The Canticle of the Creatures as Hypotext behind Dante’s Pater Noster

The article analyses Dante’s explanatory paraphrase and exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer, which opens the eleventh canto (v. 1–24) of Purgatory. The author reminds us that the prayer is the only one fully recited in the entire Comedy and this devotional practice is in line with the Franciscan prescription to recite it in the sixth hour of the Divine Office when Christ died on the cross. The prayer is reported by the poet on the first terrace of Purgatory, where the proud and vainglorious must learn the virtue of humility, and therefore it symbolizes the perfect reciprocity between man and Godhead. Dante collates and amplifies the two complementary Latin versions of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6: 9–13 and Luke 11: 2–4. The two synoptic texts are supplemented by the Gospel of John, from which Dante takes the concept of celestial bread (manna) – the flesh and the blood of Christ – which nourishes, liberates and sanctifies Christians. Apart from the Bible, Dante also draws upon the Augustinian and Tomistic traditions. However, the main hypotext behind the prayer, which is neither cited nor acknowledged in any explicit form in the Comedy, is the Franciscan Laudes creaturarum (“Canticle of the Creatures”), also known as the Canticle of the Brother Sun. Written in vernacular by St. Francis himself, who is also the author of the Expositio in Pater noster, the Canticle was still recited and sung together with the Lord’s Prayer in the Franciscan communities in Dante’s time. Moreover, following the parallel readings popular nowadays in Dante studies, the author argues that Purgatorio 11 may be elucidated in the context of Paradiso 11, which is the Franciscan canto par excellence, and taken together they both offset cantos 10, 11, 12 of Inferno, which are based on the sin of pride (superbia). The denunciation of pride in and around canto 11 of Inferno alludes to humility – the remedy of such pride in Purgatory 11, which in turn prepares the reader for the encounter with St. Francis – the paragon of humility – in Paradiso 11. The author concludes that the Dantean paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer is no less than an elaborate exegesis and homage to Christ and His teachings, something which is encompassed in a nutshell in the Sermon on the Mount.

The Use of Sarum and Other Liturgical Uses in Later Medieval Britain

If the late medieval liturgy could be characterized by anything, it was diversity of practice from one place of worship to another, not only in the texts and music used in the services, but also in other areas, including the observance of saints’ days and of special practices with local traditions as well as in the patterns of ritual action that accompanied them. Each pattern of text, music, and ritual is most frequently called a liturgical “use” (from Lat. usus, i.e., “custom”). In medieval England, the most famous of these uses were “Sarum” or Salisbury Use, so called from its emanation from Salisbury Cathedral, and the Use of York, which derived from the practices of York Minster. Both came to be used, on an increasing basis, in their local area and were then adopted on a large scale in the southern and northern ecclesiastical provinces, respectively. These so-called secular Uses (as distinct from the liturgical patterns of monastic or conventual institutions) all stood within the Latin Rite, but they could be distinguished from one another by particular details of ritual and, more noticeably in their written witnesses, by the choice and order of the texts and chants of the Mass and Divine Office. By the turn of the 16th century, the uses of Sarum and York held a near monopoly on the secular English liturgy; by contrast, nearly every diocese on the Continent had its own Use, while other institutions adopted the Use of the Roman Curia. This article includes some of the historical scholarly efforts that have laid the groundwork for further research. Some of these are included for historiographical interest, especially to reflect on the long-held belief in the textual and musical fixity of English liturgical books, which has inevitably led to misconceptions about the ways that modern resources can be used. Catalogues and secondary sources tend, for instance, to use unrepresentative modern editions of liturgical texts and music (often really transcriptions of a single source) with the result that a single reading becomes normative. More recent investigations suggest a more complex textual and musical picture than philology can readily reveal. This bibliography is replete with references that seek to explore the variation in written witnesses, and other witnesses to practice, in order to illustrate the diversity of practice in worship and the richness of liturgical influence on the rest of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages.

The Church Music Industry

The chapter details the daily routine of an apprentice, which involved singing and playing for an interminable round of church services as part of the enormous liturgical music industry in Italy. Such services included the hours of the Divine Office, daily Masses, saints’ days and feast days, religious processions, and other events in the liturgical calendar. Some performances by choristers took place outside churches, as well. Attempts by religious and secular leaders to rein in overly ornate or ambitious Italian church music making are described. Drawing on the accounts of travelers to the region, the chapter also highlights the role of church music as a lucrative tourist industry.

Prayer

Prayer lies at the centre of the monastic life, but what is prayer? For medieval monks and nuns, prayer was above all a ‘lifting up of the mind and soul to God’, whether in speech or song, requiring the whole of one’s attention and thus careful preparation and life-long discipline. It was a service offered to God, an exercise of penance, and a battle fought on behalf of one’s neighbours against the powers of darkness and sin. Like modern Christians, medieval monks and nuns worried whether their prayers were offered with appropriate devotion and understanding. Their most important models for and sources of prayer were the psalms of the Old Testament, which they sang daily in the Divine Office.

Musical and Liturgical Practice

The liturgy adopted by monastic communities offered their members the opportunity to express their piety and spiritual concerns, while simultaneously providing a public representation of the community’s spiritual identity. In particular, the cults of local saints, often supported by their relics, distinguished individual monasteries from their peers in the ongoing competition for prestige, patronage, and pilgrimage traffic. Many communities, Saint Denis just outside Paris, Farfa north of Rome, and Cluny foremost among them, tailored their liturgy to attract the patronage of powerful monarchs and secular aristocrats. A similar story emerges from Limoges, where the abbey of Saint Martial cultivated a relationship with the dukes of Aquitaine. The prayers and chants of the Mass and the Divine Office became the public face of the monastery and defined the complexion of monastic spiritual life.

Spirituality and Prayer in the Eastern Traditions

This chapter examines the practice of prayer, both public and private, in the Eastern Churches, principally in the Byzantine and Slav traditions. It begins with the earliest reflections on prayer and the life of prayer by St Basil the Great and, behind him, by pre-Nicene thinkers such as Tertullian and Origen. Continuities with classical culture are evident in Basil’s writing, as is a strikingly cosmic dimension. The chapter then considers the corporate worship of the Church—the Divine Liturgy and the Divine Office—in the contexts of both space and time. Here there is a notable eschatological dimension. It addresses, finally, the modalities of private prayer, never completely separate from public prayer.

De rebus incertis: Stephen of Liège and the Divine Office

ABSTRACTMost standard musicological references attribute to Bishop Stephen of Liège (†920) the composition of three Offices: for the Holy Trinity, the feast of Saint Lambert (bishop of Liège in the early eighth century to whom the city's cathedral is dedicated) and the Invention of Saint Stephen the protomartyr. From statements by Richarius, Stephen's successor at Liège, and Folcuin of Lobbes (both from the tenth century), and the eleventh-century account of Anselm of Liège, along with the evidence in Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MS 14650-59 (a tenth-century manuscript produced at Liège during Stephen's episcopate), I conclude that Stephen of Liège did have a hand in the Offices for Saint Lambert and the Holy Trinity. Although he may have composed chants for Saint Lambert, he more likely revised existing ones for the Trinity. No tenth- or eleventh-century testimony attests the attribution of the Office for the Invention of Saint Stephen to Bishop Stephen.

Convent Class Struggle: Lay Sisters and Choir Sisters in America

American Catholic sisterhoods of European origin usually featured a subgroup of servant nuns known as lay or coadjutrix sisters. Generally from poor backgrounds and with limited education, the coadjutrices did most of the physical labour in convents and were excluded from many of the privileges of choir sisters. Obliged to wear distinctive clothing that marked their inferior status, they were segregated from choir sisters during meals and recreation, denied opportunities for self-improvement, and excluded from singing the Divine Office and from governance of the community. Choir sisters, on the other hand, monopolized professional work, such as teaching, had access to higher education, and controlled all the leadership positions in the congregation. This paper examines the often difficult relations between lay and choir sisters and agitation by the former for better treatment and greater equality in the United States in the century prior to the Second Vatican Council.