Music and Religious Education in Early Modern Europe: The Musical Edification of the Church 9004470387, 9789004470385, 2022060261, 2022060262, 9789004470392

Citation preview

Music and Religious Education in Early Modern Europe

St Andrews Studies in Reformation History Lead Editor Bridget Heal (University of St Andrews) Editorial Board Amy Burnett (University of Nebraska-​Lincoln) Euan Cameron (Columbia University) Bruce Gordon (Yale University) Kaspar von Greyerz (Universität Basel) Felicity Heal (Jesus College, Oxford) Karin Maag (Calvin College, Grand Rapids) Roger Mason (University of St Andrews) Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) Alec Ryrie (Durham University) Jonathan Willis (University of Birmingham)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​sasrh

Music and Religious Education in Early Modern Europe The Musical Edification of the Church Edited by

Hyun-​Ah Kim

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Detail of the cover page of the first edition of Marot’s translation of Psalm 6 (ca. 1530). Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Kim, Hyun-​Ah, editor. Title: Music and religious education in early modern Europe: the musical edification of the church /​edited by Hyun-​Ah Kim. Description: Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2023. | Series: St Andrews studies in reformation history, 2468-​4317. | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 2022060261 (print) | lccn 2022060262 (ebook) | isbn 9789004470385 (hardback) | isbn 9789004470392 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Church music–​Europe–​16th century. | Christian education–​Europe–​History–​16th century. | Reformation–​Europe. Classification: lcc ML3000 .M877 2023 (print) | lcc ML3000 (ebook) | ddc 781.710094/​09031–​dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​202​2060​261 lc ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​202​2060​262

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/ brill- typeface. issn 2468-​4 317 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 7038-​5 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 7039-​2 (e-​book) Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents  Preface vii  List of Figures and Tables ix  Notes on Contributors x Introduction Music and Religious Education in Early Modern Europe 1 Hyun-​Ah Kim

PART 1 Music, Pedagogy and Edification Concepts and Theories 1  “Singing without Understanding” The Defence of the Unintelligible in Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Quincuplex Psalterium (1509/​1513) 35 Michael O’Connor Music, Rhetoric and the Humanist Pedagogy of Hebrew Biblical Chant 2  Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata recitatio 54 Hyun-​Ah Kim 3  Cross and Creation Rethinking the Aesthetic Foundations of Luther’s Theology of Music 86 Svein Aage Christoffersen 4  Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music in the Swedish Reformation Olaus and Laurentius Petri on the Concepts of Intelligibility and Edification 104 Mattias Lundberg

vi Contents

PART 2 Religious Education through Music Contexts and Practices 5  Conrad Celtis’s Melopoiae (1507) and Metrical Singing in the Church 121 Andrea Horz From Pious Poems to Protestant Hymns 6  Cult, Culture and the Psalms of Clément Marot 143 Dick Wursten 7  Text, Image and Music The Hymns of Martin Behm (1557–​1622) and Religious Education in Context 169 Martin Christ Music in the Curricula of Charitable Religious Institutions in Early 8  Modern Rome 198 Noel O’Regan 9  Metrical Psalmody and Religious Education in Early Modern Scotland 225 Timothy Duguid  Index 255

Preface From the ancient to the early modern period, music was a highly theological and religious concern. Current departmental segment in the name of specialism, however, often hinders our understanding of the theological and religious dimension of music and, more fundamentally, the integral relation of music and religion, both of which are a universal part of culture and civilisation. The moral and social implications of religious education in relation to music in early modern Europe are rather distanced from their counterpart in the modern world. This book seeks to offer the first comprehensive set of studies to examine the nexus of music and religious education in early modern Europe. It attempts to elucidate the context and manner in which music was used by the reformers, clergy and educators of the day, thereby identifying the historical, cultural and theological foundations of early modern European musical phenomena and their significance for education, aesthetics, ethics and liturgy today. The principal aim of this volume is three-​fold: first, to reassess the relevance of music to religious education within the broader intellectual, cultural and social context of early modern Europe; secondly, to investigate the pedagogical, religious and theological frameworks in which new musical practices and theories were promoted to edify the clergy as well as the laity; and finally, to illustrate the ways in which music served as a means of religious teaching and learning, by examining some musical practices and theories that were at the core of Christian education in the time of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. This volume intends to provide a foundation and impetus for future research on the theme in question, and it does not cover all aspects of proposing new directions for study. As I elaborate in the Introduction to the volume, however, it will open up a new, critical discourse on the nexus of music, education and religion in early modern Europe, bringing nine experts on early modern studies together to present original research on the theme in question. Many colleagues have supported this project one way or another. First and foremost, my sincere thanks go to Prof. Gioia Filocamo (Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali of Terni, University of Parma and University of Bologna), for her contribution to this project from the very outset, which began as a conference panel embarking on an international and interdisciplinary research project, Reformation Musical History and Theology (rmht), supported by the Theologische Universiteit Kampen (2017–​2020) and by the Europäische Melanchthon-​Akademie Bretten (2018–​). I am also grateful to Mr. Jan de

viii Preface Jong (Theologische Universiteit Kampen), Prof. Günter Frank (Europäische Melanchthon-​Akademie Bretten), Prof. Ian Hazlett (University of Glasgow), Dr Dirk J. Jansen (Forschungszentrum Gotha, University of Erfurt), Dr. Alan Suggate (University of Durham) and Prof. Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrew), for their advice, encouragement and support. Special thanks are due to the sasrh Series Editor, Prof. Bridget Heal, and the sasrh Editorial Board, and anonymous readers, for their valuable comments, criticism and suggestions, crucial for reshaping this volume, and to the publisher Brill, for accepting this book for wide dissemination. Last but not least, I thank the authors of this volume who have participated in this project, with collegiality, enthusiasm and patience over the recent years. Hyun-​Ah Kim

Figures and Tables Figures 2.1  Cantillation tunes in tenor part, Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae hebraicae (1518), fol. 84r 64 5.1  Celtis, melopoiae (1507), fol. 9v 123 5.2a&b  Wimpfeling, De hymnorum et sequentiarum auctoribus (1499), sig. A3v–​A4r 126 5.3  Hymn O praecolenda trinitas Jesus, Joseph et Mariae on the melody of Quem terra pontus 127 6.1  Cover page of the first edition of Marot’s translation of Psalm 6 (ca. 1530) 145 6.2  The central pages of Marot’s versification, preceded by the latin text from the first edition of Marot’s translation of Psalm 6 (ca. 1530) 146 6.3  Complete psalter, printed by Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen in Lyon (1549), also including Marot’s translation of the Ave Maria: la salutation angelique 159 6.4  Title page, Antoine Mornable (composer), livre second contenant xvii pseaulmes de David… (Paris: Pierre Attaingnant, 1546), fol.1r 161 7.1  Musical notation in Behm’s Centuriae Tres precationum Rhythmicarum, das ist: Drey Hundert Reim-​Gebetlein (Breslau: Fellgiebel, 1659), unpaginated 181 7.2  Page from vergiß mein nicht: ruffet Jesus christus tag und nacht, with the reference “to the tune of ach mein herzliebes jesulein etc.”, p. 28 183 7.3  Prayer wie lieblich ist der meyen, later set to a tune and still part of many modern Lutheran hymn books; from kirchen calendar (1608), p. 317 184 7.4  Woodcut of Behm, contained in his funeral sermon, showing him as Lutheran preacher, next to the crucified Christ (Christophorus Holstein, christliche leichpredigt/​bey dem volckreichen leichbegängnis/​des … Martini Bohemi) 187 7.5  Image of Wittenberg, surrounded by personifications of the months from Behm’s kirchen calender 188

Tables 6.1  Number of the different editions of Marot’s Psalms 153 9.1  Manuscript books containing settings of the tunes from 1564 scottish psalm buik 244

Notes on Contributors Martin Christ completed his doctorate on confessional coexistence in central Europe at the University of Oxford in 2017. He is a Post-​doctoral Research Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. He is the author of Biographies of a Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, c. 1520–​1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021) and has published a range of articles on religious toleration and pluralism in German History, Past & Present and in edited volumes. Svein Aage Christoffersen is an Emeritus Professor in Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. He has worked on a wide range of questions in ethics and philosophy of religion from a hermeneutical and phenomenological point of view, inspired not least by Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard and K.E. Løgstrup. He has widely published on the relationship between religion and the arts in Protestant theology, and is co-​editor of Transcendence and Sensoriness: Perceptions, Revelation, and the Arts (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2015). Timothy Duguid is a Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Information Studies at the University of Glasgow. His specialties include early modern British music and culture and digital musicology. His publications include a monograph, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, c.1547 –​ 1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014). He is the Director of the Music Scholarship Online (MuSO) project, a virtual research environment gathering published scholarship, digitized archival materials, and digital scholarly outputs into a single online portal. Andrea Horz studied musicology, philosophy and medieval German studies in Erlangen and Vienna. Her PhD dissertation about Heinrich Glarean’s Dodekachordon (2013) was awarded the Dissertationspreis des Instituts für Musikwissenschaft der Universität Wien. She was an Assistant Professor in musicology (2011–​15) and held a Hertha-​Firnberg-​position (2015–​18) at the University of Vienna. She is the author of Heinrich Glareans Dodekachordon: Zu den textuellen Bezügen des Musiktraktats (Wien: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, 2017) and is the editor of Musiktheatralische Textualität: Opernbezogene Musikdrucke im deutschen

Notes on Contributors

xi

Sprachraum des 18. Jahrhunderts (Wien: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, 2020). Since August 2018 she has held the Elise-​Richter-​position at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Hyun-​Ah Kim is an Associate Fellow at the hdc Centre for Religious History, Vrij Universiteit Amsterdam, and is an International Research Fellow at the Europäische Melanchthon-​Akademie Bretten. She is the author of The Praise of Musicke 1586 (New York: Routledge, 2017), The Renaissance Ethics of Music (London: Pickering & Chatto [Routledge], 2015) and Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), as well as numerous articles on the intersections of music, theology and ethics in the eras of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. Mattias Lundberg is a Professor of Musicology at Uppsala University. He has published books, articles, chapters and editions relating to music from the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, as well as on different aspects of Lutheran liturgical music and musical history of Northern Europe. Michael O’Connor is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at St Michael’s College, University of Toronto, where he teaches in the Christianity and Culture Program. He is author of Cajetan’s Biblical Commentaries (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2017), and co-​ editor, with Hyun-​Ah Kim and Christina Labriola, of Music, Theology and Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017). He is active as a choral conductor and occasional composer. Noel O’Regan is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, having recently retired from a Readership in musicology. He is the author of the book Institutional Patronage in Post-​Tridentine Rome (New York: Routledge, 1995) as well as numerous articles on Roman sacred music in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He has published on Rome-​based composers including Lasso, Palestrina, Marenzio and Victoria, and is currently engaged in a study of the role of music in Roman confraternities in this period. Dick Wursten received a PhD in Church History on Clément Marot and Religion at Vrij Universiteit Amsterdam (2009). He is the author of Clément Marot and

newgenprepdf

xii 

Notes on Contributors

Religion: A Reassessment in the Light of his Psalm Paraphrases (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010). He is active on the interface between theology, history and culture with a preference for early sixteenth-​century France. In daily life he is inspector of religious education in Flanders.

Introduction

Music and Religious Education in Early Modern Europe Hyun-​Ah Kim 1

The Place of Music in the Early Modern Education: Setting the Agenda

Music is a universal human experience. Since antiquity it has been associated with religious practice in various forms. The nexus between music and religion has received considerable attention from scholars and practitioners alike. Generally, however, their interest lies in the role music plays in religious rituals, and few have examined the interplay between music and religious education.1 It is only recently that critical studies have investigated the intersection of music, religion and education from a multi-​disciplinary perspective.2 Their focus is primarily on what impact institutional religions have had on musical learning and teaching in diverse educational settings and community musical practices rather than on what roles music plays in religious education.3 The reason is fundamentally that most musical education belongs to the private domain in contemporary democratic society, where individual taste or

1 On the nexus of music and religion, see Andreas Häger, Religion and Popular Music. Artists, Fans, and Cultures (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); Jeffers Engelhardt and Philip Bohlman (eds.), Resounding Transcendence. Transitions in Music, Religion and Ritual (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Homo Ludens, Music and Ritual: The Play/​Non-​Play Characters of Religious Music’, Questions Liturgiques /​Studies in Liturgy, 94, nos. 3 and 4 (2013), pp. 220–​246; Lydia Guzy (ed.), Religion and Music. Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Workshop at the Institute for Scientific Studies of Religions (Berlin: Weissensee Verlag, 2008); Guy Beck (ed.), Sacred Sound. Experiencing Music in World Religions (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006); Lawrence Sullivan (ed.), Enchanting Powers. Music in the World’s Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 2 For a recent study of the intersections of music, religion and education, see Alexis Kallio, Philip Alperson and Heidi Westerlund (eds.), Music, Education and Religion. Intersections and Entanglements (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019). 3 On the relationship between religion and music education, see Adria R. Hoffman, ‘Rethinking Religion in Music Education’, Music Educators Journal, 97, no. 4 (2011), pp. 55–​59. On aspects of religious education from antiquity through the Middle Ages from a historical perspective, see Ilinca Tanaseanu-​Döbler and Marvin Döbler (eds.), Religious Education in Pre-​Modern Europe (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

2 Kim preference for music matters more than the institutional goals of music education driven by religious or political propaganda.4 Certainly, music is an independent art in its own right in modern secular society. The value of music in such a social environment is no longer attached to the classical ethics of virtue which, combined with Christian virtues, lies at the core of religious education in early modern Europe.5 It may well be for this reason that the nexus between music and religious education is seldom considered in current scholarship, although music still plays a significant part in shaping religious identities, perhaps increasingly so.6 This book seeks to fill in that important omission in the literature on the history of early modern religious cultures. Music was an integral part of religious education and spiritual exercise in medieval European Christendom, across monastic and devotional practices and institutional education. The role music played in the movement of Modern Devotion (Devotio moderna), for example, during the late Middle Ages, is illuminating.7 An early alternative title for the Imitatio Christi was Musica ecclesiastica and its original Latin text was written in a

4 On problems using music as a means for particular goals ethical, religious or political, for instance, see Alexandra Kertz-​Welzel, ‘Advocatus diaboli: revisiting the devil’s role in music and music education’, in Alexis Kallio, Philip Alperson and Heidi Westerlund (eds.), Music, Education and Religion. Intersections and entanglements (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019), pp. 171–​180; see also David G. Hebert and Alexandra Kertz-​Welzel (eds.), Patriotism and Nationalism in Music Education (New York: Routledge, 2012). 5 Some contemporary philosophers discuss virtue in terms of music; their arguments mainly concern musical practice in secular terms, not the ethical dimension of music and musician within the pedagogical context of religious institutions. See, for instance, David Carr, ‘The Significance of Music for the Promotion of Moral and Spiritual Value’, Philosophy of Music Education Review, 14, no. 2 (2006), pp. 103–​117; Roger Scruton, ‘The Decline of Musical Culture’, in Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (eds.), Arguing About Art. Contemporary Philosophical Debates (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 119–​134. 6 On musical education in early modern Europe, see Susan F. Weiss, Russell E Murray Jr, and Cynthia J. Cyrus (eds.), Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010). 7 On the music of the Devotio moderna, an influential religious movement in Northern Europe during the late Middle Ages, see Ulrike Hascher-​Burger, Gesungene Innigkeit. Studien zu einer Musikhandschrift der Devotio moderna (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, ms. 16 H 34, olim B 113): mit einer Edition der Gesänge (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002); Idem, Singen für die Seligkeit. Studien zu einer Liedersammlung der Devotio moderna: Zwolle, Historisch Centrum Overijssel, coll. Emmanuelshuizen, cat. vi.; mit Edition und Faksimile (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007). Ulrike Hascher-​Burger and Hermina Joldersma (eds), Special Issue: ‘Music in the Spiritual Culture of the Devotio Moderna’, Church History and Religious Culture, 88, no. 3 (2008).

Introduction

3

highly rhythmical and musical style that suited the daily meditative reading of the Bible (Lectio divina) and devotional books aloud and slowly.8 Music still mattered and had multiple meanings in the time of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. Leading humanists and reformers redefined the nature and function of music in view of classical and Christian antiquity. From the medieval to the early modern period the majority of musical theorists and ecclesiastical musicians were clergy, for whom music was a highly religious and theological concern. Moreover, the choirmasters of cathedrals and churches taught not only music but also religious education, literature, Latin, rhetoric and morals, at the chorister schools or the gymnasiums in which they were involved. This multi-​tasking duty was the typical workload of occupational musicians employed by the cathedrals and churches, at least until the late eighteenth century. By contrast, modern musicians rarely function as well-​rounded educators, fundamentally because of the departmentalisation of academic disciplines, implemented in the name of professionalism. But this is not a phenomenon pertaining to modern music education exclusively; a similar tendency to fragmentation is common in other sections of post-​Enlightenment society.9 As well as the notion of music, the cultural and social implications of music and musicians have changed under the influence of secularisation in the European world over the last few centuries. The presence of music in the curricula of universities and other schools in early modern Europe was far stronger than its modern counterpart, and music played an indispensable role in shaping a religious consciousness and identity. Exploring the nexus of music and religious education thus raises some fundamental questions regarding music itself, including what music is, how to define and interpret music, and why music is important, in relation to both education and the religious practice into which it is integrated. These were also among the questions that some of the most apologetic writings on music in early modern Europe tackled.10

8 9 10

Robert Jeffery, ‘Note on the Translation’, in Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. Translated and with Notes by Robert Jeffery, with an Introduction by Max von Habsburg (London: Penguin Classics, 2013), pp. xxxvii–​xxxix, at p. xxxvii. For further discussions see Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘The Humanist Defense of Music Education in Civil and Religious Life: The Praise of Musicke (1586) and Apologia musices (1588)’, in Music, Education and Religion, pp. 183–​195, esp. pp. 191–​192. It is not the main intention of this book to treat these questions as such. On the definitions of music pertaining to the European musical practice, see Hyun-​Ah Kim, The Renaissance Ethics of Music. Singing, Contemplation and Musica Humana (London: Pickering & Chatto [Routledge], 2015).

4 Kim For instance, The Praise of Musicke, published anonymously in 1586, treats the nature and function of ecclesiastical music and argues for the use of elaborate music in contemporary English religious institutions, whilst Apologia musices (1588) by a key Aristotelian scholar, John Case (d. 1600), discusses music in more universal and philosophical terms.11 Despite the difference between these two treatises, both address music, drawing upon the classical notion of music as essentially metaphysical and ethical –​an art which is the origin and manifestation of virtue and represents the ‘harmony of the universe’ (musica mundana). Rooted in the classical interpretation of music, they apply the ancient teaching of music to existing musical practice in redefining the nature and function of music and musician. In doing so, they underline the essence of music as the basis of moral and religious education and the role of the musician as an important agent of education and religious practice. These apologetic writings on music, which had strong ethical and religious implications, were not simply a speculative and theoretical exercise. As such, they provided theological and philosophical justifications for what was already prevalent in practice under the influence of educational and religious programmes led by the humanists and reformers.12 One of the earliest examples of the impact of the Reformation on both the theory and practice of music with a view to religious education is Louis Bourgeois’s (c. 1510–​1559) Le droict chemin de musique (‘The Direct Road to Music’), published in Geneva and Lyon in 1550.13 This book proposes abandoning the ‘Guidonian hand’, a mnemonic device associated with Guido of Arezzo (c. 995–​c. 1050), a Benedictine monk who codified the Hexachord system and 11

12

13

The Praise of Musicke. Wherein besides the antiquitie, dignitie, delectation, and vse thereof in ciuill matters, is also declared the sober and lawfull vse of the same in the congregation and Church of God (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1586); John Case, Apologia musices tam vocalis quam instrumentalis et mixtae (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1588). For studies concerning the influence of theology and religious upheavals upon the world of music during the Reformation and Renaissance, see David Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden and Peter De Mey (eds.), Music and Theology in the European Reformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018); Philippe Vendrix (ed.), Music and the Renaissance. Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-​Reformation (London: Routledge, 2016). Loys Bourgeois, Le droict chemin de musique (Geneva: Jean Gérard, 1550). For its facsimiles, see Paul-​André Gaillard (ed.), Le droict chemin de musique genf, 1550. Documenta Musicologica series 1, vol. 6 (Kassel: Barenreiter-​Verlag, 1954); Bernarr Rainbow (ed.), The Direct Road to Music =​Le droict chemin de musique 1550. Classic texts in music education, vol. 4 (Kilkenny: Reproduced under the direction of Leslie Hewitt for Boethius Press, 1982); Robert M. Copeland (ed. and trans.), Le droict chemin de musique (The Direct Path of Music) of Louis Bourgeois, Musical Theorists in Translation 19 (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2008).

Introduction

5

invented a method of solmisation through the Ut queant laxis hymn, so as to facilitate the monastic education/​learning of ecclesiastical chant practice.14 Instead of Guido’s method, which was innovatory in the pedagogy of sight-​ reading, Bourgeois presents a new system of solmisation, by printing musical notes joined with letter placed at the left side of each note. The main goal of Le droict chemin de musique was to teach the literary musical amateur how to sing the Psalms. Remarkably, Bourgeois wrote the book in the vernacular for the widest readership, when most books of elementary instruction were still written in Latin. Le droict chemin de musique is among the first books of popular music instruction, directed toward the religious education of the laity centring on the contemplation of the Word of God.15 Some of the Protestant leaders adopted this innovative system of solmisation for their new editions of the Psalter, as illustrated by Philips van Marnix’s (1540–​1598) Het Boeck der Psalmen (1580).16 This new practice of psalmody became essential to the religious education of all levels, under the spirit of the Reformation across Europe.17 14

In this hymn, the first syllable of each line falls on a different tone of the hexachord. The syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la, are used as the names of the notes from c to a (ut was eventually replaced by do). Guido explains his system of solmisation in Epistola ad michahelem. For a modern edition of his works on musical theory, including Epistola ad michahelem, see Dolores Pesce (ed. and trans.), Guido D’Arezzo’s Regule rithmice, Prologus in antiphonarium and Epistola ad michahelem. A Critical Text and Translation (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1999). 15 On the reform of musical theory in early modern Europe see Stefano Mengozzi, The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory. Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 16 Philips van Marnix, Het Boeck der Psalmen Dauids. Wt de Hebreische spraecke in Nederduytschen dichte, op de ghewoonlijcke Francoische wyse ouerghesett, door Philips van Marnix, Heere van St. Aldegonde, etc. (Antwerp: Gillis van den Rade, 1580; Fac. edn, by Jozef. G.A. Sterck, Antwerp: Gert-​Jan Buitink, 1985). Nicholas Baragwanath asserts that the Protestant attempts to establish an alternative to Guido’s ended mostly a failure or at best in narrow regional influence, except for the German custom of singing the seven letter names, which nonetheless kept partly Guido’s gamut. Nicholas Baragwanath, The Solfeggio Tradition. A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 298. 17 See, for instance, ‘Statutes of Genevan Academy (1559)’, in Karin Maag, ‘Change and Continuity in Medieval and Early Modern Worship: The Practice of Worship in the Schools’, in Karin Maag and John D. Witvliet (eds.), Worship in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Change and Continuity in Religious Practice (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 117–​118. As Maag demonstrates in examining the nexus between Reformation theology and education, though prayers and a religious education mattered in all denominations, in Geneva boys were taught to sing Psalms and recite vernacular prayers. See also Karin Maag, Lifting Hearts to the Lord. Worship with John Calvin

6 Kim Such musical enterprises promoted by leading Christian humanists and reformers are especially important in relation to the nexus of music and religious education in history. For they marked a new era of musical practice aiming at the edification of the Church, congregationally and individually. The humanists and reformers were well aware of the effects of music on the human emotions and character, and they used music extensively for their reforming programmes that concerned both public worship and private devotion.18 On the eve of the Reformation religious thinkers developed a range of new interpretations of Christian doctrinal teachings, and they incorporated their new understandings into new songs.19 Erin Lambert demonstrates how they developed various interpretations of the Resurrection, for example, through different songs. Those songs of the Resurrection, Lambert argues, reveal the diversity of understandings of body and community that emerged in the sixteenth century.20 This argument is basically in line with previous studies that have illustrated the roles music played as an efficient means of teaching, propaganda, or persuasion in reforming the Church and society.21 Mainly concerned with a specific reformation tradition and its musical practice, however, these studies seldom assess the significance of music in relation to religious education

18

19

20 21

in Sixteenth-​Century Geneva (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016), pp. 73–​95. For further discussions of music in the Reformation, see Karin Maag, Worshiping with the Reformers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021), pp. 171–​202; Christopher Brown, ‘Music in the Reformation’, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 622–​639; Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 40–​75. On religious education in the Reformation, see Charlotte Methuen, ‘Education in the Reformation’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations, pp. 484–​503; Idem, ‘Securing the Reformation through Education: The Duke’s Scholarship System of Sixteenth-​Century Wurttemberg’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 25, no. 4 (1994), pp. 841–​851. Erin Lambert, Singing the Resurrection. Body, Community and Belief in Reformation Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Daniel Trocmé-​Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523–​1541 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015); Alexander Fisher, Music, Piety and Propaganda. The Soundscapes of Counter-​Reformation Bavaria (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Hyun-​Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England. John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music. Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007); Christopher Brown, Singing the Gospel. Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Rebecca W. Oettinger, Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

Introduction

7

within the broader cultural, liturgical and intellectual context of early modern Europe from a multi-​disciplinary and cross-​confessional perspective.22 The main goal of this book is to fill that gap, by opening up a critical discourse on the intersections of music, education, liturgy and theology in the era of the Reformation and Renaissance humanism. Taken as a whole, the humanist and Reformation writings regarding music present various reflections on the function of music in religious education which concerns moral development, and social or civic cohesion. A case in point is the public censure and punishment of singing illicit songs in the city of Geneva, for the improvement of morality and discipline.23 What are the connections between musical aesthetics or ethics and religious education? How are music, musicians or musical instruments, represented in contemporary musical compositions, paintings or writings which purport to edify people in the public sphere? What are the considerations and justifications for including or excluding music associated with religious education and rituals as part of school curricula? Considering these questions, this book demonstrates the ways in which music played a critical role in educational and religious reforms and the underlying theological and philosophical notions of music. In investigating how music supported or subverted religious education, furthermore, it illustrates the intersections of music, education, and religion in terms of the formation of both lay spirituality and confessional identities in early modern Europe. The present book thus has three foci: 1) music as a pedagogical tool in public worship and private devotion reframed by the Christian humanists and reformers; 2) the representations of music, musicians or musical instruments in the new media of moral and religious education; and 3) the considerations and justifications for including or excluding music associated with religious education and rituals as part of curricula in various confessional traditions. In view of these foci, the book is divided into two parts: the first part deals with the conceptual and theoretical foundations of new musical practices promoted by some major humanists and reformers, practices which were aimed at edifying the Church; and the second part examines the way in which these

22

23

For earlier studies on music and education in the Reformation, see, for instance, Frederick W. Sternfeld, ‘Music in the Schools of the Reformation’, Musica Disciplina, 2 (1948), pp. 99–​122; Joe E. Tarry, ‘Music in the Educational Philosophy of Martin Luther’, Journal of Research in Music Education, 21, no. 4 (1973), pp. 355–​365. On songs as a subject of moral and judicial discipline in Geneva, see Melinda Latour, ‘Disciplining Song in Sixteenth-​Century Geneva’, Journal of Musicology, 32, no. 1 (2015), pp. 1–​39.

8 Kim concepts and theories were put into practice, and demonstrates the usage and representation of music, tied intimately to text and image, pictorial and poetical, across the humanist and confessional spectrum. 2

Educating the Soul through Music: The Humanist Approach

A common matrix of research presented in this book is the humanistic ad fontes approach which resulted in the discovery of classical and Christian antiquity through philology and textual criticism. An understanding of the humanistic approach is of prime importance in relation to the nexus between music and religious education of that period. For Renaissance humanism was essentially an educational movement which played a vital role in shaping new pedagogical and intellectual methods adopted for learning, sacred or secular. Hence, we cannot discuss any education in early modern Europe, musical or religious, without considering the humanist movement. One should not confuse Renaissance humanism with the popular notion or nuance of humanism in current secular society characterised by atheistic, non-​theistic, or anti-​ theistic outlooks. Renaissance humanists were so varied in theological, religious, philosophical thinking that it would be anachronistic to categorise them from a modern denominational viewpoint, even if some humanists or reformers are associated with specific denominations of the modern Christian world. Regardless of their religious and theological views, however, the humanists shared a passion for philology, and many of them turned into significant religious, social and educational reformers across the confessions. As well as the Boethian and Aristotelian thought on the pedagogical value of music, which was well-​known to medieval scholars, the Platonic philosophy of education, accessible through the recent translations by Marsilio Ficino (1433–​ 1499), underlies the humanistic endorsement of music in religious education.24 Plato emphasises that the ultimate goal of music is to educate the soul. 24

Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica, sive de immortalitate animorum (Florence: Antonio Miscomini, 1482; 2nd edn, Paris: Aegidium Gorbinum, 1559); Platonic Theology. The Immortality of Soul, edited by James Hankins with William Bowen, and translated by Michael B. Allen with John Warden (6 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–​2006). For a recent study of Boethius’s De institutione musica, which was the most important textbook on music in the university education in medieval and early modern Europe, see Cecilia Panti, ‘The Reception of Greek Music Theory in the Middle Ages: Boethius and the Portraits of Ancient Musicians’, in Tosca A. C. Lynch and Eleonora Rocconi (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Music (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020), pp. 447–​460.

Introduction

9

In Platonic terms, education (paideia) refers to the moulding of the soul; music is a useful means for educating, because “more than anything else rhythm and melody find their ways into the inmost soul and take the strongest hold upon it, … if one is rightly trained”.25 This view of the nexus of music and soul is fundamentally grounded in the Pythagorean notion of music as the sonic manifestation of ‘number’ (ratio), a notion which underlies the theoretical framework of sacred architecture and music during the Middle Ages.26 Ficino elaborates the Pythagorean-​Platonic interpretation of the music-​soul relationship and the human imitation of divina musica, which, according to him, is first and foremost through vocal music of various numbers (i.e. metres).27 The Platonic tradition of poetic music, revived by Ficino, was enormously influential in both theory and practice among humanists and reformers beyond sixteenth-​century Florence. In particular, metric songs and psalmody came to the centre of humanist musical reforms and played a significant role in the edification of the Church throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their chief concern in music was not much different from the Florentine Camerata (or the Camerata de’ Bardi).28 Although the Camerata existed from the 1570s, attempts to write metrical songs had already been made since the late fifteenth century.29 25 Plato, Republic, iii, 401d, in Plato in Twelve Volumes, vols. 5 & 6 (trans.), Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). http://​www.pers​eus.tufts.edu/​hop​ per/​text?doc=​Pers​eus%3At​ext%3A1​999.01.0168%3Ab​ook%3D3%3Asect​ion%3D4​01d. Accessed 13 April 2021. For further discussions of Platonic and Aristotelian views on the pedagogical value of music, see Mary B. Schoen-​Nazzaro, ‘Plato and Aristotle on the Ends of Music’, Laval théologique et philosophique, 34, no. 3 (1978), pp. 261–​273; Frédérique Woerther, ‘Music and the Education of the Soul in Plato and Aristotle: Homoeopathy and the Formation of Character’, Classical Quarterly, 58, no. 1 (2008), pp. 89–​103. 26 On Pythagoras’s musical theory and its reception in the Middle Ages, see Andrew Hicks, ‘Music and the Pythagorean Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, in Aurélien Robert, Irene Caiazzo and Constantinos Macris (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2021), pp. 82–​110. 27 Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Music of the Soul (Animae musica): Marsilio Ficino and the Revival of Musica humana in Renaissance Neo-​Platonism’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 19, no. 2 (2017), pp. 122–​134, at p. 129. 28 Kim, ‘Music of the Soul (Animae Musica)’, p. 131. 29 Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church in the Reformation: the Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 4, no. 1 (2017), pp. 1–​20, at p. 9. Grantley McDonald demonstrates the link between Ficino’s musical writings on metrical songs and the practice of singing Latin and Greek quantitative verse in metre and their profound influence on the development of metrical songs in Germany and elsewhere. See Grantley McDonald, Orpheus Germanicus. Metrical Music and the Reception of Marsilio Ficino’s Poetics and Music Theory in Renaissance Germany (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2002).

10 Kim The first outcome of this new musico-​poetical experiment in northern European humanism is found in the works of Conrad Celtis (1459–​1508). Andrea Horz (Chapter 5) investigates the relationship between Celtis’s Melopoiae sive harmoniae tetracenticae (1507) and early metrical singing in the Church. The metrical ode settings of the sixteenth century are closely associated with humanistic discussions about the performance of classical poetry or neo-​Latin literature. However, only in passing has it sometimes been touched upon that Christian poetry, particularly liturgical hymns, are also linked to the humanist odes set to classical metres. Beyond the evident case of Wolfgang Gräfinger’s (1470–​1515) Harmoniae, Christian hymns were combined with various metres in other famous ode collections, even such as Celtis’s Melopoiae.30 Horz demonstrates how and to what extent debates on the ancient singing practice of poetry in German-​speaking areas in the early sixteenth century are concerned with the questions of ecclesiastical chant. She provides a broader historical insight into the debate about the early Christian practice of singing and these ode settings, and discusses the relationship between old and new, Catholic and Protestant forms of ecclesiastical chant and the humanistic considerations over the pedagogical value of the musical practices. As well as the classical tradition of poetic music, ancient texts on rhetoric, especially Cicero’s De Oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, discovered toward the mid-​fifteenth century, had a profound impact on the humanists and reformers alike in redefining the nature and function of music in society. Alongside this classical literary corpus that shed new light on education and music, humanist Biblical and patristic scholarship provided an intellectual basis for the renewal of existing churches. Furthermore, in seeking ‘ancient theology’ (prisca theologia, prisca sapientia, or pia philosophia) some of the major Renaissance thinkers synthesised philosophy, theology and religion grounded in various ancient schools, including Platonism, Pythagoreanism, Hermetism (or Hermeticism), Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah, and more.31 In this 30

31

For an earlier study of Gräfinger’s Harmoniae, see Grantley McDonald, ‘The metrical harmoniae of Wolfgang Gräfinger and Ludwig Senfl in the context of Humanism, Neoplatonism and Nicodemism’, in Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes and Sonja Tröster (eds.), Senfl-​Studien i (Tutzing: H. Schneider, 2012), pp. 69–​148. In his letter to Ioannes Pannonius of Buda of the mid 1480s, Ficino defends his tenets of the ancient theology, and argues for the benefit and necessity of philosophy for religion. Marsilio Ficino, [Opera omnia] Marsilii Ficini florentini, insignis philosophi platonici, medici, atque theologi clarissimi, opera, & quae hactenus extitêre,… (2 vols., Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1576), i. 871–​872. For further discussions of the concept of prisca theologia, prisca sapientia or pia philosophia, see Theo Kobusch, ‘Pia Philosophia –​Prisca Theologia: Die Idee vom Universalen Christentum’, in Kent Emery, Russell Friedman and Andreas Speer (eds.), Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages. A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown

Introduction

11

context, the patristic efforts to reconcile pagan philosophy and culture with Judeo-​Christian religion resurged within the humanist circles through the discovery of ancient literature, Greco-​Roman, Hebraic and other Semitic. Much of the literature concerns poetry and rhetoric, inseparable from music. The ancient theories of music as a poetical and rhetorical entity appealed greatly to early modern intellectuals, for whom music was not an art for its own sake but a sister art of literary, mathematical and theological-​philosophical studies. Besides, a significant constituent of humanist philology, Christian Hebraism grew from a highly speculative interest in Judaic literary and mystical tradition; it developed into an intellectual enterprise and discipline supported by both Catholic and Protestant leaders. Accomplished Hebraists and orientalists of early modern Europe disagreed on many points, but all of them saw Hebrew as not only the oldest but also the most powerful of languages, the medium with which God had called the world into being.32 While anti-​Semitism was tenacious in European Christendom, the importance of Hebrew was recognised even among those hostile to the Jews. Despite Luther’s anti-​Semitic sentiment, the legacy of Hebraism endured in Wittenberg and other Lutheran towns. Revered as the first language through which God spoke to mankind, Biblical Hebrew had a special place in the new universities and colleges founded on the ideal of the humanist education. Johannes Reuchlin (1455–​1522) produced the first Latin translation of the Hebrew text for seven penitential Psalms, published in 1512.33 He was also the first Christian grammarian/​rhetorician who paid attention to the traditional art of chanting the Hebrew Bible.

32

33

(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2011), pp. 673–​686; Martin Mulsow, ‘Ambiguities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance Humanism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1–​13; Cesare Vasoli, ‘Der Mythos der “Prisci Theologi” als “Ideologie” der “Renavatio”’, in Martin Mulsow (ed.), Das Ende des Hermetismus historische Kritik und neue Naturphilosophie in der Spätrenaissance (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 17–​60. Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, with Alastair Hamilton, ‘I have always loved the Holy Tongue’: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: The Belkanp Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 86. On Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe, see Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–​1660). Authors, Books and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012); Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (eds.), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Joannis Reuchlin in septem psalmos poenitentiales Hebraicos interpretatio de uerbo ad uerbum, & super eisdem commentarioli sui, ad discendum linguam hebraicam ex rudimentis (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1512; 2nd edn, Wittenberg: Klug, 1529). This includes the full Hebrew text of the Psalms with his own fresh, direct translation from the Hebrew. As the codices of the Hebrew Bible were hard to obtain north of the Alps, he decided to issue at least a booklet on the Seven Penitential Psalms in Hebrew.

12 Kim Whilst existing studies of Renaissance rhetoric are mainly concerned with the Greco-​Roman legacy in the humanist writings, they rarely look at the humanist rhetorical scholarship on oriental languages and literature. Consequently, the relationship of rhetoric and Christian Hebraism remains almost unexplored, let alone its association to the music of the day, despite the central importance of Biblical studies in the original languages in early modern education. Hyun-​Ah Kim (Chapter 2) examines the way in which Hebrew Biblical chant was studied and taught by Reuchlin, whose scholarship paved the way for a new rhetorical framework of liturgical chant as a combination of aesthetical, ethical and pedagogical values during the Reformation. By examining Reuchlin’s De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (1518) that presents the earliest printed transcription of Hebrew with music, Kim illustrates the humanist pedagogy of Hebrew Biblical chant and its possible impact on the art of accented singing in the Catholic Reformation, with an emphasis on the ancient notion of accented and intoned recitation, i.e. modulata recitatio (modulated recitation). Reuchlin’s innovative pedagogy of Hebrew Biblical chant reflects strongly the humanist grammatical-​rhetorical enthusiasm for the delivery (pronuntiatio) of the Word of God, which lies at the centre of religious education across the confessions in the early modern world. 3

Defining the Notions of Intelligibility and Edification

These new musical attempts inspired by classical and Christian antiquity became a significant part of pedagogical programmes associated with new religious ideas. One should however be aware that music was still understood, basically, as a mathematical discipline which belonged to the quadrivium, alongside astronomy, geometry and arithmetic. The mathematical notion of music persisted in early modern musical thinking, though the Renaissance notion of music was centred on the classical relevance of rhetoric, poetry and moral philosophy to music. Music was not among the studia humanitatis, a cluster of five subjects (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy) constituting the humanist curriculum; but it was inextricably linked to these five subjects.34 34

For more discussions of the studia humanitatis, see Benjamin G. Kohl, ‘The Changing Concept of the “Studia Humanitatis” in the Early Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies, 6, no. 2 (1992), pp. 185–​209. For a recent study of the studia humanitatis in relation to the modern humanities, see Eric Adler, The Battle of the Classics. How a Nineteenth-​Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today (New York: Oxford University press, 2020), pp. 33–​88.

Introduction

13

Students would learn history as well as music and singing as part of poetico-​ rhetorical studies concerning versification and pronunciation, in the awareness of the classical moral philosophy of music. In this context, the rhetorico-​poetical and ethical aspects of music became vital for defining and understanding music, under the influence and inspiration of classical education.35 Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–​1536), a leading Biblical humanist and educator, criticised the existing practice of ecclesiastical music in which musical sounds, vocal and instrumental, obscured the sacred texts, and wrong accentuations and pronunciations failed to deliver the Word of God. Emphasising the importance of delivery in singing as well as in preaching in the Church, he argued that the singing of emerging Christianity was a kind of ‘modulated recitation’ comprehensible to the congregation.36 Indeed, one of the most critical issues regarding music on the eve of the Reformation concerns the intelligibility of the word in the liturgico-​musical performance. Erasmus’s frequent remarks on the need for intelligibility in church music were especially influential across the reforming movements.37 Mainstream reformers, let alone the majority of Biblical humanists, exploited music as an effective means for edifying the Church, stressing the clarity of the 35

For further discussions of the humanist notions of music as rhetoric in relation to moral philosophy, see Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘In Search of Decorum: The Humanist Union of Music, Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Günter Frank, Mathias Herweg and Franz Fuchs (eds.), Das 15. Jahrhundert, Melanchthon-​Schriften der Stadt Bretten 15 (Stuttgart: Frommann-​holzboog, 2021), pp. 261–​276. 36 See Erasmus of Rotterdam, In epistolam Pauli ad Corinthios priorem annotationes (1519), in Anne Reeve and Michael A. Screech (eds.), Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: Acts –​Romans –​i and ii Corinthians; facsimile of the final Latin text published by Froben in Basel, 1535, with all earlier variants (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), p. 507. For a recent study of Erasmus’s ideas on ecclesiasical music, see Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Erasmus on I ad Corinthios 14.15–​19: The Erasmian Theology of Music and Its Legacy in Reformation England’, in Wim François, Violet Soen, Anthony Dupont and Andrea Robiglio (eds.), Authority Revisited. Towards Thomas More and Erasmus in 1516 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 261–​304. On the reception of Erasmus, see Karl A.E. Enenkel (ed.), The Reception of Erasmus in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013). 37 Jean-​Claude Margolin, Érasme et la musique, De Pétrarque à Descartes 9 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965); Charles Béné, ‘La musique religieuse chez Erasme et dans la Dispute de Lausanne’, in Eric Junod (ed.), La Dispute de Lausanne (1536): La théologie réformée après Zwingli et avant Calvin (Lausanne: Bibliothèque historique vaudoise, 1988); Jean-​ Claude Margolin, Recherches Erasmiennes (Geneve: Droz, 1969), pp. 85–​97; Clement A. Miller, ‘Erasmus on Music’, Musical Quarterly, 52 (1966), pp. 332–​349; Helmut Fleinghaus, Die Musikanschauung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1984); Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Erasmus on Sacred Music’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 8, no. 3 (2006), pp. 277–​300; Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–​1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 108–​120, 183–​184.

14 Kim word combined with music. But not all the humanists and reformers shared this thought. The French Biblical humanist and philosopher Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1455–​1536), took a rather different view. Michael O’Connor (Chapter 1) studies Lefèvre d’Étaples’s defence of the unintelligible in church music practice, with a focus on his Quincuplex Psalterium (1509/​1513). According to O’Connor, in commenting on the Psalms Lefèvre d’Étaples combines Augustine’s idea of wordless jubilant singing (Jubilatio) with apophatic theology, and concludes that since ‘negative theology’ is superior to ‘affirmative theology’, unintelligible jubilation gives better praise than intelligible hymn-​singing. O’Connor brings together remarks from Lefèvre’s Psalm commentary which defend the unintelligible in the practice of church music; for Lefèvre, apophatic theology justifies wordless exultation and thence elaborate music. The effect is to relativize the text, allowing scope for music’s own expressive capacity to form and to educate the devotional practices of worshippers. The question of the unintelligible in church music sparked heated debates between Erasmus and the Scholastic theologians of Paris. While both agree about the importance of moderation in church music, the fundamental difference between them lies in how they perceive the edification of the laity. For the Scholastic theologians, piety and spirituality do not have to be accompanied by intellectual effort.38 Moreover, they found educating the laity via congregational reading and singing of the vernacular Bible to be potentially fatal to both the people and the Church.39 From the Scholastic standpoint, Erasmus’s view that the traditional chant and elaborate music merely soothe the ears seemed to support the errors of the heretics such as Wycliffites and Lutherans.40 For Erasmus and the Protestant reformers, however, singing both with the spirit and with understanding is godly and dutiful for every Christian, as the Apostle Paul exhorts (1 Corinthians 14:15–​19). Mattias Lundberg (Chapter 4) discusses the notion of intelligibility and edification in relation to the Swedish Reformation more specifically. The impact of this notion on the practice of liturgical music in early modern Sweden was persistent, in terms of the way it was understood and applied to the ritual of the Mass and the Office. Two of the central agents in this process of reinterpretation 38 39 40

Kim, ‘Erasmus on I ad Corinthios 14.15–​19’, p. 285 (Both the original Latin text and English translation of the debate are in this article). On instructions and prohibitions about lay-​reading of the Bible in early modern Europe, see Erminia Ardissino and Élise Boillet (eds.), Lay Readings of the Bible in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2020), pp. 65–​135. Kim, ‘Erasmus on I ad Corinthios 14.15–​19’, p. 286.

Introduction

15

of established liturgical practice were the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri (1493–​1552 and 1499–​1573, respectively). Both have left a considerable body of writings that touch upon different aspects of liturgical music. Lundberg argues that the recurring key concepts of “intelligible” (“förståndelig”) and “improvement” (“förbättring”) are to be understood on different levels of abstraction in their discussion of music and text in the ritual. While connected to language, the concept of intelligibility seems to denote not merely the decoding of a text in one’s vernacular for the laity, but also in a very real and concrete sense an improvement and edification as citizens, Christians and, ultimately as humans. Regarding the notions of intelligibility and edification pertaining to church music, the pedagogical aspect of singing in both public worship and private devotion was best tested in the practice of congregational psalmody. During the Protestant Reformation, a number of new musical compositions came into being for lay education, in devotional and spiritual practice. For instance, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–​1560), the father of German education and a principal reformer of university education, strongly recommended the use of vernacular metrical psalmody for educating the laity, thereby teaching them the Bible and morality.41 Melanchthon promoted this vernacular psalmody, in line with other humanists who employed music for pedagogical purposes in Germany, in learning both the Greco-​Roman and Hebrew literary traditions. The educational value of music was not unknown in the Scholastic academia built upon Aristotelianism, which emphasises the utility of music as a pedagogical tool, on the basis of the pleasure intrinsic to music.42

41

On Melanchthon’s views on music, see Inga Mai Groote, ‘Musikalische Poetik nach Melanchthon und Glarean: Zur Genese eines Interpretationsmodells’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 70 (2013), pp. 227–​253; Christopher Spehr, ‘Musik –​Herzschlag der Seele: Melanchthons Vorrede zu den “Selectae harmoniae” von 1538’, in Luther, Zeitschrift der Luther-​Gesellschaft. Heft1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 2–​7; Stefan Rhein, ‘Melanchthon und die Musik’, Luther, 82 (2011), pp. 117–​127; Ludwig Knopp, ‘Melanchthon in der Musik einer Zeit –​eine bibliografische Studie’, in Günter Frank und Johanna Loehr (eds.), Der Theologe Melanchthon, Melanchthon-​Schriften der Stadt Bretten 5 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), pp. 411–​432; Christoph Krummacher, Musik als praxis pietatis. zum Selbstverständnis evangelischer Kirchenmusik, Veröffentlichungen zur Liturgik, Hymnologie und theologischen Kirchenmusikforschung 27 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), pp. 11–​52. 42 Aristotle, Politics, 1340 b 10–​14.

16 Kim 4

Music, Theology and the Devotional Cultures of the Reformation

As discussed above, early German humanists such as Celtis and Reuchlin taught classical and Biblical texts by means of singing. In such a context, the function of music was not simply adding pleasant tunes to the texts. The movement of melodies and pitches themselves were supposed to be regulated by a careful consideration of the syntactical and accentual divisions of the texts which determine the rhythm of the songs. Among the Protestant reformers, Luther was most enthusiastic for combining the Word of God with the beauty of music as a gift of God, and presented new theological interpretations about beauty. Calvin also recognised the beauty of music, though he rejected existing polyphonic music, in preference to monophonic poetic songs promoted by the Florentine Platonists.43 Svein Aage Christoffersen (Chapter 3) argues for aesthetics in Luther’s theology of the cross and creation, particularly in relation to music and its role in Christian education. According to Christoffersen, Luther treated beauty dialectically, in reference to the cross as a turning point for all human wisdom and understanding: “whoever is most beautiful in the sight of God is the ugliest, and, vice versa, whoever is the ugliest is the most beautiful” (Dictata super Psalterium, 1513–​1515); “sinners are beautiful because they are loved, and not loved because they are beautiful” (Heidelberg Disputation, 1518). Later, however, Luther praises music for its ability to delight and please the human heart (Encomium musices, 1538): music is a gift of God, and there is no dialectic between this gift and the sensuous experience of it. Christoffersen emphasises the metaphysical implications of Luther’s theology of creation, and offers a new understanding of the dialectic between cross and creation, through a critical analysis of existing aesthetic studies concerning Luther’s theology of music. One might wonder how the Lutheran theology of music and its role in Christian education was embodied in a local context beyond Wittenberg. Martin Christ (Chapter 7) studies the hymns of Martin Behm (1557–​1622), the Lutheran preacher, and aspects of the influence of his hymns on religious education in context. Christ introduces the little-​known Behm and his world in order to show that music and religious education have to be seen in 43

For Calvin’s ideas of musical beauty, see Erin Lambert, ‘In corde iubilum: Music in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 14, no. 3 (2012), pp. 291–​309. For the reception of Ficino in Switzerland, especially for the engagement of the Reformed theologians such as Zwingli, Calvin and Bullinger in Ficino’s legacy, see Grantley McDonald, Marsilio Ficino in Germany from Renaissance to Enlightenment. A Reception History (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2022 [2013]), pp. 544–​554.

Introduction

17

a broader cultural context of the Lutheran Reformation. According to Christ, Behm composed a total of 480 hymns, some of them specifically for educational purposes. Many of the hymns were printed together with other materials, including sermons, woodcut illustrations or poetry, and the composition and use of the hymns was influenced by these other elements. Christ argues that these hymns also have to be understood in terms of Behm’s tenure as preacher in the Lusatian town of Lauban, where he worked during most of his life. A study of Behm helps historians to gain important insights into a kind of musical culture beyond well-​researched urban centres elsewhere in Europe. As Christ concludes, Behm’s hymns should be understood in the context of the Thirty Years War and broader political developments. While the Lutheran practice of church music consisted of both the Biblical songs (i.e. the Psalms and canticles) and newly-​composed hymns, its Reformed counterpart was dominated by the Biblical songs, the Psalms above all. But the psalmody did not originate in public worship and was not exclusively liturgical, especially in early modern France. Rather, the practice of Psalm-​singing was prevalent within aristocratic circles as a new form of musical entertainment, yet it was a stimulation which turned out to be hugely effective for private devotion. The union of vernacular versification and simple but beautiful melodies captivated the hearts of the laity from the highest born to the lowest.44 Dick Wursten (Chapter 6) examines the evolutionary process of vernacular Psalms in early Protestant music, focussing on the Psalms of Clément Marot (1496–​1544). Wursten maintains that translating the Psalter originated from the humanist ad fontes project, as promoted by the French Court, which viewed itself as a Renaissance court. The spiritual side of the Renaissance is present, but this should not immediately be equated with what later became ‘the Reformation’. The Psalter was unlocked by Marot, creating a new translation referring to the Veritas Hebraica. The liturgical use of Marot’s Psalms (an idea of Calvin’s not Marot’s) has endured the centuries and has firmly associated these religious poems with the hymn singing of emerging Protestant communities. It focuses on the Calvinist milieu, obscuring the fact that the congregational hymn-​singing was not the original ‘habitat’ of Marot’s Psalms. Wursten argues that looking at Marot’s Psalm poems retrospectively causes a severe bias which obscures their origin. By investigating the different musical approaches of Marot’s Psalms, he demonstrates that they were courtly poems, intended originally for pious reading and recitation in a private setting. 44

For more discussions about the use of Psalms in early modern Europe, see Linda Phyllis Austern, David L Orvis and Kari Boyd McBride (eds.), Psalms in the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).

18 Kim Wursten thus sheds new light on the musical approaches of Marot’s Psalms which served as a means of religious education for private devotion in the first half of the sixteenth century. Although the psalmody originated from the French royal court, it culminated in the Genevan church led by Calvin, and became music for all. But the Genevan psalmody was not confined to the city of Geneva. It spread across emerging Reformed congregations in Europe and beyond, as the Reformed refugees carried the music wherever they moved to. Timothy Duguid (Chapter 9) examines the way in which metrical psalmody was used as a tool for reforming in early modern Scotland. In 1561, just one year after the Scottish Parliament declared the country a Protestant nation, only 25% of parishes had a minister. Lingering Catholicism was widespread, particularly amongst the recently displaced Catholic clergy who were now not qualified to be ministers. Even so, Scotland was slowly transformed from a Catholic nation to a Protestant one. This, according to Duguid, can largely be attributed to the Readers Services that took the place of preaching services and that included Bible reading, the psalmody, and set prayers. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the impact of these Readers Services, there has only been limited discussion of metrical psalmody’s specific role in this shift in identity. Indeed, recent scholarship has been devoted to describing Scottish psalmody in terms of its origins and manifestations.45 The psalmody has yet to be fully explored as a pedagogical tool and vehicle for reform. Duguid thus presents evidence for the influence of psalmody on the Scottish religious reform from its infancy in the late 1520s until 1650 and beyond. 5

The Power of Music in Moral-​Religious Education: The Socio-​ institutional Implications

Meanwhile, early modern England saw one of the most unique and eclectic liturgico-​musical reforms. A main goal of the English reform of the 1540s was establishing liturgical uniformity across the country in the vernacular, alongside the spread of the vernacular Bible (The Great Bible). The first Edwardian Act of Uniformity passed in January 1549 directs the exclusive use of the Book of Common Prayer. Although the traditional rites of the English Church (Bangor, Lincoln, Hereford, York, and Sarum or Salisbury) were abolished, the

45

See, for instance, Timothy Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice. English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, 1549–​1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate [Routledge], 2014).

Introduction

19

vernacular liturgy was still delivered in the same manner of chanting as in the Latin rites.46 Yet the English reformers did not abolish the traditional chants but produced a rhythmically varied rendition of them, through a proportional musical notation devised under the influence of humanist rhetoric and quantitative versification, as illustrated by John Merbecke’s (c. 1505?–​c. 1585?) Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550).47 On the whole, the English reform of liturgical music took a moderate path in realising the ideal of “distinct and modulated pronunciation” (distincta modulataque pronuntiatio), when compared with its Reformed counterpart. This ancient manner of Christian singing advocated by Erasmus was embodied in the English reform of liturgical music, mediated through Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–​1556).48 As well as the humanist rhetoric, the ancient moral philosophy of music strongly influenced the musical practice of the English Reformation. The English reform of choral foundations focused on moral education and scholarly ability as well as the liturgy.49 This is clearly reflected in royal injunctions issued from 1547 to 1550 which stipulate the reduction of English choral foundations.50 Even later on, masters of choristers were responsible for the moral and religious education of the boys in their charge. In such a context, it was not uncommon for the choirmasters to compile commonplace books for their teaching purposes. A case in point is an extensive commonplace book by Merbecke, the organist and choirmaster of St George’s Chapel, Windsor.51 All 46

Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘The Merbecke Revival in Victorian Anglicanism: A Re-​appraisal’, Toronto Journal of Theology, 25, no. 1 (2009), pp. 57–​76, at p. 58. 47 For further discussions about the proportional notation and the Anglican reform of liturgical chant and its relation to the reform of moral education, see Kim, Humanism and The Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, pp. 154–​172. 48 The distincta modulataque pronuntiatio that Erasmus suggests as the ancient manner of Christian singing is emphasised in almost every injunction directing liturgical music in Tudor England. For further discussions, see Kim, ‘Erasmus on I ad Corinthios 14.15–​19’, pp. 294–​296. 49 On the English chorister education in the sixteenth century, see Jane Flynn, ‘The Education of Choristers during the Sixteenth Century’, in John Morehen (ed.), English Choral Practice 1400–​1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 180–​199. 50 Walter Frere and William Kennedy (eds.), Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, Alcuin Club Collections 14–​16 (3 vols., London: Longmans, 1910), ii. 200, 225, 258. 51 John Merbecke, A Booke of Notes and Common Places …. (London: Thomas East, 1581). For a discussion over musical commonplace books complied by the choirmasters as tools for the composition of polyphony and musical education, see Peter Schubert, ‘Musical Commonplaces in the Renaissance’, in Russell Murray, Jr, Susan Weiss and Cynthia Cyrus (eds.), Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 161–​192.

20 Kim the components of chorister education (music, grammar, drama) focused on moral education as well as liturgy, which continued throughout the reigns of Mary i and Elizabeth i.52 Moreover, various diocesan injunctions issued at that period indicate facility with Latin and moral excellence as crucial requirements for the appointment of clerk musicians.53 The model of musician as a moral teacher is typical of social criticism against occupational musicians in early modern England. In his Schoole of Abuse (1579), for instance, Stephen Gosson condemns pipers (i.e. organists), alongside poets and players, as the “caterpillars that devour a Commonwealth”.54 Based on the classical models of musician described in De musica of (Pseudo-​) Plutarch, one of the most influential classical writers in early modern Europe, the English polemicists emphasise that Chiron was not only a skilful musician but also a master of justice.55 In denouncing the immorality of contemporary musicians, they thus drew upon the classical notion of the musician as master of temperance and justice, stressing that music is a pathway or handmaid to virtue.56 This criticism, according to the polemicists, was not against music itself but against the abuse of music, and they argued for the socio-​ethical importance of music and musicians in the Church and society at large.57 52 53

54 55

56

57

Frere and Kennedy, Visitation Articles and Injunctions, p. 106; Flynn, ‘The Education of Choristers during the Sixteenth Century’, pp. 194–​197. This effort to improve the intellectual level of musicians bore fruit. Many church musicians, including Christopher Tye, John Merbecke and John Bull, pursued academic degrees in England from the second half of the sixteenth century onward, and some of them contributed even to theological and Biblical studies. On the English musicians who received academic degrees, see John Caldwell, ‘Music in the Faculty of Arts’, in James McConica (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford (3 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), iii. 201–​212; Nan Carpenter, ‘The Study of Music at the University of Oxford in the Renaissance (1450–​1600)’, Musical Quarterly, 41, no. 2 (1955), pp. 191–​214. Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse (London: T. Dawson for Thomas Woodcocke, 1579), fol. 9r. Gosson regards Terpander, alongside Chiron and Homer, as musicians who are wise men, learned poets and skilful musicians, far from the pipers. His view on the ancient musicians including Terpander is based on (Pseudo-​) Plutarch, De musica, 1132C–​1133D, and 1145F. The most popular moralistic critic in England in the 1580s was Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (London: Richard Jones, 1583), where Stubbes denounces the immorality of musicians vehemently. On music-​hating moralists in England in later centuries regarding theatrical music, see Maria Semi, Music as A Science of Mankind in Eighteenth-​ Century Britain (trans.), Timothy Keates (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 37–​45. In her latest book, Linda Phyllis Austern demonstrates how debates about the place of music in moral and religious education and its influence on society took place during the time of rapid religious and social change in early modern England. See Linda Phyllis

Introduction

21

More radical Protestant polemics against existing musical practice within the Church of England resulted in a series of musical apologetics. The Praise of Musicke (1586) is noteworthy in this respect, since it provides the first and most complete defence for the cultural and social value of music as a response to the Puritan attack on liturgical ceremonies, when musical practice was criticised by individuals and institutions alike.58 It considers the essence and role of music in civil and religious life, by consulting a wide range of classical and contemporary literature acknowledged in Elizabethan learned society. The landscape of church music in Elizabethan England is even more compelling in relation to the role of music in the religious education which was essential to the formation of Protestant identity and spirituality. In his Church Music and Protestantism in Post-​Reformation England, Jonathan Willis examines the relationship between the practice of religious music and the complex process of Protestant identity formation, stressing the vital importance of hearing in the early modern period.59 Indeed, music then was one of the most powerful and emotive elements of divine worship, especially through the congregational singing of Psalms in metre, which enhanced the didactic nature of Protestant worship, alongside the sermons.60 Not only among the Protestants but also among the Catholic Recusants in the post-​Reformation England, music played a significant role in their religious education and spiritual formation, especially in the domestic context of devotional life.61 Austern, Both from the Ears and Mind. Thinking about Music in Early Modern England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2020). 58 For a critical edition and interpretation of The Praise of Musicke, see Hyun-​Ah Kim, The Praise of Musicke, 1586. An Edition with Commentary (New York: Routledge, 2017). 59 Jonathan Willis, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-​Reformation England. Discourses, Sites and Identities (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). On the role of hearing in the Reformation, see Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 48. For more recent studies of the power of hearing regarding the soundscape of early modern Europe, see Tess Knighton and Ascensión Mazuela-​Anguita (eds.), Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). 60 On the English psalmody see Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme. Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–​1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For further discussions of the role of music in public worship and private devotion in Reformation England, see also Jonathan Willis, ‘Music and Religious Identity in Elizabethan London: the Value (and Limitations) of the Churchwardens’ Accounts’, in Andrew Foster and Valeri Hitchman (eds.), Views from the Parish. Churchwardens’ Accounts c.1500–​c.1800 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 179–​199; Idem, ‘Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music in Reformation England’, in Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds.), Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 131–​150. 61 See Jane Flynn, ‘English Jesuit Missionaries, Music Education, and the Musical Participation of Women in Devotional Life in Recusant Households from ca. 1580 to ca.

22 Kim In both early modern Britain and continental Europe, the new musical enterprises of humanism and the Reformation thus developed in different forms. Often, music was incorporated into the text highlighted by various images. Music, text and images were side by side, line by line, illustrated within a prayer book, thereby enhancing the effects of religious education and spiritual formation. The image could be a simple one. But in later periods, the image of music as such was used for alerting the laity to the mortality of life, on the basis of the transitory nature of musical sound associated with the vanity of the human desire for materialistic beauty. Numerous paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries present the image of music, particularly musical instruments, as symbolic of a transitory physical world and human mortality. Most famous are the still-​life paintings of musical instruments that flourished in early seventeenth-​century Netherlands. Following the controversy over the use of musical instruments in the Calvinist church particularly, these paintings express the theme of vanitas (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12:8) and provoke the spectator to repentance. The underlying notion is that musical instruments represent the temporal concept of their physical, musical sound which vanishes away, as soon as the sound is produced.62 Such visual representations of musical instruments point to how the musica instrumentalis, i.e. the music of physical sound, both vocal and instrumental, was perceived in the early seventeenth century when theatrical and instrumental music became increasingly popular and caused much controversy among church leaders, Catholic and Protestant alike. Consequently, music was often regarded as one of the ‘indifferent matters’ (adiaphora), or ‘middle things’ (Mitel Dingen), a concept used originally in Stoicism indicating things or actions neither morally mandated nor forbidden.63 At the same time, music 1630’, in Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey and Amanda E. Winkler (eds.), Beyond Boundaries. Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England (Blumington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017), pp. 28–​41. 62 The Italian priest Evaristo Baschenis (1607–​1677) is among the most renowned painters who express the concept of time through still-​life paintings, where musical instruments are the dominant feature of the pictorial space. Gioia Filocamo argues that Baschenis’s experience of musicians influenced his still-​ life paintings of musical instruments, where he not only reproduced the notion of transience, common to all the widespread representations of caducity (soap bubbles, rotten fruits, skulls, etc.), but also projected it towards a​ ‘ritualised emotional time’ that expands during the musical flow. Gioia Filocamo, ‘Emotion, Edification and Musical Iconography: Reinterpreting Baschenis’s Still-​life Paintings through his Conception of Time’, unpublished paper presented at the Eighth Annual RefoRC Conference (University of Warsaw, 24–​26 May, 2018). 63 The adiaphora in Christianity, applied first by Melanchthon, concern matters that are not regarded as essential to salvation, yet as permissible in the Church. Unlike their opponents

Introduction

23

was widely used for edifying the laity across the confessions, which paved the way for the advance of popular sacred music, institutionally and domestically. Indeed, across various religious institutions, including churches, monasteries, convents, confraternities, as well as domestic service/​prayers, music did play an important role in uniting and teaching those gathered, beyond private tutoring of aristocrats’ children and university classrooms. Noel O’Regan (Chapter 8) discusses the place of music in the curricula of charitable and religious institutions in early modern Rome specifically. Like other early modern European cities Rome had a plethora of charitable institutions directed at relieving poverty, providing protection for orphans and others regarded as at risk. Education was offered for religious reasons in the first instance, but also as a preparation for work and for civic life. The usefulness of music in both these processes was recognised, particularly in the decades after the end of the Council of Trent. O’Regan provides evidence for the use of music in religious and moral education–​in the broad sense –​promoted by charitable institutions. Special attention is given to the education of girls, by using evidence from the archives of the Conservatorio di S. Caterina dei Funari and the orphanage of S. Maria della Visitatione specifically. O’Regan thus demonstrates that music was not just a subject of study at these institutions; it also had a practical use in the often elaborate rituals celebrated by these and similar institutions. 6

The Scope of Future Research on the Theme in Question

As has been outlined thus far, this book brings together the latest critical discourses on the interplay between music and religious education within the broader context of early modern Europe, an interplay which had changed not only the way of worshipping or praying but that of edifying the laity as the active, central subject of both public worship and private devotion. A pioneering attempt to explore the theme in question, these nine studies presented (esp. Calvinists) who took an adiaphoristic position over music used in church, orthodox Lutherans affirmed music as essentially good rather than as neutral, though not always consistent or clear about musical forms in question. They defended figural and instrumental music as well as singing in foreign languages in church. Consequently, church music was affirmed in all its forms, despite its potential negative effects on the congregation. For further discussions of the adiapahora controversy and on the changed meaning of adiaphora, from ecclesial to cultural, from liturgical to ethical, see Joyce Irwin, Neither Voice nor Heart Alone. German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Ages of the Baroque (New York: Peter Lang, 1993).

24 Kim here do not cover all aspects of the relationship between music and religious education across early modern Europe. We anticipate further research on the theme, particularly with regard to Eastern Europe and the colonial contexts of European Christendom in the early modern period.64 Nor does this book treat what specific type of music or song was adopted for teaching certain Christian doctrines advocated by early modern religious thinkers and educators. But the present volume calls into question what theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings lie behind the use of music for teaching such new theological and dogmatic concepts, and it investigates the cultural, intellectual, religious and theological frameworks in which new musical practices and theories were promoted to edify the Church as a whole, which was the most prevailing religious institution in early modern European society. Through the present book, it will therefore become clear that the pragmatic use of music for religious education stimulated by the humanism and the Reformation was not simply based on the view of music as a gift of God; but it resulted from serious ethical, social and theological considerations on the place of music in religious life, in parallel with the reforming zeal of existing Church and society. Throughout the centuries, the transmission of religious faith, identities and values relies on education, institutionally or otherwise, from one generation to another. In this regard, the intellectual, musical and religious culture of early modern Europe is important and intriguing in bridging antiquity and modernity. For it harboured classical and Christian antiquity which resurged through literary enthusiasm, while much of modern religious practice rooted in the European Christianity was shaped by that process of revival. By demonstrating that music was an essential factor of religious culture and education in early modern Europe, this book will retrieve some of the important linkages which have been missing or overlooked in current scholarship, while at the same time raising questions over the place of music in the edification of the Church/​churches, universal and local, old and new.

64

For a recent, pioneering study concerning the musical, religious, commercial, and educational cultures of the eighteenth-​century colonies especially in relation the psalmody as transmitted via transatlantic music, lyrics and sacred singing, see Stephen A. Marini, The Cashaway Psalmody. Transatlantic Religion and Music in Colonial Carolina (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2021).

Introduction



25

Bibliography

Anonymous, The Praise of Musicke. Wherein besides the antiquitie, dignitie, delectation, and vse thereof in ciuill matters, is also declared the sober and lawfull vse of the same in the congregation and Church of God (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1586), ustc number: 510509. Adler, Eric, The Battle of the Classics. How A Nineteenth-​Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today (New York: Oxford University press, 2020). Ardissino, Erminia and Élise Boillet (eds.), Lay Readings of the Bible in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2020). Aristotle, Politics (ed.) and (trans.), Harris Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944). Austern, Linda Phyllis, Both from the Ears and Mind. Thinking about Music in Early Modern England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2020). Baragwanath, Nicholas, The Solfeggio Tradition. A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Béné, Charles, ‘La musique religieuse chez Erasme et dans la Dispute de Lausanne’, in Eric Junod (ed.), La Dispute de Lausanne (1536). La théologie réformée après Zwingli et avant Calvin (Lausanne: Bibliothèque historique vaudoise, 1988). Bourgeois, Louis, Le droict chemin de musique (Geneva: Jean Gérard, 1550); facs. Paul-​André Gaillard (ed.), Le droict chemin de musique genf, 1550. Documenta Musicologica series 1, vol. 6. Kassel: Barenreiter-​Verlag, 1954; Bernarr Rainbow (ed.), The direct road to music =​Le droict chemin de musique 1550, Classic texts in music education vol. 4. (Kilkenny: reproduced under the direction of Leslie Hewitt for Boethius Press, 1982); Robert M. Copeland (ed. and trans.), Le Droict Chemin de Musique (The Direct Path of Music) of Louis Bourgeois, Musical Theorists in Translation 19 (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2008). Brown, Christopher, ‘Music in the Reformation’, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 622–​639. Brown, Christopher, Singing the Gospel. Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). Burn, David, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden and Peter De Mey (eds.), Music and Theology in the European Reformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). Burnett, Stephen G., Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–​1660). Authors, Books and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012). Caldwell, John, ‘Music in the Faculty of Arts’, in James McConica (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford (3vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), iii. 201–​212. Carpenter, Nan, ‘The Study of Music at the University of Oxford in the Renaissance (1450 –​1600)’, Musical Quarterly, 41, no. 2 (1955), pp. 191–​214.

26 Kim Carr, David, ‘The Significance of Music for the Promotion of Moral and Spiritual Value’, Philosophy of Music Education Review, 14, no. 2 (2006), pp. 103–​117. Case, John, Apologia musices tam vocalis quam instrumentalis et mixtae (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1588), ustc number: 510927. Coudert, Allison P. and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (eds.), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pensylvania Prss, 2004). Duguid, Timothy, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice. English ‘Singing Psalms’ and Scottish ‘Psalm Buiks’, 1549–​1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate [Routledge], 2014). Erasmus, Desiderius, In epistolam Pauli ad Corinthios priorem annotationes (1519), in Anne Reeve and Michael A. Screech (eds.), Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: Acts –​Romans –​i and ii Corinthians; facsimile of the final Latin text published by Froben in Basel, 1535, with all earlier variants (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990). Ficino, Marsilio, Platonica theologia de immortalitate animorum (Florence: Antonio Miscomini, 1482; 2nd edn, Paris: Aegidium Gorbinum, 1559); Platonic Theology. The Immortality of Soul, edited by James Hankins with William Bowen, and translated by Michael B. Allen with John Warden (6 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–​2006), ustc number: 994999. Ficino, Marsilio, [Opera omnia] Marsilii Ficini florentini, insignis philosophi platonici, medici, atque theologi clarissimi, opera, & quae hactenus extitêre,… (2 vols., Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1576). Fisher, Alexander, Music, Piety and Propaganda. The Soundscapes of Counter-​ Reformation Bavaria (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Fleinghaus, Helmut, Die Musikanschauung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1984). Flynn, Jane, ‘English Jesuit Missionaries, Music Education and the Musical Participation of Women in Devotional Life in Recusant Households from ca. 1580 to ca. 1630’, in Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey and Amanda E. Winkler (eds.), Beyond Boundaries. Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017), pp. 28–​41. Flynn, Jane, ‘The Education of Choristers during the Sixteenth Century’, in John Morehen (ed.), English Choral Practice 1400–​1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 180–​199. Frere, Walter and William Kennedy (eds.), Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, Alcuin Club Collections 14–​16 (3 vols., London: Longmans, 1910). Gosson, Stephen, The Schoole of Abuse conteining a plesaunt [sic] invective against poets, pipers, plaiers, jesters, and such like caterpillers of a commonwelth …. (London: T. Dawson for Thomas Woodcocke, 1579), ustc number: 508798.

Introduction

27

Grafton, Anthony and Joanna Weinberg, with Alastair Hamilton, ‘I have always loved the Holy Tongue’. Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: The Belkanp Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). Groote, Inga M., ‘Musikalische Poetik nach Melanchthon und Glarean: Zur Genese eines Interpretationsmodells’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 70 (2013), pp. 227–​253. Guido of Arezzo, Guido D’Arezzo’s Regule rithmice, Prologus in antiphonarium, and Epistola ad michahelem. A Critical Text and Translation, (ed. and trans.) Dolores Pesce (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1999). Hascher-​Burger, Ulrike, Gesungene Innigkeit. Studien zu einer Musikhandschrift der Devotio moderna (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, ms. 16 H 34, olim B 113). mit einer Edition der Gesänge (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002). Hascher-​Burger, Ulrike, Singen für die Seligkeit. Studien zu einer Liedersammlung der Devotio moderna: Zwolle, Historisch Centrum Overijssel, coll. Emmanuelshuizen, cat. vi. mit Edition und Faksimile (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007). Hascher-​Burger, Ulrike, and Hermina Joldersma (eds.), Special Issue: ‘Music in the Spiritual Culture of the Devotio Moderna’, Church History and Religious Culture, 88, no. 3 (2008). Hebert, David G. and Alexandra Kertz-​Welzel (eds.), Patriotism and Nationalism in Music Education (New York: Routledge, 2012). Herl, Joseph, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism. Choir, Congregation and Three Centuries of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Hicks, Andrew, ‘Music and the Pythagorean Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages’, in Aurélien Robert, Irene Caiazzo and Constantinos Macris (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2021), pp. 82–​110. Irwin, Joyce, Neither Voice nor Heart Alone. German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Ages of the Baroque (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). Jeffery, Robert, ‘Note on the Translation’, in Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. Translated and with Notes by Robert Jeffery, with an Introduction by Max von Habsburg (London: Penguin Classics, 2013), pp. xxxvii–​xxxix. Kallio, Alexis, Philip Alperson and Heidi Westerlund (eds.), Music, Education and Religion. Intersections and Entanglements (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019). Kertz-​Welzel, Alexandra, ‘Advocatus diaboli: revisiting the devil’s role in music and music education’, in Alexis Kallio, Philip Alperson and Heidi Westerlund (eds.), Music, Education and Religion. Intersections and Entanglements (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019), pp. 171–​180. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘In Search of Decorum: The Humanist Union of Music, Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy in the Late Fifteenth Century’, in Günter Frank, Mathias Herweg

28 Kim and Franz Fuchs (eds.), Das 15. Jahrhundert, Melanchthon-​Schriften der Stadt Bretten 15 (Stuttgart: Frommann-​holzboog, 2021), pp. 261–​276. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Erasmus on I ad Corinthios 14.15–​19: The Erasmian Theology of Music and Its Legacy in Reformation England’, in Wim François, Violet Soen, Anthony Dupont and Andrea Robiglio (eds.), Authority Revisited. Towards Thomas More and Erasmus in 1516, Lectio series 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 261–​304. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘The Humanist Defense of Music Education in Civil and Religious Life: The Praise of Musicke (1586) and Apologia Musices (1588)’, in Heidi Westerlund, Philip Alperson and Alexis Kallio (eds.), Music, Education and Religion. Intersections and Entanglements (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019), pp. 183–​195. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church in the Reformation: the Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 4, no. 1 (2017), pp. 1–​20. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, The Praise of Musicke, 1586. An Edition with Commentary, Music Theory in Britain 1500–​1700: Critical Editions (New York: Routledge, 2017). Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Music of the Soul (Animae Musica): Marsilio Ficino and the Revival of Musica humana in Renaissance Neo-​Platonism’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 19, no. 2 (2017), pp. 122–​134. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, The Renaissance Ethics of Music. Singing, Contemplation and Musica Humana (London: Pickering & Chatto [Routledge], 2015). Kim, Hyun-​Ah, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England. John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate [Routledge], 2008). Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Erasmus on Sacred Music’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 8, no. 3 (2006), pp. 277–​300. Knighton, Tess and Ascensión Mazuela-​Anguita (eds.), Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). Knopp, Ludwig, ‘Melanchthon in der Musik einer Zeit –​eine bibliografische Studie’, in Günter Frank und Johanna Loehr (eds.), Der Theologe Melanchthon, Melanchthon-​ Schriften der Stadt Bretten 5 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), pp. 411–​432. Kobusch, Theo, ‘Pia Philosophia –​Prisca Theologia: Die Idee vom Universalen Christentum’, in Kent Emery, Russell Friedman and Andreas Speer (eds.), Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages. A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2011), pp. 673–​686. Kohl, Benjamin G., ‘The Changing Concept of the ‘Studia Humanitatis’ in the Early Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies, 6, no. 2 (1992), pp. 185–​209. Krummacher, Christoph, Musik als praxis pietatis. zum Selbstverständnis evangelischer Kirchenmusik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994). Latour, Melinda, ‘Disciplining Song in Sixteenth-​ Century Geneva’, Journal of Musicology, 32, no. 1 (2015), pp. 1–​39.

Introduction

29

Leaver, Robin. A., Luther’s Liturgical Music. Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). Maag, Karin, Worshipping with the Reformers (Champlaign, IL: InterVasity Press, 2021). Maag, Karin, Lifting Hearts to the Lord. Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-​Century Geneva (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016). Maag, Karin and John D. Witvliet (eds.), Worship in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Change and Continuity in Religious Practice (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004). Margolin, Jean-​Claude, Recherches Erasmiennes (Geneve: Droz, 1969), pp. 85–​97. Margolin, Jean-​Claude, Érasme et la musique, De Pétrarque à Descartes 9 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965). Marini, Stephen A., The Cashaway Psalmody. Transatlantic Religion and Music in Colonial Carolina (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2021). Van Marnix, Philips, Het Boeck der Psalmen Dauids. Wt de Hebreische spraecke in Nederduytschen dichte, op de ghewoonlijcke Francoische wyse ouerghesett, door Philips van Marnix, Heere van St. Aldegonde, etc. (Antwerp: Gillis van den Rade, 1580; Fac. edn, by Jozef. G.A. Sterck; Antwerp: Gert-​Jan Buitink, 1985). Marsh, Christopher, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). McDonald, Grantley, Marsilio Ficino in Germany from Renaissance to Enlightenment. A Reception History (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2022 [2013]). McDonald, Grantley, ‘The Metrical Harmoniae of Wolfgang Gräfinger and Ludwig Senfl in the Context of Humanism, Neoplatonism and Nicodemism’, in Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes and Sonja Tröster (eds.), Senfl-​Studien i (Tutzing: H. Schneider, 2012), pp. 69–​148. McDonald, Grantley, Orpheus Germanicus. Metrical Music and the Reception of Marsilio Ficino’s Poetics and Music Theory in Renaissance Germany (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2002). Mengozzi, Stefano, The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory. Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Merbecke, John, A Booke of Notes and Common Places …. (London: Thomas East, 1581). ustc number: 509381. Methuen, Charlotte, ‘Education in the Reformation’, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 484–​503. Methuen, Charlotte, ‘Securing the Reformation through Education: The Duke’s Scholarship System of Sixteenth-​Century Wurttemberg’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 25, no. 4 (1994), pp. 841–​851. Miller, Clement A., ‘Erasmus on Music’, Musical Quarterly, 52 (1966), pp. 332–​349.

30 Kim Mulsow, Martin, ‘Ambiguities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance Humanism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1–​13. Oettinger, Rebecca W., Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). Panti, Cecilia, ‘The Reception of Greek Music Theory in the Middle Ages: Boethius and the Portraits of Ancient Musicians’, in Tosca A. C. Lynch, and Eleonora Rocconi (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Music (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020), pp. 447–​460. Patrick, Millar, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody (London: Oxford University Press, 1949). Pettegree, Andrew, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 40–​75. Plato, Republic, in Paul Shorey (trans.), Plato in Twelve Volumes, vols. 5 & 6 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). Quitslund, Beth, The Reformation in Rhyme. Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–​1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Rhein, Stefan, ‘Melanchthon und die Musik’, Luther, 82 (2011), pp. 117–​127. Rublack, Ulinka, Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Schoen-​Nazzaro, Mary B., ‘Plato and Aristotle on the Ends of Music’, Laval théologique et philosophique, 34, no. 3 (1978), pp. 261–​273. Scruton, Roger, ‘The Decline of Musical Culture’, in Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (eds.), Arguing About Art. Contemporary Philosophical Debates (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 119–​134. Spehr, Christopher, ‘Musik –​Herzschlag der Seele: Melanchthons Vorrede zu den “Selectae harmoniae” von 1538’, in Luther. Zeitschrift der Luther-​Gesellschaft Heft1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 2–​7. Sternfeld, Frederick W., ‘Music in the Schools of the Reformation’, Musica Disciplina, 2 (1948), pp. 99–​122. Stubbes, Phillip, The Anatomie of Abuses (London: Richard Jones, 1583). ustc number: 517663. Tarry, Joe E., ‘Music in the Educational Philosophy of Martin Luther’, Journal of Research in Music Education, 21, no. 4 (1973), pp. 355–​365. Trocmé-​Latter, Daniel, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523–​1541 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). Vasoli, Cesare, ‘Der Mythos der “Prisci Theologi” als “Ideologie” der “Renavatio”’, in Martin Mulsow (ed.), Das Ende des Hermetismus historische Kritik und neue Naturphilosophie in der Spätrenaissance (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 17–​60. Vendrix, Philippe (ed.), Music and the Renaissance. Renaissance, Reformation and Counter-​Reformation (London: Routledge, 2016).

Introduction

31

Wegman, Rob C., The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–​1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005). Weiss, Susan F., Russell E. Murray Jr. and Cynthia J. Cyrus (eds.), Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010). Willis, Jonathan, ‘Music and Religious Identity in Elizabethan London: the Value (and Limitations) of the Churchwardens’ Accounts’, in Andrew Foster and Valeri Hitchman (eds.), Views from the Parish. Churchwardens’ Accounts c.1500–​c.1800 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 179–​199. Willis, Jonathan, ‘Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music in Reformation England’, in Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds.), Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 131–​150. Willis, Jonathan, Church Music and Protestantism in Post-​ Reformation England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Woerther, Frédérique, ‘Music and the Education of the Soul in Plato and Aristotle: Homoeopathy and the Formation of Character’, Classical Quarterly, 58, no. 1 (2008), pp. 89–​103.

pa rt 1 Music, Pedagogy and Edification Concepts and Theories

∵

­c hapter 1

“Singing without Understanding”

The Defence of the Unintelligible in Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Quincuplex Psalterium (1509/​1513) Michael O’Connor 1

Introduction

It is a commonplace among theologians and liturgists that the purpose of music in worship is to serve the text. This logocentric principle has its roots in the New Testament and its champions in Athanasius, Augustine, and Calvin. It is the rule by which compositions and performance practices are evaluated in churches throughout the world. In this chapter, I will explore an alternative view: that music, with its own specific qualities and its intimate engagement with the human voice, has a unique and somewhat autonomous role in Christian prayer. This view is found in the writings of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–​1536), particularly in his work on the Psalms. There are many studies dealing with Lefèvre’s biblical exegesis, his place in Renaissance humanism, and his relationship with the Protestant Reformation, but little so far on music. The principal aim of the present chapter is to examine Lefèvre’s Quincuplex Psalterium, and to draw together the scattered remarks he makes there on music’s vital and irreducible place in Christian life. Lefèvre speaks for the tradition of negative or apophatic theology –​the tradition which emphasises the ineffability of God and the inadequacy of human words to capture the things of God. In this context, Lefèvre finds music offering a potentially superior form of theological and devotional expression, especially jubilation or jubilant singing –​a kind of praise that does not strive to express the inexpressible, but simply overflows with joy and gratitude. Misquoting the apostle Paul, we might call this “singing without understanding” (see 1 Corinthians 14:15).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

36 O’Connor 2

A Life of Words

Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, also known by his Latin name Faber Stapulensis, was a priest, professor of liberal arts, church reformer, and bible translator.1 As a young scholar, Lefèvre lectured at the Collège du Cardinal Lemoine in Paris. His publications in this period mainly concentrate on Aristotle; they include the treatise Elementa musicalia (1496) as well as a commentary on Aristotle’s Politics (1506). The treatise, “arguably Lefèvre’s most original contribution to any field”,2 and a significant influence on later theorists, has just begun to receive the attention it merits.3 The commentary on Aristotle’s Politics awaits analysis from a musical point of view. In 1508 Lefèvre stepped away from a formal teaching role and moved to the abbey of Saint-​Germain des-​Prés, at the invitation of the abbot, Guillaume Briçonnet (1470–​1534). He continued to work on Aristotle, but he also dedicated a great deal of attention to the Church Fathers, the mystics, and to scripture. By this time, his reputation was growing; it was said of him that he: Restored the liberal arts to their antique splendor; that he freed every part of philosophy from the fog of barbarous sophistry; that he was the first of the Gauls (like Cicero among the Romans) to join previously rude and unpolished philosophy with eloquence; and that he gave himself heart and soul to the study of divine things, helping the professional theologians by restoring, emending, explaining and publishing scriptural and theological texts.4 1 On Lefèvre, see Guy Bedouelle, Lefèvre d’Étaples et l’Intelligence des Écritures (Geneva: Droz, 1976); Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Lefèvre, Pioneer of Ecclesiastical Renewal in France (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984). 2 Richard J. Oosterhoff, ‘Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), accessed 4 April 2016, http://​plato.stanf​ ord.edu/​archi​ves/​sum2​015/​entr​ies/​lefe​vre-​etap​les/​. 3 Oosterhoff gives a glimpse the treatise’s blend of theoretical and practical approaches: “In his most original treatise on music theory, he thanked two music teachers. Their tutelage affected Lefèvre’s theoretical work too, as he apologised for breaking formal rules in music theory in order to accommodate certain elements of practice. The work’s crowning example was Lefèvre’s geometrical technique for dividing the interval into ‘irrational’ proportions—​ proportions of the sort musicians actually used to tune instruments”. Richard J. Oosterhoff, ‘Idiotae, Mathematics, and Artisans: The Untutored Mind and the Discovery of Nature in the Fabrist Circle’, Intellectual History Review, 24, no. 3 (2014), pp. 301–​319, at p. 310. See also Richard J. Oosterhoff, Making Mathematical Culture. University and Print in the Circle of Lefèvre d’Etaples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 150–​161. 4 Eugene F. Rice (ed.), The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Related Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. xv. Hereafter cited as Rice, pe.

“Singing without Understanding”

37

Two central works of this period are his Quincuplex Psalterium (1509/​1513)5 –​ his edition of five different Latin versions of the Psalter with commentary and notes –​and new Latin translations and explanations of the Epistles of St. Paul (1512/​1515).6 These texts cemented his position at court; he was sought after as an advisor especially to Marguerite Alençon (later of Navarre), sister of King Francois i, and their mother Louise. Prompted by a royal pilgrimage, he was asked to write a hagiography of Mary Magdalen. In the resulting treatise he challenged the traditional view which identified, in one individual, the sinner who anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:36–​50), with Mary of Magdala, from whom Jesus cast out seven demons (Luke 8:3), and with Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who anointed Jesus at Bethany (John 12:1–​7). This only served to increase his celebrity.7 In June 1521 Briçonnet called him to his diocese of Meaux to assist with ambitious plans for church reform. His attention now moved almost entirely to scripture, with a lay audience in mind. He led the group that produced a French translation of the Bible and commentaries on the readings appointed for the Sundays of the year. Inevitably, to some ears this sounded like Lutheranism. When the King, his de facto protector, was captured by the Emperor’s forces, Lefèvre’s work was formally investigated by the Theology Faculty of the University of Paris. He fled to Strasbourg in the late summer of 1525 –​at that time under the leadership of the reformer Martin Bucer (1491–​1551).8 Lefèvre’s final years were passed in relative tranquility. On his return from imprisonment, the king made Lefèvre librarian at the royal palace of Blois and tutor to his children. From there he went to the court of Marguerite of Navarre; he died at Nérac in 1536. According to Eugene F. Rice, Lefèvre showed a “sympathetic interest” in Luther:

5 Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Quincuplex Psalterium (Paris: Estienne, 1509; 2nd edn, Paris: Estienne, 1513). The second edition is reprinted in Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 170 (Geneva: Droz, 1979), hereafter cited as QP. Guy Bedouelle, Le Quincuplex Psalterium De Lefèvre D’Étaples: Un Guide De Lecture (Geneva: Droz, 1979). 6 Commentarii D. Pauli epistolarum (Paris: Estienne, 1512; 2nd edn, Paris: Estienne, 1515). Irena Backus, ‘Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. A Humanist or a Reformist View of Paul in His Theology?’, in R. Ward Holder (ed.), A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2009), pp. 61–​90. 7 Sheila M. Porrer (ed. and trans.), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples and the Three Maries Debates (Geneva: Droz, 2009). 8 For speculation about the details of this episode, see Reid, King’s Sister, pp. 341–​345; Jules-​ Alexandre Clerval, ‘Strasbourg et la Réforme française’, Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France, 7 (1921), pp. 139–​160.

38 O’Connor A common devotion to St. Paul gives their doctrines of justification a superficial resemblance, while direct Lutheran influence can be detected in his last works. But he remained too attached to Catholic sentiment and practice and too committed to the image of human liberty and dignity in Aristotle and the Greek Fathers to break with tradition.9 We can summarise Lefèvre’s pedagogical itinerary as one that begins in an academic context among predominantly celibate male clergy and religious, but subsequently, by way of the court and with the backing of influential women in the royal household, arrives at a pastoral and predominantly lay context, where women and families would have made up a large part of his audience, and where vernacular French was the typical language of instruction. While this chapter attends to the earlier phase, it will become clear that the distinction between these two phases should not be exaggerated. 3

Lefèvre and the Psalms

In the Preface to the Quincuplex Psalterium, Lefèvre speaks of his turn to theological studies: But even after a haphazard sampling of divine things I saw so much light shine forth that, by comparison, the human disciplines seemed like darkness. They breathed a fragrance of such sweetness that nothing like it can be found on earth, nor could I believe that there is any other earthly paradise whose odor could lead souls toward immortality.10 Lefèvre’s biblical works were intended for the benefit of monks and clergy –​ those who study the scriptures and who pray the Psalms every day.11 He is in 9 10

11

Eugene F. Rice, ‘Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques’, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edn., vol. 8 (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2003), pp. 449–​450. Heiko A. Oberman (ed.), Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 297 (“at ex illa quamvis remota delibatione tanta lux affulgere visa est ut eius comparatione disciplinae humanae mihi visae sint tenebrae, tanta spirare fragrantia ut illi sua violentiae nihil inveniatur in terris simile; neque aliam crediderim terrenam paradisum cuius odore in vitae immortalitatem foveantur animae”. Rice, pe, p. 193). See Jean-​Marie Le Gall, ‘Les moines au temps de Lefèvre d’Etaples et Guillaume Briçonnet à Saint-​Germain-​des-​Prés’, in Jean-​François Pernot (ed.), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1450?–​ 1536) (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1995), pp. 125–​140. The royal family shared this concern for monastic reform –​the majority of Marguerite’s letters before 1521 are

“Singing without Understanding”

39

no doubt as to the need for such material; on his frequent visits to monasteries, he sees widespread neglect of the true spiritual nourishment that comes from “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). This neglect deals a mortal blow to Christian community: Those who do not love this sweetness are dead in spirit. And from the moment that these pious studies are no longer pursued, monasteries decay, devotion dies out, the flame of religion is extinguished, spiritual things are traded for earthly goods, heaven is given up and earth is accepted –​the most disastrous transaction conceivable.12 When he asks the monks what effect the words of scripture have on them, they confess that “they became utterly sad and downcast from their reading”.13 In his earlier work on music, he had supplied a list of music’s miraculous powers, culled from ancient authorities, including the power of healing mind and body.14 Now in his work on the Psalter, he proposes a role for music that, when combined with the inspired texts themselves, offers the most exquisite sweetness and consolation. The psalmist says: “Your decrees were the subject of my song, in the place of pilgrimage” (Psalm 118 [119]:54).15 The “place of pilgrimage” is the world through which we journey in this life. Music is the sweetest thing to the hearer, and a strong protection against sadness. Sadness constricts the heart and quenches the spirit. Music, on the other hand, opens the heart and calls the spirit, as it were, from the prison of darkness, into an open space. There is no medication more powerful against the heart’s anxieties and the spirit’s failings, no sweeter harmony, than the song (“modulatio”) of concerned with reforming religious houses; see Jonathan A. Reid, King’s Sister –​Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–​1549) and Her Evangelical Network (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2009), p. 106. 12 Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation, p. 297 (“Frequens coenobia subii, at qui hanc ignorarent dulcedinem, veros animorum cibos nescire prorsus existimavi; vivunt enim spiritus ex omni verbo quod procedit de ore Dei, et quaenam verba illi nisi sacra eloquia? Mortuos igitur qui eiusmodi sunt spiritus habent. Et ab eo tempore quo ea pietatis desiere studia coenobia periere, devotio interiit, et extincta est religio, et spiritualia pro terrenis sunt commutata, caelum dimissum et accepta terra, infoelicissimum sane commercii genus”. Rice, pe, p. 193). 13 “… se multum tristes et animo deiecto ex illa lectione abscedere solitos”, Rice, pe, p. 193. 14 See Ann E. Moyer, ‘The Quadrivium and the Decline of Boethian Influence’, in Noel H. Kaylor and Philip E. Phillips (eds.), A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012), pp. 479–​517, at p. 497. The list itself is in Rice, pe, pp. 30–​32. 15 Lefèvre numbers the Psalms according to the Vulgate and the Septuagint; the Hebrew numbering, followed by most modern English translations, is given in square brackets.

40 O’Connor divine decrees (“Your decrees were the subject of my song”).16 It is quite clear that for Lefèvre, the singing of praise is not an option for the devout disciple; it is a duty, albeit both a pleasant and beneficial one. He adds to this argument from experience an argument from authority that urges his readers to approach the Psalms with great reverence. In the Politics, Aristotle had suggested that children be taught music –​not that they continue to play music in adult life, but that they have a discerning palate for the music that is performed for them; a musician’s work is ultimately servile work, not for the educated elites for whom Aristotle was writing. In his commentary on this work, Lefèvre notes that Aristotle justifies this by observing that Zeus himself was never said to sing, or play the lyre –​he was above that kind of common labour.17 In the Quincuplex Psalterium, however, expounding Psalm 112 [113] (“Laudate pueri dominum”), Lefèvre notes that because this was the Psalm assigned for the end of the Passover meal, it must be the Psalm sung at the end of the Last Supper, as Matthew’s gospel says, “after they had all sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (Matthew 26:30). For Lefèvre, this Psalm is to be held in especial reverence not only on account of the saints and apostles who sang it, but because the Lord himself, the author of all goodness, together with his disciples, pronounced the words of this Psalm with his sacred and almighty mouth.18 Lefèvre’s pedagogical purpose is to deepen his readers’ understanding of the biblical text through accurate translation and historically informed

16

17

18

“Musica /​res est suavissima auditui: et adversus tristitias validum munimentum, nec ab re quidem. Nam hae cor constringunt et angustiatos spiritus mortificant: illa vero cor dilatat /​et quasi ex ergastuli tenebris /​spiritus evocat in amplum. Verum infinitae bonitatis dominator immensae: nulla suavior harmonia /​nullum valentius adversus cordis angustias et animi defectionis medicamentum quam in intimis mentis suae penetralibus modulatio iustificationum tuarum. Et ideo servus tuus sive dulci contemplatione tua laetus /​sive malis offensus: illas semper animo decantabat. Cantabiles (inquit) michi errant iustificationes tuae: in loco peregrinatinis meae. Nos pariter erudiens in hac mortalis vitae peregrinatione /​sive ex spectaculo honorificationum divinarum laeti fuerimus /​sive ex inhonorificatione graviter molestia affecti /​nunquam a spirituali melo /​qui omnem quae sensu percipi posit /​evincit harmonia /​nobis esse cessandum”. qp 180r–​v. Lefèvre’s commentary, dating from 1506, can be found in Aristotle, Contenta. Politicorum Libri Octo; Commentarii ( Jacobi Fabri Stapulensis in Eosdem); Economicorum Duo; Commentarii (Fabri); Hecatonomia Septem; Economiarum Publicarum Unus; Explanationes Leonardi (Aretini) in Oeconomica Duo (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1526), 129r. “Unde et a modo maior michi circa hunc hymnum reverentia: quod credam non modo sanctos et apostolos /​sed et ipsum dominum et authorem totius bonitatem /​cum suis discipulis sacro et omnipotenti ore suo hunc hymnum pronunciasse”. qp 165v.

“Singing without Understanding”

41

commentary. This last observation underlines, however, that he always seeks to unite this scholarship to a living devotion, so that his readers draw from the text (or, rather, their praying of the text), the sweet fragrance of divine grace and consolation; the purpose of their reading, studying, and praying should be a closer union with God. This occasioned him to remind them of an important principle in his own philosophy, namely, the inability of human language to grasp the things of God. 4

Negative Theology

A key to understanding Lefèvre’s religious musical thought is his espousal of negative theology or apophatic theology. This theological tradition is a constant but never dominant strand in ancient and medieval thought. It proceeds by way of denial rather than affirmation: we can say something about what God is not, whereas we can say nothing true about what God actually is. In Denys Turner’s words, apophatic theology is “that speech about God which is the failure of speech”.19 This tradition of thought is indebted to Dionysius (late fifth-​century/​early sixth-​century, probably Syrian), author of On Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, On the Celestial Hierarchy, and On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. The author of these works identifies himself with the Athenian Dionysius who met Paul in the Aereopagus (Acts 17:34). Known as Dionysius the Areopagite, he had a particularly strong following in Paris where his already composite identity was further merged with St. Denis, the martyr bishop of Paris –​hence possessing both local and apostolic pedigree. Other thinkers associated with negative theology include Pythagoras: Lefèvre compared “Pythagoras’s silent mode of speaking with St. Paul and Dionysius, in whom there is ‘much silence’”.20 Closer to Lefèvre’s time, the chief spokesperson of negative theology was German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–​ 1464), especially in his work De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance, 1440). Lefèvre and those in his close circle repeatedly recommended and disseminated the work of Dionysius, Cusa and others. For example, in 1498 and again in 1515, he oversaw the publication of editions of and commentaries on the

19 20

Denys Turner, ‘The Darkness of God and the Light of Christ: Negative Theology and Eucharistic Presence’, Modern Theology, 15 (1999), p. 153. Richard J. Oosterhoff, ‘From Pious to Polite: Pythagoras in the Res publica litterarum of French Renaissance Mathematics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 74, no. 4 (2013), pp. 531–​ 552, at p. 538.

42 O’Connor works of Dionysius.21 And in 1501, his colleague Charles Bovelles published In artem oppositiorum introductio, a reworking of themes of negative theology; Lefèvre provided a preface to this work, in which he wrote that “if Aristotle is the life of studies, Pythagoras is their death, but one superior to life; hence the former rightly teaches by speech, the latter by silence, but a silence which is act and a speech which is privation”.22 The approach of negative theology also informed the pastoral and spiritual counsel given by the group around Lefèvre. For example, in a letter of spiritual counsel written to the king’s sister, Marguerite of Alençon, in 1523, Bishop Briçonnet commented on Dionysius’s description of divine ignorance: … one must presuppose that some good hermit or religious wrote to him, asking what was divine ignorance. To which he responded that it was knowledge unknown to the one who has it, the knowledge of darkness full of superexcellent and incomprehensible light, hidden and outside of all knowledge, and nevertheless knowledge of [him] who transcends all knowable things. Thus, Madame, I would be blaspheming in presuming to write to you that which is better felt without feeling, tasted without taste, of which the silence is enjoyable passion, intoxicating and alienating, if our good father and apostle Saint Denis had not given us such excellent nourishment.23

21

22 23

Dionysius Areopagita, Theologia vivificans. Cibus solidus. Dionysii Celestis hierarchia. Ecclesiastica hierarchia. Divina nomina. Mystica theologia undecim epistole. Ignatii undecim epistole. Polycarpi epistola una [edited by Lefèvre] (Paris: J. Higman and W. Hopyl, 1498); Dionysius Areopagita, Theologia vivificans. Cibus Solidus. Dionysii coelestis hierarchia. Ecclesiastica hierarchia. Mystica theologica, etc., comm. J. Lefèvre d’Étaples & J. Clichtove (Paris: Henri Estienne, 1515). Oosterhoff, ‘From Pious to Polite’, p. 539: “Ergo si ita est, Aristoteles studiorum vita est, Pythagoras autem studiorum mors, vita superior; hinc rite docuit hic tacendo, ille vero loquendo, sed silentium actus est et vox privatio”. Rice, pe, p. 96. “fault presupposer que ung bon hermite ou religieux luy escripvit, demandant que c’estoit que divine ygnorance. Auquel respondit estre science incongneue à celuy qui l’a, science des tenebres plaines de super(ex)cellente et incomprehensible lumiere caschée et hors de toute congnoissance, et neantmoings congnoissance de celluy qui transcende toutes choses congnoissibles. Parquoy, Madame, je blasphemerois presumant vous escripre ce que mieulx se sent sans sentir, gouste sans gouster, duquel le scilence est passion savoureuse, inebriante et alienante, se nostre bon pere et apostre sainct Denis ne nous avoit subministré sy excellentre pasture”, cited and translated in Cathleen Eva Corrie, ‘“Sy excellente pasture”: Guillaume Briçonnet’s mysticism and the Pseudo-​Dionysius’, Renaissance Studies, 20 (2006), pp. 35–​50, at p. 38.

“Singing without Understanding”

43

One of the features of negative theology, as demonstrated here, is a tendency towards silence. Since God is ineffable, and human words are incapable of saying anything meaningful about God, the honest response of faith would seem one of mute contemplation. Lefèvre expresses this view in the Quincuplex Psalterium. For example, the Psalmist says, “My eyes have been found wanting before your salvation” (Psalm 118[119]:123). Lefèvre elaborates, combining sight with voice: “The eyes of the mind fail, and the words of the mouth fail; but at the summit of knowledge, ignorance alone sees, and silence gives praise to God (te laudat silentium)”.24 He has more on this theme, occasioned by a curious reading of the opening of Psalm 64[65]. Most modern translations have some version of the following: “Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion”.25 But some translations acknowledge a variant that Jerome also knew and used in his translation of the Psalter from the Hebrew: e.g. the English Standard Version (2001) has a footnote with this alternative: “Praise waits for you in silence”. Lefèvre makes much of this: To you, O God, silence is praise in Sion. Which refers to apophatic and negative theology, when the mind is still in the meditation of divine immensity and incomprehensibility, acknowledging that saying anything at all cannot praise him who is so far above all praise, even less use than trying to hold the waves of the sea in your hand.26 24

“Domine deus cuius laus est silentium /​cuius verbum omnium salus /​cuius eloquium iustificatio. si verbum tuum a mente nostra capi posset: haud quaquam aliquid magnum esset …. est igitur verbum tuum ignotum: per quod nichilominus omnia cognoscuntur. et eloquium tuum incognitum: per quod omnia effabilia redduntur … optimo iure evenit ut tuum verbum infinitum sit et incompraehensibile /​et tuum eloquium immensum et ineffabile. quomodo igitur non verum dicat /​qui oculis spiritualibus ad verbum et eloquium tuum conversus ait: oculi mei defecerunt in salutare tuum …? … ibi te ignoratia videt /​quae est apex scientiarum. te laudat silentium: quod omne excedit effabile verbum”. qp, 194r. 25 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. 26 “te decet hymnus deus in Sion: Hieronymus ex hebraeo /​tibi silentium laus deus in Sion. quod apophaticam /​negativamque theologiam respicit: cum mens in meditatione immensitatis et incompraehensibilitatis diuinae silet /​agnoscens quicquam dicendo non posse eum laudare qui omni laude in immensum superior est /​multo minus quam possit totam maris undam pugillo concludere”. qp, 92v. This interpretation is followed by Erasmus: “Again at Psalm 64, according to the original text of the Hebrew, ‘To you silence, praise, God on Sion’. They interpret Sion as a lookout: when you have passed over all corporeal and incorporeal things all the way up to the very minds of the seraphim and you have ascended onto that lofty lookout, all human voices fall silent there and all the imaginings of human understanding”, in Frederick McGuiness (ed. And annotated), James Butrica (trans.), The Evangelical Preacher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), p. 1067 (“Rursum Psalmo lxiiii iuxta veritatem Hebraicam: ‘Tibi silentium laus Deus in Sion’. Sion speculam interpretantur: ubi, res omnes corporeas et incorporeas usque

44 O’Connor Silence is not the only possible response, however. As it turns out, the negative theologians could be quite loquacious in their ignorance. There is rather a lot that can be said about what God is not. By distancing yourself from absolute truth claims about ultimate realities, you can effectively give yourself permission to think out loud, to ruminate on the mysteries and paradoxes of biblical teaching, and on the multifaceted symbols of Christian faith. In any case –​and this is crucial –​a devout silence might be particularly difficult to maintain when the heart is overflowing with joy, gratitude, and awe. 5

Jubilation

There is a tradition that goes back to the earliest Christian centuries which sees a fitting response to God in enthusiastic if inarticulate cries of joy, in laughter, clapping, dancing, ecstatic speech. In time this was associated with the Psalmist’s call to “cry out in jubilation”. Augustine captures this well: You cannot speak of him because he transcends our speech; if you cannot speak of him, yet may not remain silent, what else can you do but cry out in jubilation, so that your heart may tell its joy without words, and the unbounded rush of gladness not be cramped by syllables?27 For Augustine, this phenomenon was not an optional extra for the super-​ devout but was a necessary duty for all who are bound to offer praise to God. According to Claire Taylor Jones, by “the end of the thirteenth century, the

ad ipsas mentes seraphicas transgressus, conscenderis in speculam illam sublimem, ibi consilescunt omnes humanae voces et omnes humani intellectus imaginationes”, Ecclesiastes (Libri iii–​i v), Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, v-​5 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), p. 360). 27 Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, (trans.) Maria Boulding, vol. 1 (New York: New City Press, 2000), pp. 400–​401 (on Psalm 32) (“Ineffabilis enim est, quem fari non potes: et si eum fari non potes, et tacere non debes, quid restat nisi ut iubiles, ut gaudeat cor sine verbis, et immensa latitudo gaudiorum metas non habeat syllabarum?” Enarrationes in Psalmos 32, ii.8, Opera Omnia post Lovaniensium Theologorum Recensionem, Castigata, vol. iv [=​Patrologiae cursus completus 36 (Paris: J.P. Migne, 1841, p. 283)]). For a thorough account of this theme in Augustine, see Carol Harrison, On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 132–​151.

“Singing without Understanding”

45

mysticism given voice in the jubilus was no longer speculative negative theology, but experiential devotion”.28 Lefèvre picks up this theme in his comments on Psalm 46[47]. The Psalm begins: “O clap your hands, all ye nations: shout unto [or jubilate to] God with the voice of Joy”, then a few verses later, “God is ascended with jubilee [or jubilation], and the Lord with the sound of trumpet” (Douai-​Rheims). This is the first use of iubilate or in iubilo in the Vulgate Psalter, so Lefèvre takes the occasion to offer a careful reading. First of all, he locates this Psalm as a prophecy of the Ascension; he paraphrases with “exult with inexpressible joy, jubilate because God is transcendent”, and then “Christ has ascended in the astonished jubilation of those watching him [on earth, i.e. the voices of the apostles], and in the praise of the angels at his foretold arrival [in heaven, i.e. the sound of the trumpet]”.29 The jubilating is the sound of those who with inexpressible praise want to praise him who is above all praise, whom neither words, nor letters, nor syllables can comprehend; watching Christ ascend, the apostles know that they are lifting up their minds to the incomprehensible and ineffable. It is they who give the greatest praise.30 Generalising from this, he says that whoever reads a Psalm praises God with expressible praise; but the one who then goes on to praise God in jubilation, confesses that God cannot be praised with expressible praise, and so moves into inexpressible praise. Lefèvre makes his conclusion explicit: since negative theology is superior to affirmative theology, it follows that for the pious, well-​instructed mind, jubilation is better praise than hymn singing.31 Lefèvre does not shy away from the idea of jubilation, even bringing it up when the context did not require it. Commenting on the mysterious word that punctuates the psalter, Selah, Lefevre reports that while Nicholas of Lyra thinks the word might mean in secula seculorum (for ever and ever), Paul of Burgos

28 29 30

31

Claire Taylor Jones, ‘Hostia jubilationis: Psalm Citation, Eucharistic Prayer, and Mystical Union in Gertrude of Helfta’s Exercitia spiritualia’, Speculum, 89 (2014), pp. 1005–​1039, at p. 1015. “gestate inexpressibili laetitia … ascendit deus in iubilo: et dominus in voce tubae, elevatus est Christus dominus in admirationis iubilatione aspectantium eum: et in preconio angelorum secundum eius adventum nunciantium”. qp, 71r. “iubilum: sonum quendam elevationis mentis in deum esse volunt /​qui nec verbis /​nec litteris /​nec syllabis compraehendi valet: quo indicibilem laudem ad eum qui omni laude superior est significari volunt. Et qui mentem suam ad ineffabilem et incompraehensibilem in iubilo elevare novit: hic maxime divinitatis laudator est et agnitor”. qp, 71r. “Qui autem psalmum legit: laude expressibili deum laudat. Qui vero post iubilat: confitetur se non potuisse laudem dei exprimere. Et quantum theologia negativa praecellit affirmativam: tantum apud pias mentes laus iubilatoria praecedit hymnidicam”. qp, 71r.

46 O’Connor disagrees, citing the absence of consensus among Jewish scholars. Lefèvre himself wonders whether it has something to do with the jubilus and the structure of psalmodic recitation.32 Nevertheless, he acknowledges that jubilation as a practice has pretty much fallen out of use.33 He marvels that, if the things he has heard are true, the Jews have maintained a shadow of this practice even in his own day; meanwhile Christians need to be instructed about it from scratch –​even though they are reminded again and again in texts such as this and other psalms. If this instruction does not happen, of course, the practice is open to misconstrual and mockery by the rude, the uneducated.34 We can note two important things here: first, Lefèvre does not exclude affirmative theology –​so much of his own work, including this book on the Psalms, was for the edification of the faithful. He simply assigns a hierarchical order: negative theology is superior to affirmative theology. Second, while encouraging this practice, he seems to be counselling discretion. Best not to jubilate in front of those who do not know what you are doing; people need to be educated, re-​familiarised, but until they are, avoid causing scandal. So much for jubilation in itself. But Lefèvre has more. There was a thread of speculation that connected the idea of jubilation with the extensive melismas found in some Gregorian chants (alleluias and sequences, the chants that precede the solemn proclamation of the gospel reading at mass).35 Lefèvre refers to certain neumes or note patterns which 32

33 34

35

“Quid etiam se Sela nota sit fortassis iubili ut et neumata alias ad hoc inducta suspicati sumus, quasi quosdam divinae incompraehensibilitatis ad deum nutus: et hoc illi percipuum esse, diapsalmatis autem officium secundum locum tenere, ut et neumatum apud nos troporum”. qp, 123v. And elsewhere: “Si etiam Selah se obtulerit spectandum: toties mente iubila, agnoscens deum laude et sermone incompraehensibilem: et in silentio mentis tantisper incognoscibilem venerare. Mox nomina innominabilis et laudes omnem laudem excellenter diffugientis resume: et nitere eum nominare et laudare: quem a quoque mortali nominari et laudari est impossibile”. qp, 233v. For the contrary case, in favour of a knowledge and practice of speaking in tongues throughout the medieval period, see Eddie Ensley, Sounds of Wonder. A Popular History of Speaking in Tongues in the Catholic Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 47–​104. “Et mirum est iudaeos (si vera sunt quae a nonullis narratibus audivi) iubili umbram adhuc retinere: Christianos autem vix admonitos esse /​cum tamen tam frequenter legant. Iubilemus deo salutari nostro. Iubilate deo Iacob. Iubilate deo omnis terra /​et hiuiusmodi frequenter quamplurima. Sed forte rudes vulgi /​iubilantes ridebunt. Non ridebunt: si fuerint admoniti /​ineffabilis laudis dei esse signum. Quomodo enim quod mens nullo modo compraehendere potest: sermone valet exprimere? Quod si putat: fallitur /​decepitur et errat. Et si non passim iubilus: at saltem in secretioribus arctioris et sanctioris vitae congregationibus servaretur”. qp, 71r. Margot Fassler, Gothic Song. Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-​ Century Paris (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. 58–​64; Lori

“Singing without Understanding”

47

introduce a kind of stylised jubilation into the formal structures of the church’s collective worship. It is as if he is saying that such florid or melismatic chant stabilises and institutionalises in the melodies of divine worship the praiseworthy practice of jubilation.36 In effect, what this practice does is to relativise the text somewhat, and to allow scope for music’s own expressive capacity to serve the devotional intentions of the worshippers. Not everyone approved: in this same decade, Erasmus published remarks that were severely critical of church music he had probably heard in England, decrying the unintelligible chatter of polyphony, of melismatic chant, and of instrumental music.37 Catholic and Protestant writers alike would follow his train of thought –​including Calvin and Cajetan and the Council of Trent.38 Lefèvre’s minority view is closer to the medieval mystical tradition of Northern Europe. One example is the great German visionary and musician, the abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–​1179), who is, as Margot Fassler notes, “the only Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church from whom a large body of liturgical song survives”.39 At the end of her work Scivias, she writes of liturgical chant: “And so the words symbolize the body, and the jubilant music indicates the spirit”; the words show the humanity of Christ, while the music –​“the heavenly harmony” –​shows his divinity.40 In her visions, Hildegard heard the music; she remembered this music afterwards and was able to write it down, and then composed texts for it. Thus, in Hildegard’s own compositions, the music is the heavenly component, the words the earthly. Lefèvre knew Hildegard’s Scivias; he was the first to bring it out in print, in 1513 (the same year as the second edition of Quincuplex

36 37 38 39

40

Kruckenberg, ‘Neumatizing the Sequence: Special Performances of Sequences in the Central Middle Ages’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 59 (2006), pp. 243–​317. “Hactenus pro admonitione iubili. Sed et puto eas voces /​quae neumata appellant: pro iubilo ecclesiis //​introductas. Quas etiam ad divinae melopoeiae cognoscendos tropos: communes utilesque fecere”. qp, 71r–​v. Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–​1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 161–​165. Michael O’Connor, ‘The Liturgical Use of the Organ in the Sixteenth Century: The Judgments of Cajetan and the Dominican Order’, Religions, 5, no. 3 (2014), pp. 751–​766. Margot Fassler, ‘Angels and Ideas –​Hildegard’s Musical Hermeneutic as Found in Scivias and Reflected in O splendidissima gemma’, in Rainer Berndt SJ and Maura Zátonyi OSB (eds.), Unversehrt und Unverletzt. Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständnis Heute (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), pp. 189–​212, at p. 202. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, (trans.) Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, with an introduction by Barbara J. Newman and preface by Caroline Walker Bynum (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), p. 533.

48 O’Connor Psalterium).41 In the same volume as Hildegard’s Scivias, Lefèvre also published the Liber specialis gratiae of Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241–​1298). This work was compiled and composed during Mechtild’s latter years of ill health by her sisters at the monastery of Helfta, one of whom was the abbess, her “close friend and protégée”, Gertrude the Great (1256–​1301/​2). It contains the following description of Mechtild: She was deliciously nourished by the words of the Gospel, experiencing a sweetness so great that when she read it in choir, she was often transported in jubilation until she could not finish. Sometimes she almost fainted. But she always read so fervently that she roused the hearers to devotion. Similarly, when she sang in choir, it was as if she were wholly on fire, attending to God with all her strength. Not knowing what she did, she sometimes made astonishing gestures, now stretching out her hands, now lifting them on high. When she was in ecstasy, she was sometimes not even aware that people were pulling her away and moving her, or else she scarcely returned to herself.42 A similar stress on ineffability marks the theological writings of Gertrude the Great herself. She is familiar with “an impulsive and almost violent movement of the spirit and soul, accompanied or perhaps caused by the inability to find

41

42

Liber trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum (Paris: Estienne and De Brie, 1513). See Raymond Clemens, ‘Medieval Women Visionaries in the Renaissance: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Liber trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum (1513)’, in E. Ann Matter and Lesley Smith (eds.), From Knowledge to Beatitude. St. Victor, Twelfth-​Century Scholars and Beyond, Essays in Honor of Grover A. Zinn, Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), pp. 358–​383. According to Clemens, the volume includes: “The Shepherd of Hermas, a second-​century narrative Lefèvre believed to have been authored by a disciple of Paul; the Visio Wettini, written by Heito, abbot of Reichenau, sometime before 806, but which Lefèvre falsely attributed to Uguentino; two visionary books by the Dominican Robert of Uzès (d. 1296); Hildegard’s Scivias; several books and letters of Elisabeth of Schönau, Hildegard’s younger contemporary; and the Liber specialis gratiae of Mechthild of Hackeborn, one of the nuns of Helfta. A remarkable compendium of the medieval visionary corpus, Lefèvre’s Liber was the first printed edition of all of these texts except for Mechthild’s” (pp. 358–​359). On Mechtild, see Ella Johnson, ‘The Nightingale of Christ’s Redemption Song: Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Musical Apostolate’, in Michael O’Connor, Hyun-​Ah Kim and Christina Labriola (eds.), Music, Theology and Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017), pp. 181–​196. Mechtild of Hackeborn, The Book of Special Grace, introduced and translated by Barbara Newman (New York: Paulist Press, 2017), p. 222. The description of Gertrude as Mechtild’s “close friend and protégée” comes from Newman’s Introduction, p. 1.

“Singing without Understanding”

49

words that express the nobility of God”.43 She speaks of the heavenly Sanctus as the jubilating of the angels, since even they lack the words with which to offer fitting praise. Moving to an even more sublime level of “musicking”, Gertrude exclaims about the song sung by God, to God: “Oh how great is the jubilation where the supreme and eternal voice of praise and thanksgiving sounds in unison to the one and triune Lord from the one and triune deity”.44 So great is the inability of the human believer to find the appropriate words and sounds of praise before God, that Gertrude advises the contemplative to ask Christ himself to offer fitting jubilation vicariously.45 Lefèvre’s approach is consistent with these voices: even though negative theology could predispose the believer to silent contemplation, negative theology could also become the justification for wordless exultation and elaborate music that, for a time, breaks free of the control of the text –​even if that text is the biblical text, the divinely inspired Word of God. While Lefèvre’s commentaries have the appearance of scholastic works typically of male authorship, they evidently share affinities with the writings of medieval female theologians such as Hildegard, Mechtild, and Gertrude. The commentary on the Psalms seems to demonstrate that a process of bridging the gap between different theological styles had started even before his intellectual pursuits and pastoral commitments took him more and more into circles where women’s and lay people’s voices participated in theological debate and devotional practice. 6

Conclusion

This examination of Lefèvre on the Psalms has yielded a number of conclusions: music is good, a blessing from God. Singing has an important role in the devotional life of faithful Christians. Elaborate music is not merely an aesthetic indulgence; in the right setting it can be seen as performed negative theology –​the highest kind of theology and the best kind of praise. Lefèvre seems to take a definite stand on the question of the liturgical merits of complex musical forms that do not prioritise the intelligibility of the text: the closer music comes to fulfilling the liturgical role of praise and worship of God, the less sense it will make to those human participants actually singing and hearing it; and, conversely, the more sense it makes to them, the further it will retreat from the elusive goal of offering fitting praise to the ineffable God. For this 43 44 45

Jones, ‘Hostia jubilationis’, p. 1018. Cited in Jones, ‘Hostia jubilationis’, p. 1018. Jones, ‘Hostia jubilationis’, p. 1018.

50 O’Connor reason, I have called Lefèvre’s approach to jubilation “singing without understanding” (but we could also call it “singing beyond understanding”). How this sits with Paul’s instructions about prophecy and tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 is not clear: “I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding [or the mind, nous] also” (1 Corinthians 14:15); in Lefèvre’s commentaries on Paul’s letters,46 he offers no apposite remarks on this passage. One mystery remains tantalisingly unsolved: it is not clear (to me, at least) what kind of actual practices Lefèvre has in mind –​musical, esoteric, and/​or devotional –​and what form they might take. Is he thinking of stylised liturgical gestures? Or the sharing within groups of enthusiastic prayer and praise? Or private devotional reveries? We may be able to find some clues in liturgical sources such as the Meaux Breviary and Missal, produced very early in Briçonnet’s term of office. I suspect, though, that a more fruitful path may be one that tracks Lefèvre’s interest in Platonic theology.47

Bibliography



Primary Sources

Aristotle, Contenta. Politicorum Libri Octo; Commentarii ( Jacobi Fabri Stapulensis in Eosdem); Economicorum Duo; Commentarii (Fabri); Hecatonomia Septem;

46 47

See note 6 above. Lefèvre may have in mind elements from the Platonic theology of Marsilio Ficino (1433–​ 1499). Plato speaks of a kind of frenzy (mania in Greek, furor in Latin) –​a divinely inspired state giving the true philosopher access to a higher plane of knowledge. Such frenzied insight is set at a higher premium than worldly logic and rational argumentation. In Plato, this frenzy can have several contexts: prophecy, ritual observance, poetry/​music, and love. Plato’s renaissance Florentine disciple and interpreter, Ficino, highlighted the poetic and the erotic, and spoke of the arousing potential of physical beauty and harmonious music. In this case, Ficino has in mind an esoteric practice known and practised by philosophers, mocked and misunderstood by the masses who take it for a mundane madness. See Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘The Platonic Frenzies in Marsilio Ficino’, in Jitse Dijkstra, Justin Kroesen, and Yme Kuiper (eds.), Myths, Martyrs and Modernity. Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010), pp. 553–​567; Sophia Howlett, Marsilio Ficino and His World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 135–​164. Concluding an analysis of Neo-​Platonic themes in the writings of one of Lefèvre’s chief patrons and intellectual interlocutors, Marguerite de Navarre, Philip Ford writes that the “Platonic frenzy of love, then, acts in the same way as Christian grace” –​as the means of return or ascent to the divine; Philip Ford, ‘Neo-​Platonic Themes of Ascent in Marguerite de Navarre’, in Gary Ferguson and Mary B. McKinley (eds.), A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013), pp. 89–​107, at p. 105.

“Singing without Understanding”

51

Economiarum Publicarum Unus; Explanationes Leonardi (Aretini) in Oeconomica Duo (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1526), ustc number: 145777. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Maria Boulding (trans.), vol. 1 (New York: New City Press, 2000). Augustine, Opera Omnia post Lovaniensium Theologorum Recensionem, Castigata, vol. iv [=​Patrologiae cursus completus 36] (Paris: J.P. Migne, 1841). Dionysius Areopagita, Theologia vivificans. Cibus Solidus. Dionysii coelestis hierarchia. Ecclesiastica hierarchia. Mystica theologica, etc., comm. J. Lefèvre d’Étaples and J. Clichtove (Paris: Henri Estienne, 1515), ustc number: 144512. Dionysius Areopagita, Theologia vivificans. Cibus solidus. Dionysii Celestis hierarchia. Ecclesiastica hierarchia. Divina nomina. Mystica theologia undecim epistole. Ignatii undecim epistole. Polycarpi epistola una [edited by Lefèvre d’Étaples] (Paris: J. Higman and W. Hopyl, 1498), ustc number: 201424. Erasmus, Desiderius, The Evangelical Preacher, James Butrica (trans.), Frederick McGuiness (ed.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). Erasmus, Desiderius, Ecclesiastes (Libri iii–​i v), Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, v-​5 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994). Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (trans.), Barbara J. Newman (intro.) and Caroline Walker Bynum (preface) (New York: Paulist Press, 1990). Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild of Hackeborn, et al, Liber trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum [edited by Lefèvre d’Étaples] (Paris: Estienne and De Brie, 1513), ustc number: 180770. Lefèvre d’Étaples, The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Related Texts, (ed.) Eugene F. Rice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). Lefèvre d’Étaples, Commentarii D. Pauli epistolarum (Paris: Estienne, 1512 ; 2nd edn, Paris: Estienne, 1515). Lefèvre d’Étaples, Quincuplex Psalterium (Paris: Estienne, 1509; 2nd edn, Paris: Estienne, 1513). The second edition is reprinted in Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 170 (Geneva: Droz, 1979), ustc numbers: 143517 and 144203. Oberman, Heiko A. (ed.), Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966). Porrer, Sheila M. (ed. and trans.), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples and the Three Maries Debates, (Geneva: Droz, 2009).



Secondary Sources

Backus, Irena, ‘Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples: A Humanist or a Reformist View of Paul in His Theology?’, in R. Ward Holder (ed.), A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2009), pp. 61–​90. Bedouelle, Guy, Le Quincuplex Psalterium De Lefèvre D’Étaples. Un Guide De Lecture (Geneva: Droz, 1979).

52 O’Connor Bedouelle, Guy, Lefèvre d’Étaples et l’Intelligence des Écritures (Geneva: Droz, 1976). Clemens, Raymond, ‘Medieval Women Visionaries in the Renaissance: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Liber trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum (1513)’, in E. Ann Matter and Lesley Smith (eds.), From Knowledge to Beatitude. St. Victor, Twelfth-​ Century Scholars and Beyond, Essays in Honor of Grover A. Zinn, Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), pp. 358–​383. Clerval, Jules-​Alexandre, ‘Strasbourg et la Réforme française’, Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France, 7 (1921), pp. 139–​160. Corrie, Cathleen Eva, ‘“Sy excellente pasture”: Guillaume Briçonnet’s mysticism and the Pseudo-​Dionysius’, Renaissance Studies, 20 (2006), pp. 35–​50. Ensley, Eddie, Sounds of Wonder. A Popular History of Speaking in Tongues in the Catholic Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). Fassler, Margot, ‘Angels and Ideas –​Hildegard’s Musical Hermeneutic as Found in Scivias and Reflected in O splendidissima gemma’, in Rainer Berndt SJ and Maura Zátonyi OSB (eds.), Unversehrt und Unverletzt. Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständnis Heute (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), pp. 189–​212. Fassler, Margot, Gothic Song. Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-​ Century Paris (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011). Ford, Philip, ‘Neo-​Platonic Themes of Ascent in Marguerite de Navarre’, in Gary Ferguson and Mary B. McKinley (eds.), A Companion to Marguerite de Navarre (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013), pp. 89–​107. Hanegraaff, Wouter J., ‘The Platonic Frenzies in Marsilio Ficino’, in Jitse Dijkstra, Justin Kroesen, and Yme Kuiper (eds.), Myths, Martyrs and Modernity. Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010), pp. 553–​567. Howlett, Sophia, Marsilio Ficino and His World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe, Lefèvre, Pioneer of Ecclesiastical Renewal in France (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984). Johnson, Ella, ‘The Nightingale of Christ’s Redemption Song: Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Musical Apostolate’, in Michael O’Connor, Hyun-​Ah Kim and Christina Labriola (eds.), Music, Theology and Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017), pp. 181–​196. Jones, Claire Taylor, ‘Hostia jubilationis: Psalm Citation, Eucharistic Prayer and Mystical Union in Gertrude of Helfta’s Exercitia spiritualia’, Speculum, 89 (2014), pp. 1005–​1039. Kruckenberg, Lori, ‘Neumatizing the Sequence: Special Performances of Sequences in the Central Middle Ages’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 59 (2006), pp. 243–​317. Le Gall, Jean-​Marie, ‘Les moines au temps de Lefèvre d’Etaples et Guillaume Briçonnet à Saint-​Germain-​des-​Prés’, in Jean-​François Pernot (ed.), Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1450? –​1536) (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1995), pp. 125–​140.

“Singing without Understanding”

53

Moyer, Ann E., ‘The Quadrivium and the Decline of Boethian Influence’, in Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (eds.), A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012), pp. 479–​517. O’Connor, Michael, ‘The Liturgical Use of the Organ in the Sixteenth Century: The Judgments of Cajetan and the Dominican Order’, Religions, 5, no. 3 (2014), pp. 751–​766. Oosterhoff, Richard J., Making Mathematical Culture. University and Print in the Circle of Lefèvre d’Etaples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Oosterhoff, Richard J., ‘Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), accessed 4 April 2016, http://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​sum2​015/​entr​ies/​lefe​vre-​etap​les/​. Oosterhoff, Richard J., ‘Idiotae, Mathematics and Artisans: The Untutored Mind and the Discovery of Nature in the Fabrist Circle’, Intellectual History Review, 24, no. 3 (2014), pp. 301–​319. Oosterhoff, Richard J., ‘From Pious to Polite: Pythagoras in the Res publica litterarum of French Renaissance Mathematics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 74, no. 4 (2013), pp. 531–​552. Reid, Jonathan A., King’s Sister–​Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–​1549) and Her Evangelical Network (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2009). Rice, Eugene F., ‘Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques’, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edn, vol. 8 (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2003), pp. 449–​450. Turner, Denys, ‘The Darkness of God and the Light of Christ: Negative Theology and Eucharistic Presence’, Modern Theology, 15 (1999), pp. 143–​158. Wegman, Rob C., The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–​1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005).

­c hapter 2

Music, Rhetoric and the Humanist Pedagogy of Hebrew Biblical Chant Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata recitatio Hyun-​Ah Kim 1 Introduction1 While the humanist passion for classical learning primarily concerned Latin letters, ancient Near Eastern literature, especially the Hebrew Bible and Jewish mystical writings, received considerable attention from the humanists.2 Traditionally, the Hebrew Bible is delivered in a form of intoned recitation which stands between reading and singing, known as ‘cantillation’, i.e. ‘the art of chanting the Bible’.3 Cantillation is not a Jewish phenomenon exclusively; ancient eastern churches, including Coptic, Syrian and Armenian, keep their cantillation traditions, and it appears that the cantillation type is probably the most archaic form of Christian chant.4 Generally, however, the term ‘cantillation’ refers most often to the Jewish liturgical practice of Hebrew Biblical chant.5

1 Part of the research for this chapter was funded (Herzog Ernst Scholarship) by the Gotha Research Centre (Forschungszentrum Gotha), University of Erfurt, in two successive summers (2020–​2021). 2 See, for example, Robert Wakefield, Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum Arabicae, Hebraicae, Chaldaicae (London: Winandum de Vorde, 1529). For a recent study about the humanist scholarship on literature of the Near East and North Africa –​the world of the Bible (Samaritan, Coptic and Ethiopic) see Peter Miller, Peiresc’s Orient. Antiquarianism as Cultural History in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2017). On the early modern studies of Judaic theology and philosophy see Wilhelm Schmidt-​Biggemann, Geschichte der christlichen Kabbala (3vols., Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​holzboog, 2012–​2013). 3 Joshua R. Jacobson, Chanting the Hebrew Bible, Second, Expanded Edition: The Art of Cantillation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2017 [2002]), p. 1. 4 An early important study of these Christian cantillation traditions, see Solange Corbin, ‘La Cantillation des rituels chrétiens’, Revue de Musicologie, 47 (1961), pp. 3–​36; also Edith Gerson-​Kiwi’s review of Corbin’s article, Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 15, no. 1 (1963), p. 137. 5 In this chapter, ‘cantillation’ refers to Hebrew cantillation, unless otherwise indicated.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

55

Cantillation works as follows: each word of the Biblical text has a cantillation sign (called a ‘trope’ in English; ‘trop’ in Yiddish) which indicates a melodic fragment, and these are strung together to form longer melodies when reciting the Biblical texts. The humanists call the cantillation signs ‘musical accents’ (accentus musici). For the Biblical accents are inseparable from musical motifs used to articulate the accents. The musical accents were systematised in simple melodic formulae, termed the ‘Zarqá Table’ (after the name of the first tune of accent). Three humanists printed the musical motifs that constituted tunes of the Pentateuch recitation, customary in the Ashkenazi communities.6 Among them, Johannes Reuchlin (1455–​1522) is most important in relation to classical rhetoric and the modulata recitatio which is typical of ancient Christian music.7 Despite numerous studies concerning both cantillation and Reuchlin, however, few have treated Reuchlin’s pedagogy of cantillation in the light of rhetoric and its significance in relation to the early modern reforms of liturgical music. More fundamentally, existing studies of Christian Hebraism have paid little attention to how the humanists studied Hebrew, the ‘divine language’ in which the Bible has been recited in a distinct manner of modulation since antiquity.8

6

7

8

Johannes Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (Hagenau: Thomas Anshelm, 1518); Sebastian Münster, M’lekhet ha-​Diqduq/​Institutiones Grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1524); Johannes Vallensis, Sefer Tuv Taàm /​Opus de Prosodia Hebraeorum (Paris: Johannes Bagardus, 1545). For studies of the Ashkenazi cantillation tradition, see Alexander Knapp, ‘Ashkenazi Pentateuchal Chant: A Sixteenth-​Century German-​Christian Interpretation’, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 6, no. 1 (2012), pp. 23–​69; Victor Tunkel, The Music of the Hebrew Bible and the Western Ashkenazic Chant Tradition (London: Tymsder Pub., in association with the Jewish Music Institute, 2006); Hanoch Avenary, The Ashkenazi Tradition of Biblical Chant Between 1500–​1900. Documentation and Musical Analysis (Jerusalem: Tel-​Aviv University Press, 1978); Hanoch Avenary, ‘The Earliest Notation of Ashkenazi Bible Chant’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 26 (1975), pp. 132–​150. On the modulata recitatio see Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church in the Reformation: the Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 4, no. 1 (2017), pp. 1–​20; Idem, The Renaissance Ethics of Music. Singing, Contemplation and Musica Humana (London: Pickering & Chatto [Routledge]. 2015), pp. 91–​94. Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–​1660). Authors, Books and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012); George Box, Hebrew Studies in the Reformation Period and After. Their Place and Influence (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010); David H. Price, ‘Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism: Johannes Reuchlin and the Discovery of Hebrew’, Arthuriana, 19, no. 3 (2009), pp. 80–​96; Hans-​ Martin Kirn and Hagit Amirav, ‘Notes on the Reformation, Humanism, and the Study of Hebrew in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Theodore Bibliander (1505–​64)’, Church History and Religious Culture, 87, no. 2 (2007), pp. 161–​171; Allison Coudert and Jeffrey

56 Kim This chapter aims to reassess the significance of Reuchlin’s study of cantillation in relation to the modulata recitatio, which is a major characteristic of the liturgico-​musical Reformation, centring on the ‘delivery’ (pronuntiatio) of the Word of God.9 Focusing on De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (1518) that introduced for the first time the Hebrew accents with a printed musical notation, the chapter examines Reuchlin’s pedagogical and rhetorical approach to cantillation and its influence on the early modern practice of Biblical chanting, particularly on the post-​Tridentine reform of liturgical chant. With an emphasis on the ‘rhetorical accent’ (meteg, ‫ )מתג‬that Reuchlin includes in the Zarqá Table alongside the musical accents, I illustrate the way in which Reuchlin engages with cantillation as a living treasury of the modulata recitatio. In the light of classical rhetoric that served as a cornerstone of the humanist education and music, I will elucidate the underlying principles for the rhythmic formula of meteg and its importance, and finally reflect on the religio-​cultural and ethical implications of Reuchlin’s synthesis of classical rhetoric and philology and the ancient Judaic tradition of Biblical chant. In conclusion, the chapter thus suggests that Reuchlin’s pioneering pedagogy of cantillation paved the way for the new oratorical framework of reciting and singing the Biblical texts in the time of the Reformation and thereafter. 2

Reuchlin and Christian Hebraism

A lawyer, statesman, educator and philologist, Reuchlin was one of the first humanists who mastered the three classical languages and was the most outstanding Hebraist of early modern Europe.10 While working in the German office at the Papal curia, he became acquainted with learned men who spoke

9

10

Shoulson (eds.), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). This chapter focusses mainly on accentual and rhetorical matters, and does not intend to discuss the philosophical and Kabbalistic foundation of Reuchlin’s interest in cantillation. A full discussion of Reuchlin’s philosophical study of Kabbalah and its relation to cantillation is set out in my forthcoming monograph (‘Music, Rhetoric and Christian Hebraism in Early Modern Europe’). For biographical studies of Reuchlin, see Franz Posset, Johann Reuchlin (1455–​1522). A Theological Biography (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015); Manfred Krebs (ed.), Johannes Reuchlin 1455–​1522 (Pforzheim: Im Selbstverlag der Stadt, 1955; new edn, Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994); Ludwig Geiger, Johann Reuchlin. sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1871, rpt, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1964).

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

57

Greek and Hebrew.11 In Rome, Reuchlin undertook an intensive study of the Hebrew language and purchased valuable Hebrew manuscripts and printed books for his library.12 Known as ‘Capnion’ (from the Greek, ‘smoke’ in origin) in the Italian humanist circle Reuchlin shared their interest in ancient theological and mystical traditions (prisca theologia), including the Kabbalah and neo-​Platonic theurgy in which poetical music played a vital role.13 Reuchlin’s pioneering work in Hebrew scholarship left a huge legacy for centuries to come.14 He produced the first reliable Hebrew grammar and lexicon, entitled De Rudimentis Hebraicis (1506).15 Published a decade before 11 12

13

14

15

Christoph Timm, Museum Johannes Reuchlin. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung in Pforzheim (Heidelberg: Ubstadt-​Weiher, 2012), p. 47. Reuchlin’s private library possessed numerous historical manuscripts (Codices) and early printings (Inkunabeln) of about 350 volumes, of which ca. 250 Latin, ca. 50 Greek and ca. 40 Hebraic titles. Timm, Museum Johannes Reuchlin, p. 47; Matthias Dall’Asta, ‘Bücher aus Italien: Reuchlins Kontakte zu italienischen Buchhändlern und Druckern’, in Gerald Dörner (ed.), Reuchlin und Italien: [vom 27. bis 29. Juni 1996 fand in Pforzheim der 3. Internationale Reuchlinkongreß statt] Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 7 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1999), pp. 23–​43. For the list of Hebraist books and manuscripts which Reuchlin possessed, see Wolfgang von Abel and Reimund Leicht, Verzeichnis der Hebraica in der Bibliothek Johannes Reuchlins (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2005). In his study of Platonic theology, Ficino discusses the prisca theologia intensively. See Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica, sive de immortalitate animorum (Florence: Antonio Miscomini, 1482), xvii.1. On the influence of Neo-​platonism on Reuchlin, see Thomas Leinkauf, ‘Reuchlin und der Florentiner Neuplatonismus’, in Gerald Dörner (ed.), Reuchlin und Italien, Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 7 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1999), pp. 109–​132. Reuchlin’s first major publication was De verbo mirifico (Basel: Johannes Amerbach, 1494), a tract on Jewish Kabbalah, inspired by the Florentine humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. This tract indicates Reuchlin’s goal of ‘Christianising’ Jewish mysticism. In this work, for example, he claims that the ineffable Tetragrammaton of God’s name (yhvh) has become effable and efficacious in the new form of Jesus’s name (yhsvh). Later, Reuchlin’s publisher Thomas Anshelm used this conceit for his printer’s device (see Item ii.5). This early work is notable for claiming the prime importance of the Hebrew language but also explicit in its rejections of Judaism. For information on Reuchlin’s written works, see Gerald Dörner, ‘Reuchlin, Johannes’, in Franz J. Worstbrock (ed.), Deutscher Humanismus 1480–​1520, Verfasserlexikon. Band 2. Lieferung 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 579–​633. For modern editions of Reuchlin’s works, see Johannes Reuchlin. Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe mit Kommentar, (eds.) Widu-​Wolfgang Ehlers et al. (Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstadt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 1996 –​). On the legacy of Reuchlin see Jörg Robert, Evamarie Blattner and Wiebke Ratzeburg (eds.), Ein Vater neuer Zeit. Reuchlin, die Juden und die Reformation (Tübingen: Stadtmuseum Tübingen, 2017); Marlis Zeus, Johannes Reuchlin –​Humanist mit Durchblick (Karlsruhe: Helmesverlag, 2011). Johannes Reuchlin, De rudimentis Hebraicis (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, 1506). In 1492–​1493, Reuchlin studied Hebrew under Rabbi Jacob ben Jehiel Loans, a physician at the Innsbruck court of Friedrich iii. In 1498–​1499, as ambassador of the Palatinate,

58 Kim Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum (1516), De Rudimentis Hebraicis frequently corrects errors in the Vulgate Bible, and it is of major importance for the revival of Hebrew Biblical scholarship.16 This book marked an unprecedented synthesis of Latin and Hebrew philology. Though written in Latin, it adopts the pagination of Hebrew books, running from right to left, whilst applying Latin rules of declension to Hebrew nouns. Reuchlin discusses the basic elements of Hebrew, especially its vowel pronunciation in detail, in the light of classical rhetoric and the rabbinic philology of Hebrew led by Moses Kimchi (?–​d. 1190) and David Kimchi (c.1160–​c.1135).17 In this syncretic approach to the Hebrew, Reuchlin translated penitential Psalms from their original texts for pedagogical purposes.18 Furthermore, he promoted Hebrew scholarship in wider academic circles and recommended the installation of two professors of Hebrew at every university. He himself became the first teacher of Hebrew at the universities in Ingolstadt and Tübingen, and his nephew and student, Melanchthon, taught Hebrew as well as Greek at Wittenberg.19 Studying the Hebrew language became more important thanks to these efforts, and trilingual colleges, designed for an intensive study of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, were established in various cities,

16 17 18 19

Reuchlin studied Hebrew under the renowned Jewish scholar Obadiah Sforno in Rome. For more discussions of Reuchlin’s Hebrew studies, see Ulli Roth, ‘“Rudimenta Reuchliniana”’: Faber Stapulensis auf den Spuren des Hebraisten Johannes Reuchlin Daphnis’, Zeitschrift für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur, 35, no. 1 (2006), pp. 25–​50; Saladin Jean-​Christophe, ‘Lire Reuchlin lire la Bible; Sur la préface des “Rudimenta hebraica” (1506)’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 222, no. 3 (2005), pp. 287–​320; Hermann Greive, ‘Die hebräische Grammatik Johannes Reuchlins. De rudimentis hebraicis’, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 90, no. 3 (1978), pp. 395–​409. Price refers to this book as a ‘complex manifesto for the biblical humanist movement’. David H. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 68. Moses Kimchi’s Mahalakh shevile ha-​da’at (‘Journey on the Paths of Knowledge’) and David Kimchi’s Sefer ha-​shorashim (‘Book of the Roots’) were among the greatest medieval Jewish authorities of Hebrew philology. Johannes Reuchlin, Septem psalmi poenitentiales hebraici cum grammaticali tralatione Latina (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1512; 2nd edn, Wittenberg: Klug, 1529). Gianfranco Miletto and Giuseppe Veltri, ‘Hebrew Studies in Wittenberg (1502–​1813): From Lingua Sacra to Semitic Studies’, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 6, no. 1 (2012), pp. 1–​ 22. See also Heinz Scheible, ‘Reuchlins Einfluß auf Melanchthon’, in Arno Herzig, Julius H Schöps and Saskia Rohde (eds.), Reuchlin und die Juden, Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 3 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 123–​149; Rüdiger Bartelmus, ‘Melanchthon, Reuchlin und die humanistische und jüdische Tradition’, in Johannes Schilling (ed.), Melanchthons bleibende Bedeutung. Ringvorlesung der Theologischen Fakultät der Christian-​Albrechts-​ Universität zum Melanchthon-​ Jahr 1997 (Kiel: Theologische Fakultät der Christian-​ Albrechts-​Universität. 1998), pp. 41–​56.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

59

including Alcalá, Paris and Leuven. Mastering the three classical languages (trium linguarum gnarus), indeed, became the humanist scholarly ideal during the late Renaissance.20 Up to the seventeenth century, the Church maintained Hebrew as the ‘divine language’. Brian Walton, editor of the famous Polyglot Bible (1657) thus states: “The first language, Hebrew, most certainly comes from God himself; on that there should be universal agreement”.21 Supporting Hebraist studies in Christendom took a great toll on Reuchlin, however, as he faced prosecution, known as the ‘Reuchlin Affair’.22 Johannes Pfeffercorn (ca. 1469 –​1521),23 a converted Jew who became a Dominican priest, criticised Reuchlin’s works in the Hebrew language and literature as dangerous and insidious to the Church, claiming that Hebrew books should not be taught to Christians but should be confiscated and burned.24 Reuchlin’s response to the accusation is in his Ratschlag ob man den Juden alle ire bücher nemmen, abthun und verbrennen soll (‘Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy

20 Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era, pp. 27–​42. For the humanist interest in the languages of the ancient Near East, see Robert Weiss, ‘England and the Decree of the Council of Vienne on the teaching of Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, Tome 14 (1952), pp. 1–​9. 21 Charles Sullivan, ‘Hebrew and the First Language of Mankind’ (9 Mar. 2013), https://​charl​ esas​ulli​van.com/​3965/​heb​rew-​and-​the-​first-​langu​age-​of-​mank​ind/​ Accessed 15 April 2018. 22 On the campaign against Jewish books see Sönke Lorenz und Dieter Mertens (eds.), Johannes Reuchlin und der ‘Judenbücherstreit’: [Vorträge einer Ringvorlesung im Wintersemester 2011/​2012 in Tübingen] (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2013); David H. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Matthias Dall’Asta, ‘Man soll der Juden Bücher nicht verbrennen!’: Johannes Reuchlins Augenspiegel von 1511 und seine Wirkung; Vortrag zur Eröffnung der ‘Woche der Brüderlichkeit’ Reuchlinhaus Pforzheim, 13. März 2011 (Pforzheim: Kulturamt der Stadt Pforzheim, 2011); Erika Rummel, The Case against Johann Reuchlin. Social and Religious Controversy in Sixteenth-​Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). 23 On Pfefferkorn’s anti-​Jewish propaganda, see Johannes Pfefferkorn, Speculum adhortationis iudaice ad Christum (Cologne: Martin von Werden, 1507). Pfefferkorn’s tracts were published simultaneously in separate German and Latin editions. Speculum adhortationis iudaice ad Christum was first published in German, entitled Der Joeden Spiegel (Cologne: Collen van Landen, 1507). See also Pfefferkorn, Ich heysch eyn boichelgyn der ioeden bicht (Cologne: Collen van Landen, 1508); Idem, Handt Spiegel (Mainz: Johannes Schöffer, 1511); Idem, In disem buchlein vindet Ier ain entlichenn furtrag wie die blinden Juden yr Ostern halten (Augsburg: Erhard Öglein, 1509); Idem, Streydt puechlyn (Cologne: Heinrich von Neuß, 1516). 24 The first to attempt to print Hebrew in Germany was Peter Schwarz, Contra perfidos Judaeos de conditionibus veri Messiae (Esslingen: Konrad Fyner, 1475). Peter Schwarz (1434–​1483) was a German Dominican who studied Hebrew for his missionary campaigns against Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire.

60 Kim and Burn All Jewish books’)25 alongside other supporting documents in a pamphlet he called Augenspiegel.26 In these works Reuchlin defended Jewish books, exceptionally among the scholars being asked by Emperor Maximillian for an opinion about them. In 1514 Reuchlin was officially charged with heresy and was brought to trial for his Hebrew works.27 The battle continued until 1520 when a commission met to investigate the case, and forced Reuchlin to be silent about Hebrew literature and Jewish matters. Reuchlin’s De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (1518) came out during this turbulent time. Alongside De arte Cabalistica (1517), it is among the last outputs of Reuchlin’s Hebraist studies and introduces Hebrew Biblical chanting for the first time to European Christian scholars.28 Grounded in existing Jewish scholarship on cantillation, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae shows Reuchlin’s inclusive and universalistic outlook on the Judeo-​Christian religion and its relation to ancient Greco-​ Roman philosophical and theological traditions. Despite his criticism of the Catholic Church and long battle with the Dominicans concerning Jewish

25

26

27

28

This text, written in 1510 at the request of the Holy Roman Emperor who was under pressure to burn all Jewish religious books, is a landmark in the history of Jewish-​Christian dialogue. Antonie Leinz-​von Dessauer (ed.), Gutachten über das jüdische Schrifttum Ratschlag ob man den Juden alle ire bücher nemmen, abthun und verbrennen soll (1510–​1511). Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 2 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1965). See also Johannes Reuchlin, Sämtliche Werke. Bd. iv,1. Schriften zum Bücherstreit (eds.), Widu-​Wolfgang Ehlers et al. (Stuttgard-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 1999). For a modern English edition see Peter Wordsman (ed. and trans.), Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books. A Classic Treatise against Anti-​Semitism (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). Johannes Reuchlin, Augenspiegel (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1511). The Augenspiegel is a response to Pfefferkorn’s Hand Spiegel (1511). For a modern English edition of Augenspiegel, see Daniel O’Callaghan (ed.), The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-​ Century Germany. Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013). See also Johannes Reuchlin, Defensio Ioannis Reuchlin Phorcensis ll. doctoris contra calumniatores suos Colonienses (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1513; subsequent edn: Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1514). Acta doctorum Parrhisiensium … contra speculum oculare Ioannis Reuchlin Phorcensis, una cum sententia eiusdem libelli condemnativa ad ignem (Cologne: Heinrich Quentel, 1514); Johannes Reuchlin, Clarorum virorum epistolae latinae graecae et hebraicae variis temporibus missae ad Ioannem Reuchlin Phorcensem ll. Doctorem (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1514). Johannes Reuchlin, De arte Cabalistica (Hagenau: Thomas Anshelm, 1517). Both De arte Cabalistica and De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae were printed with Reuchlin’s coat of arms on their cover pages. In 1516 the Pope Leo x set a date to proceed against Reuchlin. De arte Cabalistica was dedicated to Leo x.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

61

books, Reuchlin remained an adherent of the Church of Rome throughout his life.29 3

Hebrew Cantillation as the Modulata Recitatio

The Masoretes devised cantillation signs as well as a vowel notation system for Hebrew towards the end of the ninth century.30 The cantillation signs, which indicate accents, punctuations and emphasis of words, are mnemonic devices to help the reader recall various tunes to articulate the accentuation of the text.31 As to the signs which are called ‘tropes’, Joshua R. Jacobson states that the Yiddish word ‘trop’ may have derived from the Greek tropos or Latin tropus, referring to a mode or extended melody in church music of the Middle Ages, and he wonders how this Christian term came to be associated with synagogue ritual. 29

30

31

Reuchlin was dismayed by Melanchthon’s association with Luther and his cause. Melanchthon had been promised Reuchlin’s library upon the death of Reuchlin. When Melanchthon refused to denounce Luther and leave Wittenberg, Reuchlin disinherited him. After the dispersal of Jews in 70 ce different cantillation practices had evolved from different regions: Palestinian, Babylonian, and Tiberian; the most complete system of cantillation was developed by the Tiberian Masoretes. For the latest studies of the Tiberian tradition, see Geoffrey Khan, The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Including a Critical Edition and English Translation of the Sections on Consonants and Vowels in the Masoretic Treatise Hidāyat al-​Qāriʾ ‘Guide for the reader’ (2 vols., Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020); Sung Jin Park, The Fundamentals of Hebrew Accents. Divisions and Exegetical Roles beyond Syntax (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). For earlier important studies of the Tiberian tradition, see Miles B. Cohen, The System of Accentuation in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Milco Press, 1969); James D. Price, The Syntax of Masoretic Accents in the Hebrew Bible, sbec 27 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990); Israel Yeivin, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, (trans.) E. J. Revell (Missoula, MT: Published by Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature and the International Organization for Masoretic Studies, 1980). For more comprehensive studies of the Hebrew accentuation and vocalisation see Geoffrey Khan (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013); and Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds.), Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020). The cantillation signs are called ‘echphonetic’ signs, as they indicate accents, punctuations and tunes. For further discussions of the echphonetic signs, including the Hebrew accents, see Heidy Zimmermann, Tora und Shira. Untersuchungen zur Musikauffassung des rabbinischen Judentums (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2000), esp. pp. 66–​75; Reinhard Flender, Der biblische Sprechgesang und seine mundliche Uberlieferung in Synagoge und griechischer Kircher (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1988), pp. 116–​123.

62 Kim The earliest identification of this term with Jewish chant appears in a commentary by the eleventh-​century French Rabbi, Rashi, in a sweetened chant which is called a ‘trop’.32 According to Eric Werner’s speculation, this ‘sweetened chant’ that Rashi called trop refers to the practice of chanting the priestly blessing to an extended melody.33 “Whatever its origin, over the centuries”, as Jacobson notes, “the term ‘trop’ has come to refer to the te ‘amim, both their graphic notation and their melodies”.34 But these scholars and later specialists of cantillation have paid little attention to the rhetorical nature and basis of the cantillation signs, although the trope is one of the most basic terms of classical rhetoric. Traditionally, in classical rhetoric, figures of speech (or rhetorical figures) are divided into two categories: schemes and tropes. The schemes concern the arrangement of words, while the tropes, the meanings of words.35 Quintilian explains about the trope as follows: the name of ‘trope’ is applied to the transference of expressions from their natural and principal signification to another, with a view to the embellishment of style or, as the majority of grammarians define it, the transference of words and phrases from their proper place to another to which they do not properly belong.36 32 Jacobson, Chanting the Hebrew Bible, p. 2. 33 Eric Werner, ‘Trop and Tropus: Etymology and History’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 46 (1975), pp. 289–​296, at p. 291. Werner also notes that ‘Rashi’s use of the term trop leans toward a most diluted meaning of tropus and avoids any concrete comparison with the highly specific term in the musical liturgy of the Church. Having conceded that the word trop describes best a melismatic type of scriptural cantillation, Rashi avoids any further specification’. Werner, ‘Trop and Tropus’, p. 296. 34 Jacobson, Chanting the Hebrew Bible, p. 2. The italics are mine. 35 Richard Sherry, A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes (London: John Day, 1550), fol. C4r: “Emonge authors manye tymes vnder the name of figures, Tropes also be comprehended: Neuerthe lesse ther is a notable difference betwixt them. In figure is no alteracion in the wordes from their proper significacions, but only is the oracion & sentence made by them more pleasaunt, sharpe & vehement, after the affecion of him that speketh or writeth: to the which vse although tropes also do serue, yet properlye be they so called, because in them for necessitye or garnyshynge, there is a mouynge and chaungynge of a worde and sentence, from theyr owne significacion into another, whych may agre wyth it by a similitude. The former parties ben these”. Little is known of Sherry; it is likely that he is an Erasmian Protestant humanist, and the above treatise, which also includes Erasmus’s treatise on the education of children, is heavily relied on Erasmus and Mosellanus. Only one issue of the treatise appeared and a revised edition was published in 1555. Cf. Petrus Mosellanus, Tabulae de Schematibus et Tropis (London: John Kingston, 1573 [1516]). 36 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ix.1.4. “est igitur tropos sermo a naturali et principali [p. 350] significatione translatus ad aliam ornandae orationis gratia, vel, ut plerique

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

63

Given the rhetorical nature of tropes, it is unsurprising that Reuchlin, a leading Christian Hebraist versed in the classical rhetoric, was fascinated by cantillation. Reuchlin’s interest in cantillation as a grammarian/​rhetorician culminates in his De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, which consists of three books: the first, ta’am (‫ ;)טעם‬the second, meteg (‫ ;)מתג‬and the last, neginah (‫)נגינה‬ which he calls the musical accents of cantillation. Reuchlin notes that although “the accent can properly be preserved without song” (accentus posset proprie seruari sine cantu), it can be taught more skilfully through music.37 The tunes of musical accents are for the Pentateuch, the most central of the 21 prose books in the Bible which are “cantillated daily in a wonderful manner of accentuation at synagogues”.38 The music notation in De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae is the earliest printed transcription of cantillation tune motifs. The cantillation tunes appear in Tenor (see Figure 2.1). An earlier source than Reuchlin is in two manuscripts in the library of Caspar Amman, dated about 1511.39 The music in the manuscript is not Amman’s, but of Johannes Böschenstein (1472–​1540) who taught Hebrew at Wittenberg University.40 Reuchlin attributes the cantillation tunes to grammatici finiunt, dictio ab eo loco, in quo propria est, translata in eum, in quo propria non est; figura, sicut nomine ipso patet,conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerente ratione”. The translation is from Quintilian. With An English Translation, (trans.) Harold E. Butler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), p. 351; I have modified Butler’s translation. 37 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 71r. 38 “miro modo in synagogis quotidie fuis quadam uoculatione cantillare”. Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 71r. The three poetic books of the Bible (Psalms, Proverbs and Job) have a different cantillation system. 39 Amman was prior of an Augustinian monastery, an enthusiastic Hebraist who admired and supported Reuchlin. For his two letters to Reuchlin written in Hebrew (dated on September 22, 1515, and September 25, 1520) see Georg Burkard (ed.), Johannes Reuchlin Breifwechsel, vol. 3. 1514–​ 1517 (Stuttgart-​ Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​ holzboog, 2007), pp. 142–​143 (letter no. 271); Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner (eds.), Johannes Reuchlin Briefwechsel, vol. 4. 1518–​1522 (Stuttgart-​ Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​ Holzboog, 2012), pp. 354–​355 (letter no. 391). 40 Böschenstein was a Hebraist, mathematician and musician. Of the sacred songs he composed, “Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund” (When Jesus Stood Before the Cross) is best known. He published numerous books on Hebraist studies and Christian faith, including Introductorium in Hebraeas literas Hebraice et teutonice (Augsburg: Augustae Öglin 1524); Ain christenliche vndericht Der brüderlichn[n]‌lyeb (Augsburg: Ramminger, 1523); Rudimenta Hebraica Mosche Kimhi (Augsburg: Sigismundus Grym[m] Medici nd Marci Vuirsung, 1520); and Hebraicae grammaticae institutiones (Wittenberg: Johannes Grunenberg, 1518). For an early study on the sources of Reuchlin’s Zarqá Table, see Erik Werner, ‘Two obscure Sources of Reuchlin’s De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae ’, Historia Judaica, 16 (1954), pp. 46–​54. On Böschenstein, see Thomas Kaufmann,

64 Kim

­f igure 2.1  Cantillation tunes in tenor part, reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae hebraicae (1518), fol. 84r Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel: Wt 1125

Böschenstein.41 The Zarqá-​Table of both Reuchlin and the Amman manuscripts consists of the same 33 accents, whilst later transcriptions of the Table produce only 20, omitting Meteg, Gaya, Maqaf and Maqel –​those which are not genuine ‘musical accents’.42 Most of all, the accent Sof-​pasuq is notated in three rhythmic values (□ ) in Reuchlin’s book, and the note with a ‘Luther and the Jews’, pp. 69–​104, at p. 81; Timothy Wengert, ‘Philip Melanchthon and the Jews: A Re-​appraisal’, pp. 105–​135, here pp. 116–​117, both articles are in Dean Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (eds.), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-​Century Germany (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006). For a more recent study of Amman and Böschenstein, see Ilona Steimann, Jewish Book-​Christian Book. Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Context of German Humanism (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), see pp. 76–​94. 41 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 83r. 42 See Münster, M’lekhet ha-​Diqduq/​ Institutiones Grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam, fols. 2a–​3a; Vallensis, Sefer Tuv Taàm /​Opus de Prosodia Hebraeorum, fol. 12b. Both Münster and Vallensis do not include the rhetorical accent in their transcriptions of the musical accents, which are simpler than Reuchlin’s in terms of rhythmic proportions. But there are also some differences between Reuchlin’s and Amman’s. The Amman source uses mostly two note values: a white minima and white semiminima; only ‘Sof-​pasuq’ has the

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

65

circle and a dot is found in Reuchlin’s alone, not in later transcriptions of the Zarqá-​Table.43 Uniquely, Reuchlin arranged the musical motifs of the Zarqá-​Table in four-​ part harmonies through his pupil, Christoph Schilling.44 The intention of this harmonisation is entirely pedagogical. It also illustrates Reuchlin’s positive view of music as Harmonia, as articulated in his dedicatory letter of Athanasius’s Epistola ad Marcellinum in interpretationem psalmorum that he translated (1515), which was the first Latin translation of Athanasius’s letter in full, from a Greek manuscript and shed new light on the patristic instruction on psalmody that resonated throughout the reformers’ writings on sacred music.45 Reuchlin was fully aware of the pedagogical effects of music, for learning sacred texts with melodies was customary in the schools of medieval churches, where plainchant was taught to students for both literacy and liturgy. As a student of Latin, Reuchlin himself sang in the choir of the school (Kollegiatstift) in Pforzheim.46 In harmonising the cantillation tunes Reuchlin hoped the ancient chant practice would be more acceptable to his contemporaries; the harmonised version could serve as an example of utilising the tropes for his young, diligent students, who might use it daily to facilitate their correct reading of the text by memorising the accents, and distribute their own modulation of unique songs in considering syllables accentuated, either in the custom of the synagogue, or in the delightful conceiving of their own pleasing and joyful tunes.47 The musical rendering of cantillation tunes, according to Reuchlin, would eventually semibrevis and the final longa. For a comparison of the two notations see Avenary, ‘The Earliest Notation of Ashkenazi Bible Chant’, p. 138 (for Amman’s), p. 144. 43 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 84v; Hyun-​Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England. John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 178. 44 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 83r. 45 For the dedicatory letter (to Jakob Questenberg, dated on 12 August, 1515), see Johannes Reuchlin Breifwechsel 3, no. 273, pp. 127–​137. Athanasius’s letter to Marcellinus on the interpretation of the Psalms, translated by Reuchlin (S. Athanasivs ad Marcellinum in librum Psalmorum Capnione interprete) was published in the S. Athanasius In Librum Psalmorum nuper a Ioanne Reuchlin integre translatus (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1515), see fols. C*–​ Eiiiir. 46 Timm, Museum Johannes Reuchlin, p. 30. 47 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 81r: “Ab hac serie ordiunt olim opationem quae canonum nostrorum disciplinam potuistis accipe. Placeat igit cuique suum, mihi placebunt mea. Ego eum quod inferius locaui, eo utar exemplo, ut discipulorum meorum studiosa iuuentus quotidie unum ex illo uersumtenaci commedent memorie, tum deinde consyderatis qua libet in syllaba tropis, suum unicuique carminis modulum distribuant, uel pro synagoge cuiuslibet consuetudine, uel pro singulorum quorunque gaudii laeticiae hilaritudinis concepto iubilo. Quapropter Idea, spectrum, et

66 Kim make one freely and correctly recite the texts, by observing the correct accentuation which is pivotal to cantillation. But this harmonisation could be seen as an absurd attempt, undermining the sanctity of Biblical chant practice. Francis Cohen, for instance, comments on Reuchlin’s tropes in the tenor line as being “ludicrously accompanied by three other harmony parts”.48 What matters most for Reuchlin, however, is teaching his students how to modulate the syllables of Hebrew, that is, to measure correctly their quantities –​long or short –​through the aid of musical melodies employed to emphasise the accentuation.49 Reuchlin’s approach to the cantillation tunes is flexible; for the music was in the first place employed as a pedagogical means to ‘deliver’ the Word of God correctly, and was not a goal itself. In this view, he defends his use of songs in studying the Hebrew Bible as follows: Now one may exercise in these stadiums of Harmony and Hebraic athletic fields, by which earlier lectors of the sacred books adapted themselves and became accustomed to the songs, I have to say briefly, and why this study must not be overlooked. Peculiar sentences and words of interest chosen from the sacred books are designated to the Tropes, which we list in Hebrew, and are called in Latin in this way.50 Whilst most humanists dedicated to Biblical studies concentrated on exegeses or textual criticism in the early sixteenth century, Reuchlin went further to investigate the delivery of the Hebrew Bible in practice by studying cantillation, a liturgical practice which illustrates Quintilian’s statement that “music is one of the oldest arts related to literature through the testimony of the greatest poets”.51 The cantillation signs demonstrate the unity of music and grammaticē exemplar hoc illud erit”. I have paraphrased my translation of this Latin text. All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 48 Francis Cohen, ‘Cantillation’, in Isidore Singer (ed.), The Jewish Encyclopedia (12 vols., London: Funk and Wagnalls Com., 1901–​1906), iii. 548. 49 My translation and understanding of Reuchlin regarding his pedagogy is different from Knaap and Avenary. Cf. Knapp, ‘Ashkenazi Pentateuchal Chant’, p. 64; Avenary, ‘The Ashkenazi Tradition of Bible Chant’, p. 15. 50 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 81r: ‘Nvnc in quibus Harmoniae stadiis atque campis athletae hebraissando se exerceant, et quo more prius lectores sacrae scripturae se aptent, atque cantibus assuescant breui dicendum mihi est, nequid [sic] huius studii praetermisisse uidear. Eliguntur inquam è sacris literis orationes peculiares et uerba commoda in quibus Tropi designantur, quos hebraice enumerauimus, et latine appellantur hoc modo’. 51 “est omnium in litteris studiorum antiquissimam musicen extitisse, et testimonio sunt clarissimi poetae”. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, i.x.10.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

67

and the affinity between music and rhetoric, in that both employ ‘voice’ and ‘modulation’ for effective delivery.52 The term modulation had various meanings in the early modern musical treatises.53 In the classical tradition of rhetoric, modulation concerns changes in pitch (intonation, accentuation, and inflection) as well as measuring the quantity of syllables. The ancient theorists divide a tone into two kinds, that is, continua and discreta. The former concerns reading and speaking, the latter singing, to which the theorists refer as modulated.54 The modulation is the quintessence of “music” as “the science of measuring well” (musica est bene modulandi scientia).55 In classical prosody inseparable from songs, the modulation concerns measuring the quantity of syllables, that is, quantitative

52 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, i.x.24–​25. On the ancient and early modern notions of modulation, see Frances B. Turrell, Modulation. An Outline of its prehistory from Aristoxenus to Henry Glarean (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1958). 53 In Le Istitutioni harmoniche (Part ii, Chapter 14), Zarlino defines modulation as “a movement made from one sound to another with the help of various intervals” (“un movimento fatto da un suono all’altro per diversi intervalli”). In Part iii of the same work, however, the term has different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. In translating Part iii of Le Istitutioni harmoniche Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca render variously, such as “melody”, “progression”, “movement”, and “line”. Gioseffo Zarlino, Le Istitutioni harmoniche (Venice: Franceschi Senese, 1558); Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca (trans.), The Art of Counterpoint. Part Three of Le Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 67. In analysing Zarlino’s usages of the term, Vered Cohen argues that, in Sopplimenti musicali (1588), the term modulation appears in contexts which are more indicative of its meaning, and he treats modulation here as the equivalent of terms as aria or canto. Cohen’s argument is based on Zarlino’s discussion of the Hebrew accentuation in Chapter 13 of Part viii in the Sopplimenti musicali, where Zarlino cites the Hebrew term (neginah), which refers to the “musicus accentus” –​i.e. the use of melodic formulas in the Biblical recitation (i.e. cantillation), and explains that, by means of the neginah, words are produced with modulation. In this light, Cohen concludes that modulation means melody or melodic line. It is noteworthy that such strong evidence supporting this interpretation of the term modulation derives from the Hebrew accentuation and a Hebrew word. See Vered Cohen, ‘Hebrew as an Elucidator of Concepts in Western Music’, Musica Judaica, 9, no. 1 (1986–​1987), pp. 65–​67. But Cohen does not consider the broader context of the humanist rhetoric in which the term modulation is used. 54 Franchinus Gaffurius, De Harmonia Musicorum Instrumentorum Opus (Milan: Gotardo da Ponte, 1518), bk i. ch. 2; (ed. and trans.) Clement A. Miller (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1977), pp. 37–​38; Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church’, pp. 14–​15. 55 Augustine of Hippo, De musica 1.2. The definition originated from Varro, the Roman rhetorician.

68 Kim versification in metres. The importance of rhythms and metres in ancient music theory is not simply technical; it reflects the ancient theological view that like harmony, rhythm was bestowed on humans to help the unmodulated condition of the soul.56 In this light, well-​measured music set in metres was seen as a “human imitation of divine music”, beneficial for restoring the original state of the soul.57 In the simplest terms, the modulata recitatio is a union of reading and singing, delivering a verse or prose in perfect measure, traditionally from memory. A specimen of the modulata recitatio is the practice of cantus planus, which Franchinus Gaffurius (1451–​1522)58 calls the soniferous reading, i.e. a “reading aloud with tones either sustaining or tarrying”.59 The humanists such as Erasmus regard the modulata recitatio as typical of ancient Christian musical practice.60 This modulata recitatio, directed toward the edification of the Church, was most inspiring for the humanist reconstruction of ancient divina musica during the Reformation.61 Fundamental to the modulata recitatio is correction accentuation. The key factors of the modulata recitatio are rhythms and metres that concern the accentuations of texts in measuring the quantity of syllables.62 Whilst most humanists of the early sixteenth century studied these factors in relation to classical Latin, Reuchlin explored them in relation to the Hebrew syllables and pronunciation.

56 Plato, Timaeus 47. 57 Hyun-​Ah Kim, ‘Music of the Soul (Animae musica): Marsilio Ficino and the Revival of Musica humana in Renaissance Neo-​Platonism’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 19, no. 2 (2017), pp. 122–​134, at p. 129. 58 Gaffurius, a priest and a leading musical humanist, served as the choirmaster of the cathedral in Milan. 59 “Inde soniferam lectionem quasi lectionem sustinentem sonos vel ipsis sonis substitutam: ipsum planum cantum appello”. Franchinus Gaffurius, Practica musicae (Milan: Ioannes Petrus de Lomatio, 1496), fol. Aiv; Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church’, p. 15. Such a pedagogical use of musical sound is not only found in the Judeo-​Christian tradition but other religio-​philosophical schools that produced substantial literatures. 60 Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church’, pp. 15–​16. 61 Kim, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church’, pp. 16–​18. 62 The classical emphasis on metres as the rational framework of music pertinent to the Divine is well reflected in the musical treatise written by one of the most outstanding Arabic musical theorists who influenced the medieval theory of European music. In his De ortu scientiarum (Concerning the Rise of the Sciences), Al-​Fārābi (870–​950) discusses metre as one of the cornerstones for the science of music. For further discussion see Kim, Renaissance Ethics of Music, pp. 94–​95.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

4

69

Cantillation and the Art of Accented Singing

Hebrew Accents and the Reform of Liturgical Chant 4.1 The humanists devoted to Hebraist studies did not fail to perceive the common rhetorical basis of liturgico-​musical practices centring on the delivery (pronuntiatio) of sacred texts in both Jewish and Christian traditions. The synagogal practice of cantillation was inspiring for Reuchlin, for it revealed how rhetoric and grammar govern music in the practice of Biblical recitation centring on speech (sermo), as in the art of preaching.63 There had been two styles of cantillation, and the humanists took the simpler style used for pedagogical purpose rather than a more elaborate one practised in the synagogue.64 Reuchlin’s version is particularly important in this regard, for it has a more sophisticated rhythmic system than others.65 But modern transcribers of the Zarqá Table are far more interested in its melodies than in its rhythms. Consequently, therefore, several accents in their transcriptions, whose rhythmic patterns are different but melodies are alike, appear identical in rhythmic treatment.66 Harmonic as the tropes in Reuchlin’s Zarqá Table are, his prime concern is teaching the Hebrew accentuation rather than the tunes. As will be discussed later, this emphasis on the Hebrew accents, linked inextricably to music, was insightful for the music theorists of the day. Reuchlin’s study of cantillation reflects a profound interest in both classical rhetoric and Christian antiquity, an interest which was shared among the humanists at the contemporary papal curia. The impact of humanist rhetoric on the liturgical performance of the papal curia is traceable from the late fifteenth century onward. A case in point is a manuscript treatise of 1505, entitled De tonis sive tenoribus, by Paris de Grassis (c. 1470–​1528), a humanist and 63

Cf. Johannes Reuchlin, Liber congestorum de arte predicandi (Phorce: Thomas Anshelm, 1508 [1504]). Here Reuchlin notes that the art of preaching is the greatest praise of celestial art, not of fictitious speech (Artis predicandi maxima laus est, caelare artem, Ne fictus sermo videatur), fol. aij. Erasmus translated the Greek word logos at the beginning of John’s Gospel by sermo, speech, conversation, rather than the traditional verbum of the Vulgate. Joanna Martindale (ed.), English Humanism. Wyatt to Cowley (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 22. 64 Avenary, The Ashkenazi Tradition of Biblical Chant, pp. 58–​59. 65 Most of the accent motifs in Reuchlin’s transcription have the note with a pause at the end, whilst Münster’s notation has no pause and Vallensis’s notation consists of minim and semibreve with pause. Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, p. 178. 66 Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, p. 178. Likewise, the main interest of contemporary synagogal practices in the West lies in the cantillation tunes rather than the accentual, rhythmic and syntactical structure of texts.

70 Kim the Master of Ceremonies under popes Julius ii and Leo x. In this treatise, de Grassis presents a number of musical examples to illustrate how to recite the liturgical texts in keeping the accents, depending on the category, prosody, meaning and mood of the texts.67 Not only the accentuation of texts but the Latin itself was corrected. Pietro Bembo (1470–​1547), the secretary of Leo x (1513–​1521) stresses that “whatever was to be heard or read should be expressed in really pure Latin [Ciceronian Latin], full of spirit and elegance”.68 The Catholic humanists considered liturgical chant, especially the accentus (orations, epistles, lessons, gospels, etc.), as part of sacred oratory revised within a new theological framework of rhetoric (theologia rhetorica).69 Recent studies of Christian Hebraism have demonstrated that the post-​ Tridentine Catholic Church’s efforts to educate its scholars in Hebrew, together with Protestant Hebraist scholarship, formed a new market for Hebrew books that grew by thousands of potential customers after 1520.70 Reuchlin’s reputation as a leading Biblical humanist in Rome is well reflected in the tract of Giorgio Benigno Salviati, sent to Emperor Maximilian in 1517, where Salviati, who was then the archbishop of Nazareth, emphasises Reuchlin’s eloquence in almost all languages, including Hebrew and Ethiopian (which was known then as ‘Chaldean’), and also his excellence in philosophy, both divine and human.71

67

James Borders, ‘Rhythmic Performance of Accentus in Early Sixteenth-​Century Rome’, in Marco Gozzi and Franceso Luisi (eds.), Il Canto Fratto L’altro Gregoriano. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Parma –​Arezzo 3–​6 dicembre 2003 (Rome: Torre d’Orfeo, 2005), pp. 385–​405; Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, p. 154. 68 Cited in Pierre Battifol, History of the Roman Breviary (London: Longmans, 1912), p. 177. For Reuchlin’s letter to Leo x, in which he defends Hebraist studies, see Johannes Reuchlin Breifwechsel. Band 3, letters no. 267 (sent on June 13, 2015, see pp. 105–​108) and no. 309 (sent before 27 March, 1517, see pp. 210–​219). 69 On the theologia rhetorica see Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Renaissance Thought (2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970; rpt. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), i. 126–​128, 141–​142, 305–​307, passim; see also Kirk Essary, ‘Rhetorical Theology and the History of Emotions’, in Andrew Lynch and Susan Broomhall (eds.), The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe, 1100–​1700 (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 86–​102. 70 Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era, 2. For more discussions on the Hebraist and oriental studies in the Catholic Reformation, see Robert J. Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton. Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God. From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2015); Idem, Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation. the First Printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007). 71 See Giorgio Benigno Salviati, An Iudaeorum libri, quos Thalmud appellant, sint potius supprimendi, qu[am] tenendi & conservandi (c. 1515), which was issued by Hermann von

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

71

In this intellectual and cultural milieu, some of the leading musical theorists and practitioners must have shared their interest in contemporary Hebraist studies. In clarifying accentuation rules in vocal music, for example, Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–​1590), a key music theorist (who was choirmaster of St Mark’s basilica in Venice), discusses three kinds of Hebrew accents in cantillation (grammatical, rhetorical and musical) in c­ hapter 13, book 8 of Sopplimenti musicali (1588).72 He draws a distinction between rhetorical and grammatical accents: the former employs time without offence to hearing and without any barbarism in pronunciation; whilst the latter follows long and short time in the quantity of syllables. Exploring the common ground in the Hebrew prosody and the classical, Zarlino concludes that in matters of time composers must always follow the rhetorical accent, and not the grammatical. Here, he refers to Moses as “friend of God and most ancient writer” (Mosè amico di Dio & Scrittore antichissimo), who sang the Word of God in a perfect union of words and music under divine inspiration.73 Zarlino’s view of the Hebrew accents is indebted to contemporary Christian Hebraist works, especially to Reuchlin.74 Reuchlin’s influence is recognisable not only in the new musical theory concerning the art of accentual singing, but also in the existing chant practice revised under the direct influence of humanist rhetoric. Most of all, his musical notation appears to have inspired the post-​Tridentine reform of liturgical chant aiming to revive the chant practice in its pristine purity, and to free it from arbitrary additions and alterations in vogue. A case in point is Directorium chori of Giovanni Guidetti (1532–​1592), a priest and a pupil of Palestrina, commissioned by Gregory xiii to revise the services of the Roman Church, Guidetti studied ancient manuscripts of Roman chants in St. Peter’s and other principal churches of Rome. The Directorium chori, published in 1582, went through many editions until 1737, and was succeeded by Cantus ecclesiasticus passionis (1586). The Directorium chori is most famous for its unprecedented proportional notation.75 It uses only four musical notes set in 2:1 ratios: ‘minim’ Neuenahr as Dragišić, Juraj. Defensio praestantissimi viri Ioannis Reuchlin L.L. Doctoris (Cologne: Eucharius Cerviornus, 1517), fols. Biiiiv and Cir. 72 Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali (Venice: F. de’ Franceschi Senese, 1588), see pp. 322–​ 326; Kim, Renaissance Ethics of Music, p. 58. 73 Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali, p. 323. 74 For further discussion of the influence of Christian Hebraism on Zarlino, see Don Harrán, In Search of Harmony: Hebrew and Humanist Elements in Sixteenth-​Century Musical Thought (Hänssler-​Verlag: American Institute of Musicology, 1988). 75 On the post-​Tridentine liturgical chant, see Marianne C.E. Gillion, ‘Cantate Domino Canticum Novum? A Re-​examination of ‘Post-​Tridentine’ Chant Revision in Italian

72 Kim (♦), ‘Brevis’ (■), ‘Brevis sub semicirculo’ ( ), and ‘Brevis sub semicirculo cum puncto’ ( ). Guidetti’s proportional notation is akin to Reuchlin’s in terms of both note shapes and rhythmic divisions.76 There is no direct evidence suggesting that Guidetti read Reuchlin’s book of 1518 and the peculiar note forms derived from Reuchlin’s. It is, however, highly likely that Guidetti consulted Reuchlin, one of the most esteemed grammarians of the day in treating accentuation matters of the Bible for practical guidance.77 The humanists redefined Christian theology and practice in the light of rhetoric, and they applied rhetoric to music, particularly to liturgical chant as an integral part of sacred oratory which could serve as a useful means for developing correct habits of speech. At the centre of the humanist reform of liturgical chant was correct pronunciation and accentuation.78 The humanist

76

77

78

Printed Graduals’, in Wim François and Violet Soen (eds.), The Council of Trent. Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–​1700), v. 3. Between Artists and Adventurers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 159–​181; Richard J. Agee, ‘The Printed Dissemination of the Roman Gradual in Italy in the Early Modern Period’, Notes, 64, no. 1 (2007), pp. 9–​42; Valerio Morucci, ‘Cardinal’s Patronage and the Era of Tridentine Reform: Giulio Feltro della Rovere as Protector of Sacred Music’, Journal of Musicology, 29, no. 3 (2012), pp. 262–​291; Matteo Nanni (ed.), Music and Culture in the Age of the Council of Basel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); John W. O’Malley, ‘Trent, Sacred Images, and Catholics’ Senses of the Sensuous’, in Dans M.B. Hall and T.E. Cooper (eds.), The Sensuous in the Counter-​Reformation Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 28–​48; Theodore Karp, An Introduction to the Post-​Tridentine Mass Proper (2 vols., Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2005); Raphael P. Molitor, Die Nach-​Tridentinische Choral-​Reform zu Rom. Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des xvi. und xvii. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Leipzig: F.E.C. Leuckart, 1901–​1902). I discussed this similarity in my earlier study, and for further discussions of proportional notations used in the reforms of liturgical chants, including Guidetti’s, see Kim, Humanism and The Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, pp. 148–​172. For Guidetti’s notation, see Ibid., p. 153. Werner assumes that the nucleus of the collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican was provided by the Florentine nobleman Gianozzo Manetti who began to study Hebrew with a Jew (about 1450), and succeeded in interesting Popes Nicholas V and Sixtus iv in the pursuit of Hebrew studies. Werner, ‘Two obscure Sources of Reuchlin’s De accentibus et orthographia’, pp. 39–​40. On Reuchlin’s influence on the Reformation, see Barbara Mahlmann-​Bauer, ‘Johannes Reuchlin und die Reformation: eine neue Würdigung’, in Wilhelm Kühlmann (ed.), Reuchlins Freunde und Gegner. kommunikative Konstellationen eines frühneuzeitlichen Medienereignisses (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2010). Although the Council of Trent did not allow the use of vernacular languages, the positions of both the Catholic and Protestant Reformations were alike over the matter of the intelligibility of liturgical texts. Craig Monson, ‘The Council of Trent Revisited’, Journal of American Musicological Society, 55 (2002), pp. 1–​37.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

73

believed ancient ecclesiastical music was built upon the unity of word and tone; but their separation had grown in the chant practice of later churches.79 Meteg: The Rhetorical Accent 4.2 Reuchlin’s interest in cantillation is fundamentally concerned with the delivery (pronuntiatio), most important in classical oratory. The delivery, like music, is divided into two parts: “voice” (vox) and “motion” (motus).80 The four features of delivery are accuracy, clarity, elegance and compatibility.81 Focusing on the delivery, Reuchlin’s notation of the Zarqá Table illustrates the humanist efforts to make a parallel between the classical prosody and its Hebrew counterpart.82 A case in point is his treatment of Sof-​pasuq (or called Silluk), which always appears at the end of a verse. Using the pause at the end of a verse is typical of the humanist compositions of classical odes and liturgical chants.83 Reuchlin draws special attention to an accent indicating the pause in reading, namely, the meteg –​the rhetorical accent used to mark the secondary tone, reminding the reader to give its vowel full pronunciation (the meteg appears in the form of a vertical bar, usually on left side of vowels). The meteg makes readers pause; makes the vowel an open syllable. The second book of De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae is devoted entirely to the meteg. Here, Reuchlin clarifies that in Hebrew there is no actual versification or rhyme, however, there exists a rhetorical measure, out of long and short syllables, and he treats the meteg in detail. Reuchlin thus notes that the “rhetorical accent is an artificial retention of breath (restraining), whence it takes names of ‘rope’ and ‘rein’. It is operated by adorned and sweet gracefulness around diction”.84 According to Reuchlin, the rhetorical accent is especially important in cantillation, since “the Holy Scripture should be pursued in the utterance of all

79 Harrán, In Search of Harmony, p. 124. 80 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, xi.iii.6. 81 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, xi.iii.29–​65. 82 In some cases, the Hebrew theory of accentuation is entirely misunderstood. For instance, see Werner, ‘Two Obscure Sources of Reuchlin’s …’, pp. 41–​42. 83 Quintilian, the best teacher of ancient rhetoric for the humanists, stresses the importance of the final syllable and its length in discussing the four features of delivery, especially in relation to clarity and elegance. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, xi.iii.33. See Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England, p. 182. 84 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 60v. “Rhetoricus autem accentus est artificiosa retentio spiritus, unde nomen habenae ac retinacula accepti, quod Hebraei apte, ‫ מתג‬nominarunt. De accentu igitur rhetorico qui orna natus et suauitatis gratia circa dictiones versatur, syllabarumque quantitate constat nunc dicendum est …”.

74 Kim excellence and nourishing and decorum, by no means just in reciting”.85 He explains twenty-​seven rules concerning the meteg in detail.86 As to the rationale for these rules, Reuchlin notes as follows: “I explain the quantity of syllables and accents with clear rules, so far as the students could speak true, pleasing words in the manner of the masters of grammar and also of rhetorical eloquence”.87 Moreover, for Reuchlin, the meteg is inseparable from the musical accents; he includes it in his Zarqá Table and illustrates how the rhetorical accent is rendered in musical rhythms (the breve is used to make the syllables short; the longae, to lengthen them), together with three other non-​musical accents (Gaya, Maqaf and Maqel).88 Invariably, however, existing studies of Reuchlin’s Zarqá Table have focused on the tunes of the accents rather than their rhythms. The same is true of the modern pedagogy of cantillation generally. Hence, the meteg and its unique musico-​rhetorical function is hardly noticeable in the performance of Biblical chant.89 The melodies enhance the dramatic effects of the text, but they are not the greatest concern to the Masoretic plan. The rhythmic and structural considerations are most essential to the Masoretic system, whose primary goal of devising the cantillation signs lies in accurate delivery of the text.90 Reuchlin’s pedagogy of cantillation is loyal to that original intent, although he employs the latest homophonic arrangement of the cantillation tunes, so as to facilitate learning the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, which was alien to his contemporaries. As Reuchlin wished, many universities in Germany and elsewhere promoted study of the Hebrew language, and numerous treatises on the Hebrew grammar and accentuation had come out throughout the seventeenth and

85 “Scriptura sacra ut est omnis uirtutis et morum nutricia sic et decorum illud in dicendo uenuste prosequitur, haud tantum in agendo”. Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 60r. 86 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fols. 62v–​66r. 87 “nunc accentus et syllabarum quantitates manifestis canonibus explicaui, quateuus non modo quod libet uocabulum grammatice loqui uerum etiam rhetorice eloqui possitis”. Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol. 65v. 88 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fols. 86v–​87r. 89 At best, in his transcription, for instance, Emmanuel Rubin indicates a meteg with a ‘tenuto’ sign. Emanuel Rubin, ‘Rhythmic and Structural Aspects of the Masoretic Cantillation of the Pentateuch’, Music & Dance Department Faculty Publication Series, 1 (1993), p. 9. https://​schol​arwo​rks.umass.edu/​mus​ic_​f​acul​ty_​p​ubs/​ Accessed 10 October 2020. 90 Rubin, ‘Rhythmic and Structural Aspects of the Masoretic Cantillation of the Pentateuch’, p. 10.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

75

eighteenth centuries.91 Following the problematic book of Elias Levita (1469–​ 1549) on the Masoretic text published in 1538, the question when the Hebrew vowel points and accents were invented had caused fierce debates among both Christian and Jewish scholars.92 Particularly, the question of poetic metre in the Hebrew Bible, coupled with the central importance of the Psalms, became pivotal for the Hebraists. A number of young Hebraists studied the dating of the vocalisation and accentuation and Hebrew prosody, alongside correct pronunciation and accentuation for the delivery of the Bible.93 5

Conclusion

Music, rhetoric, and grammar were one in the ancient practice of cantillation. The Masoretic system of cantillation illustrates the way in which ancient grammarians/​rhetoricians combine music with sacred texts. Reuchlin was the first 91

92

93

There are numerous other minor Hebraists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who wrote on the Hebrew accentuation, whose works have been largely neglected. An overview of these Hebraist works is to be found in Aron Dotan’s prolegomenon to William Wickes’ book on the early treatises. William Wickes, Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament: Taʻame Emet on Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; Taʻame Kaf-​alef Sefarim on the Twenty-​one Prose Books (New York: ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1970 [1881, 1887]). For an overview of studies of Hebrew Biblical accentuations from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, see pp. vii–​xx. Elias Levita (Elijah ben Asher Levita; Alias ha-​Levi, also known under the name Bahur), Sefer masoret ha-​masoret (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1538); see also Idem, Sefer tuv ta’am (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1538); the Latin editions of these two, translated by Münster: Accentibum Hebraicorum breuis expositio (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1539) and Reihe: Sēfer haṭ-​ṭaʿamîm we-​Sēfer Māsôret ham-​māsôrā (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1539). Johannes Buxtorf the Younger (1599–​1664), for instance, is one of the most outstanding Hebraists among the early Reformed theologians. Following his father’s footstep, he became the chair of the Hebrew language study at the University of Basel (1630) and was later appointed Professor of Dogmatics at the same University. One of the most famous books written by him is Tractatus de punctorum vocalium et accentuum, in libris veteris Testamenti hebraicis, origine, antiquitate et authoritate: oppositus Arcano punctationis revelato Ludovici Cappelli (Basileae: König, 1648). This is one of several polemics composed after an argument with Louis Cappelli (1585–​1658), who was professor of Hebrew in 1613 and later professor of theology, at the Reformed Academy of Saumur, over the antiquity of niqqud. Whilst Cappelli confimed Levita’s assertation that the punctuation and vocalisation of the Hebrew Bible was developed after the Christian era on the basis of philological and scientific treatment of the Biblical text, Buxtorf the Younger argues against Levita’s view of the late origin of the Hebrew vowel points, and defends the authenticity of the vocalisation of the Tetragrammaton. It is an elaboration of his father’s book, Tiberias, sive Commentarius Masoreticus (1620 and 1664).

76 Kim Christian Hebraist committed to the study of cantillation, and his study of the Hebrew accentuation threw new light on the delivery of the Bible when the intelligibility of sacred texts was a central issue with regard to ecclesiastical music. Reuchlin taught the Hebrew accents in considering both Hebraic and Greco-​Roman traditions of music and prosody. To teach the Christian reader the accents, he synthesised classical musical antiquity and Jewish liturgical practice by harmonising the cantillation tunes. But the harmonisation itself was not the core of his pedagogy; fundamentally, the cantillation tunes were employed to articulate the accents in modulating rhythms and pitch, and to facilitate the memorising of the Bible. This use of music, according to Reuchlin, is based on the ancient custom of praising the divine, as articulated by ancient thinkers, Greek and Jewish alike. Unsurprisingly, thus, cantillation, practised daily at synagogues, fascinated him as a wonderful reference to ancient customs.94 The melodies employed are useful means; but they are not sacrosanct, and are subject to change, as far as they serve for “cantillating the voculatio, i.e. the accentuations of words, or intonation”.95 In the same vein, the Hebrew accentuation inspired the post-​ Tridentine reform of liturgical chant in both theory and practice. As William Wickes states, indeed, “the Hebrew accentuation is essentially a musical system”.96 But the rhetorical aspect of cantillation was a premise for the early modern Christian Hebraists, yet it is often overlooked by current linguists and Biblical scholars who have debated the origin and development of Hebrew accentuation and vocalisation. Cantillation, for Reuchlin, served as a living example for exploring the ancient union of music, rhetoric, and grammar. It inspired later musical theorists and chant practitioners who adopted the art of accented singing under the influence of classical prosody and rhetoric.97 They sought a new manner of chanting, rooted in the musical practice of ancient churches, i.e. the modulata recitatio.98 But Reuchlin’s Hebrew 94 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol.71r. 95 Reuchlin, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae, fol.71r. 96 William Wickes, A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-​One So-​Called Prose Books of the Old Testament. With a Facsimile of a Page of the Codex Assigned to Ben-​Asher in Aleppo (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1887]), p. 1. 97 It is unknown to what extent Reuchlin himself was interested in the liturgical reform of the Church in his time, though he experienced the liturgical performance of the Papal curia where humanism flourished and influenced the performance of liturgy and liturgical music. 98 See Erasmus’s letter (Epistola contra pseudevangelicos) to Vulturio Neocomo, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, vol. ix-​1 (Amsterdam: North-​Holland Pub., 1969), p. 306. According to Erasmus, Paul sang in the modulation, when he said: “I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the understanding, too”. (1 Corinthians 14:15). “Modulate canebat

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

77

scholarship goes beyond such linguistic and philological interest in the Bible. He was among the earliest European scholars to defend minorities by speaking of religious tolerance. Through the De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae he reconstructed cantillation, which was (and still is) at the heart of the synagogal tradition, as an impetus for the Christian singing of the Hebrew Bible. As such, this audacious attempt presents a unique blending of Jewish musico-​liturgical practice and the European musical tradition of harmony. Reuchlin’s battle for promoting Hebrew studies among the Christians paved the way for a new rhetorical framework of Biblical and liturgical chant in the time of the Reformation.99 His pedagogy of cantillation marked a milestone not only in the advanced, innovative Hebraist scholarship of the day but also in the moral and intellectual integrity of Christian cosmopolitanism in the early modern world.

Bibliography



Primary Sources

Acta doctorum Parrhisiensium de sacratissima facultate theologica contra speculu oculare joannis reuchlin phorcensis.vna cum snia eiusd libelli condemnatiua ad ignem (Cologne: Heinrich Quentel, 1514). ustc number: 608642. Böschenstein, Johannes, Introductorium in Hebraeas literas Hebraice et teutonice (Augsburg: Augustae Öglin 1524). Böschenstein, Johannes, Ain christenliche vndericht Der brüderlichn[n]‌lyeb (Augsburg: Ramminger, 1523). Böschenstein, Johannes, Rudimenta Hebraica mosche kimhi a johan. Böschenstain diligenti studio revisa (Augsburg: Sigismundus Grym[m]‌Medici nd Marci Vuirsung, 1520), ustc number: 691578. Böschenstein, Johannes, Hebraicae grammaticae institutiones (Wittenberg: Johannes Grunenberg, 1518; Cologne: Johann Soter, 1521), ustc number: 667717.

99

Paulus, quum ait: Psallam spiritu, psallam et mente; orabo spiritu, orabo et mente”. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi, vol. v-​3, p. 185. Luther did not entirely share Reuchlin’s appreciation of all Jewish literature, nevertheless he defended Reuchlin’s academic freedom to pursue Hebrew studies in acknowledging the significance of Hebrew Biblical scholarship. Martin Luther, Responsio ad condemnationem doctrinalem per Lovanienses et Colonienses factum. 1520. See in D. Martin Luthers Werke. WA 6. Schriften 1519/​20; einschließlich Predigten, Disputationen =​Abteilung 4, Teil 1, Band 6 (Weimar: H. Böhlaus, 1888), p. 184.

78 Kim Buxtorf, Johannes, Tiberias Sive Commentarius Masorethicus Triplex Historicus Didacticus Criticus: Ad illustrationem Operis Biblici Basiliensis conscriptus Quo Primum Historia Masoretharum Tiberiensium (Basel: Ludwig König, 1620), ustc number: 2005595. Buxtorf, Johannes the Younger, Tractatus De Punctorum Vocalium, Et Accentuum, In Libris Veteris Testamenti Hebraicis, Origine, Antiquitate, [et] Authoritate: Oppositus Arcano Punctationis Revelato, Ludovici Cappelli (Basel: Ludwig König (i, heirs of) & Martin Wagner, 1648), ustc number: 2116179. Erasmus, Desiderius, Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam: North-​ Holland Pub., 1969–​1995; 1996–​2008; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2009 –​). Ficino, Marsilio, Platonica theologia de immortalitate animorum (Florence: Antonio Miscomini, 1482), ustc number: 994999. Gaffurius, Franchinus, De Harmonia Musicorum Instrumentorum Opus (Milan: Gotardo da Ponte, 1518), ustc number: 831336. Grassi, Paride, Paridis Crassi bononien. olim apostolicarvm cerimoniarvm magistri ac episcopi pisavren. De cerimoniis cardinalivm et episcoporum in eorum dioecesibus libri dvo: singulis etiam ecclesiarum canonicis valde necessarij: nunc primum impressi (Rome: Apud Antonium Bladum, 1564). Guidetti, Giovanni, Directorium chori ad usum sacrosanctae Basilicae Vaticanae et aliarum cathedralium (Rome: Robert Granjon, 1582), ustc number: 835481. Levita, Elias, Sefer masoret ha-​masoret (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1538; (trans.) Sebastian Münster: Accentibum Hebraicorum breuis expositio. Basel: Johannes Froben, 1539). Levita, Elias, Sefer tuv ta’am (Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1538, (trans.) Sebastian Münster, Reihe: Sēfer haṭ-​ṭaʿamîm we-​Sēfer Māsôret ham-​māsôrā. Basel: Johannes Froben, 1539). Luther, Martin, Responsio ad condemnationem doctrinalem per Lovanienses et Colonienses factum. 1520, in D. Martin Luthers Werke. WA 6. Schriften 1519/​20; einschließlich Predigten, Disputationen =​Abteilung 4, Teil 1, Band 6 (Weimar: H. Böhlaus, 1888). Mosellanus, Petrus, Tabulae de Schematibus et Tropis (London: John Kingston, 1573 [1516]), ustc number: 507696. Münster, Sebastian, M’lekhet ha-​Diqduq/​Institutiones Grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam (Basel: Johannes Froben, 1524), ustc number: 661237. Pfefferkorn, Johannes, Streydt puechlyn vor dy warheit und eyner warhafftiger historie vechtende wyder den falschen broder Doctor Joannis Reuchlyn und syne jungeren (Cologne: Heinrich von Neuß, 1516), ustc number: 694755. Pfefferkorn, Johannes, Handt spiegel. Wider und gegen die Jüden und Judischen Thalmudischen schrifftenn so sie uber das Cristenlich regiment singen und lesen welche pillich gotslesterer …. (Mainz: Johannes Schöffer, 1511), ustc number: 661559.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

79

Pfefferkorn, Johannes, In disem buchlein vindet Ier ain entlichenn furtrag wie die blinden Juden yr Ostern halten (Augsburg: Erhard Öglein, 1509). Pfefferkorn, Johannes, Ich heysch eyn boichelgyn der ioeden bicht (Cologne: Johannes Landen, 1508), ustc number: 668757. Pfefferkorn, Johannes, Speculum adhortationis iudaice ad Christum (Cologne: Martin von Werden, 1507). Plato, Timaeus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). Quintilian, Marcus F., Institutio oratoria, D.A. Russell (ed. and trans.), Quintilian. The Orator’s Education (5 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Reuchlin, Johannes, Sämtliche Werke (eds.), Widu-​Wolfgang Ehlers, Hans-​Gert Roloff and Peter Schäfer (Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstadt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 1996 –​). Reuchlin, Johannes, De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae (Hagenau: Thomas Anshelm, 1518), ustc number: 628887. Reuchlin, Johannes, De Arte Cabalistica (Hagenau: Thomas Anshelm, 1517), ustc number: 667610. Reuchlin, Johannes, S. Athanasivs ad Marcellinum in librum Psalmorum Capnione interprete, in S. Athanasius In Librum Psalmorum nuper a Ioanne Reuchlin integre translatus (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1515). Reuchlin, Johannes, Clarorum virorum epistolae latinae graecae et hebraicae variis temporibus missae ad Ioannem Reuchlin Phorcensem ll. Doctorem (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1514). Reuchlin, Johannes, Defensio Ioannis Reuchlin Phorcensis ll. doctoris contra calumniatore suos Colonienses (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1513; subsequent edn, Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1514). Reuchlin, Johannes, Septem psalmi poenitentiales hebraici cum gramaticali tralatione Latina (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1512; 2n edn, Wittenberg: Klug, 1529). Reuchlin, Johannes, [Augenspiegel]. Doctor Johannsen Reuchlins … Augenspiegel (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1511); Daniel O’Callaghan (ed.), The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-​ Century Germany. Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013), ustc number: 640977. Reuchlin, Johannes, Gutachten über das jüdische Schrifttum (Ratschlag ob man den Juden alle ire bücher nemmen, abthun und verbrennen soll, Stuttgart: s.n., 1510–​ 1511), (ed.) Antonie Leinz-​von Dessauer, Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1965); Schriften zum Bücherstreit. i. Teil. Reuchlin Schriften (=​Sämtliche Werke iv, 1) (eds.), Widu-​Wolfgang Ehlers, Lothar Mundt, Hans-​Gert Roloff and Peter Schäfer (Stuttgard-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​holzboog, 1999); Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books. A Classic Treatise against Anti-​semitism, (ed. and trans.) Peter Wordsman (New York: Paulist Press, 2000).

80 Kim Reuchlin, Johannes, Liber congestorum de arte predicandi (Phorce: Thomas Anshelm, 1508 [1504]), ustc number: 669284. Reuchlin, Johannes, [De Rudimentis Hebraicis]. Principium libri Ioannis Reuchlin … de rudimentis hebraicis (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, 1506; 2nd revised edn, by Sebasitan Münster) (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1537), ustc number: 686605. Reuchlin, Johannes, [Tütsch missiue] Doctor iohanns Reuchlins tütsch missiue. warumb die Juden so lang im ellend sind (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, 1505). Reuchlin, Johannes, De verbo mirifico (Basel: Johannes Amerbach, 1494), ustc number: 748528. Reuchlin, Johannes, Johannes Reuchlin Briefwechsel. vol. 4. 1518–​1522, (eds.) Matthias Dall’Asta and Gerald Dörner (Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​Holzboog, 2012). Reuchlin, Johannes, Johannes Reuchlin Breifwechsel. vol. 3. 1514–​1517, (ed.) Georg Burkard (Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​holzboog, 2007). Salviati, Giorgio Benigno, An Iudaeorum libri, quos Thalmud appellant, sint potius supprimendi, qu[am] tenendi & conservandi (c. 1515); issued by Hermann von Neuenahr as Dragišić, Juraj. Defensio praestantissimi viri Ioannis Reuchlin L.L. Doctoris (Cologne: Eucharius Cerviornus, 1517). Schwarz, Peter, Contra perfidos Judaeos de conditionibus veri Messiae (Esslingen: Konrad Fyner, 1475), ustc number: 747533. Sherry, Richard, A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes (London: John Day, 1550), ustc number: 504543. Vallensis, Johannes, Sefer Tuv Taàm /​Opus de Prosodia Hebraeorum (Paris: apud Jacques Bogard, 1545), ustc number: 149485. Wakefield, Robert, Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum Arabicae, Hebraicae, Chaldaicae (London: W. de Worde, 1529). Zarlino, Gioseffo, Sopplimenti musicali (Venice: F. de’ Franceschi Senese, 1588). Zarlino, Gioseffo, Le Istitutioni harmoniche (Venice: Pietro Da Fino, 1558), ustc number: 864226; Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca (trans.), The Art of Counterpoint. Part Three of Le Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).



Secondary Sources

Abel, Wolfgang von and Reimund Leicht (eds.), Verzeichnis der Hebraica in der Bibliothek Johannes Reuchlins (Ostfildern: J. Thorbecke, 2005). Agee, Richard J., ‘The Printed Dissemination of the Roman Gradual in Italy in the Early Modern Period’, Notes, 64, no. 1 (2007), pp. 9–​42. Avenary, Hanoch, The Ashkenazi Tradition of Biblical Chant between 1500–​1900. Documentation and Musical Analysis (Jerusalem: Tel-​Aviv University Press, 1978). Avenary, Hanoch, ‘The Earliest Notation of Ashkenazi Bible Chant’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 26 (1975), pp. 132–​150.

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

81

Avenary, Hanoch, Studies in the Hebrew, Syrian and Greek Liturgical Recitative (Tel Aviv: Israel Music Institute, 1963). Bartelmus, Rüdiger, ‘Melanchthon, Reuchlin und die humanistische und jüdische Tradition’, in Johannes Schilling (ed.), Melanchthons bleibende Bedeutung. Ringvorlesung der Theologischen Fakultät der Christian-​Albrechts-​Universität zum Melanchthon-​Jahr 1997 (Kiel: Theologische Fakultät der Christian-​ Albrechts-​ Universität. 1998), pp. 41–​56. Battifol, Pierre, History of the Roman Breviary (London: Longmans, 1912). Box, George, Hebrew Studies in the Reformation Period and After. Their Place and Influence (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010). Burnett, Stephen. G., Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–​1660). Authors, Books and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012). Burns, Jeffrey, David Bers and Stephen Tree, The Music of Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible. A Revised Theory of Musical Accents in the Hebrew Bible (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011). Cohen, Francis, ‘Cantillation’, in Isidore Singer (ed.), The Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols. (London: Funk and Wagnalls Com., 1901–​1906). Cohen, Miles B., The System of Accentuaton in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Milco Press, 1969). Corbin, Solange, ‘La Cantillation des rituels chrétiens’, Revue de Musicologie, 47 (1961), pp. 3–​36. Coudert, Allison and Jeffrey Shoulson (eds.), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Dall’Asta, Matthias, ‘Bücher aus Italien: Reuchlins Kontakte zu italienischen Buchhändlern und Druckern’, in Gerald Dörner (ed.), Reuchlin und Italien. [vom 27. bis 29. Juni 1996 fand in Pforzheim der 3. Internationale Reuchlinkongreß statt] (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1999), pp. 23–​43. Dörner, Gerald, ‘Reuchlin, Johannes’, in Franz J. Worstbrock (ed.), Deutscher Humanismus 1480–​1520, Verfasserlexikon. Band 2. Lieferung 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 579–​633. Essary, Kirk, ‘Rhetorical Theology and the History of Emotions’, in Andrew Lynch and Susan Broomhall (eds.), The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe, 1100–​1700 (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 86–​102. Flender, Reinhard, Der biblische Sprechgesang und seine mundliche Uberlieferung in Synagoge und griechischer Kircher (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1988). Geiger, Ludwig, Johann Reuchlin. sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1871, rpt, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1964). Gillion, Marianne C. E., ‘Cantate Domino Canticum Novum? A Re-​examination of ‘Post-​Tridentine’ Chant Revision in Italian Printed Graduals’, in Wim François

82 Kim and Violet Soen (eds.), The Council of Trent. Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–​1700), v.3. Between Artists and Adventurers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 159–​181. Goodman, Anthony and Angus McKay (eds.), The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe (New York: Routledge, 2014). Greive, Hermann, ‘Die hebräische Grammatik Johannes Reuchlins’, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 90 (1978), pp. 395–​409. Harrán, Don, In Search of Harmony. Hebrew and Humanist Elements in Sixteenth-​ Century Musical Thought (Hänssler-​Verlag: American Institute of Musicology, 1988). Harrán, Don, Word-​Tone Relations in Musical Thought from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Hänssler-​Verlag: American Institute of Musicology, 1986). Hornkohl, Aaron D. and Geoffrey Khan (eds.), Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020). Jacobson, Joshua R., Chanting the Hebrew Bible, Second, Expanded Edition. The Art of Cantillation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2017 [2002]). Jean-​Christophe, Saladin, ‘Lire Reuchlin lire la Bible; Sur la préface des ‘Rudimenta hebraica’ (1506)’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 222, no. 3 (2005), pp. 287–​320. Khan, Geoffrey, The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Including a Critical Edition and English Translation of the Sections on Consonants and Vowels in the Masoretic Treatise Hidāyat al-​Qāriʾ “Guide for the reader” (2 vols., Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020). Khan, Geoffrey, (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2013). Karp, Theodore, An Introduction to the Post-​Tridentine Mass Proper (2 vols., Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2005). Kaufmann, Thomas, ‘Luther and the Jews’, in Dean Bell and Stephen Burnett (eds.), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-​Century Germany (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006), pp. 69–​104. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Music, Rhetoric and Edification of the Church in the Reformation: the Humanist Reconstruction of Modulata Recitatio’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, 4, no. 1 (2017), pp. 1–​20. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, ‘Music of the Soul (Animae Musica): Marsilio Ficino and the Revival of Musica humana in Renaissance Neo-​Platonism’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 19, no. 2 (2017), pp. 122–​134. Kim, Hyun-​Ah, The Renaissance Ethics of Music. Singing, Contemplation and Musica humana (New York: Routledge, 2016 [2015]). Kim, Hyun-​Ah, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England. John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate [Routledge], 2008).

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

83

Kirn, Hans-​Martin and Hagit Amirav, ‘Notes on the Reformation, Humanism, and the Study of Hebrew in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Theodore Bibliander (1505–​ 64)’, Church History and Religious Culture, 87, no. 2 (2007), pp. 161–​171. Knapp, Alexander, ‘Ashkenazi Pentateuchal Chant: A Sixteenth-​Century German-​ Christian Interpretation’, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 6, no. 1 (2012), pp. 23–​26. Koenig, Walter, ‘Luther as a student of Hebrew’, Concordia Theological Monthly, 24 (1953), pp. 845–​853. Krebs, Manfred (ed.), Johannes Reuchlin 1455–​1522 (Pforzheim: Im Selbstverlag der Stadt, 1955, new edn, Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994). Leinkauf, Thomas, ‘Reuchlin und der Florentiner Neuplatonismus’, in Gerald Dörner (ed.), Reuchlin und Italien, Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 7 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1999), pp. 109–​132. Loewenstein, Herbert, ‘Eine Pentatonische Bibelweise in der Deutschen Synagoge (um 1518)’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 12 (1930), pp. 513–​526. Mahlmann-​ Bauer, Barbara, ‘Johannes Reuchlin und die Reformation: eine neue Würdigung’, in Wilhelm Kühlmann (ed.), Reuchlins Freunde und Gegner. kommun­ i­ ka­ tive Konstellationen eines frühneuzeitlichen Medienereignisses (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2010). Martindale, Vulgate J. (ed.), English Humanism. Wyatt to Cowley (London: Croom Helm, 1985). Mertens, Dieter and Lorenz von Sönke, Johannes Reuchlin und der ‘Judenbücherstreit’. [Vorträge einer Ringvorlesung im Wintersemester 2011/​ 2012 in Tübingen] (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013). Miletto, Gianfranco and Giuseppe Veltri, ‘Hebrew Studies in Wittenberg (1502–​ 1813): From Lingua Sacra to Semitic Studies’, European Journal of Jewish Studies, 6, no. 1 (2012), pp.1–​22. Miller, Peter N., Peiresc’s Orient. Antiquarianism as Cultural History in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2017). Molitor, Raphael, Die Nach-​Tridentinische Choral-​Reform zu Rom. Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des xvi. und x vii. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Leipzig: F.E.C. Leuckart, 1901 –​02). Monson, Craig, ‘The Council of Trent Revisited’, Journal of American Musicological Society, 55 (2002), pp. 1–​37. Morucci, Valerio, ‘Cardinal’s Patronage and the Era of Tridentine Reform: Giulio Feltro della Rovere as Protector of Sacred Music’, Journal of Musicology, 29, no. 3 (2012), pp. 262–​291. Morucci, Valerio, ‘Cardinal’s Patronage and the Era of Tridentine Reform: Giulio Feltro della Rovere as Protector of Sacred Music’, Journal of Musicology, 29, no. 3 (2012), pp. 262–​291.

84 Kim Nanni, Matteo (ed.), Music and Culture in the Age of the Council of Basel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). O’Malley, John W., ‘Trent, Sacred Images, and Catholics’ Senses of the Sensuous’, in Marcia B. Hall and Tracy E. Cooper (eds.), The Sensuous in the Counter-​Reformation Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 28–​48. O’Malley, John W., Trent and All That. Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). Park, Sung Jin, The Fundamentals of Hebrew Accents. Divisions and Exegetical Roles beyond Syntax (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Posset, Franz, Johann Reuchlin (1455–​ 1522). A Theological Biography (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015). Price, David H., Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Price, David H., ‘Christian Humanism and the Representation of Judaism: Johannes Reuchlin and the Discovery of Hebrew’, Arthuriana, 19, no. 3 (2009), pp. 80–​96. Price, James D., The Syntax of Masoretic Accents in the Hebrew Bible, sbec 27 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). Robert, Jörg, Evamarie Blattner and Wiebke Ratzeburg (eds.), Ein Vater neuer Zeit. Reuchlin, die Juden und die Reformation (Tübingen: Stadtmuseum Tübingen, 2017). Rosenthal, Frank, ‘The Rise of Christian Hebraism in the Sixteenth Century’, Historia Judaica, 7 (1945), pp. 167–​191. Roth, Ulli‚‘“Rudimenta Reuchliniana”: Faber Stapulensis auf den Spuren des Hebraisten Johannes Reuchlin Daphnis’, Zeitschrift für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur, 35, no. 1 (2006), pp. 25–​50. Rubin, Emanuel, ‘Rhythmic and Structural Aspects of the Masoretic Cantillation of the Pentateuch’, Music & Dance Department Faculty Publication Series, 1 (1993), pp. 1–​10. Retrieved from https://​schol​arwo​rks.umass.edu/​mus​ic_​f​acul​ty_​p​ubs/​. Rummel, Erika, The Case against Johann Reuchlin. Social and Religious Controversy in Sixteenth-​Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). Scheible, Heinz, ‘Reuchlins Einfluß auf Melanchthon’, in Arno Herzig, Julius H Schöps and Saskia Rohde (ed.), Reuchlin und die Juden, Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften 3 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 1993), pp. 123–​149. Schmidt-​Biggemann, Wilhelm, Geschichte der chrislichen Kabbala (3 vols., Stuttgart-​ Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-​holzboog, 2012–​2013). Steimann, Ilona, Jewish Book-​Christian Book. Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Contxt of German Humanism (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020). Sullivan, Charles, ‘Hebrew and the First Language of Mankind’ (9 Mar. 2013), https://​charl​esas​ulli​van.com/​3965/​heb​rew-​and-​the-​first-​langu​age-​of-​mank​ind/​. Timm, Christoph, Museum Johannes Reuchlin. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung in Pforzheim (Heidelberg; Ubstadt-​Weiher, 2012).

Reuchlin’s Reconstruction of the Modulata Recitatio

85

Trinkaus, Charles, In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Renaissance Thought (2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970; rpt, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). Tunkel, Victor, The Music of the Hebrew Bible and the Western Ashkenazic Chant Tradition (London: Tymsder Pub., in association with the Jewish Music Institute, 2006). Turrell, Frances Berry, Modulation. An Outline of its prehistory from Aristoxenus to Henry Glarean (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1958). Wengert, Timothy, ‘Philip Melanchthon and the Jews: A Re-​appraisal’, in Dean Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (eds.), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-​Century Germany (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006), pp. 105–​135. Werner, Eric, ‘Trop and Tropus: Etymology and History’, Hebrew Union College Annual, 46 (1975), pp. 289–​296. Werner, Eric, ‘Two obscure Sources of Reuchlin’s De accentibus et orthographia linguae Hebraicae ’, Historia Judaica, 16 (1954), pp. 46–​54. Wickes, William, A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-​One So-​Called Prose Books of the Old Testament. With a Facsimile of a Page of the Codex Assigned to Ben-​Asher in Aleppo (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1887]). Wilkinson, Robert J., Tetragrammaton. Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God. From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2015). Wilkinson, Robert J., Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation. the First Printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007). Yeivin, Israel, Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah, (trans.) E.J. Revell (Missoula, MT: Published by Scholars Press for the Society of Biblical Literature and the International Organization for Masoretic Studies, 1980). Zeus, Marlis, Johannes Reuchlin –​Humanist mit Durchblick(Karlsruhe: Helmesverlag, 2011). Zimmermann, Heidy, Tora und Shira. Untersuchungen zur Musikauffassung des rabbinischen Judentums (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2000).

­c hapter 3

Cross and Creation

Rethinking the Aesthetic Foundations of Luther’s Theology of Music Svein Aage Christoffersen 1

Introduction

Music has been used to educate Christians in their faith throughout the centuries. Singing the Psalms and hymns has put the life of the believers into a Christian perspective. Singing together is also an important tool for creating a sense of Christian community and connection, thereby binding believers closer together. Besides, music as such is a powerful means to create mood, which can bend the human mind towards God and make it more receptive to all things divine. In the Lutheran churches, music has always played an important role. Among the various functions of music in the Lutheran Reformation, three main functions stand out: first, music was a tool for teaching and learning. Music facilitated the congregation’s internalisation of the doctrines of the church; second, music was a tool for comfort and consolation; and third, music was instrumental in building the sense of union and belonging.1 The positive relationship of the Lutheran churches to music can be traced all the way back to Martin Luther himself. As is well known, Luther was a great lover of music. He was an accomplished amateur player of both flute and lute, and he praised the theological significance of music as God’s benevolent gift.2 Luther translated and paraphrased traditional liturgical, religious and secular songs, and he wrote hymns. In the past, the number of hymns attributed to Luther was grossly exaggerated. Nowadays, thirty-​seven choral texts are nevertheless attributed to Luther, and several of the melodies can be attributed with good likeliness to his pen.3 Music played an important role in Luther’s Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdiensts (1526), in which he stressed the 1 Chiara Bertoglio, Reforming Music. Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), p. 181, pp. 274–​282. 2 D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–​1997; hereafter WA), Tischreden, Bd. 6, p. 348; Bertoglio, Reforming Music, pp. 181–​182; Mark C. Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty –​ A Reappraisal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), p. 113. 3 Bertoglio, Reforming Music, pp. 256–​257.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

Cross and Creation

87

pedagogical importance of this new vernacular liturgy.4 The church service should first and foremost aim at “the immature and the young who must be trained and educated in the Scripture and God’s Word. … For such, one must read, sing, preach, write and compose”.5 Theologians interested in music and music experts interested in church and theology quote readily from Luther’s enthusiastic comments on music, and there are a number of musicological examinations of Luther’s view on music. But the theological interest in Luther’s view on music has primarily focused on music as a vehicle for the Word of God, reaching for the human heart.6 Less attention has been paid to music as a theological topic in its own right. One of the reasons behind this neglect is that Luther never wrote a treatise or a pamphlet on aesthetic questions in general or on his view on music in particular. When he deals with questions that concern aesthetics, it is always in connection with other questions, such as the indulgences or hagiolatry, which determines his theological focus. However, the Protestant disregard of aesthetic considerations cannot be explained just by referring back to Luther himself. The self-​understanding of Protestant theology has also to be taken into account. Protestant theology identifies itself as the theology of the Word –​a theology that first and foremost is concerned with the relationship between the word of God and belief. A certain educational value has been ascribed to images and music in practical theology; but the aesthetic questions of images and music are not treated as important as are theological questions such as the Eucharist. In general, aesthetics has been regarded as something superficial and shallow, concerned primarily with the emotional lives of people and to a lesser degree with human will and intellect. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing interest in Luther’s theology of music from an aesthetic perspective. Miikka E. Anttila and Mark C. Mattes are prominent contributors to this new study of aesthetics in Luther’s theology.7 Both aim explicitly at a theological understanding and 4 Martin Luther, Deudsche Messe und ordnung Gottis diensts (Wittenberg: Michael Lotter, 1526). For an English edition of Deudsche Messe und ordnung Gottis diensts, see Luther’s Works, vol. 53: Liturgy and Hymns, (ed.) Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1965), pp. 61–​90. 5 Luther’s Works 53, p. 62; WA 19, p. 73: “Aller meyst aber geschichts umb der eynfeltigen und des jungen Volks wille, wilchs sol und muss teglich ynn der Schrift und Gottis wort geubt und erzogen warden … umb solcher willen mus man lessen, singen, predigen, schreyben und tichten”. 6 For instance, see Johannes Block, Verstehen durch Musik. Das gesungene Wort in der Theologie (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2002). 7 Miikka E. Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music. Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). See also Miikka E. Anttila, ‘Music’, in Olli-​Pekka Vainio (ed.), Engaging Luther

88 Christoffersen evaluation of Luther’s view on music and aesthetics. Both of them are concerned with theology, but approach the question of Luther’s aesthetics from different starting points. Anttila is mainly interested in Luther’s theology of music and expands his theology of music to aesthetics in general. For Mattes, it is the other way around. His primary interest lies in the aesthetics of Luther, and he locates Luther’s theology of music within his theological aesthetics in general. As will be seen, however, both Anttila and Mattes arrive at some of the same conclusions in the end. In the following, we shall discuss Luther’s view on music from an aesthetic perspective. While this approach is in line with Anttila and Mattes, the present chapter follows another route when it comes to the understanding of Luther’s theology of Creation. The chapter thus emphasises the metaphysical implications of Luther’s theology of Creation, and it understands the dialectic between cross and creation in a different way. It will also consider aesthetical implications in Luther’s teaching on the Christian vocation.8 2

The Young Luther and Aesthetics

A main challenge for those who want to take Luther’s aesthetics into account is the young Luther’s view on beauty. As a young man, Luther treated beauty dialectically, with reference to the cross as a turning point for all human wisdom and understanding. In his Dictata super Psalterium (1513–​1515), Luther says: Whoever is most beautiful (pulcherrimus) in the sight of God is the most ugly (deformissimus), and vice versa, whoever is the ugliest is the most beautiful …. Therefore, the one who is most attractive in the sight of God (speciosissimus coram deo) is not the one who seems most humble to himself, but the one who sees himself as most filthy and depraved.9 (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2010), pp. 210–​222, and Miikka E. Anttila, ‘Die Ästhetik Luthers’, Kerygma und Dogma, 58 (2012), pp. 244–​255. Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty. See also Mark C. Mattes, ‘Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics’, in John Barton (ed), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 –​; Online Publication, 2016). 8 Luther’s theology of music is also discussed from a similar point of view, but in a different context and hence without reference to the dialectic between cross and creation and to Luther’s teaching on the Christian vocation in: Svein Aage Christoffersen, ‘Musikk og metafysisk undring i Luthers teologi’, in Harald Rise (ed.), Lutherske perspektiver på liturgisk musikk (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2019), pp. 13–​33. 9 Luther’s Works 10, p. 239. WA 3, pp. 290–​291.

Cross and Creation

89

This dialectic is developed further in the Heidelberg Disputation, both in the thesis and in the proofs.10 Let us consider some key passages briefly: From The Proofs to Thesis 3: Human works appear attractive (speciosa) outwardly, but within they are filthy (foeda), … For they appear to the doer and others good and beautiful (pulchra), yet God does not judge according to appearances (secundum faciem) but searches ‘the minds and hearts’ …. For without grace and faith it is impossible to have a pure heart.11 Thesis 4: Although the works of God are always unattractive and appear evil (deformia malaque videantur), they are nevertheless really eternal merits.12 Thesis 28: The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing (diligibili) to it.13 From The Proofs to thesis 28: Therefore, sinners are attractive (pulchri) because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive (pulchri).14 One may of course say that the Heidelberg Disputation shows that aesthetics in the ordinary sense of the word was of no interest to the young Luther. Beauty does not refer to a sensuous experience, but to a spiritual one. This is Anttila’s position. What we find in the Heidelberg Disputation is an aesthetic variation on the doctrine of justification.15 According to Anttila, the young Luther barely touches upon outward, sensuous beauty, at all.16 10 The Heidelberg Disputation was an academic disputation held at the University of Heidelberg on April 26, 1518. Luther wrote the thesis for the disputation, which is reckoned as a landmark in Luther’s theological development. 11 Luther’s Works 31, p. 43. Cf. WA 1, p. 356: “Opera hominum videntur speciosa sed intus sunt foeda … Videntur enim sibi et aliis bona et pulchra. Sed Deus est qui non iudicat secundim faciem, sed scrutatur renes et corda … At sine gratia et fide impossibile est mundum haberi cor”. 12 Luther’s Works 31, p. 39. Cf. WA 1, p. 353: “Opera dei, ut semper sint deformia malaque videantur, vere tamen sunt vere immortalia”. 13 Luther’s Works 31, p. 41. Cf. WA 1, p. 354: “Amor dei non invenit sed creat suum diligibile, Amor hominis fit a suo diligibile”. 14 Luther’s Works 31, p. 57. Cf. WA 1, p. 365: “Ideo enim peccatores sunt pulchri quia diliguntur, non ideo diliguntur quia sunt pulchri”. 15 Anttila, ‘Music’, p. 218. 16 Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, pp. 165–​167.

90 Christoffersen Mattes is in accordance with Anttila at this point. That is, the young Luther does not regard beauty as a sensuous experience, but as a spiritual characteristic. Luther’s understanding of beauty is a forensic and is not an aesthetic understanding.17 Mattes supports this view by connecting it to the distinction between man “in his relation to the world” (coram mundo) and man “in his relation to God” (coram deo). This distinction is, according to Mattes, what lies behind Luther’s distinction between the visible and the invisible and between outward and inward beauty. The things which count coram mundo do not count coram deo.18 In this way Mattes strengthens the point that man’s beauty coram mundo has no bearing on his status coram deo. Anttila and Mattes are obviously right in taking Luther’s conception of beauty to express his teachings on righteousness, thereby rejecting beauty coram mundo as a metaphysical roadmap to God. However, it does not follow that Luther in the Heidelberg Disputation has nothing to say about external, sensory beauty. On the contrary, Luther’s argument presupposes that external beauty is an uncontroversial fact. The meaning of something being beautiful is common knowledge. Luther does not contest the fact that bishops and cardinals can look beautiful in their spectacular clerical robes, or that services can be beautiful in all their liturgical pomp and circumstance. The point is just that all this beauty says nothing about how the bishops, cardinals and the liturgy appear in the eyes of God. It is not beauty (pulchra) that governs the line of thought in the texts quoted above, but attractiveness (speciosa). Beauty is but one of several things which can be attractive. This explains why Luther rejects not only beauty but also good works, virtue, piety etc. as favorable in the eyes of God.19 Luther’s line of thought presupposes that beauty is outwardly attractive. Luther is not urging the idea that we should be attracted to ugliness, neither outwardly nor inwardly. To be attracted to something implies a certain kind of approval and recognition. Ugliness on the other hand, be it outwardly or inwardly, is disgusting. In Luther’s Theology of the Cross outward beauty is unmasked as just outward and condemned in its religious pretentions and inward ugliness is condemned as disgusting. Condemnation is not attractive; no one wants to be condemned. For this reason, God’s work in Christ is unattractive and appears evil. But how 17 Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty, p. 89; p. 98. 18 Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty, pp. 110–​112. 19 Thesis 3: “Although the works of man always appear attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins”. Luther’s Works 31, p. 39. Cf. WA 1, p. 353: “Opera hominum ut semper sint speciosa bonaque videantur, probabile tamen est ea esse peccata mortalia”.

Cross and Creation

91

can God’s work in Christ then, create faith in God? That is because God’s work in Christ is not just condemnation, it is grace as well, and grace is attractive, and hence beautiful in the eyes of those who have realised their sinfulness (ugliness). In this view, a new kind of beauty begins to appear: the beauty of humility –​ humilitas: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin … through knowledge of sin, however, comes humility, and through humility grace is acquired”.20 3

The Old Luther: Pleasure and Music as a Gift of God

As mentioned earlier, music plays an important role as an educational tool in Luther’s reform of the church service in the 1520’s. Luther never lets go of the educational perspective, but when we come well into the 1530s, other points of view enter into the picture. This is not least evident in Luther’s preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae (1538).21 In his preface, Luther praises music as the master of human emotions: For whether you wish to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to appease those full of hate –​and who could number all these masters of the human heart, namely, the emotions, inclinations, and affections that impel men to evil or good? –​what more effective means than music could you find?22 As Luther states, music creates emotions. It affects people’s feelings. However, we should not conceive emotional reactions based on modern psychology in which emotions and feelings are one sector among others in people’s inner lives. It is not the emotions in isolation that are affected and moved, but the human mind. Music is emotional and thus can affect one’s faith and thought as well. It speaks to one’s heart, the locus of both thoughts and feelings. Hence, 20

Luther’s Works 31, p. 51. Cf. WA 1, p. 361: “Per Legem enim cognatio peccati, per cognitionem autem peccati humilitas, per humilitatem gratia acquiritur”. 21 Hans Albrecht (ed.), Georg Rhau. Musikdrucke aus den Jahren 1538 bis 1548 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1955). Cf. WA 50, pp. 368–​374; Luther’s Works 53, pp. 321–​324. Georg Rhau (1488–​1548) was a German publisher and composer. 22 Luther’s Works 53, p. 323. WA 50, p. 371: “Siue enim velis tristes erigere, siue laetos terrere, desperantes animare, superbos frangere, amantes sedare, odientes mitigare, et quis omnes illos numeret dominos cordis humani, scilicet affectus et impetus seu spiritus, impulsores omnium vel virtutum vel vitiorum”.

92 Christoffersen the Holy Spirit honours music as an instrument for the proper work of the Spirit, as written in the Scripture. Through music the gifts of the Spirit were instilled in the prophets, namely, the inclination to all virtues, as can be seen in Elisha (2 Kings 3:15). On the other hand, music serves to cast out Satan, the instigator of all sins, as is shown in Saul, the king of Israel (1 Samuel 16:23). The enormous power of music over the human mind is precisely the reason why there is an intimate connection between the word of God and music. In songs and the Psalms, word and music are united in the soul of the listener, and this ability to conjoin words and music is a property that only human beings have. There is music in all things; but the gift of combining words and notes belongs to a human alone, “to let him know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming (the word of God) through music and by providing sweet melodies with words”.23 Although Anttila investigates the theological foundation of Luther’s view on music, his main interest does not lie in the capacity of music to work as a vehicle for the gospel. What is most important according to Anttila is that in the ears of Luther, music is a gift, and as a gift, music is pleasing. Music is pleasant and delightful, and we are to open our hearts and receive musical delight in gratitude as a gift of God.24 Music is not only good for something; it is a boon in itself, which distinguishes it from other sources of sensuous pleasure, like for instance sex: “Sexual pleasure in marriage is a good thing when it is used to conceive a child, to fulfil a natural need, or to restrain inchastity. Sexual pleasure is thus a pleasure with a purpose, not an end in itself. Music, however, is a sensuous pleasure that has nothing sinful in it”. In Luther’s theological aesthetics, the delight in music is “a disinterested pleasure, something to be entertained for the sake of itself”.25 Music as a gift of God is given with the Creation, but the gifts of God cannot be separated from God himself, according to Anttila: “To receive the gifts of God means thus also to be united with him”.26 Hence, in order to receive music as God’s gift, you have to open your heart, take God into your life and believe in God. Belief then, and unity with God, is a presupposition for the delight in music without sin. Anttila summarises Luther’s view on music in the following way: “to recognize the pleasure of music as a gift of God is a sign of faith in a loving and generous father”.27 23

Luther’s Works 53, pp. 323–​324. WA 50, p. 372: “… vt sciret, se Deum laudare oportere verbo et Musica, scilicet sonora praedicatione et mixtis verbis suaui melodiae”. 24 Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, p. 200. 25 Anttila, ‘Music’, p. 217. 26 Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, p. 200. 27 Anttila, ‘Music’, p. 219.

Cross and Creation

93

In Anttila’s view, pleasure is closely connected to beauty, and the connection between musical pleasure and beauty is the bridge from Luther’s view on music to his aesthetics, since with beauty we are in the middle of an aesthetical discourse, not about the arts, but about the sensuous world. It is the world that is beautiful, and the world is God’s creation. Beauty, then, is God’s gift. Despite the fact that the world as created by God is beautiful, however, there is not just beauty in the world. The world is also evil, pain, suffering and destruction. Because of all the horrible events that happen in the world, “to see beauty, order and goodness in the world is a confession of faith”. This means, according to Anttila, “that one’s aesthetic experience takes place a posteriori to one’s faith”.28 Faith on the other hand, presupposes revelation, and in this way Anttila’s concept of creation is derived from the revelation. Mattes too emphasises creation when it comes to the later Luther. He maintains the distinction between man coram mundo and man coram deo, but now he stresses that the sensuous beauty coram mundo is to be considered as creational beauty, while the beauty coram deo is gospel beauty. “The latter”, Mattes notes, “is not apparent to the senses or to human reason”, but creational beauty is.29 This grants the sensuous beauty coram mundo significance and value as created by God. However, our experience as sinners is mixed, according to Mattes, and it is not always clear that the universe is governed by teleology or is a reflection of beauty: “It is only through the gospel that we can unconditionally affirm that the cosmos is beautiful and good”.30 The key word here is “unconditionally”. The gospel removes the uncertainty that goes together with our experience as sinners. In this way Mattes ends up confirming Anttila’s conclusion: Yes, there is beauty in the world, but you need the gospel’s justification by faith to see the beauty and enjoy it unconditionally. When the gospel has renewed their senses, believers may find “innocent delight” not just in music, but also in the beauty of the world. Justification is effective in the sense that “sinners are renewed in heart, mind, and even body; their senses are opened so they can honour creation as a gift and so give God glory for his goodness”.31

28 Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, p. 171. 29 Mattes, ‘Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics’, p. 14. 30 Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty, p. 176. 31 Mattes, ‘Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics’, p. 17.

94 Christoffersen 4

Music and Metaphysics

Both Anttila and Mattes emphasise that Luther’s view on aesthetics is founded on Creation theology. When Creation theology is derived from the revelation, however, aesthetic pleasure becomes ultimately a privilege for the believers. But is Creation theology, according to Luther, just an extension of Revelation, as Anttila and Mattes emphasise? Does this understanding do justice to Luther’s view? Let us take a closer look at the preface Luther wrote to Georg Rhau’s publication of Symphoniae iucundae. It is a brief text, but it nevertheless gives the most detailed account of Luther’s view on music. In this preface Luther puts art-​music in the context of the music that is given in nature and in the creation. Right from the beginning, music has been inherent in all creation, Luther writes, for nothing exists that is without numero sonoro –​a sounding number.32 The idea that music is inextricably connected to mathematics can be found in the philosophy of music from antiquity and onwards, and this is the background for Luther’s idea that music is inherent in all creation. Everything created is, like music, based on numbers and proportions and governed by mathematical laws. Thus, music is as primary in the created world as mathematics. In a table talk Luther even calls music the “prime material” (prima materia), that is, something which existed before matter became differentiated into all things in the universe.33 Luther uses air as an example showing that music is incorporated into everything that exists. The air is both invisible and impossible to grasp through one’s senses, and it is “as silent as a fish”. Nonetheless, it gains a mouth and a voice when it is set in motion. Thus, even air has “a sounding number” that can supply it with sound and make it sensory. When the air moves, it gains a voice. Air is voiced; it swings, and therefore can be sensed. There is even music in the empty air.34 From the frequency of air, Luther proceeds to birdsong, which is mentioned positively in the Old Testament. However, the most outstanding example of music in the Creation is, according to Luther, the human voice. Luther does not just consider the astounding fact that human beings can use 32 33

34

“Nihil enim est sine sono, seu numero sonoro”, WA 50, p. 369. Cf. Luther’s Works 53, p. 322. “For nothing is without sound or harmony”. WA TR 4, p. 191 (n:r 4192): “17. Decembris cantores quidam aderant canentes egregias mutetas. Quas cum Lutherus miraretur, dixit: So unser Her Gott in diesem leben in das scheisshauss solche edle gaben gegeben hat, was wird in ihenem ewigen leben geschehen, ubi omnia erunt prefectissima et iuenndissima. Hic autem tantum est materia prima”. Cf. Mattias Lundberg, Martin Luther egna toner och ord om musik (Skeleffteå: Artos, 2017), p. 27. WA 50, p. 369. Luther’s Works 53, p. 322.

Cross and Creation

95

their voices to sing. His main point is that the voice swings both when weeping and when laughing.35 When Luther refers to “sounding number” to explain that music is inherent in everything created, it is not to make the omnipresence of music less enigmatic, but rather the opposite. Exactly the enigmatic and inexplicable, not to say mysterious, play a central role in Luther’s praise, and music is not least enigmatic in the human voice: Philosophers have labored to explain the marvelous instrument of the Human voice: how can the air projected by a light movement of the tongue and even lighter movement of the throat produce such an infinite variety and articulation of the voice and of words? And how can the voice, at the direction of the will, sound forth so powerfully and vehemently that it cannot only be heard by everyone over a wide area, but also be understood? Philosophers for all their labor cannot find the explanation; and baffled they end in perplexity; for none of them has yet been able to define or demonstrate the original components of the human voice, its sibilation and (as it were) its alphabet, e.g. in the case of laughter –​to say nothing of weeping. They marvel, but they do not understand. But such speculations on the infinite wisdom of God, shown in this single part of his creation, we shall leave to better men with more time on their hands. We have hardly touched on them.36 There is no conflict between philosophy and theology in this text. What Luther suggests is not that the theologians can do what the philosophers cannot. On the contrary, the philosophers are the learned, the ones who have insight and can spend time pondering on the mystery of the human voice. Luther as a theologian cannot. Not even the philosophers, the most learned of the learned, are able to define what the human voice consists of. But precisely because no 35 36

WA 50, p. 370. Luther’s Works 53, p. 322. Luther’s Works 53, p. 322. Cf. WA 50, p. 370: “Sudarunt Philosophi, vt intelligerent hoc mirabile artificium vocis humanae, quo modo tam leuimotu linguae leuiorique adhue motu gutturis pulsus aer funderet illiam infinitam varietatem et articulationem vocis et verborum, pro arbitrio animae gubernantis, tam potenter et vehementer, vt per tanta interualla locorum circulariter ab omnibus distinete non solum audiri, sed et intelligi possit. Sed sudant tantum, nunquam inueninnt, et cum admiratione desinunt in stuporem, Quin nulli adhue reperti sunt, qui definire et statuere potuerint, quid sit ille sibilus et alphabetum quoddam vocis humanae, seu materia prima, nempe Risus (de fletu nihil dicam). Mirantur, sed non complectuntur.Verum haec speculabilia de infinita sapientia Dei in hac vna creatura relinquamus melioribus et ociosioribus, nos vix gustum attingimus. De vsu tantae rei dicere hic oportuit”.

96 Christoffersen one can explain and define what the voice is, everyone can wonder at the voice as an enigmatic expression of God’s wisdom. The enigma of the human voice is an issue not just for the theologians; it is a philosophical issue, which provokes amazement and contemplation. Luther is generally critical and polemical towards philosophy and metaphysics, and Mattes summarises Luther’s critique to the point when he writes, “the project of metaphysics fails as a road that grants access into God’s being independently of God’s self-​giving in Jesus Christ”.37 However, when it comes to music, there is a mystical perspective in Luther’s view,38 and as far as this mystical perspective remains a philosophical issue, Luther’s view on music contains a metaphysical aspect. In this metaphysical approach, Luther is not concerned with revealing the nature and secrets of music so that it becomes a rational and understandable roadmap to God. By contrast, the metaphysical approach does not give answers; instead, it emphasises the questions and the inscrutability of music. Luther’s way of dealing with music, thus, seems to indicate that music transcends our ability to understand. We are struck by wonder and awe when we see what music can accomplish and how omnipresent it is. It is under this aspect we must also read Luther’s reference to “sounding number” in everything created. The “sounding number” is not to rationalise music, but to bring forth its ineffable character. For who can understand that even air has its own “sounding number”? We can hear it, but can we understand it? Luther’s metaphysical approach, then, is no model of explanation. On the contrary, it is meant to maintain the enigmatic and mysterious character of music and of the created world. For Luther the primary modus of metaphysics is not explanation, but wonder. You do not have to believe or be a theologian to wonder, even the philosophers marvel. This metaphysical wonder is accessible to all human beings, it is universal. Today, Luther’s ideas about “sounding numbers” are obsolete. However, this is not to say that Luther’s view on music becomes more relevant today the less metaphysical it is. Rather, the opposite is the case. When the theology of creation and the theory of music are subsumed under revelation, the musical theory loses its general character and relevance. It is exactly the metaphysical approach in Luther’s view on music that makes it possible for him to say something about music in general terms. The sound of something moving through the air, of birdsong, of the human voice and the power music has over the human mind, for Luther these are all phenomena which are generally

37 Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty, p. 104. 38 Cf. Bertoglio, Reforming Music, p. 193.

Cross and Creation

97

accessible and which are of importance for his view on music. As universal phenomena, they signify the mysterious omnipresence of God. Borrowing a term from Peter Berger, we may say that in Luther’s theology music is a sign of transcendence.39 Music does not prove anything, but it makes one wonder if there is not more to the world than empirical facts can tell us. When making music, performing music, listening to music human beings transcend the factual character of the world. Transcendence is often understood as climbing, going beyond or going above the empirical and the factual. In Luther’s approach to music, however, transcendence may just as well be understood as a move into the depths of the world. In music, one does not stay at the surface of things; one ponders or meditates on the depths and profundity of the world. Music as a sign of transcendence does not have to be an attempt to escape from this world; it can also be an incitement to penetrate into the depths of the world.40 5

Phenomenology of the Voice

As we have seen, it is not only ‘sounding numbers’ but also the human voice (vox) which causes wonderment in Luther’s view on music. The voice is the concrete expression of the enigmatic omnipresence of music in everything created. It is not primarily the word that creates wonder in the preface to Symphoniae Iucundae, it is the human voice. It is the voice that connects the word with music. Thus, the metaphysical aspects in Luther’s approach to music is not only based on mathematical speculations; but it also has a phenomenological basis in the human voice. This importance of the voice can be found in a number of other places in Luther’s theology as well. When he is to explain the meaning of the word “Euangelion” in the preface to the publication of the New Testament in German, for instance, he refers to how we can use our voice. “Euangelion”, he writes, is a Greek word, which means “good tidings, a good message, good news, a good report, about which we sing, tell and rejoice”.41 The gospel is an outburst, a cry –​ Geschrey –​as Luther can also call it: 39 40

41

Peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels. Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (London: Penguin, 1969). For further discussions of transcendence in relation to music by bringing together musicology, theology and philosophy, see Ferdia J. Stone-​Davis (ed.), Music and Transcendence (London: Routledge, 2015). See also Andrew Bowie, Music, Transcendence and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2015). WA: Die Deutsche Bibel 6, p. 3. Luther’s Works 59, p. 123.

98 Christoffersen The gospel is nothing but a sermon and a cry for God’s grace and mercy … and is not really what is found in books and written with letters, but an oral sermon and a living word and a voice which resounds in the whole world and is cried out in public so that it will be heard all over.42 As such a cry, the gospel is not information –​a concept, an article of faith, or a text –​but an address which makes the one to whom it is spoken free. Therefore, it is not the letter and the text, but speech and voice that are the primary medium of the gospel, as Luther highlights in a commentary on Malachi 2:7, where it is written: “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” Luther comments on this verse as follows: This is a passage against those who hold the spoken word in contempt. The lips are the public reservoir of the Church. In them alone is kept the word of God. You see, unless the word is preached publicly, it slips away. The more it is preached, the more firmly it is retained. Reading it is not as profitable as hearing it, for the live voice teaches, exhorts, defends, and resists the spirit of error. Satan does not care a hoot for the written word of God, but he flees at the speaking of the Word.43 A good example of the importance Luther ascribes to the human voice is found in a letter he wrote to the priest Bernhard von Dölen. Luther worked widely as a spiritual adviser, both face to face and as a correspondent. Von Dölen turned to Luther several times to find comfort and encouragement when he found life –​and his congregation –​difficult. Luther answered his letters to the best of his ability, but also wrote in an answer in 1537 that von Dölen’s problems were probably of such a nature that could not be dealt with in a single letter. Von Dölen would have to come to Luther and hear Luther’s own voice: I can write nothing to comfort you now, other than this: if you want my advice, come and see me as soon as possible. It is possible that your tribulation is too serious to be solved in a short letter. It will be better to cure it, if God will, by a personal meeting with me and my living voice (viva voce).44 42 43 44

Luther’s Works 30, p. 3; WA 12, p. 259. Luther’s Works 18, p. 401; WA 13, p. 686. Cited in Gerhard Ebeling, Luthers Seelsorge. Theologiein der vielfalt der Lebenssituationen an seinen Briefen Dargestelt (Tübingen: Siebeck Mohr, 1997), p. 14.

Cross and Creation

99

That is to say, only through the voice does the word really gain force and power over the human mind. It is not the word that gives the voice this power; it is the voice that lends its power to the word, so that the word can utilise the power of the voice. The word must literally be incarnated and become perceivable in the voice to gain power over the human mind. Man’s voice is a universal phenomenon, given to believers and non-​believers alike. Hence, the power of the voice comes not from the revelation but from creation. The voice is created in such a way that it gives power, and that is also true of music. Previously we have seen that Luther in his preface to Symphoniae iucundae praises music precisely because it can do so many things to the human mind, and not just create joy and give enjoyment and pleasure. Music has been created in such a fashion that it confers power. 6

Compassion and Humility

There is no reason to deny that revelation may sharpen one’s ability to see beauty and goodness in this world. But the world is not unconditionally good and beautiful, and certainly not in the eyes of the believer. Luther knew as we all do, that the world is also evil, cruel and repulsive, full of illness, hunger, suffering, distress and death. Nonetheless, we live, and we are sustained in life by benevolent forces outside ourselves. We live because God supports our lives with food and clothing, health and peace, as Luther says in his Large Catechism.45 This is the mercy of creation, understood as a merciful creation and sustenance of life in this world.46 For Luther, it is therefore not the evil in the world we should wonder about; it is the good forces we should wonder about and receive in their sensorial forms.47 In this tension between good and evil, life and death, once again a metaphysical perspective emerges in Luther’s theology, in the form of wonderment at goodness and existence. It is marvelous that something exists, rather than nothing. In such a metaphysical perspective, the created world can be experienced and received as a gift, from which wonder and awe may arise. This is the very context for Luther’s understanding of music as God’s gift. 45 46 47

Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 432. WA 30, 1, pp. 183–​184. Cf. Svein Aage Christoffersen, ‘Skapelsesnåde: Om den sansbare verdens erfaringsform’, Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 112 (2011), pp. 261–​277. WA 31-​1, pp. 70–​71. Cf. Luther’s Works 14, pp. 47–​49; Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, p. 171; Idem, ‘Die Ästhetik Luthers’, p. 249.

100 Christoffersen Music participates in an ongoing battle between life and death, goodness and evil. It is a sensuous phenomenon that, oddly enough and in so many ways, can contribute to sustaining life for each and every person, believer and non-​ believer alike. Revelation not only sharpens the ability to experience beauty in this world. As Luther sees it, revelation makes the believer more sensitive to pain and suffering. Anttila emphasises this when he refers to Luther’s commentary on Genesis 23:2, where it is written that Abraham mourned and wept over the death of Sarah. Luther does not see Abraham’s tears as an expression of a lack of faith, but rather, as an expression of his closeness to God.48 In Anttila’s rendering: The people of God harbor tender emotions and weep and mourn their parents, spouses, or friends when they are bereaved. This is not a sign of their human infirmity, but rather their feeling of tender passion for others is proof that they know God. Whoever knows God also knows and loves creatures, since vestiges of God exists in creation.49 Closeness to God sharpens both sensitivity to and love of God’s creation. Sensitivity is not a weakness, but a sign of knowing God.50 This sensitivity to and love for God’s creation, threatened by death and destruction creates a compassion for those who are in pain and distress, who cry and mourn, who are poor and oppressed. The compassion has an aesthetical potentiality, which Luther was aware of, when he wrote that music could comfort the sad, encourage the despairing and humble the proud. Being sad and in despair is neither attractive nor beautiful, but the compassion in efforts to comfort and encourage is attractive and beautiful. This sensitivity in compassion creates a link to the young Luther’s theology of the cross. As we have seen in the Heidelberg Disputation, the cross reveals God’s creative love to those who are nothing in themselves, and this means that humility is the quintessence of Christian life. Humility characterises those who live by grace as it is given both in creation and in Christ. Human beings can be said to be ugly as far as they are sinners who act in presumptuous and evil self-​interest, but human beings receiving grace in humility are beautiful. Both compassion and humility entail a recognition of human beings as created and loved by God’s grace.

48 WA 43, p. 276; Luther’s Works 4, p. 195. 49 Anttila, Luther’s Theology of Music, pp. 170–​171. 50 Anttila, ‘Die Ästhetik Luthers’, p. 248.

Cross and Creation

101

Luther’s Theology of the cross also undermined the established teaching on how to live a Christian life. Luther moved the arena for Christian life from cloisters to everyday domestic life. Christians should not leave this world in order to live as monks or nuns in cloisters. Christians are called to take care of their neighbours in ordinary life, as bakers, lawyers, spouses, servants, and the like. This doctrine of Christian vocation is later unfolded in Luther’s Great Catechism, where a poor girl who tends a little child and faithfully does what she is told is presented as a more genuine model for Christian life than those who spend all their time in church, singing, praying and wafting incense.51 Luther’s doctrine of vocation turns a compassionate eye to common people and their lives in the ordinary. 7

Creation and Cross

We have thus far discussed Luther’s view on music from a broader, aesthetic perspective. This approach has made it possible to emphasise how the theological perspectives in Luther’s view on music is founded on his theology of Creation. In contrast to a common trend in modern Lutheran theology, however, metaphysical elements in Luther’s Creation theology are accentuated. Luther’s Creation theology is not just derived from revelation; it also includes metaphysical assumptions implied in phenomenological observations. In its omnipresence and power –​not least in the human voice –​music takes side with the creative and life-​sustaining powers in this life. Hence, music is an incitement to awe and wonder, joy and gratefulness for all human beings. Attractive and beautiful from this point of view, music is also a sign of transcendence. However, Luther’s aesthetics are not based solely on Creation theology. God’s work in Christ has aesthetic implications as well, expressed in the beauty of compassion and humility, and this may influence the aesthetic way of looking at the world. To look at the world aesthetically with the cross of Christ in mind may develop a keen and humble eye and compassion with those who suffer and struggle and often end up being crucified in one way or another. After the Reformation, liturgical music and hymns were promoted in the vernacular languages as efficient tools for teaching and learning in church, at school, and at home. Music was a vehicle for the Word of God in a language that people could comprehend, and the emotional power of music was brought 51

Kolb, and Wengert, The Book of Concord, p. 428; WA 30-​1, p. 179.

102 Christoffersen into service, much in line with Luther’s points of view. Together with the emphasis on vernacular language, Luther’s doctrine of vocation underscored the lives of ordinary people. But during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cultural mentality at large had changed too. In this context, life was seen not only from above, in a divine perspective, but also from below, in a human perspective. Gradually, thus, the whole range of human life experiences was taken into the realm of music, often but not always with a compassionate eye to human fragility. This change of aesthetic perspective was of course not due to the Reformation alone. However, Protestant Creation theology, highlighting the importance of vernacular language and life in the ordinary, helped to pave the way for these perspectives in religious music; at the same time, in this capacity as an advocate for life in the ordinary, the Creation theology blurred the line between the sacred and the profane. The compassionate eye could be expressed outside church music as well as within church music.

Bibliography



Primary Sources



Modern Editions

Albrecht, Hans (ed.), Georg Rhau. Musikdrucke aus den Jahren 1538 bis 1548 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1955). Kolb, Robert, and Timothy J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. 4. Lectures on Genesis Chapters 21–​25 (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1964). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. 10. Lectures on the Psalms 1 (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1974). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. 14. Selected Psalms iii (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958). Luther’s Works. American Edition vol. Lectures on the Minor Prophets (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1975). Luther’s Works. American Edition vol. The Catholic Epistles (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1968). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. Career of the Reformer i (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 1957). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. Liturgy and Hymns (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1965). Luther’s Works. American Edition, vol. 59. Prefaces i /​1522–​1532 (St Louis, MO: Concordia, 2012).

Cross and Creation

103

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–​1997): Bd 1 (1883); Bd 3 (1885); Bd 12 (1891); Bd 13 (1889); Bd 19 (1897); Bd 30, 1 (1912); Bd 31, 1 (1913); Bd 43 (1912); Bd 50 (1914); Tischreden, Bd 4 (1916); Tischreden, Bd 6 (1921); Deutsche Bibel, Bd 6 (1929).



Secondary Sources

Anttila, Miikka E., Luther’s Theology of Music. Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). Anttila, Miikka E., ‘Music’, in Olli-​Pekka Vainio (ed.), Engaging Luther (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), pp. 210–​222. Anttila, Miikka E., ‘Die Ästhetik Luthers’, Kerygma und Dogma, 58 (2012), pp. 244–​255. Berger, Peter, A Rumor of Angels. Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (London: Penguin Press, 1969). Bertoglio, Chiara, Reforming Music. Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017). Block, Johannes, Verstehen durch Musik: Das gesungene Wort in der Theologie (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2002). Bowie, Andrew, Music, Transcendence and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2015). Christoffersen, Svein Aage, ‘Skapelsesnåde. Om den sansbare verdens erfaringsform’, Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift, 112 (2011), pp. 261–​277. Christoffersen, Svein Aage, ‘Musikk og metafysisk undring i Luthers teologi’, in Harald Rise (ed.), Lutherske perspektiver på liturgisk musikk (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2019), pp. 13–​33. Ebeling, Gerhard, Luthers Seelsorge. Theologie in der vielfalt der Lebenssituationen an seinen Briefen Dargestelt (Tübingen: Siebeck Mohr, 1997). Lundberg, Mattias, Martin Luthers egna toner och ord om musik (Skeleffteå: Artos, 2017). Mattes, Mark C., ‘Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics’, in John Barton (ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014–​; Online Publication, 2016). Mattes, Mark C., Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty –​ A Reappraisal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017). Stone-​Davis, Ferdia J. (ed.), Music and Transcendence (New York: Routledge, 2015).

­c hapter 4

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music in the Swedish Reformation

Olaus and Laurentius Petri on the Concepts of Intelligibility and Edification Mattias Lundberg 1

Introduction

The Swedish reformation in the sixteenth century constituted a complex affair of struggles and compromises, both on the level of individual agents and between different interests of groups and communities in late-​mediaeval society.1 One vicissitude that had a great historical impact on music was the gradual transformation from the mediaeval “schola” of “chorales” (choir and altar priests), to a system where the cathedrals remained central for liturgy, but through a quite different type of institution. This paradigm shift took place without the cathedral chapters forfeiting the responsibility of providing singing on the highest level in the Office and the Mass. The new school system (though the word “schola” remained unchanged) was the prototype of what became the gymnasium (the Lateinschule in other regions under Lutheran influences).2 The consolidated form of that type of institution from around 1580 onwards, and its staggering importance for musical life in contemporary

1 For an overview of the Swedish Reformation, see Ingmar Brohed, Reformationens konsolidering i de nordiska länderna 1540–​1610 (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, 1990); Christer Pahlmblad, Mässa på svenska. Den reformatoriska mässan i Sverige mot den senmedeltida bakgrunden (Lund: Arcus, 1998) and Martin Berntsson, ‘Social Conflicts and the Use of the Vernacular in Swedish Reformation Liturgy’, in Maria Schildt, Mattias Lundberg and Jonas Lundblad (eds.), Celebrating Lutheran Music. Scholarly Perspectives at the Quincentenary (Uppsala: Acta universitatis Upsaliensis, 2019) pp. 33–​48. 2 The school situation in Sweden has been covered by Gustav Ivarsson: ‘På lärdomens vägnar skall ingen brist finnas’, Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, jämte studier kring tillkomst, innehåll och användning, (ed.) Sven Kjöllerström (Lund: Ohlsson, 1971), pp. 315–​330; and Jakob Evertsson, ‘Gustav Vasa och skolans avfolkning: Undervisningens roll i förhandling om traditionell religion under tidig reformationstid i Sverige’, Svensk teologisk kvartalsskrift, 95, no. 1 (2019) pp. 33–​52. For a wider context of North-​European schools, see Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

105

Sweden, has attracted considerable scholarly attention.3 Recent studies have discussed struggles concerning the introduction of vernacular language in liturgy and the enduring status of the Latin Mass.4 Less attention, however, has been paid to the positions and ideals on liturgical music in learning (indeed: as learning) as these surface in the texts of the main individual agents of the early Swedish reformation period. The introduction of Swedish language in liturgy predates the earliest clear evidence for congregational singing by many decades. A rather prompt introduction of vernaculars (Swedish and German) in the divine service in Stockholm in the 1520s eventually spread outside of that city, which necessitated the use of elaborate manuscripts throughout the dioceses, sometimes conveying the late-​mediaeval Gregorian repertory translated into Swedish in extenso.5 A small number of metric hymns, particularly those by Nicolaus Decius and Martin Luther, were also introduced during that period. But it appears that these were, at least during the period discussed here, predominantly sung by the choir (priests and school boys), not by the laity.6 The greatest novelty in the period c. 1520–​c. 1540 was thus not any new type of songs, nor any new group of singers, but the introduction of a ritual language that was for the first time readily understood by the congregation. On the level of individual agents, the brothers Olaus Petri (1493–​1552) and Laurentius Petri (1499–​1573) played a central role in this change and both left a considerable body of writings concerning the topic of singing in Swedish.

3 Mattias Lundberg, ‘Vos ad se pueri: Exegesis, Learning and Piety in Lutheran School Songs 1521–​1650’, in David Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden and Peter De Mey (eds.), Music and Theology in the European Reformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 191–​210; Idem, ‘Korporative Identitäten in nicht-​liturgischen Schulgesängen während der Reformationszeit in Schweden: Einige repertoire-​und institutionshistorische Beobeachtungen’, in Heinrich Assel, Johann Anselm Steiger and Axel E. Walter (eds.), Reformatio Baltica. Kulturwirkungen der Reformation in den Metropolen des Ostseeraums (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 769–​782. 4 See Pahlmblad, Mässa på svenska; Martin Berntson, Kättarland. En bok om reformationen i Sverige (Skellefteå: Artos, 2017); Idem, Mässan och armborstet. Uppror och reformation i Sverige 1523–​1544 (Skellefteå: Artos, 2010). 5 The most extensive Manuscripts of this type are the Kyriale from the Churches of Bjuråker and Hög in the diocese of Uppsala, both dated around 1540. Both are available in the SweLiMuS database: Bjuråker: SweLiMuS SLMS0162 http://​urn.kb.se/​reso​lve?urn =​urn:nbn:se:alvin:por​tal:rec​ord-​432​766; Hög: SweLiMus SLMS0161: http://​urn.kb.se/​reso​ lve?urn=​urn:nbn:se:alvin:por​tal:rec​ord-​432​692. 6 Folke Bohlin, ‘Någrahanda song’, in Sven Kjöllerström (ed.), Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, jämte studier kring tillkomst, innehåll och användning (Lund: Ohlsson, 1971), pp. 294–​301, at pp. 300–​301.

106 Lundberg This chapter examines the concepts of intelligibility and edification through liturgical music during the Swedish Reformation, focusing on the writings of Olaus and Laurentius Petri. When considering the full range of the writings of the Petri brothers, two concepts in relation to liturgical music recurrently appear, namely those of an “intelligible” (“förståndelig”) service of vernacular texts, and of the aim of “edification” or “improvement” (“förbättring”) of the participants in liturgy. These concepts are linked both by comprehension of the texts and of the ritual as a performed action (opus operatum; “a work wrought”) in a metaphysical sense, albeit as we shall see below rather different from a traditional Roman-​Catholic view of efficacy of the action itself. In what follows, we will examine these paired concepts more closely, and trace their ramifications for the role of music in the later stages of the long Swedish reformation. 2

Intelligibility and Edification, or Improvement

The Wittenberg-​educated Olaus became the leading loyal theologian to King Gustav i Vasa. As secretary in the city council of Stockholm (1524–​1531) he supervised the printing press that issued a number of early important writings by himself and others, including liturgical orders, treatises and pamphlets. His younger brother Laurentius had a less central position during the politically tempestuous 1520s, but rose to become archbishop of Uppsala in 1531, the first in that position to clearly profess a church in reform under the auspices of the Swedish King (not seeking confirmation of his appointment from Rome). His writings, mostly dating from after 1550, have in many cases not been published in critical editions, but must be studied in original manuscripts and prints.7 Olaus Petri, a decided polemicist, argued in a way typical for sixteenth-​ century reformers for liturgical reforms from the authority of history. His main argument for celebrating Mass and Office in the Swedish language was that in late antiquity, these texts had been sung and read in the first language of the Christians (whether in Greek in the East or Latin in the West). Therefore, the historical support, according to Petri, was greater for using Swedish than

7 The writings of Olaus Petri has been published in a scholarly edition: Bengt Hesselman (ed.), Olaus Petri. Samlade skrifter (4 vols., Uppsala: Sveriges kristliga studentrörelses förlag, 1914–​ 1917). Natanel Fransén has published two of Laurentius’ writings, namely his detailed liturgical order De officiis (1927) and his treatise on lectionary recitation tones, De punctis (1930).

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

107

Latin in his own context.8 Interestingly, this did not come into conflict with the humanist plea that ideally all Christians ought to understand the Gospel in its original language (i.e. Greek) and the Western rite in its Latin. Olaus expresses in fact the concept that the Latin Mass was likely introduced in Sweden since the Swedish language was seen as unfit for the traditional notation and with the hope that all inhabiting this far north region would become learned/​edified. Since that never happened, according to Olaus, Latin must now yield (for practical purposes related to intelligibility and edification) for the Swedish liturgy as celebrated among the uneducated population.9 In some instances, however, Olaus deploys the historical argumentation for vernacular singing with what may be termed proto-​anthropological arguments, claiming (like Luther around the same time10) that music and singing is part of the Creation and thus to be found naturally in all humans. That notion is elaborately put forward in the preface the 1536 print Swenske songer (attributed to Olaus Petri by most scholars nowadays) comprising liturgical items and hymns in Swedish translation: and that which (without doubt) has transpired through God’s exceptional wisdom and gift, that man as if from natural lust has a desire for singing and playing … In order that man now ought to be awoken to behold God’s wondrous work through such songs, and remember his benefactions, it is quite clear that this all ought to take place through an intelligible tongue, or else it shall bear no fruit, and the song does not make its proper work.11 Especially interesting here is the notion that no “fruit” or “works” may result from singing without understanding on the receiving part. This may seem 8

Olaus Petri, Orsack hwar före messan böör wara på thet tungomål som then menighe man forstondelighit är (1531), pp. iv–​v. See also Sven Ingebrand, Swenske Songer 1536. Vår första bevarade evangeliska psalmbok (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1998). 9 Petri, Orsack hwar före messan böör wara på thet tungomål som then menighe man forstondelighit är, p. viii. 10 Preface to Symphoniae Iucundae, 1538, in D. Martin Luthers Werke. kritische Gesammtaus­ gabe, vol. 50 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1914), pp. 364–​374. 11 Italics, my emphasis, here and in other quotations throughout chapter. All English translations by present author. Olaus Petri, preface to Swenske Songer (1536), pp. ii–​iii: “… som han giort oc både menniskior oc annor creatur beuisat haffuer, huilkit (vtan twiffuel) aff gudz besunneliga råd hoc ingifft skeedt är, at menniskian som en naturligh lust och begier haffuer til siungande, och spelande … Ther nw menniskian scal igenom sådana songer vpwächtwarda til at betracta gudz dråpeliga werck, och vppåminnas hans stora welgerningar, är clart nogh påtaga at thet scal skee på förstondeligt mål, elles fölier ther ingen fruct medh, och songen haffuer icke sitt retta werck”.

108 Lundberg trivial to a modern reader, but must be read here in the context of a speculative and metaphysical view of the Mass as an opus operatum. Olaus assigned, as can be seen here, the capacity of such “effect” not primarily to the singer and the listener, but to the object of the songs and the language itself, speaking in several instances of “okunnugt mål” (‘language that lacks knowledge/​intelligibility’).12 What, then, were the “works” that ought to be wrought through such singing? This question brings us to the fact that the concept of intelligibility consistently in Olaus’ texts is linked to the concept of “förbettring” (‘improvement’ or “edification”). In the preface to the Swedish translation of the New Testament in 1526, we find the following interpretation of St. Paul: It is also found in 1 Corinthians 14 that St. Paul does not wish anything else to be said in Christian congregations than that which can be understood and be to the improvement [or “edification”] of our neighbor, so that he says that he rather speaks five words to the congregation that are intelligible, than ten thousand words in foreign tongue, as is now the case with the Latin.13 From the context of 1 Corinthians 14 it is clear that the epistle contrasts speaking in tongues to construal of the same speech. It is rather bold of a Swedish reformer in 1526 to evoke this passage in direct relation to Latin and the Swedish vernacular. What seems to be argued here is that the aforementioned outcome or effect –​(“werck”), “fruit” (“frucht”), or even “merit” (“gagn”) –​is the same in both cases. The concept of “intelligibility” is linked to “improvement” or “edification” as one possibility, not as an opus operatum that follows as a definite consequence from uttering of words. The effect has thus two conditions: first, the Word is understood; and second, it is affirmed in the mind of the person who hears it.14 12 13

14

Olaus Petri, preface to Swenske songer, pp. ii–​iii. See commentary on third preface by Ingebrand: Swenske songer, pp. 14–​18. Olaus Petri, preface to New Testament (1526), p. 4: “Finnes och wäl j. Cor. xiiij. ath S. Paulus icke will athi christeligha församblĩgar skall annat talas än thet förstås kan och till wår nästes förbätring kõma må så ath han sägher sig heller wilia tala fäm oord j församblingenne som förståndelighen äro än tiyotusend oord medh fremmånde tungor som nw skeer medh Latinen”. Sven Ingebrand has linked this to the importance of the sermon in Olaus Petri’s theology: only when those attending Mass have firstly heard, and secondly understood, the doctrine of Christ’s death and resurrection they may acquire the “fruits” or “effect” of the communion. Sven Ingebrand, Olavus Petris reformatoriska åskådning (Lund: Gleerup, 1964), pp. 328–​329.

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

109

The concept of “intelligibility” of the liturgy therefore resides (at least as phrased in the passages referred to here) in the sung texts –​but it depends, of course, ultimately on the capacity of the listener. Such a conception of intelligibility appears to relate closely to Melanchthon’s view that perception and understanding (taken as a whole) leads to a condition of human will, as described in the 1521 edition of Loci communes: But first, when we are to describe the human nature, we do not need the manifold divisions of the philosophers, but may instead with few words divide mankind into two parts. For in him is found the ability to get to know and also the capacity by which he either follows or tries to flee from what he has come to know. The ability to get to know is that through which we perceive or understand, draw conclusions, compare one thing to another, deduce one thing from another.15 This epistemological position is certainly intended by Melanchthon to bypass superfluous distinctions between different scholastic hierarchies of perception, senses, understanding and ultimately knowledge (this we may see in the passages following the one quoted here). The same subsuming of all types of sensory perception, knowledge and understanding is found in Olaus Petri’s defense and explication of the Mass in Swedish: Now God’s word is for that reason given that we should engage our belief in it. But in order to engage our belief in it we must hear what is at hand, and so it must materialize in the language that is intelligible for us. If not, we would not be able to hear it, just as the scripture tends to speak of hearing, so that one is said not to hear anything other than what one understands. But anywhere where we cannot hear it, it is not a correct usage as it ought to be, and neither can it have the effect it is sent out to have. Therefore it will necessary follow from this that if the Mass should be in its correct use, and have the effects by which it has been instituted by Christ, it must take place in the language that is intelligible.16 15

Philipp Melanchthon, Loci communes, (ed.) Gustav Leopold Plitt (Erlangen: Deichert, 1864), p. 107: “Ac primum quidem in describenda hominis natura no habemus opus multiplicibus philosophorum partitionibus, sed paucis in duo partimur hominem. Est enim in eo vis cognoscendi, est et vis, qua vel persequitur vel refugit, quae cognovit. Vis cognoscendi est, qua sentimus aut intelligimus, ratiocinamur, alia cum aliis comparamus, aliud ex alio colligimus”. 16 Petri, Orsack hwar före Messan, p. iv: “Nw är gudz ordh for then skul vthgiffuit at wij skole settia ther troo til, Men skole wij settia ther troo til, så moste wij iw hörat, men skole wij

110 Lundberg After lengthy and convoluted arguments, Olaus concludes again as follows: “Therefore it [the Mass] must be held in the language that is intelligible to them [those attending Mass], otherwise they have no benefit from it, as they ought to have.”17 As has already been seen, intelligibility (“förståndelighet”) is ascribed to the object learned or understood, that is the ritual, text or even the music alluded to. Nowhere in the writings of the Petri brothers does it seem to be used in describing a human capacity in the same way as in the 1526 Swedish translation of Luke 2: 47, where the “συνέσει” attributed to Jesus has been rendered “förstondh” (“wisdom”, Vulgate has “prudentia”). In the very detailed rules and ideals of the cathedral schools given in the Church Ordinance of 1571 (mainly the work by Laurentius Petri) any type of word describing “intelligent” or “wise” is entirely absent from the discussions of learning and training of music and theology.18 In describing aptitude and knowledge for the school boys who were priests in spe, we find here instead adjectives such as “skilled” (“skickelig”), “trained” (“öffuad”) and “equipped”/​“prepared” (“färdig”). These are qualities attributed to the subjects (students and lecturers at the schools). The intelligibility is here again a capacity seen as residing in a specific sung text. This has potential consequences for the view of priesthood, since members of the clerical state are, one may argue, from this position described not as different in type, nature or capacity, but rather in degree of skill or proficiency. In his Dialogus Laurentius Petri addresses a very special connection between intelligibility and the “fruits” or “works” wrought through the singing, i.e. what exactly it is that the sung words achieve in a metaphysical sense. This concerns the words of institution, throughout the Middle Ages a part of the canon of the Mass, read silently by the officiating priest, but which in the Swedish reformation Mass orders became sung to the recitation formula of the preface

kunna höra hwad här haffues for hender, så moste thet iw skee på thet måål som oss forstondelighit är, elles kunne wij thet icke höra, såsom man j scrifftenne pläghar tala om hörslen ther man icke seyes höra annat än thet man forståår, Men hwar wij thet icke kunna höra, så är thet icke j then retta brukning som thet skal wara, och kan ey heller werka til hwilkit thet vthsendt är, Ther före wil thet aff nödhenne fölia här vthaff, at så framt at messan skal wara j sinne retta brukning och werka thet werk til hwilkit hon aff Christo insatt är, så moste hon skee på thet mål som förstondelighit är”. 17 Petri, Orsack hwar före Messan, p. 6: “Therfore moste hon skee på thet mål som them är forstondeligit, elles haffua the icke thet gagn ther aff som them borde”. 18 Folke Bohlin, ‘Någrahanda song’, in Sven Kjöllerström (ed.), Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, jämte studier kring tillkomst, innehåll och användning (Lund: Ohlsson, 1971), pp. 173–​193.

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

111

tone.19 Christer Pahlmblad has analyzed Laurentius’ position in relation to those of Gabriel Biel (1418–​1495) and other late-​mediaeval scholastic authors. Pahlmblad points to that Laurentius separates the “sense” (Sw. “sinne”, Lat. “sensus”) from the audible effect and shape of what is spoken and sung. This means that a particular exact phrasing does not bind the “sense” of the Words, but rather its being uttered and then understood by a receiver. The argument offered by Biel, to which Laurentius seems to concur, is that a learned person can understand the utterances by an unlearned person in spite of deficit grammar, because the “sense” can be reconstructed in the mind of the more learned man.20 The opposite is not true, however, since an unlearned man cannot decode the perfect grammar of the learned. This implies that the “sense” can be conveyed in translations, but what is then presupposed is a capacity of knowledge or understanding on the part of the receiver –​the more so, in fact, the further the phrasings of the texts and music are removed from the items translated: just as it happens in Christ’s communion, where bread and wine become the flesh and blood of the Lord, not due to this or that order of words or might of blessings, but on God’s own might, which works its ways secretly in the congregation when the words that resound after it enters the ears of the congregation, and makes her [the congregation] knowing this.21 This is then explicated to link the question of “knowing” to language: And in the same way we Swedes know equally well what the foundation is when we hear these words: “This is my body”, as the Latin peoples when you say to them: “Hoc est corpus meum”.22 19

For a longer analysis of the musical shapes and forms of this reform in the Swedish reformation, see Mattias Lundberg, ‘Prefationstonen tonus solemnis som melodiskt sammanhållande element i den svenska reformationstidens mässa’, Svenskt gudstjänstliv, 92 (2017), pp. 67–​94. 20 Pahlmblad, Mässa på svenska, pp. 203–​204. 21 “… såsom thet tillgår i Christi Natuard, ther brödh och wijn warda herrans lekamen och blodh /​icke aff tinne eller någhors ordaformos eller signelsers krafft, uthan aff Gudz eghen krafft, huilken tå werkar hemligha i församlingen när orden som ther uppå lydha komma i församlingens öron, och göra henne sådant kunnogt”. Laurentius Petri, Dialogvs om then förwandling som medh messone skedde [1542], (ed.) Abraham Angermannus (Wittenberg: Schleich, 1587), fol. 26r. 22 “Och theslikes wete wij Suenske så wel huadh grunden är när wij thesse ord höre: Thetta är min lekamen, som de Latiner när man them sägher: Hoc est corpus meum”. Petri, Dialogus, fols. 26v–​27r.

112 Lundberg 3

Arguments Concerning Adiaphora of Liturgy against Two Opposing Positions

According to the texts discussed so far, hearing a Mass is not “a work wrought” if there is no intelligibility on the part of hearers/​listeners. The singing of the Words of institution (in vernacular, as “intelligibility”) is thus for Olaus and Laurentius a prerequisite for the “fruit” or “work” of the Mass, but not a sufficient one. For the other component needed is understanding and affirmation in the mind of the listener. This theological position offered an argument both against those that claimed Latin was necessary for the “works” or “fruits” of the Mass, and against those who claimed that this was not a matter of adiaphora, arguing, that Latin should not be used at all.23 According to Olaus, if the listener is Latinate, the effect of the work will be the same if the words are sung in Latin. This understanding seems evident from the following passage: Then again others may say: how about the Latin Mass, is it then not right? Answer: the Latin Mass is as good as the other one when it is held in its correct practice for those who understand Latin, since the Mass cannot be in its correct practice if it does not take place for edification. And this cannot happen if it is not intelligible, it is not sufficient that one hears the voice of the priest reading or singing, one also must know what he utters, otherwise no edification follows. An unspirited animal may hear pipes and harps but it cannot dance after them, since it does not understand what has been harped or piped. Thus one may not harvest the fruit of the Mass as one should, when it is held in a foreign tongue.24 23

24

“Adiaphora” is the common term for elements neither necessary nor incompatible for salvation. The Epitome of the Lutheran Formula of concord 1577 defines it in ­chapter 10 as “ceremonies and church rites which are neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, but are introduced into the Church with a good intention, for the sake of good order and propriety, or otherwise to maintain Christian discipline …” (“Ceremonien oder Kirchengebräuchen, welche in Gottes Wort weder geboten noch verboten, sondern von guter Ordnung und Wolstands willen in die Kirche eingeführet …”). “Så motte åter nogher seya, Huru är thet thå om then Latineska messona, är hon thå icke rätt? Swar, Then Latineska messan är så godh som then andra när hon j sin rätta brukning och halles for them som Latine forstå, For ty messan kan icke wara j sinne rätta brukning medh mindre hon skeer til forbettring, och thet kan icke skee vtan ther hon är forstondelighen, Thet är icke nogh at man hörer röstena ther presten läss eller siunger, man moste och weta hwad han segher, eller folier ther ingen forbättring vthaff, Jtt oskälighit diwr kan och höra pipor och harpor, men thet kan intit danssa ther epter, ty thet forstår intet hwad som pipat eller harpat warder, Så kan man icke heller tagha then frucht aff messone som man skulle när hon är på främmande tungomål”. Petri, Orsack hwar före Messan, unpaginated.

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

113

In the latter case discussed here then, Latin would have the same effect as Swedish for an educated congregation, since it is –​unlike speaking in tongues –​ intelligible to anyone versed in that language. Laurentius also stresses repeatedly that Latin is perfectly possible, provided that there is understanding among those celebrating Mass: But since everything in the congregation ought to take place with the aim of edification, just as Paul teaches, such songs of praise or hours of the office ought not all, and not always, be sung in Latin, as it has traditionally been. Instead, in order that the people may acquire some understanding, and through that edify themselves, some sections –​especially those most suitable –​ought to be sung in Swedish. But since St. Paul also in his time knew of some foreign languages that were known by some parishioners, so may still some Latin songs be sung for those who knows the Latin language, or are about to learn it.25 The last point, the continuous active acquisition of Latin, seems central for both Laurentius and Olaus (as, incidentally, for Luther). In the most elaborate liturgical order of the entire Swedish reformation, De officiis, an equally prescriptive and descriptive account of Uppsala Cathedral liturgy around 1570, Laurentius Petri states that in the first Vespers on Saturday the lectionary ought to be sung in Latin, for the sake of the important practice of the boys (“vt puera Latina discentes, ita sese exerceant”), while the Sunday Vespers ought to have the same passages sung in Swedish, due to the larger attendance of unlearned laity (“propter maiorem frequentiam praesentis populi”).26 In the same vein, Laurentius discusses Mattins, where vernacular was saved for the greater feast days, whereas Latin could suffice on lesser days.27 This ran, from what we may glean from the popular reception of the Swedish Mass, counter to the desire for greater solemnity of the Latin at Advent, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

25

26 27

“Men effter thet all ting bör skeet til förbättring i Församblingenne, såsom Paulus lärer, skola sådana Loffsonger eller Kyrketidher, icke altijdh eller allasammans sjee på Latijn, såsom sedher haffuer warit, vthan på thet folcket må ock haffua ther på någhot förstånd, och sig ther aff förbättra, skola någor stycker the raff, serdeles the som beqwemligast äro, siungas på Swensko. Men effter thet S. Paulus ock j sin tijdh tillstadde fremmande, doch någhrom aff Församblingenne kunnogh, tungomål. Så mågha ock än nu några Latiniska songer medh ibland sungne warda, för theras skul som thet Latiniska målet kunna eller ock lära skola”. Kjöllerström (ed.), Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, pp. 102–​103. De officiis [c.1570], 1927 (ed.), Fransén, p. 24. De officiis, p. 34.

114 Lundberg In spite of the rather sophisticated argumentation for vernacular singing in the Mass, the Swedish Mass was met with considerable suspicion and hostility among the laity across the country in the sixteenth century.28 A common protest against the Swedish Mass was that its solemnity was more than an adiaphoron, something inherently connected to the office of Latinate priesthood, and if it were to be sung in Swedish it could soon be sung by anyone, just as a secular song. Martin Berntson has shown that a common topos in the protests against the Swedish Mass in the rural provinces was that it “could soon be whistled by anyone behind a dung wagon”.29 Seemingly the reformers were aware of these arguments and met also these with the argument that “intelligibility” is always a greater good than solemnity: “Therefore the argument that of the Mass is held in Swedish, anyone could learn [to chant it] rests on weak foundations. I do not take any harm if someone else knows something as well as I do, and are able to do something as well as I am.”30 Thus, the proper effect or result of the Mass is likened to a state of knowledge, and this, it seems, in a way which even to some degree compromises the status and role of ordained clergy in relation to a non-​ordained capable singer (even if this is not likely the argument that was intended). 4

Conclusion

As argued thus far, the edification and learning of the Swedish cathedral schools by the middle of the sixteenth century was understood as being conveyed in ritual form, in liturgy, both for the active participants in the singing, and for those laypersons attending the liturgy from outside the demarcated area of the choir. Indeed, the two closely linked concepts “förståndelig” (“intelligible”) and “förbettring” (“improvement”/​“edification”) are central to the arguments for liturgical singing in the vernacular in the Swedish dioceses. This was not merely a matter of conveying information (as bound up in language). Rather, there was a belief that the Mass had specific “effect” or “work” (“werck”) and “fruit” (“frucht”), especially in the Eucharistic prayer and the words of institution, the 28

Martin Berntson has given a valuable survey of the protests against vernacular Masses in Sweden: Kättarland. En bok om reformationen i Sverige (Skellefteå: Artos, 2017). 29 Berntson, Kätterland (2017). 30 “Ther före är thet aff en gansska löss grund sagdt, ath om messan skulle skee på Swensko så skulle hwar man lära henne. Ja läre man frij, Jach haffuer iw ingen skadha ther aff at en annar weet och kan noghot gott så wel som iach”.

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

115

section of the ritual that was generally what the laity identified as constituting the Mass. Especially the passages where singing is described as causing something to happen when the words are properly understood, and leading to an “improvement” and “edification” on the part of the listener, offer a much richer and more historically rooted view of what could on a more general level have been deduced from the 24th article of Confessio Augustana: “For therefore alone we have need for ceremonies: in order to teach the uneducated” (“Nam ad hoc unum opus est ceremoniis, ut doceant imperitos”).31 I hope that drawing attention to the writings of two main agents in the Swedish reformation, Olaus and Laurentius Petri, and analyzing what seems to be their positions in these matters, sheds important light on how Wittenberg-​ trained theologians could claim that they had not changed anything essential in the Mass of their forefathers. Yet –​without contradiction in their own eyes –​ they could argue that the mystery of the sacrament constituted “to teach the uneducated”.

Bibliography



Primary Sources

Printed

Jesus. Thet Nyia Testamentit på Swensko [Preface to New Testament in Swedish] (Stockholm: s.n., 1526). Luther, Martin, Preface to Symphoniae Iucundae, 1538, in D. Martin Luthers Werke. kritische Gesammtausgabe, Bd 50 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1914), pp. 364–​374. Melanchthon, Philipp, Loci communes, (ed.) Gustav Leopold Plitt (Erlangen: Deichert, 1864). Petri, Olaus, Orsack hwar före messan böör wara på thet tungomål som then menighe man forstondelighit är (Stockholm: s.n., 1531). Petri, Olaus, Preface to Swenske Songer (Stockholm: s.n., 1536).



Modern Editions

Petri, Laurentius, De offiicis [c. 1565], (ed.) Natanael Fransén (Stockholm: Svenska bokhandelscentralen, 1927). Petri, Laurentius, De punctis [c.1560], (ed.) Natanael Fransén (Stockholm: Samtiden, 1930). 31 Beresford James Kidd (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), p. 944.

116 Lundberg Petri, Laurentius, Dialogvs om then förwandling som medh messone skedde [1542], (ed.), Abraham Angermannus (Wittenberg: Schleich, 1587). Petri, Olaus, Olaus Petri: Samlade skrifter, (ed.) Bengt Hesselman (4 vols., Uppsala: Sveriges kristliga studentrörelses förlag, 1914–​1917).



Secondary Sources

Berntsson, Martin, Kättarland. En bok om reformationen i Sverige (Skellefteå: Artos, 2017). Berntsson, Martin, Mässan och armborstet. Uppror och reformation i Sverige 1523–​1544 (Skellefteå: Artos, 2010). Berntsson, Martin, ‘Social Conflicts and the Use of the Vernacular in Swedish Reformation Liturgy’, in Maria Schildt, Mattias Lundberg and Jonas Lundblad (eds.), Celebrating Lutheran Music, Celebrating Lutheran Music. Scholarly Perspectives at the Quincentenary (Uppsala: Acta universitatis Upsaliensis, 2019), pp. 33–​48. Bohlin, Folke, ‘Någrahanda song’, in Sven Kjöllerström (ed.), Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, jämte studier kring tillkomst, innehåll och användning (Lund: Ohlsson, 1971), pp. 294–​301. Brohed, Ingmar, Reformationens konsolidering i de nordiska länderna 1540–​ 1610 (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, 1990). Evertsson, Jakob, ‘Gustav Vasa och skolans avfolkning: Undervisningens roll i förhandling om traditionell religion under tidig reformationstid i Sverige’, Svensk teologisk kvartalsskrift, 95, no.1 (2019), pp. 33–​52. Ingebrand, Sven, Swenske Songer 1536. Vår första bevarade evangeliska psalmbok (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1998). Ingebrand, Sven, Olavus Petris reformatoriska åskådning (PhD diss., University of Lund. Lund: Gleerup, 1964). Ivarsson, Gustaf, ‘På lärdomens vägnar skall ingen brist finnas’, Sven Kjöllerström (ed.), Den svenska kyrkoordningen 1571, jämte studier kring tillkomst, innehåll och användning (Lund: Ohlsson, 1971), pp. 315–​330. Kidd, Beresford James (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911). Lundberg, Mattias, ‘Vos ad se pueri: Exegesis, Learning and Piety in Lutheran School Songs 1521–​1650’, in David Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden and Peter De Mey (eds.), Music and Theology in the European Reformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) pp. 191–​210. Lundberg, Mattias, ‘Korporative Identitäten in nicht-​ liturgischen Schulgesängen während der Reformationszeit in Schweden: Einige repertoire-​und institutions­ historische Beobeachtungen’, in Heinrich Assel, Johann Anselm Steiger and Axel E. Walter (eds.), Reformatio Baltica. Kulturwirkungen der Reformation in den Metropolen des Ostseeraums (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 769–​782.

Förståndelig and Förbättring through Liturgical Music

117

Lundberg, Mattias, ‘Liturgical Singing in the Lutheran Mass in Early Modern Sweden and its Implications for Clerical Ritual Performance and Lay Literacy’, Yale Journal of Music and Religion, 3, no. 1 (2017), pp. 61–​76: https://​eli​scho​lar.libr​ary.yale.edu /​cgi/​view​cont​ent.cgi?arti​cle=​1066&cont​ext=​yjmr. Lundberg, Mattias, ‘Prefationstonen tonus solemnis som melodiskt sammanhållande element i den svenska reformationstidens mässa’, Svenskt gudstjänstliv, 92 (2017), pp. 67–​94. Lundberg, Mattias, ‘Shaping a Written and Sung Vernacular: Translation of Liturgical Texts in the Swedish Reformation’, in Johan Franzon, Anjo Greenall, Sigmund Kvam, Anastasio Paranou (eds.), Song Translation Studies. Lyrics in Context (Berlin: Frank & Timme. 2021), pp. 233–​254. Pahlmblad, Christer, Mässa på svenska. den reformatoriska mässan i Sverige mot den senmedeltida bakgrunden (PhD diss., University of Lund, Lund: Arcus, 1998). Strauss, Gerald, Luther’s House of Learning (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

pa rt 2 Religious Education through Music Contexts and Practices

∵

­c hapter 5

Conrad Celtis’s Melopoiae (1507) and Metrical Singing in the Church Andrea Horz 1 Introduction1 Scarcely any other kind of setting is regarded as more humanistic than Latin metrics in music. The metrically oriented ode settings of the sixteenth century normally have a strong connection to humanistic discussions on the performance of classical ancient poetry or neo-​Latin literature. One of the most prominent representatives of this musical genre is the humanist Conrad Celtis (1459–​1508). His Melopoiae in particular marked a milestone in humanistic ode settings, characterised by strict orientation to the text metre.2 In the description of the ode settings in the existing research literature, however, the different spheres in which these types of musical compositions were implemented have so far remained in the background. This is especially applicable to the relationship of the repertoire to the ecclesiastical sphere; only in passing has it sometimes been touched upon that Christian poetry –​and certain hymns –​is also linked to this musical repertoire. This chapter demonstrates that humanistic musical pieces in sacred contexts are determined by the metre –​a link which has been identified in the literature but has hardly been considered in the contemporary context around 1500. The following investigation shows how debates around 1500 in German-​ speaking areas on the ancient singing practice of poetry are concerned with questions of church chant. I argue that the new compositions are part of the traditional work on hymn singing. They are new “melodic form-​shells” which 1 I would like to thank Birgit Lodes, Klaus-​Jürgen Sachs, and Sonja Tröster for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 Rochus von Liliencron, ‘Die Chorgesänge des lateinisch-​ deutschen Schuldramas im 16. Jahrhundert’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 6 (1890), pp. 309–​ 387, and also later Gundela Bobeth, ‘Die humanistische Odenkomposition in Buchdruck und Handschrift: Zur Rolle der Melopoiae bei der Formung und Ausbreitung eines kompositorischen Erfolgsmodells’, in Birgit Lodes (ed.), Niveau, Nische, Nimbus. Die Anfänge des Musikdrucks nördlich der Alpen, Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte 3 (Tutzing: Hans Scheider, 2010), pp. 67–​88, at p. 68.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004470392_00

122 Horz musically complement the metre-​focused efforts of the humanists towards the renewal of hymns. The metric implementation of text in music, particularly in hymns, seemed appropriate from a humanistic perspective. It appears that Renaissance humanists tried to revive the style of the late-​antique poem recital, a tradition from which the authors of Christian hymns already drew. To substantiate this hypothesis, I will first explain in which way Celtis’s Melopoiae is linked to the work of Jacob Wimpfeling (1450–​1528) and other humanists regarding hymns in particular and the liturgy in general. I will then clarify how their work on hymns is related to early Christian singing practice and the tradition of medieval hymn singing. Finally, I will determine the location of this type of hymn setting in the Reformation era. 2

Celtis and Wimpfeling: Work on Latin Metrics

On the title page of the Melopoiae, Conrad Celtis drew attention to the fact that the four-​part movements in question are shaped according to church hymns (“Melopoiae sive Harmonicae tetracenticae super xxii genera carminum Heroicoru[m]‌Elegiacoru[m] Lyricorum & ecclesiasticoru[m] hymnoru[m] …”).3 He included Christian hymns in the Melopoiae, though they are marginal in comparison to the prominent Horatian settings. While the Horatian texts are directly underlaid with melodies and are at first compared to Celtis’s own poems in a table, only at the end of the print do the hymns receive a separate listing according to their metres archilochic, alcmanic-​trochaic, choriambic, and elegiac (see Figure 5.1).4 Through this Celtis is linked to his first and foremost concern, namely to affect minds by means of a four-​part, quantitative lecture, not only with ancient Horatian texts and his own poems but also with church songs. Existing scholarship has seldom identified the relationship between the hymn repertoire and the Melopoiae. It is therefore unsurprising that the origin of Celtis’s composition from another tract has not yet been studied. Celtis evidently referred to Wimpfeling’s De hymnorum et sequentiarum auctoribus (1499); the differences between the listed hymns are minimal (see Figure 5.2a&b).5 This 3 Conrad Celtis, Melopoiae sive harmoniae tetracentiae (Augsburg: Erhard Öglin 1507), [vd16 M 4465, vdm 55]. 4 Celtis, Melopoiae, fol. 9v. Only Jörg Robert seems to detect this connection to the ecclesiastical repertoire. Jörg Robert, ‘Celtis, Konrad’, Verfasserlexikon. Deutscher Humanismus 1480–​ 1520, vol. 1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 375–​427, at p. 421. 5 Jacob Wimpfeling, De hymnorum et sequentiarum auctoribus (Mainz: Peter von Friedberg 1499) [gw m 51594]. Celtis’s concern to revive the ancient quantitative metrics is, in this case, not just in line with a publication by Wimpfing; in the Ars versificandi et carminum (Leipzig: Conrad Kachelofen, 1486), Celtis had already leaned on Wimpfeling’s De arte

Conrad Celtis’s Melopoiae (1507) and Metrical Singing

123

­f igure 5.1  Celtis, melopoiae (1507), fol. 9v Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München: Rar. 291, vd16 M 4465, vdm 55 (Exemplar: D-​Mbs Rar. 291,