by Lisa Chong
This 15th-century Italian liturgical manuscript is made of parchment, and contains sheet music for religious chants. Unlike modern Western sheet music, the musical stave consists of 4 lines instead of 5, in a form known as plainchant – a sacred piece composed in Latin for the liturgies of the Western church. Such a large parchment page would have been a common sight for those in a church’s choir; its size ensured all singers could refer to the music simultaneously. There are also Roman numerals inked in red on both pages, indicating folio references for full versions of separate chants, such that they would not need to be repeatedly written out in full.
Although Latin was the main language used in Christian service throughout Europe at the time, we can reasonably trace this parchment’s origins to Italy. As seen in Figure 1, part of the music stave has been rubbed out to make space for shorthand text: “Octava Agnetis Virginis”. This is a chant for Saint Agnes, patron saint of chastity and purity, and the most prominent female martyr in ancient Rome. Throughout the year, church choirs would sing different hymns and masses depending on upcoming religious events, including their saints’ upcoming Feast days. The octave is a second Feast celebrated on the eighth day afterward; therefore, members of this church commemorated not only the Feast of Saint Agnes on the 21st of January, but also repeated the feast. This double veneration indicates that the region this church was situated in held Saint Agnes in particularly high regard; the main regions of Europe that would have fallen under these criteria were Italy and England, but the former is more likely due to the plainchant’s origins as a notation invented solely for liturgical composition in the Western church.
Interestingly, the first page has the final line of a previous hymn overriding into the next stave, as seen from the Latin “allelu ya”/hallelujah. But it does not continue left to right into the next stave: it juts into a small right-most section below, and to its left is the rubbed-out stave, with text indicating that the chant below it is for the Octave of St Agnes. Here is a closer look, with the atypical line boundaries shown.
This is likely because the scribe needed to make space for the decorated illuminated capital – the large, ornate letter ‘V’ that sprawls all the way across the left side of the page – that begins Psalm 44:13-16, which is associated with St Agnes’ second octave feast. In doing so, the manuscript writer exhibited a prioritisation of form over minor function. The more elaborately decorated illuminated capital in blue (as opposed to the smaller black capital ‘E’ in “Eructavit”) signals not only the beginning of any new line or chant, but the start of an important commemoration for a particularly venerated Feast Day. Perhaps, stylistic form did not win over function; this decoration functions, alongside the music it accompanies, as a celebration of the mercy of Christ.