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Anti-semitism in an early fifteenth-century motet: Tu, nephanda*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Ann Lewis
Ann Lewis
Affiliation:
Cambridge
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Extract

There is much interest at present in the way medieval motets generate meaning, both with their texts and their music. In two articles from a recent issue of Early Music History, for example, a remarkable density of meaning and symbolism, both textual and musical, has been proposed for Machaut's motet 15. Studies of this kind are intended to demonstrate what can be achieved by placing the poems of motets in a literary context and by considering the structure of words and music. Such research also no doubt serves to reinforce the idea that many motets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries demand a wealth of erudite knowledge to be understood and is thus congenial to the current belief that many motets were intended for an intellectual elite. Whilst there can be no doubt that medieval motets often cultivate a literary style of considerable – indeed intense – obscurity, what I wish to suggest here is that one, very ambitious, motet can be interpreted using some of the most basic tools of the medieval cleric.

Type
Articles
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 45 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Brownlee, Kevin, ‘Machaut's Motet 15 and the Roman de la Rose: the Literary Context of Amours qui a le pouoir I Faus Samblant m'a deceü I Vidi Dominum’, Early Music History, 10 (1991), 1–14,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Margaret Bent, ‘Deception, Exegesis and Sounding Number in Machaut's Motet 15’, ibid., 15–27.

2 Bologna, Civico Museo, Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q15 [hereafter Q15], fols. 210v–212r.

3 Only two compositions, Veni, dilecte my and Ave mater nostri redemptoris, are also found in other sources. The former is in both Aosta, Biblioteca del Seminario Maggiore, MS 15 (olim MS A 1 D19), fol. 206v, and Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, MS 87, fol. 215v. The latter is in Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, MS 92, fols. 176v–177r.

4 The document records Lymburgia's presence at the drawing up of a will in November 1431. Vicenza, Archivio di Stato, Raccolta testamenti, xvii, fol. 214.

5 It seems impossible to trace ‘stracta’ in any lexical record of medieval or indeed Classical Latin. A possible solution is provided by the common late medieval habit of writing ‘t’ for ‘ct’ (thus ‘cuntis’ in this text for Classical ‘cunctis’), and of writing ‘ct’ for ‘t(h)’ (whence the common variation Pithagoras/Pictagoras). Allowing for this variation then ‘stracta’ might be emended to ‘strata’, ‘way’ or ‘path’. The phrase ‘scorpionis strata’ might then be translated ‘the way of the scorpion’.

6 It was Wayne Cox, Bobby (‘The Motets of MS Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Q15’, Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University (1977), 44–5)Google Scholar and Etheridge, Jerry H. (‘The Works of Johannes de Lymburgia’, Ph.D. diss., Indiana University (1972), 201–3)Google Scholar who made the pioneering attempts to decipher the text and music of this motet. For ‘nutritorem’ Cox has ‘mitriorem’, which does not seem to be a Latin word, while Etheridge has ‘nutriorem’, which does not seem any better. The correct reading is ‘nutritorem’, and the sense is quite satisfactory: ‘serpentis est natura mordere nutritorem’, ‘it is the nature of a serpent to bite the one that feeds it’. Compare the lines in the Epytoma sapientie of Hieremas de Montagone, published in Venice in 1505 and doubtless reflecting earlier traditions; the attribution is to Jacobus de Benevento (d. 1271): ‘Noli serpentem, dico tibi, fili, nutrire, / Mordebit quoniam te prius ipse malus’ (I say to you my son, do not nourish the serpent, / for he is the evil one who will the sooner bite you), fol. G*lllb.

7 ‘The Works of Johannes de Lymburgia’, 201–3.

8 ‘The Motets of Q15’, 44–5.

9 Rumsey, Lucinder, ‘The Scorpion of Lechery and Ancrene Wisse’, Medium Aevum, 61 (1992), 48–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., 51.

11 Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS α.M.5.24 (olim. lat. 568), fol. 14r.

12 Willi Apel, French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 53/3 (American Institute of Musicology, 1971), p. xviii.

13 Patrologia Latina 70: 385.

14 Ibid., 388.

15 Ibid., 389.

16 Imperfect text in Patrologia Latina 113: 923. Migne attributed this large anthology of glosses to Walafrid Strabo. The compilation was in fact made in the twelfth century, as Beryl Smalley has shown (The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952, rev. 1983), 46–66).

17 Johannes de Turrecremata, Expositio in Psalterium (Paris, n. d.).

18 In the following text the Scriptural passages are underlined.

19 Expositio, fol. 64r–v.

20 The Devil and the Jews: the Medieval Conception of the Jew and its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New Haven, 1943), 20; ‘Trachtenberg also cites the passage from Apocalypse (2:9 and 3:9) where the Jews’ house of worship is referred to as the ‘Synagogue of Satan’.

21 The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987), 27–45 and 64–5.Google Scholar

22 Ziegler, Philip, The Black Death (London, 1969/R 1982), 98–111;Google Scholar and Roth, Cecil, The History of the Jews in Italy (Philadelphia, 1946), 170 ff.Google ScholarPoliakov, Léon, in The History of Anti-Semitism, I: From Roman Times to the Court Jews (London, 1974),Google Scholar states that ‘During the second half of the fourteenth century, anti-Jewish hatred reached such a peak that we can confidently date from this period the crystallization of anti-semitism in its classic form that later led Erasmus to observe: “If it is the part of a good Christian to detest the Jews, then we are all good Christians”’.

23 For a remarkably detailed account of the activities of Jewish bankers, pawn-brokers and money-lenders in Vicenza at the time of Lymburgia's sojourn there, see Nardello, Mariano, ‘II prestito ad usura a Vicenza e la Vicenda degli ebrei nei secoli XIV e XV’, Odeo Olimpico, 13–14 (1977–1978), 69–128.Google Scholar

24 de Machaut, Guillaume, The Judgment of the King of Navarre, ed. and trans. Palmer, R. Barton (New York and London, 1988), 10–11.Google Scholar

25 Roth, , The History of the Jews in Italy, 161.Google Scholar

26 See Origo, Iris, The World of Bernadino of Siena (London, 1963).Google Scholar On Bernardino's views concerning the Jews see Poliakov, , The History of Anti-Semitism, 147.Google Scholar

27 Poliakov, , The History of Anti-Semitism, 147.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 135.

29 See Avonberg Lavin, Marilyn, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago and London, 1990), 125–6,Google Scholar for a more detailed discussion of the scene.

30 It was not only scenes of the Crucifixion which used the scorpion to symbolize the Jews. For example, a detail from the Corpus Domini altarpiece, also in Urbino, depicts a scene in a pawn-shop. The house is identified as that of a Jew by a scorpion blazon above the mantlepiece. At the counter in front a Christian woman is proffering a Host to the Jew in exchange for coins. The next scene on the altarpiece depicts the subsequent Profanation of the Host. See Aronberg Lavin, Marilyn, ‘The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Uccello, Joos Van Ghent, Piero della Francesca’, The Art Bulletin, 49 (1967), 1–24 (esp. pp. 6–7 and figs. 3 and 5)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a complete description and Plates.

31 Bulard, Marcel, Le Scorpion: symbole du peuple Juif (Paris, 1935), passim.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 57.

33 Ibid., 42–3.

34 Fons totius superbie / O livoris feritas / Fera pessima. The Works of Guillaume de Machaut, ed. Schrade, Leo, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 2–3 (Monaco, 1956; repr. 1977), vol. n, pp. 30–3.Google Scholar

35 It might also be added that the passage from Numbers quoted above concerns Core, Dathan and Abiron who led a schism against Moses and were punished – a type of Judas's betrayal of Christ.

36 Nardello, ‘II prestito ad usura a Vicenza’, 89–90.

37 For a transcript of the complete relevant document see ibid., 113–23.

38 This was the fifth decree of the nineteenth session of the Council of Basel, ‘universalem ecclesiam repraesentans’. The text is printed in Labbeius, P. and Cossartius, G., Sacrosancta Concilia, XX (Paris, 1672).Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 547.