The sausage-maker in Trogir

In the Croatian city of Trogir there is a medieval cathedral with a stupendous and beautifully crafted stone arch. I will tell you more about this in future blogposts, but today I will give you one of my favourite details of this masterpiece of masonry.

The stone arch is the accumulative product of the skills and efforts of several masons over a period of three centuries. But the earliest elements of the arch were put in place by the master mason Radovan, who finished his work in 1240. We know this because an inscription survives from the time of its completion, giving the name of the maker and the year it was finished.

The arch has been the subject of extensive study throughout the twentieth century, and there has been established a consensus concerning the layers of its genesis.

One of the details established as belonging to Radovan's workmanship is a scene depicting some of the labours of the year, namely the making of sausages. Below, we see how skilfully and life-like Radovan rendered this scene, one with which he was most likely very familiar from his own life. We see the sausage-maker in his clogs, minding the stew that will go into the intestines already prepared and drying from being cleaned, hanging above him. Meanwhile, a young boy pours liquid into a bowl. This is most likely pig's blood that will be mixed in with the stew that will go in the sausage.

There are many stunning things about this depiction. For instance, it shows that realism and sophistication were not absent from medieval masonry - a point that should not have to be made, but which bears repeating. Secondly, moreover, this scene is a great reminder that we modern people are not all that different from those of the Middle Ages. Having grown up on a farm, I am well familiar with the making of sausages, and in its basic elements we do this in the same way as the thirteenth-century Dalmatian man who served as Radovan's inspiration for this beautiful carving.

A requiem by Cristóbal de Morales

As the autumn takes hold on Denmark and various signs of ending and transition appear in my everyday life, it somehow feels fitting to share with you a mass for the dead by one of my favourite composers, the Spanish Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500-53), whose music is among the most beautiful things in this world.

Cristóbal de Morales, Missa pro defunctis

The World in His Hands - a medieval representation of the earth in Early Modern Denmark

He's got the whole world in his hands
- Traditional


One of the most pernicious misunderstandings about the Middle Ages is the erroneous belief that people then thought the earth was flat. They did not, and we have much textual and artistic evidence to show that both lay and learned of the medieval period would have encountered depictions and formulations of the earth as round several times throughout their lives, be it in manuscripts, in sermons or in church art. The idea that medieval man and woman believed the earth to be flat was propagated by Washington Irving in a novel about Christopher Columbus, where part of the construction of Columbus as a hero of modernity consisted of him knowing that the earth was round. (In actuality, as Umberto Eco has demonstrated in his Book of Legendary Lands, Columbus suggested that the earth was not a perfect sphere but slightly elongated to the West.)
In the Middle Ages, it was well known that the earth is a sphere, and it was often, but far from exclusively, depicted with the three known continents divided by waters in the shape of a T in the middle of the sphere of the earth. From this design, these depictions are now known as T-O maps.

Yesterday I went to Dalum Church in Odense, Denmark, a former Benedictine nunnery established in the twelfth century and converted to a Protestant parish church in the sixteenth century. The pulpit of the church, which appears to be late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, depicts Christ flanked on both sides by the evangelists - a very common pictorial sequence in Protestant pulpits. Interestingly, in his left hand Christ holds the spherical earth, but depicted as as a medieval T-O map. This representation of the earth is very interesting to find at this point in time, since America had long since made its way onto contemporary European maps, and it seems that the craftsman deliberately harkened back to an older model, one of Christ as the redeemer of the world established in late-medieval Renaissance art.

I was very happy to discover this little detail, as it provides yet another example of the sophistication of medieval imagery, and how it has endured even into the modern world.

A chant for the birth of the Virgin Mary

Yesterday, September 08, was the feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary, one of the oldest of the several Marian feasts that were implemented at various points throughout the medieval period. The universal importance of Mary in the medieval cult of saints meant that this feast was celebrated throughout Christendom and had a significant repository of liturgical chants.

In this blogpost, I wish to share one of these chants from the Latin calendar which is included in a manuscript fragment housed at the university library of University of Southern Denmark. This fragment, fragment XII of RARA Musik M 4, is most likely of German origin, but of unknown date, and it contains a partly-surviving column from the feast Nativitas Mariae. As part of my research on this fragment, I have transcribed the text of the chant, and this transcription - maintaining the spelling of the manuscript but having dissolved abbreviations - can be found below together with a translation of the text itself (this translation is my own).

Natiuitas tua

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA Musik M 4

Natiuitas tua
(CID: 003852)

Natiuitas tua dei genitrix uirgo gaudium annuntiauit uniuerse mundo ex te enim ortus est sol iustitie christus deus noster qui soluens maledictionem dedit benedictionem et confundens mortem donauit nobis uitam.


Your birth, god-bearer, virgin, announced joy to the whole world, namely that from you is risen the sun of justice, Christ, our god, who loosening the bonds of punishment, giving blessings and dismaying death, gave life to us. 

Felix, and Adauctus the added saint

Yesterday, August 30, was the feast of SS Felix and Adauctus, who were believed to have suffered during Diocletian's persecution of Christians, one of the most wide-reaching of such persecutions to have taken place, and the persecution that occupied the most important place in the cultural memory of medieval Christendom. Diocletian, and his co-augustus Maximian were the main antagonists in many of the stories of early and often apocryphal saints, and this includes the story of Felix and Adauctus, a story which Jacobus de Voragine dates to c.287, i.e. before the persecutions were begun.

The story of these two saints is not a long one, and it mostly revolves around Felix. He was a priest, together with his brother whose name was also Felix but who disappears from the story and does not take part in his brother's passion story. The older Felix was brought before the two emperors and commanded to sacrifice in the temple of Serapis. Felix blew in the face of a statue of Serapis and the statue crumbled, a common topos in martyr stories. He was then taken to statues of Mercury and Diana, but with the same result, and the Romans seized him, tortured him and brought him to a sacred tree. Felix blew on the tree as well, and it fell over, crushing an altar as it did.

As Felix was about to be exectued, another man of unknown name and background stepped up and said he was a Christian as well, and the two martyrs-to-be embraced each other and were then killed. According to Jacobus de Voragine in Legenda Aurea, the two saints were buried in the hole of the sacred tree by Christians who managed to retrieve their dead bodies. Since the man who had joined Felix in martyrdom was unknown, he was given the name Adauctus, meaning "added" or "increase", to signify that he was an addition to the martyrdom of Felix.

Collect for the feast of Felix and Adauctus

Syddansk Bibliotek, RARA Musik M 4

A requiem by Duarte Lobo

Since so much of my work consists of researching medieval liturgy, much of the music to which I listen in the course of a workday is also liturgical, albeit early modern rather than medieval. Currently, one composition that both reflects my late-August mood and is well worth sharing is a requiem composed by Duarte Lobo (c.1565-1646), one of the most important composers of polyphonic music in early modern Portugal.

 

 

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 13 - the intertextuality of an antiphon

I have recently returned to work on manuscript fragments at Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, and it is very gratifying to sit down with these old treasures again. Currently, my attention is partly focussed on the cover fragment of Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA L 31. This fragment contains parts of the matins of the liturgical office for Sundays, and its most visible feature is the opening antiphon of the first nocturne, marked by strongly blue initial. I already identified this antiphon during previous research on this fragment, but as I sat down to consider it more closely, I noticed just how rife it is with biblical intertextuality.       

Antiphons are relatively short chants that are sung in responses to psalms. The very name, antiphon or counter-sound, points to its function as a kind of refrain. In the regular services of the liturgical year, where there is no major saint or important event to celebrate, the antiphons used are very often drawn from an old repertoire. Accordingly, their dates and the names of their composers are lost to us, and were in all likelihood not known by those who performed the antiphons as a part of the annual liturgical cycle.   

Because of the relationship between the antiphons and the psalms, it comes as no wonder that a lot of antiphons rely on language and imagery based on the psalms themselves. However, it is often easy to forget just how intricate this intertextuality of antiphons can be, and so in this blogpost I wish to show the echoes of the psalms and other biblical passages that can be found in the antiphon Beati qui in lege tua from RARA L 31. It is important to note that my aim here is merely to highlight the intertextual potential of the antiphon as a chant. I do not claim that the biblical echoes of the antiphon that I suggest here are the ones intended by the long-lost composer of the antiphon. It might very well be that he or she aimed for a different intertextuality than the one I present here. This is, in other words, merely an exercise to become more aware of biblical echoes that can be found in the antiphon. Moreover, I wish to emphasise that the antiphon necessarily has a musical side – as can indeed be see in the picture below – and this music could also have its connections to other chants or other musical repertoires, an intermusicality for want of better words. I do not possess the expertise to talk about this aspect, and accordingly I will leave that out of the present discussion. Nonetheless, it is important to be reminded that I here treat merely on the textual level, also had a very significant musical level that affected how it was received and performed in the liturgical setting.                

Beati qui in lege tua

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA L 31

Photograph by Jakob Povl Holck

The text of the antiphon is as follows (I have dissolved abbreviations but retained the spelling otherwise):

Beati qui in lege tua iugiter meditantur domine beati qui in te confidentes tibi seruiunt in timore de monte sancto tuo nos clemens exaudi nec nos arguas in die furoris tui


This translates roughly to (with modernised punctuation):

Blessed are they who continuously meditate on your law, Lord. Blessed are they who trust in you and who serve you in fear. From your holy hill, listen to us in clemency, and do not accuse us on the day of your fury.                  


In order to unpack some of the potential intertextuality of this antiphon, I will in the following list some strings of words which can be found, either verbatim or with minimal difference in text, in biblical passages. The text in Latin is taken from the Vulgate, while the translations into English are from the Douay-Rheims edition.                 


Beati qui      

See Psalm 83:5: Beati qui habitant in domo tua, Domine; in saecula saeculorum laudabunt te

(Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord: they shall praise thee for ever and ever)       

 
in lege tua iugiter meditantur                 

See Psalm 1:2: in lege ejus meditabitur die ac nocte (and on his law he shall meditate day and night)


beati qui in te confidentes

See Psalm 10:2: In Domino confido; quomodo dicitis animae meae : Transmigra in montem sicut passer? (In the Lord I put my trust: how then do you say to my soul: Get thee away from hence to the mountain like a sparrow?)

See also Wisdom 16:24: Creatura enim tibi Factori deserviens, exardescit in tormentum adversus injustos, et lenior fit ad benefaciendum pro his qui in te confidunt (For the creature serving thee the Creator, is made fierce against the unjust for their punishment; and abateth its strength for the benefit of them that trust in thee)


tibi seruiunt 

See Psalm 118:91: Ordinatione tua perseverat dies, quoniam omnia serviunt tibi (By thy ordinance the day goeth on: for all things serve thee)    


in timore      

See Psalm 2:11: Servite Domino in timore, et exsultate ei cum tremore (Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling)

See also Psalm 5:8: Ego autem in multitudine misericordiae tuae introibo in domum tuam; adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum in timore tuo (as for me in the multitude of thy mercy, I will come into thy house; I will worship towards thy holy temple, in thy fear)

See also Psalm 118:38: Statue servo tuo eloquium tuum in timore tuo (Establish thy word to thy servant, in thy fear)                     


de monte sancto tuo          

See Psalm 3:5: Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi; et exaudivit me de monte sancto suo (I have cried to the Lord with my voice: and he hath heard me from his holy hill)

See also Psalm 14:1: Domine, quis habitabit in tabernaculo tuo? aut quis requiescet in monte sancto tuo? (Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? or who shall rest in thy holy hill?)       


nos clemens exaudi           

See Psalm 19:9: Domine, salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die qua invocaverimus te (O Lord, save the king: and hear us in the day that we shall call upon thee)            

See also Psalm 64:6: Exaudi nos, Deus, salutaris noster, spes omnium finium terrae, et in mari longe (Hear us, O God our saviour, who art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea afar off)


nec nos arguas in die furoris tui            

See Psalm 6:2: Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me, neque in ira tua corripias me (O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, nor chastise me in thy wrath)                    

This verse is also found in Psalm 37:2.   


This is not an exhaustive list of references, neither to biblical passages in general nor to psalm verses in particular. The psalms provided the backbone of the liturgical performance at a monastic or a secular church, as can be seen from the Rule of Saint Benedict where it states that all 150 psalms should be performed in the course of one week. It is therefore no wonder that antiphons were composed in order to resonate with this foundation. In order to comprehend this intertextuality, we must keep in mind that the monks or priests who performed the antiphon found in RARA L 31 were well familiar with the psalter. Each psalm was performed at least once a week, sometimes more often depending on the calendar of the institution, and the performers of the antiphon Beati qui in lege tua would have no difficulty recognising its intertextuality. For each of the phrases taken from another psalm, or reminiscent of another psalm, the performers would catch in during their own performance of the antiphon, and they would connect it to the other psalms in question.                    

As for the content and the meanings of these psalm verses, the understanding would vary from individual to individual. There were commentaries on the psalms which expounded the different layers of meaning, most famously the one by Cassiodorus, but this knowledge is not likely to have been evenly distributed. We therefore do not know the full depth of the intertextuality of this antiphon that was accessible to the members of the institution from which the fragment of RARA L 31 derived. What is clear, however, is that even the novices would be able to recognise what psalms were echoed in this antiphon, and depending on individual levels of knowledge and insight, they would understand the theological depth of the antiphon beyond the words of the antiphon itself.