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Work and Play in Sacred Music and its Social Context, c. 1050–1250
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In the central and high Middle Ages, liturgical singing was a form of work, even if it is absent from the typology of ‘work’ as understood by modern historians. The notion of the ‘three orders’, dividing society into those who work, those who pray, and those who fight, does not acknowledge the laborious character of the medieval monastic horarium. On occasion, however, singers could also experience the liturgy in a lighter vein. Clerical celebrations during the Octave of Christmas transformed musical work into its mirror image, resulting in musical play that was structured in the image of work, as illustrated by cathedral ordinals and liturgical dramas. Indeed, the opposition between the strictly maintained daily liturgical structure and the release from routine was the central ludic element of the annual festivities – the crossing of the boundary between the use and the abuse of liturgical time. To demonstrate the significance of that boundary, this paper will analyse texts that show the perception of singing as work, and then turn to sources demonstrating the process by which liturgical material was subverted into play.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 57 - 79
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
References
1 See, for instance, Heers, Jacques, Le travail au moyen âge, Que sais-je?, 1186 (Paris, 1982 Google Scholar) which refers to the liturgy only in the context of confraternities (pp. 98–104).
2 Duby, Georges, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London, 1980 Google Scholar), influentially distinguished between the activities of monks and anything that could be considered labour, see esp. pp. 178–9, on Cluny.
3 As in the juxaposition of the terms in the titles of ch. 47 (‘de significanda hora operis Dei’) and ch. 48 (‘de opera manuum cotidiana’); see RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English, ed. Fry, Timothy (Collegeville, MN, 1981), p. 248 Google Scholar.
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5 On the additions to the Benedictine office, in general, see The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, 6 vols, Henry Bradshaw Society, 69–71, 76, 78, 80 (London, 1932–42), 6: 46–137; Kassius Hallinger, ‘Überlieferung und Steigerung im Monchtum des 8. bis 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Eulogia: miscellanea liturgica in onore di P. Burckhard Neunheuser O.S.B., Studia Anselmiana, 68 (Rome, 1979), pp. 125–87.
6 Tolhurst, , Monastic Breviary, pp. 46–7 Google Scholar. Barbara Rosenwein, ‘Feudal war and monastic peace: Cluniac liturgy as ritual aggression’, Viator, 2 (1971), p. 139, cites Cuthbert Butler’s thesis to this effect in his Benedictine Monachism (Cambridge, 1924), p. 296.
7 For descriptions of developments in Cluniac liturgy during the central Middle Ages, see Kassius Hallinger, ‘Das Phänomen der liturgischen Steigerungen Klunys (10/11. Jh.)’, in Isaac Vázquez, ed., Studia historico-ecclesiastica. Festgabe für Prof. Luchesius G. Spätling O.F.M. (Rome, 1977), pp. 183–236; Rosenwein, ‘Feudal war’, esp. pp. 129–40. On Peter Damian’s reaction see most recently Irven Resnick, ‘Peter Damian on Cluny, liturgy, and penance’, Studia liturgica, 18 (1988), pp. 170–87.
8 Liber tramitis aeui Odilonis abbatis, ed. Dinter, Peter, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, 10 (Siegburg, 1980), chs 140, 148 (pp. 200–1, 213–14 Google Scholar).
9 Liber ordinis S. Victoris Parisiensis, ed. Luc Jocqué and Milis, Ludo, CChr.CM, 61 (Turnhout, 1984), p. 144 Google Scholar: ‘Qui autem de labore remanent, si sacerdotes fuerint, possunt missas cantare, et alii eos iuuare, et qui nichil facere habent, in claustro quieti sedere debent, et horas suas et psalmos, sicut bii, qui in labore sunt, cantent.’
10 Consuetudines canonicorum regularium Springirsbacenses-Rodenses, ed. Weinfurter, Stephan, CChr.CM, 48 (Turnhout, 1978), XXI, civ (p. 62)Google Scholar: ‘Qua finita incipiunt operari, qui norunt et possunt, cęteri uero consuetudine delicatiores uel ualitudine debiliores aut etate imbecilliores in claustro operentur, quod pater monasterii statuerit. Qui uero processu etatis nihil omnino operari ualuerint, dum cęteri operantur, psalmodię uacabunt, ut in diuersa actione laboris unitas fraterni regnet amoris.’
11 The Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk (from Harleian Ms. 100) in the British Museum), ed. Gransden, Antonia, Henry Bradshaw Society, 99 (Chichester, 1973), p. 82 Google Scholar.
12 Ibid., p. 88.
13 John de Beleth, Summa de ecclsiasticis officiis, ed. Douteil, Herbert, 2 vols, CChr.CM, 41A (Turnhout, 1976), c. 30b: 1, p. 58 Google Scholar.
14 On the Gemma animae, see most recently Valerie J. Flint, Honorius Augustodunensis of Regensburg, Authors of the Middle Ages, 6 (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 138–9.
15 Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma animae, II, 18: PL 172, col. 621: ‘Nocturnale officium quoque est imitatio in vinea laborantium. Cum in Ecclesia ad servitium Dei noctu canimus, quasi in vinea ad operandum convenimus….. Cum laudem Dei per Domine, labia mea aperies incipimus, quasi opus vineae inchoamus. Moxque divinum auxilium per Deus, in adjutorium meum intende invocamus, quatenus incoeptum opus perficiamus, per Venite ver alterutrum ad servitium Dei, quasi operantes instigamus. Deinde hymnum Deo canimus, quod nocturnas illusiones superavimus, et illos per hoc imitamur, qui cantant, dum operantur. Deinde dum alternatim psallimus, quasi certatim operi insistimus, dum lectiones legimus, quasi nos ad opus instruimus, dum responsoria canimus, quasi post peractum opus gratias agimus. Est enim lectio mentis refectio; dum ergo lectiones legimus, quasi animas in divino opere lassas velut vineae operarios reficimus; dum responsoria canimus, quasi post refectionem laudes solvimus. Unde cum iterum psallimus, quasi refecti ad laborandum surgimus.’
16 Ibid., II, 19: PL 172, col. 622.
17 PL 172, col. 624: ‘Per sex ergo psalmos in vinea Domini laborantes declarantur …. per Responsoria alacritas laborantium denotatur.’
18 Isidore of Seville, Regula monachorum, HI, De monachis, in Reglas monásticas de la España visigoda (San Leandro, San Isidoro, San Fructuoso); Los Tres libros de las “Sentencias”, ed. Julio Campos Ruiz and Ismael Roca Meliá, Santos Padres Españoles, 2 (Madrid, 1971), p. 93: Torporem somni adque pigritiam fugiat, uigiliisque et orationibus sine intermissione intendat’
19 BN, MS lat. 115SO, fol. 243n ‘Qui ad celebrandum diuinum offitium uel obsequium festinat, necesse est ut a se omnem somnolentiam et torporem repellat. Aliter dominum quern querit, inuenire non poterit.’ The gloss comments on w. 5–6, ‘pulsis procul torporibus surgamus omnes ocius’. For a text of the hymn, see Early Latin Hymns, ed. A. S. Walpole (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 262–3.
20 BN, MS lat. 11550, fol. 248r: ‘qui somnolentus et piger est, ipsa somnolentia obruit eum ne oratio eius possit peruenire ad Deum.’ For the hymn text, see Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, p. 268.
21 See, for instance, Cassian, Collatio, ed. M. Petschenig, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 13 (Vienna, 1886), xxii.5, p. 620.
22 For an analysis of the hymn glosses in my critical edition currently in preparation, see Susan Boynton, ‘Latin glosses on the office hymns in eleventh-century continental hymnaries’, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 11 (2001).
23 Radulfus Glaber, Historiae, ed. France, John (Oxford, 1989), V. 1, p. 216 Google Scholar. This narrative is based on a text written for Abbot Odo of Saint-Germain; see R. A. Shoaf, ‘Raoul Glaber et la Visio Anselli Scholastici’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 23 (1980), pp. 215–19.
24 Glaber, , Historiae, V. 5, pp. 220–2 Google Scholar.
25 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Cologne, 1851), IV.28 – 1: 197–8.
26 For a convenient overview of the office of the circator beginning with the Rule of Benedict, see Hugh Feiss, ‘Circatores: from Benedict of Nursia to Humbert of Romans’, American Benedictine Review, 40 (1989), pp. 346–79, and most recently S. G. Bruce, ‘“Lurking with spiritual intent”: a note on the origin and functions of the monastic roundsman (circator)’, Revue Bénédictine, 109 (1999), pp. 75–89. Bruce notes that ‘circatores were ever on the watch for somnolent monks’ (p. 85). Ch. 43 of the Rule prescribes the punishment for monks who were late to services.
27 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, IV.31 – 1: 202–3.
28 Ibid., V.5 – 1: 282.
29 Ibid., IV, 33, 34 – 1: 203–4.
30 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, V.5 – 1: 283.
31 Ibid., IV.35 – 1: 204.
32 Ibid., IV.36, 38 – 1: 205–6.
33 For instance, Margot Fassler, ‘The office of the cantor in early Western monastic rules and customaries: a preliminary investigation’, Early Music History, 5 (1985), p. 49, cites a passage from the late-eleventh-century Cluniac customary of Bernard stating that ‘no one should ever presume to begin any chant higher, or to raise it, once it is begun, or vary it in any way, unless the armarius begins first’ (‘nullus enim praesumere umquam debet quemlibet cantum altius incipere, aut inceptum elevare, seu quovis modo variare, nisi Armarius prius incipiat’).
34 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, V.5 – 1: 283–4.
35 Ibid., IV.9 – 1: 181. I am grateful to Margot Fassler for referring me to this text.
36 For the most recent discussion of these events, see Stroll, Mary, The Medieval Abbey of Farfa (Leiden, 1998), pp. 235–47 Google Scholar.
37 Il Regesto di Farfa compilato da Gregorio di Catino, ed. Ignazio Giorgi and Ugo Balzani, 5 vols (Rome, 1883–1914), 5: 322: ‘Adolescentes vel minores fratres cantuum neumas et organa solita respuebant, et non spirituali honestate aut gravitate, sed istrionum more canere studebant, et multas nenias extraneasque cantilenas introducere satagebant, nec huius loci consuetudinem sed diversarum partium levitates et extollentias, quas in exteris locis quibus degebant audierant vel viderant, exercere curabant.’
38 The manuscript reading is uentre, which I emend to uentrem at the kind suggestion of Charles Witke.
39 Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS Farfa 4, fol. 77r.
40 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 289, fol. 134r.
41 Arlt, Wulf, Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters ans Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung, 2 vols (Cologne, 1970), 2 (= Darstellungsband), p. 176 Google Scholar.
42 For examples of these new compositions, see Susan Boynton, ‘Liturgy and history at the abbey of Farfa in the late eleventh century: Hymns of Peter Damian and other additions to BAV Chigi C.VI.177’, Sacris Erudiri, 39 (2000), pp. 317–44.
43 See the transcription in the Appendix. I am grateful to Peter Bergquist for preparing a camera-ready version of my handwritten transcription.
44 Edited in Arlt, Festoffizium, 1 (= Editionsband), pp. 147–8. For other editions, see p. 257.
45 For a recent discussion of this repertory, with further bibliography, see Grier, James, ‘A new voice in the monastery: tropes and versus from eleventh- and twelfth-century Aquitaine’, Speculum, 69 (1994), pp. 1023–69 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 E.g. Consuetudines Fructuarienses – Sanblasianae, ed. L. G. Spading and Peter Dinter, 2 vols, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, 12 (Siegburg, 1987), 2: 215–16; Ulrich of Zell, Antiquiores consuetudines Cluniacensis monasterii, 11: PL 149, col. 654D. The Cluniac Liber tramitis and the Cluniac customary from Vallombrosa, among other sources, are cited by Anne Walters Robertson, ‘Benedicamus Domino: the unwritten tradition’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 41 (1988), pp. 5–9.
47 While the festivities are best documented in cathedrals, some version of them took place in monasteries as well. Two texts by Ekkehard IV refer to celebrations after Christmas at St Gall; Ekkehard IV, Casus Sancti Galli, ed. Hans F. Haefele, Ausgewahlte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, 10 (Darmstadt, 1980), 14 (p. 40); ‘Notkero magistro pro pace et solito scolarium otio in die post Epiphaniam’, in Der Liber Benedictionum Ekkeharts IV, ed. Johannes Egli, Mitteilungen zur vaterlandischen Geschichte, 31 (St Gall, 1909), pp. 383–7. I am grateful to Peter Stotz for these references.
48 On the Feast of Fools through the thirteenth century, see Chambers, E. K., The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford, 1903), 2, pp. 274–91 Google Scholar, 321–5, 336–41; on the Boy Bishop, see 2: 349–71; Shahar, S., ‘The boy bishop’s feast: a case-study in Church attitudes towards children in the High and Late Middle Ages’, SCH, 31 (1994), pp. 243–60.Google Scholar
49 Beleth, Summa, ch 72b, p. 134.
50 PL 194, cols 890–1; same text in Young, K., The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols (Oxford, 1933), 2: 411 Google Scholar. See also Boynton, Susan, ‘Performative exegesis in the Fleury Inteifectio puerorum’, Viator, 29 (1998), pp. 42–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Beleth, Summa, ch. 120, p. 223.
52 Guillaume Durand, Rationale diuinorum officiorum, VII-VIII, ed. Anselme Davril and Timothy Thibodeau, CChr.CM, 140B (Turnhout, 2000), p. 105 (VIII.xxxix): ‘De beato nicolao. Legitur quod cum in quadam ecclesia que dicitur Crux, subiecta monasterio sancte Marie de Caritate, nondum ystoria beati Nicolai cantaretur. Fratres eiusdem loci priorem suum ut earn sibi cantare liceret instanter rogauerunt; ille uero hoc precise negauit dicens incongruum fore pristinum morem nouitatibus immutare lllis uero instantibus, indignatus respondit: Recedite a me quia noua cantica immo ioculatoria quedam in mea ecclesia non cantabuntur. Adueniente autem eiusdem sancti festiuitate, fratres cum quadam animi tristitia matutinarum uigilias peregerunt. Cumque omnes se in lectis recepissent, ecce beatus Nicolaus priori uisibiliter terribilis apparuit, quem a lecto extrahens per capillos dormitorii pauimento illisit, et incipiens antiphonam “O pastor eterne”, per singulas uocum differentias uirgis quas in manu tenebat grauissimos ictus super dorsum illius ingeminans, per ordinem, morose cantando antiphonam ipsam ad finem usque perduxit. Omnibus ergo illius clamoribus excitatis, semiuiuus ad lectum deportatur qui tandem ad se rediens dixit: Ite et ystoriam nouam sancti Nicolai amodo decantate.’
53 William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum Anglorum libri quinque, ed. Hamilton, N. E. S. A., RS, 52 (London and Cambridge, 1870), p. 258 Google Scholar: ‘Nee cantu nee voce minor, multa ecclesiastica composuit carmina. Si quis in auditu ejus arte joculatoria aliquid vocale sonaret, statim illud in divinas laudes effigiabre.’
54 This expanded version of the legend found in Durand’s Rationale is translated in Charles W. Jones, The Saint Nicolas Liturgy and its Literary Relationships (Ninth to Twelfth Century) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1963), pp. 47–9.
55 Page, Christopher, The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France, 1100–1300 (London, 1989), pp. 4–6 Google Scholar: ‘Exultemus et letemur / Nicolaum veneremur / Eius laudes decantemus / Et suef Aleis; Decantando predicemus / Et si m’entendeizl’
56 Ordinaire et coutumier de l’église cathédrale de Bayeux, ed. Ulysse Chevalier (Paris, 1902), p. 64: ‘omnes enim isti quam sollennius possunt festa sua celebrant.’
57 For an expanded version of this argument, see Boynton, ‘Performative exegesis’, pp. 41–5.
58 Chevalier, Ordinaire, pp. 3, 64, 67.
59 Ibid., pp. 69–70.
60 Ibid., p. 69.
61 Analecta Hymnica, 10: 56 and 47: 298: ‘innocentissimo grege, qui sine ulla sunt labe, dicentes excelsa voce: Laus tibi sit Domine’. On this prose, which is also found in Matins of the Beauvais Circumcision office, see Arlt, Festoffizium, 1: 223, 2: 99–100.
62 Chevalier, Ordinaire, p. 71.
63 Chevalier, Ordinaire, p. 72.
64 The text is published in Uffici drammatici padovani, ed. Giuseppe Vecchi (Florence, 1954), pp. 174–8, and in Young, Drama, 1: 106–9.
65 Vecchi, Uffici drammatici, pp. 174–5.
66 Ibid., p. 176.
67 Ibid., pp. 176–7.
68 Ibid., p. 179.
69 Margot Fassler, The Feast of Fools and Danielis Ludus: popular tradition in a medieval cathedral play’, in Thomas Forrest Kelly, ed., Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice, 2 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 85–6.
70 For the text of the decree, see PL 212, cols 71–2.
71 Chevalier, Ordinaire, p. 72.
72 BL, MS Egerton 2615, compiled between 1227 and 1234; see Arlt, Festoffizium, 2: 29.
73 The Sens office has been published as Office de Pierre de Corbeil (Office de la Circoncision) improprement appelé ‘Office des Fous’, ed. Henri Villetard, Bibliothèque musicologique, 4 (Paris, 1907). The conductus described here are on pp. 101 and 121–2.
74 Edited in Arlt, Festoffizium, 1: 3, 104.
75 Henry Copley Greene, The song of the ass Orientibus partibus, with special reference to Egerton MS. 2615’, Speculum, 6 (1931), pp. 534–49, esp. p. 534.
76 Arlt, Festoffizium, 1: 113.
77 Fassler, , ‘Feast of Fools’, pp. 89–92 Google Scholar.