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| What may have influenced the composers of this liturgy - culturally, intellectually? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 19 2014, 06:54 PM (522 Views) | |
| Kati Ihnat | Dec 19 2014, 06:54 PM Post #1 |
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Someone asked in an email, "well, if we're not sure about Arabic influence, or can be pretty sure about the lack thereof, what DID influence these liturgists?" I can at least respond from the point of view of the texts. In another thread, Raquel very helpfully pointed out that the texts of the chants are mostly from the Bible, although some have been altered from the original text. This is true, but there are other sources that pop up in these chants, and even more so in other texts in and around the chants. First on the chants. The other major source for chant texts were saints' lives. These were stories about the saints that described the lives of Christian men and women, most of whom died as martyrs for the Christian faith in the early centuries of Christianity's spread. They were gathered together in a book called the Passionarium, essentially the book of the 'Passions' (i.e. sufferings, from the Latin). This book provided material for the oral readings in between the chants on the feast days of these saints - this was mainly during the night office of matins (between a set of chants, there was a bit of reading aloud). But interestingly, although there is still a lot of biblical material in chants for saints' feasts, there is also clear reference to the saints' lives found in the Passionarium. So we know that liturgists were not limited to the Bible, and that they mined other sources for their liturgical texts. This isn't so very unusual, and we find the same in other liturgical traditions. What is unusual is another kind of text that had a major role in the liturgy and gives us intriguing indications about other sources of influence. The Old Hispanic Liturgy reserved a crucial role for prayers that accompanied every antiphon - so you would have an antiphon, a snippet of psalm or whole psalm, and a prayer/oration; this unit was used consistently throughout the liturgical offices. The prayer/oration was probably intoned and not sung, but importantly, it related specifically to the text of the antiphon and explained the relevance of the text of the antiphon. Let me give an example. I'll take one from the feast day of the Virgin Mary, celebrated on 18 December, because I know this office best and this was just yesterday ![]() This antiphon is taken from Ezechiel 44:1: "I saw the gate in the house of the lord and it was closed and the angel said to me 'the gate you see will not open nor will anyone pass through it because the Lord God of Israel will exit through it and it will remain closed.'" (Vidi porta in domo domini clausa et dixit ad me angelus porta ista quam vides non aperietur neque aliquis per eam transibit quoniam dominus deus israhel egredietur per eum et erit clausa.) The prayer/oration that follows then explains the meaning of this passage: "Word, power and knowledge of the Father, you neither violate the gate of the maternal womb by entering it, nor do you destroy it by exiting; when conceived, he neither corrupted the virgin, nor deprived the mother of her virginity in birth: grant us that, by her efforts, she, who gave birth to you as a son for us, might ask for us what is being asked of you, and that she, who deserved to give birth to you without being joined to a man, might make us give birth in your conception such that, our mouths opening at the gates of Syon, we might conceive the spirit of salvation and thus foretell the miracle to your new nation, in order that faith might always take possession of our uncorrupted hearts. Amen. (Verbum, virtus et sapienta patris, qui materni uteri portam nec ingrediens violas, nec egrediens dissipas; quum nec conceptus corrumperet virginem, nec parturitio matrem virginitate privaret: presta nobis; ut obtentu suo, que te genuit filium nobis preroget quod rogatur; et, que te meruit sine virili coitu parere, nos conceptu tuo faciat parturire; ut, in portis Syon dilatantes os nostrum, salutis concipiamus spiritum, et sic nove nationis tuae predicemus miraculum, ut cor nostrum fides semper possideat incorruptum. Amen.) So, the prayer explains how we are supposed to understand the text of the antiphon. The gates of the city in the antiphon are a metaphor for Mary's womb: it opened for no man (because she remained a virgin) until the Lord God emerged from it (at Jesus' birth). The prayer tells us that this means that Christ - the Word, power and knowledge of the Father - neither destroyed Mary's virginal status upon entering (at the moment of conception) nor upon exiting (at the moment of birth); Mary remained a virgin even after the birth. The prayer then goes on to portray those doing the praying standing before such a miracle gaping at the wonder of it all, conceiving the Holy Spirit in their hearts, and preaching it to everyone, while asking that their hearts remain as pure as Mary's body. And where did the liturgists get this interpretation of Ezechiel's text? Well, they had at their disposal many theological texts that could have served this purpose. Saint Jerome, the fourth-century translator of the Bible into Latin, composed commentaries on many of the texts of the Hebrew Bible, including this one, which he specifically reads to be a metaphor for the Virgin birth. So does Isidore of Seville, the sixth-century Iberian bishop, in his 'On the Catholic Faith', probably because he read Jerome. And so does Hildefonsus of Toledo, the seventh-century bishop of Toledo who likely founded this feast of Mary in the first place, in his treatise 'On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary', probably on the model of Isidore. So people composing the liturgy for this feast, people who were probably close to Hildefonsus, had some obvious models from which to draw in their choice of biblical text and interpretation in the prayer. But there are other interesting indications about the sources. Remember that every antiphon is followed by a bit of psalm text/a whole psalm. The one that follows this antiphon starts at Ps. 23:7 - "Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in." This seems to be very fitting for the antiphon text from Ezechiel, which is all about a gate that only the Lord can go through. But it doesn't appear in any of the commentaries mentioned above: Hildefonsus does mention it in his treatise, but not in the context of the Ezechiel text, and neither Jerome nor Isidore mention it at all. There is one author who does have the two texts back to back, and this is Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, important theologian and the guy who managed to get Augustine to convert to Christianity. In a text he wrote giving advice and encouragement to women who were starting increasingly to take vows of virginity as an expression of their Christian faith, he waxed lyrical on Mary's virginity. He first cites Ezechiel 44:1 to show how it was prophesied that Mary would remain a virgin even when she gave birth to Jesus, and then he quotes Ps. 23:7 immediately after to give additional support for this. So we can venture that whoever composed this liturgy may have had Ambrose in mind when putting an antiphon based on Ez. 44:1 next to Ps. 23:7. And he may have done so because Ambrose was talking about Mary as the perfect virgin, an example to all those women who might want to remain virgins like Mary did. So the liturgy has a message about Mary as role model that we can identify based on the theological source the liturgist chose to follow. This has been a rather long way of explaining how the liturgy was composed, at least from a textual perspective. Our liturgical composers had a range of sources available to them, both biblical and not. In addition to this, they had a range of possible interpretations of the biblical text from a series of commentators (Jerome, Isidore, Ambrose, Hildefonsus, but also others, such as Augustine), and they picked and chose depending on the message they wanted to transmit. In so doing, they themselves went on to create new ways of understanding the biblical texts, by putting different texts next to each other, and giving their interpretation in the prayer/oration. This was as much a theological exercise as it was musical, and this is something to keep in mind. |
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| Emma Hornby | Feb 16 2015, 04:52 PM Post #2 |
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Administrator
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We had a conversation with the project's current composer-in-residence (Michael Ellison) which touched on some of these themes. We talked about the way that almost all of the chant texts are biblical texts, and often Old Testament texts (with the accompanying prayers carefully showing a Christian interpretation of those Old Testament texts, where it prefigures something Christian). We also talked about the way that the bible texts can be taken into the old Hispanic liturgy literally, or changed to reinterpret them (adding "my enemies" to lots of chant texts in the three weeks before Easter, so that the bible texts turn into being Jesus the Just man, persecuted by his enemies, for example), or a group of different bible texts get woven together to give them an entirely new meaning. We also talked about what a wordy liturgy this is. It is not philosophical or abstract, and it is not explicitly mystical. Instead, it is straight up Christological bible intepretation. This may be because it was created so soon after the conversion from Arianism - the main purpose of the liturgy was to establish, articulate and enact the basics of Nicene Christianity. There is a thread through the liturgy which is about Christianity superseding old beliefs (where those old beliefs are Judaism and Arianism - this is pre-Islam). It's noteworthy that most of the Iberian saints were martyrs (and the gorier the better), but NOT mystics. We talked about the way that the year cycles round and round, and practitioners of the liturgy would spiral around and around the same liturgy each year, but perhaps going deeper into the meaning each time. |
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| David Greenhorne | Feb 18 2015, 10:16 PM Post #3 |
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Interesting stuff, but I was wondering, were there monastic communities in Spain which would have practiced the sort of (neo-platonic type) contemplative practices from say Gregory of Nyssa. I seem to remember you saying that Augustine was a big influence in Spain also. So they may have been getting on quietly with mysticism and letting the headlines go to the show-off martyrs? |
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| Kati Ihnat | Feb 19 2015, 04:19 PM Post #4 |
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Thanks for the question, David - it's a good one. I really should clarify, when we say it's not an especially mystical tradition, what we mean is not that there wasn't a strong brand of asceticism in the Iberian church (which there was, with important monasteries, and seemingly a widespread understanding of the importance of committing to a religious life; more on which, see here). And it seems that monks and nuns would have been expected to meditate, to read and contemplate the Scriptures and Patristic authors. After none (the ninth liturgical office), "those of whom have already reached the perfect age, should meditate with a clean conscience on the words of God", states the monastic Rule attributed to Fructuosus of Braga. Leander of Seville's advice to his sister Florentina also emphasises reading: "Your reading must be continuous and your prayer uninterrupted. Your time and tasks should be divided so that after you read, you pray, and after you pray, you read." He says that when reading the Old Testament, she should keep in mind not to read it literally but Christologically, and should probably avoid the erotic Song of Songs entirely. So we know that both men and women devoted to a monastic life were reading and praying. What we mean in stating that it doesn't seem to have been a particularly mystical tradition is that if you look at the texts produced, especially in the Visigothic period, they don't have much in common with the later medieval mystical works of people like Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich, just to name some famous examples. So much of the theological production around the same period as the liturgy was probably composed (so between the sixth and eighth centuries) is straight-up biblical exegesis. In addition to this, Isidore of Seville famously cut up a lot of Patristic authors on a variety of questions in his extensive encyclopedia, the Etymologies. There is a very obvious influence on these authors of Augustine, certainly, but Gregory of Nyssa I haven't found (and you can look at this article for a list of Patristic sources, both Latin and Greek, that show up in the works of Iberian authors). Other less exegetical and more doctrinal works include attacks on heretics and Jews, but these also root themselves in the Bible text to show the 'truth' of Nicene Christianity. From the orations I've looked at in the liturgy itself, the emphasis seems to be on explaining how the chant texts, which are often drawn from the Hebrew Bible, actually foretell and apply to the coming of Christ, rather than saying something more abstract about the soul's union with God or something of the sort. But maybe I will find something! I won't rule it out just yet. There is nevertheless a strong apocalyptic streak in the Iberian tradition, and maybe this is where you are getting the mysticism. The Commentary on the Apocalypse of John (Revelations) by Beatus of Liebana (a monk from Cantabria, who lived ca. 730-800) clearly captured the imagination of monks in this period. There are a number of gorgeously illustrated copies of this commentary from the tenth and eleventh centuries (see here), from numerous monasteries across Northern Iberia. Julian of Toledo somewhat pre-empted this in the seventh century, in his Prognosticon futuri Saeculi, which has been deemed the first systematic treatment of Christian eschatology by its editor. But again, both of these texts, though interested in eschatological questions, are actually syntheses if not anthologies of Patristic works relevant to the subject. There's not much in the way of ecstatic visions of the beyond in these texts. The aim was to promote understanding among those who might need the clarification rather than to lift the spirit of the initiated to union with the divine. Edited by Kati Ihnat, Feb 19 2015, 05:07 PM.
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