham, John’, in Grove Music Online (2022), accessed 14 May 2022.
97 Analecta hymnica, 55 vols., ed. G. M. Dreves and C. Blume (Leipzig, 1886–1922), L, pp. 602–16; see P. Maximilianus, ‘Philomena van John Pecham’, Neophilologus, 38 (1954), pp. 290–300; see also W. Hodapp, ‘The Via Mystica in John Pecham’s Philomena: Affective Meditation and Songs of Love’, Mystics Quarterly, 21, no. 3 (1 Sept. 1995), pp. 80–90.
98 See D. L. Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford, 1952), p. 138; M. D. Knowles, ‘Some Aspects of the Career of Archbishop Pecham’, The English Historical Review, 57 (1942), p. 179.
99 ‘Ignorantia sacerdotum populum praecipitat in foveam erroris: et clericorum stultitia vel ruditas, qui diffinitione canonica filios fidelium instruere jubentur, magis aliquando ad errorem prodfuit quam doctrinam. … In quorum remedium discriminum statuendo praecipimus, ut quilibet sacerdos plebi praesidens, quater in anno, … die uno sollemni vel pluribus, per se, vel per alium, exponat populo vulgariter, absque cujuslibet subtilitatis textura phantastica’. (The ignorance of the priests casts the people into the pit of error; and the folly or rudeness of the clergy, who are ordered to instruct the children of the faithful by canonical definition, sometimes benefited more from error than doctrine. … To remedy these dangers we enjoin, that each priest presiding to the people, four times a year, … on one solemn day or more, personally or through another, explain to the people in the vernacular, without fanciful style of any subtlety.) Constitutiones fratris Joannis de Peckham … editae apud Lambeth, anno Domini MCCLXXXI, in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, compiled by J. D. Mansi et al., 53 vols. in 60 (Florence and Paris, 1759–1884; repr. Paris, 1900–27), XXIV, cols. 403–20, at col. 410; our translation.
100 Jeffrey, ‘St. Francis and Medieval Theatre’, p. 331.
101 Compilatio Assisiensis, p. 1644; Assisi Compilation, pp. 207–9.
102 The Lay Folks’ Catechism, or The English and Latin Versions of Archbishop Thoresby’s Instruction for the People: Together with a Wycliffite Adaptation of the Same, and the Corresponding Canons of the Council of Lambeth, ed. T. F. Simmons, Early English Text Society, original series, 118 (London, 1901), p. 6 (texts c and t).
103 ‘Et ne quis super his per ignorantiam se valeat excusare, haec sub verbis planis et incultis, ut sic levius in publicam deducantur notitiam fecimus annotare’: Lay Folks’ Catechism, p. 22 (texts t and c). For an in-depth illustration of a Franciscan preacher’s use of English in a sermon, see Fletcher, Popular Preaching, pp. 40–5, 50–5.
104 R. H. Robbins, ‘Friar Herebert and the Carol’, Anglia, 75 (1957), pp. 194–8.
105 Palti, ‘Synge we now’, p. 50; Greene, EEC, p. cliii.
106 Fallows, Carols, p. 64 n. 9; The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 113–14. A three-voice setting of ‘Gloria, laus et honor’, dating from the mid 15th century, appears in BL Egerton MS 3307, fols. 10v–13r.
107 Fallows, Carols, p. 64, n. 9.
108 The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 115–16.
109 See H. Gneuss, ‘William Hereberts Übersetzungen’, Anglia, 78 (1960), pp. 169–92, at p. 191; Greene, EEC, pp. xciii, cliii.
110 Dobson and Harrison, Medieval English Songs, pp. 17–18, n. 5.
111 Gennrich, Kontrafaktur, pp. 68–136.
112 Deeming, Songs in British Sources, pp. 94–7. Her editions show in ‘ossia’ where she repeats or omits pitches to meet the needs of the contrafacta.
113 Ibid., p. 199.
114 Gennrich, Kontrafaktur, p. 7; see also W. Suppan, Deutsches Liedleben zwischen Renaissance und Barock: Die Schichtung des deutschen Liedgutes in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1973), pp. 22–4.
115 See D. F. Scheurleer, Een devoot ende profitelyck boecxken (The Hague, 1889), online at https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_dev001devo01_01/ (accessed 14 May 2022).
116 L. P. Grijp, Het Nederlandse lied in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam, 1991), p. 197. In chapter 8, Grijp supports his observations using a large number of examples from extant sources of Dutch devotional songs.
117 See P. V. Loewen, ‘A Rudder for The Ship of Fools? Bosch’s Franciscans as Jongleurs of God’, Speculum, 96 (2021), pp. 1118–35.
118 See D. Pezzini, The Translation of Religious Texts in the Middle Ages: Tracts and Rules, Hymns and Saints’ Lives (Bern, 2008), p. 221. Our concept of Herebert’s typical translation process varies somewhat from that of Nelson, Lyric Tactics, pp. 81, 86–7.
119 In addition, in Herebert’s third stanza, the Lord occupies a throne on high that is not present in the Latin version.
120 Herebert makes other changes as well. He tends to replace abstract terms with more tangible concepts, and he makes the hymn more self-conscious as a sung composition: it frequently describes itself as a song (lines 5, 7, 9, 11). His focus on song here fits with Page’s idea that Middle English carols often opened their refrains with calls for participation, such as ‘sing we’. According to Page, this call to participate ‘was known in English dancing-songs before the Norman Conquest’. Page, ‘The Carol in Anglo-Saxon Canterbury?’, p. 269. Herebert’s translation thus comes over as an offering to God that transcends prayer. In turn, the self-conscious stance of the poem helps to raise the profile of Herebert’s individual craft.
121 Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy, ed. Van Dijk, II, p. 235. This represents the Franciscan or Roman use; the ritual was the same in the use of Sarum that predominated in England: Graduale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century [BL Add. MS 12194], ed. W. H. Frere (London, 1894; repr. Farnborough, Hants., 1966), pp. 83–4.
122 M. Éliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York, 1961), p. 63.
123 The procession into Jerusalem as described in the gospels resembles the kind of military triumphs given to successful Roman generals. See Mark 11:1–11. For associations between Palm Sunday and dancing, see Dickason, Ringleaders of Redemption, p. 85.
124 The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 113–14. The music in Graz A 64/34 is notated with black square neumes on four-line staves indicating both F and C clefs. We acknowledge that music for the refrain ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ as it appears in the Sarum rite is substantially different after the opening fifth, but the text setting is neumatic, like Graz, and the music for the verses is essentially the same as in the Graz source. See Graduale Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, pp. 83–4. The melody for ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ in the Roman curial use practised by the Franciscans is stable across other recensions, so we feel confident that the melody in the source from Graz is similar if not identical to the one Herebert knew.
125 See n. 112 above.
126 With its pivot from past to present, this kind of couplet enacts two processes: translation, the converting of a text from an ancient language into the language that people would habitually speak in everyday situations, and exegesis. Both of these are integral tasks to Herebert’s vocations as scholar, preacher and Franciscan.
127 The bearing of branches here resonates remarkably with the children carrying celebratory branches in Salimbene’s description of Benedetto’s lauda: Cronica, I, p. 103; Chronicle, p. 48.
128 See The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 113–14.
129 See Middle English Dictionary (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary, accessed 23 May 2023), s.v. ‘boue’.
130 He also suggests a local setting as opposed to Jerusalem for the Palm Sunday procession by using ‘bówes’. ‘The Caiphas Song’, written at roughly the same time as Herebert’s songs, interprets the customary Palm Sunday ‘bówe’ as an emblem of the bearer’s fight with the devil. See C. Brown, ‘Caiphas as a Palm-Sunday Prophet’, in Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, 1913), pp. 105–17, at p. 109 and n. 1.
131 See Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 84. Herebert indulges here in the kind of anti-Semitism that is a common feature of works from the Western Middle Ages.
132 Herebert’s juxtaposing of locations and periods in history here and elsewhere in his songs is akin to the ‘temporal dynamic’ that Chaganti, Strange Footing, p. 248, observes in the act of dancing the Middle English carol.
133 See W. H. Campbell, ‘Lenten Preaching in Thirteenth-Century England: The Case of a Franciscan Sermon Handbook’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 46 (2020), pp. 97–114, at p. 100 and n. 13.
134 See John 12:12–19. For processions, the bearing of branches and other liturgical traditions associated with chant on Palm Sunday in Worcester and Salisbury respectively, see D. Hiley, Gregorian Chant (Cambridge, 2009), p. 19; Brown, ‘Caiphas’, pp. 115–17.
135 See Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, pp. 110–11; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, line 1993; and Grocheio (n. 53 above), who all mention girls. At Salisbury cathedral, instructions for the Palm Sunday procession say that ‘Gloria, laus et honor’ is to be sung by a group of boys: see Brown, ‘Caiphas’, p. 115.
136 Herebert is generally careful concerning the terminology for singing: see Nelson, Lyric Tactics, pp. 82–3.
137 See Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 84; Zeeman, ‘The Theory of Passionate Song’, pp. 231–51.
138 See Herebert’s ‘Hayl, Leuedy, se-stoerre bryht’, line 8, The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 120–1, at p. 120; K. J. Ready, ‘The Marian Lyrics of Jacopone da Todi and Friar William Herebert: The Life and the Letter’, Franciscan Studies, 55 (1998), pp. 221–38, at pp. 221–3, 232. The Eva–Ave device goes back at least to the composition of ‘Ave maris stella’, likely in the 9th century (this hymn was certainly very popular by the 12th century), and thus precedes the Franciscan movement and its particular theological concerns: see Nelson, Lyric Tactics, pp. 84, 85.
139 The Franciscans were not alone in their promotion of the Eva–Ave device, though the intensity of their Marianism has often been noted: see S. J. McMichael, Medieval Franciscan Approaches to the Virgin Mary: Mater misericordiae sanctissima et dolorosa (Leiden, 2019), pp. 1–10.
140 See Pezzini, ‘Versions of Latin Hymns’, p. 302.
141 See The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 115–16; A. Karim, ‘“My People, What Have I Done to You?”: The Good Friday Popule meus Verses in Chant and Exegesis, c. 380–880’ (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 2014).
142 For this liturgical plan, see Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy, ed. Van Dijk, II, pp. 242–3; cf. Graduale Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, pp. 101–2.
143 Greene includes a number of carols on penitential themes in EEC, several of them composed by Franciscans, notably John Grimestone and James Ryman. See especially the entries under the headings ‘Carols of the Passion’, ‘Carols of Christ’s Pleading’ and ‘Carols of Repentance’.
144 See F. Fita, ‘Poesias ineditas de Gil de Zamora’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 6 (1885), pp. 379–409; idem, ‘Cincuenta leyendas por Gil de Zamora combinadas con las Cantigas de Alfonso el Sabio’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 7 (1886), pp. 54–144. Fita has traced at least 49 cantigas in the Cantigas de Santa Maria to the Liber Mariae and Officium almifluae virginis by Juan Gil de Zamora (c. 1230–1318). S. H. Martínez, Alfonso X, the Learned: A Biography, trans. O. Cisneros (Leiden, 2010), pp. 60–1, writes that Gil ‘must be considered one of the main collaborators in the composition not only of the literary and theological content, but also of the music of the cantigas’. The Laudario of Cortona belonged to the Confraternità di Santa Maria delle Laude, attached to the church of San Francesco in Cortona. See Loewen, Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (Canterbury, 2013), s.v. ‘Jacopone da Todi’; Ready, ‘The Marian Lyrics’, pp. 221–35.
145 Woolf, English Religious Lyric, pp. 40, 133, 200, calls Herebert’s translation of the Improperia ‘stilted’, and the style of two other poems ‘clumsy’.
146 Compare John Grimestone’s Middle English version of the Reproaches. He does almost exactly what Herebert does in terms of using ‘thee’ and ‘me’ rhymes, except that Grimestone interposes a line with a ‘b’ rhyme into every couplet and thus makes each couplet a quatrain. See Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, pp. 88–9 (lyric no. 72). Generally, rhyming repeatedly on exactly the same sound was considered poor poetic practice in the European Middle Ages, including in England.
147 Herebert also uses a refrain in his translation of Nicholas Bozon’s verse sermon reflecting on the inevitability of death. Herebert simply translates the refrain that occurs in the original. Therefore, he again ends up composing an unusual kind of carol, though we cannot propose any music for this one. See ‘Vous purueez en cete vye’, in The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 127–8; B. J. Levy, Nine Verse Sermons by Nicholas Bozon: The Art of an Anglo-Norman Poet and Preacher, Medium Aevum Monographs, new series, 11 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 77–86.
148 In the Middle Ages, a connection to love lyrics is quite possible for any poem in the vernacular, let alone one that takes on board the structure of a carol, as opposed to a work in the more clerical Latin tongue: see Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, pp. 111, 154 and n. 39. Composers of carols were associated with amatory subject matter: see Gower, Confessio Amantis, lib. 1, lines 2710–11.
149 See C. C. Flanigan, K. Ashley and P. Sheingorn, ‘Liturgy as Social Performance: Expanding the Definitions’, in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. T. J. Heffernan and E. A. Matter (Kalamazoo, MI, 2001), pp. 695–714.
150 See The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 115–16.
151 See Pezzini, ‘Versions of Latin Hymns’, p. 303.
152 See R. Beadle, The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290 (Oxford, 2013); P. V. Loewen and R. Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song: Feminine Expression in The Shrewsbury Officium Resurrectionis and in German and Czech Easter Dramas’, Speculum, 82 (2007), pp. 595–642.
153 For example, see Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, p. 228 (lyric no. 128). See also S. Stanbury, ‘Gender and Voice in Middle English Religious Lyrics’, in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. T. G. Duncan (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 238–9.
154 The melody for ‘Popule meus quid feci’? for Good Friday is stable across other recensions of the chant, including Franciscan and Sarum use. The melody in Sarum use is essentially the same as the one in Franciscan use but is lacking as a model for ‘My volk, what habbe y do þe?’ because it does not include the Lesser Reproaches, and the Greater Reproaches are missing the verse beginning ‘Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti’: see Graduale Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, pp. 101–2. The Hereford Missal, BL Add. MS 39675, fol. 84r–v, another 13th-century source for the Sarum rite, has essentially the same music as the sources from Salisbury and Graz; and it, too, is missing the Lesser Reproaches. With this in mind, we feel confident that the music from Graz is similar if not identical to the one Herebert knew.
155 See Fleming, ‘The Friars’, p. 364. Pezzini, ‘Versions of Latin Hymns’, often praises Herebert’s technique, but calls one of Herebert’s stanzas ‘a poetic disaster’ (pp. 301–3). See also Pezzini, Translation of Religious Texts, p. 225. Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric (London, 1972), p. 14, attributes ‘some dramatic sense’ to Herebert.
156 Herebert also uses a varied strophic form in some of his other translations, e.g. ‘Conditor alme siderum’ and ‘Eterne rex altissime’.
157 See nn. 115–17 above.
158 See Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, p. 18. His argument rests partly on the evidence of directions in preachers’ manuscripts that use the verb ‘dicere’ for poems, which he construes as ‘speaking’. But liturgical rubrics throughout Latin Christendom, from Carolingian times into the early modern period, use ‘dicere’ to mean ‘to sing’ plainchant: see e.g. Van Dijk and Walker, Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy, ‘Appendix of Documents: Rubrics in Office Books/Mass Books’, pp. 448–513, passim; Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy, ed. Van Dijk, II, passim.
159 Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 81.
160 See P. V. Loewen, ‘Portrayals of the Vita Christi in the Medieval German Marienklage: Signs of Franciscan Exegesis and Rhetoric in Drama and Music’, Comparative Drama, 42 (2008), pp. 315–45, at p. 336. See also P. V. Loewen, ‘Mary Magdalene Converts her Vanities Through Song: Signs of Franciscan Spirituality and Preaching in Late-Medieval German Drama’, in Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. idem and R. Waugh (New York, 2014), pp. 181–207; U. Mehler, Marienklagen im spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Deutschland, 2 vols., Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur, 128–9 (Amsterdam, 1997) I, pp. 37–185, at pp. 74–83, 135–54.
161 See Brown, ‘Caiphas’, pp. 105–10, for an edition; see also Jeffrey, ‘St. Francis and Medieval Theatre’, pp. 335–9.
162 The tail rhyme was probably an import from French and Latin models: see G. T. Duncan, Middle English Lyrics and Carols (Cambridge, 2013), p. 40. Pezzini, Translation of Religious Texts, p. 221, discusses Herebert’s use of tail rhyme in his translation of ‘Conditor alme siderum’. We reserve a discussion of what could be a tail-rhyme carol (the text includes a refrain) by Herebert, a translation of several stanzas of a verse sermon by the Franciscan preacher Nicholas Bozon from Anglo-Norman into Middle English, for our study of Herebert’s sophisticated use of tail rhyme; see The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 127–8; Levy, Nine Verse Sermons, p. 86.
163 See The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, pp. 2–6.
164 See Pezzini, ‘Versions of Latin Hymns’, pp. 298, 301.
165 The simple rhymes, often occurring on the same ‘ee’ sound, lend themselves to ease of participation in group singing. There is also an analogy with ‘The Caiphas Song’ to consider: a priest speaks the role of Caiphas as part of a procession on Palm Sunday, using Middle English song form, sermon terminology and calls for singing: see Jeffrey, ‘St. Francis and Medieval Theatre’, pp. 336–8; Brown, ‘Caiphas’, pp. 105–10.
166 ‘Qui usum huius quaterni habuerit, oret pro anima dicti fratris’ (BL Add. MS 46919, 205r; Fig. 1 above): The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer, p. 19. Nelson, Lyric Tactics, p. 80, proposes that the organisation of Herebert’s songs in the manuscript ‘facilitates performance’.
167 See Nelson, Lyric Tactics, pp. 80, 81.
168 Deeming, ‘Record-Keepers’, p. 74.
169 Deeming, ‘Sermons and Songs’, p. 102.
170 See Mullally, Carole, p. 85.