¹ Cogliano, Annibale, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida fra storia e mito (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2006), p. 23 Google Scholar; translation (with my slight alteration) in Watkins, Glenn, Gesualdo: The Man and his Music, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Processo per l’omicidio di don Carlo Gesualdo fatto alla sua moglie donna Maria d’Avalos e duca d’Andria à 17 ottobre 1590. The original manuscript is lost but several later copies are extant. Of these, Annibale Cogliano has identified two as ‘more reliable’ (‘più attendibili’): Biblioteca Provinciale di Avellino, fondo Capone, b. 10 (fascicolo 2, fols 1–10^r); and Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, ms. XXII. 157, fols 251^r–259^r. On these sources and other variants, see Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 11–24; Cogliano, Annibale, Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa: per una biografia (Irsina: Giuseppe Barile, 2015), p. 91 Google Scholar; Cogliano, Annibale, Inventario: centro studi e documentazione Carlo Gesualdo (Avellino: Elio Sellino, 2004), p. 101 Google Scholar. The Avellino copy, as transcribed by Cogliano, serves as the basis for this study. The processo is also found in translation in the standard reference on Gesualdo in English: Watkins, Gesualdo, pp. 14–22, which I shall cite in tandem with Cogliano. Watkins drew upon the first published edition of the processo: Carmine Modestino, Della dimora di Torquato Tasso in Napoli negli anni 1588, 1592, 1594, (Naples: Giuseppe Cataneo, 1863), II, pp. 52–66. Processo is best rendered in English as ‘investigative hearing’ (not as ‘trial’, in the modern sense of the word), as it was a processo per informazione, on which see Cohen, Thomas and Cohen, Elizabeth, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 17 Google Scholar. Other copies of this processo (e.g. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, ms. XXII. 157) were titled, more plainly, Informazione …

³ The most extensive chronicle from the seventeenth century is the so-called ‘Corona manuscript’ (of uncertain authorship and date): Borzelli, Angelo, Successi tragici et amorosi di Silvio et Ascanio Corona (Naples: F. Casella, 1908), pp. 192–203 Google Scholar; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 126–27, 190–94; Watkins, Gesualdo, pp. 7–13. Although much of the common understanding of Gesualdo’s double homicide has come directly from the Corona manuscript, I shall disqualify it from this investigation because it does not provide any certain facts not already found in the processo.

⁴ Cogliano (Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, p. 91) calls the processo ‘deliberately superficial’ (‘volutamente superficiale’).

⁵ There are other processi of musicological interest, as in Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds, pp. 103–34. Processi were also turned into carnival performances; for one by a playwright who sought Gesualdo patronage, see Vincenzo Braca, Il processus criminalis e I pronostici, ed. by Rosa Troiano (Cava de’ Tirreni: Avagliano, 2002), pp. 18–19, 105.

⁶ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 22; translation in Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 21.

⁷ On the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, see McGinn, Thomas, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 140–47Google Scholar (p. 146); and Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 28–29. There are some noteworthy differences between the ancient law and its neo-Roman rendition in Gesualdo’s Naples (as cited below). In antiquity, only the father of an adulterous wife had the right to kill her, and the husband could only kill her lover if he was of low social class. Otherwise, the law remained in essence the same: the husband had to catch the two in the act (typically in his own home) to be permitted to kill them both at that moment. In modern Italian law, the Zanardelli penal code (1890–1930) continued to acquit (after trial) husbands who killed adulterous wives. The subsequent Rocco code, which sentenced husbands to a reduced prison term, was abrogated in 1981.

⁸ The words of, for example, Gray, Cecil and Heseltine, Philip, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa: Musician and Murderer (London: Kegan Paul & Co.; J. Curwen & Sons, 1926)Google Scholar still hold sway over discourse regarding Gesualdo.

⁹ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 26–27; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, pp. 90, 105–06. Legal scholars generally concur. In Giovanni Iudica’s judgement, Gesualdo was innocent according to civil law but guilty of breaking the code of chivalry because the weapons he employed to kill nobility were appropriate to plebeians; see Giovanni Iudica, Il caso Gesualdo (Milan: La vita felice, 2013), pp. 11–13, 21–22. Still, as the ‘honourableness’ of such killing remains in question in other domains, scare quotes are used here and (selectively) elsewhere in this study.

¹⁰ ‘De iure autem regni nostri marito permittitur & adulterum & uxorem in ipso actu deprehensos ambos occidere nulla habita distinctione personarum’. Nuntio Tartaglia, Margaritarum fisci practica criminalis (Naples: successors of Mattia Cancer, 1579; repr. Giovanni Battista Cappello, 1590), p. 105; this book was bound together with Tartaglia’s Practica M.C. vicariae. Cogliano (Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 26) cites only an eighteenth-century source on the law: Alessio Sauri, Codice delle leggi del regno di Napoli (Naples: Vincenzo Orsini, 1796), XII, titolo LI, notes 1–8. However, sources from Gesualdo’s time are numerous. See also Giovanni Francesco De Leonardis, Prattica de gli officiali regii, e baronali del regno di Napoli (Naples: Giovanni Giacomo Carlino & Antonio Pace, 1596; repr. Giovanni Domenico Roncagliolo, 1609), p. 54.

¹¹ Camillo Borrello dedicated to Carlo Gesualdo his Consiliorum sive controversiarum forensium (Venice: Giovanni Guerigli, 1598), which cites the Julian law (fol. 82^v), and to Alfonso Gesualdo his Regia aragonum (Venice: Giacomo Aniello de Maria, 1574). Carlo was also the dedicatee of Marco Aurelio Belli, De solutis externis ad ius civile liber singularis (Naples: Constantino Vitale, 1604), which I have not located. Borrello discussed adultery in his Decisionum universarum et totius christiani orbis rerum omnium iudicatarum, summae (Venice: Giunti, 1627), III, pp. 172–93. The many tomes of ‘collected decisions’ by Neapolitan jurisconsults are described in Marco Nicola Miletti, Stylus judicandi: le raccolte di ‘Decisiones’ del Regno di Napoli in età moderna (Naples: Jovene, 1998).

¹² In view of a point made by Carmine Modestino, we ought not to discount the possibility that the Carafa family had a case against Gesualdo. There is ambiguity as to whether the ancient caveat that the adulterer must be of low class to be killed was in effect in Naples. Based on this caveat, Modestino argued against accepting Gesualdo’s honour killing as legitimate. See Modestino, Della dimora di Torquato Tasso, pp. 76–78. This caveat is found in (among others) Giovanni Luigi Riccio, Decisionum curiae archiepiscopalis Neapolitanae (Naples: Dominico Maccarano, 1625), IV, p. 191. Elsewhere, Borrello reports in his Decisionum universarum that this caveat was ignored (Appx. 1). Since the Duke of Andria was not of low status, could Gesualdo have been indicted for murder? As it stands, the record shows that the viceroy set aside his own affection for the duke and did not wade into legal grey areas to help the Carafa family seek justice. See Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 15. On querele, see Cummins, Stephen, ‘Forgiving Crimes in Early Modern Naples’, in Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Cummins, Stephen and Kounine, Laura (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 255–79.Google Scholar

¹³ Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 36. This is evinced by the correspondence of the Venetian ambassador in Naples. See Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 14; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 14.

¹⁴ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 43–44, 195–201. Gesualdo’s claim was questionable according to at least one contemporary jurist: ‘If the husband kills the wife caught in adultery, then he does not acquire the dowry’. (‘Maritus si occidit uxorem deprehensam in adulterio non lucratur dotem’.) De Leonardis, Giovanni Francesco, Perutilis tractatus de variis iuris decisionibus, et practicabilibus quaestionibus (Naples: Giovanni Giacomo Carlino & Antonio Pace, 1592), p. 115 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ ‘De iure vero canonico non licet neque patri neque marito, filiam aut uxorem vel adulterum in adulterio deprehensos occidere’. Tartaglia, Margaritarum, p. 105. For adultery, canon law prescribed excommunication for laity and, for clerics, assignment to a monastery; see Borrello, Decisionum universarum, III, p. 175.

¹⁶ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, pp. 47–76, 318.

¹⁷ Ecclesiastical courts tried adultery cases when no violence was involved. See Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 43.

¹⁸ ‘Maritum non posse in Foro Conscientiae licitè occidere adulterum in adulterio deprehensum’. Gregorio Carafa, De monomachia seu duello; opus theologico-morale (Rome: Mascardi, 1647), p. 329. On Carafa (1588–1675) and his treatise, see Giulio Sodano, ‘Tra politica e religione: le riflessioni di un vescovo regio sul duello’, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, 2 (2015), pp. 121–43.

¹⁹ This fork is not just metaphorical: in terms of cartography, Gesualdo’s residence on the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore in Naples is near the intersection of Via Duomo (which leads to Duomo di San Gennaro, the cathedral of Naples) and Via dei Tribunali (which leads to the Castel Capuano, then home to the Gran Corte della Vicaria).

²⁰ Aquinas, Thomas, Summa totius theologiae; additiones ad tertiam partem (Venice: Giunti, 1588), pp. 400–01Google Scholar; trans. in The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: Third Part Supplements (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1932), pp. 282–84.

²¹ More so than ‘liturgical’, ‘paraliturgical’ describes the timing, in that Gesualdo’s actions align with the church liturgy without being a formal part of that liturgy. I shall, however, speak more plainly, with the paraliturgical aspect understood. In a general sense, almost any honour killing could be ‘liturgical’: there are cultural rituals behind defending honour that are motivated by what any given group treats as ‘sacred’. See Cohen, Thomas, ‘The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Journal of Social History, 25/4 (1992), pp. 857–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² On the presence of the historiographer’s voice in homicide mysteries, see Cohen, Thomas, ‘Reflections on Retelling a Renaissance Murder’, History and Theory, 41/4 (2002), pp. 7–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Cohen, Thomas, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 17–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Aside from his ad hoc hunting trip, nothing is known about how Gesualdo plotted his honour killing (Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 25).

²⁴ Gill, Aisha, ‘Introduction: “Honour” and “Honour”-Based Violence: Challenging Common Assumptions’, in ‘Honour’ Killing and Violence: Theory, Policy and Practice, ed. by Gill, Aisha, Strange, Carolyn and Roberts, Karl (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 1–23 Google Scholar.

²⁵ See Kendrick, Robert, Singing Jeremiah: Music and Meaning in Holy Week (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Murder in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Dean, Trevor and Lowe, K.J.P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The ‘normality’ of honour killing is debatable. Scott Taylor cautions us not to exaggerate: the violence against adulteresses we find in fiction does not always match the court processes from real life. See Taylor, Scott, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 194–225 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (in particular, p. 214). Taylor’s findings are pertinent because Naples was under Spanish rule during Gesualdo’s time. See also Rose, Colin, A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Stras, Laurie, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 294–95, 312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Chronicles of the Fontanelli affair are found in Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, pp. 103–04. Unlike Gesualdo, Fontanelli tried to poison his wife and still faced exile from Ferrara as a punishment for killing her lover.

²⁹ Reproductions are available online and in Watkins, Glenn, The Gesualdo Hex (New York: Norton, 2010)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Taylor, Honor and Violence, pp. 198–99.

³¹ Toscano, Maria Manuela, ‘Chemins vers une esthétique de l’inquiétude dans la musique de Gesualdo’, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 30/1 (1999), pp. 27–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, p. 109.

³² ‘Justification’ is used here not only in a theological sense (sinners are made righteous through God) but also in a psychological sense: the need for ‘self-justification’ arises when one’s decision-making in a dilemma (i.e. to kill or not?) could be considered immoral. Since Gesualdo never faced the curia ecclesiastica, any biblical justification he sought for killing was perhaps intended for himself alone. On the problem of justifying killing through religion, see Brugger, E. Christian, Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, 2nd edn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), pp. 38–56 Google Scholar; Renard, John, ‘Exegesis and Violence: Texts, Contexts, and Hermeneutical Concerns’, in Fighting Words: Religion, Violence, and the Interpretation of Sacred Texts, ed. by Renard, John (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), pp. 1–29 Google Scholar.

³³ ‘Chi uccide giustamente, per la giusta difesa del prossimo, o dell’honor suo, et delle cose sue, anco ch’altrimenti potesse difendere la propria vita, non pecca, benché incorra nella irregolarità’. de Azpilcueta, Martín, Manuele de’ confessori, et penitenti, trans. by di Guglinisi, Cola (Venice: Andrea Muschio, 1584), p. 174 Google Scholar; quoted in Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, p. 106.

³⁴ Historians are also not in agreement: at odds with Cogliano, Taylor cites the same treatise by Azpilcueta for evidence that Christian moralists discouraged honour killing. In Taylor’s reading, Azpilcueta permitted killing to prevent but not to avenge dishonour; uxoricide was ‘inexcusable’. See Taylor, Honor and Violence, pp. 197–99, where he cites Azpilcueta, Manual de confesores y penitentes (Barcelona: Claudio Bornat, 1567), p. 149.

³⁵ ‘Si v.g. in adulterio deprehenderetur, tunc quamvis impunè in Foro externo occideretur à viro adulterae, non tamen talis occisio esset à lethali culpa immunis’. Gregorio Carafa, De monomachia, p. 218. This position is not unique to Carafa and is also found in collected decisions, as in Vivio, Francisco, Decisiones regni neapolitani (Venice: Damiani Zenari, 1592), p. 270 Google Scholar.

³⁶ Ordering others to break the commandment was an excommunicable offense. See Miele, Michele, ‘Confessione, confessori e penitenti nei sinodi di area napoletana della seconda metà del cinquecento’, in Ricerche sulla confessione dei peccati a Napoli tra '500 e '600, ed. by Ulianich, Boris (Naples: La città del sole, 1997), pp. 15–64 Google Scholar (p. 55). It is not entirely certain that Gesualdo engaged in the killing himself (as opposed to delegating it to his servants); see Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 24.

³⁷ All English quotations from the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

³⁸ Borrello, Decisionum universarum, III, p. 175.

³⁹ Arias, Francesco, Dell’immitatione di Christo … Libro Primo, trans. by Putignano, Tiberio (Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1609)Google Scholar. On Putignano’s service to Gesualdo, see Bizzarini, Marco, Federico Borromeo e la musica: scritti e carteggi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2012), pp. 23, 95–96Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ ‘E cosa evidente, che l’adulterio, che si commette con donna maritata, & l’incesto, che si commette con donna parente, sono peccati gravissimi, & condannati nella legge di Dio, non solo con pena di morte, & di dannatione eterna, ma anche con pena di morte temporale’. Arias, Dell’immitatione, I, p. 491.

⁴¹ ‘Et volse Dio, per scoprire la gravezza di questi peccati, & l’odio, nel quale gli hà, che questa pena di morte corporale si esseguisse con tanto retta giustitia, che quando per l’autorità della persona, che commetteva il peccato, fusse mancato chi havesse esseguita questa pena, supplisse la giustitia, della quale per questo effetto provedeva dal cielo’. Ibid. In this instance, God punished David and Bathsheba by taking their firstborn son. Arias subsequently comments on Numbers 5. 11–31 (‘The Test for an Unfaithful Wife’).

⁴² On the execution of adulterers in the biblical era, see Phillips, Anthony, ‘Another Look at Adultery’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 6/20 (1981), pp. 3–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ The Council of Trent did invest the power to apply the death penalty in civil courts, while remaining reticent about the offences that merited it. See Catechism of the Council of Trent, ed. by John McHugh and Charles Callan (New York: Joseph Wagner, 1934; repr. Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, 2002), p. 421. Synods in the Gesualdo territories reiterated the general prohibitions on concubinage and clandestine marriages, to stop people from living in perpetuo adulterio. See Constitutiones synodales ecclesiae venusinae (Rome: Paulo Blado, 1591), fols. 37^v, 46^v; Gesualdo, Scipione, Constitutiones, et decreta diocesanae synodi in metropolitana ecclesia Compsana (Naples: Giacomo Carlino, 1600), pp. 100, 185Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ See Brugger, E. Christian, The Indissolubility of Marriage & the Council of Trent (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), p. 24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It may also be recalled that adultery was subject to the death penalty in puritanical societies in the Anglophone world. Cf. White, R.S., Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 170–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haskins, George Lee, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1960), p. 149 Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Catechismus, ex decreto Concilii Tridentini (Rome: Paulo Manuzio, 1569), pp. 466–87 (pp. 478, 484).

⁴⁶ While John 8 is commonly cited as evidence against the death penalty in early Christianity, it should not be interpreted unilaterally as such. See Brugger, Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, p. 64. The only passage in the New Testament that arguably condones capital punishment for adultery is Revelation 2. 21–23.

⁴⁷ See François, Wim, ‘Scripture and Traditions at the Council of Trent: The Fourth and Fifth Sessions’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Trent, ed. by Minnich, Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 72–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 80).

⁴⁸ Marcello Ferdinandi da Bari, Prediche quadragesimali (Venice: Giorgio Varisco, 1606), I, pp. 539–59 (pp. 544–45). This civil law is explained in Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 43. If she did not bear a son, an adulteress was not subject to death; her dowry was confiscated. As Maria d’Avalos had already given birth to Emmanuele Gesualdo, this exception did not pertain to her. Ferdinandi preached this sermon at the Annunziata in 1597 (seven years after Gesualdo’s honour killing). Giovanni de Macque (c. 1550–1614) served as organist there (1590–94).

⁴⁹ Comparable Neapolitan sermons for the occasion are found in Capaccio, Giulio Cesare, Delle prediche quadragesimali; parte seconda (Naples: Horatio Salviani, 1586), pp. 297–347 Google Scholar; Filocalo Caputo, De discorsi quaresimali (Naples: Lazaro Scoriggio, 1628; repr. Rome: Gioseppe Monaldi, 1698), II, pp. 39–59; Mastrilli, Gregorio, Discorsi quadragesimali; terza parte (Naples: Lazaro Scoriggio, 1628), p. 19 Google Scholar. Mastrilli, incidentally, was the brother of the Jesuit Carlo Mastrilli, who (as we shall see) arrived at the scene of Gesualdo’s honour killing.

⁵⁰ Borrello, Decisionum universarum, III, p. 175, oddly omits John 8, citing Matthew 5 and I Corinthians 6 as New Testament pronouncements against adultery.

⁵¹ ‘Questa fù la pietà, ch’il Signore usò con questa donna peccatrice, & così gran peccatrice, com’è una adultera, laquale per il delitto dell’adulterio merita non solamente pena di fuoco eterno nell’altra vita, ma in questa anchora merita pena di morte temporale. Et con questa pietà diede speranza di rimedio à tutti i peccatori’. Arias, Francesco, Dell’immitatione di Christo, parte seconda, trans. by Putignano, Tiberio (Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1611), pp. 110–11Google Scholar. Putignano published both this and the parte terza (1615) without dedications. See also Pavone, Francesco, Commentarius dogmaticus sive theologica interpretatio in evangelia (Naples: Giovanni Domenico Montanari, 1636), pp. 230–31Google Scholar. Pavone published Alfonso Gesualdo’s spiritual exercises (in 1608).

⁵² See Grossmann, Fritz, ‘Bruegel’s “Woman Taken in Adultery” and Other Grisailles’, The Burlington Magazine, 94/593 (August 1952), pp. 218–29Google Scholar.

⁵³ On the inventory of the artwork in the Gesualdo castle, see Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, p. 22. The painter of Il perdono di Gesualdo, Giovanni Balducci, painted Cristo e l’adultera in Florence (Basilica di Santa Maria Novella) before serving Archbishop Gesualdo. See Mauro Vincenzo Fontana, Itinera tridentina: Giovanni Balducci, Alfonso Gesualdo e la riforma delle arti a Napoli (Rome: Artemide, 2019), p. 226.

⁵⁴ According to legend, a cuckold (cornuto) grew horns (corni) on their head. As recorded in the processo, Gesualdo yelled ‘A casa Gesualdo corna!’ when he barged into his wife’s room (Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 23). Elsewhere in art there was a tendency to depict cuckolds as sterile. See Alberti, Francesca, ‘“Divine Cuckolds”: Joseph and Vulcan in Renaissance Art and Literature’, in Cuckoldry, Impotence and Adultery in Europe (15th–17th Century), ed. by Matthews-Grieco, Sara F. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 149–82Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, 2nd edn, trans. by Ralph Kerr et al., 40 vols (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1899–1953), XXI: Sixtus V (1585–1590) (1932), pp. 93–94.

⁵⁶ ‘Virgo intacta manet, nec vivit adultera coniux. Castaque nunc Roma est, quae fuit ante salax’. Mutio Pansa, Della libraria vaticana (Rome: Giovanni Martinelli, 1590), p. 78; translated in Corinne Mandel, ‘Felix Culpa and Felix Roma: On the Program of the Sixtine Staircase at the Vatican’, The Art Bulletin, 75/1 (1993), pp. 65–90 (pp. 80–81). See also Cohen, Elizabeth, ‘Though Popes Said Don’t, Some People Did: Adulteresses in Catholic Reformation Rome’, in Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Murray, Jacqueline and Terpstra, Nicholas (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 75–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ Alfonso Gesualdo’s dispute is recorded in the documentation of a homicide that deprived Sixtus V of his nephew: Gnoli, Domenico, Vittoria Accoramboni: storia del secolo XVI (Florence: Successori Le Monier, 1890), p. 268 Google Scholar. See also Modestino, Della dimora di Torquato Tasso, II, p. 46.

⁵⁸ Alfonso’s opinion of his nephew’s honour killing is still undocumented. On the Archivio Storico Diocesano di Napoli, see Cogliano, Inventario, p. 8. Alfonso was elsewhere adamant about maintaining the honore del clero in court. See Mancino, Michele, ‘Ecclesiastical Justice and the Counter-Reformation: Notes on the Diocesan Criminal Court of Naples’, in The Civilization of Crime: Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages, ed. by Johnson, Eric A. and Monkkonen, Eric H. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 125–37Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ The reader should not be left with a false impression that there was an irreparable schism in the Gesualdo family: Alfonso soon arranged Carlo’s second marriage into the d’Este family.

⁶⁰ Chupungco, Anscar, Handbook for Liturgical Studies: Introduction to the Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), I, pp. 399–402 Google Scholar.

⁶¹ The most infamous homicide in 1580s Naples was that of Vincenzo Starace, who was Eletto del Popolo, an elected representative of the people; see Musi, Aurelio, ‘Political History’, in A Companion to Early Modern Naples, ed. by Astarita, Tommaso (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 131–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 140–42). Another intriguing adultery case, in which Sixtus V hanged the fugitive wife of a Neapolitan civil servant, is chronicled in Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, ms. San Martino 264a fols 15^r–17^r.

⁶² In addition, public executions of criminals had their own liturgy as well. See Prosperi, Adriano, Crime and Forgiveness: Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe, trans. by Carden, Jeremy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020)Google Scholar; and The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Terpstra, Nicholas (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Carlo Baja Guarienti, ‘Reggio, 28 giugno 1517: liturgia di un omicidio’, Studi storici, 4 (2008), pp. 985–99. Guarienti (drawing upon Jacob Burkhardt) presents a longer list of liturgical homicides (p. 989) than I do here. Another example would be the murder of Giuliano de’ Medici during the Eucharist on Easter Sunday in 1478. See Martinez, Lauro, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ D’Elia, Anthony, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 56 Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Stefano Dall’Aglio, ‘Truths and Lies of a Renaissance Murder: Duke Alessandro de’ Medici’s Death between History, Narrative and Memory’, in Murder in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Dean and Lowe, pp. 125–43 (p. 132).

⁶⁶ Gnoli, Vittoria Accoramboni, p. 322. Vittoria was killed by her husband’s relative (who was punished for the murder).

⁶⁷ One could also cite fiction. Shakespeare scholars, for instance, point out that there is a deliberate ‘misapprehension of the liturgy’ in Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays because distorted Bible verses run through the killers’ minds. See Swift, Daniel, ‘The Drama of the Liturgy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion, ed. by Hamlin, Hannibal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 52–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 61–62).

⁶⁸ That is to say, courtesy books did not describe how to dress up honour killing as ‘Christian’. Yet those noblemen-killers perhaps felt some need to re-fashion themselves as Christians in (what David Turner terms) a ‘culture of cuckoldry’; Turner, David, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. Consider Stephen Greenblatt’s discussion of Shakespeare’s Othello, which is rife with protestant propaganda in favour of the Old Testament punishment for adultery. See Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980; repr. 2005), pp. 246–47Google Scholar. On the noble decorum of another musician-killer, see Wistreich, Richard, Warrior, Courtier, Singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Vanni Bramanti, ‘Delitto d’onore? L’assassinio di Leonora di Toledo’, in Le donne Medici nel sistema europeo delle corti, XVI–XVIII secolo, ed. by Giulia Calvi and Riccardo Spinelli (Florence: Edizioni polistampa, 2008), II, pp. 497–520. Isabella de’ Medici was killed a few days later. See Murphy, Caroline, Murder of a Medici Princess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. These homicides are cited here as examples of non-liturgical planning, but it ought to be clarified that they are also exceptions to the Julian law, as the Medici noblewomen were not caught in the act.

⁷⁰ Pattenden, Miles, Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 30–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A musician-murderer involved in this Carafa court is described in Sherr, Richard, ‘Be Careful in your Patrons: A Few Fretful Years in the Life of Nicola Barone, Papal Singer, Composer and Murderer’, Early Music, 42 (2014), pp. 389–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. by John Rotelle et al., 44 vols (New York: New City Press, 1997–), II/2: Letters 100–155, trans. by Roland Teske (2003), p. 394.

⁷² Watkins, Gesualdo, pp. 15, 18, 21. Watkins followed Modestino, Della dimora di Torquato Tasso, II, p. 52, which was based on Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli ms. X C 32 (transcribed in Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 183–89). There is an internal contradiction in Watkins’s Gesualdo between these dates and those found in other sources that went unresolved. Cf. Watkins, Gesualdo, pp. 12, 14. This problem was previously identified in Keith Larson, ‘The Unaccompanied Madrigal in Naples from 1536 to 1654’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation: Harvard University, 1985), pp. 469–70.

⁷³ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 15, 18–19, 22.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 14; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 14.

⁷⁵ Cuoppolo, Alfonso, Il gigante della collina: storie, dolori e musiche nell’eco delle sue antiche mura; studi e ricerche sul castello di Gesualdo (Grottaminarda: Delta 3 Edizioni, 2013), p. 296 Google Scholar; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 14. Also of note is the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (1582).

⁷⁶ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 22; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 21. Through some fine calculations, Cuoppolo conjectured that the time of death was right before midnight; Il gigante della collina, p. 296. The timing of Gesualdo’s honour killing, however, will not lead us (so far as I have found) to the microlevel of the liturgy of the hours.

⁷⁷ That said, there remains a block of unaccounted-for time in the processo: if the killing occurred on Tuesday night and, as the servants recalled (a week later), Gesualdo departed on Wednesday morning (before the investigators and those responsible for the deceased arrived), then he must have stayed in his residence during Tuesday morning and Wednesday night, which is not sound logic. This also leaves the question of why the investigators did not arrive promptly on Tuesday morning after the homicide and date the processo 16 October instead of 17 October. As Cogliano points out, there are inconsistencies in the processo about the hours, circumstances, and who saw what; Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 24. Nonetheless, the date of 16 October is corroborated outside the court by the Venetian ambassador.

⁷⁸ The calendar of saints could mark time in processi, as seen in Thomas Cohen, ‘A Daughter-Killing Digested, and Accepted, in a Village of Rome, 1563–1566’, in Murder in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Dean and Lowe, pp. 62–80 (p. 63).

⁷⁹ Dall’Aglio, ‘Truths and Lies of a Renaissance Murder’, p. 132.

⁸⁰ The table is based on the edition of the Roman Breviary closest in date (prior) to October 1590: Breviarium romanum ex decreto sacrosancti concilii tridentini restitutum Pii V Pont. Max. iussu editum (Venice: Giovanni Varisco & Paganino Paganini, 1588; repr. 1589).

⁸¹ According to civil law, a husband could not allow his wife to persist in adultery or else he would have been liable to charges of prostitution; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 27.

⁸² Maria d’Avalos and Carlo Gesualdo were first cousins and needed papal permission to wed. The d’Avalos family also needed the pope to approve Maria’s release from a Dominican convent she had entered after the death of her second husband, during her period of mourning. See Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 6; Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, pp. 87–88.

⁸³ Pattenden, Miles, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁴ Perhaps Carlo was aware that Sixtus V placed Alfonso Gesualdo (as prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites) in charge of the revision of the Breviary. See Pierre Batiffol, History of the Roman Breviary, trans. by Atwell Mervyn Yates Baylay (London: Longmans & Co., 1912), p. 210.

⁸⁵ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 22; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 21.

⁸⁶ If, based on our current roster of Gesualdo’s known musicians, one were to hazard a guess as to the identity of this young priest and musician, Scipione Stella (1558/59–1622) could be put forward. Stella, one of Gesualdo’s closest musicians, later accompanied Gesualdo to Ferrara and oversaw the Ferrarese printing of his madrigals. Although not yet ordained a priest in 1590, he would be in 1605. On Stella, see Scipione Stella, Inni a cinque voci: Napoli, 1610, ed. by Colusso, Flavio (Lucca: Libreria musicale italiana, 2007)Google Scholar. Whoever this priest-musician was, the testimony of Gesualdo’s manservant implies some religious premeditation.

⁸⁷ Clerics involved in honour killings were charged with a crime. For a contemporaneous example in Naples, see Romeo, Giovanni and Mancino, Michele, Clero criminale: l’onore della Chiesa e i delitti degli ecclesiastici nell’Italia della Controriforma (Rome: Editori Laterza, 2013), pp. 168–69Google Scholar. One of Alfonso Gesualdo’s initiatives as archbishop was to take away clerics’ prohibited arms (ibid., pp. 88–92).

⁸⁸ Calixtus I issued an edict that allowed adulterers to return to communion upon repenting. The extent to which Gesualdo knew such tidbits of church history is unknown, but (as remarked) Gesualdo may have had some help.

⁸⁹ Or, to draw a contemporary Neapolitan comparison: the Venerable Ursula Benincasa (1547–1618), on whom see Cesare d’Engenio Caracciolo, Napoli sacra (Naples: Ottavio Beltrano, 1623), p. 574. Ursula (foundress of the Order of Theatine Nuns) is reported to have consoled Fabrizio Carafa’s wife after his death; see Beatrice Cecaro, Madre di pietà: amore e morte all’origine della Cappella Sansevero (Naples: Alós, 2010), pp. 145–46.

⁹⁰ See Caravaggio’s celebrated ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula’ (1610), which was painted in Naples.

⁹¹ The feasts are listed in Breviarium romanum (1589), n.p. See also Martyrologium romanum (Rome: Domenico Basa, 1583), pp. 183–84, where the persecution of St Martinian and St Saturnian in Africa is emphasised on 16 October.

⁹² The feast of St Januarius, the patron saint of Naples, is the closest (19 September). The seven protector saints of Naples are Agnello (feast day on 14 December), Agrippinus (9 November), Aspren (3 August), Athanasius (15 July), Euphebius (23 May) and Severus (29 April). See Paolo Regio, Vite dei sette santi protettori di Napoli (Naples: Gioseppe Cacchi, 1571). Naples also venerated St Patricia (25 August), who fled an arranged marriage and was later shipwrecked off the Neapolitan coast. See Paolo Regio, La vita di S. Patricia vergine sacra (Naples: Gioseppe Cacchi, 1590). Also observed was the feast of Ludovico di Tolosa (19 August). In the Gesualdo territories, Venosa celebrates the feast of St Andrew the Apostle (30 November). Another pertinent source, Ordo recitandi divinum officium, et celebrandi missas; iuxta ritum s.r.e. in civitate, & dioecesi Neapolitana, in anno 1589 (Naples: Orazio Salviani, 1589), survives incomplete (in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli) and is lacking mid-July to December.

⁹³ Of the several ‘Lives of the Saints’ series printed in the late sixteenth century, the closest to Gesualdo was Paolo Regio, Libro primo [-secondo] delle vite de i santi (Vico Equense: Gioseppe Cacchi, 1586–7).

⁹⁴ Revelation 2. 1–17, with Jesus’s condemnation of fornication, was read the week after Easter (not including the aforementioned verses of Revelation 2. 21–23). The story of King David’s adultery (II Samuel 11), read in the sixth week after Pentecost, would not support Gesualdo’s honour killing (unlike David, Gesualdo was not being punished for adultery).

⁹⁵ The Maccabees elsewhere figure in music history in Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (HWV 63), which is based on I Maccabees 2–8. The passage under consideration here (I Maccabees 9) comes right after that and before where Handel’s sequel, Alexander Balus (HWV 65), picks up (I Maccabees 10–11).

⁹⁶ La madre dei Maccabei became an occasional topic for oratorios, including works by Girolamo Gigli and Attilio Ariosti, among others.

⁹⁷ Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith: Old-Testament Faith-Warriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective, ed. by Gabriela Signori (Leiden: Brill, 2012), II, pp. 10–11. Signori’s observations generally hold for Gesualdo’s Naples: Maccabean wartime propaganda appears in Paolo Regio, Delle osservanze catholiche; dialoghi sette (Vico Equense: Giovanni Giacomo Carlino & Antonio Pace, 1597), p. 406, and Maccabean Marian devotions are found in Marcantonio Capece, Discorsi dell’eccellenze di Maria Vergine beatissima (Naples: Secondino Roncagliolo, 1630), pp. 774–75.

⁹⁸ Bellarmino, Roberto, Dell’uffitio del principe christiano (Siena: Ercole e Agamennone Gori, 1620), pp. 289–302 Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Citations from I and II Maccabees also figured in treatises on final judgement, including Gesualdo, Giovanni Andrea, Ragionamenti sopra i novissimi prima parte; della corporea morte & del’universal giudicio (Naples: Gioseppe Cacchi, 1577)Google Scholar. While it is plausible that Carlo was familiar with this treatise (which, incidentally, was dedicated to a Carafa prince), there is no explicit connection between it and his honour killing (so far as I see).

¹⁰⁰ There was once a cult of the Maccabees in Gesualdo’s vicinity. According to one legend, descendants of the Maccabees found refuge around Naples. In the archdiocese of Benevento (to which the comune of Gesualdo belongs today), there is a village called Casale de’ Maccabei; see Francesco Morante, ‘Il casale Maccabei: storia di un territorio beneventano’, Studi beneventani, 2–3 (1989–90), pp. 29–66. Little is known about either this cult or the noble Maccabeo family in Gesualdo’s time (a prince Cesare Maccabeo founded the Accademia dei Rozzi in Benevento in 1628). Nonetheless, it is possible that Gesualdo knew of the Maccabees in more ways than from the Bible alone.

¹⁰¹ Harrington, Daniel, First and Second Maccabees (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1985), p. 58 Google Scholar; Breviarium romanum (1589), fol. 276^r. I Maccabees 9. 41–42 were not included in the Breviary. Cf. Vetus testamentum secundum LXX latine redditum et ex auctoritate Sixti V Pont. Max. editum (Rome: Georgio Ferrari, 1588), p. 1358.

¹⁰² As Renard remarks, we often must figure out the ‘logic behind marshaling sacred texts in support of or against resorting to violent action’. In general, scriptural justifications for violence are not one-to-one. See Renard, ‘Exegesis and Violence’, p. 2.

¹⁰³ In some pre-Tridentine breviaries, Proverbs 6. 32–34 was scheduled in the second week after advent. See Breviarium romanum (Paris: Thielmann Kerver, 1554), p. 92.

¹⁰⁴ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, p. 14; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 14. Cogliano also speaks of a vendetta per adulterio (p. 12). Vendetta and honour killing were subjected to the same moral-theological debate. See Muir, Edward, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 169–71Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ St Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy, trans. by Augustus de Romestin et al., in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896), X, p. 34. I Maccabees 9. 37–40 was commonly passed over in exegetical writings, being a relatively minor skirmish in Maccabees. In Neapolitan literature, see Zappullo, Michele, Sommario istorico (Naples: Giovanni Giacomo Carlino & Constantino Vitale, 1609), p. 36 Google Scholar. Jesuit commentaries from elsewhere include Serarius, Nicolaus, Commentarii in sacros bibliorum libros … Machabaeorum (Paris: Edmond Martin, 1610), p. 758 Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Gesualdo’s honour killing otherwise did not sync with the Ambrosian rite, which scheduled I Maccabees 1–2 in the third week of October; cf. Breviarium ambrosianum (Milan: Pontio and Besutio, 1582), p. 411.

¹⁰⁷ Cogliano points out that honour killings were discussed in the correspondences between Geronima and Carlo Borromeo – a subject the archbishop treated carefully to avoid scandal. See Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 45–46.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., p. 22; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 21.

¹⁰⁹ As for the question of whether there were other aspects of the October liturgy that could have supported Gesualdo’s honour killing, it is possible but unlikely. For instance, the lessons for mass on Dom4 included Ephesians 5. 15–21. Ephesians 5. 3 censures sexual immorality and 5. 19 encourages us to make music for the Lord in order to overcome such temptations. Then, Ephesians 5. 22 instructs wives to submit to their husbands as they do the Lord. See Missale romanum (Antwerp: Christophori Plantini, 1577), pp. 84–86. Imprecatory psalms might also be considered. In the weekly cycle, Psalms 26–37 were sung on F2 and 38–51 on F3. See Psalterium romanum ad usum cleri basilicae vaticanae (Rome: Typographia Vaticana, 1593), pp. 70–101.

¹¹⁰ Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: omicida, pp. 17, 26; Watkins, Gesualdo, p. 17.

¹¹¹ Selwyn, Jennifer, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), p. 192 Google Scholar. Selwyn cites the sermons of Paolo Segneri (1624–94).

¹¹² Although it was customary to have a formal reconciliation between feuding families, none is documented here.

¹¹³ The prevalence of I Maccabees 9. 41 in sacred oratory remains to be determined, but it did sometimes appear in funerary orations. See Linton, Anna, Poetry and Parental Bereavement in Early Modern Lutheran Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 168 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This verse may also be cross-referenced with Amos 8. 10.

¹¹⁴ Durante, Elio and Martellotti, Anna, ‘Don Carlo Gesualdo: melomania e convenzioni sociali’, Studi musicali, 33/1 (2004), pp. 43–61 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Watkins applies the notion of ‘late style’ to Gesualdo’s biography in The Gesualdo Hex, pp. 36–37. The possible anachronism aside, it is logical to see a bifurcation in Gesualdo’s musical output – before and after the honour killing. All of his known sacred works were printed afterwards, except for one motet, on which see Piccardi, Carlo, ‘Carlo Gesualdo: l’aristocrazia come elezione’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 9 (1974), pp. 67–116 (pp. 90–93)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ New Gesualdo Edition, ed. by Maria Caraci Vela, Dinko Fabris and Agostino Ziino, 12 vols (Kassel: Barenreiter, 2018–), IX: Responsoria et alia ad officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia, ed. by Rodobaldo Tibaldi (2018); Gesualdo di Venosa, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Glenn Watkins and Wilhelm Weismann, 10 vols (Hamburg: Ugrino Verlag, 1957–62), VII: Responsoria et alia ad officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia (1959).

¹¹⁷ ‘℞. With hymns and thanksgiving they blessed the Lord, who had done great things in Israel, and the all-powerful Lord gave them the victory. V. The front of the temple they adorned with crowns of gold, and they dedicated the altar to the Lord’. Breviarium romanum (1589), fols. 271^r, 276^r; The Hours of the Divine Office in English and Latin, 3 vols (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1963–64), III: August to Advent (1964), p. 1214.

¹¹⁸ Violent spiritual listening remains to be explored in Renaissance music history. As Andrew Dell’Antonio has shown, there was a post-Tridentine imperative to stick to a ‘correct understanding’ (‘recte sentire’) of scripture; individualistic interpretations were tolerated only in so far as they did not stray from orthodoxy. It would not be unproblematic for Gesualdo to have contemplated his honour killing during this lesson. See Dell’Antonio, Andrew, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 62–65 Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Smith, John Arthur, Music in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 161 Google Scholar. The other verses with battle music (I Maccabees 4. 13–14 and II Maccabees 12. 37) were not included in the Breviary.

¹²⁰ Any ceremonial music for several churches that Gesualdo had constructed or renovated after 1590 (most notably, the Chiesa Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Il perdono di Gesualdo is on display) has not come down to us. See Cogliano, Carlo Gesualdo: per una biografia, pp. 28–29.

¹²¹ The only known sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Neapolitan plainchant manuscript that includes the responsories for October is from the convent of the Chiesa di San Lorenzo Maggiore, Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, ms. XV AA 36, as described in Arnese, Raffaele, I codici notati della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli (Florence: Olschki, 1967), pp. 226–27Google Scholar. The chant melody for ‘In hymnis & confessionibus’ (fols 43^v–45^r) is generally consistent with the printed version in Antiphonarii romani (1611). Owing to its aforementioned Maccabean heritage, medieval Benevento also observed the feast of the Maccabees, as in Benevento, Biblioteca Capitolare, ms. V 21, fol. 100^r–v.

¹²² Plainchant for the responsory to I Maccabees 9.37–40, ‘In hymnis & confessionibus benedicebant’, may be found in Antiphonarii romani secundum novum breviarium recogniti; pars aestivalis (Antwerp: Joachim Trognaesius, 1611), pp. 402–03; see British Library, Digital Store 1481.e.24, <https://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100099178062.0x000001> [accessed 10 August 2023] (also readily available on Google Books).

¹²³ Kendrick, Robert, The Sounds of Milan, 1585–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹²⁴ Don Harrán, ‘Madama Europa, Jewish Singer in Late Renaissance Mantua’, in Festa Musicologica: Essays in Honour of George J. Buelow, ed. by Thomas Mathiesen and Benito Rivera (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1995), pp. 197–232 (p. 216).

¹²⁵ Gesualdo di Venosa, Sämtliche Werke, VIII/IX: Sacrarum cantionum: liber primus; liber secundus (1961–62).

¹²⁶ See Giovanni Iudica, ‘The “Gesualdo Case” in Contemporary Melodrama’, in Law and Opera, ed. by Filippo Annunziata and Giorgio Fabio Colombo (Cham: Springer, 2018), pp. 159–71.