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Staging violence, suffering and orthodoxy in the chants of the Spanish March
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2014
Abstract
During the reconquest of Islamic territories on the Spanish March, Iberian lands witnessed a religious transformation enacted by the Christian victors and characterised by the resurgence of devotion to both old and new saintly figures. The present article explores how the music of saints represents, and thus interprets, issues related to violence and suffering so prevalent on the frontier. The chants for prominent saints in the area, Paul of Narbonne, Eulalia of Barcelona and Saturninus of Toulouse, are explored here in relation to how words and music interacted to illustrate the saints' position in relation to violence and suffering. Musical analyses trace how the topoi of orthodoxy in faith and confronting bloodshed with devout resolution are cast in the chants of earlier styles to those of the late twelfth century. Differences in musical depictions of these subjects underscore how the saints, in their changing sonic personae, were made to engage with the realities confronting Christian frontier communities.
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References
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17 ‘The impiety of the tyrant enjoined / to keep the glorious man Paul / long weakened by hunger and squalor / and to be afflicted by various kinds of tortures.’ All translations are my own. I would like to thank Lars Morten Gram for his many valuable suggestions.
18 For comparable (though not exact) melodic introductions, see in Dobszay, László and Szendrei, Janka, Antiphonen im 2. bis 6. Modus, Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi, vol. 5, pt 2, Teilband (Kassel, 1999), 577–8Google Scholar, nos. 4122, 4125 (hereafter MMMA 5/2).
19 This melodic gesture resembles incipit formulas in the first mode, but it is absent in the fourth mode repertoire covered by Dobszay and Janka Szendrei, MMMA 5/2, 523–683.
20 ‘While the enemy of God would see the faith of blessed Paul grow / and the fierce punishments of tortures made himself stronger, / the wickedness of the devil sought, found, carried out / unheard of types of punishments.’
21 Cf. MMMA 5/2, 736, no. 5115.
22 ‘The frightening vastness of the pagans, in accordance with the impiousness of its cruelty, turned itself to arms in order to overcome the courageous, the strong warrior, the most saintly Paul, with terror and savageness, whom it could not at all overcome because of his virtue.’
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28 On matters of tonality, see Hughes, Andrew, ‘Late Medieval Rhymed Offices’, Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 8 (1985), 31–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hiley, David, ‘The Music of Prose Offices in Honour of English Saints’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 10 (2001), 23–38, at 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 ‘Angered by the honest word of the martyr the judge / Exceedingly furious orders her to be tormented by burning / Fastened on the cross put forth to be burnt by fire.’
30 Cf. MMMA 5/2, 778, 831, nos. 6064, 6164.
31 Michael's visit is a facet not present in any of the extant vitae.
32 Cf. MMMA 5/2, 1230, 1242, nos. 8400, 8421.
33 Hankeln, Roman, ‘Old and New in Medieval Chant: Finding Methods of Investigating an Unknown Region’, in A Due: Musical Essays in Honour of John D. Bergsagel & Heinrich W. Schwab, ed. Kongsted, Oleet al. (Copenhagen, 2008), 161–80Google Scholar.
34 ‘And now God, willing to end the severe punishments, / which the crucified virgin bore as a holy trophy, / sent the illustrious Michael for the virgin.’
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36 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, lat. 1090. For a digital reproduction, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007359 (accessed 30 September 2013). See also Goudesenne, Jean-François, ‘Les offices des saints patrons provençaux: à l'histoire ecclésiastique d'Arles et Marseille (Xe–XIVe siècles)’, Hagiographie et culte des saints en France méridionale (XIIIe–XVe siècle), Cahiers de Fanjaux, 37 (2002), 113–46Google Scholar.
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38 E-Bbc 619, fols. 125r–v. These chants are not found in the expected sources of E-Tc 44.1 and E-Tc 44.2 (Ms. 44.1: Tavèrnoles (Alt Urgell), c.1020; Ms. 44.2: Toledo, c.1095), cf. http://cantusdatabase.org/ (accessed 30 September 2013). I am currently investigating these and other strands in the historiae of the Iberian peninsula.
39 The Saturninus responsories of F-Pn lat. 1090 also appear in Girona, Museu Diocesà, Ms. 45 (c.1130), demonstrating the concurrent repertoires existing for the saint at different centres across the Pyrenees. See Marqués and Gros, ‘L'antifonari de Sant Feliu de Girona’, 177–326; and Garrigosa i Massana, Joaquim, Els manuscrits musicals a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (Lleida, 2003), 141, no. 181Google Scholar.
40 Cf. MMMA 1, 12, No. 1035.
41 ‘And he is bound to the bull / and sent out from the Capitoline, / all the limbs of the body lacerated; / Christ takes up the soul worthy to God.’
42 F-Pn lat. 1090, fol. 283v. This responsory is also found in the Toledo manuscripts 44.1 and 44.2. I have not yet had the opportunity to compare the chants, but it pushes the ante quem date of the F-Pn lat. 1090 Saturninus historia to the early eleventh century.
43 R. ‘The most blessed martyr Saturninus / is tied to the bull with ropes, / is cast down from the summit of the Capitoline through the stairs to the level [ground], / the head is crushed and the brain cast out; / Christ receives the soul worthy to God’. V. ‘The lifeless body was carried by the furious bull to the place where, / the rope broken, was deserving at that time of a grave for burial.’
44 See group VIIIc in Frere, Walter, Antiphonale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, vol. 1 (London, 1901–24), 55Google Scholar. See also Katherine Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories of the Divine Office: Aspects of Structure and Transmission’, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., University of Regensburg (2008), 231–59.
45 Cf. Group G1, Frere, Antiphonale, 46; Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 244.
46 Cf. Group G5, Frere, Antiphonale, 53; Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 242.
47 The end of the verb ‘excusso’ is set to the formula D1. Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 74.
48 According to Helsen (‘The Great Responsories’, 232), the verse employs a standard tone. A modified form of formula f1 is interpolated at ‘ubi funo disrupto’, creating a clearer bipartite division of the text, cf. Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 237. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for signalling formulae not initially pointed out in this chant.
49 Jonsson, Ritva, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm, 1968)Google Scholar. A study relevant to the versified vitae, currently being prepared for publication, is Anne-Marie Turcan-Verkerk, ‘Forme et réforme. Enjeux et perceptions de l'écriture latine en prose rimée (fin du Xe – début du XIIIe siècle)’, Ph.D. diss., Université Paris IV – Sorbonne (1995). I would like to thank Cristian Gaşpar for bringing this work to my attention.
50 Björkvall and Haug, ‘Performing Medieval Verse’, 278–99.
51 Buc, Philippe, ‘La Vengeance de Dieu: De l'Exégesè Patristique à la Réforme Ecclésiastique et à la Primière Croisade’, in La Vengeance 400–1200, ed. Barthélemy, Dominiqueet al. (Rome, 2006), 451–86Google Scholar; idem, ‘Some Thoughts on the Christian Theology of Violence, Medieval and Modern, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 5 (2008), 9–28; idem, ‘Exégesè et violence dans la tradition occidentale’, Annali di Storia moderna e contemporanea, 16 (2010), 131–44; see also Buc, ‘Martyrdom in the West’, 23–58; and Throop, Susanna A., Crusading as an Act of Violence, 1095–1216 (Surrey, 2011)Google Scholar.