Music and the Making of Medieval Venice (Music in Context) 1009425021, 9781009425025

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Music and the Making of Medieval Venice

Music played an essential part in raising the city of Venice and in founding the empire on which its fortunes would depend. This book focuses on a set of musical projects – played out in liturgy and civic ritual – that formed the city’s history and framed and interpreted its unique material culture as it was in the process of taking shape. Jamie L. Reuland shows the state’s most imaginative musical endeavors bound up with legal culture, stemming from the chancery’s engines of historiography, or situated within the rich material environment of relics and reliquaries, mosaics and wall paintings, icons and statues. Arguing for music’s technical ability to fabricate a sense of place and give form to history, Reuland recovers Venice’s fascinating early propensity for a statecraft of the imagination, the consequences of which would be the better-known history of its material decay.

jamie l. reuland is Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University. Her work on the intellectual and social history of medieval music has been supported by the ACLS, Fulbright Foundation in Greece, Medieval Academy of America, and Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Previously, Reuland was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University.

music in c ontext General Editor

Benedict Taylor, University of Edinburgh Founding Editor

Julian Rushton, University of Leeds Emeritus Editor Emeritus

J. P. E. Harper-Scott, Royal Holloway, University of London Emeritus The aim of Music in Context is to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires, or practices in historical, critical, socio-economic, or other contexts; or to illuminate particular cultural and critical contexts in which music operates through the study of specific musical works, repertoires, or practices. A specific musical focus is essential, while avoiding the decontextualization of traditional aesthetics and music analysis. The series title invites engagement with both its main terms; the aim is to challenge notions of what contexts are appropriate or necessary in studies of music, and to extend the conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical directions. Books in the series Simon P. Keefe, Mozart’s Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion J. P. E. Harper-Scott, The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism: Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton Nancy November, Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 Rufus Hallmark, ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’: Chamisso’s Poems and Schumann’s Songs Anna Zayaruznaya, The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context Emily Kilpatrick, The Operas of Maurice Ravel Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill, Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: From Conception to Performance Catherine A. Bradley, Polyphony in Medieval Paris: The Art of Composing with Plainchant Daniel M. Grimley, Delius and the Sound of Place Owen Rees, The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603) Nicole Grimes, Brahms’s Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture Jane D. Hatter, Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice Daniel Elphick, Music behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and His Polish Contemporaries

Emily MacGregor, Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933 Anne M. Hyland, Schubert’s String Quartets: The Teleology of Lyric Form Stephen Rodgers, The Songs of Clara Schumann Annika Forkert, Elisabeth Lutyens and Edward Clark: The Orchestration of Progress in British Twentieth-Century Music Roseen Giles, Monteverdi and the Marvellous: Poetry, Sound, and Representation

Music and the Making of Medieval Venice

jamie l. reuland Princeton University, New Jersey

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009425025 DOI: 10.1017/9781009425032 © Jamie L. Reuland 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Reuland, Jamie L., 1984– author. Title: Music and the making of medieval Venice / Jamie L. Reuland. Description: [1.] | Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023. | Series: Music in context | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023026447 (print) | LCCN 2023026448 (ebook) | ISBN 9781009425025 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009425018 (paperback) | ISBN 9781009425032 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Music – Italy – Venice – 500–1400 – History and criticism. | Church music – Italy – Venice – 500–1400. | Church music – Catholic Church – 500–1400. | Venice (Italy) – History – 697–1508. Classification: LCC ML290.2 .R48 2023 (print) | LCC ML290.2 (ebook) | DDC 780.945/ 3110902–dc23/eng/20230607 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026447 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026448 ISBN 978-1-009-42502-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To John, Russell, and Jerome, with all my love.

Contents

List of Figures [page xi] List of Maps [xii] List of Tables [xiii] List of Music Examples [xiv] Acknowledgments [xv] List of Manuscript Sigla [xviii] A Note on Dating [xix] List of Abbreviations [xx]

Introduction [1] part i an audible empire 1 2

Echoes of Empire The Laudes in Medieval Venetian Crete [19] Unsilenced Archives Icons, Advocates, and the Akathistos Hymn [42] part ii the fictive city

3

Singing Effigies An Annunciation Drama for the Festa delle Marie [81] part iii relics and the horizons of musical representation

4 5 6

Narrative Fragments Vespers for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics [119] History Lessons Matins for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics [156] Sound Documents The Midcentury Chancery Motet [191] Epilogue [230] ix

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Contents

Appendix 1: Excerpts from a Sixteenth-Century Ceremonial Book from Venetian Candia [237] Appendix 2: The Akathistos Hymn, translation modified from Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn [239] Appendix 3: Lectio “secunda” (Zanetti 356, fols. 331v–332r) [248] Bibliography [250] Index [269]

Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2a 3.2b 3.3 4.1a 4.1b 5.1 5.2 6.1

Icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa, 145 × 95 cm. Santa Maria della Salute, Venice [page 46] Exterior of the church of the Hodegetria, monastery of Balsamonero [61] Stanza 14 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Hodegetria, monastery of Balsamonero, ca. 1400. Fresco [67] Stanzas 23 and 24 of the Akathistos hymn on north side of nave, with dedicatory inscription below, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91 [69] Stanza 23 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91. Fresco [72] Stanza 24 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91. Fresco [73] Hodegetria icon in situ, church of the Panagia in Meronas [76] Mark’s translation to Venice as depicted in the Porta Sant’Alipio, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270–75. Mosaic [105] Angelo annunciante, Venetian sculptor (attr. Marco Romano), ca. 1340. Marble, 71 cm tall. Treasury, San Marco, Venice [108] Vergine annunciata, Venetian sculptor (attr. Marco Romano), ca. 1340. Marble, 111 cm tall. Treasury, San Marco, Venice [109] Tomb of Andrea Dandolo, Baptistery, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1354 [111] Prayer for the discovery of Mark’s relics (Preghiera), south transept, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270. Mosaic [136] The column opens (Apparitio), south transept, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270. Mosaic [137] Mark appears from the column in a historiated initial F of the Apparitio prologue, BMC, MS 1498, fol. 25r, ca. 1326 [160] Detail of Mark appearing from the column, Paolo Veneziano, Pala feriale, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1345. Mosaic [161] Crucifixion, Baptistery, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1354. Mosaic [228] xi

Maps

1 Venice in the Mediterranean, ca. 1250 [page 2] 2 Venetian Crete [62] 3 Venice in the Lagoon [202]

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Tables

1.1 Laudes performed to Pope Urban VIII and Archbishop Alvise Mocenigo in Candia “die prima octobris 1636” [page 30] 3.1 Description of 31 January procession from Piazza San Marco to Santa Maria Formosa [86] 3.2 Martin da Canal’s 31 January account and the San Marco antiphonal corpus [90] 3.3 Martin da Canal’s 31 January account and the Padua Annunciation exchange [97] 4.1 Zanetti 356 Leggendario and First Vespers texts for the Feast of the Apparition [139] 5.1 Chants and sources for the Feast of the Apparition, excerpts from Nocturn I [165] 5.2 Musical division of textual syntax in Nam scissis [171] 5.3 Correspondence between responsory texts and Zanetti 356 lesson divisions for Apparitio Matins [181] 6.1 The ducal motets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries [195]

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Music Examples

3.1 Reconstruction of Annunciation dialogue [page 93] 4.1 Gaudete et exultate, Veneciarum cives, antiphon 1, Apparitio Vespers [141] 4.2 Beatissimus Marcus, responsory, Apparitio Vespers [144] 4.3 Felix regio, Magnificat antiphon, Apparitio Vespers [148] 4.4 Hic est beatissimus martyr, Magnificat antiphon, Theodore Vespers [151] 5.1 Exultet, iubilet Venetorum Ecclesia, invitatory, Apparitio Matins [166] 5.2 Precibus populi, antiphon 1, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins [169] 5.3 Nam scissis sanctissimis, antiphon 2, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins [170] 5.4 Videntibus omnibus, antiphon 3, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins [172] 5.5 Felix regio, responsory 1, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins [174] 6.1 Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani, anonymous motet [206] 6.2 Marce, Marcum imitaris, anonymous motet [220]

xiv

Acknowledgments

This book begins in Crete, and so did the idea for it. I found inspiration there in a group of thinkers, makers, and explorers – above all, Patricia Fortini Brown, Dimitri Gondicas, and Jerolyn Morrison – who filled me with a sense of wonder about the work of scholarship that has buoyed the project along from start to finish. A book on this topic would scarcely have been imaginable without these three. It was also, memorably, on Crete that I first spoke to Wendy Heller. Since then, she has been to me the ultimate mentor – brilliant, wise, generous, funny – and I cannot thank her enough. Research was carried out during a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Stanford University and during two research sabbaticals from Princeton University, made possible by a Stanley J. Seeger Research Sabbatical Grant and an Elias Boudinot Bicentennial Preceptorship. Librarians and archivists in Italy, Greece, and the United States lent invaluable assistance, and I owe special thanks to those at the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the Biblioteca del Museo Civico Correr, the Istituto Ellenico in Venice, the Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile di Padova, the Biblioteca Capitolare di Padova, the Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova, the archives of the Vikalaia Municipal Library in Heraklion, Crete, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Several colleagues read the typescript in its entirety: Elena Abramov-van Rijk, Anna Maria Busse Berger, Michael Scott Cuthbert, Jonathan Glixon, Rebecca Maloy, Susan Rankin, Jesse Rodin, David Rothenberg, and Anna Zayaruznaya gave generously of their time, resources, insights, and ideas, adding heaps of erudition to the project and removing error. Their interventions improved the book enormously, and I am grateful. I thank Annika Fisher and Lesley Hay for phenomenal work copyediting the text, and Tanya Izzard for indexing it. Adrian Kitzinger produced three beautiful maps for the book. In moments where travel abroad proved impossible, Jill Weinreich, Francesca Bottazzin, and Eri Frangidakis offered crucial on-the-ground assistance. Kate Brett at Cambridge University Press and Benedict Taylor, series editor, made the process a smooth and happy one.

xv

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Acknowledgments

Evident on so many pages of this book is the talent and handiwork of my research assistant, Marcel Camprubì, who read, reread, and proofread, tracked down references, generated bibliographies, and prepared music examples. I am grateful for his willingness to pitch in during several critical crunch stages of the book’s development. It has been a joy to have learned so much from scholars in my fields and discipline. Both book and author have been enriched by conversation with: Andrew Albin, Lanier Anderson, Margaret Bent, Susan Boynton, Mary Channen Caldwell, Tracy Cooper, Julie Cumming, J.P. Daughton, Margot Fassler, Andrew Hicks, Deborah Howard, Peter Jeffery, the late Alejandro Planchart, Francesca Toffolo, the late David Rosand, Susan Weiss, Giovanni Zanovello, Emily Zazulia, and Nino Zchomelidse. At Stanford and beyond, Jesse Rodin supported the project with humor, camaraderie, and expert insight. Rebecca Maloy has been a terrific source of inspiration. Colleagues across the Princeton campus, and especially in the Department of Music, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Program in Medieval Studies have benefited this work. I thank in particular Charles Barber, Gabriel Crouch, Catherine Fernandez, Simone Marchesi, Lisa Margulis, Simon Morrison, Pamela Patton, Sally Poor, Helmut Reimitz, Teresa Shawcross, Gavin Steingo, Rob Wegman, and Eric White. Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek made several passages of music examined in these pages come to life in song. I am beyond fortunate to have Beatrice Kitzinger as a colleague and friend and a person I learn from at every turn. I have many things to thank her for, but her expert advice on book images of a significantly post-Carolingian age – namely the age of this book’s production – made the final work more beautiful. The Department of Music, under the leadership of Wendy Heller and Dan Trueman, and together with Jacqueline Appleby, Deborah Koenigsberg, Michael Langley, Beth Schupsky, Darwin Scott, and Greg Smith, offered a great deal of practical, logistical, material, and moral support during various phases of research and writing. Ulla Britt-Fagan, Betsy DeFelice, Anne Goodman, Daniel HoffmanSchwarz, Barbara Natalie Nagel, Yevgeniya Oleshkevich, Laurel Peterson, Magdalena Posch, and Juri Seo have all lent counsel, company, and inspiration, as well as welcome distraction from the book. Anne O’Donnell has been an ambient presence in this project from the start, quite memorably during the springtime of the first real research trip in Padua and Venice, but during other stages as well.

Acknowledgments

My family, extended and immediate, has supported this project in big ways and small. Kate and Tim Reuland have cheered me along. My parents, Jill and Robert Greenberg, and my siblings, Sara Huneke and Will Greenberg, have offered me love and encouragement, a point of view, and a place to start. I thank them lovingly. My husband John – reader of all readers, clearinghouse of all my writing – has been a companion in every stage of this project’s making, from our student days camped out in the Trustee Reading Room to the shared home office, with many travels and adventures in between. I thank him for his stubborn and clearly biased convictions concerning the book’s merits. May every writer have a reader so unconditionally sympathetic. I thank Russell and Jerome for the spirit of delight they awaken in me every day. My best writing happens under the spell of that magic, and they can consider the good parts of this book theirs.

xvii

Manuscript Sigla

ASV 119 BU 2216 Eg Gr Pad C 55 Pad C 56 PadD Q15 VAM¹ VAM 113 VAM 114 VAM 115 VAM 116 VAM 117 VAM 118 Vienna 1799 Zanetti 356

xviii

Venice, Archivio di Stato, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 119 Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 2216 Montefiore dell’Aso, Biblioteca Prof. Francesco Egidi Grottaferrata, Biblioteca dell’Abbazia, Collocazione provisoria 224 Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS C 55 Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS C 55 Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 1106 Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna MS Q15 San Marco antiphoner in private collection Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 113 Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 114 Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 115 Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 116 Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 117 Venice, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 118 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, 1799** Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS Zanetti Lat. 356

A Note on Dating

Dates accompanied by the abbreviation m.v. (more veneto) follow the Venetian practice of using 1 March as the first of the year. All other dates follow modern convention.

xix

Abbreviations

ASV BMC BMV BVM CAO

xx

Venice, Archivio di Stato Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Civico Correr Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Blessed Virgin Mary Corpus Antiphonalium Officii

Introduction

This book is about music’s work in raising the medieval city of Venice and in founding the empire on which its fortunes would depend. It focuses on a set of musical projects, played out in the twin realms of liturgy and civic ritual, that supported the creation of a Venetian political identity, gave shape to its far-fetched history, and framed and interpreted the city’s unique material culture as it was in the process of taking shape. Though Venice’s musical heyday began later, springing out of its dwindling relevance as an empire, though generations of admirers and detractors have decried it as a spectacle of veneers and artificiality, and though the city itself has been slowly, if beautifully, decomposing for half a millennium, this book begins with a place in need of building. The period delineated here starts in the early years of the thirteenth century, when Venice first emerged from a brackish backwater to become the powerhouse empire of medieval Europe, and ends around the turn of the fifteenth century, when expansion onto the Italian mainland shifted the city’s political and economic interests and ultimately ushered in its decline. Though the period was beset by some of the greatest calamities of the millennium, these two centuries of Venetian history were, on balance, marked by the strengthening of civic institutions at home and territorial gain across the eastern Mediterranean, by material and economic growth, and by huge technological gains over the flux and wilderness of the lagoon.1 At the same time, the city nurtured the emergence of a native literary and historiographical tradition, a homegrown school of painting, and the development of distinctive idioms in the visual and plastic arts. These cultural expressions were not separate from the political, economic, and infrastructural developments that buoyed the city up but were deeply entwined in them. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”: Espaces, pouvoir, et société à Venise à la fin du moyen âge, 2 vols. (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 72–96. For a summary of the political, technological, and commercial advancements that characterized the period, see Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 119–70.

1

1

2

Introduction

Map 1 Venice in the Mediterranean, ca. 1250. Courtesy of Adrian Kitzinger

Music, however, has factored little in the discussion of Venice’s creative and artistic flourishing during these years. By and large, the city’s institutions were not responsible for the kinds of stylistic, generic, and cultural changes around which the subdisciplines of musicology have coalesced. The brisk pace of development in polyphony that took place in other European centers across these same centuries plays only a peripheral role in the history unfolded here, and Venice’s major musical institution, the Basilica San Marco, has justifiably been called conservative in this and other regards.2 Yet music 2

The Basilica San Marco was certainly not the only institution that cultivated music. See Jonathan E. Glixon’s two important studies on spheres of music-making and production that were separate from but entwined with the interests of state: Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260–1806 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Mirrors of Heaven or Worldly Theaters? Venetian Nunneries and Their Music (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Sound Building

was integral to the colonial and political machinery of the medieval city – so much so that it is often difficult to disentangle it from other forms of political expression during the period. This entanglement is precisely what unites these chapters, each of which shows the state’s most imaginative musical projects variously bound up with legal culture, stemming from the chancery’s engines of historiography, or situated within the rich material environment of relics and reliquaries, mosaics and wall paintings, icons and statues. In its attention to these entanglements, Music and the Making of Medieval Venice illuminates the earliest history of the Venetian investment in music as an element of statecraft. The period of colonial expansion that began in the thirteenth century occasioned a crisis of representation in turn, in which the conditions of empire placed a heavy burden on the state and its art forms to make abstract concepts and absent entities perceptible to the senses. The musical projects I explore in this book gave concrete expression to the city’s insubstantial past and far-fetched self-image and offered a medium by which to project administrative authority in its eastern Mediterranean colonies. The sung rituals dating to the earliest phase of colonial expansion in the Mediterranean (1204–61), the glittering liturgical works and dramatic enactments composed in response to political crisis (ca. 1261–1340), and the ceremonial motets of an empire on the verge of decline (ca. 1330–70) undertook the shared aesthetic task of envisioning the real and imagined horizons of empire. In each case, the ability of music to confer form onto political history and hagiography made it a vital tool for fabricating the foundations of the new empire. Liturgical composition, polyphonic song, and the earliest stirrings of Venetian music drama are sites of special focus, as they register these acts of political imagination in genres that were themselves in the process of creation, renewal, or radical overhaul. Situating these musical activities within a body of previously ignored material and textual evidence, this book reveals the profound contribution music made to the Venetian project of empire over the course of several centuries.

Sound Building In the Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum – a compilation of historical writings about Venice begun as early as the eleventh century but whose manuscript tradition belongs squarely within the thirteenth – music figures as a special instrument of civic awakening and political self-definition.

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Introduction

The opening lines of the text press the origins of the lagoon’s human habitation deep into a fabled past. Imagining Orpheus as the city’s first ancestor, the Origo civitatum begins:3 One desiring to know the histories of old ought to be acquainted with its beginnings. We know, as it is read in histories, Orpheus to have been practically the first rational being. Orpheus is said to have assembled men [homines . . . congregasse] through the sweetness of his words, and to have made the first city and towns. In fact before that, men enjoyed the food of beasts and ate during the nighttime in caves and woods. And therefore so sweetly Orpheus is said to have sung through his pipe that stone should have jumped upon stone in the creation of his city [in edificationem civitatis sue]. Because these wild men gathered like hares to exalt his words [sermonum eius . . . mirificare], he in this way established a city [civitatem constituit ] and, at the same time, had men dwell [in it].4

There is much to marvel at in this Venetian Orpheus: insentient stones fall under the sway of his song to take the shape of dwelling places, and cavemen form assemblies, emerging from a dark prehistory in order to live, eat, and worship together in the light of day. Out of bare life, music conjures up a constitution and lays the foundation (edificationem) for the unfolding of Venetian history. The Orpheus envisioned in the Origo civitatum builds the settlement that would someday become the city of Venice. He lays down its foundations not merely through brick and mortar and moving stones but by gathering and domesticating its many inhabitants and imparting a sense of communal purpose and identity.

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A highly complex text, the twelfth-century Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum has been described as “the most aggravating chronicle with which medievalists have to deal.” Gina Fasoli, “I fondamenti della storiografia veneziana,” in Agostino Pertusi (ed.), La storiografia veneziana fino al XV secolo: Aspetti e problemi (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1970), pp. 11–44 (p. 33), quoted and translated in Areli Marina, “From the Myth to the Margins: The Patriarch’s Piazza at San Pietro di Castello in Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2011), 353–429 (362). Its litanies of imperial deaths, ducal elections, and civic building projects alternate with far-fetched genealogies that route the ancestry of the Venetian Republic through Justinian, Nero, and Aeneas of Troy. “Antiquorum ystorias scire desiderans, ipsarum principium oportet cognoscere. scimus, ut in ystoriis legitur, Orpheum primum fere sapientem fuisse. hic dicitur quasi bestiales homines dulcedine verborum suorum in unum congregasse et primum civitatem et castella fecisse. antea enim homines ferino cibo utebantur et in speluncis et nemoribus nocturno tempore commedebant. et ideo dicitur Orpheus tam dulciter fistula cecinisse, quod lapis desuper lapidem in edificationem civitatis sue faceret salire. quia hii sermonum eius leporine ferinos homines cogebant mirificare. qui taliter civitatem constituit et homines insimul habitare fecit.” Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum, ed. Roberto Cessi (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1933), pp. 3–4.

Sound Building

Orpheus’s song has always been a commonplace for music’s powers of animation and its mysterious affinity with the world of creatures and things. While the opening of the Origo civitatum taps this trope, it stands apart for its distinct civic-mindedness.5 What music performs in this passage is nothing less than the work of civilization. Trading on the multiple senses of the term aedificatio – connoting, at the broadest level, an act of structuring – the opening of the Venetian chronicle uncovers an otherwise hidden set of relationships between a city’s physical bedrock, its cornerstones and buildings, and its social codes, governing bodies, charters, mores, and practices. Along with the verbal form aedificare, the word aedificatio meant building in the concrete sense of erecting structures. But it just as often referred to the well-reasoned argument or to the persuasive arrangement of parts into a coherent whole. The opening of the Origo civitatum plays across these various senses, staging in the same moment of genesis acts of both physical and rhetorical creation. Orpheus’s performance does not stage creation ex nihilo but ex materia, where order, arrangement, and the subordination of particulars shift the locus of meaning away from the raw material and toward the structuring relationships between them. In short, it is a musical kind of creation. Within the medieval liberal arts, music was understood to be the sounding image of the world’s underlying order.6 Yet for most denizens of medieval Europe, the idea that music could give a perceptible form to hidden things had value beyond the cosmological. Music was called upon to give sonorous proof of all types of sublunary matter – to make it not only perceptible but also pleasing. It was, first and foremost, a vehicle for the texts that defined a community and its place in the cosmos: scripture, of course, but also the laws, treaties, and pledges of fealty that bound its various members to one another. It did not suffice for such texts merely to exist; to extend into perpetuity, these texts needed repetition through ritual 5

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This particular Orpheus type, revered for his ability to civilize and confer rationality, was introduced likely by Thomas Aquinas, but cultivated especially on the Italian peninsula by writers like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Susan Boynton, “The Sources and Significance of the Orpheus Myth in Musica Enchiriadis and Regino of Prüm’s Epistola de harmonica institutione,” Early Music History 18 (1999), 47–74 (50). There is much in the opening passage of the Origo civitatum to link it to Aquinas’s Orpheus in his Commentary on Aristotle’s “De anima” I.12.190. In several of his Glosae, twelfth-century philosopher William of Conches rehearsed the dictum that “the world is the ordered collection of all created things” (mundus est ordinata collectio omnium creaturarum). See Andrew Hicks, Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 32–33.

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Introduction

performance.7 Within ritual, music was the prime medium of a community’s identity and the perceptible expression of its place in the world and in history.8 When the Venetian Origo civitatum imagined song as the fine tool of government, it was in full recognition of the ingenuity and persuasion with which music can take its ordering effect. Even more so, it is a vision in which form – of which music was a prime art – is so central to the creation and sustenance of human community that it borders on the magical. Whatever preceded the mythic act of musical ordering that the Origo civitatum describes – chaos, darkness, unformed matter, undifferentiated time – is beyond the reaches of that history. By medieval Christian standards, Venice’s prehistory was particularly dark and unformed. Built under extreme human and environmental conditions, on lagunary salt flats that gave refuge from Lombard armies, the city and its watery surroundings could claim what hardly any other hectare in Europe could: the total absence of stable settlement prior to the sixth century. In the year 537/38, Cassiodorus describes Venice as a region governed entirely by the laws of impermanence, where men lived like birds in tabernacle houses.9 Six centuries later, this liquid city had become the economic powerhouse of Europe, commanding an enormous empire across the eastern Mediterranean (see Map 1). Yet its belated beginnings kept it apart from the natural course of Christian history. Virtually any other medieval city bore the visible, material traces of the Roman Empire that witnessed Christ’s birth, ministry, and death. Such artifactual evidence was important proof of a city’s place in the scheme of Christian history.

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Anders Ekenberg, Cur Cantatur? Die Funktionen des liturgischen Gesanges nach den Autoren der Karolingerzeit (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1987). Like music, the discipline of history was also understood as a function of form. David Ganz mentions the thirteenth-century notary who begins his chronicle with the claim that “Clio [i.e., history] sets events forth in an ingenious order.” “Historia: Some Lexicographical Considerations,” in Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, A.B. Kraebel, and Margot E. Fassler (eds.), Medieval Cantors and Their Craft: Music, Liturgy, and the Shaping of History, 800–1500 (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2017), pp. 8–22 (p. 9). One could also mention Fulgentius’s statement that “we have shown the whole state of mankind under the figure of history,” quoted in Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” translated by Ralph Manheim, in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 11–98 (p. 47). Cassiodorus, “Tribunis maritimorum senator praefector praetorio,” in Theodor Mommsen (ed.), Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 12, Cassiodori Senatoris Variae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894), pp. 379–80. See also Massimiliano Pavan, “La Venetia di Cassiodoro,” in La Venetia dall’antichità all’alto medioevo: Atti del convegno a Venezia 3 al 5 maggio 1985 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1988), pp. 63–74.

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This absence of Roman history posed a challenge when, in the first years of the thirteenth century, the city laid claim to an actual empire; in 1204, Venetian naval forces participated in the sack and capture of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, whose territories were divided among the Crusader States. The ensuing settlement of vast stretches of the erstwhile Roman Empire clinched Venetian dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. But the city’s imperial stature could not be legitimated by the sales record of land purchase alone. The challenge Venice faced in this regard was, at least in part, an aesthetic one. To the inhabitants of these colonies, the state that governed them from afar was largely an abstraction. In order to rule persuasively, proof of Venice’s legitimate presence needed tangible forms of representation, and those forms of representation needed the repetitions of ritual. Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) tackles the question of musical representation at the ground level, in the earliest days of Venice’s empire in the eastern Mediterranean. I begin in the year 1211, when the state came into possession of the island of Crete, its largest, longest-held, and most commercially profitable maritime colony. While Venice influenced ritual life in many of its colonies and port cities, from Zara to Ragusa, Modon to Corfu, the state’s especially robust system of governance on Crete is reflected in the sheer abundance of surviving records from the island. We can glean from Crete a more nuanced picture of the relationship between music, ritual, aesthetics, and politics than in any other place in the empire. I focus in particular on the practices and policies of music instituted by the Venetian administration on the island, and on the far-reaching ramifications of using music as a technology of political representation on the island. Records from the first century of Venetian rule in Crete document the use of song as a bureaucratic tool, in which the singing of laudes – a genre with ambivalently political and liturgical usage – legitimized state contracts of taxation, transfer of property, and vassalage.10 10

The most vigorous and far-reaching study of the laudes remains Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958). Less well known is Appendix I (pp. 188–221) of Kantorowicz’s work, a musical study by Manfred Bukofzer; due to a publishing delay at the University of California Press, Kantorowicz was able to commission Bukofzer’s help editing and commenting on the music of the laudes formularies that Kantorowicz had copied out by hand from manuscripts he consulted in European libraries before the war. He notes that due to the strange circumstances of the book’s publication, Bukofzer’s “musical investigation” had to be carried out “quite independently” and that, while Kantorowicz was not at leisure to integrate Bukofzer’s work with his own, “several conclusions which in the text [he] had to provide . . . with a question mark, might subsequently have been rephrased in a more positive form” (p. xi).

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The starting point of Chapter 1 is a document known as the Concessio insulae Cretensis, drawn up by Doge Pietro Ziani in September 1211.11 As a historical artifact, the Concessio holds the distinction of being the first administrative record of empire in the eastern Mediterranean. It is also one of the earliest records of Venice’s investment in music as an element of statecraft. Among the terms of tribute listed in the document is a directive that all feudatories “have laudes sung for us and for our successors in the archbishopric and bishoprics four times a year, on Christmas, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark, and on the feast of the major church [i.e., patron saint] of Crete.”12 With remarkable consistency in wording, this clause crops up throughout the thirteenth-century charters that established Venice’s presence across the eastern Mediterranean. Chapter 1 explores the significance of the laudes ritual within the Venetian imperial enterprise, arguing that it served as a sounding icon of the state’s claim to the romanitas on which its legitimacy as a Christian empire depended. If the Concessio required the laudes be performed on Christmas, Easter, and the feast days of Saint Mark and Saint Titus, the reality far exceeded this initial mandate. Within decades, the ceremony had taken on a life of its own. Already by the late thirteenth century, the laudes had become a weekly feature of civic life on the island, performed each Tuesday in the capital city of Candia in a ritual that symbolized interfaith relations on the island. It was folded into the veneration of icons and into encounters with the miraculous; it became a site for resolving personal disputes; and it was referenced and represented deep within the rugged interior of the island in the decorative programs of rural chapels. Each of these configurations, explored in Chapter 2, reveals a different facet of a political imagination that gave music the power to represent the state in all its members, local and far-flung, visible and invisible, human and divine. Studying the variety of performance contexts for the laudes gives us glimpses into the chaotic reality out of which Venice’s project of empire was being forged in the early years. Far from expressing unanimous agreement, the laudes had, by the fourteenth century, become a spectacular arena of dispute on the island. Both Latin and Greek populations on the island adopted the laudes as a space to contest and negotiate 11

12

Pietro Ziani, “Concessio insulae Cretensis,” in Gottlieb Tafel and Georg Martin Thomas (eds.), Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte, 3 vols. (Vienna: Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1856–57), vol. 2, pp. 129–36. “Laudes nobis et successoribus nostris in archiepiscopatu et episcopatibus decantari facietis quater in anno: in natiuitate Domini, in pascha Resurrectionis, in festo sancti Marci et in festo maioris ecclesie Cretensis.” Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 132–33.

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colonial identity. Drawing on Paul Zumthor’s concept of mouvance, developed for a poetic rather than bureaucratic corpus, to account for the variability of the laudes in performance, I argue that the significance of the laudes within the Venetian project of colonization was produced in and as ritual.13 It was not until the mid-fourteenth century that the charters containing the laudes clause were organized into official diplomatic cartularies – a project of enormous historiographical importance. The perdurance of the cartulary arrangement of these documents conceals the fact that, prior to this act of gathering, the contents of these documents were known first and foremost through ritual, and in the medium of the living and singing voices of friends and enemies, feudal lords and public officials. My aim in this chapter is to restore the particularity of some of the voices that sang these laudes. It was not only in the colonies that ritual was bent to the needs and imagination of a new empire. Part II turns to the lagoon city and to the world of civic ritual for which medieval Venice was renowned, then as it is today. My focus in Chapter 3 is on what was arguably the most spectacular ritual in the medieval Venetian liturgical year: the Festa delle Marie (Feast of the Twelve Marys). A multiday celebration that began on the eve of the Feast of Saint Mark’s Translation (31 January) and ended on the Feast of the Purification (2 February), the celebration centered around twelve wooden effigies of the Virgin Mary. Each effigy was decked in sumptuous fabrics, adorned with gemstones and pearls, and crowned with a golden headpiece. Over the four-day period, these wooden statues were the focal points of the city’s attention; as if living, they were borne through the canals in procession, courted by men with gifts, and hosted at lavish parties in the homes of the nobility. But by the late thirteenth century, the state threw all its financial backing behind a new facet of this celebration: a procession made on 31 January to the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where a sung enactment of the Annunciation, unique within the medieval dramatic corpus, was performed. Folded into the processional itinerary was a sung acclamation of the doge – the same laudes ceremony that was performed in the colonies and examined in Part I – made by two priests, costumed as Gabriel and Mary, who were in transit to perform the Annunciation drama. From around 1267 until 1379, when the feast was abolished, this sung representation framed the popular themes of the Festa delle Marie as matters of state and empire. 13

Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), esp. chap. 2, on anonymity and instability of the text; see also Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989).

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This chapter provides the first in-depth musical study of the Venetian Annunciation enactment, its sung ceremonial context, and its connection to the laudes. Arguing that what Martin da Canal’s chronicle description furnishes is a verbatim script of the chants used in the dialogue – all of which belong to the antiphonal repertory of San Marco – I suggest a plausible reconstruction of the enactment’s melodies. My analysis of that reconstruction shows how this preexisting repertory was refashioned into a version of the Annunciation story that is without parallel in the medieval dramatic repertory. Central to this chapter is a concern with the ways song worked in tandem with the plastic arts (effigies, thrones, costumes) to create the ceremony’s special representational effects. A study of early fourteenthcentury inventories from the basilica treasury, alongside eyewitness reports, indicates that the procurators of San Marco went to great lengths to make both the actors in the Annunciation enactment and the Marian effigies spectacularly vivid. Here, as in other projects examined in this book, Andrea Dandolo – statesman, jurist, humanist, and eventually doge – plays a leading role. A contract given to Paolo Veneziano shows Dandolo employing the best artists in the region for the ephemeral purposes of state ceremony. A common theme I track among conciliar documents related to the Festa delle Marie is the intention to make the statues appear as lifelike as possible. Nowhere amid the festivities, I argue, was this better realized than the moment in which two statuesque bodies – the clerics in the guise of Gabriel and Mary – opened their mouths and began to sing. Part III turns to the beating heart of the city’s ritual life: the liturgy and musical ceremony of the Basilica San Marco. In Chapters 4 and 5, I explore the creation of liturgical offices meant to advertise sacred plunder from the east and reinterpret them as objects of Venetian history. In the absence of prior Roman settlement, Venice’s imperial ambitions rested on the spiritual authority that its relics, wrested from its colonies, conquest, and commerce, lent the state. A city with no martyrs, no early saints, and no spots on the evangelical itinerary relied on its relics to bring it into contact with this early Christian past. The possession of relics leveled the playing field for Venice’s participation in Christian history – a playing field to which the state brought a great deal of historiographical ingenuity. Across the final three chapters of the book, I argue for music’s unique ability to articulate the complex historical, geographic, and narrative structures that the relic implied. I show how the musical devices of mode and melody and practices of musical borrowing offered Venetian composers a set of remarkably sensitive tools by which to shift between historical, ritual, and present time in the creation of these narrative offices. What

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resulted was a set of kaleidoscopic visions of the Venetian state and its members, embedded in biblical history and eschatological time. If the relics and their shrines served the chancery as the narrative props through which the living could imagine the state’s past and future extensions, it was the liturgy that spun elaborate narratives about rocks and bones – two crude states of matter that human civilization, in its most concrete forms, emerges from and returns to. Between the poles of potentiality and death that rock and bone represent (matter that has never been sentient, that is no longer sentient) lies the wide field of creative space in which late medieval Venetian liturgists, composers, artists, and historiographers labored to assert the promise of the city’s secure, providential future. In the years between 1261 and 1339, the ducal chancery produced several large-scale liturgical programs for the Basilica San Marco, narrative offices known as historiae, meant to celebrate its most precious sacred objects. While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of these liturgical offices in making sense of a community’s past, most studies of historiae tend to elide relics with the saints to which they belong rather than viewing them as categorically distinct, generative of fundamentally different kinds of historical engagement, and defying any simple or straightforward relation to the past.14 While Part III joins a growing body of scholarship centered on relics as topics for liturgical and devotional elaboration, what interests me here, above all, is the deeply folded past that the object of the relic implied and the technical means by which music could reveal it.15 Chapter 4 brings these questions to bear on one of the most spectacular music-liturgical programs of the fourteenth century: the narrative office for the feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition. Found as a late addition to the Basilica San Marco’s thirteenth-century antiphonal (VAM¹), this office celebrated 14

15

Two classic works on history writing’s entwinement with musical and liturgical arts in the Middle Ages are Susan Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006) and Margot Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). A major recent contribution in this regard is Rebecca Maloy, Songs of Sacrifice: Chant, Identity, and Christian Formation in Early Medieval Iberia (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020). The current state of the scholarship on liturgy’s historiographical extensions is well represented in Bugyis, Kraebel, and Fassler, Medieval Cantors and Their Craft. Recent works that show relics to have been catalysts for medieval liturgical creation are Yossi Maurey, Medieval Music, Legend, and the Cult of St. Martin: The Local Foundations of a Universal Saint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Catherine Saucier, A Paradise of Priests: Singing the Civic and Episcopal Hagiography of Medieval Liège (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014); and Sarah Ann Long, Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2021).

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the present-day virtue of the state’s most cherished possession: the body of its patron saint, the Evangelist Mark. In this chapter, I argue that the creation of the Apparitio office was a product of the state’s heightened attention to, and generative engagement with, the cult of relics. A work of enormous rhetorical ingenuity and historical imagination, the narrative office for the feast of the Apparition has received virtually no attention as an object of hermeneutic interest in its own right. Careful comparison between the Vespers office chants and the legend source from which the story derives reveals an inventive process of selection, omission, and fabrication of texts, as well as a high degree of sensitivity in musical setting. The result was a compelling public ritual that represented the contract between the body of Mark and the Venetians who venerated him, and at the same time made a self-reflexive bid for music and liturgy as the means of that contract’s renewal. Chapter 5 takes a deep look at the construction of narrative history through the use of melodic parsing and textual selection in the Matins office for the feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition. Unlike the public-facing office of Vespers, the night office of Matins – an enormous and lengthy complex of readings, psalmody, and chant – offered a robust formal structure on which narrative history could be built up and elaborated. An analysis of the chants and readings from the Matins office reveals the composer’s careful curation of source material and inventive use of the conventional features of mode and melody, showing just how much craft went into the representation of miraculous history in a liturgical format. The composer’s heavy-handed reliance on the technical and mediumspecific tools of chant to make Mark “appear” within the office suggests that such formal devices served as viable substitutes for the miraculous. The office itself seems to argue that good storytelling, whether accomplished on the page or in plainchant, could produce miracles merely at the level of form and technique. Chapter 6 examines a pair of polyphonic works likely commissioned by the state’s governing bodies. San Marco was the doge’s private chapel, and its chancery was responsible for furnishing the basilica with liturgical books.16 The same chancellors and scribes who copied and organized legal and diplomatic texts oversaw the production of historiographic, literary, and musical works as well (it was the ducal chancery that created 16

Though frequently referred to as one, San Marco was not technically a basilica but the doge’s private chapel. A 1917 law allowed it and other churches that were by tradition but not by definition basilicas to officially adopt the label.

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the antiphoners into which the Apparitio liturgy was added in the early fourteenth century).17 Chapter 6 argues that this collapsing of chancery functions had aesthetic consequences. This was above all due to the direct involvement of Andrea Dandolo in shaping the political and artistic vision of the chancery over the course of more than two decades, first during his time as procurator at San Marco (1331–43), and then during his dogado (1343–54). Over his long career in service of the state, Dandolo oversaw a vast array of projects aimed at inventorying Venetian history and finding new artistic means for its re-presentation across various media and formats. One of these was the ceremonial motet. A laboratory for musical avantgardism during the later Middle Ages, the motet had a uniquely political life in Venice, whose institutions – turning volte-face away from the selfreferential ars nova motet – cultivated the genre for the ritual uses of state. I focus on the two earliest motets (both anonymous) known to have been composed for Venetian ceremony: Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani (1329–39) and Marce, Marcum imitaris (ca. 1365). Both works are precocious examples of the Italian ceremonial motet. More importantly, the rhetoric on display in these motets straddles the humanist–conservatist divide for which the midcentury chancery, the engine of Venetian historiography, was known.18 My readings of Ave corpus sanctum and Marce, Marcum imitaris reveal them working in tandem with the chancery’s most significant historiographical enterprises. Not only do they bear strong thematic links to the topics most heavily elaborated within the midcentury chancery, but they exemplify an approach to history writing that was characteristically Venetian, emphasizing the past’s providential repetitions and continuities. Seen this way, the conservative humanism, or “chancery humanism,” that marks the Venetian historiographic idiom has not only to do with the uncritical stance toward the state for which it is best known (this is to be expected from an institution in service of the doge) but with its approach toward history as form – an approach that matched the explicit charge of the chancery: to make the state sensible through the organization of its sundry items and documents. Andrea Dandolo’s ties to Padua in the early 17

18

Susy Marcon, “I codici della basilica di San Marco,” in Marcon (ed.), I libri di San Marco: I manoscritti liturgici della basilica marciana (Venice: Il Cardo, 1995), pp. 13–28 (p. 19); Marco Pozza, “La cancelleria,” in Girolamo Arnaldi, Giorgio Cracco, and Alberto Tenenti (eds.), La formazione dello stato patrizio, vol. 3 of Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), pp. 365–87. Nicholas Mann, “Petrarca e la cancelleria veneziana,” in Girolamo Arnaldi (ed.), Il trecento, vol. 2 of Storia della cultura veneta (Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1976), pp. 517–35.

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years of his career make his involvement with Marchetto of Padua likely, and I argue that these are the circumstances that produced Ave corpus sanctum. The chapter thus gives fresh context to a work that is both remarkable and poorly understood. At the same time, it helps illuminate the distinct cultural and intellectual milieu in which a native Italian idiom in the motet genre developed.19

A Note on Representation At the heart of this book lie questions about music’s powers of representation, its relationship to social and symbolic forms, and its role in constituting political life. In premodernity, the concept of repraesentatio bore little of the sense of the modern English cognate.20 Though translated here and by convention as “representation,” the medieval Latin term lacked the idea of imitation or mimesis. Originating in the language of Roman law, repraesentatio stood for the juristic concept of the proxy – for the immediacy of a sense-perceptible substitution.21 By the later Middle Ages, repraesentatio was an ambivalent and flexible term that straddled political, formal, and metaphysical categories, was understood as an item or instance of manufacture, as artificial, and performed – but in any case, standing in substitution for something else. In the early fourteenth century, the Veneto’s own Marsilius of Padua was working out the concept of repraesentatio for a new political theory; in Venice, the doge was referred to as both a repraesentatio and an imago ; and the Annunciation play discussed in Chapter 6 was called a repraesentatio in contemporary documents, as were

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21

Four decades after the publication of Margaret Bent, “The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” in Giulio Cattin (ed.), L’Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, 6: Atti del congresso internazionale “L’Europa e la musica del Trecento,” Certaldo, Palazzo Pretorio, 19–20–21 Iuglio 1984 (Certaldo: Polis, 1992), pp. 85–125, the French ars nova motet continues to dominate our understanding of the genre. A significant proportion of the fourteenth-century Italian motets are ducal motets (roughly a fifth of the surviving examples), and there is good reason to view Venice as a seedbed for the development of a native idiom, perhaps inspired by the French ars nova motet (as in Ave corpus sanctum) but quickly incomparable to it (as in Marce, Marcum). On the range of meaning of the term across various domains of knowledge and practice, see Albert Zimmermann (ed.), Der Begriff des Repraesentatio im Mittelalter: Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971). For its medieval political valences, see Hasso Hofmann, Repräsentation: Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1974). James Ker, “Roman Repraesentatio,” The American Journal of Philology 128 (2007), 341–65; Ben Holland, “Sovereignty as Dominium? Reconstructing the Constructivist Roman Law Thesis,” International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2010), 449–80.

A Note on Representation

the Marian effigies.22 In place of abstract or distant entities, a medieval representation offered a sensible, present form to work with. Not to be confused with the idea of mimesis, representation in this period was not a form of imitation, but of substitution. The problem of representation in music surfaces in each and every chapter of this book. Working within the substitutional logic of medieval representation, the music examined here accomplishes precisely the heavy lifting described in the passage from the Origo civitatum cited above. Through its ritual repetitions, its sonorous immediacy, and its own temporal structures, music supported the illusion of a divinely ordered empire. In the pages that follow, we will see the musical imagination creating congregations of men and women (in the laudes performances of Chapters 1 and 2), lifting and moving rocks and bones (in the relic liturgies of Chapters 4 and 5), and testifying to a civilization’s value through the beauty of its manufacture (the polyphonic entwinement of Venetian saints and doges in the motets of Chapter 6 and the bejeweled singing statues of Chapter 3). In the Epilogue, I reflect on the splitting of political and dramatic forms at the end of the fourteenth century and on the horizons of a medieval view of musical representation, both then and now. Paradoxically, the professionalization of the state’s musical institutions around the turn of the fifteenth century attenuated its connections to the Venetian political apparatus. Liturgical drama continued to be cultivated within a monastic environment that was remote from the concerns of state and increasingly hostile toward the theocracy that supported its project of empire. Within the Veneto, the monastic appropriation of dramatic forms led to a new set of representational ideals – one in which music was meant as a tool for affective and interior – and categorically not material or metaphysical – transformation.23 It is no coincidence that humanism was on the ascendant in these same years. Petrarch’s ambivalence toward the Venetian state is illustrative of this dawning humanism, with its commitment to historical fidelity and textual authority. Under the new humanistic regime, the past’s relics were precious because of the philological relationship they bore to the past. 22

23

As a demonstration of the term’s multivalence, Dennis Romano notes that while Doge Francesco Foscari was referred to as an imago (a physical proxy for or representation of Venice, its government, and Saint Mark), his son Jacopo was found importing an imago lapidea (a piece of sculpture) into the city. Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. xxi. Jamie Reuland, “Cantus Figuratus and Monastic Re-Figuration in Late Medieval Veneto,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 28, no. 1 (2019), 43–75.

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This shift in emphasis toward the legitimacy of the text, and not of its performance, decentered the authority of ritual.24 Truth was becoming modern and scientific – not mystical, and not musical. Thus the distance between myth and reality was at once generative of the aesthetic imagination of the medieval city and symptomatic of its instabilities. When Petrarch used the allegorical mouthpiece of Reason to rebuke the Venetian Republic with the claim that “the nature of things cannot be overcome by human artfulness . . . place a pallid corpse into a golden coffin and surround it with gems and purple, the greater the adornment the greater is the horror,” he sounded a prescient note about the gap between art and life that would become increasingly, even glaringly apparent by the mid-fifteenth century.25 Indeed, it would become Venice’s artistic legacy. Yet in fully envisioning the extent to which music adorned the medieval empire – often literally its corpses, as in the brilliant songs composed for its cult of relics – Music and the Making of Medieval Venice recovers the city’s fascinating early propensity for a statecraft of the imagination, the consequences of which would be the better-known history of its material decay. 24

25

M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). Petrarch, Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of “De remediis utriusque Fortune,” with a Commentary, translated by Conrad H. Rawski, 5 vols. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), vol. 1, p. 60.

part i

An Audible Empire

1

Echoes of Empire The Laudes in Medieval Venetian Crete

In September 1211, Doge Pietro Ziani drew up a land grant pertaining to the newly purchased island of Crete. Known as the Concessio insulae Cretensis, the grant parceled the territory among some five hundred men, enrolled in the rank of cavalry, whose names appear at the bottom of the register. These were to become the first vassals of the Venetian state. Specified in the charter were the terms by which they were to hold the land in fee. This included the levying of taxes, the raising of armies, etc. In return, the Concessio provided them with buildings, horses, livestock, and pastureland. As a historical artifact, the Concessio holds the distinction of being the first administrative record of empire in the eastern Mediterranean.1 It is also one of the earliest records of Venice’s investment in music as an element of statecraft. Among the terms of tribute listed in the document is an injunction that all feudatories “have laudes sung for [the doge] and for [his] successors in the archbishopric and bishoprics four times a year, on Christmas, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark, and on the feast of the major church of Crete.”2 The laudes referred to here as a term of tribute is none other than the acclamatory chant known in modern scholarship as the laudes regiae.3 Composed in the eighth century for the emperor Charlemagne, it is perhaps the most concise statement of imperial theocracy to have taken musical shape in the Middle Ages. In its standard form, the chant begins with the threefold Christological exclaim for which it is best known – Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat – continues with a set of acclaims to temporal leaders (emperor, generals, judges, etc.), and ends with a litany of petitions to relevant saints. Throughout the central Middle Ages, the laudes regiae were reserved for the celebration of only the

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3

Together with the state’s Republican form of government, Venice’s maritime empire would come to define its political identity as distinct from any other state in late medieval Europe. “Laudes nobis et successoribus nostris in archiepiscopatu et episcopatibus decantari facietis quater in anno: in nativitate Domini, in pascha Resurrectionis, in festo sancti Marci et in festo maioris ecclesie Cretensis.” For the history of the nomenclature of these chants that originate in the eighth century and begin with the exclaim Christus vincit, see Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, “The Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae,” Viator 12 (1981), 37–78 (42–43).

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Echoes of Empire

most impressive unions between divine and temporal rulers – the coronation of kings and the investiture of popes and bishops – such that there is hardly a musical item more closely tied to the idea of medieval kingship.4 It is thus surprising to find the laudes indicated not in a pontifical or psalter or sacramentary, but in a charter otherwise devoted to the distribution of property and to the terms of military service.5 Not a whiff of mysticism is to be found in the document. The demand that feudatories “have laudes sung” sits squarely within the contractual language of the text, which includes the performance of the chant among a list of privileges retained by the Signoria, all fixed in the same stiff legal style. The immediate context of the laudes in the Concessio is as follows: Venice’s friends you ought to have as friends, and Venice’s enemies you ought, as we do, to have as enemies, and you ought to make neither pact nor peace with them without our consent or that of our successors, or the consent of the duke, who will be in that place [Crete] with his own counsel. You are to have laudes sung for us and for our successors in the archbishopric and bishoprics four times a year, on Christmas, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark (Apr. 25), and on the feast of the major church of Crete (S. Titus). Against our prohibitions or that of our successors, you will not grant passage to anyone, and you will not deny passage to those to whom we have decided to give it . . . You ought also to give (military) force and courage to the duke, who will be for us and our successors in the city of Candia, for enforcing justice and accountability.6

This clause – “to have laudes sung” – is repeated throughout the charters that date to Venice’s first three decades of empire in the eastern Mediterranean.7 Together in the Liber albus and Liber pactorum, the two 4

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7

Kantorowicz considers them to have been “among the earliest Western political documents in which the attempt was made to establish in the secular-political, as well as in the ecclesiastical, sphere, a likeness of the City of God” (Laudes regiae, p. 62). All the more so since, after the twelfth century, the laudes fell into a state of comparative decline elsewhere in Europe. “Amicos Venecie debetis habere amicos, et inimicos Venecie debetis, sicut nos, inimicos habere, et cum illis nullam treuam nullamque pacem facere sine nostro et nostrorum successorum consensu, uel consensu Ducis, qui in illo loco erit cum suo conscilio. Laudes nobis et successoribus nostris in archiepiscopatu et episcopatibus decantari facietis quater in anno: in natiuitate Domini, in pascha Resurrectionis, in festo sancti Marci et in festo maioris ecclesie Cretensis. Contra intradictum nostrum et successorum nostrorum alicui passagium non concedetis, et eis passagium non contradicetis, quibus illud uoluerimus dare . . . Debetis etiam dare fortiam et uirtutem Duci, qui pro nobis et successoribus nostris erit in ciuitate Candida, ad iustitias et rationes” (Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte, vol. 2, p. 121). Maria Georgopoulou suggests that the verbatim repetition of the laudes clause reflects a high degree of intentionality in the state’s approach to their new colonial enterprise. Venice’s

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core collections of Venetian diplomatics, the clause crops up dozens of times in records relating to colonies from Durazzo on the Istrian coast to the island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea.8 It arises not only in charters but in pacts and treaties as well. It appears, for example, in an agreement drawn up in 1232 between Bartolomeo Gradenigo, duke of Candia, and two influential members of the Cretan nobility, Nicholas Skordyles and Michael Melissenos, who had incited a series of rebellions against the colonial administration. A bid at peace with the indigenous nobility, the 1232 agreement converted the land that under Byzantine law had belonged to these families into fiefs, with Skordyles and Melissenos assuming the rights and duties of the Venetian feudatory class.9 Among those duties was the offering of military protection, the raising of a levy of denarii and wax, and the assurance that laudes were sung in honor of the doge of Venice. Their signed contract states: We have sworn, and all those must swear who just now were not found swearing to the command of our lord the doge of Venice and of his successors and in a similar way to the lord duke of Crete . . . We will make war for him to [the extent of] our power until they return to the command of Your Highness, and we will raise laudes for the lord the doge of Venice, and as many pounds of wax as we ought to supply, fulfilling the treaty by the month of September.10

It is difficult, in the context of these early records, to separate ritual from the most basic material interests of a fledging empire. Despite the mystical aura the genre carried elsewhere and in other times, in thirteenth-century Venetian Crete the laudes possess all the auratic charge of the Internal Revenue Service; in the above treaty, the raising of taxes and the raising of

8

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Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 215. Though her focus is architecture – a more obviously monumental expression of Venice’s colonial ambition – Georgopoulou suggests the “heavy symbolic weight” of the laudes within “the documents that seal the colonization of the territories of Zara (1204), Corfu (1207), Negroponte (1209), Durazzo (1210), Candia (1211), and Ragusa (1232)” (ibid., pp. 214–16). Promissio Graecorum in Creta Insula, in Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte, vol. 2, pp. 312–13; Flaminio Cornaro, Creta sacra, 2 vols., 1755, repr. (Modena: Memor, 1971), vol. 2, pp. 265–66. “Juravimus et jurare debent omnes illi qui modo non fuerunt inventi ad jurandum preceptum Domini nostri Ducis Venetiarum et suorum successorum et simili modo ad Dom. Ducem Crete . . . Nos illi faciemus guerram ad nostrum posse donec tornabunt ad preceptum vestre altitudinis et levabimus laudes Domino Duci Venetiarum et libras denariorum et hec quantum de cera complere debemus complendo pacem per mense Septembris.” Promissio Graecorum in Creta Insula, in Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte, vol. 2, pp. 312–13.

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laudes even depend on the same verb: levabimus. In a single breath, the two rebel leaders promise raw resources to the Republic, and a song of fealty. Such are the earthy beginnings of the state’s investment in music – directives nestled among items pertaining to war and to wax, the allocation of houses, and the pasturing of horses and livestock. But when laudes are something colonists will “have sung” in the same way they will contribute soldiers or raise an army, we might wonder whether these documents have anything to tell us about music per se.11 What of music can we learn from texts that reference song in terms of obligation, as a thing owed to one’s landlord? Enough, I argue, that it is worth dwelling among the rebels, foot soldiers, and tax collectors of the nascent empire – if only for the space of a few chapters – to understand what kind of political work music was called upon to accomplish. Behind the bureaucratic language of contracts and registers lies a keen awareness on the part of the state that the success of an empire would depend on more than effective bookkeeping, the maintenance of armies, and the extraction of resources. A whole corporate imagination needed to be leveraged, and this required the work of representation.12 What needed representing was a city and government of which many of the island’s inhabitants would never have firsthand knowledge. For those that did, those first Venetian transplants to the island, their relationship to the place and people that “held them in fee” would become increasingly remote as the decades passed. To appreciate the nature of music’s entanglement with taxes and military service in these documents, we need to understand how representation, a term whose premodern valences are jointly aesthetic, evidentiary, and transactional, substituted the presence of government – in this case both absent and abstract – with the sense-perceptible performance of one.13 If the

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13

The passage that follows the stipulation that the laudes be performed four times annually concerns the colonists’ compliance with respect to matters of war and enemies of state: “Contra interdictum nostrum, et successorum nostrorum alicui passagium non concedetis: et eis passagium non contradicetis quibus illud voluerimus dare, et quoties nos exercitum fecerimus et successores nostri, debetis facere sicut homines de Venetiis a Modone superius: Unusquisque vestrum quandocunque fueritis requisiti, faciet secundum quod cuilibet nostrum evenerit faciendum.” Cornaro, Creta sacra, vol. 2, p. 229. The clause that follows this one specifies the terms under which colonists should come to the city of Candia to pay their taxes. I am far from the first to point out Venetian art’s entwinement with its form of government, which lies at the heart of the idea of the “myth of Venice.” It is not the mythic dimension but the practical one that I am after here, such that we could take literally Fasoli’s assertion that “se mai è esistito uno Stato che meritasse il nome di opera d’arte, è lo Stato veneziano.” Gina Fasoli, “Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale,” in Agostino Pertusi (ed.),Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV: Atti del I Convegno internazionale di storia della civiltà veneziana (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1973–74), vol. 1, pp. 261–95 (p. 262). See “A Note on Representation” in my Introduction above for a brief overview of this idea.

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reality of empire was to remain always and inevitably an abstraction, art gave something tangible, earthy, and radically present to work with. Part I addresses the practices and policies of music instituted by the Venetian administration on the island. Focusing on the laudes as an instrument of political representation, these chapters reveal how administrative practices became an art of empire in medieval Venetian Crete. I argue that the colonial administration established on Crete is paradigmatic of the habits of government that shaped Venice’s political imaginary during the height of its maritime empire (ca. 1204–1420). Above all, these habits are evident in the state’s tendency to handle the most intractable matters of colonial government – the month’s sea voyage between colony and Commune, the frequent revolts, the inexperience in land management – at least in part as exercises in aesthetics. At its most mature, this ability to tap the connection between the life of politics and the life of art through “figuration” gave rise to the so-called “myth of Venice,” what David Rosand has described as art’s “incarnation of a political ideal.”14 But I am far less interested in the mythic edifice of the state than I am in the political processes and bureaucratic habits that propped it up. Whatever lofty and mythical heights this edifice might have attained, the motivation for aestheticizing the political was grounded in the very practical problem of governing from afar and through administrative proxy. Among Venice’s maritime possessions, Candia was at once its longestheld (1211–1669), most economically important, and most difficult to manage. Rich in grain, cheese, oil, and wine and proximate to trade routes in Africa, Asia, and Europe, Candia was central to the commercial success of the empire, and from the very beginning, the Republic approached it as a special case.15 When Venice assumed control of the island in 1211, it found itself for the first time in the position of managing an empire across an ocean and ruling a population divided from the Commune by language, faith, and custom.16 Rebellion was a near-continuous feature of life on the colony. Frequent uprisings, first by the Greek inhabitants and soon by the 14

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David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 4. For an in-depth analysis of the agricultural and commercial organization of the island during the fourteenth century, see Mario Gallina, Una società coloniale del trecento: Creta fra Venezia e Bisanzio (Venice: Deputazione editrice, 1989). Silvano Borsari, Il dominio veneziano a Creta nel XIII secolo (Naples: F. Fiorentino, 1963), p. 73. Sally McKee notes that because “Crete lay approximately a month away by galley from Venice . . . direct rule required a more sophisticated bureaucracy and methods of communication than mere expansion into contiguous territory would have demanded.” Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 20.

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Venetian feudatories themselves, required considerable outlays of money and effort, and the threat of renewed and residual allegiance to the Byzantine state was of constant concern.17 As a measure of oversight and economic control, the Republic installed an extensive system of bureaus and elected officials – a local government far more robust than was in place in any of its other colonies. In the port city of Candia, this entailed a huge administration that effectively replicated the various governing structures of the Commune.18 Sally McKee describes how the state “launched a miniaturized version of its own political structure, down to and including the administration and dispensation of justice.”19 Within that administration, the duke served as the living representative of the doge on the island and the title duca di Candia soon came to designate the most influential member in the whole maritime regime. Cretan dukes regularly went on to occupy high-ranking roles in the city of Venice, including that of doge.20 Jacopo Tiepolo, for instance, the very first duke of Candia, was recalled from Crete when he was elected doge in 1229. At his death in 1249, Marino Morosini was likewise called up from the rank of duke of Candia to succeed him as doge. There is thus good reason to view Candia as a zone of experimentation, geographically remote from the city and its Republican mores, yet connected through a brisk rotation of personnel that circulated between the colonial administration abroad and the Republican government at home. In the same way that spolia was plundered for decorative use in state architecture – a way of bolstering the city’s claim to romanitas – ritual strategies first worked out in the colony were transported back to the lagoon city.21 Many elements of 17

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By the mid-fourteenth century, Petrarch could call the Venetian feudatories “Venetian in name, enemies [of the state] by design and character” (Epistole de rebus senilibus III.IX, quoted and translated in McKee, Uncommon Dominion, p. 130). McKee describes how “in Crete, its first territorial possession, the Venetian state launched a miniaturized version of its own political structure, down to and including the dispensation of justice.” She estimates that “more than fifty and probably closer to one hundred men, most of them appointed in Venice, filled the ranks of the colony’s bureaucracy,” which was seated in Candia (Uncommon Dominion, p. 27). Ibid. This included the division of the island into six sestieri, named after the identical six sestieri of the Commune (Castello, Cannareggio, Dorsoduro, S. Polo, Santa Croce, and San Marco), which effectively superimposed the topographical image of the Commune onto the colony. Monique O’Connell describes how the most common pattern of career advancement during these first centuries of empire was one in which statesmen “moved back and forth between judicial positions and overseas administration, being elected to increasingly important positions over the course of their careers.” Men of Empire: Power and Negotiations in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 94. Venice’s attitudes toward the antique past are brilliantly worked out in Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 75–82.

Rocks of Romanitas

the colonial laudes ceremony were elaborated within the growing ritual and musical life of the Commune, old wine in new skins. Just as Venice’s merchants and crusaders ransacked eastern territories for spolia with which to fabricate a new “Roman” image at home, the colonial regime looked toward the found ritual symbols of older and more distinguished Mediterranean civilizations to express their imperial ambition. Unlike the use of spolia, however, these ritual strategies began their lives as practical responses to the challenges of establishing secure rule in the colony. This helps explain why the laudes initially crop up in relation to policies of land ownership and taxation, as referenced in the Concessio and subsequent documents. Due to the lagoon city’s total inexperience managing land territories, the state adopted landholding customs that had been put in place on the island under the Byzantines.22 By maintaining some aspects of Byzantine law, the Venetians hoped to ensure a stable transition from one ruling power to another. Chryssa Maltezou points to the fact that the survival of Byzantine institutions was most apparent “on the one hand in the sphere of land ownership – above all in the methods of granting land and the economic obligations of peasants toward the feudal lords – and on the other hand in the tax system.”23 Early records of colonization show the laudes to have been integral to this strategy of colonization, working in tandem with the Senate’s policies of taxation and its management of estates. In their connection to the publication of these policies – the effect of which was a binding contract between the Signoria and the grantee, along with the public recognition of the grantee’s feudal status – these earliest manifestations of the laudes would be more accurately regarded as oral traces of the Venetian system of record keeping. They were, in fact, a vital institutional survival on the island, connected to policies of land management and taxation through their function as binding oath.

Rocks of Romanitas It was thus through the building of empire – not as a glittering concept but as a thin web of local policy and administrative attitudes – that the Venetian state began to cultivate a musical aesthetics. Though the genre 22

23

This issue has been addressed most thoroughly by Chryssa A. Maltezou, “Byzantine ‘consuetudines’ in Venetian Crete,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 269–80. Maltezou points out that consiliar documents refer to these preexisting Byzantine legal institutions with terms such as consuetudines terre, usus, leges mos, cursus et ordines terre (272). Ibid., 272–73.

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was manufactured in the Carolingian sphere, the laudes regiae belonged to a ritual vocabulary of empire that was shared across the Mediterranean. In imperial Rome, a parentage to which both Byzantines and Venetians laid claim, acclamations functioned as a means to distribute information across the empire.24 Issuances from the metropolis – acts, laws, and decrees – were published in a variety of formats, where wooden boards, marble tablets, and pamphlets or leaflets were all common. Though the medium of presentation was flexible, the mode of reception was not. The ritual acclamation performed by the provincial citizens validated both the medium and its contents, and expressed agreement (consensus) between province and metropolis.25 Like icons and decrees, laudes were portable, and functioned as a means of communication across far-flung territories. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer describes how provincial populations that had no hope of meeting the emperor used acclamations sung before imperial portraits as opportunities to communicate directly with central authorities, bypassing the urban elites who acted as provincial representatives.26 Part of what made acclamations so vital to the traffic of information across the empire was their ability to mutate between performance and writing. Clifford Ando explains how, “although acclamations were, by definition, a momentary vocalization of communal feeling . . . in its written form, an acclamation became a portable expression of a community’s loyalty toward its emperor.”27 What began as a means of communication between the provincial population of Crete and the Commune’s ruling elite was soon tapped to communicate across time as well. The material perdurance of writing concretized the relationship between the rituals of the past and those of the present. The laudes supported the fiction that the huge temporal gap between Roman Crete and Venetian Crete could be closed through the continuities of ritual. Documentation for the Roman institution of acclamation lay patent in one of the most symbolic spaces on the island: the city of Górtyn that had been the island’s inland capital throughout the period of Roman rule. A city in ruins by the time of Venetian conquest, the site nonetheless captured the 24

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Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p. 175. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, “Voces populi: Akklamationen als Surrogat politischer Partizipation,” in Egon Flaig (ed.), Genesis und Dynamiken der Mehrheitsentscheidung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 173–202. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, “Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich: Zur Typologie und Funktion eines Kommunikationsrituals,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86, no. 1 (2004), 27–74 (64). Ando, Imperial Ideology, p. 203.

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Republic’s political imagination. Thanks to the Roman practice of inscribing acclamations on public monuments, the crumbling structures in and around Górtyn furnished transcripts of the rituals that had been performed in Crete while the island was a Roman province, and the city came to function as a quarry of historical evidence that could be mined for the Venetian state’s imperial self-fashioning. Górtyn’s Roman structures were plundered as spolia, brought back to the Commune, and incorporated into the city’s most monumental spaces of government, creating what Johanna Heinrichs describes as “a physical link between ancients and moderns.”28 In his De orthographia, the Venetian humanist Gasparino Barzizza (1360– 1431) recalls how new magistrates in the Venetian Senate would visit the ruined capital in a political pilgrimage through which the site, its inscriptions, and ritual history became the tangible firsthand knowledge of the Venetian government’s high-ranking members.29 A comparison between the material remains at Górtyn and the surviving transcripts of colonial ritual in Venetian Candia shows just how much the laudes ceremony conjured up the ritual specter of Roman Crete. Among the more interesting extant examples at Górtyn is the inscription of an acclamation to Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–41) and Empress Eudochia, along with their heir, Constantine III:30 Κωνσταντῖνε αὔγουστε, τοὺ βίνκας, Ἡράκλειε αὔγουστε, τοὺ βίγκας, Κύριε νίκην τοῖς δεσπότες Ῥωμαίων. Εὐδοκία αὐγούστα, τοὺ βίγκας. 28

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Johanna D. Heinrichs, “The Topography of Antiquity in Descriptions of Crete,” in Nebahat Avcıoğlu and Emma Jones (eds.), Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and Its Territories, 1450–1750: Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 205–18 (p. 207). “Quem noui magistratus a Senatu Veneto in eam insulam missi hebreis ducibus accensis funalibus usque quo iter est peruium Inni sunt semper cum primum insulam attigerunt.” Gasparino Barzizza, De orthographia (Venice: Simone da Lovere, 1500), fol. 53v. For a photographic view of the four columns supporting these inscriptions, see Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti veneti nell’isola di Creta, 4 vols. (Venice: Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1905–32), vol. 4, p. 551. A rubbing of the inscription in the first column is reproduced in Federico Halbherr, “Cretan Expedition X: Addenda to the Cretan Inscriptions,” American Journal of Archaeology 2, no. 2 (1898), 79–94 (90). Based on the fact that Constantine’s, and not Heraclius’s, name appears first and that Heraclius’s wife, Eudochia, died merely three months after Constantine’s birth (612), I would argue that the acclamation was used to command recognition of Constantine as heir to the imperial throne. See Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2003), pp. 61–62. This Cretan acclamation closely conforms to a similar acclamatory inscription found in Smyrna; see Henri Grégoire, Recueil des inscriptions grecques-chrétiennes d’Asie Mineure (Paris: E. Leroux, 1922), pp. 21–22.

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August Constantine, conquer, August Heraclius, conquer, Lord, let there be victory for the rulers of the Romans. August Eudochia, conquer.31

The transliteration of the Latin acclamatory expression tu vincas (you conquer) into Greek (τοὺ βίνκας [line 1] and τοὺ βίγκας [lines 2 and 4]) links the acclamation to the broader Roman acclamatory tradition. These “scraps of Latin,” as Walter Kaegi dubs them, served the Byzantines, like the Venetians after them, as “echoes of the empire’s Roman heritage.”32 An inscription on a rock nearby preserves the characteristic phrase “πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη” (many the years) used in the imperial polychronion with which the Byzantine court acclaimed the emperor up until the end of the eastern Roman empire.33 In the early fifteenth century, Cyriacus of Ancona referred to the inscriptions he found on the antique monuments of Crete as sigilla historiarum – the “validating seals of history.”34 As remnants of both a real and mythologized past, these transcripts on stone gave tangible proof of the continuity of ritual and of political legitimacy on the island. In appropriating the Roman practice of acclamation, the Venetians downplayed the difference between the Roman or Byzantine past and the Venetian present; the imposition of laudes on Crete’s population disrupted the neutral flow of historical time, and the “seals of history,” pressed into stone, became figures of a political reality fulfilled under the Venetian regime. A copy of a ceremonial book that once belonged to the duke of Candia shows just how much the “πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη” found inscribed on the rocks of Górtyn resounded in the ceremonial life of the island, even several centuries into Venetian rule. Entries for Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark, and the Feast of Saint Titus all describe how the laudes were sung “according to ancient custom” (secondo l’antica consuetudine) and intended for perpetuity (“aciò in ogni tempo siano essequiti et fatte per 31 32

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Gerola, Monumenti veneti, vol. 4, p. 551. Kaegi, Heraclius, p. 268. It is interesting that Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus’s De ceremoniis records nearly identical acclamations performed in Constantinople for Heraclius, indicating that here, too, the ritual utterances of the provinces were fashioned and fixed in the image of the capital. An image of the fragment is reproduced in Federico Halbherr, “Cretan Expedition III: Epigraphical Researches in Gortyna,” American Journal of Archaeology 1, no. 3 (1897), 159–238 (175). Michail Chatzidakis, “Ciriacos numismata und gemmae : Die Bedeutung der Münz- und Gemmenkunde für die Altertumsforschungen des Ciriaco d’Ancona,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 54, no. 1 (2010–12), 31–58 (31). I supply the historically specific notion of “validating” to sigilla in Cyriacus’s expression following Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 81.

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l’avvenire essequire dalli rettori di questa città”). Appendix 1 reproduces the entries for Christmas and Epiphany.35 The city’s Catholic and Orthodox clerics alternated singing acclaims to the doge and the duke, first in Latin by the Catholic clerics and then in Greek by the Orthodox clerics (“et poi ultimamente in greco per il protopapa et suo clero”). The acclamations sung in Latin (“in franco”) would have been the same that, by the late thirteenth century, were performed in the city of Venice at the doge’s election and investiture and during the city’s major political and religious feasts, and that belonged to the broader Latin laudes regiae tradition.36 Compared to other uses of the laudes regiae formula, the Venetian version appears remarkably succinct. Removed from the longer litany of saints to which the laudes regiae attached itself in the Frankish liturgy (which might, in addition, include acclaims to any number of ecclesiastical, political, or military officials), in Crete only the doge (the figurehead of the Venetian empire), the duke (his colonial proxy), and occasionally the pope and Latin archbishop received acclaims. This began with the familiar tricolon – “Christus vincit, christus regnat, christus imperat” – was followed by an acclamation to the doge – “illustrissimo ac serenissimo principi domino nostro [N.N.] Dei gratia Duci Venetiarum, salus, honor, vita . . .” – and a petition to his patron, Saint Mark – “Sancte Marce, tu nos adiuva.” The chant was then repeated in its entirety, this time acclaiming the duke of Candia as the doge’s colonial representative and petitioning Saint Titus, patron saint of the Venetian colony.37 Although the Cretan ceremonial specifies only that the Greeks repeated the laudes “in greco,” a later document, this one recording the formula used for the pope and the archbishop of Candia on the Feast of Saint Titus, confirms that what the Greek clerics sang was in fact the polychronion of Byzantine imperial ceremony (Table 1.1). The characteristic series of “πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη” (many the years) that follow the Latin Christus vincit formula suggest the functional identity of Byzantine and Latin acclamatory forms on the island.38 35

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ASV, Procuratori, Libro de Atti dal 1618 sino 1648-Candia, fol. 186r. Reproduced in Aspasia Papadaki, Cerimonie religiose e laiche nell’isola di Creta durante il dominio veneziano, translated by Giorgio Pelidis (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2005), pp. 186–87. Jamie L. Reuland, “Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image,” Journal of Musicology 32, no. 2 (2015), 205–14. The wording of the Venetian version remained remarkably consistent from the time of their first appearance in the early thirteenth-century colonial records to their first mention within the ceremonial life of the city of Venice itself in the 1260s, to their appearance in polyphonic guise in Hugo de Lantins’s composition in honor of Doge Francesco Foscari in 1423. In keeping with the archival sources, I use the terms laudes or laudo to refer inclusively to the entire ceremony comprised of both the Latin laudes and the Greek polychronion. For the Byzantine polychronion, see Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis.

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Echoes of Empire Table 1.1 Laudes performed to Pope Urban VIII and Archbishop Alvise Mocenigo in Candia “die prima octobris 1636” De mandato dell’Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo monsignor Luigi Mocenigo, Arcivescovo del Regno di Candia, si registra qui sotto il laudo latino e greco, fatto alla Santità di Nostro Signore et all’Illustrissimo Arcivescovo li primi vesperi di San Tito et dell’Epifania ad futuram rei memoriam. Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. Sanctissimo ac Beatissimo Patri et Domino Nostro Domino Urbano divina providentia Papae octavo totius orbis terrarum Pastori vigilantissimo salus, honor, vita, triumphus et gloria sempiterna. Christus, ut supra Sancte Petre Tu nos adiuva Christus, ut supra Illustrissimo ac Reverendissimo Domino Nostro Domino Aloysio Mocenico Dei et Apostolicae sedis gratia Archiepiscopo totius Regni Cretae meritissimo salus, honor, vita et gloria sempiterna. Christus, ut supra Sancte Tite Tu nos adiuva Christus, ut supra.

Τοῦ μακαριωτάτου καί ἀγϊωτάτου κϋρΐου κϋρΐου ἡμετέρου κϋρΐου Ὀρβάνου ὀγδώου θεία χάρϊτι τῆς ἁγΐας ῥωμαϊκῆς καί καθολϊκῆς ἐκκλησίας ἄκρου ἀρχιερέως πολλά τά ἔτη καί πάσα ἐν Θεῶ εὐτϋχΐα. Τοῦ ἐκλαμπρωτάτου καί πανἱερωτάτου κϋρΐου κϋρΐου ἡμετέρου κϋρΐου Ἀλωϊσΐου Μοτζενΐγω, θεία χάρϊτι ἀρχϊεπισκόπου Κρήτης πολλά τά ἔτη. Πολλϋχρόνιον ποιήσει ὁ Θεός τόν μακαριώτατον πατέραν ἡμῶν πάπα Ῥώμης εἰς πολλά ἔτη. Πολλυχρόνιον ποιήσει ὁ Θεός τόν αὐθέντιν ἡμῶν μητροπολΐτην Κρήτης εἰς πολλά ἔτη.

Reproduced in Papadaki, Cerimonie religiose, 186–87 Broadcasting the fact that the colony had been transferred from Byzantine to Venetian hands, the names of the doge and duke, followed by the pope and Latin archbishop, replaced those of the Byzantine emperor and his family: (as in the “Ἰννοκεντίου δεσπότου πάπα τῆς πρεσβυτέρας Ῥώμης, πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη”).39 39

This was not the first time the Venetians had taken this tack; after the capture of Constantinople, it was Doge Enrico Dandolo who required the Greeks to substitute the name of the Byzantine emperor with that of the pope in the euphēmia that was ritually chanted for the emperor. Evidence for Dandolo’s success in gaining the Greeks’ compliance in this regard survives in the written records of the acclamations that were reported back to Innocent III. The acclamations recorded are structurally identical to those that would have been sung to the emperor: Ἰννοκεντίου δεσπότου πάπα τῆς πρεσβυτέρας Ῥώμης, πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη (Many the years of the lord Innocent, pope of the clergy of Rome). For more on this document, see Silvio Giuseppe

A Harmonious Empire

The acclamatory formula, addressed to the Venetian administration and its clerics, is directly patterned on the inscriptions published among the ruins of Górtyn. The Venetians had, in a sense, hybridized the Latin laudes regiae, a mystical litany of kingship, with the Roman acclamation, an utterance belonging to the ceremonial forms of Byzantine political discourse. We can understand the Venetian colonial laudes as styled as much upon the eastern Roman acclamations found among the ruins of the colony as they were upon the Frankish laudes regiae.40 The first modern archaeologists to study the site remarked on the striking similarity between the inscribed columns at the provincial capital of Górtyn and the acclamatory formulas prescribed for use in the court at Constantinople.41 The “πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη” found on the stones at Górtyn – and heard with great regularity in the colonial ritual of medieval Crete – functioned as the verbal motif of the imperial acclamation of the eastern Roman Empire. Constantinos VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 945–63) gives pride of place to the polychronion chant in his two-book compendium of Byzantine ceremony known as the De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae. Among other things, the De ceremoniis is a profound meditation on the codependence of empire and its ritual expressions. Given the Venetian regime’s intense fascination with and frequent allusion to the ritual of the Byzantine court, the De ceremoniis offers us a framework within which to understand the aesthetic of empire they hoped to cultivate through the laudes ceremony.

A Harmonious Empire Like the passage from the Venetian Origo civitatum discussed in the Introduction, the opening of the De ceremoniis argues for the deep interconnectedness of ritual and civilization. Its preface frames the book’s

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Mercati, “Laudo cantato dal clero greco di Candia per il Pontefice Urbano VIII e l’Arcivescovo Luca Stella,” Bessarione: Rivista di studi orientali 38 (1922), 9–21 (11). No less significant is the fact that the Venetians had transferred the Cretan cult of Saint Titus from the early Byzantine basilica at the Roman capital of Górtyn to the new Venetian port capital of Candia. The church of Saint Titus that possessed the skull of that saint had long been the seat of the Orthodox metropolitan on the island. The Venetians were quick to appropriate the church and the cult of the saint alike. In 1211, the Orthodox church was converted into the Latin cathedral, and the laudes petition to Saint Titus made clear that the saint now protected the new Venetian regime. On the Venetian appropriation of the cult of Titus, see Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, pp. 109–31. She also explores the topic and its ritual ramifications in “Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage,” Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995), 479–96. Halbherr, “Cretan Expedition X,” 90–91.

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intention to detail the court’s ceremonial life down to the very last minutia as a matter of existential importance. Loss of ritual, the author begins, threatens the very foundations of empire, and any desuetude in ceremonial life would throw the impermanent nature of empire into ugly relief. But, thanks to a praiseworthy ritual, the imperial power appears more majestic, grows in prestige, and at the same time evokes the admiration both of strangers and of our own subjects. Many things by nature tend to disappear with the passing of time, which has created and exhausted them. Of this number is the great and precious matter that is the expression and codification of imperial ceremonial. Because it was neglected and, so to speak, perishing, the empire was viewed truly as without adornment [ἀκαλλώπιστον] and without beauty. Moreover, just as one would call disorderly a body badly constituted, one in which the limbs are joined together pell-mell and without unity, so it is with the imperial government when it is not conducted and governed with order [τάξει ἀγομένου καὶ κυβερνωμένου].42

Also reminiscent of the Origo civitatum is this passage’s slippage between the language of art and that of government. Good form (εὐσχῆμα), the harmonization of parts (εὐαρμόστοως τῶν μελῶν), and the ordering of conduct (τάξει ἀγομένου) are communicated through the beauty of ceremony that inspires admiration in the empire’s subjects and visitors. But ceremonial beauty did not represent the good functioning of government per se. Rather it reflected God’s cosmic empire and his governance of eternal creation. Concluding in this vein, the preface expresses the wish that “the imperial power being employed with measure and good order reproduce the harmonious movement that the Creator gives to this entire universe, and may [the empire] appear to our subjects more majestic and, at the same time, more pleasing and admirable.” What imperial ceremony offered was nothing short of the sensible representation of God’s universal empire – “imperium in saecula saeculorum” (or, sticking with the Greek, “τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰῶνων”). It is remarkable how frequently acclamation features in accounts of imperial ceremony in the De ceremoniis . Book 1 of the work is devoted to descriptions of the liturgy on festal occasions. It prescribes the polychronion chant at almost every major feast, including Easter, Transfiguration, Pentecost, Christmas, Epiphany, Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity of Mary, and that of the Holy Apostles. Acclamation features even more prominently in 42

Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae, in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, edited by J.J. Reiske (Bonn: E. Weber, 1829), vol. 1, pp. 3–5.

A Harmonious Empire

book 2, which lays out the various observances – coronations, royal births, marriages, court entertainments – on which the chant would have been sung in antiphonal exchange between the court’s heralds (οἱ κράκται) and the representatives of the populace (ὁ λαὸς). In short, the words “πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη” ring off the pages of the De ceremoniis ; the amount of space devoted to verbatim descriptions of the chant suggests that the polychronion quite uniquely reflected the “harmonious movement that the Creator gives this entire universe.” One has the impression that acclamation was even something like the sounding image of that order. When ruler acclamation occurred within the liturgy, it almost always fell right before or right after the singing of the Gloria in excelsis (in the Byzantine rite, Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις). This was true both of the polychronion of Byzantine imperial ceremony and the laudes regiae of the western pontifical rite.43 Referring to the latter, Amalarius of Metz, whose commentary on the liturgy enjoyed great authority throughout the Middle Ages, describes the “angelic hymn” as “praise [laus ] of God” (Ymnus Gloria in excelsis Deo laus Dei est ), an interpretation for which he furnishes the Gospel passage, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:13). Amalarius hears the song as the expression of “ineffable glory” (gloria ineffabilis ), when Christ, passing (transitu ) into the world of sensible things at his birth, “joined the souls of the saints to the community of angels” (animas sanctorum copulavit consortio angelorum).44 Amalarius asserts the absolute equivalence between song and praise, reflected in his straightforward predicative definition of the hymn: laus Dei est. Praise to God (laus in Latin, εὐφημία in Greek) rang out as the harmony of absolute concord. What was true of the Roman Empire was true, also, of Heaven’s reign: consensus emanated through sound, and more specifically, through song. If the movements of ritual represented an eternal, cosmic order, acclamation – laus or εὐφημία – was what legitimized it. Within the Roman imperial tradition, the polychronion was the near-exclusive venue for popular participation in imperial ceremony, where the people (λαὸς) exchanged a song of praise with the court heralds (κράκται). Just as 43

44

Michel Andrieu, Ordines romani du haut moyen âge, 5 vols. (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense Bureaux, 1956–65), vol. 4, p. 162; Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, translated by Francis A. Brunner, 2 vols. (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 2012), vol. 1, pp. 388–90. Amalarius of Metz, On the Liturgy, translated and edited by Eric Knibbs, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), vol. 2, pp. 58–61.

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the Gloria in excelsis joined (copulavit ) the angelic hierarchy to divine order, so too did the acclamation represent the well-composed body of the empire. Despite the lofty ambitions the De ceremoniis sets for imperial acclamation, the Venetians, as we have seen, downplayed the available mystical dimensions of the laudes regiae formula. In his 1946 monograph, Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship, Ernst Kantorowicz observed how, compared to the laudes formularies used elsewhere in western Europe, “the [Venetian] Signoria always brought into prominence the legal and constitutional importance of the laudes within her colonial empire. It was ever one of the fundamentals of Venetian domination to insist upon the recognition of Venice’s sovereignty by imposing the laudes on the conquered people, almost on the very day she established her rule in a colony.”45 Apart from an important but little-known article by Silvio Giuseppe Mercati, Kantorowicz was the first to bring the peculiarities of the Venetian laudes into the broader scholarship on western acclamatory practices.46 The topic of Kantorowicz’s study was the murky Carolingian origin of the laudes regiae, “a single liturgical chant . . . [that] received its classical form during the eighth century in the GalloFrankish Church under Anglo-Irish and Roman influences, but [that] represents at the same time the liturgical survival of acclamations tendered to the Roman emperors.”47 It was the historian’s contention that “the seemingly insignificant changes in the texts of the laudes, traced . . . from the eighth to the thirteenth century, reflect the various changes in theocratic concepts of secular and spiritual rulership.”48 Kantorowicz’s disquisition into the laudes regiae never wandered far from its Carolingian emphasis. Even so, a section of the book is devoted to the “The Laudes in the Venetian Colonies,” for this particular form of the laudes threw into stark relief and with “surprising 45 47

48

Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae, vol. 2, p. 154. 46 Mercati, “Laudo cantato dal clero greco.” Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae, p. ix. Working through the narrow lens of a single liturgical genre (manifest, albeit in a bewildering array) allowed Kantorowicz to put the conceptual underpinnings of medieval kingship under a microscope. As such, the book functions as something like a prelude to The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), published a decade later to great acclaim, in which Kantorowicz’s notion of “medieval political theology” emerged fully fledged through a series of close readings across religious and legal domains of discourse. But the arguments of both these manuscripts rest on a recognition of the deep imbrications of law and liturgy within medieval conceptions of sovereignty. Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae, p. ix.

A Harmonious Empire

clarity the legal and constitutive momentum of the acclamations in these regions.”49 If throughout the medieval period law and liturgy remained the twin arenas for the practice of authority, the Venetian case of the laudes tipped the balance dramatically toward the authority of the former. The laudes belonged not only to the legal rhetoric of the state but to its technical realization. As Kantorowicz put it, the ceremony was “clearly an essential part of the Venetian technique of colonization.”50 He remarks on how, both in form and in function, “the original and primarily political nature of the laudes, which was never dismissed in Byzantium, was distinctly brought into prominence [by the Venetians in their maritime colonies] at a time when the genuine and intrinsic value of liturgical acclamations was about to be obscured in the western realms.”51 Unlike the mystical significance they carried elsewhere in the west, these Venetian laudes appeared to be “a political rather than an ecclesiastical measure,” with “constitutional [as opposed to mystical] importance.”52 A member of Stefan George’s cabal of German antirationalists, Kantorowicz fetishized the mystical in all aspects of historical inquiry.53 It is perhaps for this reason that he abandoned his inquiry into the laudes the moment they ran aground the mundane and mechanical functions of Venetian colonial bureaucracy. Stumbling upon the “surprising clarity” of “the legal and constitutive momentum of the acclamations in these [Venetian] regions,” he stopped short of probing the sources of that momentum or the mechanisms that sustained it, and withdrew back into the study of the “mystical” nature of the liturgical genre.54 Yet in downplaying the “constitutional importance attributed to the laudes by the Venetians” that they used as a “technique of colonization,” Kantorowicz misses an entirely distinctive fusion of political and aesthetic theory within the Venetian sphere. It is precisely the mechanical, bureaucratic, and efficient nature of the laudes in Venetian Crete that animates the political and ritual imagination of the colony. In a private communication with Kantorowicz, Percy Ernst Schramm praised the publication of Laudes regiae for what he saw 49 53

54

Ibid., p. 147. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., p. 151. 52 Ibid., p. 150. Robert E. Lerner, Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 68–83. Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae, p. 147. It would be the liturgical material that proved most revelatory for Kantorowicz’s historical insights. In a preface to the book, Kantorowicz appeals to medievalists to attend more seriously to the liturgy as a source of historical knowledge and pronounces it “rare” in his times that “the ‘professional’ mediaevalist, the student of political, institutional, or cultural history of the Middle Ages, swerved so far from his usual studies as to lose himself in the magic thicket of prayers, benedictions, and ecclesiastical rites” (p. vii). Indeed he was about to spend the course of an entire book lost in one such thicket – arguably, one from

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as the work’s groundbreaking contribution: his intuition that, “as the State becomes visible in images, so it becomes audible in the laudes.”55 Implicit in Schramm’s assessment is the long historical entwinement of image and acclamation in the Mediterranean. As a symbolic form common to the political history of the region, acclamation operated against the background of a shared concept of empire, a ritual gesture that asserted the political bonds between province and metropolis. But it was the image that was the emissary of empire – or more appropriately, of the emperor. In this way, acclamatory chants served as verbal oaths of loyalty to a distant sovereign, whose image had been dispatched to the province to receive this ritual form of validation. The acclamation of images had long been a central component of the display of consensus that was so vital to the administration of Roman provinces such as Crete – a ritual utterance that, whatever the realities or local particulars, assured “unanimous intersubjective agreement” between ruled and ruling populations.56 The function of consensus, however, rested on an important proposition: the recognition of the image (eikon ; imago) as a valid substitute for the person. In his groundbreaking work in medieval image theory, Hans Belting made acclamation something close to the raison d’être of the imperial image. The presence of the image gave rise to a set of provincial rituals centered around the absent ruler’s portrait. Acclamation, Belting claims, “increased the aura of the image and at the same time demonstrated the loyalty of the subjects.”57 Though Belting’s work was to substantially change the field of medieval image studies, musicology has not yet responded to the implications of the fact that ritual responses to the cult image in premodernity were almost always sung.58 In Chapter 2, we will come across one such image, the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa, which came to be folded into an occasion for the laudes rituals on the Venetian colony. But the

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which he would never fully emerge, as it would plunge him into the denser thicket of medieval political theology of The King’s Two Bodies. Lerner, Ernst Kantorowicz, p. 248. 56 Ando, Imperial Ideology, pp. 6–7. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 106. Roland Betancourt looks back on Likeness and Presence, on the avenues it opened up and those it never imagined, in “Medieval Art after Duchamp: Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence at 25,” Gesta 55, no. 1 (2016), 5–17. Had they been working in an era after Belting, one imagines that Kantorowicz and Bukofzer’s collaboration on the laudes regiae might have taken on a new scope and purpose.

A Harmonious Empire

original form of the laudes ritual prescribed in Ziani’s Concessio took place in the absence of any such painted emissary. Moreover, there was no emperor to paint. The colony’s hinterland, as the Concessio makes clear, was placed under the care of Venetian feudatory families, using a distinctly western system of land management known as hereditary subinfeudation.59 Within this arrangement, feudatories were expected to work in coordination with the urban administration, maintaining residences inside city walls while also protecting the state’s interests through the good management of their estates.60 In theory, this would have supported a nimble operation between Commune and colony, and between the island’s port cities and its rural interior. But in practice, Venice’s top-heavy bureaucracy, which had no antecedents in the Byzantine world, risked incoherence to the island’s Greek inhabitants.61 It also dispossessed a powerful Byzantine aristocracy on the island that had been established only decades earlier under Emperor Alexios II Komnenos. The aristocrats in possession of pronoia (roughly the Byzantine correlate of a fief) owed direct allegiance to the emperor, a single sovereign to whom they pledged fealty.62 It was a system of formal and rhetorical simplicity. Thus, the Venetians faced the problem of substituting the charismatic, almost priestly figure of the emperor with a set of bureaus staffed by

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For a study of the feudal system in medieval Venetian Crete, see Elisabeth Santschi, La notion de “feudum” en Crète vénitienne (XIIIe–XVe siècles) (Montreal: Ganguin et Laubscher, 1976). The vast interior of the island required different handling. A dramatic and imposing landscape, Crete is dominated by four massive mountain ranges, the tallest of which, the Lefka Ori (White Mountains) “spring from the sea to their full height [2200 m] in less than 10 km,” creating a sheer face of rock across the southwestern side of the island. Oliver Rackham and Jennifer Moody, The Making of the Cretan Landscape (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 12. This western region of the Lefka Ori, together with the equally high Psiloritis range to the east, would become an important geography of resistance to the Venetian regime, which remained largely restricted to the port cities of Candia, Rethymno, Canea, and Sitia (see Map 2). In Chapter 2, I explore how the laudes ceremony ramified well into these steep reaches of the island, where art and ritual took on a life of its own outside the Venetian bureaucratic apparatus. Documents from the first centuries of Venetian rule indicate that feudatories were expected to have their primary residences within one of the four main cities in order to ensure the strong cooperation between city and countryside. Deno John Geanakoplos (ed.), Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 70. Ibid. See also Mark C. Bartusis, Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The Institution of Pronoia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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rotating functionaries.63 In the absence of the figure of the emperor, whose aura could be captured in a painted likeness, it was the state’s colonial administration that functioned as the image (imago) of the state. This substitution of a sovereign with a bureaucracy needed to be not only legible but persuasive to the island’s inhabitants. The challenge was to give Venetian bureaucracy something of the divine gilding of an empire, and its functionaries the ability to partake of the charisma of an emperor. Thus even at the level of bureaucratic maintenance, one witnesses a high level of control in styling likeness between the colony and the Commune. Stressing the degree to which “it was part of the post-1204 rhetoric of the Republic . . . to present the situation on Crete as a perfectly uniform, clear-cut case of transplantation of Venetian practice to the colony,” Georgopoulou notes how “the official cadastres of the [Venetian] colony, recording the possessions of the feudatories and organized in a similar manner, further emphasize the intended similarities between Venice and Crete.”64 One might say that these cadastres were artfully arranged; their organization was meant to directly reflect a basic ideology of empire. Identity and consensus, the visible and audible sign of which was the sung laudes performance, contradicted any and all differences found in the real, local particulars. A slippage has occurred between the image as painted artifact and the image as proxy government.65 And it is here that the originality of the Venetian adoption of this Byzantine practice emerges. In its bureaucratic likeness to the Commune, the colonial administration becomes the imago of the state, and a system of state functionaries assumes the charismatic status of emperor. We might recall Schramm’s claim that the significance of the laudes regiae as a genre lay in the fact that, “as the State becomes visible in images, so it becomes audible in the laudes.” In the case of the Venetian laudes, it was the whole structure of colonial management that was made audible – documents, bureaucrats, and the partition of neighborhoods included. References to the laudes performance as a “sign” (segno) or “seal” (sigillum) reinforce the conceptual kinship between the icon and the laudes, as per Schramm, two forms of image-making that appeal to different sense faculties. By giving the political imaginary and its structures of management 63

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For the classic study on the development and legacy of the Byzantine emperor’s priestly persona, see Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantine (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, p. 103. Bissera V. Pentcheva makes an argument for widening the definition of eikon or imago beyond the modern concept of painted panel. “What Is a Byzantine Icon? Constantinople versus Sinai,” in Paul Stephenson (ed.), The Byzantine World (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 265–83.

A Harmonious Empire

sense-perceptible expression, the laudes claimed the colony’s likeness to Venice – and the extension of that likeness deep into a historical past.66 As late as the seventeenth century, the Venetian administration continued to recognize the laudes as the definitive statement of sovereignty on the island. An anonymous letter written to one of Candia’s Venetian magistrates provides a long and thorough description of the island’s climate, the management of its towns and countryside, and its major civic institutions (churches, monasteries, hospitals).67 He paints a fairly disparaging picture of the place, complaining of the stench of the city streets, all in bad repair, and of too many mosquitos (“un eterno et numeroso stuolo di zanzale”). He concedes tolerable air quality (“non è nè buona nè pessima”) and admits that, however uncomfortable the climate, it supported good agricultural yield (“si raccogliono biave et legumi abbondantemente, sede, gotoni, lane, formazi attimi, lini, mieli, cera, aldano, ogli, vini generosi et di più sorte, valonie, carobbe, giande, e legnami d’ancipressi, oltre una infinità de’semplici vari, fra’ quali risplende il ditamo cretense famoso”), and he dilates upon the state of the castles occupied by the Venetian nobility. Beneath this description, he furnishes an exhaustive list of each of the administrative positions on the island as they correspond to those of the Commune, details the processes of election on the island, and describes the judicial branch in all its parts. The author concludes with the assurance that all aspects of the colony “are always maintained in the true image and likeness of Venice” (essendo stata questa città tenuta et mantenuta sempre a vera imagine et similitudine di Venetia).68 Fascinatingly, he cites the singing of laudes as the best testament to the good order of the colony and its maintenance in the “likeness of Venice”: “Among all the demonstrations of this sublime preeminence is that of the ceremony of Laudo, which one does six times a year . . . it is a praise of His Serenity [the doge], and of the most excellent lord Duca, and it serves as a sign of vassalage [segno di vassallagio].”69 The remainder of the letter is taken up with a lengthy description of one such laudes ceremony, including a reproduction of the text he heard sung (given 66

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Chatzidakis, “Ciriacos numismata und gemmae,” 31. I supply the historically specific notion of “validating” to sigilla in Cyriacus’s expression following Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 81. Giuseppe Gerola, “Una descrizione di Candia del principio del seicento,” Atti della Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati, ser. 3, 14 (1908), 272–81. Ibid., 278. “Fra tutte le dimonstrationi di questa sublime preheminenza è quella della cerimonia del Laudo, la quale si fa sei volte all’anno . . . È lode di sua Serenità et dell’eccellentissimo signor Duca, et serve per segno di vassallagio.” Ibid.

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verbatim only in Latin – he states, however, that it was repeated in Greek) and the division of musical labor among the Greek and Latin clerics and choirs. Like his exhaustive detailing of the economic, political, and military affairs of the island, meant to assure his correspondent of the colony’s good management, his eyewitness transcript of the laudes ceremony may similarly serve as a closing affirmation of Venice’s sound dominion over the population – as the “segno di vassallagio” he purports it to be.70 In short, he provides a record little different from the transcripts of Roman acclamations inscribed in stone in Górtyn that served the Venetians as the sigilla historiarum. One senses in this letter the sharp divide between the unadorned fact of the colony and the gilded image of an island in perfect likeness of the city of Venice. Like a sigillum, the laudes stamp an administrative ideal onto the bare material reality of the colony. The description of the laudes ritual as a segno (sign) or sigillum (seal) brings into even clearer focus the way in which they made a political imaginary, the state’s structures of management, perceptible to the senses. A property of language in the tradition of Augustine, the medieval signum was defined as “something that shows itself to the senses and something other than itself to the mind” (signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit ).71 While all language was understood to work this way, song places special accent on the appeal to the senses (sensui ), giving pleasing sound to the utterance. It is in this way that the laudes impressed the audible image of the state upon its colony. In this sense, it was no matter that Crete was hardly at all like Venice. In their landmark study of Crete’s paleo- and archaeological history from the Cretaceous period on, Oliver Rackham and Jenny Moody state in direct contradiction to Venetian sources that “it is easy to exaggerate the extent to which ordinary Cretans and the landscape were affected by imperialism. Venice influenced the architecture of Crete, but not by making it a replica of Venetian architecture, which is very different.”72 Naturally, scaled to the geological epochs that concern Rackham and Moody, the Venetian impact is small indeed, such that theirs is an Ozymandias tale of human settlement 70

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It is remarkable that, even in the seventeenth century, the laudes ’ connection with vassalage, the arrangement of subinfeudation that the original charter of 1211 set out, continues to be upheld. Augustine of Hippo, De dialectica, translated by B. Darrell Jackson (Boston, MA: Reidel, 1975), p. 86. See Stephen Meier-Oeser, “Medieval Semiotics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified on May 11, 2011, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/semioticsmedieval. Rackham and Moody, Making of the Cretan Landscape, p. 1.

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on the island.73 Even so, the authors’ reminder that Venice was not, in any empirical sense, replicated in its colony contradicts an official, procuratorial view of the colony “kept and maintained always in the true image and likeness of Venice” (tenuta et mantenuta sempre a vera imagine et similitudine di Venetia).74 We come to realize that the “imagine et similitudine” did not, in fact, refer to the visible features of architecture, or to the remains of urban and rural infrastructures, but rather to the ritual space of imagemaking, for which the laudes gave proof of continuity and likeness. A major rebellion waged by both Greek inhabitants and Latin feudatories against the Venetian state led, after its suppression, to the institution of a weekly procession that combined the laudes with litanies sung before a miraculous icon of the Virgin, an image believed to have been painted by Saint Luke himself.75 The ritual connection the Senate forged in this truly novel ceremony – between the laudes, with their connotations of feudal law, and the veneration of icons – provides a window into the complex life and afterlife of the sung ceremony in the Venetian colony. In particular, it illuminates the extent to which the ritual served as a space through which the island’s inhabitants regularly negotiated, controlled, and contested religious and political identity. This is the subject of Chapter 2. 73

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Their study corrects many of the distortions produced by historical documents. Through their reading of diverse elements of landscape, they are able to counter that “historians [of the island], believing Plato, often assume that politics are a supreme factor, controlling all aspects of human and even natural activity. In reality, Crete was always an outlying province. The imperial powers seldom colonized it (by exporting populations) to any great extent, nor did they control it closely; for the most part, they were content to take over existing institutions” (ibid.). Elsewhere, a decision of the Venetian Senate in 1455 referred to Candia as “alia civitas Venetiarum apud Levantem”; see Freddy Thieret, La Romanie vénitienne au Moyen Age: Le développement et l’exploitation du domaine colonial vénitien, XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris: De Boccard, 1959), no. 2994, pp. 205–06. This was, depending on the source, the revolt of 1264 or the so-called San Tito rebellion of 1363.

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Today, the Concessio insulae Cretensis survives in a register of pacts housed at the Archivio di Stato in the Campo dei Frari in Venice. Its three folios are bound together with a collection of diplomatic documents known as the Liber albus (white book). In 1343, Doge Andrea Dandolo ordered the creation of the Liber albus within the ducal chancery, a project that was to become the first major historiographical enterprise of his dogado.1 Included in the compilation were important records of the Republic’s diplomatic dealings with the eastern empire from the years 932 to 1342, a period of rapid ascent for the city as it rose to become the powerhouse of medieval Europe. Given the importance of the Liber albus as a record of diplomatic exchange with the Byzantine Empire, on whose shoulders the Republic reached unprecedented political and economic heights (and also given the long history of theft from the Venetian archive), the Liber albus remains one of the library’s more closely guarded possessions.2 From today’s vantage, this guardedness seems warranted, given the ultimate fragility and impermanence of any material artifact. But when the Concessio insulae Cretensis was written down in the early thirteenth century, the concept of an original lacked such strong associations with material fragility. Archives did not exist so remotely from the active world that their contents in part governed. Documents were not inert objects, but had dynamic, occasionally spectacular existences beyond their brittle archival ones. In Chapter 1, we followed the vicissitudes of the Concessio insulae Cretensis through the fulfillment of its demand that “laudes be sung to [the doge] and to [his] successors” – a single clause that, in practice, engaged the full scope of the Venetian historical imagination. 1

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For the origins of the collection as an initiative of the ducal chancery during the Dandolo years, see Gottlieb Tafel and Georg Martin Thomas, Der Doge Andreas Dandolo und die von demselben angelegten Urkundensammlungen zur Staats- und Handelsgeschichte Venedigs: Mit den OriginalRegistern des Liber Albus, des Liber Blancus und der Libri Pactorum aus dem Wiener Archiv (Munich: Verlag der k. Akademie, 1855), pp. 8–9. I turn to Dandolo’s craft in organizing state documents into a Venetian narrative history in Chapter 6. For some insight into the library’s trouble with theft, see Rodney G. Dennis, “A Voice from the Library: How to Determine That One Is Not a Legitimate Owner,” Harvard Review 2 (1992), 114–17.

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As that case well demonstrates, it was not the preservation of the material text inside a climate-controlled room that promised the perpetuity of the document’s authority, but rather the reenactment of its message by a living, breathing community. And while charters like the Concessio carried enormous power, both symbolic and real, the physical document that existed in writing was not so authoritative simply for having been written down. It functioned far more like a script, and it was the performance of that script that animated and authorized the message of the original.3 It was in view of this performative function that the literary critic Paul Zumthor first argued that the variant – the great bugaboo of medieval philology – might have use beyond, or at least in addition to, the enterprise of building recension histories.4 Turning the philological endeavor on its head, Zumthor called for a method of explanation that would account for textual irregularities as elements of performance, windows into the “phenomenon of the human voice as a dimension of the poetic text.”5 At the very least, such a method would upend the primacy of the original, exemplar, or urtext, and replace it with a model of fluid interaction between a text’s content on the page and its event in sound. Zumthor’s corpus of study was poetry, a special subset of language that exists in a space bracketed off from everyday discourse. But as we have seen, a document like the Concessio insulae Cretensis was also special, bracketed, and highly performative. Zumthor’s call to heed the living, breathing voices now latent in the medieval poetic corpus is likewise relevant for the study of a medieval legal text that, in Venice as elsewhere, was known and experienced first and foremost as a performance, and only incidentally as a physical document.6 As an object lesson in the contested primacy of a text’s written and enacted forms, Zumthor pointed to the fact that, toward the end of the Middle Ages, “confusion arose between the words auteur (author) and acteur (actor).”7 In late medieval Venetian Crete, this lexical ambiguity was 3 4

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Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. Paul Zumthor, Toward a Medieval Poetics, translated by Philip Bennett (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). Zumthor’s ideas were further expanded when New Philology arrived in medieval studies; see Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, translated by Betsy Wing (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Zumthor notes that while “for us the text is identified with the book, a material, visual, manufactured object . . . for most people of the Middle Ages, and indeed throughout most of this long period, the text was an audible and therefore fluid and changeable object” (Toward a Medieval Poetics, p. 21). Paul Zumthor, “Intertextualité et mouvance,” Littérature 41 (1981), 8–16. Zumthor, Toward a Medieval Poetics, p. 21.

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no empty etymological exercise. If the Concessio and the series of charters and treaties issued in its wake had authored a political system, those documents needed authorization through their regular enactment by living bodies and voices within a public sphere. It was only in the mid-fourteenth century that, through Andrea Dandolo’s grand historiographical vision, the Concessio would take on its newly stable, textual dimension within the Liber albus – the format in which it is known today. But seen in its original light, prior to that textual formation, the Concessio functioned far more like a script, and its adherents actors; it established the terms of membership within the community it was meant to govern, and defined, in bluntly material terms, the social relations within that community. The article specifying that “laudes be sung” is a particularly literal example of the document’s function to spur the performance of contractual obligation. Scripted into the very terms of membership in the state was the requirement of sung consensus to the Venetian regime, which would occur on a regular schedule: that of ritual.8 In his study of the medieval cartulary, Patrick Geary suggests that it was the disputed status of identity and memory that propped up the creative enterprise of history writing throughout much of the Middle Ages.9 It had been previously taken for granted that a cartulary (of which the Liber albus is an example) straightforwardly reconstituted an institution’s charters and documents, providing a window into the archive at the moment of the cartulary’s creation.10 But Geary challenges the extent to which such collections function as simple “intermediate[s] to the recovery of the archive,” and urges for a historical perspective that accounts for the fact that a book like the Liber albus was almost always “born out of conflict and expressed – implicitly or explicitly – claims not only about specific elements that were copied into them but, as a whole, about identity and memory. As such they were an integral part of writing and creating history, and it is unlikely that this historical role ever disappeared.”11 If Chapter 1 introduced the laudes as a dazzling performance of the Venetian imperial imagination in microcosm, this chapter, by contrast, aims to lay bare the conflict that bubbled directly beneath the bright surface 8

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By the end of that century, additional occasions for the laudes had been established for Epiphany, All Saints’ Day, and an annual 10 May commemoration of the revolt staged against the Venetian government in 1363. Cornaro, Creta Sacra, vol. 2, p. 31. Patrick Geary, “From Charter to Cartulary: From Archival Practice to History,” in Robert A. Maxwell, ed., Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 181–86. Ibid., p. 181. 11 Ibid., pp. 181, 186.

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of official state rhetoric. Such conflict frequently erupted into view, taking the form of contested, alternative imaginings of empire and identity, and given representation through the same laudes ritual. The most conspicuous arena for the ritual dispute of power in Venetian Candia was the procession of the icon of the Madonna Mesopanditissa, a state-sponsored event that, from as early as 1264, was staged each Tuesday in the colonial city and its immediate suburbs. In it, the entire population joined in alternating litanies to the Marian icon with acclamations for the doge and duke. The Mesopanditissa was the most venerated indigenous object on the island, and the appropriation of its cult by the Venetians for a weekly performance of consent to the new regime was a matter of no small rhetorical importance (see Figure 2.1).12 Much has been written about this icon, but this has largely been to the neglect of the ritual through which it was presented to the public and that activated its significance within the Venetian colonial context.13 But song was the other half of the equation when it came to the efficacy of the premodern icon. Just as crucial to the Tuesday ceremony were its sung elements, which wove the key articles of empire, as specified by the colony’s founding charter, into the veneration of an icon that was revered by the Orthodox population.14 The sung rituals that activated the Venetian cult of the Mesopanditissa are the subject of this chapter. The core of the Tuesday procession remained the laudes prescribed in the Concessio, the ceremonial sine qua non of colonial life, which had now come to frame the litanies sung to the Marian panel. Thus the Tuesday procession combined two forms of song strongly associated with transaction and with the efficacious: the laudes ’ acclamation of the doge and litanies to the miraculous image. In time, the association of both song types with contractual obligation, with the resolution of local conflict, and with the official apparatus of Venetian law writ large made the ceremony a site for other, unofficial authorizing functions. In the centuries that followed, the procession only gained in complexity, accreting a variety of vernacular rituals that themselves depended on the 12

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Cornaro, for instance, recalls how the icon had been saved from destruction during the iconoclastic period and miraculously spared for the Cretans (BMV. Cod. Marc. Ital. Cl. VI 286 [coll. 5985], Chronicle of Andrea Cornaro, “Historia Candiana,” book 7, fol. 54). Georgopoulou, in particular, has rightly stressed how this Byzantine cult object, with its historical ties to the eastern Christian world, needed to be “reactivated” in order “to fit the exigencies of Venetian Candia and its new overlords” (Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, p. 218). An important exception is Papadaki, Cerimonie religiose, p. 147. For the Byzantine public form of the litē with in the broader context of Christian litany, see Peter Jeffery, “Litany,” in Joseph Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York, NY: Scribner, 1982), vol. 7, pp. 588–94.

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Figure 2.1 Icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa. 145 × 95 cm. Santa Maria della Salute, Venice. Photo credit: Juergen Ritterbach/Alamy Stock Photo

combined efficacy of the laudes ’ legal functions and the icon’s intercessory powers. In practice, the weekly ritual of singing laudes and litanies to two different emissaries of power – the colonial administration sent from Venice on the one hand, and the miraculous icon of the Mother of God on the other – was bent toward different ends, to serve the interests of various claimants.15 Tracing the vernacular performances that surrounded the Tuesday procession allows us to read a book like the Liber albus against the grain. We can do this on the evidence of administrative records alone, for they betray a labored attempt on the part of the state to manage the event. Other evidence can be gleaned from vernacular chronicles, which add some historiographical salt to the bureaucratic records of colonial life on the island. But important evidence also comes in the form of nontextual

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The Virgin of the Mesopanditissa was to have a new cult life in the city of Venice following the Ottoman takeover of Crete in 1669, when the icon was brought to Venice and installed on the high altar of Santa Maria della Salute, a church begun three decades earlier in response to the devastating plague of 1630/31. To this day, the Madonna della Salute is venerated on 21 November in thanksgiving for the city’s restored health.

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artifacts. While musical and liturgical sources from medieval Venetian Crete are almost nonexistent, one major survival are the wall paintings that, though weathered and damaged, still adorn the thousands of Byzantine chapels that dot the Cretan countryside.16 Among these wall paintings is an iconographic program that arose in the rural chapels of fourteenth-century Crete and is unique to that region. It depicts the miraculous intervention of, and acclamation to, a Marian icon whose type and function was similar to that of the Mesopanditissa.17 The program portrays each of the twenty-four stanzas of the Akathistos hymn, a stunning feat of Byzantine hymnography that was penned in the sixth century and was closely associated with the miraculous icon of the Hodegetria in Constantinople. The Cretan-Orthodox painters and donors responsible for these decorations tapped the Akathistos hymn’s ritual history and Constantinopolitan associations to speak to contemporary concerns on the island. This chapter examines three distinct versions of the Cretan Akathistos cycle, in the church of the Panagia in Roustika, the church of the Hodegetria at the monastery of Balsamonero, and the church of the Panagia in the village of Meronas. A comparison of these three cycles shows just how much the Akathistos program could be turned toward the interests of political life in Venetian Crete. Each version of the program brilliantly attests to the imaginative potential of the Tuesday ceremony, the significance of which was disputed even in the island’s most remote reaches and highest altitudes. Whether we are looking at government correspondence, at a chronicle, or at pictures on a wall, we find that there were always multiple claimants over the laudes, and that the binding functions of this sung ritual were widely sought. Far from expressing the unanimity of an empire, the laudes had become, by the fourteenth century, a spectacular arena of dispute on the island.

Mary Mediatrix The 1260s were a period of wild ritual growth and artistic self-definition in the Venetian Commune. A series of monumental urban projects was underway there that would, within decades, build the image of a new 16

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Olga Gratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή. Η μαρτυρία της εκκλησιαστικής αρχιτεκτονικής [Crete in the later Middle Ages: The evidence of religious architecture] (Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2010), p. 9. The hymn is edited and transcribed in Egon Wellesz (ed.), The Akathistos Hymn. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta 9 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1957).

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Rome in the heart of the Venetian city.18 But this impressive façade was in part meant to mask the real reversal of fortune the city had suffered. The reconquest of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaiologos shook the security of the fledging empire and weakened its authority in the colonies – Crete included. In 1263, emboldened by the reconquest of the capital city and backed by the Palaiologos family, a group of Cretan noblemen staged a revolt against the colonial regime. It was the aftermath of this revolt that allegedly gave rise to the Tuesday procession. In his Racconto di varie cose successe nel Regno di Candia dall’anno 882 , Antonio Trivan describes the resolution to this uprising and the genesis of the procession as one and the same: The peace established in February of 1264: Between the noble man Marco Dandolo, Duke of Candia for the most serene Venetian dominion, and the Constantinopolitan archondopouli, with the universal assent of the populace, a sincere and good peace was sworn, along with obedience toward the most Serene Republic of Venice, and for the great security they swore to be its most faithful allies in the future, and devoted subjects in front of the icon of the image of the ever-glorious Virgin Mary, called in Greek Messopanditissa [sic ], that is Mediatrix of the Peace between the two parties; as a sign of this, the most serene image was taken around the entire city in procession, with the following of the entire populace of both parts; of the Greeks and Latins, both religious and secular, all of them blessing and thanking Divine Providence for inspiring this kind peace, lifting their voice to the glory of the newly acquired protector with the expression “Viva S. Marco”, and declaring themselves to always be good allies of the most serene republic of Venice, and of its allies, and the enemies of its enemies [per sempre amici della Ser:ma Rep:ca di Ven.a e dele suoi amici, et nemici de suoi Inimici ]; having demonstrated that they were gathered and accepted as the children of that same republic, from the obedience of which one can never be subtracted.19

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We will turn to some of the musical products of this urban regeneration in Chapter 3. “Stabilita la Pace il mese di Feb.o l’anno 1264- frà il Dilett:mo nob: Viro q Marco Dandolo Duca di Candia per il Ser:mo Dominio Veneto, et li Arcondopuli Costantinopolitani con universal assenso del Popolo, fù giurata sinciera, e buona pace, et obbedienza verso la Rep:ca Ser:ma di Ven.a, et per maggior sicurezza si sono protestati esser per l’avvenire fidelis:mi suoi amici, et devoti sudditi inanzi l’Immagine della sempre gloriosa Vergine Santa Maria, intitolata in Greco Messopanditissa, cioè Mediatrice de Pace d’ambi le Parti; in segno di ciò fù girata la sua Ss:ma Immagine processionalm:te per tutta la Città col seguito di tutto il Popolo d’ambi due le Parti; de Grece, e Latini, da Religiosi, et Secolari, benedicendo, e ringraziando tutti la Divina Providenza per l’inspiraz:ne di quest’alma Pace, alzando la voce à gloria del nuovo Prottettor acquistato con l’Espressione di Viva S. Marco, e col dichiararsi buoni per sempre amici della Ser: ma Rep:ca di Ven.a e dele suoi amici, et nemici de suoi Inimici; avendo ciò dimostrato furono accolti; et accettati; come Figli della stessa Rep:ca, dall’ubbedienza della qual non si son mai sottrati.” BMV, MS Ital. VII 525 (7497), fols. 13r–v. Emphasis added.

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Trivan references the original context for the laudes and describes the ritual of peacemaking in language that closely echoes the 1211 Concessio.20 The phrase “amici della Ser[enissi]ma Rep[ubli]ca di Ven[eti]a e del[l]e suoi amici, et nemici de suoi Inimici” is a direct translation of the Latin “amicos Venecie debetis habere amicos, et inimicos Venecie debetis, sicut nos, inimicos habere” used in the founding charter.21 Records stemming from a new series of conflicts that erupted a century later, in summer 1363, provide details that help clarify some aspects of the procession’s social context. A document issued by the duke of Candia on 10 July 1368, for instance, states that: Those charged with carrying the image [of the Mesopanditissa], which on any Tuesday is carried, in honor of the Mother of God and in praise of the dominion and commune of the Venetians [ad honorem dei genitricis et ad laudem dominationis et comunis Venetiarum] are not compelled, as is the case with the captains of the suburbs as with other officials, to do vaita as is customarily done by the inhabitants of the said suburbs, but, rather, will be exempt from the said vaita those who are eight in number and whose names are: Ser Dimitrius Sergia, Ser Georgius Quirino, Ser Elias Simbrago, Ser Nichiforus Paleologo, Ser Iohannes Brati, Ser Stamati Gisi, Ser Stamati Cumnino, and Ser Michael Longovardo.22

From the list of names we can glean that those responsible for carrying the Mesopanditissa in the Tuesday procession were members of the Greek and Latin nobility (given the title ser ). In return, these men “were exempted from 20

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The possibility that “Viva San Marco” was itself a sort of ritual acclamation is suggested by the frequent inclusion of that phrase as performed by the Venetians during military campaigns. See Martin da Canal, Les estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, edited by Alberto Limentani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1972). Interesting in this regard is the ballata, Viva viva San Marcho glorioso, whose cantus voice is found in BU 2216. The ballata praises Brescia as a protectorate of the Venetian empire and was likely composed around 1440. See Margaret Bent and Robert Klugseder, Ein Liber cantus aus dem Veneto (um 1440): Fragmente in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München und der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Wien (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012). It might also be significant that in its original context, the Concessio article that Trivan invokes directly follows the article mandating the singing of laudes. “Eodem die. Per dominum ducham et eius consilium dictum et ordinatum est quod pro reverencia gloriose virginis Marie illi qui deputati sunt ad levandum eius ymaginem, que quolibet die martis levatur, ad honorem dei genitricis et ad laudem dominationis et comunis Venetiarum non cogantur a modo indnt[?] per capitaneum burgi ut per alios officiales ad faciendum vaitam que fieri solet per habitatores dicti burgi sed sint ipsi exempti de ipsa vaita qui sunt numero per -. VIII. nomina eorum sint hec: Ser Dimitrius Seriga, Ser Georgius Quirino, Ser Elias Simbrago, Ser Nichiforus Paleologo, Ser Iohannes Brati, Ser Stamati Gisi, Ser Stamati Cumnino, Ser Michael Longovardo.” ASV, Duca di Candia, Busta 29bis, Memoriali, fasc. 15/3, fols. 38v–39r. The opening phrase neatly alludes to the two genres of song featured in this hybrid ritual: the litany ad honorem dei genitricis and the laudes ad laudem dominationis et comunis Venetiarum.

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guard duty [vaita] in the suburbs.”23 That the two major forms of feudal responsibility – military service and the extraction of profit from the land for its owners – could be exchanged for participation in the laudes reinforces the ceremony’s original function within the Venetian terms of landholding. A set of exchanges that same year between Georgios Rampani (protopapas in Candia and a convert to Catholicism), the Latin archbishop of Candia, and Pope Urban V indicate that both the privilege of carrying the icon and the requirement to sing laudes to the Venetian administration was, unsurprisingly, a disputed matter.24 At Rampani’s request, Pope Urban urged the archbishop of Candia to forbid Orthodox Greeks from carrying the icon, since they had “categorically refused to enter the Roman Church” during the weekly processions.25 It is not clear from this exchange which Roman Church the Greek participants refused to enter: the church of San Marco, where the procession began, or that of San Tito, where it ended.26 Perhaps both. Either way, the comment is telling. It was upon entering each of these churches that the Latin and Greek clergy performed the laudes (in honor of the doge and duke at the former, and the pope and archbishop at the latter). We can infer that, by refusing to enter into the Catholic sphere with the icon, the Greeks also refused to fulfill the laudes acclamation obligated by the colony’s founding charter – and more importantly by the terms of the peace that had only just been restored.27 But the Tuesday ceremony was more than another ritual repetition of the Concessio clause of the sort we saw in Chapter 1, for it integrated the colonial practice into an existing cult. The icon of the Mesopanditissa, whose life on the island pre-dated Venetian rule, was highly venerated by 23 24

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Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, pp. 218–19. It is evident from the many letters exchanged between the archbishop of Candia and Pope Urban that Rampani spoke only Greek, thus making his ties to the Latin Catholic population unclear. He profited handsomely from the conversion, moreover, and was able to acquire several canonries for himself and for his sons. As Joseph Gill notes, the Venetians looked on him with suspicion “as a trouble-maker” who forged dubious and mercurial alliances with the various political and religious factions in Candia. “Pope Urban V (1362–1370) and the Greeks of Crete,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 39 (1973), 416–68 (468). Ibid., 467. One of the ambitions of the rebel government of 1363 was to convert the mass of the church of Saint Titus to the Greek rite. With this recent failed initiative in mind, it may very well have been this church the Greek participants refused to enter. Sally McKee, “The Revolt of St Tito in Fourteenth-Century Venetian Crete: A Reassessment,” Mediterranean Historical Review 9, no. 2 (1994), 173–204 (182). A later document dated to 1379 re-extends the privilege of carrying the icon to members of the Greek community. The imposition of fines on Greek priests unwilling to participate in the laudes, however, appears a recurring theme in senatorial records from all periods of Venetian rule.

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Crete’s Greek inhabitants.28 By the thirteenth century, the panel enjoyed a reputation that granted it illustrious origins and the power to work miracles. Contemporary accounts highlight the icon’s antiquity, and popular belief numbered it among the Marian portraits Saint Luke himself had painted. The administration’s decision to mark the end of the conflict through weekly devotions to the Mesopanditissa reveals the Venetians’ awareness of the cult and an understanding of how cult objects might be usefully incorporated into the new civic apparatus. Proximity to the miraculous image was understood as an opportunity for legal as well as spiritual recourse within the Orthodox community. Between the two laudes performances that marked the first and last stops on the Tuesday route, the procession traveled to Orthodox churches throughout the city and its suburbs, allowing the Greek parishioners access to the icon’s charismatic powers.29 Minutes from the church council of Archbishop Gerolamo Lando in 1486 describe both the antiquity and continuity of the rite: For the Greeks of Crete, the priests had permission to transport the icon of the Virgin Mary from one church to the other for the glory of God, in order to have the liturgy performed on behalf of the deceased, and in memory of those who fell during their voyage from Hellespont toward Jerusalem for the liberation of the Holy Land from the hands of unbelievers.30

Yet allowing masses to be sung before the icon not only granted the Greek inhabitants of Candia and its suburbs access to the icon’s powers. It also extended the laudes ’ promise of fealty to the Venetian regime into the parish churches of the city and suburbs.31 To pay for a mass to be sung was, 28

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Maria Theochari, “Περί τήν χρονολόγησιν τῆς εἰκόνος Παναγίας Μεσοπαντιτίσσης” [On the dating of the icon of the Madonna Mesopanditissa], Akademia Athenon, Praktika 36 (1961), 272–80 (275). In his Memorie, Giovanni Papadopulo recalls the procession of the Mesopanditissa to suburban Greek churches, where parishioners could pay a fee of one cechino to have a mass sung, a practice that apparently persisted from the Middle Ages: “Et la conducevano quel giorno in più Chiese Greche che in caduna gli cantavano una messa di queli che avevano pagate queli che per voto à devotione la facevano dire, che le pagavano ordenariam[en]te un Cechino l’una” (BMV, Provenienze Diverse, 122b, fol. 30r). “Εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας τῆς Κρήτης εἶχον ἐπητρέψη οἱ Ποντίφηκες νὰ μεταφέρωσι τὴν εἰκόνα τῆς Ἀει παρτηένου Μαρίας, ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐκκλησίας εἰς τὴν ἄλλην, πρὸς δόξαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ νὰ τελῆται λειτουργία ὑπὲρ τῶν τεθνεώτων, πρὸς τὴν ἀνάμνησιν τῶν πεσόντων κατὰ τὴν διάβασιν τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου πρὸς τὴν Ἱερουσαλὴμ, διὰ τὴν ἀπελευθέρωσιν τῶν Ἁγίων Τόπων ἀπὸ τὰς χεῖρας τῶν ἀπίστων.” BMC, Miscellanea Correr MS 1211, num. 2707, fols. 33v–34r; published in Agathaggelos Xirouchakis, “Ἁι σύνοδοι τοῦ Γερόλαμο Λάντο,” Φοίνικος 8 (1933), 149–62 (154). Of the civic ritual of Venetian Candia, Georgopoulou has argued that “only the most sacred icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa could transcend the boundaries of the city and retain its

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in effect, to recognize the legitimacy not only of the icon’s efficacy but also of the prayers uttered before it – above all the laudes.32

Legal Resonances One unique feature of the laudes ceremony was its interconnection within written law and its function as a public, oral extension of it. This function was especially important for rural communities of Venetian Crete that had limited access to courts of law established by the central government.33 In a project initiated around the year 1242, the Senate appointed judges and established a written code of law, known as the Statuta Venetorum, based on those of the Commune.34 But in appointing their own forums for litigation, the Venetian administrators dismantled an existing system, one that had served as a crucial arbiter for disputes on the island in Byzantine times: the Orthodox Church. But the Orthodox Church’s residual influence in matters of law found an outlet in the very rite the Venetians had established as a display of state power. Within years, the island’s Greek population adopted the laudes ceremony as a forum for legal recourse carried out through ritual. Of all the vernacular uses that developed around the Tuesday procession, the Greek custom of performing anathemas before the icon is perhaps the most striking demonstration of the way in which the legal valence of the ceremony was turned toward local, nonofficial ends. Alongside the laudes,

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miraculous power beyond the walls, in the burg. Thus, the cult of the Mesopanditissa constituted a symbolic link between city and suburbs, just as it had acted as a mediator between colonists and colonized” (Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, p. 227). Papadopulo also mentions how “millions of women would follow in this procession, poor women and also those of civili and gentlewomen, dressed in all styles but barefoot out of a vow or something similar, always with great devotion, but very few men” (In quella proccess:ne seguitavano infinita di Donne delle povere e parte de Civili e gentildone stravestite d’ogni ord: ne scalce per voto ò altro sempre con gran divot:ne mà pochi huomini) (BMV, Provenienze Diverse 122b, fols. 30v–31r). Cretan vernacular poems that describe processions in times of earthquake or war affirm this practice, and picture women as among the most active participants. In the final years of Venice’s rule on the island, Marinos Bouniales’s poem “O Kritikos Polemos” [The Cretan war] remembers how the Greeks and Latins, rich and poor alike, would flock to the Tuesday procession to beseech the icon’s intervention against the Turks. O Kritikos Polemos (1645–1669), edited by Stylianos Alexiou and Martha Aposkite (Athens: Stigme, 1995), pp. 250–51. Geary, “From Charter to Cartulary,” pp. 142–45. Maltezou, “Byzantine ‘consuetudines’ in Venetian Crete,” 271. The project of establishing an administrative system on the island was begun by Giacomo Tiepolo, the first duke of Crete, who in 1229 became doge. In 1242, Tiepolo initiated the establishment of laws for the island and the appointment of judges.

Legal Resonances

which served as an affirmation of Venetian sovereignty, Orthodox clerics performed maledictions against offending members of the Greek community.35 A long-standing and prominent tradition linked acclamation to anathema in medieval Byzantium. Charlotte Roueché has shown how the polychronia assumed their definitively “formal, validating function” within the setting of the Orthodox ecumenical council, where following the ritual anathematization that concluded the councils, its members performed a set of polychronia.36 It is in this capacity, Roueché argues, that acclamation became standard procedure, a “verbal seal for the anathematization of groups and individuals.”37 It is possible that, with these associations in mind, the bookending laudes made the Tuesday procession seem a particularly effective place for the pronouncement of anathema – a means for resolving local conflict in the absence of an official Greek court. In this way, the laudes transformed the Tuesday ritual into a space for legal action based on custom. Rather than navigate the Venetian legal system, individuals within the Greek community turned to their Orthodox priests to resolve conflicts within the authorizing space of Venetian colonial ritual. Late evidence for the practice arises in a 1468 document that prohibits it. In the minutes of the church council of Gerolamo Lando, archbishop of Crete and Latin patriarch of Constantinople, the synod forbids the protopapas, protopsaltis (Orthodox cantor), or any other Greek clergy from performing anathemas during the Tuesday procession.38 The decree indicates such ritual excommunications to have been a standing custom in the city, “ἀνέκαθεν . . . πρᾶξις,” whereby the Greek laity paid the priests in the procession to pronounce anathemas against thieves or enemies, “ἀναθεματισμοὺς ἐναντίιον κλεπτῶν ἢ ἐχθρῶν,” in the presence of the icon:39 During the rest of the transport of the holy icon from church to church, opportunistic Greek priests have been inducing the pious but superstitious laity to seek anathemas against thieves or enemies and to promise masses and other favors for 35

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For the way ritual malediction (clamor ) substituted for inadequate systems of justice within a monastic sphere, see Lester K. Little, Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 200–18. Charlotte Roueché, “Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias,” Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984), 181–99 (199). Ibid. 38 Papadaki, Cerimonie religiose, p. 150. Enemies and thieves were virtually synonymous categories in Crete. Early chronicles indicate that interfamilial feuding centered around the raids on property. See Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 200–04.

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Unsilenced Archives the finding of the stolen items. These things are of course to the great detriment of the Christian religion and faith. According to which the Holy Synod rules that these abuses should not happen in the future, on the penalty of one ducat against the protopapas for every infringement. Neither the protopapas nor the protopsaltis have the power to proclaim excommunications against anyone, without the special permission of the local bishop or of their vicar.40

Evidently the decree did little to curb the practice. Similar prohibitions continued to issue from the archiepiscopal chancery throughout the period of Venetian rule. A mere decade before the Republic lost the island to the Ottomans, the archbishop republished a proscription first made in 1550 that stated how “one observes in the archives of the archiepiscopal chancery . . . that ‘Monsignor Archbishop prohibits the protopapas and protopsaltis from the abuses now introduced, that on Tuesdays when the Madonna is transported for votive masses, they do not go through the streets making provisions for excommunications without the permission of the archbishop,’ as up to this day is observed, under the penalty contained in that [document].”41 The targeting of protopapas and protopsaltis in these prohibitions reflects the high status of these offices on the island. They were by far the most powerful sacred as well as civic “voices” of the Greek community.42 The Venetian Senate created the offices of the first priest (protopapas) and first cantor (protopsaltis) to be elected by the Greek clergy but approved and paid by the Senate.43 After dissolving the Orthodox bishopric on the island in 1211, the Senate established the posts not only to give the now 40

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“Κατὰ τὴν μεταφορὰν λοιπὸν τῆς ἁγιας εἰκόνος ἀπὸ ἐκκλησίας εἰς ἐκκλησίαν, ἐπωφελούμενοι οἱ Ἕλληνες ἱερεῖς, παρεκίνουν τὸν εὐσεβῆ, ἀλλὰ δεισιδαίμονα λαὸν, νὰ ζητήσῃ ἀναθεματισμοὺς ἐναντίιον κλεπτῶν ἢ ἐχθρὼν, καὶ νὰ ὑποσξεθῶσι λειτουργίας καὶ ἄλλας προσφοράς, πρὸς ἀνεύρεσιν τῶν κλαπέντων. Ταῦτα βεβαίως πρὸς μεγάλην βλάβην τῆς χριστιανικῆς θρησκείας καὶ πίστεως. Διὰ τοῦτο ορίζει ἡ ἁγία Σύνοδος ὅπως μὴ γίνηται ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι τοιαύτη κατάχρησις, ἐπι ποινῇ ἑνὸς Δουκάτου ἐναντίον τοῦ Προωτοπαπᾶ διὰ κάθε τοιαύτην παράβασιν. Νὰ μὴ δύναται δὲ ὁ Πρωτοπαπᾶς ἢ ὁ Πρωτοψάλτης νὰ κηρύξωσι τὸν ἀφορισμὸν ἐναντίον οὐδενὸς, χωρὶς εἰδικὴν ἄδειαν τοῦ οἰκείου Ἐπισκόπου ἢ τοῦ Βικαρίου τοῦ.” BMC, Miscellanea Correr MS 1211, num. 2707, fols. 33v–34r; published in Xirouchakis, “Ἁι σύνοδοι τοῦ Γερόλαμο Λάντο,” 154–55. “Si vede nelli Archive: della Canc:ria Archiep:ale a __ 33 T:o che Monsignor Archivescovo prohibesce al Protopapà, et Protopsalta, per li abusi all’hora introdotti, che di martedi, che si transporta la Madonna per le messe votive, non andischino per le strade cominar escomuniche, senza licenza del Vicario, come fin’hoggi si osserva, sotto le pene in quello contenute.” ASV, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, Commissarie, b. 103, Fasc. 5 (1345–1641), fol. 35r (1653). These two ranks existed in all four of the port cities of Crete. M. Manousakas, “Venetika eggrafa anaferomena eis tin ekklesiasticin istorian tis Kritis tou 14ou–16ou aionos” [Venetian documents on the church history of Crete in the 14th to 16th centuries], Deltion tes Historikes kai Ethnologikes Hetaireias tes Hellados 15 (1961), 149–233 (151n1).

Saluting The Virgin

acephalous Orthodox community representatives but also to shelter those representatives from papal interference of which Venice was ever wary. But the large-scale displacement of the Greek Orthodox bishopric in Latin-ruled territories made the protopapas the de facto highest-ranking ecclesial figure in these areas.44 While it fell upon Church officials to pronounce anathemas, the fact that the protopapas and protopsaltis spoke on behalf of both the Orthodox laity and the Venetian administration lent further weight to the ritual pronouncement – itself part of a jointly civic and sacred ceremony.45 Within this particular ritual configuration, the Greek community found in these representatives an alternative to the courts established by the Venetian Senate when it came to the resolution of conflict.46 Interestingly, all proscriptions on anathema during the Tuesday procession stem from the Latin archiepiscopal chancery of Candia. The archives of the Venetian Senate, which actually salaried the protopapas and protopsaltis, remain silent on the matter. The Senate tended to be lax toward religious practice so long as it did not interfere with the smooth working of government. But we might also imagine that these kinds of vernacular practices enhanced the authority of the ceremony and of the Venetians whom it represented. If it was the aim of the Senate to create a public, ceremonial space in which legal ritual could ramify, the protopapas and protopsaltis, representatives of the Greek community as a whole, tacitly accepted this when they adopted that space toward such ends, reinforcing the notion of a ritual community unified under the Venetian administration.47

Saluting The Virgin: The Akathistos Hymn and the Hodegetria Icon Type Candia’s Tuesday procession of the Mesopanditissa combined two distinct but related genres of ritual song, both used to recognize, and make available, power by proxy. The first is the laudes, whose relationship to imperial 44 46

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Ibid., 149–233. 45 Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, p. 173. Michael Herzfeld points to iconographic evidence in Cretan churches of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries that document ecclesiastical methods for “shaming of thieves,” practices “apparently widespread throughout Greece before the enactment of specific antirustling legislation” (Poetics of Manhood, p. 280). In his study of the Ionian islands under the British colonial rule, Thomas Gallant uncovers the persistence of anathematization within “icon-laden” ritual performances as a form of legal recourse among the colonized Orthodox population. “Peasant Ideology and Excommunication

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provincial ceremony we have already seen. The other is the litany. In many ways, processional litanies can be understood as devotional counterparts to imperial acclamations, and the function they serve is largely homologous. As with the imperial portrait in Roman times, Orthodox theology held sacred images to be valid substitutes for the figures they represented. Just as acclamations allowed provincial subjects ritual access to a distant emperor, litanies performed before a panel of Mary were understood as effective invocations of her help.48 Public processions of Marian images, most famously those in Rome and Constantinople but also in smaller cities like Candia, channeled this theology toward the concerns of their urban populations.49 Candia’s weekly procession of the Mesopanditissa icon was modeled on a far more famous Byzantine one. Each Tuesday in Constantinople, the miraculous image of the Madonna Hodegetria was processed around the city.50 The ceremony commemorated the historical retreat of the Avar

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for Crime in a Colonial Context: The Ionian Islands (Greece), 1817–1864,” Journal of Social History 23, no. 3 (1990), 485–512. Though it is a modern practice that Gallant has in view, he finds these holdovers in what had been some of Venice’s most valuable colonies, whose social structures under British rule still rested on the remnants of Venetian institutions. One striking detail offered up by the nineteenth-century Ionian case is the fact that these excommunications, also performed by the protopapas in “icon-laden” ritual processions, were chanted (486). While documents from Candia’s archiepiscopal archives remain mute on the matter, this raises the possibility that, like the laudes, the pronouncement of anathema comprised a sung component of the Tuesday procession. Again, in his private correspondence with Kantorowicz, Schramm praised the Laudes regiae for making “absolutely overwhelming” the “exposition of how the laudes and the litanies were interrelated.” Quoted in Lerner, Ernst Kantorowicz, p. 248. A similar Tuesday procession seems also to have occurred weekly in the city of Canea, about a hundred kilometers west of Candia. For this, we have only a brief sidenote regarding the altar of the cathedral of Canea that states that “la pala di detto altare è un quadro portatile della Bma. Vergine, ornato con argento, et è alla greca essendo quello che gli Greci portano in processione ogni Martedì,” in a letter dating to February 1620, found in the Archivio della S. Congregazione di Propaganda. See Ubaldo Mannucci, “Contributi documentarii per la storia della distruzione degli Episcopati Latini in Oriente nei secoli XVI e XVII,” Bessarione 30 (1914), 97–128 (103). In a travel log from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the Florentine priest Pietro da Casola gives a striking account of one such civic response to earthquake during his brief layover in Candia. In this entry, he describes a “great company of Greek boys without any order, who cried with a loud voice ‘Kyrie Elieson ’ [sic ] and nothing else, those Greeks carried in the said procession many very large figures, painted on wood. There were crucifixes, and figures of Our Lady and other saints . . . I was greatly astonished at the chanting of the said Greeks, because it appeared to me that they chanted with great discords.” Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494, edited by M. Margaret Newett (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1907), p. 199. Constantinople’s cult of the Hodegetria was clearly known in the Venetian sphere. Andrea Dandolo discusses it in his Chronica per extensum descripta aa. 46–1280 d.C, edited by Ester Pastorello (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1938), p. 111; translated in Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), p. 58.

Wall Songs

army in 626, after which the Marian panel was paraded around the city by the patriarch. As with the Mesopanditissa, the sung veneration of the icon was central to the historiographical tradition that developed around it. According to this tradition, it was the miraculous intervention of the Hodegetria that occasioned the writing of the hymn’s second and more famous introductory stanza (prooimion) that alluded to the icon’s use as palladium of the capital city (Appendix 2). More than any other piece of medieval Greek literature, the Akathistos hymn forged a connection, both lyrical and ritual, between the image of the Mother of God and the good functioning of the state. Of the hymn’s twenty-four strophes, each odd strophe begins with the word “Χαῖρε” (hail). This series of salutations, called charetismoi in Greek, is a direct quotation of Gabriel’s “Χαῖρε,” “Ave,” or “Hail” to Mary in the Annunciation scene that is the ostensible topic and occasion for the hymn.51 But that same “Χαῖρε” belongs also to the lexicon of acclamations that greeted the Roman emperor following successful military campaigns.52 Using the language of military salutation, the Akathistos hymn’s narration of the Annunciation and Nativity puts a series of litanies into the mouths of (first) various biblical characters and (then) the singers and congregants.53 Like the laudes regiae, these litanies are distinctive for their triumphant and decidedly nonpenitent tone – a tone that binds them to the militaristic milieu in which the hymn was composed. The connections between the colonial laudes, folded into the veneration of a miraculous icon of the Hodegetria type, and the well-known and much-loved Orthodox hymn of the Akathistos were not lost on the Orthodox members of the colony. In fact, these associations were drawn out through the decorative programs of some of the most important Orthodox spaces on the colony: its rural chapels.

Wall Songs: The Akathistos Hymn in Rural Frescoes Medieval sources from Venetian Candia paint an image of a city buzzing with ritual activity. But the ritual stir of urban life did not stop at the walls of the city or even at the edges of its suburbs. Many of the most prominent 51

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The hymn came to be associated with the feast of the Annunciation, but was perhaps originally composed for the Nativity. Leena Mari Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 22. Pentcheva, Icons and Power, pp. 12–13. We will see another form of weaving together and dramatizing precisely these two forms of salutation – acclamation and the Annunciation – in Chapter 3.

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Greek families in the city maintained strong ties to villages in the harsh, mountainous interior of the island that, due to their sheer physical inaccessibility, became strongholds of resistance to the colonial regime. In their patronage of rural churches, Orthodox donors drew heavily on the symbols of Candia’s ritual life. By tracing the personnel that moved between Candia and the countryside and held important positions in both spheres, we see just how much the Tuesday ceremony echoed into the island’s interior. A major development in the vernacular architecture of the Venetian colony was the double-naved church, examples of which dot the mountains of Crete and bear witness to the interaction and hybridization of ritual life deep within the island. The number of double-naved chapels grew exponentially across the Psiloritis and Lefka Ori ranges over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see Map 2).54 In cases where decorative programs survive in these rural chapels, one finds elements of painting and inscription that borrow cultural signifiers from the civic life of Candia and redirect them toward local, parochial concerns.55 Visual evocations of music may have even conditioned ritual practice inside these spaces or served as prompts to performance.56 Throughout the Middle Ages, writing served first and foremost as a cipher for the act of speech it represented, where the authority of oral performance outstripped that of the written word.57 It is this authority that underpins the laudes ceremony: the Senate requested proof of the inhabitants’ fealty not through written pledges, but through the sonorous immediacy of song. Although the Senate frequently dispatched written mandates to the colony, a sung ritual response was required as proof of consent to the mandate. 54

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They generally featured two separate but communicating naves, each with its own sanctuary, which would accommodate the liturgical needs of both the Orthodox and Catholic laity within a single space. Textual sources occasionally attest to Catholic and Orthodox liturgies even happening at the same time in these small chapels Many of these programs reflect an intimate knowledge of the artistic, ritual, and musical trends of both Venice and the Byzantine Empire, and several of the artists and also patrons responsible for these decorations moved freely between Crete, Venice, and Constantinople. As such, they have much to tell us about the interactions between monumental space and ephemeral performance. A deep bibliography exists on this topic. Some of the most important studies remain Matthew Innes, “Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society,” Past and Present 158 (1998), 3–36; Paul Saenger, “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982), 367–414; and Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). For a more recent study that brings these issues to bear specifically into the domain of legal performance (as opposed to written law), see Robin Chapman Stacey, Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Wall Songs

Of course, the sheer durability of the written word distorts this picture and dampens our sense of the historical primacy of oral phenomena.58 Certain genres of writing, however, retain valuable information about the oral culture that stands behind it. Monumental inscription has long been acknowledged as an important medium for recording oral ritual in the late antique and medieval Mediterranean. We have already seen this principle in play in Chapter 1, in the Cretan city of Górtyn whose stones were inscribed with historical acclamations.59 In cases like these, inscription helped fix the event of ritual in history and in memory, giving proof of its legitimacy. In a culture where writing was rarely a silent or private affair, inscriptions found in public spaces would have been already associated with the idea of performance.60 Robert Nelson argues that the “means” of inscription allowed “medieval viewers, readers, and listeners [to enact] liturgical dramas of their own in these spaces of devotion.”61 This is particularly true of the many textual elements of wall painting and dedicatory inscription found among the chapels of rural Crete.62 Such decorative elements provide valuable in situ evidence of rituals that took place within their walls. In the case of the three examples explored below, iconography could also connect the ritual life of these provincial chapels to those of the capital city of Candia. The following examples show how musical topics developed in this rural iconography reference the Tuesday laudes ceremony, channeling its meanings in new directions.

The Church of the Hodegetria at the Monastery of Balsamonero Among the members of Candia’s Greek community that moved between the ritual worlds of urban and rural institutions was Angelos Akotantos. One of Venetian Crete’s most renowned Orthodox artists 58

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For a thorough discussion of the problems and prospects of studying oral aspects of the medieval past, see Michael Richter, The Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994). See especially Roueché, “Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire,” 181–99. For instance, Amy Papalexandrou’s project has been to “put texts back on the building . . . and imagine them ‘in use’ there, as integral components within a potentially complex framework of active experience,” a framework that “involves not only reading, but speech and movement as well.” “Text in Context: Eloquent Monuments and the Byzantine Beholder,” Word & Image 17, no. 3 (2001), 259–83 (262). See also Papalexandrou, “Echoes of Orality in the Monumental Inscriptions of Byzantium,” in Liz James (ed.), Art and Text in Byzantine Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 161–87. Robert S. Nelson, “Image and Inscription: Pleas for Salvation in Spaces of Devotion,” in James (ed.), Art and Text in Byzantine Culture, pp. 100–19 (p. 116). Gratziou reckons that the number of rural churches that date to the later Middle Ages is in the thousands (Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, p. 323).

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in the early fifteenth century, Akotantos is best known for his painted contributions to the church of the mountain monastery of Balsamonero, which sat deep in the southern foothills of the Psiloritis mountain chain (see Figure 2.2 and Map 2).63 Akotantos was, at the same time, protopsaltis in the city of Candia – a role barely accounted for in scholarship on the important painter.64 Thus he daily lent his voice to the civic rituals explored in Chapter 1, acting through the Venetian Senate as the musical representative of the island’s Greek population. On Tuesdays he sang litanies and laudes in praise of the Virgin and of Venice respectively – but he also crafted images and devotional objects to be used and appreciated in the island’s rugged interior, helping to shape ritual practice within these important provincial Orthodox churches far from Venetian oversight. While the many icons bearing Akotantos’s signature – “XEIR AGGELOU” (the hand of Angelos) or at other times the Latin “ANGELUS PINXIT” (Angelos painted it) – survive from his atelier, the painter-protopsaltis also hoped to give audible perdurance to his piety; his last will and testament endows memorial masses to be sung both in the rural monastery of Balsamonero and in the city of Candia at the church of Christ Kephalas, one of the most important musical institutions in Venetian Crete.65 A property of Saint Catherine’s on Mount Sinai, the church of Christ 63

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For Akotantos’s full biography based on known archival records, see Maria Vassilaki, The Painter Angelos and Icon-Painting in Venetian Crete (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Anastasia Drandaki describes Akotantos as “a man of a certain social standing in Candia,” who not only held the important post of first cantor but “traveled at least once to Constantinople” and “consorted with important people on the island.” “Between Byzantium and Venice: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in Anastasia Drandaki (ed.), The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete (New York, NY: Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, 2009), pp. 11–18 (p. 14). Under the guidance of the influential abbot Ionas Palamas, the monastery of Balsamonero grew into one of the most important shared religious spaces on the island – a pilgrimage site for Orthodox and Catholics alike. His position as protopsaltis in Candia is revealed in a posthumous document, a resolution made by the Duke of Crete concerning Akotantos’s daughter Barbara. The relevant line reads, “Coram dominio comparens magister Theodorus Acontanto, rector scolarum, exposuit nomine suo et nomine magistri Johannis, fratris sui, pictoris, asserens qualiter magister Angelus Acotanto, frater eorum, pictor quodam et protopsalta Grecorum in hac civitate.” M. Manousakas, “E diatheke tou Aggelou Akotantou (1436), agnostou Kretekou zographou” [The will of Angelos Akotantos (1436), unknown Cretan painter], Deltion/Christianike Archaiologike Hetaireia 2 (1960–61), 139–51 (144). “καὶ ἀφήνω νὰ γένουν δύο σαραταήμερα, τὸ ἕναν νὰ πίση ὁ πνευματικὸς τοῦ Βαρσαμονεροῦ ὁ κὺρ Ἰωνᾶς καὶ τὸ ἄλλον νὰ γένη εἰς τὸν Χριστὸν τὸν Κεφαλά.” ASV, Duca di Candia, b. 11. The will was drawn up, incidentally, on the occasion of a voyage to Constantinople. This fact itself testifies to the nature of his familiarity with Constantinopolitan artistic trends. Manousakas first published the will in “E diatheke tou Aggelou Akotantou.”

Wall Songs

Figure 2.2 Exterior of the church of the Hodegetria, monastery of Balsamonero. Photo credit: J. Morrison

Kephalas was held in high regard among both Greeks and Latins.66 Many Catholic Venetians left endowments to this institution in order to have commemorative masses performed, even if in the Orthodox rite.67 Akotantos’s will, drawn up in 1436, specified that two icons from his bedchamber, both of which we might assume he painted himself, be set up on a stand in the middle of the church of Christ Kephalas while the three liturgies he had endowed were sung.68

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A few decades after Akotantos’s death, the renowned cantor and theologian Ioannis Plousiadenos would be sent there by the doge of Venice to serve as its priest. M. Manousakas, “Recherches sur la vie de Jean Plousiadénos (Joseph de Méthone) (1429?–1500),” Revue des Études Byzantines 17 (1959), 28–51 (45–46). For examples of this, see Sally McKee, ed., Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete, 1312–1420 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998). These memorial masses were to take place five times a year, on Easter Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and on Christmas and the day after. See Vassilaki, The Painter Angelos, pp. 61–66; Drandaki, “Between Byzantium and Venice,” p. 14.

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Map 2 Venetian Crete. Courtesy of Adrian Kitzinger

The case of Akotantos is a single instance of the kinds of traffic in rituals, symbols, and people that regularly took place between urban churches like Christ Kephalas and exceedingly remote ones like Balsamonero. But so are the architectural and decorative schemes of these chapels. The church of the Hodegetria at Balsamonero furnishes one such example; its extensive fresco depiction of the Akathistos hymn, made by a highly skilled, if unknown, artist belongs to these interactions. As a whole, the interior of the church of the Hodegetria is rich in sonic suggestion. Liturgical texts are found throughout its wall decorations. Open scrolls, open books, and dedicatory plaques are the rule, and the general effect of the whole is a painted surface replete with the textual apparatus of liturgy, where the historical and saintly figures depicted seem alternately to elicit and to participate in the liturgical life onto which they gaze. There are practical reasons to think that the representation of liturgical text on the walls of a monastic church would have served to bridge the world of the depiction with the world of the beholder. Surviving documents related to the island’s chant curriculum in the later Middle Ages suggest the entwinement of reading and chanting.69 Contracts of apprenticeship show literacy to have been the basis and prerequisite for pursuing a cantorial career. Greek parents hoping to educate their children in reading and writing frequently did so by contracting lessons in chant more grecorum (in the manner of the Greeks).70 While the ability to read Greek was seen as 69

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On the use of the term more grecorum for the Byzantine chant tradition in Venetian Crete, see ibid., 235. ibid.

Wall Songs

an essential skill for a trained cantor, music notation rarely formed part of the curriculum. Significantly the apprenticeships of religious painters, like that of cantors, also began with learning Greek letters (γράμματα).71 Whether training to paint or training to sing, the acquisition of literacy was seen as the professional basis of both type of religious artisan. Contracts apprenticing cantors in Venetian Crete specify that students learn either “the art of singing from Greek letters” or “proficiency in Greek letters so as to be able to calanarghare according to the customs of the Greeks.”72 While both formulations stress the reliance on words rather than notes for musical learning, the mention of calanarghare (the Greek term kanonarchema transformed into a Latin infinitive) is particularly germane. It was a practice widespread throughout the Byzantine period, in which a cantors assigned the post of kanonarches quietly read the choir a short segment of verse, to which the choir would supply the characteristic musical phrase.73 It has been suggested that the practice of kanonarchema was so basic to the performance of Byzantine chant as to determine the organization and content of its musical liturgical books.74

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The Greek term γράμματα, to which Maria Kazanaki-Lappa refers, corresponds to the Latin litteras found in the cantorial contracts. “The Will of Angelos Akotantos,” in Maria Vassilaki (ed.), The Hand of Angelos: An Icon-Painter in Venetian Crete (Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2010), pp. 104–13 (p. 109). A contract drawn up in Candia in 1454 offers a rare case in which music notation is mentioned as forming part of the curriculum. It specifies that the priest Petros Perdicaris “possis docere et quantare apo tonu” (apo tonu here is a Latinization of the Greek ἀπό τόνου [from the note]). The fact that Perdicaris was evidently training to teach chant himself may be the reason why notation formed part of the curriculum. See Ioannis Markouris, “Apprenticeships in Greek Orthodox Chanting and Greek Language Learning in Venetian Crete (14th–15th Century),” in Chryssa A. Maltezou, Angeliki Tzavara, and Despina (eds.), I Greci durante la venetocrazia: Uomini, spazio, idee (13.–18. sec.); Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Venezia, 3–7 dicembre 2007 (Venice: Instituto Ellenico, 2009), pp. 233–49 (p. 249). While the two quotations here represent the generic language of these contracts more broadly, the specific contexts to which they belong are: a notarial document from April 1423 in which two chanters establish a school of chant in Candia “pro docendo illos dictam artem cantandi ac litteras grecas” (ibid., p. 248); and a contract dated to October 1417 in the city of Candia, in which the barber Nicolaos contracts Bartholomeos Rossi to teach his son so that “sit sufficiens ad litteras grecas quod possit calanarghare iuxta consuetudines grecorum” (ibid., p. 246). Helmut Hucke first drew attention to the Byzantine example of kanonarchema as indication of the fact that “written tradition does not necessarily imply singing from a book,” pointing to the colorful description of the French Dominican Jacques Goar, who, living on the island of Chios from 1631 to 1637, marveled at how “the Greeks have music books, but they rarely look at them while singing.” “Toward a New Historical View of Gregorian Chant,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 33, no. 3 (1980), 437–67 (448). Christian Troelsgård, “Musical Notation and Oral Transmission of Byzantine Chant,” Classica et Mediaevalia 50 (1999), 249–57. Troelsgård describes how if “the kanonárches announced a given phrase, these structures would probably be understood by the singers immediately, and

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This context helps us to better appreciate how the Balsamonero painter uses textual elements and music-liturgical details to bridge the world of the depiction with the world of its beholder. Among the novelties he introduces is the inscription of the first line of each stanza of the Akathistos hymn along the top of each scene. This makes the viewer of the scene likewise a reader of the hymn. But in light of the musical practice of kanonarchema explored above, it also asks the reader to become a cantor, since it is precisely this unit of text –that of the verse – that functions as the “notation” from which the choir generates melody. We will see that each of the Cretan Akathistos cycles studied here includes the evocation of ritual through the presence of text. But there are purely visual strategies at play in the Balsamonero Akathistos scene as well that invite the viewer into the (real or imagined) space of liturgical song. One of these is the cycle’s unique depiction of strophe 14 of the hymn “Seeing This Strange Birth,” located in the second register from the bottom of the barrel vault spanning the nave.75 A perspectival shift in the hymn’s text in stanza 14 helps justify the painter’s fresh handling of the scene. While the first twelve stanzas of the Akathistos hymn retell the events of the Annunciation and Nativity, stanza 14 (which the painter has put in the place of stanza 13 in this arrangement) shifts abruptly from historical to present time.76 The text self-reflexively invokes the choir now chanting – or in this case viewing – the hymn: Seeing this strange birth, let us become strangers to the world, turning our minds to Heaven. To this end the High One appeared on earth as a humble man, wishing to draw to the heights those who cry to him: “Alleluia.” Ξένον τόκον ἰδόντες ξενωθῶμεν τοῦ κόσμου, τὸν νοῦν εἰς οὐρανοὺς μεταθέντες. διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ ὑψηλὸς ἐπὶ γῆς ἐφάνη ταπεινὸς ἄνθρωπος, βουλόμενος ἑλκύσαι πρὸς τὸ ὕψος τοὺς αὐτῷ βοῶντας. “Ἀλληλούϊα.”

The entire second half of the hymn weaves in and out of these two temporal dimensions, moving from statements on the natures of Mary and Christ to

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they would be able to reproduce an acceptable version of the chant, knowing mode, the style, the text, and a reasonable segmentation of it” (254). I am grateful to Annika Fisher for her help “placing” this panel. The order of stanzas 13 and 14 are reversed in the closely related Akathistos cycle in the church of the Panagia in Meronas examined below.

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self-reflexive meditation on the song of veneration in which the cantors presently engage.77 The Balsamonero composition departs dramatically from the stanza’s standard iconography of a manger scene of worshippers visiting Mary and the Christ Child. In place of the manger, the Balsamonero version pictures the performance of liturgy (see Figure 2.3).78 Instead of Mary and the infant Christ, there is a Deesis, with the Virgin and John the Baptist flanking Christ in supplication, while Apostles and members of the clergy gather in the foreground. One of the most prominent uses of the Deesis in Byzantine churches is at the top and center of the iconostasis, over the “royal entrance” into the templon, creating both an architectural and theological framework for liturgical prayer. By placing a Deesis into this scene, the painter underscores the shift from the biblical space of the manger to the liturgical space of the church, an effect strengthened by the presence of the bishops and the cantor. Most arresting in this image is the cantor himself, who stands in the left foreground. While the various supplicatory poses of the figures populating the scene give the composition a dynamic sense of movement, Christ and the cantor alone assume fully frontal, hieratic poses, standing at once in the narrative depicted and out of it. Amplifying this effect is the fact that, while most of the figures look toward the Deesis or toward one another, only Christ and the cantor gaze directly out at the viewer. If the cantor’s gaze crosses the threshold of the painting, then his cheironomic gesture reciprocally invites the viewer to sing within a painted liturgical space not dissimilar to the one in which he or she stands. Significantly, this is also the first scene in the cycle in which either Christ or the Virgin gazes outward toward the viewer, emphasizing the link between gazes inside and outside of the pictorial surface. Christ’s halflength, frontal image, typical also for a devotional icon, combined with his outward gaze, gives him the appearance of live attention to the praise being rendered.79 In this unusual iconography, the crowd who is “drawn to the heights” by “crying Alleluia” is as much a liturgical crowd (through the 77

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Depictions of stanzas 23 and 24 commonly imagine the performance of the hymn within specific liturgical celebrations and exhibit greater variety than the other stanzas. See Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, “Icons in the Liturgy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), 45–57; Neil K. Moran, Singers in Late Byzantine and Slavonic Paintings (Leiden: Brill, 1986), pp. 104–14. Ioannis Spatharakis, The Pictorial Cycles of the Akathistos Hymn for the Virgin (Leiden: Alexandros, 2005), pp. 30–31. In the slightly earlier cycles in Roustika and Meronas, which pre-date the Balsamonero example by thirty or forty years, the outward gazes are never so direct as they are here.

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cantor and bishops) as it is a historical one (through the group of Apostles). But the connections forged with the viewers outside the picture draw them into the scene as well.80 In view of the common use of cheironomy, the cantor’s gesture would have invited the hymn’s oral realization. This slippage between sung and painted media extends to the dedicatory inscription just below the scene. Concluding with a standard dedication formula, the artist not only evokes prayer through the culminating “amen,” but stresses this addition through threefold repetition: “ἀμὴν, ἀμὴν, ἀμὴν.” To this the painter adds a long string of nonsense letters, which frame the bottom edge of the dedication. Deciphered with the help of a key, these nonsense letters yield the doxology chanted at the open of the Trisagion prayers: “Δόξα σοι ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν, δόξα σοι.” This image, saturated with sonic cues, reveals a painter not only deeply versed in the musical practices of liturgy but also invested in conjuring up imperial ceremony in the space of a provincial chapel. In our analysis of the Akathistos programs below, we will see how tightly connected these painted cycles were to the most important sung ceremony of the colonial urban life on the island.

The Church of the Panagia in Roustika To an even greater extent than the Balsamonero painter, the unknown painter of the Akathistos cycle in the church of the Panagia in Roustika integrates commemorative inscription with the hymn’s iconography in a way that highlights the sonorousness of both. While less historical information is available about the founding of this church, elements of its visual program show evidence of cultural assimilation among its Orthodox and Catholic parishioners. This is most apparent in the Throne of Mercy scene represented over the triumphal arch. This western iconographic type was a visual summation of the Catholic stance on the Filioque controversy that had long kept the unification of the eastern and western churches at an impasse.81 The rendering in Roustika 80

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Adding to the liturgical allusion here is the fact that stanza 14 paraphrases the Cherubikon hymn (line 2 “προσᾴδοντες πᾶσαν νῦν βιωτικὴν ἀποθώμεθα μέριμναν,” or “let us now lay aside all earthly cares”), one of the central liturgical texts of the Orthodox liturgy, as well as one of its most musically dramatic moments. Of the depiction here, Spatharakis notes how “the two bishops and the group of apostles to the right are identical in almost every detail, such as the posture of St. Peter looking at St. Paul” (Pictorial Cycles, p. 30). Use of the western iconographic type (as opposed to the expected Hospitality of Abraham) in the triumphal arch of the northern nave is a strong indication of the uniate stance of this community or of one of its leaders. The Catholic position on the controversy over the presence of the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both God

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Figure 2.3 Stanza 14 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Hodegetria, monastery of Balsamonero, ca. 1400. Fresco. Photo credit: J. Morrison

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happens not only to be the sole example of the western iconographic type in Crete, but in all of Byzantium.82 Directly above a small window on the north side of the nave – the only aperture on that wall – are the final two stanzas of the Akathistos (23 and 24), the most self-reflexively musical of all the hymn’s strophes (see Figure 2.4). Just below is a dedication, partially effaced, that remembers the contributions of one Georgos Blastos to the decoration of the church, along with his wife and a series of other individuals (perhaps the painter himself) whose names are now lost. Notably this stretch of painting and inscription lies directly across an arched portal providing the sole avenue of communication with the southern nave, making these decorations the only part of the northern (Orthodox) nave’s decorative scheme visible from the southern (Catholic) one. This might have been intended as a way to share an image emblematic to both denominations. It is no wonder that the painter should have exploited these final two stanzas as a place to bring the hymn’s depiction to bear on the ritual performed inside the church. Stanzas 23 and 24 function as a concluding frame to the introductory prooimion that casts the entire hymn as a firstperson sung address to the Virgin. While the previous twenty-two stanzas narrate scenes from the life of the Virgin and Christ, stanzas 23 and 24 step outside of the narrative and reveal song as the medium of both storytelling and praise. Text and syntax highlight this concluding return to the song’s performance in the here and now: the present participial psallontes in stanza 23 furnishes the initial letter psi for the hymn’s alphabetic acrostic: (23) Singing (psallontes) in honor of your giving birth, we all praise you as a living temple, O Theotokos. For the Lord who holds all in his hands dwelt in the power of your womb – made you holy, made you glorious, and taught us all to cry to you: “Hail, tabernacle of God and the Word . . . Hail, bride unwedded.” Ψάλλοντές σου τὸν τόκον εὐφημοῦμέν σε πάντες ὡς ἔμψυχον ναόν, Θεοτόκε. Ἐν τῇ σῇ γὰρ οἰκήσας γαστρὶ ὁ κατέχων πάντα τῇ χειρὶ κύριος ἡγίασεν, ἐδόξασεν, ἐδίδαξε βοᾶν σοι πάντας. “Χαῖρε, σκηνὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Λόγου . . . Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε.”

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the Father and the Son. The Throne of Mercy iconography establishes that hierarchy visually. The use of this iconography suggests that not only did the Orthodox parishioners of Roustika worship alongside Catholics, but they may have held uniate sympathies as well. Ioannis Spatharakis, Byzantine Wall-Paintings of Crete, 4 vols. (London: Pindar, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 182–83. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 182.

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Figure 2.4 Stanzas 23 and 24 of the Akathistos hymn on north side of nave, with dedicatory inscription below, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91 Photo credit: J. Morrison

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(24) O Mother hymned by all, you who gave birth to the Word, the holiest of all holies: accepting this present offering, deliver from every evil and from the punishment to come all those who cry to you: Alleluia. Ὦ πανύμνητε μήτηρ, ἡ τεκοῦσα τὸν πάντων ἁγίων ἁγιώτατον Λόγον, δεξαμένη τὴν νῦν προσφοράν, ἀπὸ πάσης ῥῦσαι συμφορᾶς ἅπαντας καὶ τῆς μελλούσης λύτρωσαι κολάσεως τοὺς σοὶ βοῶντας. “Ἀλληλούϊα.”

The painter at Panagia in Roustika makes much rhetorical work of this perspectival shift (Figure 2.6). His portrayal of the final stanza (24), “The Offering of the Hymn,” is all but unique to Akathistos iconography.83 The standard iconography for the verse depicts a choir, along with bishops and emperors, gesturing in song toward the Virgin and Child.84 Here in Roustika, by contrast, the choir and earthly ministers are replaced by the text of the hymn itself. A group of angels flank the enthroned Virgin and Child to present a set of scrolls on which the stanza’s text is written. Two of the angels reach beseechingly toward Mary with the text, while two more place scrolls at her feet in a gesture of offering. It is to the viewer, however, and not to the Virgin, that the angels hold out the text. Replacing the depiction of a sung performance with the song text itself, the scene invites the viewer – or perhaps the Roustika choir – to take the place of the imperial choir typically portrayed in the scene. Again, the liturgical practice of kanonarchema on Venetian Crete would have shaped a viewer’s interaction with this scene – especially if that viewer were also a singer. A Greek cantor in fourteenth-century Crete would have been similarly “presented” with a text by the kanonarches and would have transformed it into song through knowledge of melodic conventions. By inscribing the text rather than representing the choir, the depiction of this stanza requests a ritual action: song.

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Its only other appearance, significantly, is in the church of the Panagia in Meronas, Crete (discussed below), the Akathistos cycle of which is closely related to that of Roustika. Spatharakis’s detailed comparative analyses of Akathistos frescoes in Crete has led him to suggest that the those in Roustika and Meronas “are so similar that one would be tempted to consider them as direct copies,” a relationship that would account for this shared iconographic innovation in the depiction of the final oikos (Pictorial Cycles, p. 162). The format almost replicates that of stanza 23 of the same cycle, examined above. By contrast, Spatharakis describes how “in most of the cycles the hymn is understood as a chant and rendered by various people ‘singing’ it” (ibid., p. 18).

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The request finds a visual analogue in the preceding scene, stanza 23 (“Singing in honor of your giving birth”) (Figure 2.5). To an otherwise standard depiction of the strophe – in which bishops, cantors, and clergymen surround the seated Virgin and Child – the painter has added a tiny detail that wholly transforms the image: the Virgin reaches out to grasp the wrist of the lead cantor to her right.85 If the Virgin has the hand of the cantor, it is the cantor – we are to assume – who has the ear of the Virgin.86 Notably, the cantor holds a book to his chest with his other hand, an added detail that clinches the connection between text, song, and salvation. Both the cantor’s physical attachments – to the Virgin and to the book – fall side by side along a diagonal axis through the very middle of the composition. In this way, stanza 23 provides a visible sign of the song’s invisible efficacy; when in stanza 24, the cantor’s book is laid open to the viewer, it invites him to similarly make contact with the Virgin through song. This oral impulse carries over into the text directly beneath the bottom edge of the scene, which commemorates the donors who endowed the painting (the names of one or two have been erased): + ΑΝΕΓΡΕΘΙ ΕΚ ΒΟΘΡΟΥ Κ[ΑΙ] Α[ΝΙCΤΟΡΗΘΗ] Ο ΘΙΟC ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝCΕΠΤ[ΟC] ΝΑΟC Τ[ΗC] ΥΠΕΡΑΓ[ΙΑC] ΔΕCΠ[ΟΙΝΗC ΗΜΩΝ] ΘΚΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΕΙΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΥ ΜΑΡΙ[ΑC] ΔΙΑ CΥΝΕΡΓΙΑC ΕΞΟΔΟΥ Κ[ΑΙ] . . . ΠΟΛΟΥ ΚΥΡ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΥ ΤΟΥ Β [ΛΑ]ΤΑ Κ[ΑΙ ΤΗC] CΙΒΙΟΥ . . . ΕΤΕΛΙΩΘΗ ΕΝ ΜΗΝΙ

This holy and venerated church of our most holy lady, Theotokos and Virgin Mary, was raised from the ground and restored from destruction through the cooperation, expense, and great . . . of lord Georgios Blastos and his wife . . . completed in the month.87 If the iconography of stanza 23 envisioned song as the medium by which one gained Mary’s ear, then when the viewer moved from singing the Akathistos to uttering the dedicatory inscription below he brought the names of the donors before her ears as well. Given the Akathistos hymn’s association with the Tuesday procession, it is worth considering 85

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I am grateful to Charlie Barber for generously sharing his thoughts about the rhetoric of the image, particularly the fact of contact between the Virgin and cantor. The only other known examples of this are also to be found in Venetian Crete, in the church of the Panagia in Balsamonero examined above, and the church of the Panagia in Meronas that will be examined below. Stavros Maderakis has hypothesized that the painter represents himself through the figure of the cantor. If so, the painter underscores an equivalence between depicting and singing the hymn. “Ta themata tes ikonografikes paradoses tes Kretes,” Theologhìa 61 (1990), 713–77. Spatharakis, Byzantine Wall-Paintings of Crete, vol. 1, p. 182; based on Gerola, Monumenti Veneti, vol. 4, p. 475 (no. 4).

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Figure 2.5 Stanza 23 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91. Fresco. Photo credit: J. Morrison

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Figure 2.6 Stanza 24 of the Akathistos hymn, church of the Panagia in Roustika, ca. 1390–91. Fresco. Photo credit: J. Morrison

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the likeness this visual strategy bore to ritual practice in Candia. As we have seen, the parishioners of Orthodox churches in the city and suburbs paid a high premium to have commemorative masses sung before the icon of the Mesopanditissa. To pray or be prayed for in the Virgin’s presence was to drastically enhance the efficacy of prayer, a concept the painter at Roustika drives home in his rendition of stanza 23. Through their endowment of the Akathistos iconography for the church, these donors had, in a sense, endowed countless performances of the hymn. But they must have hoped to have had their names remembered within that performance as well, brought perpetually before the eyes and ears of the Virgin just above.88

The Church of the Panagia in Meronas: The Case of the Kallergis Closely related to the iconography in the church in Roustika, the Akathistos depiction in the church of the Panagia of Meronas is the only other extant example in the Byzantine world in which the final stanza (24) includes the hymn’s text on open scrolls carried by angels. Although badly preserved, this wall painting clearly takes the Roustika scene as its model. In Meronas, however, the scene dominates the cycle: it is twice the size of the other panels and occupies the entire upper zone of the eastmost bay on the wall abutting the southern nave. Studying the case of Meronas, one can make an even stronger case for the musical realization of the inscribed scrolls, since the scene resembles an actual rite known to have taken place within the chapel. The church possessed its very own miraculous image of Mary, which had been obtained for it by the Kallergis (Lat. Calergis) family – the feudal lords of the Mylopotamos region – around the same time the Akathistos cycle was painted on its walls. Like the Mesopanditissa in Candia and the Hodegetria in Constantinople (on whose procession, we might remember, the Venetian Tuesday procession seems based), the Madonna in Meronas was also an Hodegetria type (Figure 2.7). “HODIGITRIA” appears inscribed across the top of the panel. Its 88

Important precedents exist for the decorative use of supplicatory chants within the spaces in which those texts were sung. Robert S. Nelson has shown how in the church of the Panagia Arakiotissa in Lagoudera, Cyprus, the inscription of the Parakletikoi kanones on a scroll held by Mary are placed in visual dialogue with the dedicatory inscription of the church’s donor (“Image and Inscription,” p. 113). In fact, the arrangement in this church precisely echoes the combination of petitions to the Virgin and commemoration that we find in Crete.

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large dimensions (93 × 53 cm) suggest that it would have been carried in procession for veneration, possibly to churches around the region.89 Considering its superior artistic quality, the Akathistos cycle commissioned by the Kallergis for this church was undoubtedly meant as its focal point. In this case, the Akathistos iconography would have pointed not only to the Tuesday procession in Candia, but to the church’s very own miraculous panel of the Hodegetria. Both features – the Akathistos fresco cycle and the ritual use of the Hodegetria panel – announced the Panagia in Meronas as the spiritual center of the region, with the Kallergis family as its lords and patrons.90 The family traced its origins on Crete to the twelfth century, when they arrived as one of twelve noble families sent by the Byzantine emperor Alexios II Komnenos to secure the island’s economic and political interests for Constantinople.91 Even after the Venetian settlement of the island in 1211, the Kallergis family continued to exert considerable influence over the Orthodox population, and their relationship to the Venetian regime ever vacillated between hostility and allegiance. Over the course of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the family succeeded in consolidating power under Venetian rule. To repay their assistance in defeating the Genoese in the war of Chioggia – and despite their activity in a century’s worth of revolutions against the Venetians – the Kallergis obtained entry into the Venetian nobility in 1381. For the first and last time, a non-Catholic family had succeeded in joining the ranks of the Venetian patriciate class.92 As such, the Kallergis were well positioned to intercede on behalf of the Greeks living in their fiefdom. The family was so instrumental in advancing the interests of the Greeks – first through rebellion and then through 89

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The icon has been dated to the late fourteenth century. See Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks, and Shrouds (London: Reaktion, 1997), p. 42. Maria Borboudaki, “The Church of the Virgin of Meronas and the Kallergis Family,” Cahiers Archéologiques 55 (2013–14), 105–18. Not only did the Kallergis endow the construction and decoration of many rural churches, but they also decked them with the family crest that had just been consigned to them as a badge of Venetian nobility. A coat of arms in painted relief above the northwest portal proclaims, in no uncertain terms, that the church once belonged to the Kallergis family, the feudal lords of the Mylopotamos region and one of the most powerful and influential families in medieval Venetian Crete. Two additional crests can be found within the southern nave. The Kallergis claimed the added distinction of having descended from the emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, a lineage they proudly clung to under Venetian rule. Rosemary Bancroft-Marcus, “The Pastoral Mode,” in David Holton (ed.), Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 79–102 (pp. 80–81). Maria Georgopoulou, “Vernacular Architecture in Venetian Crete: Urban and Rural Practices,” Medieval Encounters 18, nos. 4–5 (2012), 447–80 (469).

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Figure 2.7 Hodegetria icon in situ, church of the Panagia in Meronas. Photo credit: J. Morrison

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diplomacy – that they held an almost mythic status on the island. In his Descriptio insulae Cretae, the Florentine monk and traveler Christoforo Buondelmonti considered the Kallergis to be widely regarded “not as men but as gods in this land [of Crete].”93 Exaggeration notwithstanding, there is a grain of truth in Buondelmonti’s deification of the Kallergis. Their social function for the island’s Greek inhabitants was analogous to other kinds of intercessors, like saints, relics, and icons. As the wealthiest and by far most politically connected lords of Crete’s hinterlands, the Kallergis acted as conduits to power for the many Greek inhabitants who relied on them to safeguard their personal and economic interests. Like the patron saints who interceded with God on behalf of their parishioners, the Kallergis were literally patroni who, receiving the petitions of the fief ’s inhabitants, had the means to act on their behalf.94 Patronage of rural churches announced their place in this social structure. So did the commissioning of paintings and sculptures for them. Both the architecture and decorative schemes of these chapels drew heavily on the stylistic language of the Venetian Gothic so prominent in the architecture of Crete’s port cities. It is likely that the Kallergis appropriated these features not as symbols of Catholicism but as symbols of standing in the Venetian patriciate class.95 The Kallergis had an additional reason to reference and replicate the Tuesday procession on their own turf: they were one of the chief instigators of the rebellion whose resolution (referenced at the beginning of this chapter) the procession commemorated. We might view this provincial echo of urban ceremony as an invocation of the Kallergis’ historical power on the island within its own fiefdom.96 To the extent that the singing of laudes before the Mesopanditissa in the Tuesday procession reenacted the original treaty sworn in the icon’s presence, the staging of a similar ceremony in the family’s new fief reenacted the sworn lasting peace that ultimately gained them their nobility. The Kallergis case is yet one more example of the way in which power borrowed pedigree from the past through ritual means. Sung ceremony on Venetian Crete centered around the imaginative activation of communal 93 94

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Bancroft-Marcus, “The Pastoral Mode,” p. 81. McKee notes that, unlike other feudal lords on the colony, whose tenure had to be renewed by the Venetian government every twenty-nine years and who had to defer to Venetian-appointed magistrates on legal matters, the Kallergis held a hereditary post and “were conceded a certain degree of juridical autonomy within their estates” (Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete, p. x). Georgopoulou, “Vernacular Architecture,” 469. Chryssa A. Maltezou gives an overview of these events in “The Historical and Social Context,” in Holton, Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete, pp. 17–48 (pp. 23–25).

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memory. In lending their voices to these ceremonies, the inhabitants of the Venetian colony left traces of their living concerns on an otherwise inert material culture. Litanies and acclamations, but also maledictions and memorial masses defined the relationships between the colony’s individual members and its most important cult objects. These relationships were not static: they changed as allegiances changed, as social status changed, as religious identity changed. Studying a ritual like the laudes in a place possessed of as much social dynamism as medieval Venetian Crete lets us see how song could activate a given environment to reflect something of the shifting and myriad concerns of its inhabitants. This activation of material culture through music and ritual, as a means of composing history in and through performance, was initially explored in the colonies. But, as the remaining chapters of this book argue, it was an approach soon leveraged in the lagoon city as well. In Chapter 3, we will see how, calling on many of the same forms and strategies (the performance of laudes and salutations, the sung reenactment of history and lore), Venice used spectacle to bring its own imagined history to life.

part ii

The Fictive City

3

Singing Effigies An Annunciation Drama for the Festa delle Marie

Virginis effigiem vario pictura colore Ornat et in cultu fit quasi viva placet . . . Cernite non pictam gemmis auroque Mariam Sed quae cum Nato vivit in arce poli. One adorns the Virgin’s effigy with hues of various colors, And in dress she pleases as if she were alive . . . Do not see Mary depicted in gems and gold But as she is living with the child in the city. Pace del Friuli, Descriptio festi Virginis (ca. 1310)1

Until it was abolished in 1379, the Festa delle Marie (Feast of the Twelve Marys) was one of the most spectacular rituals in all medieval Venice. The elaborate, multiday affair braided together civic processions, liturgical observances, folk custom, public games, and private domestic celebrations.2 What tied these diverse elements together was the nearcontinuous presence of twelve life-sized wooden effigies of the Virgin Mary, each one decked in sumptuous fabrics, adorned with gemstones and pearls, and crowned with a golden headpiece. Over a four-day period that began on 30 January, the eve of the feast of Saint Mark’s Translation, and ended on 2 February, the feast of the Purification, the Marian statues were the focal points of the city’s attention As if living, they were borne

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Pace del Friuli, Brevis descriptio festi gloriosissime Virginis Mariae, in A. Vardanega, “La festa veneziana delle Marie in un poemetto latino di ‘Pace del Friuli,’” Rivista mariana Mater Dei 1 (1929): 51–59 (lines 75–76, 149–50). Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” 1: 527–66. See also Silvio Tramontin, “Una pagina di folklore religioso veneziano antico: La festa de ‘le Marie,’” in La Religiosità popolare nella valle padana: Atti del secondo convegno di studi sul folklore padana, Modena 19–21 marzo 1965 (Modena: ENAL 1966), pp. 401–17; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 135–56; Giovanni Musolino, “Culto Mariano,” in Silvio Tramontin (ed.), Culto dei santi a Venezia (Venice: Studium cattolico veneziano, 1965), pp. 256–60; Thomas Devaney, “Competing Spectacles in the Venetian Festa delle Marie,” Viator 39, no. 1 (2008): 107–25.

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through the canals in procession, courted by men with gifts, and hosted at lavish parties in the homes of the nobility.3 These, like other medieval effigies, confound the modern representational sensibility. Derived from the verb fingere – to form, fashion, contrive – along with the prefix ex-, the word effigies belongs to the same lexical family as the word fictio (fiction). Indeed an effigy is a form of fiction, but not one sustained through any appeal to verisimilitude. It is a mere stand-in, a mute replacement of the original in whose stead it is offered up. For this reason, medieval effigies have long preoccupied critics on the hunt for modes of representation different than that of mimesis, the gold standard of representation in both antiquity and modernity.4 The simple fact of the effigy’s perdurance – and not of the elements of ritual, sound, and movement that once surrounded it – gives the false impression that its power was independent from the context of its use. But medieval belief in the legitimacy of the effigy required an aesthetic dimension, a transformation of an idea into a perceptible experience in space and time. As with images and relics, something had always to be done with the effigy. It was only through use in ritual space that statues came to life for a community. Marian effigies especially tended to assume ritual functions; like relics and images, they were borne as props in processions, public games, and dramatic enactments.5 3

4

5

State interest in promoting this event is further suggested by a now missing document (ASV, Ufficiali allo Estraordinario, cod. 131, last document) dated 16 September 1342, in which the procurators of San Marco specify the terms of the commission to Paolo Veneziano to provide the decorations for the sacra rappresentazione. See Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970), p. 83. The provocation of the medieval effigy led several influential historians and art historians to their most groundbreaking work: the waxen idols of kings are the starting point for Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies and for Carlo Ginzburg’s Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance, translated by Martin Ryle and Kate Soper (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001); the problem of the effigy was what Ernst H. Gombrich was working out in his Meditations on a Hobby Horse, or the Roots of Artistic Form, in Lancelot Law White (ed.), Aspects of Form: A Symposium on Form in Nature and Art (London: Lund Humphries, 1951), pp. 209–24. More recently, art historians like Jacqueline Jung, in Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), and Shirin Fozi, in Romanesque Tomb Effigies: Death and Redemption in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021), have returned to the frameworks of representation that produced a medieval material culture rich in effigies. Most inquiries into the effigy begin from an art-historical stance, but there is a vast world of ritual and performance that remains largely unaccounted for in our understanding of the effigy, its functions, and reception in the Middle Ages. On the use of wooden Marian effigies in French medieval liturgical drama, see Ilene H. Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), chap. 2 (“Function”), esp. pp. 49–60.

Singing Effigies

Music, in particular, was inextricable from a community’s experience of these objects. Contemporary accounts of the Venetian Festa delle Marie reveal song to have been a constant accompaniment to the procession of the wooden statues. Poet Pace del Friuli describes the entire affair as having been “sung in grandiose ways” (grandiloquisque forent festa canenda modis).6 As with the icon of the Mesopanditissa in Venetian Crete, litanies, hymns, prayers, and sung vows were showered upon the statues as they were processed throughout the streets and canals over the course of several days. Within that spectacle, one moment of song stands out as a particularly concentrated form of music’s activation of statues. It is a moment in which an effigy opens its mouth and sings. Or so it must have seemed, I argue, within the sung enactment of the Annunciation performed at the church of Santa Maria Formosa (see Map 3).7 Despite the many facets of the feast, from around 1268 to 1379, the state threw its financial backing behind one in particular: a double procession that began in the contrada parishes, arrived at the Piazza San Marco, wound its way around to the Basilica San Marco, and terminated at the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where two clerics from the basilica, costumed as the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, performed a sung dialogue on the Annunciation theme. En route to the enactment, each procession stopped in front of the ducal palace, where the doge and costumed clerics exchanged silent greetings while accompanying clerics sang laudes to the doge. This chapter brings to light new evidence to suggest that the texts and melodies of the Venetian Annunciation can be convincingly reconstructed. This reconstruction was made possible by the rediscovery of several leaves that had been cut from the long-missing antiphoners from the Basilica San Marco. Using these leaves alongside surviving contextual evidence, I show how the dialogue might have been manufactured out of the chant repertory of the ducal liturgy. I argue that these chants were drawn from various liturgical contexts and reworked into a an entirely fresh version of the Annunciation story.8 Particularly compelling is the combined effect of the procession’s sung drama and visual opulence. A study of early fourteenth-century inventories 6 7

8

Pace del Friuli, Descriptio festi Virginis, line 10. The entire set of festivities grew up around the parish celebration of Santa Maria Formosa, the church that remained the core station of all the itineraries of the Festa delle Marie. Edward Muir calls the relationship worked out between Santa Maria Formosa and the Festa delle Marie in Venetian historiography “tortuously complex,” but he provides an overview (Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, pp. 135–41). Despite Susan Rankin’s important study of the dramatic Easter ceremony at San Marco, there has been little engagement since with the idiosyncratic dramatic practices at the ducal

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from the basilica treasury, alongside government decrees and eyewitness reports, indicates that the procurators of San Marco went to great lengths to make the clerics dressed as Gabriel and Mary visually consonant with the twelve Marian effigies that were the core devotional objects of the feast. The combination of a long, silent procession in which the clerics were toted around the city, looking much like statues, and the sudden sung drama upon crossing the threshold of the church created a marvelous, performed commentary on the central themes of the feast. Throughout this chapter, I argue that the Festa delle Marie fostered a special synthesis between music and the plastic arts. Perhaps more than any other celebration, the feast reveals how much the Venetian musical imagination centered on the material artifacts of the city and sought to expand and interpret those artifacts through song. As in Part I of this book, we find the laudes used to validate the legitimacy of representations (there, administrations and icons; here, doges and statues) and affirm their likeness to prototypes (there, Venice and Mary; here, Mary and Mark) for which they are substitutes. When Pace del Friuli, in his Descriptio festi gloriosissime Virginis Mariae (ca. 1310), maintains that any praise given to the Marian effigies was praise rendered to the Virgin herself, he references a definition of the effigy grounded in the medieval theory of images.9 The author of the Venetian Chronicle of Marco also explicitly refers to the Marian statues as “ymagines,” and multiple sources attest that the very point of bringing these effigies into the city’s midst was to render the Marys “laudes,” or praise.10 While all scholarship on the Festa delle Marie takes the image, or effigy, as the primary object of analysis, this chapter shifts the focus toward the praise, and toward the ways the effigyobject resonated in musical and dramatic forms.

Inventing a Venetian Annunciation Our first evidence for the feast’s existence arises in 1143, when Doge Pietro Polani published a decree stipulating the proper processional route for the eve of the feast of the Purification. The clergy of San

9

10

chapel. Susan Rankin, “From Liturgical Ceremony to Public Ritual: ‘Quem Queritis’ at St. Mark’s, Venice,” in Giulio Cattin (ed.), Da Bisanzio a San Marco: Musica e liturgia (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1997), pp. 137–91. On image theory, see Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). The Chronicle of Marco, written in Venice in 1292, exists in a single manuscript source: BMV, MS Ital. Cl. XI 124 (=6802).

Inventing a Venetian Annunciation

Pietro di Castello and the ducal chapel were to walk to the church of Santa Maria Formosa to hear Vespers. The decree makes no mention of any procession having occurred the day before or of any play having taken place there.11 The Festa delle Marie began as a celebration of Mary in her role as mother of God and mother of the Church more generally.12 But in the 1260s – the decade the Tuesday procession of the Mesopanditissa was instituted in the colonies – elements of the Festa delle Marie came tightly under the state’s control, and the subject matter of the ceremony was made to encompass the doge through his association with the cult of Saint Mark. The feast was expanded to include 30 and 31 January, the feast of Saint Mark’s Translation to Venice and its vigil. Like the feast of the Apparition, whose liturgical office will be the topic of Chapter 4, it was a feast that was invented from whole cloth under the dogado of Ranieri Zeno (r. 1253–68) as part of an intense phase of development of Mark’s cult and its expression in state art and ceremony.13 The feast of the Translation is first mentioned by Martin da Canal in his Les estoires de Venise. His eyewitness account of the ceremonies as they occurred on 31 January 1268 forms the basis of my reconstruction of the dialogue and its music (reproduced in full in Table 3.1). Canal introduces the feast with the observation: “You know, sirs, that the last day of January is the feast and the procession is double” (Sachés, signors, que le derain jor de jener est la feste et la procession doble). “Double” since two separate groups processed from the Piazza San Marco to the church of Santa Maria Formosa: a priest “de dras de dame” (dressed as the Virgin) marched in the first procession, while another representing Gabriel, “aparillés a la guise d’un angle,” formed part of the second. Both men were carried in procession on decorative thrones. As the first procession passed beneath the ducal palace, three priests from the group stepped onto a raised platform where they sang the laudes to Doge Zeno “a haute vois” (in a loud voice). The priest dressed as Mary then approached the platform to “salute” the doge, who returned the gesture, after which the entire group continued to 11 12

13

La costitutione del Febbraio 1143, 124–28. For the development of the feast over the two centuries of its documented existence, see Tramontin, “Pagina di folklore,” pp. 401–17. The dogado of Ranieri Zeno therefore gives us a terminus ante quem for the introduction of the Annunciation exchange within the Festa delle Marie celebrations. We will study this civic campaign, and another new feast that arose from it – the Apparition of Mark – in Chapter 4. For the translation and its integration within the Venetian cult of Saint Mark, see Tramontin, Culto dei santi, pp. 54–58.

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Table 3.1 Description of 31 January procession from Piazza San Marco to Santa Maria Formosa [XCIII] Sachés, signors, que le derain jor de jener est la feste et la procession doble, que l’unde de ces .ij contrees dont je vos ai fait mencion s’en vienent li damosiaus et li homes d’aage en aive au palés de monsignor li dus et desendent en seche terre et donent plus de .d. banieres as petis enfans et les envoient a .ij. a .ij tres devant l’iglise de monsignor saint Marc. Et après vont greignors enfans et portent en lor mains plus de .c. cruis d’arjant. Et après vont la clergie, trestos vestus de pluvials et de samit a or, et les tronbes et les chinbes ; et vient un clerc en la rote apareillés de dras de dame, trestuit a or. Et siet celui clerc desor lor espaules, et devant et encoste les confanons a or ; et li clers vont chantant la procession. Endementiers que il vont ensi, issent .iij. clers de la procession et la ou il voient monsignor li dus as fenestres de son palés, en la conpagnie des nobles veneciens, il montent desor un dois et chantent a haute vois et dient tuit ensi :

– Criste vince, Criste regne, Criste inpere: nostre signor Ranier Gen, Des grace inclit dus de Venise, Dalmace et Groace, et dominator quarte part et demi de tot l’enpire de Romanie, sauvement, honor, vie et victoire : saint Marc, tu le aïe ! – Et quant les loenges sunt finees, il desendent desor li dois et monsignor li dus lor fait geter a val de ses mehailles a planté, et il s’en retornent en procession aveuc les autres, que totesvoies les atendoient. Et lors vient avant li clerc que porte corone d’or et est aparillés si richement con je vos ai conté; et quant il est tres parmi monsignor li dus, si le salue et il li rent son salus. Et lors s’en vont avant ciaus que le portent desor les espaules et sivent la procession, et s’en vont en l’iglise de nostre dame sainte Marie et atendent tant illeuc, que ciaus de l’autre contree vienent tot en tel manière,

[XCIII] You must know, gentlemen, that on the last day of January, the feast and the procession are twice as long, because the young men and the older men from one of the two parishes I mentioned come by water to the doge’s palace and then come ashore, giving out more than five hundred banners to the small children and then send them, two by two, right in front of the church of Monseignor St Mark. And behind them come the clergy, all dressed in copes of samite interwoven with gold, and then the trumpets and cymbals come, and finally, among the crowd there is one cleric who is dressed in women’s clothing, all woven with gold. And this cleric sits on a richly decorated chair supported on the shoulders of four men, and banners of gold are placed in front and to the sides of them, and the clerics proceed forth, singing. And as they advance in this manner, three clerics make their way out of the procession and when they see Monseignor the doge at the window of his palace, accompanied by all the nobles of Venice, they mount upon a dais, and they sing in a loud voice, all saying as follows: – Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands: to our lord Renieri Zeno who, by the grace of God, illustrious doge of Venice, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and lord over one quarter and a half of one quarter of the entire empire of Romania: health, honor, life and victory. St Mark, may you aid him! – And when the eulogy is finished, they come down from the dais and the doge makes them scatter a large number of his coins and then they return to the procession with the others, who are waiting for them. And then the cleric comes forth who is wearing the golden crown and who is clothed so richly in women’s clothing, as I have described to you; and when he comes near the doge, he greets him, and the doge returns the greeting. And those who were carrying him on their shoulders come forward and follow the procession and enter into the church of our Lady Holy Mary and wait there

que de banieres que de cruis que de prestres, et funt chante .iij. clers autretel loenges tres devant monsignor li dus, con firent les autres ; et monsignor li dus lor fait geter de ses mehailles. Et sachés que monsignor li dus est vestus a or, et a corone d’or en son chief. Et a veoir cest procession que se fait a henor de Nostre Dame, sont li gentis homes de Venise et tos li peuple et grant planté de dames et de damoselles, et entrevoies et desor li Palés en sunt a planté. [XCIV] Quant il trois clers ont chanté les loenges de monsignor li dus tot en tel manière con ont fait les autres que s’en alerent devant, il se mistrent en la procesion ; et lors vient avant un autre clerc, que seoit desor une chaere, mult richement aparillés a la guise d’une angle, et le portent desor les espaules .iiij. homes. Et quant il fu parmi ou monsignor li dus estoit, il le salue et monsignor li dus li rent son salus. Et après se, il s’en vont en la procession que les clers vont chantant ; en sachés que andeus les processions ont bons destrenceors, et clers et lais. Et tant s’en vont, que il entrent en l’iglise de nostre dame sainte Marie ; et quant celui clers qu’est aparillés en senefiance de angle est entrés dedens l’iglise et il voit l’autre qu’est aparillés en senefiance de la virge Marie, il se lieve en estant et dit tot ensi : [XCV] – Ave Marie, ploine de grace, le Signor est aveuc toi, beneoite entre les femes et beneoit li fruit de ton ventre : ce dit nostre Sire. – Et celui que en senefiance de Nostre Dame est aparillés respont et dist : – Coment peut ce estre, angle Dei, en parce que je ne conois home, por avoir enfant ? – Et li angles li redit : – Spirit Saint desent en toi, Marie : n’aies paor, auras dedens ton ventre le fils Dieu. – Et cele li respont et dist : – Et je sui ancelle dou Signor : viegne a moi selonc ta parole. – [XCVI] Que vos diroie je? Aprés ceste parole s’en issent chascun de cele iglise et s’en vont en lor maison.

until all those from the other parishes come in the same way, with the banners and the crosses and the priests, and three clerics sing the same praises to the doge, and the doge has them scatter coins. And you should know that the doge wears clothes that are woven with gold and a golden crown on his head. And all the noblemen of Venice, and the common people, and a great many ladies and young women come out to see the procession in honor of Our Lady, and along the route to the palace there are many spectators. [XCIV] When the three clerics have sung their praises to the doge in the same way as those who have gone before them, they join the procession. And then another cleric comes forward who is sitting on a chair, very richly clothed in the guise of an angel, and he is supported on the shoulders of four men. And when he comes to where Monseignor the doge is, he greets him, and Monseignor the doge returns his greeting. And after this they join the procession where the clerics are singing, and you should know that both of the processions have good leaders, both clerical and lay. And they proceed until they enter into the church of Our Lady Blessed Mary, and when the cleric who is dressed to represent an angel enters the church and sees the other who is dressed as the Virgin Mary, he stands up and says: [XCV] – Haily Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb so says our Lord. – And he who was dressed to represent Our Lady responds and says: – How can it be, Angel of God, that I will have a child, since I do not know a man? – And the angel says again, – The Holy Spirit is descending upon you, Mary. Do not be afraid; you will carry the Son of God in your womb. – And she responds and says, – I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it happen to me as you have said. – [XCVI] After this response, everyone leaves the church and goes home.

From Martin da Canal, Les estoires de Venise (1267–75), ed. Alberto Limentani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1972), 254–56.

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Santa Maria Formosa. The same sequence of events was enacted by the second procession: three priests repeated the laudes to Zeno, and the “Gabriel” priest and the doge saluted one another in turn. Once both groups had arrived at Santa Maria Formosa, the priests costumed as the Virgin and Gabriel entered the church, where they enacted the sacred drama of the Annunciation (see XCV in Table 3.1). At the play’s conclusion, the populace filed out of the church and returned to the various homes that hosted each individual effigygies. Beginning at the end of Canal’s account, with the play itself, we notice that, although the sung exchange happens inside the space of Santa Maria Formosa, it does not belong to a liturgical service. Canal makes no mention of any other activity being held within; the enactors of the drama and the priests that accompany them merely wait (“s’en vont en l’iglise de nostre dame sainte Marie et atendent tant illeuc”). Once the second procession arrives, the cleric dressed as Mary stands, and the dialogue takes place (“dedens l’iglise et il voit l’autre qu’est aparillés en senefiance de la virge Marie, il se lieve en estant et dit tot ensi”). After the enactment, the church is vacated (“Aprés ceste parole s’en issent chascun de cele iglise et s’en vont en lor maison”).14 Freedom from the liturgy is part of what makes this particular sung dialogue of the Annunciation so distinct within the medieval dramatic corpus, even as it emerged as part of a broader regional trend toward enacting the Annunciation in the late thirteenth century.15 It is likely also a factor behind the absence of a liturgical 14

15

An act from October 1288 suggests – however vaguely – that the two cleric-actors participated in a liturgical function a day or two after the enactment took place. The act simply refers to the day “quando Maria et Angelus et quando Dominus Dux vadit ad vesperas ad sanctam Mariam Formosam” (ASV, M.C. Zaneta, fol. 53r). This raises the possibility of some involvement of the costumed clerics either on the eve of the Purification or on the feast itself, both being occasions on which the doge walked in procession to Santa Maria Formosa to hear Vespers. We know from a surviving consuetudinary from the basilica that six canons accompanied the doge to Santa Maria Formosa on both occasions. It is reasonable to imagine that the clerics costumed as the angel and Mary ranked among these six (“Item in vigilia purificationis s. Marie debent sex canonici sociare eum ad S. Mariam Formosam ad vesperum et sequenti die, scilicet in festo, sex cum eo in buco debent ire solummodo de maioribus per choro”). Bianca Betto, Il capitolo della basilica di S. Marco in Venezia: Statuti e consuetudini dei primi decenni del sec. xiv (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1984), p. 182. In fact, sacred representations of the Annunciation emerge only in this period, and nowhere was this trend more concentrated than in Italy’s northeastern corner. The bestknown expression of the theme is in the so-called Aurea Missa tradition that flourished throughout the later Middle Ages. Another interesting early example is the Annunciation scene nested within the larger Benediktbeuern Christmas play (see Bevington, Medieval Drama, pp. 189–90).

Inventing a Venetian Annunciation

book to transmit it. Without a textual or notated source, scholars have been limited to generalizations about the dialogue’s musical and textual features. Its relationship to better-known members of a family of sacred representations on the Annunciation theme, which emerge at precisely this time and place in Italy’s northeastern corner, has been assumed.16 But the Venetian Annunciation is in fact quite distinct from other usages in the Veneto – or anywhere else, for that matter – melodically, conceptually, and dramatically. Internal evidence suggests that we can plausibly reconstruct the text of the dialogue and the melodies to which they were sung. Looking at section XCV of Canal’s account, we find that each line of dialogue, reported in French, corresponds to an existing Latin antiphon. This amounts to five antiphons comprising the drama, all standard fare for Marian feasts, and all well represented within San Marco’s office repertory. Table 3.2 gives the Latin chant text in column 2 alongside the French chronicle transcript in column 1. Where applicable, column 4 includes the Gospel verse from which the text of the dialogue is derived. Between the chant texts, we have Canal’s own reporting on the exchange between Gabriel and Mary. Two of these texts provide especially compelling evidence that what Canal has recorded is a direct transcript of the enactment as it occurred in the year 1268. “Beneoite entre les femes et beneoit li fruit de ton ventre” is simply a vernacularization of the chant Benedicta tu in mulieribus. Importantly, this text does not belong to Luke’s Gospel narrative of the Annunciation, but is borrowed from the scene of the Visitation between Mary and Elizabeth. This greeting came to be associated with Gabriel’s salutation (Ave Maria, gratia plena, the first chant here) through the elaboration of the Ave Maria prayer in the twelfth century, and through the frequency of both chants in the growing number of Marian liturgical devotions.17 In the thirteenth century, it was widely used for Marian celebrations, including that of the Annunciation and the Purification. 16

17

Cattin imagined the Venetian and Paduan enactments to have been identical. Giulio Cattin, “Tra Padova e Cividale: Nuova fonte per la drammaturgia sacra nel Medioevo,” Il Saggiatore musicale 1, no. 1 (1994): 7–112 (nn. 13–14). This “tradition” is comprised of a thirteenthcentury play found in the processional-ordinal belonging to the Padua Cathedral and another found in the fifteenth-century processional from the Cividale Cathedral, both performed on the feast of the Annunciation. See also Edmond de Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques du Moyen Âge: Texte et musique (Paris: Didron, 1861), p. 280. We will have occasion to look more closely at the circulation of this antiphon within the Marian celebrations at San Marco.

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Table 3.2 Martin da Canal’s 31 January account and the San Marco antiphonal corpus

Martin da Canal

Corresponding chant and Cantus ID

Feast and MS source

Textual source

Mode assignment

Ave Maria, ploine de grace, le Signor est aveuc toi,

Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum. Cantus ID 1041

Annunciation (VAM 115, fol. 154r) De BVM (ASV 119, no folio)

Luke 1:28

7

beneoite entre les femes et beneoit li fruit de ton ventre:

Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Cantus ID 1709

De BMV (ASV 119, no folio) Advent (VAM 114, fol. 12v) Purification (VAM 115, fol. 116v) Annunciation (VAM 115, fol. 156v) Assumption (VAM¹, fol. 84v) Nativity of the Virgin (VAM¹, fol. 98r)

Luke 1:42

4 or 7

ce dit nostre Sire. Et celui que en senefiance de Nostre Dame est aparillés respont et dist:

NONE

–

–

–

Coment peut ce estre, angle Dei, en parce que je ne conois home, por avoir enfant?

Quomodo fiet istud, angele dei, quia uirum in concipiendo non pertuli? Cantus ID 204210

Advent (VAM 114, fol. 32r) Annunciation (VAM 115, fol. 161r)

Luke 1:34

7

Et li angles li redit:

et respondens angelus dixit ei

–

Luke 1:35

–

Spirit Saint desent en toi, Marie: n’aies paor, auras dedens ton ventre le fils Dieu.

Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit Maria ne timeas habebis in utero filium dei. Cantus ID 5006

De BMV (ASV 119, no folio) Advent (VAM 114, fol. 10r) Annunciation (VAM 115, fols. 154 r and 154v)

*Nonbiblical chant source!

8

Et cele li respont et dist: Et je sui ancelle dou Signor: viegne a moi selonc ta parole.

NONE Ecce ancilla domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. Cantus ID 2491

– Advent (VAM 114, fol. 44v) Annunciation (VAM 115, fol. 158r)

– Luke 1:38

– 8

Note: Cantus ID numbers are drawn from Debra Lacoste, Terence Bailey, and Ruth Steiner, Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant – Inventories of Chant Sources, accessed 12 February 2023, https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca.

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The next clue is the angel’s response to Mary’s expression of surprise. “Spirit Saint desent en toi, Marie: n’aies paor, auras dedens ton ventre le fils Dieu” vernacularizes the antiphon Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit, word for word. Unlike Benedicta tu in mulieribus, this text has no biblical source but is known exclusively as an antiphon (see Table 3.2, column 4). In the San Marco liturgy, it appears twice for the Annunciation vigil: first, as the Magnificat antiphon for First Vespers, and later as the third antiphon of the first nocturn of Matins. It is also the Benedictus antiphon used on the first Sunday of Advent (see Table 3.2, column 3). Four of the five antiphons that comprise the play (Ave Maria, Benedicta tu in mulieribus, Spiritus sanctus in te descendet, and Ecce ancilla domini ) survive with notation in San Marco sources that are still consultable in one way or another. Ave Maria survives only with serious lacunae (these sections are blocked in white in the transcription of Example 3.1). Column 3 of Table 3.2 shows both the liturgical placement and manuscript source of each chant. We know from Giulio Cattin’s catalogue of the San Marco antiphoners that the remaining chant, Quomodo fiet istud, was also in use at San Marco, both as a Saturday antiphon during the third week of Advent and as the Benedictus antiphon at Lauds for the feast of the Annunciation. Because this is a chant shared in common between the Paduan and Venetian Annunciation enactments, and because these enactments are contemporary to one another, I have adopted the Padua melody in my reconstruction of the Venetian dialogue.18 In the first quarter of the fourteenth century, the ducal chancery undertook the copying of the entire corpus of chants used for the canonical hours at San Marco, organized into six volumes (Venice, Archivio di Stato, Procuratori di San Marco de supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 113–18, hereafter VAM 113–18), known as the San Marco antiphoners. We will deal more closely with some of the products of this chancery initiative in the next two chapters. In the mid-1990s, the antiphoners disappeared from the Archivio di Stato (ASV), where they had been kept since the nineteenth century.19 Thanks to Cattin’s 18

19

Giuseppe Vecchi, Uffici Drammatici Padovani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1954), p. 68. The entire Padua drama is reproduced and transcribed at pp. 66–75. The theft occurred in November 1996, not long after the antiphoners had been displayed at the exhibition I libri di San Marco: I manoscritti liturgici della basilica marciana at the Libreria Sansoviniana (22 April–30 June 1995). A catalogue was published by il Cardo that April, in conjunction with the exhibition.

Inventing a Venetian Annunciation

Example 3.1 Reconstruction of Annunciation dialogue From ASV 119; VAM 115; Pad C 55; Vienna 1799

four-volume catalogue of the liturgical books of San Marco, which include musical transcriptions of twelve especially unique offices, scholars have been able to reckon, to a limited degree, with the office repertory of the basilica through the incipits and Corpus

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Antiphonalium Officii (CAO) concordances that the study provides. In some cases, incomplete and damaged microfilm images of sections of the antiphoners fill in gaps in our knowledge of the chant melodies. In 2019, I identified sixty nonconsecutive leaves in Princeton University’s special collections as having been cut from the San Marco antiphoners.20 By coincidence, two antiphons, on separate leaves, from among the sixty that have been recovered, belong to the Annunciation drama: Benedicta tu in mulieribus and Ecce ancilla domini. A poorly preserved microfilm of ASV 119 (Procuratori di San Marco de supra, s. Chiesa, reg. 119), a source closely related to the San Marco antiphoners, transmits a melody for Benedicta tu in mulieribus that is identical to the one found in VAM 115, confirming with a greater degree of certainty that this was the melody associated with the text at the basilica.21 ASV Reg. 119 also transmits a melody for Ave Maria gratia plena as the invitatory antiphon for the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Matins office. The photograph of this particular folio is quite poor, such that the melody can be reconstructed only in part. Approaching the play at the level of mode, we notice the chants belong almost exclusively to the tetrardus. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, a mode 4 melody as it appears in both VAM 115 and ASV 119, immediately stands out as discrepant in this regard. Generally speaking, there is nothing unusual about the coexistence of chants of different modes in a sacred representation. Yet here in the Venetian Annunciation exchange – an utterly sui generis composition within the medieval dramatic corpus – there may have been a lower threshold of tolerance for modal shifts, given the fact that all these antiphons are directly exchanged, with no intervening narration or spoken commentary. Sticking within a tetrardus modal universe could have helped bind the whole together. From that vantage, the mode 4 melody of Benedicta tu in mulieribus seems less than ideal – all the more so because the angel is meant to sing the two opening antiphons back to back, as if one continuous speech. There is an available, if hypothetical, solution that would give greater melodic flow to the two halves of Gabriel’s opening statement. Benedicta tu in 20

21

My identification of these leaves was made in the context of collaboration with Susan Forscher Weiss’s 2019 graduate seminar at Princeton and its students: John Ahern, Genevieve AlloteyPappoe, Carla Bond, Sophie Brady, Marcel Camprubì, Joyce Chen, Hannah McLaughlin, John Swedberg, Calvin Van Zytveld, and Jianyu Zhao. ASV 119 consists of a single bifolium of chants and prayers for the Office of the Blessed Virgin, also from the fourteenth century, and likely an addendum to the antiphoner project (possibly contemporary to the Apparitio additions discussed in Chapters 4 and 5).

Inventing a Venetian Annunciation

mulieribus was most widely known in mode 4 but is not uncommonly found in mode 7. The two versions have much in common, sharing a general melodic contour.22 Apart from its use in the Annunciation office and that of the BVM, Benedicta tu in mulieribus occurs in four other places in the San Marco liturgy – in every major Marian observance. We cannot know whether any of these were in mode 7, since none of these feasts is represented in the antiphoner fragments that survive.23 Given the good musical sense this transposition to the tetrardus makes, however – not to mention the ease with which a trained singer could have made the modal adjustment – I have supplied a mode 7 melody from a contemporary source (Vienna 1799) in the transcription (Example 3.1). The result is a particularly strong parallelism between the two halves of Gabriel’s announcement, built from the antiphon pair. Both chants are comprised of three melodic phrases, though Ave Maria gratia plena is much elongated through melisma (phrase 2 of Ave Maria begins on “gratia” and phrase 3 on “dominus”; phrase 2 of Benedicta tu begins on “et” and phrase 3 on “fructus”). The shared contours give some clues as to how the lacunae of Ave Maria might be resolved: one certainly wants an a after the f over “do-,” consistent with phrase 3 of Benedicta tu and in avoidance of the f-b tritone. The lacuna over “te-” of “tecum” could easily have furnished an a-b, producing a cadence nearly matching that of Benedicta tu. The large illegible area over “gra-” of “gratia” is a more substantial loss, but it seems reasonable to imagine that the melisma would dwell around the b to d area, a modally appropriate contrast to the opening and closing phrases.24 Several other musical and textural features lend the exchange dramatic power, despite its generic strangeness. Among the five antiphons, rhyming cadences occur between chants 1 and 2 (“dominus tecum” [though much elaborated] and “fructus ventris tui”) and between chants 4 and 5 (“filium dei” and “verbum tuum”). Significantly, the middle antiphon, Quomodo fiet, features the only question of the dialogue. Its contrasting gestures in both the opening and closing phrases create an 22

23

24

The mode 7 version sees the first half of the chant up a fourth, with slightly more variation in the second half. This includes the Annunciation, Purification, Nativity of the Virgin, Assumption, and the third Thursday of Advent. On theme types of the tetrardus antiphons, see Walter Howard Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century with a Dissertation and Analytical Index, 6 vols. (London: Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, 1901–24), 1: 72–73.

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immediate musical distinction between the two characters. Mary’s response to Gabriel stands in simple contrast to the angel’s two ornate antiphons. It is tempting, even, to hear something questioning in the two-note neumes that gently decorate almost every iteration of d. In her second “speech,” the final antiphon of the enactment, the cadence ([f]-f-a-a-g-g) over “verbum tuum” matches the “filium dei” of the angel’s response precisely, serving almost as a musical icon of Mary’s consent. A distinctive, indeed, unusual context for the exchange, one that we have already alluded to here, makes these musical linkages desirable: unlike the office at the cathedral of Padua to which the Venice enactment is most often compared, there is no deacon involved to provide the narrative framework of the Gospel (Table 3.3).25 Mary and Gabriel exchange chanted dialogue in something akin to free and direct discourse. The result is a highly condensed version of the angelic encounter, the texts of which are drawn only incidentally from Luke’s Gospel by way of the chant repertory that furnishes its building blocks. Texts properly belonging to Elizabeth are put in the mouth of Gabriel, and nonbiblical texts that fit the theme are worked in. It is a dramatic bricolage, where chants have been uprooted from their liturgical context and repurposed for the sake of dramatic representation. The use of the invitatory Ave Maria gratia plena ushers in the dramatic action through a decisive gesture of beginning that derives both from its liturgical source (the first major chant of the Matins office) and from its abundantly melismatic setting. The antiphons that follow, though less melismatic, are distinguished by the fact that they were all reserved for some special function, either the Benedictus at Lauds or the Magnificat at Vespers, or, in the case of Benedicta tu in mulieribus, were simply so common as to have been a musical icon of the Virgin (see column 3 of Table 3.2 for the liturgical assignments of these chants).26

25

26

For a description of the Paduan Annunciation enactment within the cathedral’s larger festal and processional context, see Antonio Lovato, “Le processioni della Cattedrale di Padova nei secoli xiii–xv,” in Giulio Cattin and Anna Vildera (eds.), Il “Liber Ordinarium” della Chiesa Padovana: Padova, Biblioteca Capitolare, ms. E 57, sec. XIII (Padua: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 2002), pp. cix–clxxxiii, esp. cxvii–cxviii. Although I furnish the melody transmitted in the leaf recovered from the San Marco antiphoners, this version is not the Spiritus sanctus in te descendet used as a Magnificat antiphon at San Marco, but rather the version used in the first nocturn of Matins for the feast of the Annunciation. It is thus possible that the version of Spiritus sanctus in te descendet used in the Annunciation exchange would have been more elaborate than the one transcribed here.

Table 3.3 Martin da Canal’s 31 January account and the Padua Annunciation exchange Martin da Canal

Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus.

Quomodo fiet istud, angele dei, quia uirum in concipiendo non pertuli? Et li angles li redit: Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit Maria ne timeas habebis in utero filium dei. Ecce ancilla domini, fiat michi secundum uerbum tuum.

Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS C 55, fols. 36v−39r Post eat GABRIEL, flexis genibus, duobus digitis manus dextre eleuatis, alta uoce incipiat infrascriptam antiphonam. Ave, Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus. Finita antiphona, DIACONVS ultra prosequitur in euangelio usque: Et ait angelus ei. Hoc finito ANGELVS iterum stante manu dextra eleuata tota aperta incipiat infrascriptam antiphonam. Ne timeas, Maria; inuenisti gratiam apud dominum; ecce concipies et paries filium. Finita antiphona, DIACONVS ultra prosequitur usque: Dixit autem Maria ad angelum. Hoc finito, MARIA plana uoce respondeat infrascriptam antiphonam. Quomodo fiet istud, angele dei, quia uirum in concipiendo non pertuli?

Finita antiphona, DIACONVS ultra prosequitur usque: Et respondens angelus dixit ei; et ANGELVS iterum incipiat infrascriptum uersum. Audi, Maria, Cristi uirgo, spiritus sanctus superueniet in te, et uirtus altissimi obumbrabit tibi.

Sed cum peruenerit ad locum, scilicet: Spiritus sanctus superueniet in, tunc columba aliquantulum ostendatur. Finito uersu, iterum DIACONVS prosequatur usque: Dixit autem Maria ad angelum. Hoc finito, MARIA eleuet se, et stando brachiis apertis alta uoce incipiat: Ecce ancilla; ante finem dicte antiphone columba dimittatur et MARIA recipiat dictam sub clamide. Magnificat anima mea dominum. Et exultauit spiritus meus in deo salutari meo. Quia respexit umilitatem ancille sue; ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes. Hiis finitis cum organo respondeatur unus uersus et a CHORO aliud; sic ultra prosequendo usque ad finem et hiis finitis omnes reuertantur ad sacristiam.

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Making Statues Sing Quae enim estactoris infantia, qui mutam illam effigiem magis quam orationem pro se putet locuturam? What depths of incompetence must there be for a pleader who thinks a mute image will speak for him better than his own words! Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 3.34–35

All accounts agree that the Marian effigies appeared sublime as they were processed through the city. Giorgio Dolfin’s Cronaca di Venezia dall’origine sua fino all’anno 1458 describes how the statues were decorated with the same jewels that were displayed on the high altar during the Basilica San Marco’s most important feasts.27 There is good documentary evidence to corroborate Dolfin’s history; a late thirteenth-century book of legislation compiled by the Grand Council shows that, in 1272, the procurators of San Marco were loaning out the treasury’s jewelry to be worn by the Marian statues, and that, in 1278, a similar, presumably annual loan was made of twelve crowns. A deliberation from March 1303 granted the two contrade (districts) responsible for sponsoring the year’s festivities use of precious stones that otherwise hung upon an icon of Saint Mark.28 Readying these statues – a task that entailed handling some of the most prized objects in the ducal chapel and treasury – must have been a spectacular affair in and of itself. Preparations began a full month before the celebrations started in earnest.29 By the feast of Saint Paul (25 January), the statues were to be dressed and ready for display in the homes of the nobility (“quod Marie veniant in die sancti Pauli furnite sicut solebant et non aliter”).30 Deliberations made by various legislative bodies suggest that the month of January was, on the whole, one of busy preparation. The majority of surviving records bear January dates and give the impression of 27

28

29

30

“Quelle XII corone et XII pectorali d’oro varnidi di pretiose zoglie li che sono entro el santuario de san Marcho che se mette da le feste principal suxo l’altar grando de san Marcho quelle erano in ornamento cum le qual se adorvano le dicte XII Marie.” Giorgio Dolfin, Cronaca di Venezia dall’origine sua fino all’anno 1458, BMV, MS Ital. Cl. VII, cod. 794=8503, fol. 54r; Rodolfo Gallo, Il tesoro di San Marco e la sua storia (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1967), pp. 199–201; Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” 1: 543. “Quod de lapidibus imaginis praetiosis S. Marci possint accomodari cum bono pignore pro aptatione Mariarum.” ASV, C. Leggi, B. 206, fol. 278r, March 1303; Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” 1: 543. On the month before, see Tramontin, “Pagina di folklore,” p. 406: “Le case designate dovevano essere preparate dal 31 dicembre, secondo un decreto degli inizi del 1300 citato dal Cicogna (La festa . . . cit., p25 in nota).” Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse,” 1: 537.

Making Statues Sing

much ado being made about the effigies and their decoration. Over the course of several weeks, a huge degree of attention was paid to the Marian effigies as physical objects. An even closer study of these records indicates that not only the twelve effigies but also the clerics representing Mary and Gabriel ranked among the conspicuous and highly adorned objects of the celebration. A decree from January 1302 states that the basilica’s gems were also to be made available to those designing the seats on which Mary and the angel would be carried.31 A now-lost document dated 16 September 1342 suggests that a “Paulus pinctor,” whom Michelangelo Muraro convincingly argues was Paolo Veneziano, was engaged to design and execute Mary and Gabriel’s thrones.32 According to the document, Veneziano’s salary was to match that of his predecessor, who had just died. In other words, if we are to accept Muraro’s argument, as most scholars have, the state hired its most renowned painter to furnish props for the representation. Veneziano is referred to as “Pictor nostri Dominii” in the 1342 document, as Giovanni Bellini would be later. More commonly known for the monumental art he produced for the state – for the high altar of San Marco and for the tomb of a doge – Veneziano was thus also called on to create ephemeral art for state ceremony.33 If the contract was “of a continuative nature,” as Muraro takes it to mean, a new set of props, 31

32

33

“Un altro decreto del 29 gennaio 1302 m.v. (ASV, Liber Magnus, registro 3, fol. 79v) concede che dietro pegno le gioie e le pietre preziose possano prestarsi anche per la cattedra di Maria e dell’Angelo.” Tramontin, “Pagina di folklore,” p. 405. “Per nobiles viros dominos Anthonium Bon, dominum Marinum Zeno et dominum Petrum Pisani officiales extraordinarios, constitutus et positus fuit ser Paulus pinctor et tanquam actor et factor cathedre Marie vel Angeli que datur contratis habentibus Mariam et Angelum per singulos annos cum salario et provisione quam habebat ser Premarcus Moro S. M. Jubanico, qui mortuus est.” This is the now missing document (ASV, Ufficiali allo Estraordinario, cod. 131, last document) dated to 16 September 1342 in which the procurators of San Marco specify the terms of the commission to Veneziano to provide the decorations for the sacra rappresentazione. See Muraro, Paolo da Venezia, p. 83. His most famous work is the ferial cover for the altar of San Marco, but he also painted the lunette for the tomb of Francesco Dandolo in the Frari Church. It is worth flagging Andrea Dandolo’s involvement in all of these projects; Dandolo had recently hired Veneziano to design Doge Francesco Dandolo’s tomb monument, and he would later have the artist compose the Pala feriale. See Muraro, Paolo da Venezia. A ceremony like the Festa delle Marie blurs the boundaries between concepts of monumentality and ephemerality; the statues were wooden – they had, after all, to be carried over long periods of time – but they were blanketed in some of the most precious objects the treasury possessed, as were the thrones that apparently, at least sometimes, saw a single use. On the monumental side of things, this same decade saw two nearly life-sized effigies of the angel Gabriel and Mary placed on either side of the high altar; intended as permanent fixtures, they nonetheless referred to the ephemeral performance of the Annunciation enacted annually.

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costumes, and scenery would have accompanied each year’s enactment.34 Novelty was a sought-after effect. An inventory from the treasury of San Marco dating between 1325 and 1333 lends more specificity to the kind of material opulence that would have attended the actors of the Annunciation and the furnishings on which they were carried. It includes two silver “cherubinos,” decorated in pearls and stones of glass, which were set aside to be carried by Gabriel and Mary.35 Tellingly, these items are listed right below the crowns and necklaces (gorzeriam), twelve in number, also covered in gemstones and pearls. This suggests that the effigies and the actors were costumed in a similar style and with matching jewelry. There was, in both cases, heightened attention to the trappings and ornaments through which the actors and effigies were presented. (According to both Canal’s and Pace del Friuli’s descriptions of the doge’s appearance in these ceremonies, he, too, was practically gilded.) In other words, the degree of visual consonance between the silent actors of the Annunciation, carried on platforms at the head of each processional line on 31 January, and the effigies, “quasi viva,” processed through the city throughout the three days of the feast, would have signaled a categorical sameness between the two kinds of representations. A deliberation made by the Grand Council on 2 January 1329 (1328 m.v.) offers a tantalizing hint about the degree to which the actors were meant to appear like statues. The document relates to the moment each procession arrived at the ducal palace and the costumed clerics were brought before the doge. The decree indicates, “Mary and the angel should not lift themselves from their seats when in the presence of the lord doge, who were in the custom of lifting themselves up.”36 The reason for this deliberation is not made explicit; perhaps it was simply too difficult for the clerics carrying the platform to balance a moving object. Whatever the intention, the effect was a further woodening of the actors. Glued to their seats by decree, they would have appeared of a piece with the jeweled thrones on which they were 34

35

36

Muraro, Paolo da Venezia, p. 83. The September date on the contract is also suggestive of the scope of the work being commissioned. The vast majority of surviving notices and decrees surrounding preparations for the feast bear January dates; one has a sense of the general bustle in the weeks leading to the celebration. It is possible that a September contract indicates that the thrones required greater care in their manufacture. “Cherubinos duos argenti, quos portant Angelus et Maria in processione ad Sanctam Mariam Formosam, cum petris vitreis et radicibus perlarum.” Gallo, Tesoro di San Marco, p. 30. “Quod Maria et Angelus in festo D. Marci de Scolis pro reverentia Gloriosae et Festi non debeant se levare de suo sedere quando sunt in conspectu domini ducis, qui semper soliti erant se levare, hoc declarato per Consiliarios et Maius Consilium, quod non est de honorificentiis pertinentibus domino duci.” ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Libro d’oro, P. IV. C. 30r.

Making Statues Sing

carried. Interestingly, the most widely attested type of processional effigy in this period was the Sedes Sapientiae (Throne of Wisdom), a wooden sculpture in which the seated Mary was literally carved into her throne.37 If, as per del Friuli, the wooden Marys were “quasi viva” (almost alive), the enactors in the Venetian Annunciation were “quasi effigies” (almost statues).38 Given how much the Annunciation actors were made to resemble the Marian effigies, what must have been most wonderous of all was the moment when they were made to sing. The entire processional context that culminated in a sung enactment would have added to the drama of that moment. Indeed the play’s relationship to the procession that precedes it is part of what makes the Venetian enactment so unique among medieval representations of the Annunciation. We might consider, for a moment, the dramatic effect produced by the relative lengths of the procession, on the one hand, and the dialogue, on the other. With an itinerary that moved first by boat, through rii (canals), from occasionally distant neighborhoods of the participating contrade, then on foot around the Piazza San Marco, and then single file through the calli (streets) that led to Santa Maria Formosa – an itinerary that was then repeated by a second group – the procession must have been exceedingly long, lasting several hours. But the sung dialogue, as we can see, is exceedingly short. It could not have taken much more than a few minutes to perform. But this lopsidedness only adds to the dramatic power of the play. The angel and Mary were the visual centerpieces of their respective, lengthy processions, but the records suggest that they were entirely silent. How marvelous the moment of Gabriel’s “Ave” must have been, drawn out through the melisma of the invitatory antiphon, when these two living effigies – finally and briefly – burst into song.39 About as melismatic as an antiphon gets, Ave Maria gratia plena broke the silence with something like its opposite: melodic abundance. 37 38

39

Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom. By the fifteenth century, several generations after the feast had been abolished, disagreement arose as to whether or not the wooden statues had, in fact, been real women. Muir documents the different sides of the debate, but several early modern historians of the Republic testify to the fact that the effigies were sometimes live and sometimes statues. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, pp. 143–44n22. In her study of medieval automata, Ellie Truitt demonstrates the medieval fascination with mechanical things that alternately hid and revealed their powers of animation. The dramatic context for these two wooden clerics that are, through music, revealed to be live, is very much in keeping with the play world of medieval machines, largely confined to court culture, that Truitt discusses. E.R. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), esp. chap. 2. Also Reinhold Hammerstein, Macht und Klang: Tönende Automaten als Realität und Fiktion in der alten und mittelalterlichen Welt (Bern: Francke, 1986), and, for the Byzantine imperial context, Gerard Brett, “Automata in the Byzantine ‘Throne of Solomon,’” Speculum 29, no. 3 (1954): 477–87.

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Mixed Media: The Feast of the Purification and the Translation of Mark Despite the dramatic elegance that made the Annunciation among the most widely represented subjects in the visual and plastic arts, the moment of Christ’s Incarnation was rarely represented as a live enactment. This has to do with a calendrical infelicity that had the feast almost always falling during the penitential season of Lent. That its first dramatic representations happened in the Veneto likely has something to do with the region’s civic cultivation of the Annunciation theme, which already loosed it from strictly liturgical concerns. Both Padua and Venice promoted the idea that their cities were founded on the day of the feast (25 March).40 And although Padua’s Annunciation representation took place at the cathedral, the day was full of festivities more loosely tied to the liturgy (it seems that a different Annunciation play, about which we know almost nothing, was staged outside the Arena chapel in the morning).41 Given the importance of the Annunciation to civic identity, it is possible that the Festa delle Marie gave the Venetians an opportunity to bring a topic of intense interest to life. That the costumed enactors first seemed plastic throughout the long procession that preceded the play and then became live once they crossed the threshold into the space of the church and sang is perfectly in keeping with the kind of play between objects and actors, liturgical props and biblical characters, that the Festa delle Marie celebrated. The Purification, its festal core, provided a useful precedent for the ritual combination of live and plastic figures.42 Like the Annunciation, the Purification was another biblical scene that was late to get dramatized (twelfth century), and like the Annunciation, it remained an uncommon theme for

40

41

42

Canal reports, “Ce veul que vos sachés que cele bele cité que l’en apele Venise fu faite en l’an de l’incarnacion de nostre seignor Jesu Crist .ccccxxj.” For the Annunciation legend in Padua, see Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 38; Debra Pincus, The Tombs of the Doges of Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 129. For Padua’s legendary role in the founding of Venice more generally, see Antonio Carile and Giorgio Fedalto, Le origini di Venezia (Bologna: Pàtron, 1978), pp. 55–108. For the entire complex of events on the feast of the Annunciation in Padua, see Michael Viktor Schwarz, “Padua, Its Arena and the Arena Chapel: A Liturgical Ensemble,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010): 39–64. As with the Annunciation, northern Italy offers the most full-fledged examples, the cathedral of Padua having the most elaborate of these.

Mixed Media

dramatic realization.43 What was common was the mixing of representational media (human and crafted) within enactments of the Purification. Karl Young pointed to a pronounced tendency in the later Middle Ages to include effigies within Purification plays.44 Young was troubled by the “noticeable . . . fact that the Virgin Mary is either absent altogether, or is represented only by a plastic figure.”45 Not only Mary, but more common still was the representation of the infant Jesus through a plastic substitution. A twelfth-century ordinal from Augsburg describes a dramatic ceremony in which a priest dressed as Simeon takes in his arms a service book symbolizing the Christ Child (“et interim unus senior ex presbyteris in uice Sancti Symeonis accipiat plenarium in ulnas, et portet in ecclesiam pro puero Christo”).46 A certificate from the Gild of Saint Mary at Beverly, dated to the year 1389, calls for an actor dressed as the Virgin Mary (“vestitus et ornatus ut Regina Virgo”) to carry an effigy of the infant (“quasi filium”) to represent Jesus’s presentation at the temple.47 Thirteenth-century writers found good theological justification for this; Jacobus de Voragine’s wildly popular collection of saints’ lives, the Legenda aurea (Golden Legend) describes how “on this day [the Lord] allowed himself to be led by others, when they carried the Child Jesus to Jerusalem, as the gospel tells us . . . and on this day allowed himself to be held and carried in an old man’s arms, although he upheld the one who carried him.”48 Throughout Europe, then, one would have encountered this mix of actors and effigies in Purification celebrations. Alternately called the feast of the Presentation, it commemorated the installation of Jesus in the temple forty days after his birth, celebrating Christ’s initiation into the institution that would eventually instrumentalize his body – the central mystery of the faith. Nighttime processions that developed around this feast allowed all kinds of participants, each 2 February, to carry a waxen symbol of Christ in the form of one of the most commonplace liturgical instruments: a candle. It is a feast that is in every way about bringing bodies into churches, a framework made vivid in its (admittedly few) dramatic realizations. Voragine’s legend again provides a theological basis for these practices, describing how just as “Mary and Joseph and Symeon and Anna formed 43

44

45 48

Karl Young, “Dramatic Ceremonies of the Feast of the Purification,” Speculum 5, no. 1 (1930): 97–102. Young uses impersonation as his criterion for full-blown drama, as he does more famously in The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933). Young, “Dramatic Ceremonies,” p. 99. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., p. 100. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, translated by William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 147.

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a solemn procession and presented the child Jesus in the Temple . . . on this feast day we too make a procession, carrying in our hands a lighted candle, which signifies Jesus, and bearing it into the churches.”49 In the Augsburg and Beverly plays, the books and images of the church become the characters of the play. Inverting the theme of Christ becoming an institution, these Purification dramas use the props of an institution to represent the sacred person of Jesus. The feast of the Purification was a thematic linchpin in yet another dimension of the Venetian festivities. As a biblical type, the Purification was formally like a translation. It celebrated Christ’s installation in the temple, analogous to the translation of Saint Mark’s body into the basilica (the event that the 31 January celebration commemorated). The feast of the Translation of Mark was precisely about the translation of a sacred body across the threshold of a church. By the time Zeno’s version of the Festa delle Marie broadened the scope to include the two days prior to the Purification, the celebration had become saturated with the idea of porting sacred objects in and out of churches, where spaces were transformed by the crossing of thresholds.50 Above all was the double procession that ended in a statuesque Gabriel crossing the threshold of Santa Maria Formosa, standing up, and singing. Around the same time the Annunciation drama was instituted (ca. 1268), the legend of the Translation was in the process of being fixed in stone within the Porta Sant’Alipio lunette, on the western façade of San Marco (Figure 3.1).51 The mosaic portrays the ninth-century reception of Mark’s relics against the backdrop of the city’s contemporary architectural refurbishments, of which the mosaic itself was part, couched in the visual language of thirteenth-century civic ritual.52 Musical topoi animate the 49 50

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Voragine, Golden Legend, p. 149. There is additional evidence to suggest that the state sought to bring the feast of the Purification, along with that of Mark’s Translation, into the official “state” calendar. We learn from the Consuetudini del capitolo di S. Marco that both the Purification and the Translation were among the small handful of feasts where the doge would host a meal for the basilica’s clergy. Betto, Capitolo della basilica di S. Marco, pp. 185–86. The full iconographic cycle, of which the Sant’Alipio mosaic is the only remaining original, is visible in Gentile Bellini’s Processione in piazza San Marco. Otto Demus argues that the investiture ceremony depicted was that of Lorenzo Tiepolo. Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, 2 vols. (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1984), 2: 202–06. Significantly, this is the same investiture ceremony recounted in Canal’s Les estoires de Venise, in which the laudes performance is described in detail. Both Demus and Agostino Pertusi highlight what appears a secondary topic within the mosaic: a depiction of the moment when the newly invested doge – oath of office in hand – first encounters the populace, who symbolically legitimize his authority through the medium of sung acclamations, or laudes. Although Demus and Pertusi argue persuasively for this secondary reading, it is equally

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Figure 3.1 Mark’s translation to Venice as depicted in the Porta Sant’Alipio, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270–75. Mosaic Photo credit: JOHN KELLERMAN/Alamy Stock Photo

rhetoric of the image.53 On the left-hand side of the scene, congregants leaving the church make a gesture of speech or song – indicated by arms raised at the elbow – toward the right, motioning toward Mark’s body being borne into the church on the central axis of the composition. But the doge, the city’s political leader, forms an auxiliary focal point to Mark, the city’s spiritual leader; his bent arm and pointing finger extend this gestural motif such that it culminates in the scroll he holds in his opposite hand, which has been interpreted as the doge’s promissione (oath of office).54 By this interpretation, the viewer’s eye is drawn not merely to the doge but

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instructive to understand the image not as depicting any single ceremonial occasion but rather as drawing topically on the language of ducal ceremony, and particularly the role of acclamation therein, to interpret the mythic-historical event of Saint Mark’s translation; Agostino Pertusi, “Quedam Regalia Insignia Ricerche sulle insigne del potere ducale a Venezia durante il Medioevo,” Studi veneziani 8 (1965): 3–123 (45–46). For an analysis of the musical references in this mosaic, see Reuland “Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image,” 205–08. Demus, Mosaics of San Marco, 2: 202–06; Pertusi, “Quedam Regalia Insignia,” 45–46.

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more specifically to the legal document that defines the scope of his political jurisdiction. An accompanying inscription helps the viewer interpret the gesture of the populace on the left as directing song toward the right: Collocat hunc dignis plebs laudibus et colit hymnis / ut venetos servet terraque marique gubernet. The people establish him with worthy laudes and honor him with hymns / So that he may preserve the Venetians and govern by land and sea.55

In the sense that the mosaic conflates two separate events – the deposition of Mark’s relics in the basilica and a ducal ceremony – we can understand the “laudibus” in this inscription to refer not only to the people’s sung petitions to their patron saint but also to the singing of laudes that validated the doge as the Republic’s elected sovereign.56 The “laudibus” and “hymnis,” in other words, could refer equally well to the Te Deum, Kyrie eleison, and laudes with which the populace historically greeted the doge’s election as it could to the people’s sung veneration of Mark’s relics.57 The overtly civic language with which the inscription concludes (“terraque marique gubernet”) further ambiguates the subject of both text and image to encompass the doge as Mark’s earthly representative. Working like one big visual double entendre, the Porta Sant’Alipio mosaic fosters an identification between the doge and the source of his authority. Just as the laudes sung to the Venetian administration on Crete (Chapter 1) and before the icon of the Mesopanditissa (Chapter 2) activated a medieval theory of images, here the populace’s posture of acclamation gestures at the doge’s proximity to Mark. The gesture clarifies an important sacred economy for the state: whether the populace lauds the relics or the ruler, the effect is the same. What is addressed

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The second line of the inscription above the Sant’Alipio mosaic currently reads: “Ut Venetos semper sepit ab hoste suos,” which frustrates the hexameter set up in the first line. This modification is the result of restoration to the mosaic likely undertaken sometime in the nineteenth century (Demus, Mosaics of San Marco, 2: 201). Hanns Hubach, “Pontifices, Clerus-Populus, Dux: Osservazioni sul significato e sullo sfondo storico della più antica raffigurazione della società veneziana,” in Antonio Niero (ed.), San Marco: Aspetti storici e agiografici; Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Venezia, 26–29 aprile 1994 (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), pp. 370–97 (p. 396n78); Reuland, “Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image,” 207–08. For Domenico Tino’s eyewitness account of the ceremonial events of the election and investiture of Domenico Selvo in 1071, see Pertusi’s “Quedam Regalia Insignia,” 67–68. For the evolution of the ducal investiture ceremony from the ninth to fifteenth centuries, see Fasoli, “Liturgia e Cerimoniale Ducale.”

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to the image is transferred to the prototype, and in acclaiming the doge, they acclaim their patron saint.58 We might now return to a feature of Canal’s description that has, thus far, gone unaccounted for: the laudes sung to the doge by the clerics of each procession, first those carrying Mary and then the ones bearing the angel (Table 3.1, section XCIII). If the doge functioned like an effigy – a proxy for Mark – the laudes that legitimized the doge’s authority through Mark are here brilliantly transformed within a theatrical context. There is great dramatic irony in the fact that, at the moment Gabriel greets the doge while the laudes are sung to him, we know Mary awaits the angel’s arrival in the church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is a processional detour of profound political and theological significance; the laudes draw out in musical time the eager anticipation of Gabriel’s arrival, which we know to engender all that follows – Christ, Mark, Venice – suspending the political present inside the moment just preceding the Incarnation. When the doge receives a “salus” in the midst of a procession that is moving toward the singing of the central “Ave” of the Catholic faith, a whole political theology is conjured up out of that single sung word.59

Tableaux Vivants and the Living Voice By the fourteenth century, the motif of the Annunciation had become iconic in Venetian monumental art, visual shorthand for the divine impetus to the founding of the city and its empire.60 Static tableaux of the Annunciation drama were set throughout the most important sites of the city.61 Nowhere was the Annunciation theme more avidly worked out than at the Basilica San Marco, which acted as a stage for the Annunciation’s political resonances. Reliefs of the Virgin Orant and of Gabriel, originally separate pieces, were 58

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On the complexities of the spiritual relationship the doge shared with Mark, see Staale SindingLarsen, Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1974). There is a music-liturgical factor that would have further fostered the connection between “ave” and “salve.” The feast of the Purification was the day on which Alma redemptoris mater, the Marian antiphon that would have been sung at the end of Compline each evening since the beginning of Advent, was replaced with Ave regina caelorum at San Marco. Of all the Marian antiphons, acclamatory language occurs as a through-running structural device in Ave regina caelorum : the salutatory terms “Ave,” “salve,” “vale,” and “gaude” that open each of its verses are all drawn from an imperial lexicon – envisaging Mary as Queen of the Heavens – and are more or less interchangeable forms of address in ruler acclamations. See Reuland, “Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image,” 198–205. Apart from the prominent use of the Annunciation in the decoration of the Basilica San Marco, the placement of Mary and Gabriel on either side of the Rialto Bridge in the sixteenth century would have recalled the government’s founding location on the Rialto on 25 March 421.

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Figure 3.2a Angelo annunciante, Venetian sculptor (attr. Marco Romano), ca. 1340. Marble, 71 cm tall. Treasury, San Marco, Venice Photographic Archive of the Procuratoria di San Marco. © By kind permission of the Procuratoria di San Marco

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Figure 3.2b Vergine annunciata, Venetian sculptor (attr. Marco Romano), ca. 1340. Marble, 111 cm tall. Treasury, San Marco, Venice Photographic Archive of the Procuratoria di San Marco. © By kind permission of the Procuratoria di San Marco

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paired to form an Annunciation group on the western façade of the church, and Mary and Gabriel’s dialogue was placed above the basilica’s southern ceremonial portal.62 During Dandolo’s procuratorship, statues of Gabriel (71 cm tall, kneeling) and Mary (111 cm tall) were positioned on either side of the high altar of San Marco, fixing the theme to the spiritual core of the state (Figure 3.2).63 In the early fifteenth century, the corner aediculae of San Marco’s façade received figures of Gabriel and Mary that staged what Rosand describes as a “holy dialogue across the upper reaches of the basilica” that “reverberated” into the piazza below.64 Common to each of these configurations of the Annunciation motif is its use to enclose a political space – the high altar, a ceremonial entryway, the ducal chapel itself – within a sacred framework. At the same time, the Venetian state was showing a pronounced tendency toward the use of effigies as features of public statuary.65 Contemporary to the century in which the Annunciation play was performed, the state cultivated a ducal tomb program that used sculptural groups of the Annunciation to enclose the effigy of the doge that lay above his entombed body.66 The Annunciation figures that bookend the tombs of Bartolomeo Gradenigo (1339–42) and Andrea Dandolo (1343–54) envision the doge himself as a sacropolitical locus (Figure 3.3).67 In this sense, Gabriel and the Virgin stand on either corner of both these tomb chests. In each case, the person of the doge – representing the Republic – is framed as a semisacred figure through the holy dialogue that extends across his body. The Annunciation group arranged around the high altar of San Marco is one more iteration of the idea; here the drama contains not the doge but Mark, whom he represents, and the Eucharist that represents Christ: all sorts of multiplications of bodies.

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For a discussion of the many appearances of the Annunciation theme in Venetian state art and of the myriad symbolic resonances of this theme, see Rosand, Myths of Venice, chap. 1. Fulvio Zuliani, “The Annunciation by Marco Romano,” Studies in Venetian Art and Conservation (2001): 32–33. Rosand, Myths of Venice, p. 16. For a thorough exploration of the funerary sculptural programs of the major cities in the fourteenth-century Veneto, see Michele Tomasi, Le arche dei santi: Scultura, religione e politica nel Trecento Veneto (Rome: Viella, 2012). Noting the popularity of the effigial tomb type in late medieval Venice, Ana Munk shows how the creation of funerary sculpture for the tombs of prominent Venetian statesmen played off the artistic interest in shrine building for the city’s whole-body relics during the same period; Ana Monk, “Somatic Treasures: Function and Reception of Effigies on Holy Tombs in Fourteenth Century Venice,” IKON 4 (2011): 193–210. Pincus, Tombs of Doges of Venice, p. 129. The inscription is located in the cupola of San Giovanni Evangelista in the north transept of the basilica.

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Figure 3.3 Tomb of Andrea Dandolo, Baptistery, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1354 Photo credit: akg-images/Cameraphoto

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In his will, Dandolo requests his tomb be placed beneath a dome mosaic in the basilica bearing the inscription “XPC VINCIT, XPC REGNAT, XPC IMPERAT.”68 In other words, beneath an inscription of the “Christus vincit” tricolon with which the ducal laudes begin. Dandolo’s request was not granted. However, his unrealized vision would have harmonized political and angelic announcement within the architectural space of the basilica. The will locates the doge’s body beneath the inscription, a position that visually restates the laudes text in which the Christological tricolon precedes the acclaim to the doge. Thus, while the Annunciation extends laterally across the tomb, ducal acclamation is suggested through the vertical alignment of the doge beneath part of the laudes text. Giving spatial dimension to two sung ceremonies, Dandolo envisioned the Annunciation and the laudes as simultaneities. It is worth pondering the state’s almost obsessive combination of threedimensional representations – be they statues, reliefs, or even the threedimensional bodies of living actors – with elements of sung ritual. The 31 January Annunciation merely inverts the relationship between the sung and plastic sides of this arrangement. If we are more accustomed to recognizing the evocation of song in figural images (the Annunciation groups on the ducal tombs, the Sant’Alipio mosaic of the Translation), the Annunciation exchange uses actual song to defy the woodenness of sculpted representation. Beyond the flicker of jewels and the sheen of fabric that enlivened the Marian effigies and the Annunciation pair as physical objects, the revelation of their human voices would have been one final and decisive push against the deadness of matter. In The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Johan Huizinga reflected on how greatly the monumental art of the later Middle Ages – its funerary design above all – had “to the highest degree the character of a performance.”69 He compared instances of these sculptural programs to the arrangement of “personnages” in the European processions of tableaux vivants.70 Given the generic strangeness of the Venetian Annunciation – its distance from the liturgy, its lack of narrative framing, the protracted silence and stillness of the actors in procession on their way to the church, and the sudden 68

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See Vittorio Lazzarini, “Il testamento del Doge Andrea Dandolo,” Nuovo archivio Veneto 7 (1904): 139–48. Dandolo’s specification survives in a will dated to 3 September 1354. The inscription forms part of the dome’s twelfth-century mosaic work. See also Pincus, Tombs of the Doges of Venice, pp. 134–35. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, translated by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 309. Ibid.

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bursting into song – it might be equally if not more accurate to place the play within the tradition of the late medieval tableaux vivants than to link it to the more straightforwardly liturgical-dramatic tradition of the Annunciation that was taking hold across northeast Italy in these same decades.

1348 and the Limits of Fiction Throughout Europe, early February was the time cities celebrated the hope and expectation of biological continuity. Fertility rites formed a major part of the Festa delle Marie celebration. Since this facet of the celebration was one in which the state had less direct and, as far as I can see, no musical involvement, it has factored little in this discussion – though we have been dealing all along with the ways music was called on to multiply its most important, most powerful bodies. The state’s making of fictions – in this chapter, of literal effigies – made art an almost procreative act. Even the dedicatee of the feast, not Mary in the singular but Marys in the plural, seems a radical expansion of the sacred: that the woman without peer, first and lone among her sex, could exist by the dozen. The year 1348 was a grim one for the city and its lagoon. It began, as Muraro describes it, “with a shortage of wheat serious enough to warrant mixing millet with flour for bread.”71 Then, as if to augur the pestilence to come, an earthquake struck the lagoon on 25 January 1348. According to Marino Sanudo, its aftershocks lasted for two weeks (and for forty days according to an inscription above the door of the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità). 25 January was, in any case, the feast of Saint Paul – the day on which the fully dressed Marian effigies had customarily been presented to the Venetian populace. Several bell towers collapsed that day, but we know nothing about when or whether the Marys ever made their appearance. Plague immediately followed – the bubonic plague that came to Venice from Constantinople via Greece – and lasted between six and nine months.72 We learn from Francesco de Grazia’s Chronicon Monasterii Salvatoris Venetiarum that “in the month of February [the month that the Festa delle Marie ushered in], deaths began to pullulate in the curia, and little by little increased from day to day, since those who sat by the body of 71 72

Muraro, Paolo da Venezia, p. 59. Ibid. For the combined climatological factors that set off these cascading catastrophes, see Bruce M.S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease, and Society in the Late-Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 277–89.

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a dead man in church would die before they could return, or soon after; for some, death was deferred for two or three days.”73 In a gruesome inversion of the feast’s theme of fertility, the plague reduced the city to two thirds of its prior population. It was now death that was on the increase. The year after, strange references arise in government papers related to the Festa delle Marie. In 1349, the Grand Council issued a decree ruling that “from now on, the throwing of turnips or any other object [at the Marys] is, on pain of a fine of 100 deniers, banned for the duration of the festival.”74 We are left in the dark as to what provoked this irreverence toward the effigies, but the particular year in which the ban occurs raises the possibility that the plague itself, the reduction of the population, and the failure of the city to thrive fostered hostile feelings toward the cult objects that should have been symbols of fecundity and promises of prosperity.75 Throughout Europe since the early Middle Ages, wooden processional statues of Mary were understood to have “vicariously manifested Mary’s presence and authority,” and, as “physical proxies for the Virgin . . . were understood as having thoughts and emotions. Promises made to them were as binding as if made directly to the Virgin.”76 The effectiveness of this ritual communication was taken for granted, but medieval societies had ways of coping with its failure as well.77 Proxies that were ineffective no longer received litanies, hymns, and praises – the singing voices that medieval communities believed connected them to the realms of saints and angels – but rather baser things, like turnips and trash. A tradition of disruptive neighborhood feuding that accompanied the Festa delle Marie led the government to abolish the celebration in 1379. While the ceremony and the Annunciation play it occasioned 73

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“Postea, eo anno, de mense februarii, curialis mortalitas pullulare cepit, et paulatim, et in tantum de die in diem crevit, quod illi, qui sociabant unum mortuum ad ecclesiam, interdum moriebantur antequam reverterentur, vel statim, aliquibus differebat et faciebat inducias per duos vel tres dies.” Ibid. ASV, Compilazione Legi, B. 206 (feste) fol. 336r. Translated in Devaney, “Competing Spectacles,” 1. Devaney speculates that neighborhood feuding was behind the bad behavior, the same reason the state would abolish the feast in 1379. Devaney, “Competing Spectacles,” 10. See also Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom, pp. 40–45. We see that, on a societal level, the wooden Mary statues are already being treated very much like relics. Effigies treated like relics and the “irreverences” mentioned in the trecento document are not at all unlike the humiliation of saints; see Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), chap. 5. Also, Ana Munk, “The Art of Relic Cults in Trecento Venice: Corpi sancti as a Pictorial Motif and Artistic Motivation,” Radovi Instituta za Povijest Umjetnosti 30 (2006): 81–92.

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remained alive and well in memory, it came gradually to stand for what was most false about the state and its apparatuses of mythmaking. In the hands of Giovanni Boccaccio, the feast became the setting for the comic tale of Frate Alberto (Decameron 4.2).78 This novella centers around a dissembling friar who disguised himself as the angel Gabriel to deceive the dim-witted beauty Madonna Lisetta into sleeping with him.79 During one such heavenly tryst, “Brother Alberto heard [the voices of Madonna Lisetta’s in-laws] and realized what was going on, he jumped up, and seeing no other means of escape, he flung open a window which looked out onto the Grand Canal and threw himself into the water . . . When the lady’s in-laws opened the door to her bedroom and entered, they found that the Angel Gabriel had flown away, leaving his wings behind him.”80 Apprehended and mask removed, Alberto was chained, covered in honey, and brought forth in a great civic procession. Having been introduced to the Venetian crowd as a false angel (“the Angel Gabriel, who descends by night from Heaven to earth to console our Venetian ladies”), “a great cry arose” from the crowd, and “one by one they all started throwing garbage in his face.”81 The references to the Festa delle Marie are clear enough, from the costumed Gabriel down to the throwing of garbage. The Decameron was written only a year or two after the 1349 decree, and it seems that Boccaccio drew on current events to lend the novella some comic detail. Frate Alberto’s tale is, among other things, a meditation on the limits of fiction. False wings can seduce, but you can’t fly with them. And while it would be too facile to argue direct causality between the plague and the throwing of turnips at the Marys, the midcentury suffering of the city apparently made so very spectacular a fiction – of Mary multiplied, of statues that sang, and all of it laden with treasures – hard to sustain.82 It would be several decades before the city found its footing, and by the time it did, then the feast had already been abolished.83 78

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Giorgio Padoan was the first to definitively tie the novella to the setting of the Festa delle Marie, “Sulla novella veneziana del ‘Decameron’ (IV 2),” in Vittore Branca and Giorgio Padoan (eds.), Boccaccio, Venezia e il Veneto (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1979), pp. 17–46. For an interpretation of the story that considers the architectural and sonic preconditions that facilitate this chain of misinformation, see Niall Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2016), pp. 174–78. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (New York, NY: Norton, 1982), p. 311. Ibid., p. 313. On abuses rendered to the statues, see Devaney, “Competing Spectacles,” 17–19. The last meaningful, positive record relating to the feast dates to the early 1340s. Thereafter, only troubles are recorded.

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part iii

Relics and the Horizons of Musical Representation

4

Narrative Fragments Vespers for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics

With many tears, all day they beseeched the mercy of God, that it be deemed fit to show them where the body of blessed Mark lay . . . The most benevolent one heard their prayers and gloriously declared the place in which the most holy body had been hiding. For with the marbles of the surrounding pillar parted, the box concealing the body, likewise closed, burst forth, and with everyone looking on, [Mark’s relic] emerged from that very box . . . Happy region, that it was worthy to have such a patron, at whose will the stones divide, insensible marbles break by the hidden power, and leap up from within through the work of the Holy Spirit! Apparitio Sancti Marci 1

Stirring lifeless stone to reveal the body of Saint Mark, the prayer described in the Legenda de apparitione Sancti Marci (Legend of Saint Mark’s apparition) activated a web of relationships: between God and the faithful, between the Venetian people and its patron saint, and between a relic and the rock that contained it. The legend takes place midsummer in the year 1094, after the long rebuilding of the Basilica San Marco had just been completed. In preparation for the church’s dedication, Doge Vitale Falier inquired after the bones of Saint Mark, the titular saint of the basilica and the patron saint of Venice. A few centuries earlier, in 828, two Venetian merchants had secreted the Evangelist’s body away from Alexandria. Mark’s remains were translated with great ceremony to the church of San Marco and hidden somewhere inside. By the eleventh century, the hiding place had been forgotten, and not a single person could remember where the body had been put. Falier (or, in some versions of the story, the

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“Multiplicibus lacrimis, diucius Dei misericordiam implorarunt ut eis ubi corpus beati Marci iaceret ostendere dignatetur . . . preces eorum benignius exaudivit et locum in quo sanctissimum corpus latuerat gloriosissime declaravit. nam scissis marmoribus columpne circumpositis, arca que interius claudebatur corpus ipsa quoque concludens, erupit et in conspectu omnium per semetipsam mirificencius exilivit . . . felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum ad cuius nutum lapides scinditur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt!” Giovanni Monticolo, “L’Apparitio Sancti Marci ed i suoi manoscritti,” Nuovo Archivio Veneto 9, no. 1 (1895): 111–77 (142–43). The text is edited from Zanetti 356.

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Venetian patriarch) instituted three days of citywide fasting and litany, in which the citizens of Venice joined the doge to pray that the location of their patron’s body be made known to them. On the fourth day of public observance, with the entire community gathered at Mass and united in petition for the discovery of the body, a stone fell from a column in the south transept of the basilica, revealing the relics of Mark.2 From the very outset, this legend had been meant for liturgical use.3 The most extensive surviving version of the Apparition story – Zanetti 356 – divides the narrative into a series of lessons to be used as chants and readings for the office of the new feast of the Apparitio Sancti Marci (25 June).4 Repurposed for the office’s chants and readings, the legend created the illusion of a complex ritual temporality. Both the narrative events and the event of narration took place in the same space (San Marco) and implicated the same dramatis personae (doge, primicerius, clergy, citizenry), such that the liturgical celebration of the Apparitio transformed the spaces, persons, and things that collectively comprised the medieval city into a narrative frame replete with scenes, actors, and props. Part III of this book investigates the development of this office for the Venetian feast of the Apparitio Sancti Marci in the decades around the turn of the fourteenth century. This chapter examines the office against the backdrop of the state’s heightened attention to the cult of relics and its generative engagement with the relic as a concept in works of artistic, historiographical, and ritual manufacture. Chapter 5 takes a technical look at how narrative history is constructed through melody and textual selection in the Matins office for the feast. Cattin’s monumental Musica e liturgia a San Marco (1990) painted a stunningly detailed picture of liturgical history at the basilica through its extant sources. It is in part due to its monumentality – a musical pendant to Otto Demus’s The Mosaics of San Marco – that musicologists and liturgists have been deterred from working in the shadow of these volumes. The study’s comprehensive scope with respect to the sources it accounts for has been taken to mean that anything lying beyond its last page is a dead end. In the decades since its publication, there has been little engagement 2

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For a comprehensive study of the various narrative traditions of the Apparitio corpus Marci, see Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 111–77. In fact, the first known mention of the miracle, in Canal’s Estoires de Venise, recounts the story as justification for the liturgical festival. Hash marks divide the story into excisable sections, to be read either successively throughout the canonical hours of First and Second Vespers, Matins, and Lauds or in other places to be reordered for programmatic use throughout the various canonical hours.

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with the ducal liturgy in any of its historical specificity or as an object of musical interest in its own right – even as the liturgical books themselves, objects of luxurious manufacture, have spurred a good deal of art-historical interest. Yet Cattin’s study far from exhausts the project of coming to know the ducal liturgy. What lies at the heart of this exceptionally generative moment of liturgical production, I argue – at an institution otherwise known for its conservative and retrospective tendencies – was the artifact of the relic. This pertains even at the most pragmatic level: the posthumous activities of the saint qua relic created new occasions for civic commemoration. But for Venice, the ongoing, present-day, future-pointing sanctity that a relic symbolized was of urgent importance. A state with no martyrs, no early saints, no spots on the evangelical itinerary – indeed no Christian history at all save for the present – relied on its relics to bring it into contact with this early Christian past. The possession of relics, but more importantly their deployment in ritual and historical formats, leveled the playing field for Venice’s participation in Christian history – a playing field to which the state brought a great deal of historiographical ingenuity. Among the “late” additions to the liturgical calendar, the office for the Apparitio Sancti Marci is a work of enormous historiographical imagination. A phenomenon like the legend of the Apparitio and its development in narrative, ritual, and musical formats in the years between 1261 and 1339 reveals just how much the meaning and value of a relic depended on a community’s perception of it in performance.5 Relics represented the paradox of simultaneous presence and absence – synecdochic pieces, scattered throughout Christendom, of saints that existed in toto in the kingdom of Heaven (a “bit of heaven on earth” is what Ambrose of Milan called the relics of two early Christian martyrs).6 The inherently unstable relationship between 5

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Susy Marcon reckons that “il testo per la celebrazione dell’Apparitio del corpo di san Marco, composto probabilmente non prima degli anni settanta, è compreso fra le addizioni messe da mani seriori. Le aggiunte testuali sono trecentesche; si tratta verosimilmente di un aggiornamento operato nel momento di compilazione della nuova serie degli Antifonari primotrecenteschi” (Libri di San Marco, p. 112). Patricia Cox Miller, “Figuring Relics: A Poetics of Enshrinement,” in Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2015), pp. 99–109. Ambrose is referring to Saints Protasius and Gerbasius. On the role of performance in mediating the religious experience of relics, see Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). On the aesthetics of relic veneration within liturgical performance, see Bissera V. Pentcheva, “The Performance of Relics: Concealment and Desire in the Byzantine Staging of Leipsana,” in Ivan Stevović (ed.), ΣΥΜΜΕΙΚΤΑ: Collection of Papers Dedicated to the 40th Anniversary of the Institute for Art

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a relic, the saint it stood for, and the community that venerated it was profoundly semiotic in nature, and medieval communities had constantly to mediate the distance between here and there (by way of metaphor) and whole and part (by way of metonym) in order to avail themselves of a relic’s latent miraculous power. As Geary describes, this latency motivated the often urgent sense of “need for relics to prove themselves efficacious” and to “[exhibit] their authenticity through working wonders.”7 A range of ritual and ceremonial topoi existed by which relics could prove their continuing miraculous value. A relic’s receptivity to prayer guaranteed its authenticity and gave proof of its value. Not only was a relic cherished as a prized possession by towns and empires throughout the Middle Ages. It was treated as a citizen belonging and beholden to temporal and eternal polities alike, whose relevance to a community emerged through its participation in social and political structures. Prayer was perhaps the most common currency medieval communities called on to enlist a relic’s participation in this economy – a spiritual gift for which recompense was not only hoped but expected.8 Prayer played a central role in the authentication of relics as well; medieval communities regularly “lost” their most important relics, using these feigned crises of institutional property as occasions to stage grand corporate ceremonies, in which the entire city could offer up prayers to elicit the relics’ “rediscovery.”9 If public prayer channeled the presence of a saint, it fell to stories, ritual, and art to mediate the distance between Heaven and earth, whole and part.10 For the late medieval audience for whom the legend of the Apparitio was created, Mark’s miraculous response to the prayers of the Venetians gave proof of the saint’s continued receptivity to the community that venerated his body. The legend of Mark’s apparition established a set of miraculous topoi by which both the physical and spiritual relationships

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History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade (Belgrade: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 2012), pp. 55–71, and Cynthia Hahn, “The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries,” Gesta 36, no. 1 (1997): 20–31. For the more private extensions of relic devotion within practices of reading and prayer, see Seeta Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Geary, Living with the Dead, p. 204. Geary’s foundational work on the cult of relics (which itself extended Otto Gerhard Oexle’s socioanthropological framework into the study of medieval culture) prompted a generation of scholars to consider the medieval cult of relics a social practice worthy of scholarly inquiry. On the place of relics and prayer within the medieval gift economy, see Geary, Living with the Dead, esp. chaps. 4–6. Ibid., 230. For an overview of the metaphorical understanding of relics and its extension to devotional art, see Hahn, Strange Beauty, pp. 67–72 and 103–16. On the oral performance implicit in reliquary inscription, see Chaganti, Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary.

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envisioned in the legend could be reenacted; it marked out a miraculous site within the basilica, prescribed a set of ritual behaviors, and established a horizon of expectation for the results that, through imaginative or metaphoric performance, could be re-created again and again in liturgy. At its heart, the Apparitio is a cautionary tale about the threat of oblivion – the disappearance of a community’s past – and about the forms, acts, and collective structures of remembrance that hold oblivion at bay. If the historical events of 1094 warn of the crisis caused by a community’s failure to remember, the story pronounces – and performs – narrative and ritual as its twin safeguards. Thus at a technical level, the story of the Apparitio suggests that the opposite of oblivion is not so much remembrance as it is representation. As we have seen in Part I, medieval practices of representation entailed making abstract or absent entities vivid and immediate. The Venetian imaginary of empire was one such abstraction; it ran parallel to the state’s material reality and required perceptible forms to be brought into existence. In many ways, the structures of loss, absence, and abstraction inherent in an object like a relic are homologous to the Venetian structure of empire explored in Part I. Carlo Ginzburg highlights this homology in the connection he draws between the respective props of pagan and Christian Rome: “There is every justification,” he claims, “for granting . . . relics the metonymic status that has sometimes been attributed to the imago of the Roman emperor.”11 Both kinds of props required ritual to affirm presence over absence, proximity over distance. The immediacy of ritual form – the ceremonial acclamation of icons, on the one hand, and the liturgical veneration of relics on the other – bear witness to the sovereign’s or the saint’s presence through the repetition of sense-perceptible phenomena. Within this representational framework, however, the gap is never entirely closed. New phenomena of presence are needed soon after the old ones fall away. This is built into the story of the Apparitio Sancti Marci , which turns on an instance of ritual neglect, and is resolved once ritual is restored. Mark’s power (virtus) was made present (in praesentia) through the relic, but his place in Heaven entailed a simultaneous – and significant – absence. It was only through the continuation of miracles – or through their continued retelling – that Mark could be proven to be both here and there, present as well as absent.12 11 12

Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes, p. 72. As the bit of relic ontology in the inscription on the tomb of Saint Martin in Tours pronounced, the saint’s “soul is with God” (cuius anima in manu Dei est ), even as “he is entirely here, as

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The famed Venetian diarist Sanudo once described his home as a city buoyed upon the bodies of the saints (E queste è quelle che mantien la cita nostra . . . vi sono in questa cita solamente corpi di Santi ). To whatever extent Venice was a city founded on relics, it was also founded on and in the workings of desire. No medieval item expressed the imaginative potential of desire quite so well as a relic.13 As a perdurance of form and promise of matter’s continuity, relics held forth what Caroline Walker Bynum describes as the hope that “scattered bones and dust, marked in some way for their own bodies, would be reunited,” that “every part . . . was a whole,” that “decay was not really decay,” that “parts were merely dispersed,” and that “both decay and partition could be overcome.”14 But hope and belief were only one part of the equation; the wholeness of which a relic was part needed representing. In the absence and anticipation of unity and stasis – the conditions of eternity alone – art and ritual, and more specifically here, music and liturgy, offered up forms for reiteration and repetition as eternity’s aesthetic substitutes, or next best things. Music provided a narrative and interpretive framework for the object of the relic. My readings of the corpus of narrative chants used in the creation of the office of the Apparitio Sancti Marci show how music’s representation of relics staged yet another extension of the Venetian political imaginary: that of the sacred. These chants and the office to which they belong date to a period of intense cult building on the part of the Venetian state, which it carried out in chronicle, literary, and monumental formats. The century encompassing the reigns of doges Ranieri Zeno (1253–68) and Andrea Dandolo (1343–54) witnessed some of the most spectacular expressions of Venice’s claims to rival the Holy Land. While a great deal of scrutiny has been given to the iconographic programs undertaken to advertise Venice’s many important relics during this period, music’s contribution to Venice’s cult of relics has been cast as ancillary at best.15 The relative neglect of music in the state’s cult

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miracles of all sorts bear witness” (hic totus est praesens manifestus omni gratia virtutum ). Translation from Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes, p. 72. For a consideration of the role of desire in popular devotional practices surrounding relics, see Simon Yarrow, “Miracles, Belief and Christian Materiality: Relic’ing in Twelfth-Century Miracle Narratives,” in Matthew M. Mesley and Louise E. Wilson (eds.), Contextualizing Miracles in the Christian West, 1100–1500: New Historical Approaches (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2014), pp. 41–62. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 107–08. Cattin somewhat apologetically describes the fourteenth-century liturgical sources as displaying a “rigoroso arcaismo e rivela una forte tendenza alla staticità,” concluding that “l’ambiente marciano non vi appare creativo, preferisce piuttosto cercare, recepire e utilizzare

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of relics stems, at least in part, from a lack of serious analytical engagement with liturgy as a site of historical discourse and field of hermeneutic interest. One of the most significant trends in the study of medieval history over the past few decades has been the recognition that liturgy served as an agent, rather than mere reflection, of historical knowledge and that performance, as well as writing, shaped the historical imagination.16 Until this century, scholars of the Middle Ages tended to view liturgy as a fanciful adjunct to the two dominant genres of medieval history writing: the chronicle and the annal. Recent correctives to this narrow conception of medieval historiography show liturgy to have been a sensitive caliber of a community’s evershifting historical perspectives. Margot Fassler has gone so far as to claim that liturgy was the “default mode for the representation of the past in the Latin Middle Ages.”17 What is worth noting in the case of the Apparitio liturgy is the extraordinarily self-reflexive nature of both historical and liturgical representation. The members of a city gather to hear a story about themselves. That story is set in the very place they stand listening to it, and to the deeds accomplished by the inert things set before their eyes. Relics were in every way starting points for such stories and responsible for many of their narrative complexities. Although historians now largely assume liturgy to have been a vital mode for representing the past, neglect still persists around liturgies built specifically for the commemoration of these complex items that defy any simple or straightforward relation to the past. In fact, most studies of the liturgy tend to conflate relics with the saints to which they belong rather than view them as categorically distinct and generative of fundamentally different kinds of liturgical, devotional, and historical engagement. An exception is Benjamin Brand’s Holy Treasure and Sacred Song. Adducing an impressive array of evidence for the historiographical and liturgical activity surrounding Tuscan relics, Brand makes clear beyond a doubt that the presence of a relic stimulated liturgical creation, and that the celebration of relics offered special opportunities to express politics in liturgical formats. Nevertheless, when it comes to the chants and readings for the canonical hours, Brand views the offices

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materiale preesistente.” Giulio Cattin, “La tradizione liturgico-musicale di San Marco,” in Marcon, Libri di San Marco, pp. 29–45 (p. 43). As I hope the present discussion will demonstrate, while the chant repertory itself may have been backward-looking from a stylistic perspective, its use within the liturgical context of San Marco was original. Important examples are collected in Bugyis, Kraebel, and Fassler, Medieval Cantors and Their Craft ; Maxwell, Representing History ; and Maloy, Songs of Sacrifice. Margot Fassler, “The Liturgical Framework of Time and the Representation of History,” in Maxwell, Representing History, pp. 149–71 (p. 157).

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composed for these local relics as “less a ritual to be understood and more a backdrop to mystical reveries.”18 Henry Parkes’s recent appraisal of evidence from medieval customaries and ordinals suggests that a more active set of relations likely pertained between liturgical format and hermeneutic expectation – at least in “special” cases like the festal night office (like the one to be taken up in Chapter 5). While I join in Brand’s conviction concerning the tight relationship between relics, liturgy, and civic devotion, I want to suggest that the forms and observances related to the Apparitio evince an attitude toward liturgical composition that go beyond the creation of devotional backdrop, commentary, or commemorative rite. Following Parkes, but also the work of liturgical scholars like Derek Krueger, I view the liturgy as a hermeneutic field able to sustain narrative – even when the past narrated is as folded and complex as it is in the case of relics.19 Through its full arsenal of representational strategies – techniques of source selection, textual parsing, melodic emphasis – liturgy offered a matrix in which inert objects, like the bones of saints, but also altars, pillars, and stones, could emerge as living presences within the community and agents of the state. Music provided more than an aural counterpart to works of visual and literary hagiography advertising Venice’s most sacred objects. As a mode of performance, liturgical chant served as the medium of prayer and an enactment of the spiritual economy that existed between a relic and the community that venerated it. As a mode of text, however, chant was capable of giving shape to narrative events and structuring their relation to the present ritual utterance. My readings of the Apparitio chants – the Vespers chants in this chapter and the night office chants in the next – locate music’s contribution to the narration and ritual representation of the story in what Susan Rankin deems “the Gregorian art’s . . . most impressive ability”: “to pinpoint, emphasize, repeat, divide, move quickly past, round off, pause, literally ‘read’ the text.”20 Chant’s “art,” in Rankin’s construal, lies in its capacity to structure text, to give shape, form, and time to language and to the ideas language contains.

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Benjamin Brand, Holy Treasure and Sacred Song: Relic Cults and Their Liturgies in Medieval Tuscany (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 192. Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Susan Rankin, “Carolingian Music,” in Rosamund McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 274–316 (p. 286).

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In his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, a work broadly contemporary to the creation of the Apparitio Sancti Marci, the late fourteenth-century Byzantine liturgist Nicholas Cabasilas distinguished between chant’s formal and final causes using a striking sartorial image: Just as robes fulfil their function as clothes and cover the body, while at the same time, by their style, indicate the profession, rank, and dignity of the wearer, so it is with [chants and readings]. Since they are extracts from the Holy Scriptures and other inspired writings, the chants and lessons sanctify those who read and sing them; and because of the selection which has been made and the order in which the passages are arranged they have another function [dynamin]: they fittingly represent the significance [semasian] of the presence [parousias ] and life of Christ.21

In distinguishing the moral aim of liturgy that sanctifies from the mystical one that actualizes presence, Cabasilas brings into view the fact of craft (techne) in the creation of liturgy’s manifold effects. The commentary bespeaks a special correlation between liturgy’s crafted elements and its representational horizons. The idea that liturgical invention relied on these techniques is not in itself new. Medieval liturgical commentators and contemporary scholars take as a given that the curation of texts, through liturgy, generates theological argument, hagiography, and history. But what is remarkable about this particular commentary is the explicit connection it makes between the techniques of liturgical composition – selection and arrangement – and the signification (semasian) of presence (parousia). For Cabasilas, form itself is possessed of power (dynamis ). At core, chant’s equivocal status as both structure and medium sets up a tension between its formal and final causes – that is, between form and function, container and contained – lying very near to the heart of the relic’s theological significance and its expressive potential as an object of aesthetic attention. In my occasional adoption of the term “container” to refer to chant’s formal and structuring capacities, I mean to signal music’s relation to a better-studied type of artifact that, like liturgy, belonged to the social and creative practice of the relic cult: the reliquary. In the field of art and literary history, scholars like Cynthia Hahn and Seeta Chaganti have shown the extent to which the material and conceptual apparatus of the reliquary enabled the relic to exist as a zone of imaginative and aesthetic 21

Nicholas Cabasilas, Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, Greek text in J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 150 (Paris: J.P. Migne, 1865), translated by J.M. Hussey and P.A. McNulty as A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1960), translation modified from Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-ofLife, translated by Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 82.

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experience in the first place. The reliquary’s incorporation of figural design, complex visual programs, and ornament in gemstone and filigree generated rich semiotic fields that equivocate through gestures of hiding and revealing, protecting and presenting. A tacit consensus that underpins all this scholarship is that the “ostentation” (ostentatio, lit. showing) of relics, long understood by historians as a vital medieval social practice, was not so much a literal or straightforward parading of a city’s sacred objects but a reliance on the elements of form and style to make the relic visible as both concept and theology. Within the office of the Apparitio, the slippage between the containing form of music and the thing contained occasionally points to chant itself as the “active” element in the activation of Mark’s relics. Chant quite literally “contains” the story of the appearance of Mark’s relics to the Venetians. But it also decorates and embellishes the fact of its own containment, drawing attention to the medium as the vehicle of narration and the device that controls the time of the story’s – and Mark’s – revelation.

Building on Bones and the Matter of Form Our forefathers did all they could to go through the world looking for holy relics . . . and these are what sustain our city, which is without walls. In this city, there are only bodies of saints. li nostri progenitori fevano ogni cossa di andar per il mondo zercar reliquie sancta . . . E queste è quelle che mantien la cita nostra, eh’è senza muraglie. Vi sono in questa cita, solamente corpi di Santi. Marino Sanudo, I diarii 22

Over the course of several centuries of commerce in the east, and especially after the Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204–61), the Venetian state acquired dozens of relics. These served as credentials through which the Republic fashioned itself a Christian empire to rival Rome.23 With its many miracle-working relics making it a locus sanctus, by the thirteenth century 22

23

Marino Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, edited by Federico Stefani, Rinaldo Fulin, Guglielmo Berchet, and Nicolò Barozzi, 58 vols. (Venice: F. Visentini, 1879–1903), 20: 99, quoted in Ana Munk, “Patrocinia multa errant habentes: The State, the Parrocchia, and the Colony; Relic Acquisition in Medieval Venice,” in Stanislava Kuzmová, Ana Marinković, and Trpimir Vedriš (eds.), Cuius Patrocinio Tota Gaudet Regio: Saints’ Cults and the Dynamics of Regional Cohesion (Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2014), pp. 153–91 (p. 153). The classic study is Tramontin, Culto dei santi.

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Venice had become a major stop on the pilgrimage route to the Holy Land. Thomas E.A. Dale argues that Venice “‘reinvented’ the hybrid culture of the Middle East on Venetian grounds in order to evoke comparison with the loca sancta in the biblical Holy Land and the Egyptian homeland of its adopted apostle,” a program that was “designed to complement the acquisition of relics and holy images from the eastern Mediterranean in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and reinforce a sacred topography within the church [of San Marco].”24 In many ways, the Venetian state’s navel-gazing over its holy possessions kept pace with a more general development in late medieval Italy, a creative flourishing in artistic manufacture surrounding the local cult of relics.25 In his important work on the cult of saints in the Italian Middle Ages, André Vauchez claimed that “the public powers were indifferent to nothing regarding the bodies of saints and their cults, so profoundly rooted was the conviction that through their intercession the prosperity of the city was assured and harmony maintained.”26 New forms of government and urban organization increased this activity in the cities of the Italian peninsula and stimulated new modes for presenting the state’s most sacred and representative items.27 The relationship between urban reformation and the display of relics was particularly pronounced in the Veneto, which witnessed a period of intense cultural production around saints and relics in the fourteenth century.28 When the legend of the Apparition of Saint Mark was invented in the late thirteenth century, furnishing proof of Mark’s presence in the Venetian community was one of the state’s most pressing concerns. It is no accident that this period fell close on the heels of several major political setbacks and 24

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Thomas E.A. Dale, “Cultural Hybridity in Medieval Venice: Reinventing the East at San Marco after the Fourth Crusade,” in Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson (eds.), San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), pp. 151–91 (p. 151). Hahn goes so far as to suggest that “all relic collections in some sense represent the Heavenly Jerusalem” while “some more specifically represent the Holy City on earth – Jerusalem, the Holy Land, or other great pilgrimage destinations” (Strange Beauty, p. 196). Cynthia Hahn discusses the particular creativity of late medieval Italy in The Reliquary Effect: Enshrining the Sacred Object (London: Reaktion, 2017), p. 88. “Nulla di tutto quello che riguardava i corpi dei santi e il loro culto lasciava i poteri pubblici indifferenti, così profondamente era radicata in tutti la convinzione che attraverso la loro intercessione la prosperità della città fosse assicurata e mantenuta la concordia.” André Vauchez, “Reliquie, santi e santuari, spazi sacri e vagabondaggio religioso nel Medievo,” in André Vauchez (ed.), L’antichità e il medioevo, vol. 1 of Storia dell’Italia religiosa (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1993), pp. 455–83 (p. 463). André Vauchez (ed.), La religion civique à l’époque médiévale et moderne (chrétienté et islam): Actes du colloque de Nanterre (21–23 juin de 1993) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1995); Vauchez, “Santi mirabili e santi imitabili.” Tomasi, Arche dei santi.

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natural catastrophes. In 1261, the loss of Constantinople, Venice’s most significant foothold in the east, marked a stunning reversal after an era of almost unchecked imperial expansion across the eastern Mediterranean. Zeno had assumed the dogeship in 1253 as figurehead of a vast empire and as ruler over three eighths of Constantinople. The ripresa of Constantinople came as Venice’s first big setback to its growing dominance in the region. Zeno would dedicate the remainder of his life to recovering Venice’s image of unchallenged imperial stature; if he had lost the empire’s coveted foothold in the east, he would have to recuperate the aura of imperial growth, or at least recovery, on different terms. As we shall see, the earliest testaments to the Apparitio story emerge during this period of posturing around the state’s most important relics in efforts to combat the reality of political loss. Far greater disturbances darkened the city’s door in the first half of the fourteenth century. Europe began its shift out of the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the stable economic and environmental conditions it had produced. Increasing civic factionalism, almost continual war with Genoa, and the devastating earthquake of 1348 appeared to the Venetians as harbingers of the Black Death that arrived that same year and lasted a full eighteen months, leaving the population reduced by up to a third.29 These events, “symptoms of disintegration” as Frederic C. Lane calls them, must have struck the Venetians as signs of the precariousness of the life of the state as well as that of its individual members.30 Throughout this bleak century, the Apparitio remained the state’s idée fixe – the most compelling story it had to tell about itself – and the ducal chancery the engine for its elaboration in textual, pictorial, and ritual formats.31 Relics provided the state with a salve for uncertainty; the Republic turned to its sacred treasures as a source of renewable power and as testimony to its place in a providential scheme. In the context of the great political and social losses of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, this story of miraculous recovery must have proved a source of optimism for its audiences, and an assurance of the relics’ continued viability for the late medieval community. Although the feast was initiated under the Zeno dogado of the late thirteenth century, it first emerges in music-textual form within the liturgical 29

30 31

See Campbell, Great Transition, p. 303; Lane, Venice, p. 173. Citing the ravages of plague and war, Frederic C. Lane encapsulates the dogado of Andrea Dandolo as “the most disastrous decade Venetians had ever known” (Venice, p. 179). Lane, Venice, p. 172. Ranee A. Katzenstein connects many of the disparate projects surrounding the promotion of Mark to the ducal chancery, via the Procuratia San Marco, using iconographic and paleographic evidence. “Three Liturgical Manuscripts from San Marco: Art and Patronage in Mid-Trecento Venice,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1987, pp. 227–52.

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books of San Marco during the early fourteenth century, in the period dating to Andrea Dandolo’s influence – first as procurator at San Marco and later as doge. We will deal first with the introduction of the feast and the development of the legend in the thirteenth century before turning to the San Marco antiphoner in which it appears as a fourteenth-century addition. On the heels of the loss of Constantinople in 1261, Zeno began a vigorous campaign of relic authentication, resurrecting past miracles that relics had performed on behalf of the Venetian Commune or inventing them from whole cloth. In 1265, Zeno petitioned the pope to confirm the miraculous survival of three of the most important relics that Doge Enrico Dandolo had acquired during the siege of Constantinople and transferred to San Marco half a century earlier: a piece of the True Cross, believed to be the same cross that the Emperor Constantine had taken into battle; a flask containing the blood of Christ; and a piece of John the Baptist’s skull. One does not need to peel back many layers to see the compensation at work here. In seeking papal recognition of the material continuity of the most sacred objects to have been transferred from Byzantium to Venice a half century earlier, Zeno had turned to the language of miracles – and to its narrative topoi – to contradict the reality of political loss and the temporary eclipse of Venice’s claim to the Byzantine legacy.32 The most ambitious of Zeno’s campaigns centered around the relics of the city’s patron saint and a series of ongoing projects meant to enhance the visibility of Mark’s cult in the 1260s and 1270s. Among these projects was a major set of renovations to the Piazza San Marco, including the brilliant mosaics of the western façade of San Marco that announced the presence of Mark’s body at the ducal basilica in narrative form – a monumental template unprecedented in Latin Christendom in its conspicuousness – the so-called vita mosaics.33 There is much dispute over the exact dating of the mosaic cycle, but it must have been complete, or nearly so, by the time Martin da Canal composed Les estoires de Venise, a chronicle tightly tied to the politics of Zeno’s 32

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Around the same time, these three relics were fixed within an elaborate reliquary in the wall of the corridor that linked the ducal palace to Basilica San Marco, used by the highest members of government to pass internally between the state’s sacred and governmental spaces. By establishing the plaque in the corridor between the ducal palace and ducal chapel, the reliquary brought the relics into communication with the liminal space between the secular and sacred powers of government. Pincus gives a full account of Zeno’s efforts to authenticate these important relics and the relief plaque. Debra Pincus, “Christian Relics and the Body Politic: A Thirteenth-Century Relief Plaque in the Church of San Marco,” in David Rosand (ed.), Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), pp. 39–58. The conspicuousness of such a large-scale program on the exterior of the church, announcing the holy treasures within, was unprecedented in Christendom at that time.

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immediate successor, Lorenzo Tiepolo.34 Having just described the story of the translation of Mark’s body from Alexandria to Venice, Canal calls on the visual authority of the mosaics, pronouncing, “If anyone would like to verify any of the things I have told you, come and look upon the beautiful church of Monseignor St. Mark in Venice, and look right in front of the beautiful church, for the whole story that I have told you is written upon it.”35 “Vita ” is in fact an inaccurate description of what the cycle actually represents, since the four episodes extending from right to left across the portal lunettes are taken exclusively from Mark’s posthumous existence. They begin with the body’s “holy theft” from Alexandria and end with its installation in the church of San Marco. Much has been made of the unprecedented nature of this large-scale hagiographical representation as an external feature of medieval church architecture. As a specimen of medieval iconography, the cycle is unusual not only because of where the story appears (on a façade rather than in an apse or above an altar) but also by virtue of the particular story being told. The two hagiographic genres in which a saint’s relevance to its community was usually developed are the gesta (deeds) and the vita (life). But neither the deeds nor the life of Mark are narrated in this mosaic. What is broadcast instead across the face of the church is a story about Mark’s bones, and their role in mediating between saint and city. Though the general scholarship little distinguishes the relic from the saint, Giorgio Cracco’s observation that “Venetian hagiographic production consisted of Translationes (or Inventiones or Apparitiones ), and not Vitae or Gesta” suggests that an important distinction existed within the Venetian milieu.36 In many ways, the state’s prolific production of narratives about relic translations, inventions, and apparitions is a logical outcome of the city’s missing antiquity, which left it with no Christian martyrs of its own. Like the inscribed stones in Górtyn, the bodies of saints likewise served as the state’s sigilla historiarum. Their use as such reminds us not only that the city’s history comprised a good deal that was borrowed, plundered, and reinvented, but also that techniques of representation 34

35

36

Gina Fasoli, “La Cronique des Veniciens di Martino da Canale,” Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 2 (1961): 42–74 (53–61). “Et se aucun vodra savoir la verité tot ensi com ie le vos ai conte, veigne veoir la bele Yglise de Monseignor Saint Marc en Venise, et regarde très devant la bele Yglise que est escrit tote ceste estoire tot enci com ie la vos ai contee.” Canal, Estoires de Venise, trans. Morreale, 10. “è un fatto che la produzione agiografica veneziana si sostanziò di Translationes (o Inventiones o Apparitiones), non di Vitae o di Gesta.” Giorgio Cracco, “Santità straniera in terra veneta (secc. XI–XII),” in Jean-Yves Tilliette (ed.), Les fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (III–XIII siècle): Actes du colloque de Rome (27–29 octobre 1988) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1991), pp. 447–65 (p. 448).

Building on Bones and the Matter of Form

were seen as valid substitutes for historical truth. This mentality is evident, for instance, in Canal’s claim that the façade mosaics served to authenticate “la verité” of Mark’s relationship to the city. His assertion grants the authority of truth to representation itself, through its validating functions. Canal’s is the first known mention of the Apparitio legend, which, together with the story of Mark’s praedestinatio (see Introduction), “made concurrent debuts in Canal’s Estoires and in the decoration of San Marco.”37 Both stories became hobby horses of the ducal chancery, but only the Apparitio was ever given liturgical dress (though, as we will see in subsequent chapters, the praedestinatio became a favorite topic of state polyphony). Further, if Canal “debuted” both the living (praedestinatio) and posthumous (Apparitio) episodes of Mark’s hagiography in the Estoires, he handles each very differently. The praedestinatio arises, quite unremarked, as part of a versified “prayer” interpolated into the historical text.38 But Canal makes clear that he is relating the story of the Apparitio in order to justify and explain the liturgical feast as it was celebrated in the late thirteenth century. I quote the passage at length, though the story itself will by now be familiar: And at the feast of Monseignor St. Mark, which is in the month of July [sic : June], the mass of Monseignor St. Mark was sung, after they had processed before the Evangelist’s church. And you should know that the Venetians put on this feast for a miracle that they once witnessed, that Monseignor St. Mark performed before their eyes; and I will tell you how. When Monseignor St. Mark was brought from Alexandria to Venice, he was placed in the church, but put discreetly into a place which very few people knew about. And it happened that those who knew the spot where he was placed died without letting others know; and this caused the Venetians a great deal of grief, and they asked the patriarch and the bishop what advice they could give to find out where the body of St. Mark lay. And so Monseignor the patriarch had them fast for three days on bread and water, and afterwards, they conducted the procession. And while Monseignor the patriarch was performing the mass, a stone came from out of the column where Monseignor St. Mark was at rest, and then the Venetians saw the precious body of the Evangelist. And after that they placed it in the church where it pleased them, and kept this very discreetly among themselves; and for this miracle, they have this beautiful feast in July [sic: June]. And Monseignor the doge Renieri Zeno renewed [li dus Rainer Gen renovella cele honorable feste] this honorable feast just as I told you before.39

Canal’s choice of the word renovella implies that the liturgy composed for the feast formed an explicit part of Zeno’s renovatio, the better-known 37 39

Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 24. 38 Canal, Estoires de Venise, p. 340. Canal, Estoires de Venise, p. 218, trans. Morreale, p. 83.

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artifacts of which are the architectural additions to the Piazza San Marco and its decoration with mosaic and spolia. More important for our purposes is Canal’s tight imbrication of the past and the present as they relate to liturgy, space, and the catalyzing event of the miracle. Through his verbatim repetitions of key narrative features (the procession, the Mass, and the place of the church) both in the eleventh-century event and in its thirteenth-century commemoration, Canal holds up the present as the mirror image of the past – or perhaps vice versa. Liturgy, here, is quite straightforwardly a representation of history. In fact, liturgy was not the only place in which history took on liturgical dimensions. The most widely circulated version of the Apparitio narrative was the Legendae de sanctis (ca. 1340) of Pietro Calò, which used the liturgical calendar as an organizing principle and conceptual framework for the telling of hagiography. Rivaling the thirteenth-century Legenda sanctorum (or Legenda aurea) of Jacobus de Voragine on which it was modeled, and which it intended to supplant, this remarkable homegrown collection of saints’ lives grafts the popular and widely read genre of legenda onto a liturgical conception of time.40 Calò organizes the six-volume collection of saints’ lives, deeds, deaths, translations, and inventions according to the cycles of the Church calendar. He notes in his preface that the organizing principle of the legendae will be the breviary and missal used by the Dominicans of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. The collection thus begins with Advent and, merging the feasts of the Temporale and Sanctorale, proceeds through the calendar, and appends a set of lives for which no liturgical date could be found.41 Not surprisingly, saints belonging to the Venetian cult are represented exhaustively, as are those of surrounding regions of the lagoon. Each of Mark’s four liturgical celebrations receive separate entries (he terms Mark’s inventio a miracula). Thus by the fourteenth century, the increasingly fashionable genre of legenda – a source of popular narrative diversion in the later Middle Ages – encouraged Venetians to think of saints and their deeds, posthumous ones included, liturgically.42

40

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42

For the relationship between the Golden Legend and liturgical time, see Jacques Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and the “Golden Legend,” translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 14–21. Silvio Tramontin, “Breve storia dell’agiografia veneziana,” in Culto dei santi a Venezia, pp. 19– 20. Michele Tomasi cites the leggendario of Zanetti 356, discussed at length in Chapter 5, as the source for both the Calò version and the account produced only a few years later in Dandolo’s Chronica per extensum descripta (“I resoconti di Calò e di Dandolo sono basati sul Passionario Marciano”) (Arche dei santi, p. 86).

Making Mark Appear

Making Mark Appear: From Legend to Liturgy A set of musical and textual additions to an early thirteenth-century antiphonal from San Marco (hereafter VAM¹, following Cattin)43 furnishes the first musicliturgical record for the feast of the Apparitio.44 This antiphonal, now privately owned, is one of the earliest liturgical sources from San Marco and, unlike the fourteenth-century antiphonal, pre-dates the reforms of Simeone Moro (primicerio at San Marco from 1287 to 1291). VAM¹ contains four additions appended to the back pages by a later hand: an office for the feast of the Apparitio, added to the initial pages of the manuscript, and offices for Trinity, Corpus Christi, and the feast of Saint Theodore. Cattin dates these to the first decades of the fourteenth century. Put in the perspective of the contemporary activities surrounding the Basilica San Marco, these Apparitio additions to VAM¹ date to a period in which a brilliant pair of mosaics depicting the story – the so-called Preghiera and Apparitio mosaics – had only just been fixed above the location of the “miracle pillar” from which Mark’s body appeared in the south transept of the basilica – a glittering new advertisement that Mark’s relics lay in the basilica and performed miracles for the Venetian people (Figures 4.1a and 4.1b). Thus the addition to VAM¹ followed closely on the heels of a new Venetian hagiography for Mark’s apparition, a compilation that made “official” textual sources available for liturgical composition. As the analysis below bears out, the chants for the new Venetian office capitalize inventively on both the mosaics and this new Venetian legend, each of which serves as a lens through which to interpret the office. For those compiling a liturgy to commemorate the event, the legend’s emphasis on the animating power of prayer held the possibility for selfreflexive engagement with the liturgical format itself – its ability to both narrate and commemorate – but also to re-present the relationship between relic and community that the miracle signified. Zanetti 356, a near-contemporary book of saints’ lives that transmits a fleshed-out version of the miracle, indicates the extent to which the Apparitio liturgy developed hand in hand with the creation of the miracle’s official hagiography.45 Comparison of the texts of the offices found in the 43

44 45

See Giulio Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco: Testi e melodie per la liturgia delle ore dal XII al XVII secolo; Dal graduale tropato del duecento ai graduali cinquecenteschi, 4 vols. (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1990–92), 1: 42–45 (historical overview of VAM¹), 3: 263–66, 19*–30* (for text and transcriptions). Ibid., 1: 42–45. VAM1, on the other hand, dates to around 1318. The Leggendario survives in three separate sources, the most authoritative of which is Zanetti 356. The manuscript appears to have been compiled within the ducal chancery and dates to the

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Figure 4.1a Prayer for the discovery of Mark’s relics (Preghiera), south transept, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270. Mosaic Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY

VAM¹ antiphonal shows the book to have been the near-exclusive source for the office’s text.46 (See Table 4.1, which collates the texts of the legend with those used in the Vespers’ chants.) Cattin remarked on the scholar’s good fortune in knowing so much about the textual origins of the office, where “those texts not derived from the hagiographic legenda are hastily counted.”47

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first decades of the fourteenth century. A series of marginal notes in a separate hand divides the narrative into lectiones, pointing in no uncertain terms to the manuscript’s liturgical use. Monticolo compares the three sources from a codicological point of view (“Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 116–21). Ibid., 118. Many of the texts found in the Apparitio liturgy would have had a popular fourteenth-century afterlife through Pietro Calò da Chioggia’s Legendae de tempore et de sanctis (ca. 1330). Pietro, a Dominican friar and Venetian native, composed a collection of saints’ lives that rivaled that of Jacobus de Voragine in both popularity and scope. Not surprisingly, one place where Pietro’s work clearly surpasses Voragine’s is in his legenda for his city’s patron saint; Pietro’s life of Mark includes a great number of miracles not found in the Legenda aurea. In the case of the Apparitio and the subsequent miracles related to it, the Leggendario must have been the primary source, as Monticolo has quite convincingly demonstrated (ibid., 115–16). “Quasi nessun problema in questo caso circa l’origine dei testi,” where “si contano in fretta i testi non derivati dalla legenda agiografica.” Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 215.

First Vespers

Figure 4.1b The column opens (Apparitio), south transept, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1270. Mosaic Photo credit: Mondadori Portfolio/Contributor/Hulton Fine Art Collection/Getty Images

Indeed only a handful of additional sources – a few chants borrowed from preexisting liturgies and a small number of texts and chants composed exclusively for use in the Apparitio liturgy – are included in what is an otherwise direct derivation from the contemporary source. But despite surface similarities, the transformation of legenda into historia was far from straightforward. In the process of compiling the Apparitio texts for the historia, the liturgists and composers responsible dramatically transformed their meanings.

First Vespers: Narrative Rupture and Lacunic Presence A close examination of the Vespers office indicates that those few extrahagiographical chants and texts that are “hastily counted” were disposed in such a way as to create a remarkable moment within the

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office: a tear in the narrative fabric that exposes the occasion of realtime prayer. By bringing the historical event related in the legend to bear upon the contemporary act of worship, this Vespers service offers a reflection on the reciprocal relationship between prayer and presence. Upon close inspection of the Apparition office of First Vespers, we find a surprising lacuna in the story (see Table 4.1). While the five Psalm antiphons and Magnificat antiphon narrate almost verbatim the events leading up to and immediately following the Apparition as they are described in the Leggendario, the office omits the central episode of the legend: the miraculous appearance itself. As is evident in Table 4.1, between the fifth antiphon and the Magnificat, a substantial section of the legend finds no textual correlate in the office. The sole borrowed chant in the office, the responsory Beatissimus Marcus, fills the gap, quite literally taking the “place” of the absent miracle. This structural feature of the office has narrative consequences. The responsory and its accompanying verse stand out against the backdrop of the Leggendario account told by the surrounding antiphons. The musical “appearance” of Beatissimus Marcus becomes the dramatic enactment of the relics’ living presence to the Venetian community – no longer in the context of an eleventh-century miracle but in the present moment of worship. By breaking loose from the narrative structure of the legend, this moment within the office creates the illusion of a miraculous occurrence in the liturgical here and now. That the transformation of historical legend into living liturgy will occur is heralded by both the language and musical design of the first antiphon. Like the responsory, antiphon 1, Gaudete et exultate Veneciarum cives (Example 4.1), stands apart from the hagiographical antiphons 2 through 5. With no known source, antiphon 1 was in all likelihood composed for its present liturgical context.48 While antiphons 2 through 5, following the language of the Leggendario, employ the perfect tense, establishing the pastness of the events, Gaudete et exultate not only directs itself to the fourteenth-century community 48

Cattin concludes that “Sarà probabilmente veneziano il solenne squillo d’inizio, cioè la prima ANT dei primi Vespri: ‘Gaudete et exultate, Veneciarum cives,’ anche se la memoria suggerisce analoghi inviti all’esultanza al principio di parecchie historiae connesse con culti regionali o cittadini” (Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 215). While the text of Gaudete et exultate is newly composed, it nonetheless alludes to the very portion of the legenda that is omitted, which is itself a quotation from Matthew 7: 7: “fidelis autem Deus, qui dixerat: petite et accipietis, pulsate et aperietur vobis.”

Table 4.1 Zanetti 356 Leggendario and First Vespers texts for the Feast of the Apparition Zanetti 356: Apparitio Sancti Marci, lines 1−8a

(1) Translato igitur beatissimi Marci gloriosissimo corpore ab Alexandria in Veneciam feliciterque deposito in basilicam ad eius honorem constructam pulchro in oculis omnium scemate auro et marmoribus preciosissime redimitam, contigit ut post aliquod tempora ubi eiusdem preciosissimum corpus quiesceret nesciretur. (2) cumque post diligentissimam inquisitionem nemo huius rei conscius potuerit inveniri, toti Venecie ieiunium triduanum indictum est. (3) post quod in cordis contricione ab omnibus observatum unanimiter quarto die ad dictam eius basilicam clerus et populus Venecie convenerunt, in qua letaniis perfectis processione disposita, multiplicibus lacrimis, diucius Dei misericordiam implorarunt ut eis ubi corpus beati Marci iaceret ostendere dignaretur,

VAM¹: In festo apparicionis corporis Beati Marci Evangeliste, ad Vesperum, fols. 1−11b

English translation of chant texts

Ⱥ 1. Gaudete et exultate, Veneciarum cives, quia hodie occultum aperietur vobis tesaurum sanctissimum. Ps. Dixit Dominus 2. Translato beatissimi Marci corpore ab Alexandria in Veneciam, ipsum feliciter in basilicam sibi ornatam depositum fuit. Ps. Laudate pueri.

Ⱥ 1. Rejoice and exult, citizens of Venice, since today your hidden holy treasure will be revealed to you. Ps. Dixit Dominus 2. With the body of the most blessed Mark transferred from Alexandria to Venice, he happily allowed himself to be placed in the decorated basilica. Ps. Laudate pueri.

3. Contigit ut, post aliquot tempora, ubi eiusdem preciosissimum corpus requiesceret nesciretur. Ps. Credidi 4. Cumque post diligentissimam inquisicionem nemo huius rei conscius potuerit inveniri, toti Venecie triduanum indictum est ieiunium. Ps. In convertendo

3. It happened that after some time, it was not known where his most precious body had been deposited. Ps. Credidi 4. After a very diligent search no person knowledgeable of the matter was able to be found, a fast of three-day duration was ordered for all of Venice. Ps. In convertendo.

5. Profluentibus lacrimis, diucius Dei misericordiam implorarunt, ut eis ubi corpus beati Marci iaceret ostendere dignaretur. Ps. Domine probasti

5. With flowing tears, all day they beseeched the mercy of God, that it be deemed fit to show them where blessed Mark’s body lay. Ps. Domine probasti

Table 4.1 (cont.) Zanetti 356: Apparitio Sancti Marci, lines 1−8a

VAM¹: In festo apparicionis corporis Beati Marci Evangeliste, ad Vesperum, fols. 1−11b

English translation of chant texts

fidelis autem Deus, qui dixerat: (4) petite et accipietis, pulsate et aperietur vobis, et iterum: (5) de omni re quamcumque pecieritis fiet vobis a patre meo, prope existens omnibus invocantibus eum in veritate, preces eorum benignius exaudivit et locum in quo sanctissimum corpus latuerat gloriosissime declaravit. (7) nam scissis marmoribus columpne circumpositis, arca que interius claudebatur, corpus ipsa quoque concludens, erupit et in conspectu omnium per semetipsam mirificencius exilivit.

[Chapter reading]c R. Beatissimus Marcus, discipulus et interpres Petri apostoli, secundum quod ab eo audierat Romae rogatus a fratribus Christi scripsit evangelium, alleluia. V. Ora pro nobis, beate Marce.

R. Most blessed Mark, disciple and interpreter of apostle Peter, asked by the brothers of Christ at Rome, wrote a gospel according to what he had heard Peter say, alleluia. V. Pray for us, blessed Mark.

(8) felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum ad cuius nutum lapides scinditur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt!

AD MAGN Ⱥ Felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum, ad cuius nutum lapides scinduntur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt. Hymn: Hodie festum pie

AD MAGN Ⱥ Happy region, that it was worthy to have such a patron, at whose will the stones divide, insensible marbles break by the hidden power, and leap up from within through the work of the Holy Spirit. Ps. Magnificat.

a b c

Texts and transcriptions adopted from Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 263–64 and 19*–21*. Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 142–43. Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 263–64. Regrettably, the absence of any medieval Ordinario or Breviary from San Marco means that, with the exception of a few cases, the biblical readings for the offices at the basilica are almost entirely unknown. Ibid., 1: 60–61.

First Vespers

Example 4.1 Gaudete et exultate, Veneciarum cives, antiphon 1, Apparitio Vespers Based on Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 19*

through use of the present imperative (“gaudete et exultate Veneciarum cives” [rejoice and exult citizens of Venice]), but establishes a tone of expectancy – a sense of a change to come – through its use of the future passive (“aperietur vobis tesaurum” [the treasure will reveal itself to you]). The setting of Gaudete et exultate draws special attention to the text’s present point of view. The chant is in the first mode and is comprised of four phrases, all of which cadence on d (over the final syllables of “exultate,” “cives,” “aperietur,” and “sanctissimum”). An upward leap (a–c’) over the first syllable of “hodie” – the highest point in the chant’s tessitura – gives melodic stress to the here and now evoked in the text. An initial four-note melisma over the first syllable likewise distinguishes this antiphon from the others and, in so doing, underlines the imperative call to the “Veneciarum cives” to rejoice and keep vigil for the coming miracle.49 Antiphons 2 through 4, continuing their in seriatim borrowing from the Leggendario, narrate the backstory to the Apparition miracle, beginning with the ninth-century deposition of the relics in the church of San Marco (Ⱥ 2), the subsequent erasure of the relics’ hiding place from memory (Ⱥ 3), and the failed search to find anyone who could remember the location (Ⱥ 4).50 The fifth and final antiphon, 49

50

Opening flourishes like these are rather rare within the melodically conservative repertory of VAM¹. By picking up where the translation narrative ends, the Apparitio hagiographer grafts this later episode onto the central event of Venice’s sacropolitical history. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the 31 January celebration of Mark’s translation, the First Vespers office

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Profluentibus lacrimis, describes the communal prayer that engaged the whole city of the Venetians who, “with flowing tears, all day . . . beseeched the mercy of God, that it be deemed fit to show them where blessed Mark’s body lay.” And here, just after the prayer of the Venetians has been recounted, at the very moment when the Leggendario account would have Mark reveal himself to the city, the narrative comes to a halt. What is more, the celebratory Magnificat antiphon that follows the recitation of the chapter and responsory would make it seem that the miraculous appearance was a fait accompli – despite the fact that the miracle’s occurrence has gone unmentioned in the chanted texts of the office. What could justify such an omission – the central episode of the miracle narrative? The answer is suggested in the very portion of the Leggendario text that is omitted (lines 4–7 in Table 4.1). The section begins with a paraphrase of Matthew 7: 7–8: “and thus God had said to the faithful: seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened for you. Anything that you should seek whatsoever will be done for you by my father. He is near to all those who call on him in truth.”51 This scriptural evidence for the efficacy of prayer establishes the authority of the miracle that then follows: The most benevolent one heard their prayers and gloriously declared the place in which the most holy body lay. For with the surrounding marble of the column divided, the chest containing the body, which was shut inside of it, broke through and in the sight of all miraculously sprang forth by his own will.52

In relaying this crucial moment, the legenda thus makes theologically explicit the impetus for the miraculous occurrence. The passage from

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for that feast shares several commonalities with the office of the Apparitio. The two evening offices have in common their set of Psalms, and a similar “Ora pro nobis” serves as the chapter for the Translation Vespers. It seems likely, in fact, that the Translation liturgy that pre-dates that of the Apparition could have served as a model. There would have been rhetorical reasons, as well as practical ones, for these parallels as well. The feast of the Apparition was, after all, a reassertion of the main point of the Translation: the special propensity Mark’s relics showed toward the city of Venice. “Fidelis autem Deus, qui dixerat: petite et accipietis, pulsate et aperietur vobis, et iterum: de omni re quamcumque pecieritis fiet vobis a patre meo, propre existens omnibus invocantibus eum in veritate.” Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 143. “Preces eorum benignius exaudivit et locum in quo sanctissimum corpus latuerat gloriosissime declaravit. Nam scisis marmoribus columpne circumpositis, arce que interius claudebatur, corpus ipsa quoque concludens, erupit et in conspectu omnium per semetipsam mirificencius exilivit.” Ibid., 143.

First Vespers

Matthew frames the event as a logical outcome of God’s receptiveness to prayer. Returning to the liturgy, we find that the responsory and its verse dramatize the relationship between prayer and presence. Here at the musical highpoint of the Vespers office, musical and textual devices create the sounding illusion of the relics’ presence as the outcome of prayer. Especially important in this regard is the emphasis on invoking Mark through name, since in liturgical contexts, as Geary notes, “the pronunciation of the name of the dead was more than simply recollection: it was the means by which the dead were made present – that to utter the name of the dead was itself a type of prayer, and a way of mediating its presence.”53 Significantly it is the name of the Evangelist – and not the relic – as a nominative subject (“beatissimus Marcus”) that the responsory dramatizes at the very moment the liturgical texts abandon the historical narrative. Music itself serves as the medium for engendering presence. Up to the responsory, the antiphons of the Vespers office had moved rapidly through the events of the Apparition narrative, from Mark’s ninth-century translation from Alexandria to his eleventh-century rediscovery. The music and text of Beatissimus Marcus bring the momentum of the story to a halt and impart a new temporality – one in which time seems to stand still (Example 4.2). The respond consists of two cola, one of which cadences to F and the other to the final G.54 The first half of the respond’s first colon is nothing more than the saint’s name, this time as the nominative subject (“Beatissimus Marcus”). Indeed, the entire first period of the respond is one long appositive noun clause (“Most blessed Mark, disciple and interpreter of Peter the Apostle”). At this point, an extended melisma over the name “Marcus” – the longest in this period of the respond – slows the declamation of the text and carries the melody up to the highest point of the chant’s range for the first time. Of course, within the responsory genre as a whole, such melismatic approaches to text and sweeping motion

53 54

Geary, Living with the Dead, p. 87. The lack of a notation for the responsory verse “Ora pro nobis beate Marce,” unknown outside of the Apparitio Vespers at San Marco, makes modal identification of the responsory difficult (it is the verse that tends to determine the responsory mode). However, Beatissimus Marcus is also sung during the Matins celebration of the feast of Saint Mark (as discussed below), and in that context, it is accompanied by the verse “Quod videns Petrus,” which is in mode 8.

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Example 4.2 Beatissimus Marcus, responsory, Apparitio Vespers Based on Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 8*

across a wide melodic ambitus are not uncommon.55 But in its present liturgical context, the initial melisma over “Marcus” seems to herald his new status within the office – his renewed proximity to those gathered to commemorate the miracle of the Apparition. Further signaling Mark’s transfiguration within the office is the fact that the responsory itself comes from another source: it is the sole borrowed chant in the Vespers office, taken from the Matins celebration of the 25 April feast of Saint Mark that commemorated the Evangelist’s deeds and martyrdom in Alexandria.56 It was, in fact, the only feast in the Venetian liturgical calendar that celebrated Mark’s life and martyrdom rather than his miraculous relics.57 Accordingly, the chant envisions Mark not as a misplaced relic in 55

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57

In fact, as with all of the chant repertory from San Marco, the approach here is rather conservative compared to what one could find in other contemporary centers. Beatissimus Marcus (CAO 6192) is the second responsory of the first nocturn of Matins on 25 April. Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 260. Beatissimus Marcus appears as the third responsory in Nocturn I for the 25 April feast for Saint Mark. See Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 260 for text and 3: 8* for transcription.

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

medieval Venice, but as the living Evangelist in first-century Alexandria and the disciple of Peter. As a musical and liturgical borrowing – a translation of its own sorts from the feast of Saint Mark to that of his apparition – Beatissimus Marcus gives living embodiment to the Evangelist and testimony to the belief that the relics channeled his presence. Thus the responsory fosters the illusion of a new temporal dimension within the office – a telescoping of time in which the living Evangelist, mediated through the veneration of his relics, meets the living Venetian present. And while the Magnificat antiphon (Felix regio) that follows plunges us back into the legenda narrative (Table 4.1, 8), offering thanks for the miraculous appearance of the relics, it could equally serve as thanks for the relics’ continuing service to the fourteenth-century community: “Happy region, that it was worthy to have such a patron” is an affirmation of Mark’s patronal status, conferred not merely through the presence of his relics at the ducal chapel, but through their continued receptiveness to the prayers of his faithful community.

A Locus Sanctus in the Magnificat Antiphon Felix Regio That Magnificat antiphon, the final chant of the First Vespers office, merits its own separate discussion. If the effect of the chapter and responsory section preceding it had been the transformation of the latent relics into the living presence of the Evangelist, the Magnificat antiphon – taking its cue from the canticle it frames – extends the miraculous power from the relics to the vessel that contained them. It bestows upon the miracle pillar the status of “contact” relic – a secondary phenomenon of the relic’s sign-status that communicated the presence of sanctity from one bit of matter to another by means of touch. Cities throughout Europe availed themselves of this theology of transmission to create new sacred sites, buildings, and objects.58 In a world of finite matter, the multiplication of an object-based sanctity was a pragmatic concern; medieval theology overcame this material finitude through the development of a sanctity that was transmissible by contact.

58

For a useful comparand to the Venetian case, see Rebecca Browett, “Touching the Holy: The Rise of Contact Relics in Medieval England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 68, no. 3 (2017): 493–509.

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Despite the terminological emphasis on touch, however, it was not mere proximity that endowed the contact relic with presence but the assertion of that proximity through formal, sense-perceptible frameworks.59 In the early decades of the thirteenth century, the Venetian state undertook an aggressive program of urban renovation intended to strengthen the city’s renown as a pilgrimage destination. Among its most ambitious undertakings was the creation of a new locus sanctus within the basilica: the pillar that concealed Mark’s relics.60 Ranee Katzenstein has shown the extent to which artistic projects commissioned in thirteenth-century Venice were aimed at authenticating the miracle of the Apparition by applying decorations to the zone around the pillar in which the miracle had taken place.61 A mosaic pair depicting the miracle was fixed above the pillar in the basilica’s south transept at roughly the same time the Apparition liturgy was composed. It offers some of the earliest material evidence for the promotion of the pillar as a shrine for veneration (see Figures 4.1a and 4.1b). Intense focus on the miracle pillar as locus sanctus coincides with a fourteenth-century tendency in the Veneto to transform columns into tombs, and to depict those tombs in painting using known or recognizable architectural features.62 The Preghiera and Apparitio mosaics make reference to two distinct and proximate spaces within the basilica that depict the architectural details of their immediate environment: the altar to the east and the pillar just below.

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Nino Zchomelidse discusses the work of the frame in establishing the relationship between a relic and its proximate representations in “Liminal Phenomena: Framing Medieval Cult Images with Relics and Words,” Viator 47, no. 3 (2016): 243–96. In addition to the south transept’s aforementioned political significance – as a liminal zone between government affairs and liturgical performance – architectural and decorative evidence suggests that the immediate area of the miraculous pillar held special significance even before the development of the Apparition legend. The pavement mosaics that surround the miracle pillar are quite unlike any found elsewhere in the church. Scholars have taken its archaizing style, based on an early Byzantine prototype, to indicate some original importance of this section of the church, likely even to mark it as the oldest part of the eleventh-century structure. See Demus, Mosaics of San Marco, 2: 1, 28. For the concept of the “contact relic,” or brandea, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. 49–63, as well as G.J.C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 12–14. Katzenstein, “Three Liturgical Manuscripts,” p. 209. Michelangelo Muraro discusses the artistic and architectural efforts to transform the miracle pillar into a locus sanctus in the late thirteenth century. “Il pilastro del miracolo e il secondo programma dei mosaici marciani,” Arte veneta 29 (1975): 60–65. “La diffusione di questo tipo fece sì che nell’immaginario collettivo in area veneta esso divenisse la forma per eccellenza della sepoltura del santo.” Tomasi, Arche dei santi, p. 47.

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

An inscription above the composition relates the two halves – and two locations – of the story to one another: +PER TRIDUUM PLEBS IEIUNAT DOMINUMQUE PRECATUR PETRA PATET SANCTUM ˙ MOX COLLIGIT & COLLOCAT.63 FOR A THREE-DAY PERIOD THE PEOPLE FASTS AND PRAYS TO THE LORD. THE STONE REVEALS THE SAINT. THEN [THE PEOPLE] COLLECTS AND RELOCATES [THE BONES].

In his monumental work on the San Marco mosaics, Demus puzzled over the mosaicist’s failure to faithfully represent the south transept in the right-hand (Apparitio) scene, despite his accurate architectural rendering of the nave in the left-hand (Preghiera) scene. He mused that “if the entire stretch of architectural space represented in the Apparitio had been meant to represent the south transept, from the south entrance to the ‘miracle pillar,’ the whole [scene] would have had to be reversed.”64 It is an impossible vantage, in other words, but the consequences of this inaccuracy are rhetorical. There is a visual identity between the Preghiera and Apparitio scenes, with altar and pillar, respectively, the twin focal points of each.65 Reading the mosaic from left to right, the altar of the Preghiera becomes the miracle pillar of the Apparitio, and the open book over the altar that reads “EXAUDI OMNIS DNE POPULI SUPPLICATIONES” (Lord hear all the supplications of your people) in the Preghiera is replaced in the Apparitio by the opened window into the reliquary pillar.66 Through a structured substitution of altar with pillar, prayer with presence, the mosaic establishes a second sacred pole within the basilica, and authenticates the pillar’s status as a site for veneration and pilgrimage.67 We might remember that the story of the Apparition began with Doge Falier looking for the relics to install in the altar of the newly constructed church. With this knowledge in mind, the anticipation of the body’s return to the 63

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I am grateful to Peter Jeffery for offering his emendations to the postmedieval restoration of the inscription, which has left it unintelligible. The accompanying English translation is also from Jeffery, “The Choir of San Marco in a Thirteenth-Century Mosaic,” unpublished manuscript. Demus sensibly points to the practical difficulties of representing the south transept as compared to the nave, the view onto which is comparatively unobstructed (Mosaics of San Marco 2: 1, 28). It is worth considering the central location of the doge and the “DUX” inscription as stable points of reference in both scenes – a stability that further encourages the viewer to understand the altar and the column he attends to in both scenes as parallel. This equation between altar and reliquary taps into a rich theology shared between Eucharist and relic. The superlative study is Snoek, Medieval Piety. After the rediscovery of the relics, they would have been transferred to their current location beneath the high altar (the appropriate place for the dedication of the church).

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altar – the inscribed but undepicted moment when “the people collects and relocates the bones” – sets in motion a circular relation between the two images. If the mosaic works like a hologram card, the Magnificat antiphon, Felix regio, in the Apparition First Vespers fosters an even more tractable, plastic sense of time. Like the mosaic composition, the Felix regio antiphon foregrounds the pillar, slowly unfolding the sacred charge of the new shrine in the basilica (Example 4.3). The chant is in the first mode and is comprised of five musical phrases, all but one of which cadence to the final D (on the ultimate syllable of “regio,” “patronum,” scinduntur,” “fraguntur,” and “prosiliunt,” respectively). Its design represents, in musical terms, the live receptivity of the inanimate column to the faithful’s prayer and its role as mediator of Mark’s relics, as the chant setting puts in motion the process of animation the text describes.68 As the emphasis of the text Example 4.3 Felix regio, Magnificat Antiphon, Apparitio Vespers Based on Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 20–21*

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That the final chant of First Vespers should, both in its text and in its music-rhetorical structure, transfer the miraculous significance from the body of Mark to the pillar that contained it perhaps reflects the increasing liturgical and devotional attention paid to reliquaries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a topic explored by Hahn. Hahn sees “the reversal of container and contained aris[ing] from a genuine reversal of status” where “unadorned relic bones are inexpressive, anonymous, perhaps even repugnant. Without proper identification and a cultural matrix . . . relics remain inert. The reliquary in some sense enables or even constitutes the power of the relic. An argument can be made that the container ultimately supersedes the contained” (“The Voices of the Saints,” 28).

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

shifts from a statement of thanksgiving for the past miracle to a remembrance or summary of it, so too does the chant melody take on new direction, widening its ambitus and unfolding in increasingly longer phrases. This process of continual expansion, both in length and range, is set in motion in the very first musical phrase. It is a mere intonation and cadence (with nothing really in between) setting the vocative address to the fortunate Venetians: “Felix regio.” The six-note cadential formula [f-e-D-C-D-D] to the final of the mode (D) that concludes the opening invocation – and that reappears through out the chant – structures the first half of the antiphon (everything through “scinduntur”). It clearly demarcates the two subsequent phrases of equal length that follow. The second phrase (“que tantum digna fuit habere patronum”) – a melodically restrained and straightforward statement of Mark’s patronage to the worthy Venetians – remains within the confines of the lower half of the first-mode ambitus (D-a), even as it introduces a new melodic formula – the five-note [g-f-g-a-a ] over “habere” – that articulates the arrival at the affinal (a). Mirroring its textual description of the pillar’s first stirrings, the subsequent phrase (“ad cuius lapides scinduntur”) differs from the previous one primarily in its use of the affinal formula as a hinge up to the chant’s first exploration of the upper tetrachord of the mode. As if to hint at the immanent “breaking open” of the musical, as well as architectural, structure, the phrase peaks at the b-flat over the first syllable of “lapides” before returning back down to the final by way of the familiar formula. Taken together, these first three musical phrases establish an initial symmetry: if the phrase over “Felix regio” is taken to be a separate introductory section, the phrases that begin “que tantum” and “ad cuius” each contain twenty pitches, use the affinal formula to reach a melodic highpoint (which is a pitch higher in the “ad cuius” phrase), and make complete cadences to the final. Yet the frustration of this symmetry in subsequent phrases creates a suspended state of climax, an unceasing sense of motion that reflects the new sentience given to the previously inanimate stones, that they should open to reveal Mark’s location. That the next phrase (“marmora latenti virtute franguntur”) will diverge from those previous is suggested by a new starting pitch, this time a third above the final. And, indeed, when the affinal formula (now slightly embellished through an initial climacus) over “latenti” arrives, it serves this time to convey the melody up an octave above the final (a high d on

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the second syllable of “virtute”), before making a scalar run back down through the a-D tetrachord to cadence on e. In this way, the melodic climax of the chant, a localized foray into the upper tetrachord, separates out the phrase “latenti virtute” (through the latent power), the ablative of means by which insensate rock could be made to move through prayer.69 While the exploration of the upper range is confined to this particular moment, giving unambiguous emphasis to the “hidden power” that has been revealed, the momentum set in motion by this melodic peak is sustained until the very final cadence. Breaking with the pattern established in the previous three musical phrases, where text phrases and cadences neatly coincide, the phrase “marmora latenti” defers a return to the final and cadences instead on e. This time the new phrase (“insensibilia Spiritu”) begins on the affinal and remains suspended in the middle of the range through two repetitions of the affinal formula over “insensibilia Spiritu” before it is delivered back down to the lower ambitus for a final reiteration of the cadential formula. In its function as a musical frame to the recitation of the Magnificat canticle, the rhetorical priorities of Felix regio foster a stunning parallelism between two miraculous events, one biblical and the other specifically Venetian. For the focus of this final antiphon is not so much Mark’s body as it is the improbable vessel, made sensate through the Holy Spirit, that both hid and revealed the holy treasure. In other words, the antiphon echoes and inflects the text of the Magnificat, since both are praises of thanksgiving for great miracles visited upon Venice and the Virgin, respectively. Like Mary whom, because of her humility, God chose for his task (“respexit humilitatem ancillae suae”), so too is Venice worthy of the miracle bestowed on the pillar (“tantum digna . . . habere patronum”) that restored Mark’s patronage to the city. With the Magnificat and its antiphon read in this parallel light, Venice herself becomes “the handmaiden of the 69

The musical prominence given here to the statement of the relic’s latent or hidden virtus serves as an explicit announcement of the medieval understanding of relic. Hahn discusses the concept of virtus as ontologically bound up with the very definition of relic in medieval thought, in which a relic was “a physical object understood to carry the virtus of a saint or Christ, literally ‘virtue’ but more accurately the ‘power’ of a holy person” (Strange Beauty, pp. 8–9). She likewise explains the way in which virtus was thought to be communicable through contact, wherein “an object that has touched the relic . . . now carries that transferred, one might almost say ‘contagious,’ virtus ” (p. 9). Thus we can understand this latens virtus expressed through the text and setting of this antiphon to extend to the pillar that here participates in the miraculous occurrence.

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

Lord,” which “all generations shall call blessed,” a reading particularly amenable to Venice’s fourteenth-century self-fashioning that personified the city as the Virgin of the Annunciation.70 An interesting comparison to the treatment of the Felix regio Magnificat antiphon is to be found in the Magnificat antiphon for the Vespers office for Saint Theodore – another of the few fourteenth-century additions to VAM¹ in the same late hand (Example 4.4).71 The addition of Theodore to the liturgical calendar again bespeaks an investment in bringing out the embedded, hidden histories contained in the church of San Marco – and also to the opportunity to reanimate the past by teasing out these containments through liturgical composition. Sometime in the fourteenth century, consensus began to emerge around the idea that Theodore had been the first Example 4.4 Hic est beatissimus martyr, Magnificat antiphon, Theodore Vespers

AD MAGN Ⱥ: Hic est beatissimus martyr Christi Theodorus, qui non est derelictus a Deo in die sui certaminis, et ipse conculcavit caput draconis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Here is the most blessed martyr of Christ, Theodore, who was not left behind by God on the day of his struggle, when he crushed the head of the dragon, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

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For a discussion of the many appearances of the Annunciation theme and their symbolic resonances in Venetian state art, see Rosand, Myths of Venice, esp. chap. 1. Whereas the Apparitio appears as an addition to the initial page of the manuscript, offices for Saint Theodore, the feast of the Trinity, and Corpus Christi appear at the back.

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patron saint of the city, and that his cult in fact pre-dated the 828 translation of Mark from Alexandria. Andrea Dandolo’s midcentury Chronica per extensum descripta imagines the prehistorical shrine of Theodore lying “enclosed” (inclusa) somewhere within the basilica of Mark. Invoking the original inhabitants of Venice, Dandolo claims that these early lagunary people had two churches: one at Rialto and the other, dedicated to the martyr Theodore, now enclosed within the walls of the present-day church of San Marco (que hodie infra menia ecclesie sancti Marci inclusa est ).72 The originary history that Dandolo peddles in his Chronica has an analogue in the new fourteenth-century feast for Theodore. To wit, the second antiphon of First Vespers, which appears to posit the primacy of Theodore’s cult in the exclaim of “how much that martyr of Christ is to be venerated, in whose hall first merited to obtain the name of altar shrine” (O quam venerandus est iste martyr Christi qui primus [or: primo] in huius aula templi altaris vocabulum meruit obtinere). But even more important than the argument made for Theodore’s status as proto-patron to Mark is the attention to Theodore’s shrine as a hidden feature of the present-day structure. It was the opening words – “hic est” – of the Theodore Magnificat antiphon for First Vespers that caused Cattin to speculate that the office had been sung before an altar once dedicated to Theodore, though there is no evidence that any such altar existed in the Middle Ages. If the antiphon had indeed been sung before an altar containing Theodore’s relics, then the chant’s proposition that “Hic est . . . Theodorus, qui non est derelictus” (Here is Theodore, who was not left behind [by God]) – with its verbal play on the word relictus (relic) – would seem patently contradictory (in the context of the chant text, the statement applies to Theodore’s triumph in the moment of his martyrdom). This contradiction, however, was perfectly in keeping with the theology of the relic, which made possible the physical relicta of a saint even as that saint existed in toto in heaven.73 And whether or not the demonstrative “hic” points to a definite location of worship – i.e., an altar – the antiphon plays subtly across the idea of simultaneous containment and noncontainment, presence 72

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“Hic postea, in regione maritima accedens, quia incolas sibi asstitise cognoverat, in Rivoalto duas in eadem tumba construxit ecclesias, unam in honorem sancti Theodori martiris, que hodie infra menia ecclesie sancti Marci inclusa est.” Dandolo, Chronica per extensum, p. 73. For the “dialectical” possibilities of this contradiction, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1980), p. 78.

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

and absence, locatability and nonlocatability. These ideas would have been theologically appropriate to the Magnificat canticle the antiphon frames, in its reference to Mary’s impossible containment of the divine. But the chant also offers a bit of theologizing about relics, and about sacred matter more broadly. “Hic est beatissimus martyr Christi Theodorus” is both true and untrue: historically (allegedly) true, in that Theodore had been there and, according to tradition, was still buried somewhere deep within the basilica, and untrue in that his presence was now obscure, invisible, and unverifiable. And as was the case with Felix regio, it is this language of enclosure and occlusion, with the relic as its subject, that sets up liturgy as the agent for disclosure and revelation. But there is another possibility, or intertext, that may very well be at play between the two fourteenth-century Magnificat antiphons (Felix regio for the feast of the Apparition and Hic est beatissimus for the feast of Theodore). Around the same time these feasts were added to the San Marco antiphoner, a prominent addition of another kind was made to the Piazzetta – and, in particular, to the two monumental columns, upon one of which stood a bronze lion of Saint Mark. According to Francesco Sansovino, in 1329 a statue of Theodore – foot upon dragon and all – was placed upon the second column, putting Mark and Theodore side by side and creating, for the first time, a monumental statement about the city’s twin patrons.74 In this sense, to state that “here is Theodore” was to claim the legitimacy of his cult – and that cult’s relation to Mark’s – through the presence of statuary – not relics – and to claim an effigy as a viable substitute for the relic (we might recall a similar attitude toward effigies in Chapter 3). Together, these two columns and the saints atop them became the “gates” of the city – a city without walls, built on the bodies of saints, and now accessed through them as well.75 The deep musical and liturgical allegorization of Mary’s womb as the porta (gate) through which Christ appears makes the Magnificat antiphon an especially appropriate venue to draw attention to Theodore’s new status as co-gatekeeper of the city.76

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See Brown, Venice and Antiquity, pp. 18, 296. Venice would later carry out capital punishments between the two columns. I thank Jonathan Glixon for pointing out the irony in the fact that, for later Venetians, to be “fra Marco e Todaro” was to find oneself in a bind. For the allegorical tradition of Mary as porta see, for instance, David J. Rothenberg, “The Gate That Carries Christ: Wordplay and Liturgical Imagery in a Motet from ca. 1300,” in

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We might be mindful, at this point, of the degree of musical and liturgical attention given neither to saints, nor their acts, nor even to their bones, but to the architectural features that contain and commemorate them – features that are, at some level, the real material supports and building blocks of the medieval city. In their liturgical treatment, pillars, columns, stones, and statuary appear as extensions of the sacred material of saints. Demus once drew attention to Venice’s “indiscriminate use of columns” during this period.77 But it is easy to see how liturgy made these objects flicker with live potentiality. The same musical, textual, and liturgical strategies used to activate the latent presence of the saints could be extended and applied to all sorts of artifacts of Venetian history. If, as per Sanudo, the city could be buoyed up by the bodies of saints, it becomes clear that many of the compositions unique to the liturgy of San Marco focused on the further sanctification of the city’s built environment. In the case of the Apparitio office, and Felix regio in particular, the effect of concluding First Vespers with an emphasis on the pillar and not the relics is one of limitless expansion – a final push against the finitude of the state’s sacred matter. If the chapter and responsory had given aural embodiment to Mark’s self-revelation, the Magnificat antiphon, a postlude to this event, in a sense, “blesses” his unwitting reliquary. This shift in emphasis is not insignificant in the context in which the liturgy was composed: the creation of the Apparitio legend in the thirteenth century had transformed this site in the basilica into a shrine for pilgrims, and the 25 June feast would have drawn pilgrims to the pillar in especially high numbers.78 Vespers, moreover, was an appropriate time to give ritual emphasis to the proliferation of sacred sites and objects within the basilica. Unlike Matins and Lauds, positioned in the extreme hours of morning, the evening service of Vespers made it attractive to lay audiences and gave it what Brand calls its distinctly “social character.”79 Indeed a list of statutes relating to the basilica, compiled around the time of the Apparitio and Theodore additions, furnishes evidence of lay presence at the Vespers

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Benjamin Brand and David J. Rothenberg (eds.), Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 225–41 (p. 235). For the connection between monumental art and sepulchral decoration, see Ingo Herklotz, “Sepulcra” e “monumenta” del medioevo: Studi sull’arte sepolcrale in Italia, translated by Francesca Pomarici (Rome: Rari Nantes, 1985). Demus, Mosaics of San Marco, 2: 104–05. 78 See Muraro, “Pilastro del miracolo,” 60–65. Brand, Holy Treasure and Sacred Song, p. 196.

A Locus Sanctus in Felix Regio

service.80 The focus on the material sanctity of loci – buildings, architecture, and their histories – in the Vespers office of the Apparitio, but also in that of Theodore, is perhaps an auspicious bit of propaganda for the Venetian pilgrim industry. Indeed, much of the Matins and Lauds offices – the subjects of Chapter 5 – are devoted not so much to the actual event of the Apparition but to the subsequent miracles performed for those who came to venerate the miracle pillar. It is perhaps not coincidental, then, that the Magnificat antiphon used for Second Vespers (that is, in lieu of Felix regio) – the very final chant of the liturgical observances for the feast of the Apparitio – is an affirmation of the limitless, open-ended possibility for miracles to take place for those who come to venerate the shrine where Mark appeared: Indeed blessed Mark performed many and other miracles that were not able to be accounted for in these pages. Multa quidem et alia miracula fecit beatus Marcus, que non potuerunt pagine isti ascribi, alleluia.81

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Betto, Capitolo della basilica di S. Marco, p. 105. Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3: 266.

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5

History Lessons Matins for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics

We might dwell a moment longer on the final chant for the feast of Mark’s Apparition, the second Vespers Magnificat antiphon Multa quidem. For in its reference to those “other miracles . . . that were not able to be accounted for in these pages,” Multa quidem makes explicit work of a concept that had been implicit throughout the entire office: history’s participation in making miracles “appear.”1 Appearance, after all, is what the feast celebrates. But Multa quidem also sounds a paradoxical note of closure, leaving history’s door open for a potentially infinite number of unsung miracles around Mark’s relics. In this respect, the antiphon functions somewhat like an envoi. Through a sudden shift of attention toward its own material and textual format, the antiphon points to the slippage between history and liturgy. Liturgy takes on the dimension of the page through a deictic insistence (pagine isti ) on the physicality of the text’s inscription – on liturgy as a place in which history can be made and a site in which its miracles can be revealed. The stories that had been told about Mark’s miracle-working bones had been, all along, products of the historian’s craft. Even so, the antiphon refuses the finitude of the physical format of the page. In a final image of spilling forth, the text of Multa quidem has the relics’ miracle-working powers burst through the confines not of any physical container (the miracle pillar) but of the space of narrative. Another substitution has taken place. If Felix regio had transferred the sanctity of the saint onto the architectural structure that both enshrined and revealed his body, then in Multa quidem that sanctity spills onto the narrative format – the text that performs the same function. The slippage between columns and pages – two categorically different venues in which the miraculous is staged – is an acknowledgment of the mutual burden shared by these two kinds of structures: that of Venice as a physical, built environment in which miracles sometimes happen, and that of Venice composed in history. Focusing on the narrative office of Matins for the feast of Mark’s Apparition, this chapter shows the role of plainchant in composing 156

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“alia miracula . . . que non potuerunt pagine isti ascribi.”

History Lessons

Venetian history. If the Vespers office had been a good place to think about the liturgical task of making Mark’s presence palpable to the Venetian community, Matins allows us to think more deeply about the function of narrative in inscribing Venetian history within a live ritual. Unlike the more public-facing service of Vespers, the night office of Matins – an enormous and lengthy complex of readings, psalmody, and song – offered a robust formal structure on which narrative history could be built up and elaborated. In the case of the story of the Apparition, the task of narrating a history about ritual within ritual was one of inevitable self-reflection – a place, even, for some sleight of hand. A close analysis of the chants and readings from the Apparitio Matins office does not disappoint in this regard. Through a careful curation of source material and an inventive use of conventional melodic features, the creators of this office show just how much craft went into the representation of miraculous history in a liturgical format. Conventions of mode and melody that typified the “conservative” style of plainchant composition at the basilica were used as technical equipment for narrating the history of Mark’s miracle. The creators’ heavy-handed reliance on technical and medium-specific tools to make Mark “appear” within the office suggests that the formal apparatus of narrative itself could serve as a viable substitute for the miraculous. In this way, the office argues that good storytelling – whether accomplished on the page or in plainchant – could produce miracles merely at the level of form and technique. The connection between the narrative techniques employed in the Apparitio office and the subject matter of the relic is a problem I return to at the close of this chapter, which draws the narratological thought of Paul Ricœur, Suzanne Fleischman, and Hayden White together with recent scholarship on the material life of the medieval relic and its representations. I place this discussion in the context of an argument that has been in play throughout this book: that Venice’s material culture could and did register at the level of musical form, and that the state actively enlisted music’s formal features into the project of inscribing material culture into history. This was especially true for those material items that were historically complex – spolia, icons, the built environment – and it is no accident in this regard that relics lie at the center of my study. While musicologists seldom engage with issues of narratology when it comes to the medieval cult of relics, neither has it gone unremarked that relics were a common impetus to liturgical creation. In her landmark study of historiae, Ritva Jonsson (Jacobsson) distinguishes the late medieval historia from earlier essays in the genre, noting the strong “éléments narratifs” of these later

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offices that set them apart both on a topical and structural level.2 Tantalizingly, she suggests that a major factor in the narrative heightening of these late medieval offices was “the translation or invention of the bodies of saints [which] gave them a new relevance, despite their distance in time or in space. Their relics, to which the cult was intimately tied, rendered them present.”3 It is precisely the way in which the narrative strategies employed in the Matins office for the feast of the Apparitio cope with the fact of distance in time and space and render Mark present on a technical level that forms the subject of this chapter.

The Time of History in the Apparitio First Nocturn Antiphons In 1895, Giovanni Monticolo analyzed and edited the narrative cluster that furnishes the Venetian legend of the Apparitio. Attesting to the legend’s profound “moral and religious” significance for thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Venetians, he felt nonetheless compelled to call into question its value as a historical document, pronouncing that the story “does not have much historical importance, since the author doesn’t try to narrate fact – giving attention to all the details and to the conditions and circumstances in which they took place – but primarily turns narration toward a moral and religious end (or aim).”4 But this slippery and mutable relationship between the story’s facts, aims, and details was generative of the enormous stylistic and generic variety through which the legend was known and expressed in the later Middle Ages. If the legend established some basic “facts” of the story, its renderings across media frequently threw these facts into kaleidoscopic relation with other kinds of facts – of Venetian history, of the natural and built environment, and of civic life. It bears thinking more closely about what a given form or medium could do to configure and reconfigure the facts of the story to serve moral, religious, or political ends.

2

3

4

Ritva Jonsson, Historia: Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1968), p. 13. “La translation ou l’invention des corps de ces saints leur donne un renouveau d’actualité, malgré leur éloignement dans le temps ou dans l’espace. Leurs reliques, auxquelles le culte est intimement lié, les rendent presents.” Ibid. “Il racconto dell’Apparizione non ha grande importanza storica perchè l’autore non si propose di narrare il fatto dando notizia di tutti i suoi particolari e di tutte le condizioni e circonstanze nelle quali avvenne, ma principalmente volse la narrazione ad un fine morale e religioso.” Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 13.

The Time of History in the Apparitio

The Preghiera and Apparitio mosaic pair fixed to the wall of the basilica’s south transept emphasizes the rhetorical relationship between form, medium, and narrative technique (Figure 4.1a and 4.1b). Diptych in nature, the two halves of the image tell a story through the primitive gesture of juxtaposition: on the left is depicted the public prayer held at Mass, and on the right the breaking open of the relic-bearing pillar. The diptych format distills the legend into an instance of causality, where the simple contrast between two static but structurally parallel scenes injects the whole with a sense of motion in time. An inscription that extends across the top of the two scenes, unifying left and right, foregrounds the theology that viewed a relic’s response to prayer as proof of its place and power in a community. If this mosaic tells the story of a community’s fulfilled longing for its patron saint, then it should be noted that the body is nowhere to be found. The open window in the column reveals only more absence. In other depictions of this same scene, the body is always the compositional focus; Mark is given physical form and rendered immediate through gestures of touch and gaze. In a manuscript copy of the legend dated to the year 1326, for instance, the miracle takes place in the historiated initial of the first word of the legend’s prologue: “Fidei” (see Figure 5.1). The F’s ascender takes on the figure of the miracle column, and the letter’s arm the figure of Mark’s arm reaching out to the Venetian doge and clerics. An even more brilliant example is found in the bottom register of Paolo Veneziano’s Pala feriale (see Figure 5.2). The “action” of the scene is conveyed through the hand and haloed head of the saint emerging from the column, and through the congregation gaping in amazement. But it is the stunning architectural detail of the composition that seems to argue for presence merely through its depiction of abundant, luxurious materiality. A very different means of representation is at play in the Preghiera– Apparitio sequence (Figure 4.1a and 4.1b).5 Together the pair of images functions by establishing a causal relationship between the two halves of the composition: first comes the prayer, then the appearance. In relation to one another, the two images generate the saint’s presence not in physical terms – the arm that protrudes from the initial F or the desiccated hand that curls over the stony monument – but through the introduction of narrative time into the sequence. In the absence of a body, it is the movement of time that is foregrounded; Mark’s presence has no figural 5

The mosaic program is of admittedly earlier manufacture, pre-dating the initial decoration in BMC, MS 1498 and the Pala feriale panel by over half a century.

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Figure 5.1 Mark appears from the column in a historiated initial F of the Apparitio prologue, BMC, MS 1498, fol. 25r, ca. 1326 By kind permission of the Biblioteca del Museo civico Correr

dimension but seems to flicker into being somewhere in the passage between one moment and the next. The action of the story – or better, the act of narrating it – imbues the whole with animate life. What this mosaic demonstrates is that techniques of representation do not rely

The Time of History in the Apparitio

Figure 5.2 Detail of Mark appearing from the column, Paolo Veneziano, Pala feriale, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1345. Mosaic Photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY

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exclusively, or even primarily, on figural means. Structures of time also participate in the work of representation, and of sustaining its illusions. In the case of the Preghiera–Apparitio mosaics, play across a temporal structure can substitute for the figural representation of Mark, for the very relic itself, entirely. This distinction is crucial to any argument about the representational possibilities of musical form. Music occasionally represents things figurally, and we call that “word painting.” But that is not the norm; it is an exceptional event in which a composer goes to some lengths to borrow from the expressive structures of another art form. Chant only occasionally participates in this kind of mimetic representation of words.6 But (as with music more generally) it always has time as a field of reference, and any representation it is capable of happens against time’s canvas. In pointing up time-bound features of Old Hispanic plainchant, like “textual pacing,” recent work by Emma Hornby and Rebecca Maloy asks us to confront practices of exegesis that were deeply sensitive to the performed, sounding, and liturgical experience of biblical interpretation.7 Hornby’s and Maloy’s approach suggests that the meaning of a text and the time of its utterance were inseparable within liturgy and that, through the interventions of melody, the time of language could do as much expressive work as its strictly semantic features. We have every reason to be alert to moments of plainsong that seem to reflect, or reflect on, the similarities between temporal experience and musical experience. In a famous and much commented-on passage in his Confessions, Augustine likens the processes of memory, and the phenomenology of time more generally, to the act of singing. Punctuating a long 6

7

When Andrew Hughes uncovered a few isolated musical gestures that bear a mimetic relationship to the text they set in a late medieval office, he was pointing to an exception that proved the rule. Andrew Hughes, “Word Painting in a Twelfth-Century Office,” in Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley (eds.), Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1990), pp. 16–27. See Emma Hornby and Rebecca Maloy, Music and Meaning in Old Hispanic Lenten Chants: Psalmi, Threni and the Easter Vigil Canticles (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), especially their analyses of the Psalms in chap. 4. Ritva Jonsson and Leo Treitler made the idea that melody “reads” liturgical text a precept of chant scholarship. The authors point out the inseparability of the categories of syntax and meaning within the repertory’s melodic parsing of texts, and their ideas have formed the basis for much further scholarship on the rhetoric of chant melody, including that of Hornby and Maloy. Ritva Jonsson and Leo Treitler, “Medieval Music and Language: A Reconsideration of the Relationship,” in Studies in the History of Music, Vol. 1: Music and Language (New York, NY: Broude Brothers Ltd., 1983), pp. 1–23. In her analysis of individual chants, Maloy shows that melody can accomplish real exegetical work through its reading of text, often with astonishing subtlety (Songs of Sacrifice, chap. 5, “Sounding Prophecy: Words and Music in the Sacrificia,” pp. 159–87).

The Time of History in the Apparitio

meditation on the unknowability of time outside the mind’s own subjective measurements of it, Augustine furnishes an anecdotal example drawn from his own experience of singing: I am about to repeat a Psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation extends over the whole song. But, when I have begun, that much of the song which I carry away into the past is extended into my memory. The life of this act of mine is stretched in two ways, into my memory, because of the words I have already said, and into my expectation, because of those I am about to say. But all this happens while my attention is present at hand: the future is transferred into the memory through this to become the past.8

In Augustine’s construal, the moment of the present sits at the vanishing point of memory and expectation. More a state of motion than of being, the present is only ever a “passing” through time. Importantly, Augustine’s formulation of phenomenological time has been central to modern theories of narrative. It was this section of the Confessions that launched the final volume of Paul Ricœur’s monumental Time and Narrative, which its author framed as a “riposte to the aporetic character of speculation on time . . . not sufficiently established by the single example of Book XI of Augustine’s Confessions.”9 We will return to Time and Narrative toward the end of this chapter, where Ricœur turns to a medieval conception of the relic to describe the ability of language to represent history. Suffice it to say here that Augustine provides every authorization, indeed an encouragement, to notice how chant behaves with respect to time – referencing, measuring, and passing through the time of language – to produce the structures of narrative. Music’s referencing of time is indispensable to the way narrative unfolds in the Matins Apparitio office. The composer’s handling of the time of the text – its grammar, its verbal repetitions and elaborations – largely accounts for the narrative effects of the office. It is this play with and against the time of the narrative as a linguistic event that makes the Matins office for the Apparitio so incredibly rich and self-reflexive a product of Venetian historiography. It is worth stating that the melodic style of all these chants is highly conservative and that none of my interpretations relies on extreme uses of range, or expansive melodic elaboration, or on any glaring rupture 8

9

Augustine, Confessions 11:28:38, translation modified from Emma Hornby, “Musical Values and Practice in Old Hispanic Chant,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 69, no. 3 (2016): 595–650 (603). Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative, translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, 3 vols (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 3: 11.

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with standard procedure. Most of the features I discuss are functions of genre: the simple, declarative style of the antiphons that stand in contrast to the musical and textual elaboration of the responsories.10 As with all of the chant repertory of the late medieval basilica, the approach here appears stylistically conservative when compared to contemporary liturgical centers. The tendency for liturgists at San Marco to “graft” new Venetian material onto “strict archaic traditions” led Cattin to the dismal prospect that “the environment of S. Marco does not appear creative” but instead “prefers to seek out, take in, and use preexisting material.”11 I would argue that, in the office of the Apparitio at least, musical convention establishes the horizon of expectation that makes representation possible in the first place. What I find worth talking about in the composers’ adherence to “strict archaic traditions” and to the “use of preexisting material” – what I find remarkably creative, in fact – are those moments in which standard features are given a representational load to bear. It is precisely where melodic convention is most on display that the rhetoric of representation is at its loftiest in the office, bearing out Richard Taruskin’s assertion that “representation is constrained – gladly and fruitfully constrained – by convention, just as language is constrained.”12 Of course, not every melodic convention relates to narrative representation, nor are the effects of musical representation evenly distributed among the chants of the office’s three nocturns. These moments are largely confined to the portion of the office that narrates the central miracle – the same stretch of story depicted in the Preghiera–Apparitio mosaics – at the very outset of the office, in antiphons 1 to 3 and in responsory 1 of the first nocturn (Table 5.1). (Nocturns two and three narrate a variety of miracles performed by the bones in the days and years that follow the Apparitio, after the bones had been relocated.) This in itself tells us something interesting, which is that musical representation is reserved for the same section of the Apparitio legend that was depicted elsewhere, again and again, in the visual and plastic arts. What follows in this chapter is a close analysis of the three antiphons and first responsory that together comprise the Apparitio narrative within the Matins office. Not only are the chant 10

11

12

Almost all the features employed can be observed in the thematic descriptions of the “Silver Age” style described by Walter Howard Frere (Antiphonale Sarisburiense, vol. 1). “S’innesta su filoni di rigoroso arcaismo e rivela una forte tendenza alla staticità. Inoltre, l’ambiente marciano non vi appare creativo, preferisce piuttosto cercare, recepire e utilizzare materiale preesistente.” Cattin, “Tradizione liturgico-musicale,” p. 43. Richard Taruskin, “Afterword: What Else?,” in Joshua S. Walden (ed.), Representation in Western Music (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 287–309 (p. 290).

Table 5.1 Chants and sources for the Feast of the Apparition, excerpts from Nocturn I VAM¹: In festo apparicionis corporis Beati Marci Evangeliste, ad matutinum, fols. 1−11

Zanetti 356: Apparitio Sancti Marci, lines 6−8

English summary

INVIT Exultet, iubilet Venetorum ecclesia: pro beato Marco ostenso sibi cum gloria. Ps. Venite IN I NOCTURNO Ⱥ 1. Precibus populi exauditis, locum in quo sanctissimum corpus latuerat Deus declaravit. Ps. Celi enarrant.

[NO TEXTUAL SOURCE]

A call to rejoice at the miracle of St. Mark’s Apparition.

preces eorum benignius exaudivit et locum in quo sanctissimum corpus latuerat gloriosissime declaravit. nam scissis marmoribus columpne circumpositis, arca qua interius claudebatur corpus ipsa quoque concludens, erupit et in conspectu omnium per semetipsam mirificencius exilivit. felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum ad cuius nutum lapides scinditur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt! [NO DIRECT TEXTUAL SOURCE]

The prayers of the people having been heard, God gloriously declared the place in which the most holy body had been hiding.

Ⱥ 2. Nam, scissis sanctissimis marmoribus columne circumpositis, archa qua interius claudebatur corpus ipsa quoque conclaudens erupit. Ps. Benedicam Dominum. Ⱥ 3. Videntibus omnibus per semetipsam archam mirificencius exilivit. Ps. Eructavit. ℟. 1 Felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum, *ad cuius nutum lapides scinduntur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt. ℣. Et in motu et apparicione ipsius sanctissimi corporis de medio petrarum quidam sonus gloriosissimus consonuit. – Ad

For with the marbles of the surrounding pillar parted, the box concealing the body, likewise closed, burst forth,

with everybody looking on, [Mark’s body] emerged from that very box. “Happy region, that it was worthy to have such a patron, at whose will the stones divide, marbles break by the hidden power, and insensible things leap up from within through the work of the Holy Spirit!” ℣. And in the movement and apparition of that most holy body some very glorious sound rang out from within the middle of the stones.

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Example 5.1 Exultet, iubilet Venetorum Ecclesia, invitatory, Apparitio Matins

texts handled with unusual sensitivity, but a very intentional approach to the relationship between the chants and the readings they accompany is at play in this nocturn. After an analysis of the chants themselves, we will turn to the relationship they bear to the surrounding texts of prayers and readings. In the first nocturn of the Apparitio office, we find two different representational modes at play, which coincide, quite simply, with the respective stylistic norms of antiphon and responsory. The first mode of representation is episodic: like the mosaic, antiphons 1 through 3 achieve their special effect in the way they divide the text into a series of discrete events that point expectantly toward the future. In the responsory Felix regio (not to be confused with the Magnificat antiphon on the same text), the mode is pictorial – much more, in this regard, like Veneziano’s Pala feriale panel; the chant’s accumulation of imagery, its internal melodic repetitions, and the built-in structural repetition in the respond downplay the horizontal axis of time, and open up space to witness a physical environment in present time. As one might expect, the invitatory antiphon that begins the Matins office belongs, above all, to the time of the ritual present. It adopts the present subjunctive mood of the invitatory Psalm it frames (compare “adoremus” of Ps. 95 to “exultet, iubilet” of the antiphon). The text for this antiphon does not have any hagiographical source; the lines must have been composed as a Venite antiphon for the feast. In fact, it is very much like the first antiphon of First Vespers, Gaudete et exultate (Example 3.1), in its self-referentially liturgical tone, in its topical rootedness within the Venetian community (note the important slippage whereby the doge’s private chapel becomes “Venetorum Ecclesia” [church of Venice], analogous to the “Veneciarum cives” [city of the Venetians] of Gaudete et exultate), in its emphatic anchoring in present time, and in its deployment of first-mode themes. It will do to simply acknowledge the present tense of the invitatory as a generic feature of Matins that nonetheless exerts

The Time of History in the Apparitio

pressure on the office’s point of view and the temporal vantage from which any narration takes place. What occurs to the “time” of the chant texts in the first nocturn antiphons that follow the invitatory, however, merits close attention. One of the most striking features of this first antiphon series (Ⱥ 1–3) – merely at the textual level – is the way in which grammar has been modified to highlight narrative tense. That this was a conscious decision on the part of the composer is evident in the changes wrought to the source text. There is no other place in the office where such heavy-handed, consistent, and deliberate editorial inventions have been undertaken. In particular, a phrase in the ablative absolute has been grafted onto the beginning of each chant. Looking across columns 1 and 2 in Table 5.1, we find that antiphon 1 transforms the source reading “Preces eorum benignius exaudivit” into “Precibus populi exauditis.” A similar intervention has been made in the case of antiphon 3, where the source reading “in conspectu omnium” is changed to “Videntibus omnibus.” In both cases, the syntax of the incipits of antiphons 1 and 3 is made to match the ablative construction already in place in antiphon 2. What results are three highly parallel structures across the antiphon series of the first nocturn – especially with regard to beginnings and endings. Not only is the opening grammatical gesture made identical across each antiphon incipit. The syntax of the endings match as well, and establish a sequence of key events through a series of simple subject and past perfect predicate constructions: “Deus declaravit,” “conclaudens erupit,” “mirificencius exilivit” (God declared . . . the encasing [box] emerged . . . the miracleworker [Mark] popped out). More than the elegance of parallel structure is at stake here. Ablative absolute is a grammatical gesture of the narrative mode, and serves the purpose of sorting the time of a story. It tells us not that “this thing has already happened in the past,” but that “this thing has already happened in the story.” It belongs among the grammatical phenomena of narrative that Suzanne Fleischman finds so abundant in the medieval romance genre. A linguistic analysis of historical writing in medieval romance, epic, and chronicles – liturgy does not form part of her “textual data base”13 – Fleischman is primarily concerned with the propensity toward “idiosyncratic use of tenses” evinced in certain medieval narrative genres.14 But Fleischman’s argument that tense serves as a dominant marker of the 13

14

Suzanne Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 7. Ibid., p. 2.

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narrative mode has implications for the analysis of chant and its participation in narrative structures – especially in the case of liturgical creations that are as narrative in nature as historiae.15 Fleischman describes the narrative marker in terms almost identical to the changes wrought to the source text of the Apparitio nocturn described above. The sequencing of ablative phrases that culminate in past perfect verbs is perfectly illustrative of the operations that, for her, define the “narrative clause”: a grammatical idea that “contains a unique event that, according to the narrative norm, is understood to follow the event immediately preceding it and to precede the event immediately following it.” What this grammatical signaling of temporal sequence yields is a set of “narrative events” articulated or “separated from one another by temporal juncture, which is semantically equivalent to the temporal conjunction ‘then’: a happened, then b, then c, and so forth.”16 Fleischman’s analysis of medieval narrative from the perspective of grammar has major implications for the study of liturgical chant. The primary referent of a chant’s melody is almost always the grammar of the liturgical text it sets. And if we are to accept Fleischman’s argument that grammar can assume “semantic equivalence” for the time of the story, then it follows that melody, in those instances, can also take on a semantic function in its reference to the time of the story being signaled through grammar. Something like this is precisely what we find in the setting of texts for the first nocturn antiphons. If the grammar has been modified to signal the narrative mode at the beginning of each chant, melody serves as an additional control on the way that narrative time unfurls. Through the use of conventional themes, melody articulates the grammatical structures that have been wrought to the source legend. Put differently, it is because grammar rises to the level of narrative event in the depiction of Mark’s miracle that melody, with its ordinary and conventional attachments to grammar, takes on the function of narration. It bears stating at this point that all of the chants considered in this Matins office belong to either mode 1, 2, or 8 and that the same holds true for the Vespers chants examined in 15

16

For a general overview the historia, see Jonsson, who claims “ce genre de répons et d’antiennes figurait généralement un élément narratif, ‘historique,’ et cet élément resta prépondérant dans le genre historia ” (Études sur la genèse des offices versifiés, 12). See also Paul Lehmann, “Mittelalterliche Büchertitel,” in Erforschung des Mittelalters: Ausgewählte Abhandlungen und Aufsätze (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1962), 5: 1–93, and Hans-Werner Goetz, “Die ‘Geschichte’ im Wissenschaftssystem des Mittelalters,” in Franz-Josef Schmale (ed.), Funktion und Formen mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung: Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), pp. 165–213. Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity, p. 157.

The Time of History in the Apparitio

Example 5.2 Precibus populi, antiphon 1, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins)

Chapter 4. Cattin notes the “clear prevalence of the protus modes” in this particular office (indeed, mode 8 ends up feeling worlds away in an office so heavily inflected by the protus), and it is possible that a decision has been made to impose a limited modal palette onto the office, which would in turn constrain the number of melodic options.17 The narrative sequence begins in antiphon 1, Precibus populi. The opening ablative phrase (“Precibus populi exauditis”) is rendered through one of the most characteristic gestures of the first mode: d is briefly established as the tonal center, and then a leap up a fourth (from c to f) conveys the melody to the A reciting pitch. This is the first phrase of Walter Frere’s mode 1 (a ) theme, whose opening gesture in particular was “very stable.”18 Everything that follows on the heels of this first phrase is also simple stock for a firstmode antiphon: the second phrase is brief, cadencing on g over “quo,” while the third phrase descends from g to c (“sanctissimum”) and then continues in the bottom range of the mode through “latuerat.” But here is something worth puzzling over. Musically speaking, the melody over “latuerat” would make a comfortable final cadence, with the formulaic d-c-d-d gesture that had just brought the preceding invitatory Exultet, iubilet to a close (and which, consequently, would be the cadential figure used in the subsequent antiphon, Nam scissis ; compare the setting of “gloria” in Example 5.1 to “latuerat” in Example 5.2, to “erupit” in Example 5.3). But, of course, this is not where the text ends, and so over “Deus declaravit” there occurs something like a postcadential extension, a scalar rise and descent outlining the mode from d to a. Nor is this motion, straight up the pentachord and straight back down, a familiar trait of the first mode; its prominence gives it a separable, self-contained feel. Subtle as it is, this distinctive conclusion to an otherwise fairly classical first-mode antiphon shoulders narrative work. It makes a musical event out of a deliberate feature in the textual grammar: the use of the past perfect 17

Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 1: 215.

18

Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense, 1: 65.

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Example 5.3 Nam scissis sanctissimis, antiphon 2, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins

construction at the end of each antiphon text. In the case of this first antiphon, that past perfect construction is the catalyzing event of the entire narrative: the divine announcement that sets off everything to follow (“God declared”). The melodic separation of “Deus declaravit” from the text that comes before it not only heightens this moment but also establishes an economy of equivalence between narrative event and music-grammatical event. This equivalence, as we will see, is basic to the narrative strategy of the Apparitio office. Within the space of a short chant, the second antiphon, Nam scissis, references the whole sequence of events and movements that, together, entail the miracle: the recent splitting of stones, the present emergence of a box, and the imminent appearance of the body. Textually, the chant is delimited by two verbs of somewhat violent animation: “scissis” and “erupit” – the torn stones and the bursting forth of the box. Everywhere in this chant, we find material flux – changes in the state of matter – represented through strategies of temporal flux. The condensation of the story’s past, present, and future takes place within the liturgy’s tiniest musical container: the antiphon. Not only does the melodic setting of the text heighten the overall sense of temporal movement, but it uses the structures of musical time to punctuate the disorientations of narrative time. In mode 2, the melodic features of Nam scissis are highly conventional and straightforward: the melody falls into four even phrases, each of which cadences on the final (d) in a verbatim e-d-c-d-d gesture. But this even pacing of the musical phrases is deceptive, for these phrases are imposed unevenly over the grammatical units of the text. Through this small discrepancy, a conventional melodic feature is levied to represent the time of the story.

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Table 5.2 Musical division of textual syntax in Nam scissis Musical structure

Chant text

Translation

Period 1 (Phrase 1 and 2)

Nam scissis sanctissimis marmoribus collumne circumpositis, archa . . . . . . qua interius claudebatur . . . . . . corpus ipsa quoque conclaudens erupit.

For with the surrounding sacred marbles of the column divided, the box . . . . . . where inside was hidden . . . . . . the body, [that ark], also hiding, sprang forth.

Period 2 (Phrase 3) Period 2 (Phrase 4)

The resulting imbalance between grammatical units and musical units is what gives this antiphon its special narrative propulsion (see Table 5.2). This imbalance is already injected into the antiphon in the setting of the very first period, made up of phrases 1 and 2. It takes that whole period to get through the opening ablative construction that ends on “circumpositis.” But rather than cadence on “circumpositis,” the phrase overshoots the mark to end on “archa.” What the musical, as opposed to textual, grammar thus yields is “for with the surrounding sacred marbles of the column divided . . . the box.” Notably, “archa” (box) is the nominative subject on which everything that follows depends. Melody’s parsing of the sentence places the box on the opposite side of what happens to it. And what happens to that box (“erupit”) is withheld from us, placed at the end of a set of embedded ideas that constitute the second period of the chant. The way music parses this second period slows down the unfolding of the ideas it contains. Phrase 3 introduces into the story the new information that something is hiding in the box. But again, the musical phrase withholds the hiding noun (the body) until the subsequent and final phrase, where it is grouped with the antiphon’s concluding idea: that the box “erupit” (sprang forth). All these cadences that separate important nouns from the ideas to which they are connected makes a sort of music-formal analogy to the nested objects within the basilica – pillar, box, body, each one opening onto the next. What melody has done in order to achieve this is par for the course of what Rankin calls “one of the most impressive aspects of the Gregorian melodic art that it has this ability to pinpoint, emphasize, repeat, divide, move quickly past, round off, pause, literally ‘read’ the text (but with dimensions of colour and rhythm that the spoken text rarely matches) contrasting and separating off individual words and longer phrases.”19 19

Rankin, “Carolingian Music,” p. 286.

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Example 5.4 Videntibus omnibus, antiphon 3, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins

Something similar happens in the third and final antiphon of the series, Videntibus omnibus, an incredibly straightforward melody in the eighth mode (Example 5.4). Even so, the final cadence repeats a strategy we have already seen in antiphon 1. Musically speaking, the stepwise descent down to G, on the penultimate word “mirificencius,” would have made a tidy final cadence. But this is not where the text ends, and so over “exilivit,” one gets the same kind of postcadential extension that had appeared in antiphon 1 (Precibus populi ) over “Deus declaravit.” Once again, music’s separation of a word from what comes before it makes an event out of the final verb of the antiphon series. “Exilivit” (burst forth) is the long-anticipated, culminating event of the entire narrative, the result of what “Deus declaravit” (God declared). And, indeed, its announcement begins an accumulation of imagery of “spilling forth”: the Psalm that this antiphon frames, Eructavit cor meum (Ps. 44), opens with a heart bursting open. The versicle that follows, “in omnem terram exivit sonus” (Ps. 18:5), has sound welling up and pouring forth across the earth. The sonic gush of this versicle that precedes the first Matins reading – a reading that will recapitulate, in fact, everything that the antiphons have just related – strongly anticipates the music-rhetorical shift to occur in the responsory that follows.

The Nod of History: Felix Regio as Responsory in the Matins Apparitio Throughout the antiphon series, presence had been an emergent feature of the narrative – a quality largely created by the fact that what melody seemed to respond to was the time of the story. But something different happens when the first nocturn moves from the section of antiphons and psalmody to that of lessons and responsories. What had been emergent now appears manifest. It is as if the entire liturgical complex clicks into gear

The Nod of History

at this moment of bursting forth – when the Psalm and versicle join in the imagery of the story’s miraculous culmination. The episodic structure that had dominated thus far falls away. If the antiphons had been infused with tense, the responsory seems to shimmer with matter. This happens with the return of a passage of the narrative by now familiar to us: Felix regio, a text that clearly bore enormous significance for the Venetians.20 The same passage of the Apparition legend used as the Magnificat antiphon for First Vespers now reappears as the first responsory of Matins – with one modification, which is the addition of a verse to adapt the text to the requirements of the responsory genre (see Example 5.5).21 The verse that accompanies the respond brings the responsory text’s sonorous themes into sharp relief, a feature I discuss below in the full analysis of that chant. But it will be useful first to note some of the more global features of the Felix regio responsory and the way they contribute to the shift from one section of the nocturn (Psalms and antiphons) to the next (readings and responsories). This shift is foremost signaled by a move into present verbal time, particularly (and significantly) in the section of text that is adopted as the repetendum : stones split, marbles break open, and insensible things leap up from within. Simultaneous with this shift to the present tense is the introduction of a rich lexicon of nouns – of material things – which also spill over into the newly composed verse: lapides (stones), marmora (marble), corpus (body), petrae (rocks) – and, above all, insensibilia (lifeless things), the category under which all those substances fall. The language here is highly – literally – concrete. But each of these concrete terms is matched with a concept of animation: nutus, virtus, Spiritus Sanctus, motus, and sonus. Moreover, what is emphasized in the melodic setting of the responsory text are the nouns themselves and not – as in the case of the antiphons – the grammar through which they are conveyed. This emphasis is transferred over to the nouns through generically predictable devices for responsories: melismas at word endings and a prominent placement within the chant 20

21

In the VAM¹ office, the initial F of Felix regio occupies roughly three quarters of the page, and its vegetal decoration is richly painted in blue, gold, green, and red, highlighting its importance as the first major chant of the office as was common for the first responsory initial in medieval antiphoners. Though no textual source is provided for the added verse in Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, I argue that it is, in fact, an adaptation from a portion of the legend used in Lesson II for the first nocturn (discussed at length below): “hic ad laudem sanctissimi corporis concrepant lapides et quasi gestu quodam aplaudendo exultant in transitu et motu miraculoso huius veri israelite. hic secundum daviticum oraculum de medio petrarum . . . beatissimus Marcus . . . intonuit.” Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 35.

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Example 5.5 Felix regio, responsory 1, Nocturn I, Apparitio Matins

℟. 1 Felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum, *ad cuius nutum lapides scinduntur, marmora latenti virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt. ℣. Et in motu et apparicione ipsius sanctissimi corporis de medio petrarum quidam sonus gloriosissimus consonuit. – -Ad ℟. Happy region, that it was worthy to have such a patron, at whose will the stones divide, marbles break by the hidden power, and insensible things leap up from within through the work of the Holy Spirit! ℣. And in the movement and apparition of that most holy body in the middle of stones a certain most glorious sound rang out. –At whose will the stones divide . . .

ambitus. Within the respond (the section of responsory that precedes the verse), “nutum,” “lapides,” and “marmora” all sit at the a reciting tone, conspicuous at the high end of the modal range, with “nutum” and “marmora” receiving a b-flat inflection on their stressed syllables. It is not merely the fact of their lofty position in the chant range that brings

The Nod of History

these nouns to the fore but also the dramatic rate of ascent through which those highpoints are achieved. Notice in particular the sharp drop down a fifth, from a to d, between the final note of “-des” (in “lapides”) and the first pitch of “scin-” (in “scinduntur”). “Scinduntur” remains entirely in this lower region, but then the melody shoots immediately back up at “mar-” (in “marmora”) to b flat, the highest pitch thus far. Only “Spiritu Sancto” (a noun, though not a material one) pushes through this b-flat ceiling to reach c – the melodic highpoint of the chant. It is significant that all these nouns cluster within the repetendum, the section of the respond that is repeated after the singing of the verse (indicated in Example 5.5 by an asterisk), with the result that each of these nouns is stated twice. The sum effect is something like the rhetorical device of copia. A music-rhetorical gesture stands in substitution for the material copiousness that the miracle engenders, and all sorts of matter burst with all kinds of spirit. Seen in this light, the very first melisma of the chant – sitting atop the “tan-” of “tantum,” a word denotative of mere degree – seems to announce its emphasis on abundance. Such musical operations are not far from what Fleischman calls the “verbal icons of experience, real or invented” that constitute a special category of narrative in the medieval telling of history.22 She sees the idiosyncratic use of the present tense within a fictional or historical past as a function of narrative’s markedness as a “linguistic performance,” in which nonreferentiality enters into the rhetoric of narrative.23 The intrusion of present tense creates an immediacy and vividness – or, as Fleischman puts it, a “verbal icon.” Existing side by side – and sometimes in stark juxtaposition – in medieval narrative history are what Fleischman distinguishes as narrative (diegesis) and representation (mimesis), each of which marks out a distinct “mode of reporting.” The former mode evokes the “narrating persona” of the historian, who occupies a position of objective distance from the events recalled, while the latter evokes a “performer,” who collapses the function of “speaking” and “seeing.”24 If the medieval narrative style is indeed characterized by such shifts between reporting, on the one hand, and witnessing, on the other, we might see the Apparitio office as engaging in these same techniques of vivid depiction, expanding it, even, through musical devices. This move from narration to performance, from reporting to seeing, is precisely the kind of thing that has occurred in the shift from antiphons 1 through 3 to the Felix regio responsory. The listener is reoriented from the process of hearing 22

Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity, p. 1.

23

Ibid., p. 4.

24

Ibid., p. 62.

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a story to that of witnessing a miracle – of witnessing praesentia, the impact of which is heightened through the sudden return to the present tense (where the invitatory had begun) and through the heaping up of substantive images. This “verbal icon of experience” is all the more vivid for the fact that the responsory’s nominative subjects – archa, collumna, marmora – were not merely features of the story, but real architectural and decorative elements present in the space of performance. Up to this point, the action of the story has been carried along through the work of its verbs: Deus declaravit . . . conclaudens erupit . . . mirificencius exilivit . Verbs, that is, have been the agents of the story’s progress. When “God gloriously declared the place in which the most holy body had been lying” in the first antiphon (Precibus populi ), it is the verb “declaravit” that receives special melodic accentuation, as does the final verb of the antiphon series, “exilivit.” Something different happens in the switch to the responsory. The opening phrase is verbally inactive, introducing a pause in the action. It is a simple statement of the city’s worthiness of Mark’s patronage: “The happy region . . . was worthy.” Only in the repetendum is the task of narration resumed. But the verbal strategy of narration is different than it had been in the antiphons. The repetendum begins with the prepositional construction “ad cuius nutum.” This shifts the representation of agency away from the verbal and toward the nominal – nutum – even as the concept of that word remains charged with active potential. Lest it seem we are splitting hairs, we might recall that grammatical distinctions like these had real theological implications during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a period in which language was in the thrall of New Aristotelianism and parts of speech were elevated to the level of metaphysics by speculative grammarians like the Modistae. For those who ascribed to this power of language, the difference between a nomen and a verbum or an actus and a potentia entailed ontological distinctions between matter, form, and being.25 Modes of signification were understood to represent the inner workings of the world in its seen and unseen dimensions. In this regard, it is worth saying something more about “nutum,” the term that sets off the cascade of moving rocks and things. For nutus belonged squarely within the lexicon of medieval linguistics, especially within the linguistic and semiotic tradition of Augustine. Translated 25

For a useful overview of the medieval grammatical tradition, see Jan Pinborg, “Speculative Grammar,” in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 254–69.

The Nod of History

variously as “gesture,” “nod,” or “will,” nutus, for Augustine, was first and foremost a kind of motion rooted in the soul’s volitional power that came to bear on the body. It is this sense of the word that is operative in On Genesis, when Augustine describes how the soul is “in wonderful ways . . . mixed into the body it animates, and with its incorporeal nod [ipso incorporeo nutu ], so to say, it powers or steers the body with a kind of concentration.”26 More broadly for Augustine, nutus is a term that embraces spiritual, physical, and linguistic concerns. Both before and beyond language, nutus is a sign belonging more to the physical world than to the mind’s semiotic apparatus. He explains in On the Trinity that “when it is necessary to convey knowledge in the language of those we are speaking to, some sign is adopted to signify this word. And usually a sound, sometimes also a gesture [nutus ] is presented, the one to their ears the other to their eyes, in order that bodily signs may make the word we carry in our minds known to their bodily senses.”27 Elsewhere Augustine describes how “souls are permitted to bring forth something from the mind by signifying those movements through one of two bodies: either through natural signs, such as facial expressions or a gesture [nutus ]; or through conventional signs, such as words.”28 Here nutus sits in contradistinction to verbum, the former being a “natural” sign (signum naturale ), the latter a sign by convention (signum placitum). This is all to say that the use of the term nutus to usher in the remaining action of the story, conveyed up to this point through verbs and verbal phrases, brings the issue of representation – its relation to miracles, metaphysics, and matters of the spirit – into full view. Once again, the office seems especially concerned to point up the continuities between representation and reality. At both thematic and structural levels, the deployment of the term nutus introduces into the story a concept that designates language’s extension into the realm of the physical, where the soul can express 26

27

28

“Cum anima non sit natura corporea nec locali spatio corpus inpleat, sicut aqua utrem siue spongiam, sed miris modis ipso incorporeo nutu commixta sit uiuificando corpori, quo et inperat corpori quadam intentione, non mole.” Augustine, On Genesis 8.21.42, translated by Edmund Hill (New York, NY: New City, 2002), p. 369. “Sed cum id opus est in eorum quibus loquimur perferre notitiam, aliquod signum quo significetur assumitur. Et plerumque sonus, aliquando etiam nutus, ille auribus, ille oculis exhibetur, ut per signa corporalia etiam corporis sensibus verbum quod mente gerimus innotescat . . . cum ipsae voces in sermone nostro earum quas cogitamus signa sint rerum.” Augustine, De trinitate 15.19; translation in Andrew Thomas, “Augustine and Signs,” Master’s thesis, Durham University, 2003, p. 36. “Peccatorum tamen conditione fit, ut permittantur animae de animis aliquid agere, significando eas moventes per alterutra corpora, vel naturalibus signis, sicut est vultus vel nutus, vel placitis, sicut sunt verba.” Augustine, De musica 6.8.41, translation in Thomas, “Augustine and Signs,” pp. 46–47.

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itself without the mediation of conventional signs but instead through the motion and animation of bodies. That body could be a rock or container, but it could also be a story, a song, or a sound.29 The connection between nutus and sonus is especially pronounced in the Felix regio responsory chant (as it is in Augustine, for whom, as we recall in On the Trinity, a sign is “usually a sonus, sometimes also a nutus ”). Notably, it is the structure of the responsory genre that forges this connection. Following the recitation of the verse – “And in the movement and apparition of that most holy body some very glorious sound rang out from within the middle of the stones [sonus gloriosissimus consonuit ]” – the second statement of the repetendum now places “nutum” right after the miraculous event of sound. This new verbal context transforms “sonus,” the nominative subject of the verse, into the noun on which the prepositional phrase “ad cuius nutum” depends. Within this reconfiguration, “sonus” takes the place of “patronum” – that is, Mark – who in the context of the respond had been the original agent of the breaking stones, etc. This small grammatical ambiguity introduced into the respond-verserepetendum structure raises big narrative and theological questions: Was the “glorious sound” that “rang out” a cause or effect of Mark’s miracle? Are we to identify the “sound” with the “patron”? The superlative “gloriossisimus” certainly resonates with the pervasive use of the superlative “beatissimus” with which Mark is referred to throughout the office. In the context of the miracle of Mark’s apparition, is sonus the substitute for or the proof of his presence? The theoretical density of sonus within medieval philosophies of music only enriches the ambiguity. For Boethius, sonus had extensions that were both material and immaterial, sense-perceptible and beyond perception. In the realm of musica humana, at least, consonance (in the verse, sonus . . . consonuit ) was “what unite[d] the incorporeal nature of reason with the body” (illam incorpoream rationis vivacitatem corpori misceat ).30 The responsory’s final emphasis on sound – which through its connection to nutus takes on a representational function more physical than linguistic; which through its contextual confusion with patronum substitutes for Mark’s presence; and which through the melodic stasis and ornamentation typical of the responsory, heightens the sense of witnessing in the present time – all this likely has something to say 29

30

Hahn reminds us in her discussion of Augustine’s nutus and its implications for the analysis of reliquaries that “one of the most significant arenas of meaningful gesture was the liturgy” (Strange Beauty, p. 137). Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, translated by Calvin M. Bower (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 10.

The Nod of History

about chant as the medium in which Mark’s appearance is narrated. Nothing tells us this for sure, of course. But a closer investigation of the lesson readings used in the Matins office helps clarify the stakes of the Felix regio responsory and its seemingly self-reflexive attitude toward the sonic medium. In the absence of a surviving lectionary, no readings have been securely confirmed for the Divine Office at the ducal basilica. But in the case of the office of the Apparitio, we are fortunate enough to have an informant working in the margins of Zanetti 356, one of the key witnesses for the legend. A marginal hand divides the text of the legend through such terms as “lectio prima,” “secunda,” “lectio tertia,” etc., all the way to “lectio 9.” Those chant texts are, in fact, culled from a source far richer and more discursive than the few sentences set to music would suggest. Monticolo himself pointed in the direction of a relationship between the legend and a possible liturgical function; he noticed that a vaguely homiletic structure underpinned both the legend and its prologue, speculating that this had to do with a “public gathered in a church where the feast was celebrated, and that probably they were recited on one of the anniversaries of the same.”31 A comparison of the chants with the marginal divisions furnished in Zanetti 356 demonstrates in far more specific terms its use in liturgical performance.32 Table 5.3 keys each of these lectionary divisions to an accompanying responsory in the Matins office. The tidy textual correspondence between lesson and chant text is immediately evident for marginalia divisions 1 through 6. These divisions clearly furnish the six readings for the first two nocturns; with one significant exception, each responsory is a near-verbatim quotation from the introductory material of the lesson it accompanies. Given the tight correspondence between lesson and responsory exhibited elsewhere, it is my strong hypothesis that the Zanetti 356 text marked “lectio 7” did not furnish the first lesson of the third nocturn but rather the chapter reading for Lauds, where it would restate the material that had just been sung in Lauds antiphons 3 31

32

“il prologo che procede il racconto, e il racconto stesso composti in forma di omelia, presuppongono un pubblico raccolto in una chiesa ove si celebrava quella festa, e probabilmente si recitarono in uno degli anniversarii della medesima.” Monticolo, “Apparitio Sancti Marci,” 122. Cattin relied on Monticolo’s edition of Zanetti 356 to derive the provenance of the chant texts for the office and repeated Monticolo’s observation that the manuscript furnished lectionary readings. I do not, however, share Cattin’s assumption that the lectionary divisions neatly apply to the nine readings of Matins. A later sixteenth-century Orazionale (BMC, Cicogna 1602) furnishes the only other known set of indications about chants and readings for the office, and Cattin relies on it to clarify the fourteenth-century situation. Certain discrepancies such as Psalm assignments caution against too strong a reliance on this later source.

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through 5. The same principle would appear to apply in the section labeled “lectio 9”; it is the “Multa quidem et alia miracula” text used for the Magnificat antiphon of Second Vespers that likely would have been used as the chapter reading for that office.33 If we are to take these as accurate indications of the chapter readings (which I think we should), then we are immediately confronted with an oddity in the coordination between lesson and responsory that occurs at the very outset of the first nocturn. It is an oddity of profound rhetorical importance, since it foregrounds the responsory chant Felix regio as the medium and primary bearer of the story. Lesson 1 of the first nocturn tells the story of the Apparition up to, but not inclusive of, the “Felix regio” portion of the text; it begins with Doge Falier’s bootless search for the body, continues with a description of citywide fasting and prayer, and culminates with an almost-verbatim restatement of the events just described in antiphons 1 through 3. The first lesson thus stops right at the brink of the “Felix regio” moment in the story. That crucial text is first heard as a responsory. What this introduces into the Matins structure is an inversion of the functional relationship between lessons and responsories, where a responsory reflects on the text of the lesson it accompanies. Throughout this entire stretch of the story, from the first three antiphons through the Felix regio responsory, the opposite has held true; chant carries the narrative along, and the entire miracle sequence is heard first in song, while the lessons merely answer, reiterate, or comment on what has just been heard in antiphon or responsory form. That all the stops are being pulled out for the liturgical depiction of the Apparition – and that the transference of the story from the reading to the chant is part of this – is confirmed by the fact that the relationship between reading and responsory reverts to the expected norms by the second nocturn; the lesson introduces a new chapter in the narrative, and the responsory repeats or reflects on it (see Table 5.3). In any case, Lesson 2 repeats the text that had just been sung in the first responsory (minus the verse), before launching into an entirely neglected – and entirely brilliant – piece of Venetian historiography routed through biblical exegesis. Reproduced in full in Appendix 3, the lesson compares the miracles performed by Christ to the miracle of Mark’s appearance, which it understands to have been

33

This leaves us with the open question of where Zanetti 356 “lectio 8” belonged; it is possible that it was used as the chapter for one of the lesser hours, but in the absence of chant texts for any of these, it is hard to say with any certainty.

The Nod of History Table 5.3 Correspondence between responsory texts and Zanetti 356 lesson divisions for Apparitio Matins

Nocturn I Lesson 1: Translato igitur beatissimi Marci gloriosissimo corpore ab Alexandria in Veneciam feliciterque deposito in basilicam ad eius honorem constructam pulchro in oculis omnium scemate auro et marmoribus . . .

Responsory 1: Felix regio, que tantum digna fuit habere patronum . . . Lesson 2: Felix regio que tantum digna fuit habere patronum ad cuius nutum lapides scinduntur . . .

Responsory 2: Eodem tempore, antequam corpus beatissimus reconderetur, quidem adoles[c]ens: Gravissimum morbum incurrit. V. Ita ut vulnere canceroso in mamilla percussus. Lesson 3: Eodem autem tempore, ante scilicet quam corpus beatissimum post revelationem reconderetur, cuiusdam hominis filius, adolescens adhuc, gravissimum morbum incurrit ita ut vulnere canceroso in mamilla percussus omnem carnem circa locum illum corosam a vermibus perdidisset. hunc siquidem pater suus ad ecclesiam beati Marci duxit et ante arcam beatissimi corporis in oration et vigiliis cum eo diucius perstitit . . .

Responsory 3: Hunc siquidem adoles[c]entem pater eius: Ad ecclesiam beati Marci perduxit. V. Et ante archam beatissimi corporis in oracionibus et vigiliis diucius prestitit.

Nocturn II Lesson 4: Deposito autem beati Marci gloriosissimo corpore atque in eadem basilica cum reverencia denuo collocate, non potuit eius miraculosa dignitas ocultari, set quanto amplius fuerat ab humanis subtractus aspectibus, tanto per miraculorum fulgorem voluit habundantius coruscare ut non esset thesaurus absconditus nec lucerna sub modio sed super candelabrum posita . . .

Responsory 4: Deposito autem corpore beatissimi Marci . . . Lesson 5: Inter que illud primum narrandum occurit quod circa operarium quemdam miraculosius contigit. qui dum consumandae procerae turri ad honorem sancti Marci iuxta eius ecclesiam in altum erectae operam daret et eius vertici perficiendo diligencius inserviret, lapsum passus exterius, ferebatur in preceps . . .

Responsory 5: Inter que miracula, hoc primum nar[r]andum occurrit . . . Lesson 6: Posta ista vero tempora mulier quedam de Murianis longa invalitudine laborabat in tantum ut per quadriennium et amplius paralisi dissolute menbris enervates atque robore naturali privatis immobilis iaceret in lecto, nullum omnino membrorum movere valens nisi alterius auxilio iuvaretur.

Responsory 6: Post modicum autem tempus homo . . .

Nocturn III Lesson 7: ?

Responsory 7: Sanctissimus Marcus, evangelista Domini electus . . . Lesson 8: ?

Responsory 8: Sancte Marce, evangelista Domini . . .

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Lectio 7: In comitatu preterea Padue in loco qui dicitur Villa Plonca, mulier quedam, dum comederet lac, a spiritu immundo arepta est, cumque molestius vexaretur, ab amicis suis ad ecclesiam beati Marci ducta est. ingrediens autem ecclesiam sancti Marci, cruciari se a beatissimo Marco et durius tormentari demonium publice fatebatur, et ita miserabiliter corpus obscessum affligens, cum clamore multo et sono obsceno exivit.34 Lectio 8: Quodam preterea tempore inimici humani generis in tantum invaluit infestation ut diebus singulis plures demoniac ad sanctissimi Marci ecclesiam ducerentur cumque quidem eorum ad altare, alii vero ad arcam sanctissimi corporis cum violencia traherentur, acucius vociferabant seque exuri a Marco, nec posse eius presentiam ferre publice proclamabant . . .35 Lectio 9: Multa quidem et alia miracula fecit beatus Marcus que non potuerunt pagine iste ascribi. hec autem scripta sunt ut credamus fidmque catholicam in via tradicionis apostolorum fundatam et per miracula tociens approbatam, usque ad sanguinis effusionem inviolatam custodiamus, quantinus apostolicis vestigiis inherentes, sic inoffenso gradu ambulemus in via ut opitulante beato Marco ad patriam veniamus, prestante domino nostro Jesu Cristo cui est honor, gloria et imperium per infinita secula seculorum. amen.36

prophesied by the figures of the Old Testament. Following the introductory “Felix regio” text, the lesson continues: the boulders of Arnon gesticulated, dear brothers, just as in Numbers it is read, while the Israelite people crossed there; and here in praise of the holy body the stones creaked [made noise] and almost in a gesture of some kind of applause they exulted in the miraculous stirring and crossing of that true Israelite. Here, according to the Davidic oracle, from the middle of the stones giving voice to his virtue, the most blessed Mark thundered [intonuit ] from the height of his power, and if we are guided in truth by our leader, we see fulfilled that which that truth attests: I tell you that if they were to be silent, the stones would call out.

The last line of this opening portion of the lesson is a quotation from Luke 19: 40 and refers to the crowd that acclaimed Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem with the words, “Benedictus qui venit rex in nomine domini pax in caelo et gloria in excelsis” (Luke 19: 38–39). In the context of the lesson, this quotation accomplishes the heavy lifting of bringing angels and rocks together, along with the human praise that sits somewhere between the 34

35 36

Lauds antiphon texts 3–5, clearly derived from “lectio 7” in Zanetti 356, are as follows: Ⱥ 3. In comitatu Paduano, in loco qui dicitus Villa Plonca, mulier queam, dum comederet lac, a spiritu immundo erepta est; Ⱥ 4. Cumque molestius vexaretur, ab amicis suis ad ecclesiam beati Marci ducta est; Ⱥ 5. Ingrediens autem ecclesiam beati Marci, ante archam eius deposita est, et cum clamore magno demon ab ea exivit. The function of Zanetti 356 “lectio 8” remains obscure to me. This is the “lectio 9” of Zanetti 356. I argue it was used as the chapter reading for Second Vespers for the Apparitio office. Second Vespers reused the antiphons of Lauds but added the Magnificat antiphons, “Multa quidem et alia miracula fecit beatus Marcus que non potuerunt pagine isti ascribi, alleluia,” which would have restated the preceding reading.

The Nod of History

two. By the eighth century, the Benedictus acclaim had been added to the Sanctus (a quotation from Isaiah 6: 3), sung within the canon of the Mass, formally joining the text with the voices of the angels.37 From that point forward, the Benedictus text was strongly associated with the mirroring of human (time-bound) and heavenly (eternal) song. But in quoting this latter portion of the Luke text, the Apparitio lesson chooses to highlight the particularly earthy side of universal concord, through Christ’s reminder that even if mankind were to cease its song of praise, the stones themselves would take up the burden. Through its interpretation of the biblical basis for Mark’s miracle, Lesson 2 thus sandwiches human song between two wordless forms of adoration: the hosanna of the heavenly hosts and the clamor of rocks. In yet another gesture away from language and toward the mute praises of the material world, this opening functions as a gloss on the concept of nutus that the responsory verse had already foregrounded. But this is more than a mere exegetical exercise; it is also a provocative, savvy political statement. What this exegetical reading of the Apparitio does is endow the pillar and stones of the central and most sacred political building of the late medieval city with the power of utterance – an utterance that occupies the same horizon as the songs of angels. This likening of Venice to the holiest spaces of the Christian world continues throughout this lesson, through its consistent emphasis on the miraculous materiality of both. It furnishes a lengthy set of comparisons between Mark’s miracle of the Apparition and those of Christ. Citing both the breaking of stones at the moment of Christ’s death and the rolled-back stone of his sepulcher, the reading draws a powerful connection between the physical shrine of Mark’s body in the ducal basilica and the twin focal points of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem: Golgotha, the site of Jesus’s Crucifixion, and the tomb in which he was buried. Throughout, sound is highlighted as the agent and principle of motion by which these changes take place in the material world. Sound becomes proof positive of the sympathy between Venetian history and the Gospel, between the holiness of the city’s bedrock and that of the Holy Land. The final section of Lesson 2 is in many ways as rich and productive a gloss on the Felix regio text as the first, and it is worth quoting at length: with the miraculous origin in whose solemnity the marbles rustled and in that way were somehow freed – that is, converted through the resonant prophecy – with that we 37

For the early development of the Sanctus and its relationship to the Benedictus see Amédée Gastoué, “Le Sanctus et le Benedictus,” Revue du chant grégorien 38 (1934): 163–68; 39 (1935): 12–17, 35–39, as well as Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, 2: 128–38.

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are warned to cast every hardness from our minds. Who will be able to remain hard in mind who sees a hard rock soften? Thus the obstinate, heretical, unfaithful, and impudent feels unfeeling and inert [stolidum] if he would think little of the warning of those insensible things, if at the clamor of stone he would remain faithless.

With a reference to the final phrase of the respond (“insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt”), in which the Holy Spirit brings motion to insensible things, this final passage makes a sharp turn toward the moral level of interpretation. Despite its long excursion on the spiritual qualities of rocks and buildings, it returns ultimately to the realm of human faith and feeling. Even so, it is an interpretation that acknowledges a relationship between perception and knowledge, and claims an ontological continuity between what is represented and how it is perceived. On this note, it is worth honing in on one additional verbal feature in the verse of the Felix regio responsory: the term “in motu,” with which the verse begins, denotes “a state of flux.”38 In motu esse can be a mental state, an affective state, or a material state, as in motus mentis (thought process), motus animi (emotion), or motus terrae (earthquake). It is a term that, in its denotative flexibility, sees continuity between the movements of the insensible but perceptible world (its bones and rocks) and our sensitive perception of it (in pictures, stories, and songs). When Mark appears to the Venetians, he sets the physical world around him in motu – in audible motion, it should be said, since some glorious sound rang out (sonus gloriosissimus consonuit ). I have suggested that the story of Mark’s Apparition is, at core, a story about representation. And if the aesthetics of representation is, at some level, an aesthetics of substitution, then it is worth thinking about how this story names its own media to serve as substitutes. If the Venetians longed for the presence of their patron saint, it would be their own shifting around of stones (as in mosaic tesserae) and sound (as in melody) that would allow them to perceive him in those things.

Music and the Latent World Along with the tale of the praedestinatio, the Apparitio Sancti Marci was one of the central additions to Venetian historiography in the later Middle Ages. The story came to stand for the extension of the body politic into the realm of the sacred and for the role of the ducal chapel in mediating this relationship. It should be clear by now that the musical and liturgical 38

New College Latin and English Dictionary, s.v. “in moto.”

Music and the Latent World

setting of the legend mobilized a much broader project of Venetian history writing. The tight interdependence between legend and liturgy suggests the need for a nuanced understanding of the ways in which the ducal liturgy served as an engine of Venetian historiography. Even more, it points up the inseparability of history from the forms that conveyed it. Historian Hayden White famously challenged the view that history was, in any primary sense, a purveyor of truth-content.39 The fatto, or fact, for which Monticolo sought in vain in the Apparitio legend would have been, for White, beside the point. Above all, White pointed to the historian’s unavoidable dependence on the devices of narrative to represent historical time, an argument that has obvious implications for medieval historiae. In this chapter, I have argued that the historia for the feast of the Apparition brings the centrality of narrative form to the historiographical “content” into sharp relief. In joining the formal capabilities of chant with the impulse for narration, the creators of this office brought chant fully within the precincts of the state’s dazzling and complex project of building Venetian history. I am by no means the first to argue for the care taken in writing, selecting, organizing, and setting hagiographical sources in the creation of new historiae. Margot Fassler, Ruth Steiner, Roman Hankeln, Jean-François Goudesenne, Benjamin Brand, and others have shown the enormous ingenuity with which composers of historiae shaped their raw hagiographical material into persuasive vehicles of political ideology. As Jamie Kreiner straightforwardly puts it: “Liturgical repertories were as original as hagiography was.”40 My argument takes for granted that liturgical forms could and did move, persuade, teach, inspire, convert – or at any rate, provide their medieval audiences with an altered perception of reality. It is not any particular experience of reality, in any case irrecoverable, that I seek to disclose here, but rather the formal mechanisms that made such transformations possible. And yet my reading of the Venetian office raises bigger questions about the representational scope and ambitions of liturgical chant. In making this argument, I have suggested a tighter relationship between form and matter (White’s content) than we tend to look for in liturgical composition. It is by no means widely agreed that chant does these kinds of things in and for liturgy, as plainchant is generally understood to refer to the structure of a text but not to its meaning.

39

40

Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). Jamie Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 13.

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Even so, several chant scholars have softened the reflexive view of chant’s nonreferentiality and cautioned against too literal an understanding of what that reference might entail and how it might happen. Emma Hornby, for one, has shown the melodic settings of second-mode tracts to have been thoroughly engaged in the broader project and process of exegesis. Concluding that study, Hornby offered some more general reflections on “the relationship between text and music in western liturgical chant,” suggesting that, in order to “understand . . . how [musical grammar] is being expressed in specific instances, it is necessary to consider what the text means, the grammar of the text, and how that text was understood and read both as an independent entity and as part of a broader interpretative tradition by the people who composed, transmitted, revised, notated and heard the music.”41 What is useful about Hornby’s construal is its assumption that meaning and grammar (content and form) are not in fact distinct and separable elements of expression but work with and against practices of reading and interpretation. In this way, Hornby and White are in fundamental agreement with one another. In fact, White’s convictions about narrative would ultimately lead him into the charged arena of the New Musicology, to consider what music’s discursive horizons might have to say about preconditions of narrative as they are shared across media.42 He argued that music and historiography have a basic quality in common, and that is their pertinence to a text’s “latent content” that exists always at the level of form. Here, the terms White had earlier used to describe historiography bear striking similarities to his description of musical discourse. He stresses how historians turn ultimately to narrative to “endow their discourses with the kind of latent, secondary, or connotative meanings that will require that their works be not only received as messages but read as symbolic structures. The latent, secondary, or connotative meaning contained in the historical discourses is its interpretation of the events the make up its manifest content.”43 Music – he claims – expresses the same “latent, secondary, [and] connotative meaning” that history achieves at the level of narrative structure. But unlike history, music has no manifest, primary, or denotative 41

42

43

Emma Hornby, Medieval Liturgical Chant and Patristic Exegesis: Words and Music in the Second-Mode Tracts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), pp. 183–84. Hayden White, “Commentary: Form, Reference, and Ideology in Musical Discourse,” in Steven Paul Scher (ed.), Music and Text: Critical Inquiries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 288–319. Hayden White, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 8.

Music and the Latent World

referent. Or: “in a word, the music expresses . . . a substance of narrative without either concrete story elements or a plot.”44 To interpret music’s relationship to the text it sets “it is not so much a matter of finding musical equivalents of what the text literally says or what it suggests by the use of specific figures of speech and tropes. It is a matter of suggesting by musical means the mode of relationship to the world that is the poem’s own latent content.”45 In the case of the Matins office for the feast of Mark’s Apparition, the mode of relationship to the “world” of the story – to the text’s “latent content” – is the mode of expectation and its fulfillment. In this regard, the Matins office reinforces the formal rhetoric of the Preghiera–Apparitio mosaic pair, which was mounted a few paces away from the spot where the office would have been sung. The latent content of the story is a statement of faith in the miraculous potential of a state – which depended, at core, on the presence of Mark’s relics – to be shaped by its collective forms of expression. The liturgical prayer that elicited the miracle in the first place and reinforced Venice’s claim to the relics’ power could be reproduced over and over again across different media. In that way, the story and its formal execution becomes the substitute for the relic’s manifest power. Or, as Hahn imagines it, “Any story . . . when read in the presence of relics began a process of the imaginative reexperience of the sacred events that had occurred at the site.”46 Within this framework of substitution – of the medium for the miracle, or the form for its function – the proliferation of miraculous phenomena that the final antiphon Multa quidem imagines is continued through the multiplication of tellings across various forms and media. But I would argue that there is a wrinkle here that marshals against too strong an emphasis on “form” over “content.” Part of what makes this office so exceptionally rich in narrative scope is the content – the relic – that lies at the center of it, the imaginatively generative prop with which Venetians of the later Middle Ages constructed their own impossible place within Christian history. It was in large part the hermeneutic richness of these objects that made it possible to leverage an entire state history simply by telling stories about them in this period. The complex temporality of the relic shaped the historiographic project to such an extent that the relic’s relationship to history 44 46

Ibid., p. 152. 45 White, “Commentary: Form, Reference, and Ideology,” p. 310. Hahn, Strange Beauty, p. 18.

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became, to a large degree, the content of the narrative, demonstrable in the Apparitio Matins both at the level of text and musical form. As a document of the past – not unlike the Concessio insulae Cretensis discussed in Part I – the relic indexes what was once here (and is no longer), even as it remains present in the here and now. In the office of the Apparitio, that here-and-now presence is transferred over to the narrative container that represents it: to the chants that bring its history before the eyes of the listener. It was this tension between past existence and present trace that Paul Ricœur attempted to theorize as basic to all historical representations, down to the very linguistic operations that convey (historical or narrative) time as a function of (grammatical) tense. What Ricœur proposed in his theory of narrative was a complex confrontation between the objective – or cosmological – sense of time, as an ineluctable sweep of events along a linear axis, and the phenomenological sense of time, as a deeply folded and simultaneous awareness of past, present, and future all at once. As part of that project, Ricœur reflected on how documents and monuments, both “traces of the past,” serve as the informants of the past and the sources of its authority. In relying on “documents” of all kinds to order and verify the events of the past, one must operate “on the basis of the presupposition that the past has left a trace” and that these items “bear witness to [that] past.” Ricœur’s development of the concept of “trace” bears a striking, almost uncanny resemblance to the medieval theology of the relic. Using his idea of trace to link the physical remnants of the past to the very linguistic operations by which we express temporality, Ricœur speaks of the way in which the trace becomes a “mark” (marque) – with all the semiotic freight that that term carries – at the moment in which it is extended from a human being or an animal to anything whatever. On the other hand, the idea of being past has disappeared. All that remains is the remark that the trace is “left behind.” Here is the heart of the paradox. On the one hand, the trace is visible here and now, as a vestige, a mark. On the other hand, there is a trace (or track) because “earlier” a human being or an animal passed this way. Something did something. Even in language as we use it, the vestige or mark “indicates” the pastness of the passage, the earlier occurrence of the streak, the groove, without “showing” or bringing to appearance “what” passed this way.47

47

Ricœur, Time and Narrative, 3: 119–20.

Music and the Latent World

Particular note should be made of his definition of the trace as that which is “left behind” (laissée), that which remains. Quite like a medieval relic, Ricœur’s laissée – his traces and marks – belong to the here and now, even as they index what is elsewhere (Ricœur is thinking especially of the elsewhere of the past, but the medieval person would have understood the relic to have been an index both of the past and of eternity at once). Ricœur’s conception of narrative, which puts the linguistic and conceptual apparatus for expressing past time on the same playing field as its material remains (reliquiae), offers some useful clues about how the narrative potential of liturgy could be used to represent the historical complexities of the relic. In the case of the historia for the Venetian feast of the Apparition, it is music’s telegraphing of its own passing through time – whether expectantly or tarryingly – that works to “show” or “bring to appearance” the relic. Again Ricœur clinches the relationship between temporal structures and the concept of the relic in his reading of the same passage of Augustine, the pertinence of which to chant was discussed above. Having just defined the “trace” as that which has “passed this way” and been “left behind,” Ricœur reminds his reader that “Augustine’s Confessions have made us familiar with the metaphor of time as a passage: the present as an active transit and a passive transition; once the passage has taken place, the past falls behind. It passed this way.”48 Elliptical as this formulation may be, it provides a useful homology between temporal structures (and their expression in art forms) and the kind of presence medieval believers thought inhered in the relic. In this Apparition historia, Mark’s presence is conveyed through the special kind of passage through the language of narrative that the chant builds into it – through its referencing of the time of the narrative. Undoubtedly, to those present to hear the historia at the ducal chapel, these would not be the features most remembered in the observance, but merely the vehicle, the structure – one might even say, the shrine – that brought Mark close to the community that venerated him. Describing relic shrines of the strictly plastic variety, Hahn asserts that “the reliquary performs a function of presentation, and then it is thoroughly and efficiently forgotten in the assertive presence of the relic. No one comes away from a church treasury saying they saw the reliquary of the True Cross. Devout and non-devout alike profess to having seen the relic of the True Cross.”49 The same thing could be said about the relationship 48

Ibid., 3: 119.

49

Hahn, Reliquary Effect, p. 7.

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between the Apparitio historia as a crafted, manufactured vehicle for the story and the “facts” of the story itself. No listener in attendance at the ducal chapel would claim to have been carried away by a sweep of tightly sequenced phrases in the ablative absolute and then relaxed in the still, decorative expanse of the responsory. That listener would say they had heard the story of a miracle and had seen, in their mind’s eye, the basilica shake and the stones groan under the weight of that great happening.

6

Sound Documents The Midcentury Chancery Motet

Venetians learned to live surrounded by water, proving that relations of force are not the only active elements in history and that imagination plays a role as well. Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant 1

It should by now be clear that the state’s investment in music was closely bound up with the task of crafting an official Venetian historiography. If in the colonies this investment was apparent from the outset, the flourishing of a musical life of state was comparatively belated in the Commune. Frederic C. Lane uses 1250 as a benchmark beginning for what he terms the “growing structure of the Commune.”2 The first half of the century had been marked by the rapid expansion and consolidation of an empire in the eastern Mediterranean. The second half of the century witnessed an equally vigorous organization of public authority in the city itself, during which time urban life was thoroughly reimagined according to an official state agenda.3 It is no accident that the growth and stabilization of the Cancelleria ducale (ducal chancery), a bureau devoted exclusively to copying and keeping state documents, coincides with a sudden flowering of liturgical material in these years. The development of the chancery in the second half of the thirteenth century made it possible for the state to undertake largescale musical projects.4 This included a full complement of codices for the San Marco liturgy, a particularly well-crafted product of which we have just seen in Chapter 5.5 In these same years, the primicerio of San Marco, 1

2 3

4

5

Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 14. Lane, Venice, pp. 102–03. Crouzet-Pavan describes how “political authorities began to control and even organize urban expansion as a collective enterprise” (Venice Triumphant, p. 13). For the chancery’s operations from the mid-thirteenth century on, see Pozza, “Cancelleria,” 3: 365–87. Ibid. Pozza points out that sporadic references to functionaries serving under the title “chancellor” can be located as early as the tenth century, although there is no mention of a chancery office until the very first decade of the thirteenth century. The relevant document,

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Simeone Moro (1287–91), overhauled the liturgy at San Marco, assimilating the norms of various other liturgical centers while preserving what was distinct about the ducal rite.6 Because the chancery was responsible for furnishing the Basilica San Marco with liturgical books, the same chancellors and scribes that copied and organized legal and diplomatic texts oversaw the production of historiographic, literary, and musical works as well.7 (It was the ducal chancery that created the antiphoners encountered in Chapters 4 and 5.)8 In this chapter, I argue that the collapsing of chancery functions had aesthetic consequences. Marked similarities can be observed between the liturgical books made for the basilica during the thirteenth century and the documents drawn up for the ducal palace. Such similarities belie a textual culture closely shared by the two institutions.9 Susy Marcon observes the same “precious style” sported by the Berlin Gradual, the earliest musical source for the liturgy of San Marco, and the Statuta veneta, a compilation of legal statutes from the maritime empire commissioned by Ranieri Zeno. Near stylistic identity can be observed between the San Marco Leggendario , the earliest extant liturgical book belonging to the basilica, and the Liber pactorum, the first cartulary produced within the Venetian chancery.10 Under the influence of Andrea Dandolo, who was first a procurator of the Basilica San Marco (1328–43) and later doge (1343–54), the chancery reached a new level of prestige.11 In 1349, the renowned literary personality Benintendi Ravignani was appointed Vice Chancellor, and in 1352, he rose to the rank of Grand Chancellor. Throughout these years, Ravignani worked closely with Dandolo. At the same time, he maintained a lively

6

7 9

10

11

dated to 14 May, 1205, which refers to the “camera cambellarie Ducalis aule Venetiane,” is reproduced in Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, 1: 551. Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 1: 33–36. In consequence we hardly have a liturgical book pre-dating this reform – another factor behind the absence of notated sources for an observance like the Annunciation drama studied in Chapter 3. 8 Pozza, “Cancelleria,” 3: 365–87. Marcon, “Codici della basilica,” p. 19. “Una segnata affinità stilistica fra i volumi liturgici della chiesa e i documenti più prestigiosi del Palazzo Ducale, venendo a confermare come il palazzo e la cappella, posta sotto la giurisdizione ducale, siano strettamente legati.” Ibid. Marcon, “Miniature nei libri liturgici marciani,” 1: 166. Pozza describes the deliberation made by the Maggior Consiglio in 1291 to produce a second Liber pactorum, the first having stood as the sole cartulary of the Commune since the late twelfth century (“Cancelleria,” 3: 368.) Pozza describes the expansion of the chancery around the middle of the century, which “aumentò considerevolmente,” despite the ravages of the plague (“Cancelleria,” 3: 380). For how the production of liturgical books relates to some of the most important scriptorial products of the Andrea Dandolo dogado, see Katzenstein, “Three Liturgical Manuscripts.”

Sound Documents

correspondence with Francesco Petrarch, eventually enticing the poet to take up residence in the city.12 In his letters, Petrarch writes glowingly of the chancellor.13 The rapport between statesman, scribe, and poet – Venice’s own tre coroni – made the ducal chancery a seedbed for the humanist influence stemming from nearby Padua.14 Far more than an office of scribes and notaries, the chancery had by this point come to blur the boundary between tasks of copying and those of composition. Luciano Gargan describes the period leading up to the Dandolo years as one in which Venice witnessed “a new Latin literature, cultivated mostly by jurists, grammarians, and churchmen who had their head in the ducal chancery and were closely tied to the humanist environment of Padua.”15 In addition to the copying of pacts, privileges, deliberations, and petitions, notaries penned histories, chronicles, and encomiastic poetry in praise of the city and its officials.16 The relative sway in these years of humanist sentiment on the one hand and medieval conservatism on the other has been much discussed.17 Certainly, these competing impulses gave the literary culture of the chancery its unique Venetian stamp. But even before arriving at the question of a literary culture, or the style that expressed it, it would be good to consider the function of the late medieval chancery at its most basic. For the day-today charge of the chancery scribes, to write, document, preserve, collect, and collate, shaped their literary output as well. Dandolo’s own collaborations with the chancery betray this same outlook; the young statesman 12

13 14

15

16 17

Arnaldi details the conditions of Petrarch’s residence and relations in the city during the 1360s. Girolamo Arnaldi, “La cancelleria ducale fra culto della ‘legalitas’ e nuova cultura umanistica,” in Arnaldi, Cracco, and Tenenti, La formazione dello stato patrizio, 3: 865–87. Petrarch, Seniles 3.1, in Opera (Basel: Henrich Petrus, 1554), p. 854. For Petrarch’s decisive influence over the chancery in these years see Mann, “Petrarca e la cancelleria,” 2: 517–35. For the relationship between Andrea Dandolo and Petrarch themselves, including their correspondence, see Franco Gaeta, “Storiografia, coscienza nazionale e politica culturale nella Venezia del Rinascimento,” in Girolamo Arnaldi (ed.), Dal primo quattrocento al concilio di Trento, vol. 3, bk. 1 of Storia della cultura veneta (Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1980), pp. 11–16. Some of the concrete influences of Petrarch on Ravignani are documented in Peter Lebrecht, Schmidt, Joachim Fugmann, Martin Hose, et al., Traditio Latinitatis: Studien zur Rezeption und Überlieferung der lateinischen Literatur (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2000), pp. 283–93. “accanto al fiorire della lirica in volgare, si andò diffondendo anche a Venezia una nuova letteratura in latino, coltivata in prevalenza da giuristi, grammatici ed ecclesiastici che facevano capo alla cancelleria ducale ed erano in stretta relazione con l’ambiente umanistico Padovano. I generi trattati sono ancora di tipo medievale: dal carme laudativo, alle indagini sulle origini della città, alla storia una guerra; ma la forma diventa più elevante e si modella sempre più di frequente sui classici latini.” Luciano Gargan, “Il preumanesimo a Vicenza, Treviso e Venezia,” in Arnaldi, Trecento, 2: 142–70 (2:151). Arnaldi, “Cancelleria,” 3: 867–71. Margaret L. King’s Venetian Humanism in the Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986) remains the locus classicus.

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exercised his belief that the well-ordered past could give meaning not only to the present but to the transcendent and transhistorical city as well.18 This is evident even in as ostensibly bureaucratic a task as the maintenance of state cartularies.19 Dandolo doubled down on the chancery’s attention to the cartulary as a genre of historical collection. In his preface to the Liber albus and Liber blancus (see Chapter 2), written around the year 1345, Dandolo highlights the significance of these collections as repositories of official state history and professes his desire to arrange all the various specimens of his “most holy city in its diverse times” in good order – not only its “many volumes of books, but of things, places, and times.”20 This chancery mindset of collating “things, places, and times,” all of which comprise the volumina of history, can be detected in the few works of polyphony composed in this period. Close scrutiny of these works reveals them to have been tied to the literary and artistic culture of the midcentury chancery. It was not long after the feast of Mark’s Apparition was added to the liturgical calendar of the Basilica San Marco that the state turned its attention toward a new musical vehicle for the expression of history: the motet. Venice has long been seen as an incubator for the ceremonial, or laudatory motet. During the century that encompassed the reigns of Francesco Dandolo (1329–39) and Francesco Foscari (1423–57), the Venetian dux served as subject matter for no fewer than eight such 18

19

20

In an article that tracks the consequences of the Serrata through the fourteenth century, Guido Ruggiero suggests that it was “this blend of the bureaucratic and transcendent” that was “best viewed during the trecento in the dogeship of Andrea Dandolo.” Guido Ruggiero, “Modernization and the Mythic State in Early Renaissance Venice: The Serrata Revisited,” Viator 10 (1979): 245–56 (253). Historians have recently shown far more creativity and craftsmanship in the organization of documents into cartularies than had been previously assumed. See Geary, “From Charter to Cartulary,” pp. 181–86, as well as Helmut Reimitz, “Ein fränkisches Geschichtsbuch aus St. Amand: Der Cvp 473,” in Christoph Egger and Herwig Weigl (eds.), Text, Schrift, und Codex: Quellenkundliche Arbeiten aus dem Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2000), pp. 34–90. Pincus argues that “scholars have focused on Andrea Dandolo as jurist and historian, organizer of Venetian statutes, and orchestrator of Venetian history” while “less often noted is the Dandolo of the transcendental.” Debra Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance: Andrea Dandolo and the Construction of the Ruler in FourteenthCentury Venice,” in John Martin and Dennis Romano (eds.), Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 89–136 (p. 93). Along the lines of Ruggiero, I would suggest that Dandolo the transcendental and Dandolo the “organizer . . . of statutes” are very much one and the same. “Post compilationem sexti libri Statutorum nostrorum non minus utiliter quam laudabiliter a nostro culmine tradita privilegia, jurisdictions et pacta sanctissime urbis nostrae diversis retro temporibus a predecessoribus nostris et nobis honorabiliter procurata, vigili perquirentes examine invenimus ea per multa librorum volumina, rerum, locorum vel temporum discretione non habita, incertis sed impropriis verius sedibus pervagari.” Samuele Romanin (ed.), Storia documentata di Venezia, 10 vols. (Venice: P. Naratovich, 1853–61), 1: 355.

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works (see Table 6.1). Johannes Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor / Michael qui Stena domus, composed in the first decade of the fifteenth century, placed the so-called “ducal motet” within a genealogy that seemed to point toward the genre’s most mature expression in the works of Guillaume Du Fay.21 But to read the earliest specimens of the Venetian motet tradition genealogically detracts from an appreciation of them on their own terms. It risks missing how deeply these works belonged to the moment in which they were composed. Whatever their influence on a later musical style, they were made to carry the concerns, attitudes, and historical habits of their own present day. Table 6.1 The ducal motets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

Motet

Composer

Dedicatee

Date of composition

Ave corpus sanctum

Anonymous (Marchetto of Padua?) Anonymous

Body of Stephen

1329−39

San Giorgio Maggiore fragment

Marco Corner

1365−68

Eg ; Gr

Principum nobilissime

Anonymous

Andrea Contarini

1368−81

PadD

Venecie mundi splendor / Michael qui Stena domus

Johannes Ciconia

Michele Steno and Venice

1400−13

Q15

Ducalis / Stirps

Antonius Romanus

Tommaso Mocenigo

1414−23

Q15; BU 2216

Plaude decus mundi

Christoforus de Monte

Francesco Foscari

1423−37

Q15

Carminibus / O requies

Antonius Romanus

Francesco Foscari

1423−32

Q15

Christus vincit

Hugo de Lantins

Francesco Foscari

1423−30

BU 2216

Marce, Marcum imitaris

21

Source

For the features that connect motets of the French isorhythmic variety to Du Fay’s early motets in the Venetian ceremonial tradition, see Julie E. Cumming, “Concord out of Discord: Occasional Motets of the Early Quattrocento,” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1987. Bent has cautioned against attributing to Ciconia too strong an influence over the development of the genre, positing instead Du Fay’s direct role in “fusing French isorhythmic techniques with . . . features typical of the Italian ceremonial motet” (“Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” p. 111). For Du Fay’s impact in this regard, see Julie E. Cumming, The Motet in the Age of Du Fay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Alejandro Enrique Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay: The Life and Works, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 2: 351–91. For an analysis of Ciconia’s motet as it responds to the ceremonial life and political thought of late medieval Venice, see Reuland, “Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image.”

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This chapter focuses on the two earliest works of polyphony known to have been composed in Venice: Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani (1329–39) and Marce, Marcum imitaris (ca. 1365). Both works are precocious examples of the Italian ceremonial motet, and both are anonymous.22 The rhetoric on display in these motets straddles the humanist–conservatist divide for which the midcentury chancery, the engine of Venetian historiography, was known. In fact, a close reading of Ave corpus sanctum and Marce, Marcum imitaris reveals them working in tandem with the chancery’s most significant historiographical enterprises. Not only do they bear strong thematic links to the topics most heavily elaborated within the midcentury chancery, but they exemplify an approach to the composition of history that was characteristic of the Venetian historical attitude, which emphasized history’s providential repetitions and continuities.23 Seen this way, the conservative humanism, or “chancery humanism,” that marks the Venetian historical idiom has not only to do with its laudatory tone (this is to be expected from an institution in service of the doge) but with its approach toward history as a form – an approach that matched the explicit charge of the chancery: to make the state sensible through the organization of its sundry items and documents. As Dandolo’s preface to the Liber albus makes clear, the documentary elements that constitute the past are not limited to the textual but include things (res), times (tempora), and places (loci). In the previous two chapters, we saw the state’s imaginative concern for one kind of nontextual document – the relic (a thing that also stood for places and times) – and its representation in the liturgy. This chapter turns to a different kind of body that was in many ways homologous with the relic: the doge. Like the bodies of saints, the doge was yet another physical extension of the sacred. As verus gubernator of the Basilica San Marco, he acted as the vicar of Mark and custodian of Mark’s relics. Channeling the presence of the saint on whose guidance the government depended, he functioned much like a relic himself, and also like an icon that represented the entire Venetian populace and its values.24 Recall, for instance, the decision of the Council of Ten that defined the doge as “that

22 23 24

Both sources have also been lost since the time of their publication. Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance.” Contemporary political discourse emphasized the dual nature of the doge’s power, and his participation even within the practical affairs of the state gave embodied presence to the government’s jointly popular and divine bases. Lane describes this central paradox in the Venetian government, wherein the ducal office was administered through popular assembly, but the doge’s powers were vested by Saint Mark (Venice: A Maritime Republic, pp. 87–101, esp. 89–90).

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Imago which represents the government of the Venetians” – a representatio within the workings of the government.25 Although the doge had served as representative of both Mark and the state from the outset, the fourteenth century witnessed incremental but radical changes to his persona. The 1297 Serrata that had expanded the membership of the Grand Council and officially sealed it off in perpetuity led, in the decades that followed, to the large-scale reorganization of the government and its organs.26 This included a growing tendency to relegate the doge to a purely symbolic role. He became less and less the prince of the city and more and more a representation, image, effigy, symbol, or metaphor. Andrea Dandolo actively cultivated this newly symbolic ducal persona, raising its visibility in the realm of art, literature, and music, even as it suffered diminishment in the political arena. Debra Pincus describes the Dandolo era as one that witnessed the “refocusing and reshaping of the concept of a doge with connection to divine power, the skillful orchestrating of a ducal persona that would meet the needs of a fragmented period.”27 Within this new configuration, the person of the doge became something of a holy body himself. The idea that he functioned as the living embodiment of the relics is borne out in the by-now familiar image of the Preghiera–Apparitio mosaic (Figure 4.1a and 4.1b). Read against a political theology that made the doge a substitute for Mark, the prominent placement of the word DUX in both sides of the sequence helps resolve the fact that the body remains unrevealed in this depiction of Mark’s apparition. The DUX positioned right beside the altar and pillar serves as proxy. Although literature and the visual arts are the two better-known outlets for the midcentury vision of the doge and his place within the scheme of Venetian history, music and ritual belong squarely within this historical discourse.28 Throughout this book, I have argued that the ritual life of the city formed its own strand of Venetian history.29 The two motets examined 25

26 27 28

29

See Introduction. Translation from Romano in The Likeness of Venice, p. xxi. Unpacking the term imago as it was applied to the doge, Romano stresses the contemporary use of the word to denote devotional images, and understands “the doge [to be] like an icon, transmitting the power of Saint Mark to his people” (p. xx). Ruggiero, “Modernization and the Mythic State in Early Renaissance Venice,” 245–56. Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance,” p. 98. For a summary of Dandolo’s role in the construction of a midcentury style, see Lino Lazzarini, “‘Dux ille Danduleus’: Andrea Dandolo e la cultura veneziana a metà del Trecento,” in Giorgio Padoan (ed.), Petrarca, Venezia e il Veneto (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1976), pp. 123–56. Muir’s Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice remains the classic text on the discursive nature of Venetian ritual and its central work in generating state “myth.” While my study addresses some of the same rituals that Muir does, I am interested in a more circumscribed period, in ritual’s

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in this chapter show the state commissioning works that used new and occasionally unusual music-formal devices to emphasize the doge’s homology with the cult of relics. Ave corpus sanctum stages a triple substitution between the relics of Saint Stephen, the doge Francesco Dandolo, and the abbot of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore; its unique isorhythmic design maps out a sacred topography through the arrangement and rearrangement of its three referents – saint, doge, and abbot – each a metonym for the places, institutions, and histories with which they are associated. Through the unconventional use of a conventional form, Ave corpus sanctum thus united the political center of the city with its cloistered margins. Marce, Marcum imitaris, which postdates Ave corpus sanctum by some three-and-a-half decades, performs a similar political-theological function at the structural level. The composer deploys an unusual imitative process that not only permeates the sounding surface of the motet but elides the subject of the doge (Marco Corner) with the relics of Saint Mark, making a musical analogy to the nominal and spiritual likeness between doge and saint.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani is the earliest known motet of Venetian extraction. A reference in the triplum text to Francesco Dandolo allows us to date Ave corpus sanctum to the years between 1329 and 1339, during which time Francesco was doge. The work is transmitted in a musical fragment, now lost, from the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. F. Alberto Gallo discovered the fragment, with its two motets – Ave corpus sanctum and the stylistically similar Decus in seraphici / Cetus apostolici – as flyleaves to an incunabulum printed in Venice in 1485.30 The original foliation of the flyleaves (fols. 85–86) indicates that these works once belonged inside a much larger codex, and it is not unreasonable to assume that the two pieces are representative of at least some of the other contents of the manuscript.31

30

31

role in the specifically historical imagination, and in the technical work of music in supporting ritual discourse. F. Alberto Gallo, Da un codice italiano di mottetti del primo trecento (Bologna: Forni, 1969), p. 25. Michael Scott Cuthbert clarifies the degree to which the comparatively fragmentary sources of the Italian trecento are representative of the larger lost corpus to which they once belonged. Michael Scott Cuthbert, “Tipping the Iceberg: Missing Italian Polyphony from the Age of the Schism,” Musica Disciplina 54 (2009): 39–74, including mention of the San Giorgio Maggiore fragment at 56.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

This in turn paints a picture of a city that actively cultivated the motet at least several decades earlier than other Italian centers, for which the genre is not much in evidence until the latter half of the fourteenth century.32 This is not all that makes this work unique within the history of the genre as a whole. It is also one of a handful of works recorded in the notation described by Marchetto of Padua in his Pomerium in arte musice mensurate (ca. 1318).33 Along with Decus in seraphici / Cetus apostolici, the other motet preserved in the San Giorgio Maggiore fragment, it is the only known work to exemplify the enharmonic and chromatic semitone signs Marchetto discusses in his plainchant treatise, the Lucidarium.34 Though it is transmitted anonymously, these, along with other features – like the middle-voice tenor similar to his securely attributed Ave regina / Mater innocencie – have led scholars to attribute the work to Marchetto.35 While such features make the Paduan theorist’s influence indisputable, the attribution itself remains conjectural. Its major difficulty comes down to a matter of dates. Historical data for Marchetto drop off after 1319, but the motet’s reference to Francesco Dandolo seems to place it in the decade between 1329 and 1339. If accepted, the attribution would widen Marchetto’s active period by at least a decade on the later side, rather significantly – though certainly not impossibly – changing our biographical picture of the theorist.36

32 33

34 35

36

Bent, “Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” 122–25, table 1. Marchetto da Padua, Pomerium, edited by Giuseppe Vecchi (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1961). Given the somewhat late date for the composition of Ave corpus sanctum among Marchetto’s other known works, the closely related (indeed basically derivative) treatise of Guido Frater, Ars musice mensurate, could provide another viable theoretical background to the composition of the motet. See Gallo, Da un codice italiano ; F. Alberto Gallo, “La trattatistica musicale,” in Arnaldi, Trecento, 2: 469–76 (2: 471–72). Gallo was the first to attribute the work to Marchetto or his orbit (Da un codice, pp. 27–30). An acrostic in the duplum text of Ave regina / Mater innocencie that reads “Marcum Paduanum” seems to cinch the attribution. F. Albert Gallo, “Marchetus in Padua und die ‘franco-venetische’ Musik des frühen Trecento,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 31, no. 1 (1974): 42–56 (44–48). Virginia Newes explores the interconnections among the mere handful of works with middle-voice tenors, including the affinities between Ave corpus sanctum and Ave regina / Mater innocencie in “Early Fourteenth-Century Motets with Middle-Voice Tenors: Interconnections, Modal Identity, and Tonal Coherence,” in Ursula Günther, Ludwig Finscher, and Jeffrey Dean (eds.), Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Holzgerlingen: Hänssler, 1996), pp. 31–52, esp. 48–51. For the affinities between the two works, see Bent, “Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” 95–96. Another possibility is that Francesco Dandolo was doge at the time the motet was copied into the San Maggiore fragment, but not during its composition. The fact that the triplum refers to a specific event in the biography of that doge – a miraculous healing – weakens this argument as well, however.

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Whether or not Marchetto himself was responsible for Ave corpus sanctum, the motet’s indebtedness to Marchetto’s musical style at the precise moment Andrea was cultivating a Paduan aesthetic through his works as procurator is suggestive. It lends support to a scenario in which Andrea commissioned the motet during his university days in Padua. At the time Francesco was elected doge in January 1329, Andrea had been procurator at San Marco for only a few months.37 His election to the post of procurator of San Marco on 4 October 1328 at the age of twenty-two made him the youngest-ever occupant of the seat.38 It also had him shuttling between his legal studies in one city and his duties at the ducal chapel in another – a biographical accident that was not insignificant to the development of a “Paduan” aesthetic in and around the ducal chapel in those years.39 Many of Dandolo’s commissioned designs are based on Paduan models. It stands to reason that his emulation of this neighboring city’s tradition might have extended to music as well.40 The implications of a scenario like this – in which Dandolo commissions the work from a Paduan composer in the school of Marchetto – are profound, and expand our sense of the media through which Dandolo experimented with historiographic form. It would make Ave corpus sanctum something like the earliest of Dandolo’s attempts to depict the new sacral persona of the doge.41 It would pre-date a work as conceptually groundbreaking as the Francesco Dandolo tomb lunette, argued to have been the first attempt to “bring . . . Venice, through the doge, into the grand design of Christian history.”42 It is worth noting that the attention to inventory that Dandolo lavished on documents extended to the items and objects at 37

38 39

40

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42

For a deeply researched biography of Andrea Dandolo at various points in his career, see Șerban Marin, “A Double Pathfinder’s Condition: Andrea Dandolo and His Chronicles,” Annuario dell’Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica di Venezia 12/13 (2010–11): 41–122 (54–59). Ester Pastorello, Introduction to Chronica per extensum by Andrea Dandolo, 1:iv. The state of the documentary evidence for Dandolo’s Paduan years is summarized in ibid., iii–iv. See, for instance, Michelangelo Muraro, “Petrarca, Paolo Veneziano, e la cultura artistica alla corte del doge Andrea Dandolo,” in Padoan, Petrarca, Venezia, e il Veneto, pp. 157–68. An enormous amount of literature exists on Dandolo’s textual enterprises and chronicle writing, as well as his initiatives in the visual arts. See the helpful bibliography in Debra Pincus, “Venice and Its Doge in the Grand Design: Andrea Dandolo and the Fourteenth-Century Mosaics of the Baptistery,” in Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson (eds.), San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), p. 246n2. Pincus, “Hard Times and Ducal Radiance,” p. 109; see also Pincus, Tombs of the Doges of Venice, p. 112. At the very least, Ave corpus sanctum provides an illuminating companion to a work like the Frari lunette, itself the subject of countless historical studies.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

the Basilica San Marco as well. In November 1336, roughly the period in which Ave corpus sanctum was composed, Dandolo conducted a complete inventory of the income and expenses at the basilica.43 The monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino was in every way part of the sacred inventory of the ducal realm that Dandolo hoped to put to use. It is fascinating, in this regard, to consider the ways in which a polyphonic texture could serve as the glue to bind the most sacred item in the monastery to the state, via the doge.44 We have textual evidence to suggest that Dandolo was interested in forging such connections. The presence of the relics at the church of San Giorgio Maggiore put Stephen’s cult in visual dialogue with the political heart of the city. This topographical relationship – directly across the Bacino and facing the Piazza San Marco – was powerfully suggestive of the relation between the relics of Mark and Stephen, making the church something like a monastic annex to the ducal center (see Map 3). The doge’s historic affiliation with the monastic community of San Giorgio Maggiore strengthened this connection; since Doge Tribuno Memmo’s donation of the island of San Giorgio to the Benedictine community, three doges had abdicated their office to take monastic vows and retire there.45 Ducal retirement to the island just across the Bacino appears as a historical trope in Andrea Dandolo’s Chronica per extensum descripta (ca. 1350), the most ambitious work to have been produced from within the ducal chancery, likely completed about a decade or two after the composition of Ave corpus sanctum. Dandolo describes how Doge Sebastiano Ziani, the most celebrated doge in both the Chronica brevis and the Chronica per extensum, had retired from the ducal office in the final days of his life to take the monastic habit and, eventually, be buried in the monastery.46 The doge’s 43 44

45

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Arnaldi, “Cancelleria ducale fra culto,” 3: 870. The body of Saint Stephen was among the many relics that Venetians in Constantinople had secreted home over the previous centuries; from the twelfth century, it had been enshrined in the Benedictine monastery church of San Giorgio Maggiore. See Cracco, “Santità straniera in terra veneta.” Dandolo’s translation narrative begins with the Byzantine emperor Constantine and ends in ducal ceremony, drawing a line of descent from one great Christian city to another; Constantine obtained the relics from Jerusalem for his new Christian empire, relics the doge subsequently received in Venice, where Stephen’s journey ended. The movement of objects across sacred topographies as a metaphor for the translations of empire across the space of history is a hallmark of Dandolo’s historical rhetoric. Like Veneziano’s Pala feriale that depicted Mark’s journey toward Venice from Alexandria, the story of Stephen’s body positioned Venice within the broader history of Christian empires. See Gino Damerini, L’isola e il Cenobio di San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 1956), esp. pp. 8–18. Dandolo, Chronica per extensum, p. 265; Andrea Dandolo, Chronica brevis, aa. 46–1342 d.C, edited by Ester Pastorello (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1938), p. 366.

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Map 3 Venice in the Lagoon. Courtesy of Adrian Kitzinger

annual veneration of the relics on the feast day of Saint Stephen, whose legendary origins we saw described in the Chronica, traced a ceremonial vector across the Bacino between the ducal complex and the monastic church. As an element of that ritual veneration, Ave corpus sanctum provided a sonic commentary on the relationship the state sought to cultivate with its most important relics and on Stephen’s imagined potential to transform the state into a Christian entity.47 Dandolo’s earlier Chronica brevis is a far-less-studied product of the ducal chancery, but it must have been written around the very same time Ave corpus sanctum was composed. In condensed form, it displays the same programmatic affiliation of the doge with monastic institutions, 47

See Dandolo, Chronica per extensum, p. 227. Gallo furnishes several later manuscript sources attesting to the Saint Stephen ceremonies held on the vigil and feast (Da un codice italiano, pp. 30–31). For the persistence and ceremonial elaboration of this tradition into the early modern period, see Tracy E. Cooper, “Locus meditandi et orandi: Architecture, Liturgy and Identity at San Giorgio Maggiore,” in Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi (eds.), Musica, scienza e idee nella Serenissima durante il Seicento: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia-Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, 13–15 dicembre 1993 (Venice: Fondazione Levi, 1996), pp. 79–105.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

listing ducal burials within the monasteries of San Zaccaria and San Giorgio Maggiore, along with the doges’ sponsorship of monastic building projects and donations.48 The particular configuration of subjects in Ave corpus sanctum – with Stephen’s body as the dedicatee and the abbot and doge as secondary referents – makes the feast an obvious candidate for the motet’s occasion. Yet I am less interested in recovering the specific performance context of the work than I am in understanding how the motet worked, alongside contemporary media, to integrate Venice’s many relics into the civic fabric. Calling on available structural devices, this early fourteenth-century motet writes not only Stephen, but also the doge into the monastic history of San Giorgio Maggiore, doing double duty with its double texts. In the first half of the fourteenth century, a series of relic legends helped to strengthen the symbolic connections between San Marco and the miracle-working relics possessed by important religious institutions throughout the city.49 Yet Ave corpus sanctum is most often appreciated as an early example of the Italian occasional motet – a marker of a transitional phase in the development of the genre, exhibiting tendencies toward some hallmarks of the Italian style, yet not fully divorced from the French tradition.50 It possesses features that fit awkwardly within the conventional genealogy of the genre. And yet these very points of stylistic strangeness prove sites of expression. It is here the motet has most to say about the political and historiographical agendas in which it participates – above all, in an unusual aspect of the work’s architecture: the inclusion of an introitus within the talea repetition. The result of this repetition is an audible affiliation of the miraculous powers of the monastery’s relics with the seat of government. 48

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This pattern of ducal sponsorship of monasteries begins with the dogado of Agnello Partecipazio in the ninth century. Dandolo, Chronica brevis, p. 356. For the 25 February 1341 “miracle” that involved the cooperation of the relics of Saints George, Nicholas, and Mark, the former two belonging to the two important Benedictine monastery islands, San Nicolò al Lido and San Giorgio Maggiore respectively, that were also both major nodes on the ducal ceremonial route, see ibid. Such legends strengthened the sense of unity between the ducal and monastic churches through the cooperation of their saintly communities and also consolidated the power of relics residing outside San Marco within political jurisdiction. Bent, for instance, describes Ave corpus sanctum as among the earliest Italian motets that “dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, do not yet have the distinctive features of the later Italian motet, but . . . are certainly Italian and in some ways . . . do anticipate it.” (“Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” p. 96).

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In his introduction to the publication of the San Giorgio Maggiore fragment motets, Gallo claimed Ave corpus sanctum as the first witnesses to “the existence of a secular motet tradition” (l’esistenza di una secolare tradizione mottettistica).51 Since that time, historians have customarily lumped it together with the canon of “ducal motets” that begins with Ave corpus sanctum and ends with the three motets for Francesco Foscari (Table 6.1). Julie Cumming notes how, compared with Marchetto’s Ave regina / Mater innocencie, Ave corpus sanctum is “explicitly political.”52 She deems it “one of the first surviving motets in the laudatory political Italian motet tradition” and “the first of the motets for doges of Venice.”53 Looking more closely, however, Ave corpus sanctum appears an outlier within this larger group of ducal motets. Not only does it date to an earlier period than the other works, most of which were products of the first quarter of the fifteenth century, it is also not dedicated to a doge. Its dedicatee – in all texted voices – is the body of Saint Stephen. The fact that this motet is not addressed to the doge does not mean that he does not feature as a prominent subject. Francesco Dandolo’s status within the work is crucial to its rhetorical operations (Example 6.1). His prominence in the text, which led scholars to categorize the work as a “ducal motet,” is in fact a built-in feature of a musical design that fosters a series of structural confusions among the work’s dramatis personae: Stephen’s body, the doge, and the abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore. Ave corpus sanctum incorporates the relics of Stephen, along with the monastic community, into the Venetian body politic through the motet’s musical identification of the doge with both the body of Stephen and with the abbot of San Giorgio. An unusual structural moment in the middle of the motet rearranges the three referents of the texts and in so doing transforms the doge into a spiritual leader and Stephen’s body into a citizen of the Republic and the head of the Venetian state. An analysis of the isorhythmic structure of Ave corpus sanctum shows how the unfolding of musical form could serve as an enactment of relationships between the state’s spiritual and political guides. What is more, the motet’s self-reflexive engagement with its status as prayer brings the generic conventions of the motet to bear on the very theology that could bind relics and rulers through the act of public devotion.

51 53

Gallo, Da un codice italiano, p. 35. Ibid.

52

Cumming, “Concord out of Discord,” p. 185.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

Even more, it demonstrates the potential that was imagined for the polytextual motet as a genre. A double prayer embedded in a musical form undergoing its own logic of transformation – quite simply, talea repetition – Ave corpus sanctum transforms the texts through its own process of completion, in which the isorhythmic structure is made to support the very change that its prayer text requests (Example 6.1). In so doing, the motet leveraged its own structural devices to prove how music, as a medium of prayer, could enable the very kinds of contact with relics that prayer sought. A four-voice isorhythmic motet, Ave corpus sanctum has a musical structure that is in many ways straightforward; the talea repeats twice, with only one color (T2 C1).54 Yet, in another regard, it is absolutely singular; it is the only known motet in which the introitus participates in the isorhythmic structure. When the tenor talea repeats in measure 76, it includes the bit of melody that the tenor had carried in the opening introitus. This, in turn, generates an entirely new “introitus” halfway through the motet. One might even argue that the inclusion of the introitus within the isorhythmic scheme contradicts its very status as an introitus (I will refer to this repeated material of the introitus as “interlude” henceforth). Whatever definitions medieval authors might have given the motet introitus, it seems at least to have been understood to stand outside talea and color .55 Anna Zayaruznaya points to evidence of scribal confusion over the status of the introitus with respect to the rest of the motet even in the fourteenth century. Though scribes landed on various methods to indicate the separateness of these introductory sections from the rest of the work, there was, in almost all cases, a clear sense of boundary between introitus and body. While the section I have called the introitus in Ave corpus sanctum is not labeled as such in the San Giorgio Maggiore fragment, the scribe nonetheless observes the characteristic (if variously indicated)

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The San Giorgio Maggiore fragment transmits four voices but the countertenor is nonessential, and it is quite possible that the motet was originally composed for three voices (triplum, duplum, tenor). Though the concept of isorhythm has been challenged by Bent and others, Ave corpus sanctum is isorhythmic in the strict sense that it is built on a twice-stated talea. It is texturally denser than its two closest comparanda, Ave regina / Mater innocencie and Decus in seraphici / Cetus apostolici, featuring a contratenor that, at times, substitutes for the silent tenor and, at other times, mostly doubles the triplum at the octave, sixth, or tenth. Bent has described the tenor of Ave corpus sanctum as “chant-like” – if, and “perhaps for good reason . . . unidentified” (“Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” p. 99). Anna Zayaruznaya, “[I]ntroitus: Untexted Beginnings and Scribal Confusion in the Machaut and Ivrea Manuscripts,” Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures 5, no. 1 (2015): 47–73 (68–69n6).

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Example 6.1 Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani, anonymous motet

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

Example 6.1 (cont.)

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Example 6.1 (cont.)

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

Example 6.1 (cont.)

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Example 6.1 (cont.)

respect for boundary through his use of a double bar line in each texted voice.56 The reappearance of the introitus disrupts our expectations of the role of the introitus vis-à-vis structural tenor repetitions. But it also serves an expressive end by rearranging the motet’s three referents. The unexpected reappearance of the introitus melody redirects the subject of the duplum away from the abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore and toward the doge, ushering in a process by which the relationships among the motet’s three 56

Zayaruznaya shows the double vertical stroke as the method of choice in most of the manuscript witnesses to Machaut’s Christi qui es lux / Veni creator spiritus (ibid., 49).

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

Example 6.1 (cont.)

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subjects are reconfigured. In so doing, the motet’s musical operations transform the doge into a spiritual leader and Saint Stephen into a citizen of the Republic and the head of the Venetian state. The force of this referential confusion in the second half of the motet, however, depends on the clear distinction set up among the motet’s subjects in the first half. In its opening iteration, the introitus (Example 6.1, mm. 1–12) establishes the motet’s addressee: “Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani protomartiris” (Hail holy body of glorious Stephen, the protomartyr), after which the first stanzas of both the triplum and duplum proceed to elaborate on the invocation to Stephen’s relics set up in the introitus; both voices request that Stephen attend to their prayers and invocations. The language of the first stanza of both triplum and duplum foreshadow that these voices will take the doge and abbot as their respective subjects; the triplum uses the verb “canere” in line 2, a general verb of singing, while the duplum uses “psallere” in line 3, indicating liturgical song in particular. The duplum locates Stephen’s relics within the monastery of San Giorgio (line 2), delineating the saint’s more specifically monastic sphere of influence on the island of San Giorgio, apart from his belonging to the city of Venice at large. Both triplum and duplum make their respective subjects explicit in their second stanzas (beginning with line 6 in both texts): the triplum asks the saint to protect Doge Francesco Dandolo and suggests that Stephen bears a special relationship to that doge, whom he has helped in the past.57 The duplum text begins with an invocation to the saint to save the abbot, to direct his deeds, and to govern him, presumably in a spiritual sense. At this point, after both doge and abbot have been named, the repetition of the talea initiates a new introitus, or interlude, which disrupts the established order of things (Example 6.1, section II): “O corona martirum, ducem nostrum dirige et nostrum civitatem” (O crown of martyrs, direct our doge and our city). While this musical halfway point falls neatly between the triplum’s four stanzas, it interrupts the duplum’s second of three stanzas. Furthermore, the duplum’s participation in the introitus repetition, whose invocation refers to the doge exclusively, redirects the subject of the duplum 57

Evidence for Francesco Dandolo’s special veneration of Saint Stephen is furnished in his will, which included among his possessions “unus alius quaternus de traslacione corporis beati Stephani prothomartiris, qualiter de Constantinopoli conductum, seu traslatum fuit Venecias.” Pompeo Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alla caduta della repubblica, 3 vols. (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1925–27), 1: 515a.

Stephen as Intertext in Ave Corpus Sanctum

text away from the abbot and toward the doge (and the vocative “guberna” in the duplum text at the end of line 7 that precedes the interlude already anticipates the shift toward a civic context). Following the interlude, both triplum and duplum refer to their respective subjects by pronoun only. Thus, while the triplum and duplum voices have clearly differentiated and mutually exclusive subjects when confined to the visual realm of the manuscript, the distinction breaks down in sound. Following the unexpected repetition of the introitus that the composer interprets as part of the talea – and in which the three voices join together to request the saint’s attendance to the doge – all pronouns thereafter point to the doge. In the sounding of the motet, Francesco assumes attributes normally ascribed to a monastic rather than political leader. Beginning with stanza 3 of the duplum, the doge becomes a devoted servant of the saint (line 8), to whom he prays constantly (line 10), and who helps him live a life pleasing to God (line 12) and attain a near-saintlike spirituality (cum sanctis pariter) (line 15). Through the identification of the doge with the abbot, the motet forges a connection between Venice’s political center and the monastic island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Like those doges recounted in Dandolo’s Chronica who retired to the monastery, Francesco is made more than a political leader; he becomes a pious, even ascetic, man. The division of the introitus melody among three voices – triplum, tenor, and duplum – is a striking feature of the opening that has no known correlate in the motet repertory. It is worth remarking that this threefold structure, articulated in the introitus by the division of text among the three voices, reproduces itself at a global level in the motet as well. The number of breves in Ave corpus sanctum – totaling 150 – makes the work equally divisible by two (the division upon which the isorhythmic structure is built) as it is by three. These third-way points coincide with key structural nodes of the work. The short solo invocation in the duplum that begins in measure 51 – “rogamus” – initiates the triplum’s and duplum’s turn of attention to the doge and abbot as their respective subjects. As we have seen, this section climaxes in the repeated introitus that scrambles the two subjects, and has the doge absorbing the spiritual virtues of the abbot. At breve 101, exactly two thirds of the way through the motet, a new transformation occurs: the triplum sings, “Esto tu nobis dux” (Be our leader), followed by a pause in all voices. Though dux in a generic sense

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means “leader,” it is also the word for “doge,” and so in this context, the triplum just as convincingly sings, “Be our doge.” Thus the triplum invokes the saint to act as the city’s leader, or perhaps through the city’s leader, Francesco Dandolo. If the doge possesses the spiritual qualities of the abbot, Stephen deigns to become the political leader of the city. This is followed by a homorhythmic section among the sounding voices (mm. 106–16) that establishes the intercessory network created by these transformations. The duplum, which now sounds like it refers to the doge, proclaims: “He [the doge] prays to you [Saint Stephen] constantly” (orat te iugiter) – it is the station of a monk to pray constantly – while the triplum simultaneously supplicates that Stephen “request the mercy of God for us” (roga pro nobis Dei pietatem). The homorhythm among the sounding voices in this section supports the vision of harmony between political and celestial order: the doge’s ceaseless prayers to Stephen mirror the saint’s intercession with God on behalf of the city. Underscoring the transformations that have taken place in this section is the fact that the tenor, which occupies the middle range (between triplum and duplum) through most of the work, here crosses over the triplum (mm. 106–07).58 That voices so remote in their ranges should cross is, indeed, a salient feature. We might read this as an audible confirmation that the original order established at the outset of the work has been reconfigured. Throughout the remainder of the motet, the tenor continues to cross into the highest range (mm. 111, 124–27, 141–43), adding a textless gild to the entire final section and acting as a reminder of a newly established order. The structural points at which the subject of the duplum and triplum, respectively, are redirected – from the abbot to the doge and from the doge to the saint – perform some musical sleight of hand, rearranging the texts to create the sounding illusion of a pious doge in continual prayer to the holy body of Saint Stephen and of the saint attending to the civic affairs of the city and interceding on behalf of its citizens. As far as surviving sources attest, the ceremonial motet would not become a mainstay of the Venetian ceremonial repertory for several decades. However, we have seen here how the genre’s allowance for intertextual and textual ambiguity complemented narratives, expressed in other art forms of the period as well, that sought to integrate the city’s sacred matter into the state apparatus. Andrea Dandolo’s connections to Padua during the era of the motet’s composition create a compelling context for the

58

On the modal implications of the “middle-voice tenor” in Ave corpus sanctum, see Newes, “Early Fourteenth-Century Motets,” pp. 45, 51.

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

musical expression of Venetian historiography at such an early period in the development of the Italian motet.59

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris Although no polyphony from the dogado of Andrea Dandolo survives, it is tempting to imagine that the collection to which the San Giorgio Maggiore fragment once belonged was compiled during his reign. The next experiment with the motet as an element of state ceremony appears a full decade after his death. This is the anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris, an equal-voice motet with a textless tenor. In the roughly four decades between the composition of Ave corpus sanctum and that of Marce, Marcum, the ceremonial motet had undergone significant development, with new models and techniques of composition available. Above all, the stylistic world of the ars antiqua to which Ave corpus sanctum in part belonged to had been relegated to the past, and the Italian motet in general had decisively distanced itself from French isorhythmic practices. While many of the musical features of Marce, Marcum stand apart as experimental and sui generis, the motet’s monotextuality, its imitative opening, the introduction of phrases by melisma followed by the rapid declamation of text, the ritornello structure for the Amen section, and the bassus-like function of the tenor are all features that ground the work within the stylistic universe of the vernacular song tradition of the Italian trecento.60 The motet is transmitted in two sources: Cantus II of the motet appears as part of the (now-lost) Egidi fragment (Eg), while all three voices (Cantus I and II, tenor) are preserved in Grottaferrata 224 (Gr). Doge Marco Corner (r. 1365–68) is the dedicatee, and the motet was perhaps performed at one of the ceremonies celebrating his investiture as doge in 1365 (Example 6.2).61 Like 59

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For Dandolo’s relationship with the University of Padua, see Pastorello, introduction to Chronica per extensum by Dandolo, iii–lxxvii; Lazzarini, “‘Dux ille Danduleus,’” pp. 123–56. The indebtedness of early Italian motets to the trecento song tradition was already noted in Bent, “Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” and greatly amplified by Mikhail Lopatin, “Echoes of the Caccia? Canonic Openings in Early Quattrocento Italian Motets and Their Historical Models,” Studi musicali 6, no. 2 (2015): 215–62. Though beyond the scope of this chapter, Lopatin’s study holds fascinating implications about the kinds of precedents a work like Marce, Marcum set for the stylistic development of the Italian motet more broadly. For an organized overview of the stylistic norms of the Italian trecento repertory, see Oliver Huck, Die Musik des frühen Trecento (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2005). Although Ursula Günther refutes the attribution of the motet to Landini posited by Kurt von Fischer and Nino Pirrotta, several of the features she highlights in the motet relate it to Landini through its resemblance to his madrigal Si dolce non sono. Marce, Marcum and Si dolce non sono share striking

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Ave corpus sanctum, Marce, Marcum is also held up as an important early witness to the Italian motet tradition.62 Yet only cursory notice has been given to this motet as a vehicle for musical expression.63 In the view of Cumming, who first considered the work’s political rhetoric, Marce, Marcum “fail[ed] to take advantage of the symbolic possibilities of the motet” and, for that reason, did “not constitute a native Venetian musical tradition of full-blown laudatory motets.”64 In particular, she points to the use of a single text for both cantus voices as curious among trecento motets, which leads her to conclude that the work “does not exploit the symbolic and expressive possibilities [of] the polytextual motet.”65 Although late trecento and early quattrocento motets might be either single- or polytextual, Marce, Marcum is the earliest extant single-texted motet of the Italian trecento, and the use of a single text functions within the work’s broader expressive operations.66 The features that seem

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features of generic hybridity. Ursula Günther, “Quelques remarques sur des feuillets récemment découverts à Grottaferrata,” in F. Alberto Gallo (ed.), L’ars nova italiana del trecento 3: Secondo convegno internazionale, 17–22 Iuglio 1969 (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1970), pp. 315–97 (pp. 336–37); Kurt von Fischer, “Neue Quellen zur Musik des 13., 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,” Acta Musicologica 36, nos. 2–3 (1964): 79–97 (92); Nino Pirrotta, “Landini,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1960), pp. 163–68. See also Lopatin, “Echoes of the Caccia?” As Günther notes, the shift from octonaria to senaria perfecta in the Amen section of Marce, Marcum recalls the madrigal, and the isorhythmic tenor of Si dolce non sono would have unmistakably evoked the motet. The madrigal’s staggering of the upper voice entries with respect to the tenor isorhythm is a procedure that aligns it all the more closely with the design of Marce, Marcum outlined here. Although no motets can be securely tied to Landini, he received payment “pro quinque motectis” in 1379, and there are grounds for attributing the motet Principum nobilissime, another ducal motet dedicated to Andrea Contarini (1368–82) and for which only one voice survives, to the Florentine composer. Dragan Plamenac points out that the mention of “Franciscus peregre canentem” in the text of Principum nobilissime may refer to the composer’s stay abroad in northern Italy during the time. Dragan Plamenac, “Another Paduan Fragment of Trecento Music,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 8, no. 3 (1955): 165–81 (173–74). Example 6.2 modified from Kurt von Fischer and F. Albert Gallo (eds.), Italian Sacred and Ceremonial Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 13 (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1987), no. 44. For the place of Marce, Marcum within the tradition of the Italian trecento motet, see Bent, “Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet.” See also Cumming, “Concord out of Discord,” chap. 6; Giuliano Di Bacco and John Nádas, “The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism,” in Richard Sherr (ed.), Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), pp. 44–92; Günther, “Quelques remarques,” pp. 334–37. Cumming, “Concord out of Discord,” p. 262. Cumming understands this “full-blown phase” to be best represented by Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor / Michael qui Stena domus, discussed below, along with the group of motets related to the 1423 election of Doge Francesco Foscari, by Hugo de Lantins, Christoforus de Monte, and Antonius Romanus. Cumming, “Concord out of Discord,” p. 259. Carolann Buff makes clear the Italian tendency toward single texts around the turn of the fifteenth century in “Ciconia’s Equal-Cantus Motets and the Creation of Early FifteenthCentury Style,” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2015. For a table that illustrates adherence to

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

directly plucked from the vernacular song world of the madrigal and caccia are the ones that best support the rhetoric of the motet, all of which are bent toward the work of making the doge (here Marco Corner) the image – the imago and repraesentatio – of Mark. It is possible to argue that the work signifies precisely through its constructions of one-to-one correspondences between the two equal-range cantus voices. Viewed against the backdrop of the political theology that posited likeness between doge and saint, the use of a single text for the two cantus voices appears as one of several musical devices that create aural analogies to the notion of the doge as Mark’s imago. It is telling that the first stanza of the motet dwells explicitly on the concept of similitude between Mark the saint and Marco the doge (see text in Example 6.2). In particular, the first few words of the poem – “Marce, Marcum imitaris” (Mark, you imitate Mark) – invite the listener to interpret musical imitation – instances of which the composer presents textually, texturally, and motivically – in terms of the relationship between the motet’s two subjects. In this respect, the echoed interactions between the two texted voices are the most innovative aspect of the motet’s design and prove central to the large-scale planning of the work. Example 6.2 indicates these moments of textual echoing as letters A through E , beginning in measures 1, 27, 62, 73, and 84, respectively. These sections of structural misalignment between the cantus parts provide the major moments of contrast in a texture otherwise characterized by simultaneous declamation in the two voices (sections of hocket also offer textural contrast, a feature to which I will return later). This call-and-response interaction between the cantus parts unfolds as a musical process over the course of the motet, wherein the distance at which the two voices echo text progressively shortens with each subsequent imitative section. The systematic compression of the interval between vocal entries results in a process of musical mirror imaging that gradually brings the two voices into alignment. This strategy of organizing vocal entries bears an almost programmatic relationship to the central idea of the motet, where, over the course of the motet, the doge becomes ever more the saint’s direct musical image. An imitative introitus setting the first syllable – “Mar” – of “Marce” puts this musical process in motion. Virginia Newes indicates Marce, Marcum as the earliest known example of a dedicatory motet with an extended echo generic norms among extant Italian motets ca. 1300–1410, see Bent, “Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” pp. 122–25. Four of the motets Bent lists have missing voices, and it is therefore not possible to determine the number of texts they use.

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imitation introitus in an Italian source.67 Such lengthy introductory imitations would become a hallmark of the genre. Here in this early usage, however, the introitus works to establish the symbolic horizons of the composition. Though both sources for the motet – Gr and Eg – transmit Cantus II, only Gr transmits Cantus I and tenor, and regrettably there is a lacuna for Cantus I in measures 7 through 15. However, given that Cantus II and tenor form a contrapuntally complete, independent unit in this section, it seems reasonable to conclude that the motet opens with two exact solo repetitions of the “Mar-” melisma, successively declaimed by each cantus voice over the tenor. Suggestively, both manuscripts propose a text underlay for the introitus that complements the musical “image” it creates. The first two words of the motet, “Marce, Marcum,” are the only instances in which the shared proper name of the twin subjects appears, and their stark juxtaposition at the very outset of the motet produces an immediate graphic and auditory symmetry.68 Only the vocative and accusative endings (“-e” and “-um”) distinguish the two musical utterances of the name, pointing grammatically to the political and celestial referents, respectively. Despite the length of the opening melisma, both Gr and Eg suggest that the change of syllable from “Mar-” to “-ce” be deferred until after the cadence of the introitus. While the scribes of Gr and Eg indicate this differently (which is partly related to a musical discrepancy between the two sources in this section), both clearly withhold the grammatical resolution of the name “Marcus” until beyond the introitus.69 This delayed 67

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Virginia Newes, “The Relationship of Text to Imitative Techniques in 14th-century Polyphony,” in Ursula Günther and Ludwig Finscher (eds.), Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und. 15. Jahrhunderts (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), pp. 121–54 (p. 151). It is worth considering how much the motet – about one-tenth of it – is occupied with the musical unfolding of the name Mark (Marcus). Ginzburg cinches the premodern relationship between the three operative forms of substitution in play in this motet: the image, the relic, and the name (“Representation”). He reports how “the [medieval] imago was regarded as equivalent to the bones, since both were considered to be a part of the whole constituted by the body,” noting also Marcel Mauss’s emphasis on the “close relation that existed in the Rome of antiquity between the imago and the cognomen, which is the most personal element in the three-named system” (Wooden Eyes, p. 68). It is significant in this respect that the two manuscript sources that transmit Cantus II and tenor of Marce, Marcum – Gr and Eg – contain only one substantive scribal disagreement, and that this disagreement is in part a matter of text underlay: Gr and Eg transmit different underlay for Cantus II in mm. 14–15. Yet this very disparity perhaps helps to establish the interpretive horizons of the work. If we adopt the underlay of Eg, the potential simultaneous declamation of “Marce” and “Marcum” in m. 14 would be the only moment in which different words coincided in the motet – a vivid musical accentuation of the equivalence between human and heavenly Marks. Whether we adopt the underlay from Eg or from Gr, the availability of both possible approaches to the text only underscores the semantic interchangeability of the two Marks in the context of the motet’s subject.

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

grammatical distinction between Mark the doge and Mark the saint becomes a music-structural strategy that extends in musical time the unity of subject introduced by the introitus’s echo imitation. It is only on the heels of this initial musical image that the two Marks are uncoupled. What ensues throughout the remainder of the work is the gradual restoration of the two subjects to this original state of unity.70 Reinforcing the sense that the idea of likeness governs the musical scheme of the work, the next imitative exchange between cantus voices (m. 27, passage B) sets the continuation of the first stanza that underlined the similarity between the two Marks: “Nor are you divided from him [Mark], you are steeped in equity.”71 Yet whereas in the introitus (passage A), the repetition of the second cantus had followed the first by a distance of twenty semibreves, here in passage B, the second cantus follows at a distance of only eight semibreves. With each subsequent echoed section, the distance at which the voices echo the text is systematically shortened by two semibreves. In passage C, the distance between vocal entries contracts to six semibreves, in passage D to four, and in passage E to two semibreves. Thus, gradually and at regular intervals, the lag between vocal entries diminishes until the texted section of the motet cadences with Cantus I and II in perfect unison (m. 88). The Amen section that follows, moreover, begins with the two voices sustaining a unison long on G (mm. 90–91), and they continue in minims at the unison until the end of the following measure (92). Bridging the two sections, the solo tenor (m. 89) heralds not only the new perfect mensuration, but likewise the transformation that has occurred in the relationship between cantus voices. 70

71

Bent has stressed the generic commonalities between the Italian motet and the caccia (“Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,” p. 104). Although the musical operation at work in Marce, Marcum does not adhere to the caccia ’s strict canonic technique, its opening imitation, nodding toward the caccia, might be read as a metaphorical pursuit in which Cantus II catches up to Cantus I over the course of the motet. Thus the physical proximity of Marce, Marcum to Antonio Zacara’s caccia, Cacciando per gustar / Ay cinci ay toppi within Eg is perhaps not coincidental, as di Bacco and Nádas observe (“Papal Chapels and Italian Sources,” pp. 65–69). Di Bacco and Nádas raise the possibility that “the outstanding musical artifice of [Zacara’s] caccia ’s opening canon between the top voices would have suggested its similarity to the opening of Marce, Marcum in particular, sparking its inclusion in this collection” (pp. 68–69). If we are to read a metaphorical pursuit into Marce, Marcum, Michael Alan Anderson’s studies of the symbolic use of imitative introductory techniques in a later repertory of fifteenth-century motets dedicated to John the Baptist proves instructive. Michael Alan Anderson, “The One Who Comes after Me: John the Baptist, Christian Time, and Symbolic Musical Techniques,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 66, no. 3 (2013): 639–708, and “Symbols of Saints: Theology, Ritual, and Kinship in Music for John the Baptist and St. Anne (1175–1563),” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008. “Nec ab ipso disgregaris / Equitatis madio.”

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Example 6.2 Marce, Marcum imitaris, anonymous motet

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

Example 6.2 (cont.)

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Example 6.2 (cont.)

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

Example 6.2 (cont.)

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Example 6.2 (cont.)

Imitation as Image in Marce, Marcum Imitaris

Marce, Marcum imitaris text and translation Marce, Marcum imitaris probitatis radio, nec ab ipso disgregaris equitatis madio. Miles dignus approbaris virtutum efficacia. Princeps iustus sublimaris karismatum gratia. Tu ducatus generosi mundi pariferiam circumducis virtuosi ad prolem Corneriam. Tu michi benignitatis manum porrexisti. Tu Venetie dignitatis gradum addidisti. Sic celestis claritatis cui te commisisti, Deus augeat largitatis liliumque majestatis, quod pie meruisti.

Amen. Mark, you imitate Mark with a rod of uprightness, nor are you divided from him; you are steeped in equity. Worthy soldier, you are confirmed by the efficacy of your strength. Just prince, you are exalted by divine grace. You of generous dogeship bear a feast to the world. You lead the virtuous to the offspring of the Corner family. You offered me a hand of kindness. You added to the degree of Venice’s worth. Thus by the heavenly splendor with which you are united, may God augment the lily of largess and of majesty which you piously earned. Amen.

While homorhythmic parallel motion between the cantus voices abounds in Marce, Marcum (itself possibly related to the broader theme of the work), this passage of unison that elides the texted and

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Amen sections of the motet is indeed striking. If the texted section had introduced the cantus parts as juxtaposed images in the introitus, the Amen reveals the voices in superimposition. The shift from imperfect (octonaria) to perfect (senaria perfecta) meter only underscores the sense of a completed transformation. And if we are to see hocket as the ultimate form of vocal entwinement, the brief section of hocket that concludes the work (passage F) puts a peculiar spin on the idea, for it is nothing but the literal repetition of single pitches in a hocket texture.72 Thus the entire motet ends with echo imitations at the interval of a semibreve before the final cadence. The musical process that the echo introitus had set in motion comes to its full realization in creating aural images at the level of the individual pitch. The tenor, too, joins at the octave below in this final mirroring of pitches, reinforcing the notion of sonic sameness with which the work concludes.73 With the musical echo functioning here as an aural imago, Marce, Marcum makes a musical analogy to a political concept that equated the dual subjects of the motet’s text: human and heavenly Marks. If the first poetic line, “Mark, you imitate Mark,” establishes an interpretive framework by which to understand its musical imitations, then the musical process of aligning – even superimposing – the voices influences our understanding of the poem. Not only does Corner imitate the spiritual virtues of his patron and namesake, but he is completely identifiable with him. Since the motet likely accompanied the sung affirmation of the doge as Mark’s political representative, this musical operation perhaps voices the real image-making function of the laudes in the context of ducal investiture. The rhetorical doubling between the saint and doge at work in Marce, Marcum creates a musical analogy to an important concept: that of the image. Grounded in a political theology that saw the doge as Saint Mark’s spiritual image, Marce, Marcum forges a fresh musical metaphor by conflating sonic with spiritual similitude. Its composer seizes upon the coincidence in name between doge and saint, and Corner’s spiritual likeness to Mark, made explicit in the first line of the motet, becomes its musical subject. Drawing on the

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A prominent use of hocket is something Marce, Marcum shares with the roughly contemporary Italian motet, Lux purpurata / Diligite iustitiam by Jacopo da Bologna. I infer the tenor pitch D in m. 109 based on the previous two measures.

Motet, Chancery, and Textual History

political concepts that cast the doge as Mark’s spiritual imago, Marce, Marcum performs the musical joining of the body of the Evangelist and the person of the doge.

Motet, Chancery, and Textual History In 1365, the very year that has been proposed for the occasion of Marce, Marcum, Benintendi Ravignani, Grand Chancellor of the ducal chancery, died. With his death, so ended the long Dandolo years at the chancery, begun way back in 1328 when Andrea Dandolo himself first arrived on the scene as a young man twenty-two years of age. Numerous writers, among them Petrarch, attest to the deep friendship the doge and his chancellor shared; Petrarch refers to the pair as having “two hearts that beat in one breast.” On Dandolo’s deathbed, the doge entrusted the care of his wife and daughter to Ravignani. It is not hard to imagine that Dandolo’s lifelong cultivation of the chancery as an engine for the state’s textual expressions would have also passed over into the care of his friend, the Grand Chancellor. The chancery’s Dandolo years thus embrace the composition of both these remarkable motets. Ave corpus sanctum and Marce, Marcum in fact stand at either end of this long period. A comparison of the two works testifies to just how much stylistic change the Italian motet genre had undergone – a freeing from French influence and the integration of a native, vernacular idiom into a ceremonial form – even as the major engine of the state’s textual production remained under the guiding vision of a single individual. We can thus appreciate these works as musical expressions of a dazzling and imaginative historiographical project that spanned over three decades. One can still find Dandolo and Ravignani – united both in person and intention, as they were in life – at the foot of an enormous mosaic Crucifixion scene in the baptistery of San Marco (Figure 6.1). Here Dandolo kneels directly at Christ’s feet, and Ravignani flanks him beside the Evangelist Mark whose hand extends toward him – a design commissioned by the doge himself as part of his midcentury renovation of the baptistery.74 As renowned a figure as Ravignani was in his day, to 74

Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1964), pp. 75–78; Gabriele Horn, Das Baptisterium der Markuskirche in Venedig: Baugeschichte und Ausstattung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Land, 1991), p. 181.

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Figure 6.1 Crucifixion, Baptistery, San Marco, Venice, ca. 1354. Mosaic Photo credit: Cameraphoto arte/Art Resource, NY

immortalize him within the space of the basilica’s baptistery, at the foot of the Crucifixion and only paces away from the place where the body of the doge would ultimately lie, is about as high a tribute as one can pay a friend. But it was also a way Dandolo memorialized his own historiographical ambition. To depict a chancellor – whose roles were variously scribal, notarial, and legal – in the sacred space of the basilica, in the very chamber that renewed and perpetuated Christian life, was to place the tasks of record keeping and history writing within the scheme

Motet, Chancery, and Textual History

of human salvation. The Dandolo chancery’s elevation of textual history – the art and authority it conferred upon a documentable past – belonged to a much greater stirring that was taking place throughout the Italian peninsula, the musical consequences of which – with respect to the kinds of relations to the past that music was asked to broker – will form the final reflections of this book.

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joy: I am dressed in all but unique colors. reason: The nature of things cannot be overcome by human artfulness, and often, the greater the effort to stress or hide this nature, the more it comes forth and shows itself, as if angered to have been provoked. The innate foulness of your miserable mortal carcass cannot be changed by colors or by scents – it will just become more evident or more strongly implied. joy: I am adorned with precious jewelry. reason: Place a pallid corpse into a golden coffin, and surround it with gems and purple, the greater the adornment the greater is the horror. Lest you take offense at what I say – consider the origin of the word “cadaver,” which derives from the Latin cado, to fall, to expire. Petrarch, “Remedies for Prosperity,” Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul 1

Sometime a citizen of the lagoon city, Francesco Petrarch carried on an uneasy affair with Venice. Benintendi Ravignani, whose death ended Chapter 6, had enticed the poet to join him in the city, and had brokered an arrangement with the Venetian Senate where, in exchange for residency in the Palazzo Molina, Petrarch would donate his personal library to the state.2 Petrarch spent a full six years at the Palazzo Molina (1362–68), enjoying every imaginable protection for himself and his family, but he seems to have had little stomach for the dazzling carcass of a city. In a snub to the Senate that hosted him, he left Venice permanently in 1368 for nearby Arquà, at that time ruled by the Republic’s Carrarese enemies.3 His hugely successful De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies against fortune), however, cited in the epigram above, had been composed during that Venetian period. It is not difficult to glimpse the Venetian setting in those lines. Like Boccaccio, whose satirical treatment of the Festa delle Marie we encountered in Chapter 3, Petrarch recoiled at the decay and 1

2 3

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Petrarch, Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, trans. Rawski, 1: 60. I am grateful to Ana Munk for her reference to this passage in “Art of Relic Cults in Trecento Venice,” 87. In the end, Petrarch would not hold up his end of the bargain. Arnaldi provides a useful context for Petrarch’s ultimate displeasure and departure from a city with which he was strongly connected (“Cancelleria ducale fra culto,” 3: 865–87).

Epilogue

decrepitude that lay beneath the city’s surface. Boccaccio had made clear the kinship between duplicity and doubling inherent in the way the feast multiplied sacred matter, suggesting that what the Venetian state offered up in place of the sacred was merely the voluptuousness of theater. Petrarch is occasionally referred to as the “first modern man,” and his horror at the medieval practice of gilding death and accepting it as a substitute for life reflects a modern sensibility. Humanism’s celebration of sociability, its embrace of reason, and its call for moderation and clearsightedness belonged to a broader bid for the life well lived. This required, at a certain level, the bracketing off of death and of the threateningly material side of man that the corpse – the human relic – always connotes.4 Petrarch’s critique followed close on the heels of the Apparition of Mark’s relics that we examined in Chapters 4 and 5. The Apparition celebrated precisely what Petrarch abhorred: the jewels and artifice lavished upon the cadaver, the corpse beneath the marble slabs. We recognize in these conflicting perspectives and attitudes a cultural tension that properly belongs to the period. Studying the many ways in which music was called on to mediate near and far, nature and artifice in this period gives us a stronger hold on medieval notions of representation more generally: on how representation functioned in medieval society, and how it differed from a modern definition of the term that was already being fleshed out in fourteenth-century Italy by its proto-humanists. As the cases presented here suggest, music was a bridge between products of human creativity and the invisible, hidden world for which they stood in substitution. The unconcealment of Mark’s bones in the legend of the Apparitio was not an unmasking but a revelation. Music activated the imagined sympathies between the underlying sanctity of things and the manufactured world built upon it. The beautiful and organized movements of sound legitimated that relationship, as is apparent in the Matins responsory verse from the feast of the Apparition, which told of how “in the movement and apparition of that most holy body some very glorious sound rang out from within the middle of the stones” (Et in motu et apparicione ipsius sanctissimi corporis de medio petrarum quidam sonus gloriosissimus consonuit ). This is the broader context to which Schramm’s comment – “As the State becomes visible in images, so it becomes audible in the 4

For the view of the man’s material, mortal nature ushered in by Italian humanists via the revival of antique texts and its influence on changing codes of life conduct, see Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York, NY: Norton, 2011), pp. 5–8, 75–76.

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laudes” – belongs.5 Visuality is so basic to our understanding of representation and image-making that we forget that the sounding world could have anything to do with it. But medieval songs served as urgently needed, or simply ardently desired sense-perceptible proof that the colonial administration was the true image and likeness of the lagoon government, or that Mark’s relics had the power to stir on behalf of the state, or that the plastic forms of Gabriel and Mary suspended throughout the city could, at times, repeat the words of the Incarnation for the sake of those listening. Petrarch was not alone in recoiling at the cadaverous foundations he saw lying shallowly beneath Venice’s heavily jeweled surface. Seen one way, the city’s great gift to the modern literary imagination has been its readily apparent blend of beauty and decay. John Ruskin’s reliquary Stones that warn of imperial decline; Henry James’s “terrible relic” of a muse, Juliana Bordereau; and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice all choose Venice as the stage on which to play out the consequences of the treacherous intimacy between the material forms of death and beauty. But fraudulence was a particularly high-ranking offense for fourteenth-century humanists like Petrarch. Petrarch and his disciples (Lorenzo Valla, Poggio Bracciolini, and Leonardo Bruni) ushered in philology, a branch of knowledge whose methods of authentication came to define humanism, the humanities, and modern epistemology writ large.6 Philology’s methods of inspection and comparison, of making editions and constructing stemmatic relationships rerouted genealogies of auctoritas not through criteria of contact – the relic, the imperial imago, the contractual laudo – but through standards of correction. When the Republic began its territorial expansion onto the Italian mainland in the fifteenth century, the Senate more self-consciously than ever evoked the symbols of empire in the Mediterranean as proof of its political and historical stature. This was never more the case than during the dogado of Francesco Foscari, under whose reign “romanitas began to take hold as a visual and verbal cultural ideal in Venetian civic discourse.”7 While Foscari’s renovations in and around the Piazza San Marco survive as the most iconic and enduring signs of a civic sense of romanitas, literary, musical, and ceremonial forms gave vent to this impulse as well. In his 5 6

7

Lerner, Ernst Kantorowicz, p. 248. For more on Petrarch’s role in the founding of philology within the longue durée of that branch of the humanities, see James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 34. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 104. For the Foscari era, see Romano, Likeness of Venice.

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laudatory Carmen (1440–41) for Foscari, Filippo Morandi assigned a Roman imperial title to the doge, acclaiming him as dux augustus (and likewise praising “Venetian patricians as ideal descendants of the Romans”).8 The relevance of the imperial language, as seen for instance in the title “augustus” found in the acclamatory inscription at Górtyn (αὔγουστε [voc.]), was revised to respond to a new sense of political identity. During the Foscari dogado, the Flemish composer Hugo de Lantins set the Venetian laudes as a three-voice motet.9 All three of the surviving ducal motets dedicated to Foscari (see Table 6.1) traffic in the classicizing language of which that doge was fond. In the hands of Lantins, Christus vincit is as classically stylized as a triumphal arch (the Foscari dogado produced many of those as well). Compared to Ave corpus sanctum and Marce, Marcum, the Foscari motets are tigers of a different stripe, part and parcel of the Republican mores that were born of that new century. In these same years, Venice abandoned the term Commune as state nomenclature and became the Republic it would be throughout its long and steady, if Serene, demise.10 This is also the period that saw the growth and strengthening of the cappella Marciana as the musical institution of state, meant to glorify both God and the city in sound. In 1468, the Byzantine Catholic cardinal Basil Bessarion donated his library of Greek texts to the Republic. An entire building would be erected around this corpus of antique material.11 That building, now the Marciana National Library, sits directly across from the Basilica San Marco. It would be an overstatement to say that the library and the textual authority it enshrined could really rival the basilica it faced or the treasure cached in its altar, but its position just opposite the basilica-palazzo complex insinuates the comparison. The idea that it was documents that could verifiably transfer the past to the present would for several centuries at least rival, and then supplant the immanent authority of sacred matter.12 8 9

10 11

12

Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 104. Michael J. Allsen, “Intertextuality and Compositional Process in Two Cantilena Motets by Hugo de Latins,” Journal of Musicology 11 (1993): 174–202; Julie E. Cumming, “Music for the Doge in Renaissance Venice,” Speculum 67, no. 2 (1992): 324–64 (339–41). Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant, pp. 187–88. See Holger A. Klein, “Cardinal Bessarion, Philippe de Mézières and the Rhetoric of Relics in Late Medieval Venice,” in Holger Klein, Valeria Poletto, and Peter Schreiner (eds.), La stauroteca di Bessarione fra Costantinopoli e Venezia (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2017), pp. 3–39. Anthony Cutler, “From Loot to Scholarship: Changing Modes in the Italian Response to Byzantine Artifacts, 1200–1750,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 237–67.

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If we return to the dialogue Petrarch stages between Ratio and Gaudium in De remediis, we see that Reason’s sound logic – passing as it does through etymology and example – quite outdoes Joy’s simple declarative statement as a form of argument, and puts the lie to Venice’s tawdry trappings. But before handing Reason an easy victory, we should flesh out the particular personifications locked here in debate: Gaudium and Ratio. Rationalism had, for several centuries, exemplified the spirit and practice of medieval philosophy. Dun Scotus and Thomas Aquinas founded scholasticism on the exercise of ratio through demonstrative argument, the very kind employed by Petrarch’s personification. Ratio was the marker of humanity closest to the mind of God. It led to sound moral judgment and to the apprehension of world order. But gaudium enjoyed a theological status that eclipsed even ratio. If the exercise of ratio helped man aspire toward his divine nature and divine maker, gaudium marked the presence of God pure and simple (ipse Deus totus sit gaudium).13 Ranking among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, gaudium was the state toward which man’s earthly desiring for God led. And if argument was the modus operandi of reason, joy manifested through decidedly less abstract, wholly perceptible forms, and above all through acts of performance.14 Joy was to be found just beyond the logic of grammar, in the first impulse of language, as Dante described in his De vulgari eloquentia, imagining Adam’s first word to have been “a cry of joy [inciperet a gaudio]; and since there is no joy outside God, but all joy is in God, and since God Himself is joy itself, it follows that the first man to speak should first and before all have said ‘God.’”15 No perceptible medium better expressed that joyful state of being “just beyond language” than music. The author of a late twelfth-century treatise known as the Speculum ecclesiae makes continuous reference to gaudium in his description of pneuma – the Middle Age’s best available term for a still somewhat anachronistic concept of music as melody isolable from its syllabic freight – when he writes, “Since this joy is neither fully to be expressed with words, nor is fully able to be still, the church, as if jubilating 13

14

15

Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, translated by Steve Botterill. Cambridge Medieval Classics 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1.4.3–4; Elena Lombardi, The Syntax of Desire: Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae, Dante (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 129–30. It is worth noting the frequency with which gaudium was described as taking the shape of utterance – especially those kinds of utterances J.L. Austin classifies as speech acts and that Aristotle felt compelled to sideline from his discussion of language in De interpretatione. De vulgari eloquentia, trans. Botterill, 9.

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with suppressed words, bursts forth in admiration.”16 We recognize in the author’s language the images of bursting forth, and of churchly movements extending to rocks and people alike, as basic to the legend of the Apparitio as well. The fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle describes the “ineffable joy” (ineffabile gaudium) that song conferred, above and beyond plain language, in the way it connected the individual to the public (liturgical song being the most commonly encountered form of public speech) and to the angelic state.17 And a tradition of commentary on the liturgy that extended from Amalarius of Metz to Sicardus of Cremona to William Durandus stressed the angelic symbolism of liturgical song that was rooted in the joy that fused heaven to earth. The century-and-a-half period examined in this book witnessed the making of an empire, the choreography of its ritual life, and the organization of a set of texts that would form the canon of state historiography and lay the foundation for the so-called myth of Venice, all of which was reflected in distinct, though overlapping, phases of musical statecraft. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Venice, it was the medium of music that gave proof of the divine presence on which the state’s authority rested. By making the movements of the world audible in song, Venetians proved the presence of Mark’s body, lodged deep within the marble, just as they proved the perpetual life of the saint that that body represented. We can also recall the world-creating power of song in the Origo civitatum introduced in the first pages of this book. It was the perceptible quality of sweetness in Orpheus’s song that created the social and material forms of a civilization: its foundations, assemblies, and constitutions. It would take the better part of a century to restore the metaphysical dimension to music, when Renaissance figures like Marsilio Ficino once again explored song’s potential to mediate between the concrete, material world and the realm of immaterial and invisible ideas. Uncannily, music’s magic – its theater and its singing statues – reappeared in the early modern era in precisely the same place it had vanished: on the Italian peninsula. If it reappeared in the same place, it belonged to a different world, utterly transformed by the changes humanism had wrought. 16

17

Translation from Margot Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris, 2nd ed. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. 61–62. Andrew Albin, “Listening for canor in Richard Rolle’s Melos amoris,” in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.), Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 177–97, and Katherine Zieman, “The Perils of Canor : Mystical Authority, Alliteration, and Extragrammatical Meaning in Rolle, the Cloud-Author, and Hilton,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 22 (2008): 131–64 (143–44).

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Even so, music remained a special marker of art’s ability to shorten the distance between physical and metaphysical forms of knowledge – indeed, of the very usefulness of art in doing so. Fredric Jameson frequently enlists the “magical narratives” of the Middle Ages as a paradigm of art’s ability to organize experience, both to generate a political universe and to act within it.18 Collectively, the chapters of this book support the idea that, for some of the most important narrative and dramatic forms produced during the later Middle Ages, music largely accounts for the element of “magic” that could transmute the base and inconsistent facts of political life in the late medieval Venetian empire (incompatible provincial and central administrative bureaus, conflicting Byzantine and feudal contractual systems, linguistic and confessional difference). These magical, musical narratives both do and do not produce the political history of this most far-reaching, most insubstantial empire in late medieval Europe. 18

Fredric Jameson, “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,” New Literary History 7, no. 1 (1975): 135–63.

Appendix 1 Excerpts from a Sixteenth-Century Ceremonial Book from Venetian Candia

Memoria fatta per la festa di Nadal L’eccellentissimo signor duca se veste la vesta de veludo cremesino eccetto nel tribunale con uno avogador. Et poi vien l’eccellentissimo capitano con li clarissimi consiglieri de su et sentono al tribunale un pocco et poi si levano de lì et si accompagnano con la processione di preti et si vano a San Marco. Et si fa il laudo di Sua Serenità et l’eccellentissimo duca stando in pie ad obedientia del suo Prencipe, tenendo una candella in man impizzata datagli per il suo capellano, facendo prima il laudo in franco dal suo capellano et di San Marco et poi ultimamente in greco per il protopapa et suo clero, sotto pena di mancar qualche prete dal detto laudo di pagar quel tanto che parerà a Sua Signoria eccellentissima. E poi facendo il laudo dell’eccellentissimo signor duca si senta alla banca tenendo la candella impizzata dal suo capellano et li altri signori stando in pie ad obedientia di esso eccellentissimo duca. Et poi compito il laudo, Sua Signoria eccellentissima ordina al suo capellano per cantar le tre messe del Nadal. Et poi finite le messe si partino a procession de lì et si vano a San Tito accompagnati per le piffere, trombe e tamburi con tutti i papati et protopapa et protopsalta et gerodiacona con tutti duoi gastaldi con il capellano di Sua Signoria eccellentissima, ogni un il suo luoco dove gli aspetta giusta l’ordenario et fano il laudo similmente in essa chiesa et finito che sarà detto laudo si aldi messa grande. Et poi si partino de lì et lo compagnano i signori l’eccellentissimo duca fino al pè scalla del suo palazzo. Il protopapa è obligato far dir uno delli preti greci una epistola alla greca et ancora lui debba dire lo evangelio nella messa di Nadale e similmente di Pasca. L’eccellentissimo signor duca è obligato dar da disnar nella festa di Nadal al protopapa, al gerodiaco, al protopsalta, al suo capellan, ai pifferi, a uno delli gastaldi, a chi parerà a Sua Signoria illustrissima, et alli preti a quelli che piace al protopapa. ...

The entire ceremonial is reproduced in Papadaki, Cerimonie religiose, pp. 169–80.

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Nota della cerimonia che si fa per la festa della Epiphania L’eccellentissimo duca si senta nel tribunale con l’avogador et poi vengono tutti li eccellentissimi signori et sentano nel tribunale stando un poco et lì si fa il laudo di Sua Serenità con il clero greco et latino. Et poi si parteno con la processione et si vano a San Tito, ove si fa il laudo del santissimo Papa et dell’arcievescovo di Candia.

Appendix 2 The Akathistos Hymn, translation modified from Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn

Prooimion I Having secretly received the command, The bodiless one went with haste to Joseph’s dwelling, And said to her that knew not wedlock: “He who bowed the heavens and came down Is contained unchanged but whole in you. I see him take the form of a servant in your womb; I stand in amazement and cry to you: Hail, bride unwedded.” Prooimion II To you, our leader in battle and defender, O Theotokos, I, your city, delivered from sufferings, Ascribe hymns of victory and thanksgiving. Since you are invincible in power, Free me from all kinds of dangers, That I may cry to you: “Hail, bride unwedded.”

Strophes 1 A chief angel was sent from heaven To say to the Theotokos, “Hail.” And amazed he rose When he saw you, O Lord, taking on a body, And with bodiless voice cried out these things to her: “Hail, through whom the curse shall cease; Hail, recalling of fallen Adam; Hail, deliverance of the tears of Eve; Hail, height hard for human thoughts to scale; Hail, depth hard even for the eyes of angels to pierce;

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Hail, since you are the chair of the king; Hail, since you bear him who bears all; Hail, star causing the sun to shine; Hail, womb of the divine Incarnation; Hail, through whom the creation is made new; Hail, through whom the Creator is worshipped; Hail, bride unwedded.” 2 The holy one, seeing herself to be chaste, Spoke boldly to Gabriel: “The paradox of your words I find hard for my soul to accept, for you speak of childbirth from a conception without seed, crying: Alleluia.” 3 The Virgin, yearning to grasp a knowledge unknowable, cried to the ministering angel: “How can a son be born of chaste loins? Tell me.” He answered in fear; yet this he cried: “Hail, initiate of sacred counsel; Hail, faith of those who pray in silence; Hail, prelude to the miracles of Christ; Hail, main chapter of his teachings; Hail, celestial ladder by which God descended; Hail, bridge leading those from earth to heaven; Hail, marvel greatly lauded by the angels; Hail, wound greatly lamented by the demons; Hail, you who ineffably gave birth to the light; Hail, you who taught nobody ‘how’; Hail, you who surpass the knowledge of the wise; Hail, you who illuminate the minds of the faithful; Hail, bride unwedded.” 4 Then the power of the Most High overshadowed her That knew now wedlock, so that she might conceive; And she showed forth her fruitful womb As a sweet field for all Who are willing to harvest salvation by singing thus: “Alleluia.”

Appendix 2

5 The Virgin, bearing God in her womb, Hastened to Elizabeth. And the unborn child of Elizabeth Knew at once her embrace, and rejoiced, And with leaps like songs cried to the Theotokos: “Hail, vine-twig of unfading bud; Hail, treasure of undying fruit; Hail, you who till the tiller who loves humankind; Hail, you who cultivate the cultivator of our life; Hail, earth that flourishes with a fertility of compassion; Hail, table that bears a wealth of mercy; Hail, since you make the meadow of delights blossom again; Hail, acceptable incense of intercession; Hail, atonement for the whole world; Hail, good will of God towards mortals; Hail, freedom of approach for mortals before God; Hail, bride unwedded.” 6 Tossed inwardly by a storm of doubts, Prudent Joseph was troubled. He saw you unwedded And suspected illicit love, O blameless one. But when he learnt of your conceiving by the Holy Spirit, he said: “Alleluia.” 7 The shepherds heard the angels glorify Christ’s appearance in the flesh. And running as if to their shepherd They behold him as a lamb without spot, Pastured in Mary’s womb, and they cried in praise of her: “Hail, mother of the lamb and the shepherd; Hail, fold of spiritual sheep; Hail, protection against unseen wild beasts; Hail, key to the gates of Paradise; Hail, since heavenly things rejoice with the earth; Hail, since earthly things chant with the faithful; Hail, unsilenced mouth of the apostles; Hail, unvanquished courage of the martyrs; Hail, firm foundation of the faith; Hail, brilliant token of grace;

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Hail, through whom Hades was stripped bare; Hail, through whom we were clothed in glory; Hail, bride unwedded.” 8 The magi saw a star moving towards God, And followed its radiance; Keeping it before them as a beacon, With its help they sought the mighty king. And attaining the unattainable, they rejoiced and cried to him: “Alleluia.” 9 The children of the Chaldaeans saw in the Virgin’s hands him who with his hand fashioned humankind. Though he had taken the form of a servant, yet they knew him as their master. And they hastened to do him grace with gifts, and cried out to the blessed Virgin: “Hail, mother of the star that never sets; Hail, bright dawn of the mystical day; Hail, you who closed the furnace of deception; Hail, you who protect the initiates of the Trinity; Hail, you who have cast the inhuman tyrant from his dominion; Hail, you who showed forth the Lord Christ, who loves humankind; Hail, deliverance from pagan worship; Hail, liberation from miry deeds; Hail, you who quenched the worship of fire; Hail, you who released us from the flame of passions; Hail, guide of the Persians to temperance; Hail, joy of all generations; Hail, bride unwedded.” 10 The magi became heralds, bearing the message of God, and returned to Babylon, fulfilling your prophecy. They proclaimed you the Christ to all, and abandoned Herod as a fool not knowing how to sing: “Alleluia.” 11 Shining upon Egypt the light of truth You dispelled the darkness of falsehood, for her idols, O Saviour,

Appendix 2

fell down unable to endure your power, and those who were saved from them cried to the Theotokos: “Hail, elevation of humans; Hail, downfall of demons; Hail, you who trampled upon the delusion of error; Hail you who refuted the deceit of the idols; Hail, sea that drowned the spiritual Pharaoh; Hail, rock, giving water to those who thirst for life; Hail, pillar of fire, guiding those in darkness; Hail, protection of the world, wider than the cloud; Hail, food, following after manna; Hail, minister of holy joy; Hail, promised land; Hail, from whom flow milk and honey; Hail, bride unwedded.” 12 When Simeon was about to depart from this life of deceit, you were given to him as an infant, but you were made known to him as perfect God; and hence, astounded at your ineffable wisdom, he cried: “Alleluia.” 13 A new creation has the Creator revealed, Manifesting himself to us, his creatures. From the seedless womb he came Preserving it chaste as it was before, so that, beholding the miracle, we might sing her praises, crying: “Hail, flower of incorruption; Hail, crown of continence; Hail, you who shine forth the prefiguration of resurrection; Hail, you who show forth the life of the angels; Hail tree of glorious fruit on which the faithful feed; Hail, wood of fair shading leaves where many shelter; Hail, you who brought into the world the deliverer of captive; Hail, you who conceived the guide to those who wander astray; Hail, conciliation of the Righteous Judge; Hail, forgiveness for many who have stumbled; Hail, robe of free intercession given to the naked; Hail, love conquering all desire; Hail, bride unwedded.”

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14 Seeing this strange birth, let us become strangers to the world, turning our minds to heaven. To this end the High One appeared on earth as a humble man, Wishing to draw to the heights those who cry to him: “Alleluia.” 15 The uncircumscribed Word was present wholly among those below, yet in no way absent from those above. For a divine condescension occurred – not a descent according to place – and a birth from the Virgin, seized by God, who hears this: “Hail, container of the uncontainable God; Hail gate of hallowed mystery; Hail, tidings doubted by unbelievers; Hail, undoubted boast of believers; Hail, all-holy chariot of him who is above the Cherubim; Hail, excellent dwelling-place for him who is above the Seraphim; Hail, you who bring opposites together; Hail, you who unite virginity and childbirth; Hail, through whom sin is remitted; Hail, through whom Paradise is opened; Hail, key to the kingdom of Christ; Hail, hope of eternal blessings; Hail, bride unwedded.” 16 All the ranks of angels marveled at the great work of you Incarnation, for the say God whom none can approach as a human approachable by al, dwelling among us and hearing from us all: “Alleluia.” 17 Wordy orators we see dumb as the fishes in your presence, O Theotokos. They are at a loss to say how you remained a virgin and yet had power to bear a child, but we, marveling at the mystery, cry aloud with faith: “Hail, vessel of the wisdom of God;

Appendix 2

Hail, treasure of his providence; Hail, you who reveal lovers of wisdom as unwise; Hail, you who refute practitioners of reason as unreasonable; Hail, since the cunning disputants are shown to be fools; Hail, since the mythmakers have withered in silence; Hail, you who have torn asunder the tangled webs of the Athenians; Hail, you who illuminate many with knowledge; Hail, ship for those who wish to be saved; Hail, haven for the seafarers of life; Hail, bride unwedded.” 18 Wishing to save the world, the Maker of all things came to it of his own free choice. And because as God he is our shepherd, he appeared for us, among us, like us; and calling like by means of like, as God he hears; “Alleluia.” 19 For virgins and for all who flee to you you are a wall, O Virgin Theotokos; for the Maker of heaven and earth constructed you, undefiled, by dwelling in your womb, and taught all to address you: “Hail, pillar of virginity; Hail, gate of salvation; Hail, beginning of spiritual renewal; Hail, bestower of divine goodness; Hail, for you gave new birth to those conceived in shame; Hail, you who destroyed the corruptor of hearths; Hail, you who have birth to the sower of purity; Hail, bridal chamber of a seedless marriage; Hail, you who join the faithful with the Lord; Hail, fair nursing-mother of virgins; Hail, bridal escort of holy souls; Hail, bride unwedded.” 20 No hymn can recount the wealth of your great compassion, for even if we offer you, O holy King, an equal number of psalms and odes,

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we will achieve nothing worthy of your gifts to us, who cry to you: “Alleluia.” 21 We see the holy Virgin as a torch full of light, shining upon those in darkness. For by kindling the immaterial light she guides all to divine knowledge, illuminating the mind with brilliance, honoured by this cry: “Hail, beam of the spiritual sun; Hail, lampstand of the light that never wanes; Hail, soul-illuminating lightning; Hail, you who like thunder strike down the enemies; Hail, since you kindle the many-beamed lantern; Hail, since you make the many-streamed river gush forth; Hail, you who prefigure the baptismal font; Hail, you who take away the filth of sin; Hail, basin that washes clean the conscience; Hail, bowl wherein is mixed the wine of mighty joy; Hail, scent of Christ’s fragrance; Hail, life of mystical feasting; Hail, bride unwedded.” 22 Wishing to grant release from ancient debts, the redeemer of all people came of his own will to dwell among those who were exiled from his grace. And after tearing up the record of sins he hears from all: “Alleluia.” 23 Singing in honor of your giving birth, we all praise you as a living temple, O Theotokos. For the Lord who holds all in his hands dwelt in the power of your womb – made you holy, made you glorious, and taught us all to cry to you: “Hail, tabernacle of God and the Word; Hail, greater than the Holy of Holies; Hail, ark gilded by the Sprit; Hail, inexhaustible treasury of life; Hail, precious diadem of pious kings; Hail, holy exaltation of devout priests; Hail, immovable tower of the Church;

Appendix 2

Hail, impregnable wall of the kingdom; Hail, through whom trophies are raised up; Hail through whom enemies fall; Hail, healing of my body; Hail, protection of my soul; Hail, bride unwedded.” 24 O Mother hymned by all, you who gave birth to the Word, the holiest of all holies: accepting this present offering, deliver from every evil and from the punishment to come all those who cry to you: “Alleluia.”

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Appendix 3 Lectio “secunda” (Zanetti 356, fols. 331v–332r)

felix regio que tantum digna fuit habere patronum ad cuius nutum lapides scinduntur, Marmora latent virtute franguntur, insensibilia Spiritu Sancto intrinsecus operante prosiliunt! gestierunt, fratres karissimi, scopuli Arnon, prout in Numeris legitur, dum populus Israeliticus inde transiret; et hic ad laudem sanctissimi corporis concrepant lapides et quasi gestu quodam aplaudendo exultant in transitu et motu miraculoso huius veri israelite. hic secundum daviticum oraculum de medio petrarum dando vocem virtutis sue beatissimus Marcus ab alto potestatis sue intonuit, et si veritate duce dirigimur, adimpletum conspicimus quod veritas ipsa testatur: dico vobis quia si hii tacuerint lapides clamabunt. intendat nunc, queso, caritas vestra, fratres karissimi, ut miraculosius aliquid in beato Marco quam in ipso Cristo cum pietate inveniat. ecce enim ut evangelica narrat ystoria, Cristo recenter mortuos et que non rapuerat inter crucis angustias exsolvente in redempcione eciam hominum adhuc sanguinem suum fundente petre scisse sunt et monumenta aperta. sed beato Marco ante multa tempora mortuos, corpore quoque ipsius nervis artefactis solutto et in pulverem unde prius sumptum fuerat, iam ex aliqua parte reducto, Marmora scinduntur durissima, monumentum eius gloriosissimum aperitur. quis non hoc religiosa presumptione fateri possit maius miraculum in corpore beati Marci penitus humoribus exsiccato quam in corpore Cristi adhuc ex vitali spiritu calefacto quamvis exanimi? si spiritus Elie in duplum maior fuit in Eliseo discipulo quam in Elia suo magistro quia Eliseus mortuos mortuum suscitavit quod non Elias, licet uterque vivens suscitaverit mortuum, quis poterit dicere quod non sit maius miraculum in corpore beati Marci pre vetustate pulvericato quam in corpore Cristi adhuc exfluente sanguine tepido lapides scindere, sepulchrum aperire? et forte in illa comparacione Elie et Elisei summi magistri dignatio et huius discipuli dignitas est figurata, nec aborret a vero, aut catholico dogmati in aliquo adversatur, hec laudum preconia beatissimo Marco ascribere, cum per semetipsam veritas ipsa testetur: qui crediderit in me, opera que ego facio et maiora horum faciet, cum et super locum eundem 248

Appendix 3

clamet auctoritas: maius fuit ad umbram Petri sanare infirmos, quam ad tactum fimbrie Cristi in muliere sanguinis fluxum siccare. nonne maius fuit omnes fere gentes in auditu auris obedire Deo ad voces predicatorum quam in Cristi presenciam ex maxima parte Iudeos obdurari aut paucos eorum converti? secure igitur fateamur Cristum dignatum esse maius aliquid per discipulum suum quam per semetipsum in had eius apparitione miraculosa efficere; non quod in beato Marco, menbro secundum apostolum pendente de menbro, aliquid cogitem quod non in ipsum a capite suo influxerit, cum inter ceteros de plenitudine Cristi acceperit, nichil habens quod non ab ipso susceperit, sed quia laude dignissimum nec segniter arbitror transeundum quod maius aliquid per servum quam per semetipsum Jesus Cristus dominus noster dignatus est facere. ut autem ad morum edifficationem miraculum istud proficiat quid per lapidum scissionem et marmorum fractionem accipimus nisi cordis contritionem et mentis perverse humiliationem? lapides enim scindere est duriciam cordis in nobis ipsis disrumpere. de lapidibus igitur, id est miraculo lapidum, ad vocem illam evangelicam in filios Abrae suscitemur ut saltim ad lapidum exemplum in nobis ipsis duricies emollescat. huic intellectui Spiritus Sanctus in Job atestatur dicens: lapis calore solutus in es vertitur. ut enim ad licteram quod dicitur intelligatur, lapis calore, id est Spiritus Sancti fervido opere, solutus est. cum miraculose in huius sollempnitatis origine Marmora crepuerunt et sic quodammodo soluta in es, hoc est in sonoram predicationem, vertuntur, cum per hoc ammonemur duriciem omnem a mentibus nostris abicere, quis poterit iam in mentis durare duricia ubi conspexerit lapidum duriciam emolliri? obstinatus igitur hereticus et infidelis protervus iam se senciat insensatum et stolidum si insensibilium ammonitionem contempserit, si ad clamorem lapidum in perfidia sua remanserit. horum figuram tenuit mulier habens septem demonia quam beatissimus Marcus ad arcam suam violenter atractam, eadem hora in conspectu omnium liberavit. et utinam isti a septem demoniis, id est universitate viciorum et heresibus liberentur!

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Index

Page numbers for examples and illustrations are in italics, and for tables in bold. absence, 121, 153 historiographic, 6–7 representations of, 159 abundance, 159, 175, 187 acclamations see laudes. administrative records see documents. agency, 153, 176, 183 Akathistos hymn, 55–57 acclamation in, 57 iconography of, 65–66, 70–74 stanza 14, 64–65, 67 stanza 23, 72 stanza 24, 73 stanzas 23 and 24, 68–74 in wall paintings, 62–66, 68–77, 69 Akotantos, Angelos, 59–61 Alexios II Komnenos, Byzantine emperor, 75 Alma redemptoris mater, 107 Amalarius of Metz, 33 Ambrose of Milan, 121 Anderson, Michael Alan, 219 Ando, Clifford, 26 animation, 101, 173 of effigies, 82, 100–1 through music, 4–6, 154–55 vividness, 175 Annunciation office Ave Maria, gratia plena, 89, 90, 92, 96, 97 melody for, 94, 95–96 Benedicta tu in mulieribus, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97 melody for, 94, 95–96 mode, 94–95 Ecce ancilla domini, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97 Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit, 91, 92, 97 Annunciation procession and exchange, Santa Maria Formosa, 9–10, 83–84, 84–98 Canal’s description of, 86 costume and jewelry, 98–100 dramatic effects of, 101 laudes sung to doge, 85 liturgical freedom of, 88–89

material opulence of, 100–1 Padua Annunciation ceremony, comparison with, 97 procession, length and route of, 85–88, 101 sung dialogue of Annunciation, 88, 90, 91 antiphons, 89, 92 Gospel narrative, absent from, 96 reconstruction of, 89–98, 93 antiphon, 33, 89, 90, 92 Alma redemptoris mater, 107 Annunciation office Ave Maria, gratia plena, 89, 90, 92, 96, 97 Ave Maria, gratia plena, melody for, 94, 95–96 Benedicta tu in mulieribus, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97 Benedicta tu in mulieribus, melody for, 94, 95–96 Benedicta tu in mulieribus, mode, 94–95 Ecce ancilla domini, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97 Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit, 91, 92, 97 Apparitio liturgy, First Nocturn Exultet, iubilet Venetorum Ecclesia, 165, 166, 166–67 Nam scissis sanctissimis, 165, 167, 170, 170–71, 171 Precibus populi exauditis, 165, 167, 169, 169–70 Videntibus omnibus, 165, 167, 172, 172 Apparitio liturgy, Vespers Gaudete et exultate Veneciarum cives, 138–41, 141 Magnificat antiphon Felix regio, 138, 145–55, 148 Multa quidem, 155, 156 Profluentibus lacrimis, 142 Psalm, 138 hagiographical, 141–42 temporality, 138–41 Theodore Vespers, Hic est beatissimus martyr (Magnificat Antiphon), 151, 151–53

269

270

Index

antiquity absence of, in Venetian history, 6–7 borrowings from, 27–29 Roman Empire, 25–28 Apparitio (Feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition) liturgy, 11–12, 120, 121–22, 124, 135–39, 163–64 First Nocturn, 164–72, 165 antiphon Nam scissis sanctissimis, 165, 167, 170, 170–71, 171 Exultet, iubilet Venetorum Ecclesia, 166, 166–67 Felix regio, 172–84, 174 Precibus populi exauditis, 169, 169–70 Videntibus omnibus, 172 First Vespers, 137–55, 139 Magnificat antiphon Felix regio, 138, 145–55, 148 narrative rupture in, 138, 141, 142–43 responsory Beatissimus Marcus, 138, 143–45, 144 Matins archival evidence for, 179–80, 181 lessons, 179–84, 181 responsory Felix regio, 172–84, 174 Second Vespers, Multa quidem, 155, 156 archives/manuscripts, 165, 179–80, 181 Basilica San Marco VAM¹, 135, 139, 165 Egidi fragment, 215, 218 Grottaferrata 224, 215, 218 Marciana, MS Zanetti Lat. 356, 139 Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare MSS C 55 and C 56, 97 Princeton University special collections, 94 Archivio di Stato (ASV), 92 ASV Reg. 119, 94 VAM 113–18, 92, 94 art administration as, 23 limitations of, 115 as procreative act, 113 repetition in, 66, 123 arts, plastic, 10 vs. life, 100–1 music, relationship with, 83–84 sculpture, 107–13, 108, 109 see also effigies. arts, visual see effigies; icons; mosaics; sculpture; wall paintings. Augsburg, 103, 104 Augustine, 176–77 Confessions, 162–63

On Genesis, 177 authenticity of relics, 131 of state, 3–6 authority, 232 through performance, 58–59 of representation, 133 Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani (motet), 13–14, 195, 196, 197–98, 206, 210, 227 Ave Maria, gratia plena (antiphon), 89, 90, 92, 96, 97 melody for, 94, 95–96 Barzizza, Gasparino, De orthographia, 27 Basilica San Marco Annunciation sculptures, 107–13, 108, 109 Baptistery, 227–29, 228 liturgy, commissioned for, 11–14 liturgy, organization of, 191 mosaics Crucifixion, 227–29, 228 Porta Sant’Alipio lunette, 104–7, 105 Preghiera–Apparitio, 135, 136, 137, 146–48, 158–62, 197 vita, 131–32 musical conservatism of, 2 pillar containing Saint Mark’s relics, 145–48, 154 San Marco antiphoners, 92–94 statuary, 107–13, 108, 109, 154 tombs of doges, 111 treasury jewelry, 99 VAM¹ (antiphonal), 135, 139, 165 Beatissimus Marcus (chant), 138 beauty, 32–33 Bellini, Giovanni, 99 Belting, Hans, 36 Benedicta tu in mulieribus (antiphon), 89, 90, 92, 94, 97 melody for, 94, 95–96 mode, 94–95 Bent, Margaret, 195, 203, 204, 219 Berlin Gradual, 192 Bessarion, Basil, 233 Betancourt, Roland, 36 Beverly, 103, 104 Bible, 33, 112, 142, 180–84 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, 115, 230 bodies, 110–12 representation of, 159 sacred, 104 substitutions of, 103 see also relics.

Index

Boethius, 178 Brand, Benjamin, 125, 154, 185 Brown, Patricia Fortini, 24 Buff, Carolann, 216 Bukofzer, Manfred, 7 Buondelmonti, Christoforo, Descriptio insulae Cretae, 77 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 124 Byzantium imperial governance of, 37 laws, 25 polychronion, 28, 29–31, 30, 33 rituals of, 25 Venice, diplomatic relationship with, 42 see also Constantinople. Cabasilas, Nicholas, 126–27 cadences, 141 in Apparitio liturgy, 148, 171–72 rhyming, 95, 96 calanarghare (kanonarchema), 63–64, 70 Canal, Martin da, 10, 100 Les estoires de Venise, 85–94, 86, 90, 97, 131, 133–34 Cancelleria ducale (ducal chancery), 42, 191–94 chants, copying of corpus of, 92–94 conservative humanism of, 13, 196 legal texts, production of, 192 liturgical texts, production of, 11–14, 192, 197–98 prestige, 192–93 Candia see Crete. cantors kanonarches, 63–64, 70 protopsaltis, 53, 54, 55, 60, 62 in wall paintings, 70–71 cartularies, 9, 44, 194 Liber albus, 20, 42, 194, 196 Liber blancus, 194 Liber pactorum, 20, 192 Cassiodorus, 6 Cattin, Giulio, 89, 92, 120, 124, 164, 179 on Apparitio liturgy, 135, 136, 169 on Quomodo fiet istud (chant), 92 on Theodore Vespers, 152 Ceasarius of Heisterbach, 114 Chaganti, Seeta, 127 chancery, ducal see Cancelleria ducale. chant, 12 Beatissimus Marcus, 138 borrowing of, 144 as container, 127, 128, 150–51, 153 form and content, relation of, 185–87

melody, 95 Quomodo fiet istud, 90, 92, 95, 97 reading and, 62–63 time and, 162–63 vernacularization, 89–92 see also laudes. see also antiphons. Chioggia, War of (1378–81), 75 Christianity Catholic, 29 imperial legitimacy and, 8 Orthodox, 29, 49–50, 52 Venice’s historical claims to, 6–7, 10–11 see also clergy. chronicles Chronicle of Marco, 84 Dolfin, Giorgio, Cronaca di Venezia, 98 Grazia, Francesco de, Chronicon Monasterii Salvatoris Venetiarum, 113 Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum, 3–6, 31 vernacular, 46 Ciconia, Johannes, 195 clergy Catholic actors, as Mary and Gabriel, 9, 10, 85, 88, 91 in Annunciation procession, 85–88 deacons, 96 Orthodox, 54–55 protopapas, 53, 54, 55 protopsaltis (cantor), 53, 54, 55, 60, 62, 65–66 concealment, 171 Concessio insulae Cretensis, 8, 19–20, 37, 42–43, 49 conflict, 8, 44 laudes (acclamations), resolved through, 52–55 over ritual participation, 50 consensus, 36 Constantine III, Roman emperor, 27 Constantinople Byzantine reconquest, 48, 130 Madonna Hodegetria icon, procession of, 56–57 Venetian capture, 7, 30 Constantinos VII Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae, 31–34 containment, 153, 171 by chant, 127, 128, 150–51, 153 by form, 156 of relics, 145–48 content form and, 185–88 latent, 186–87

271

272

Index

continuity, material, 9, 26, 82, 124, 131 Cornaro, Andrea, 45 Corner, Marco, doge, 215 Corpus Antiphonalium Officii (CAO), 94 costume, 10 Council of Ten, 196 creation, 5–6 Crete, 7–9, 19–25 Candia (later Heraklion), 24 churches, 57–77 Hodegetria, Balsamonero, 47, 61, 67 Panagia, Meronas, 47, 74–77, 76 Panagia, Roustika, 47, 66–74, 69, 72, 73 churches, San Marco, 50 churches, San Tito, 50 Górtyn, 26–28, 31 as likeness of Venice, 39–41 Madonna Mesopanditissa procession, 45–47, 48–56 rebellions, 21, 23, 41, 48, 77 as Roman colony, 25–28 Statuta Venetorum (legal code), 52 see also wall paintings. Crouzet-Pavan, Élisabeth, 191 Cumming, Julie E., 203, 204, 216 Cuthbert, Michael Scott, 198 Cyriacus of Ancona, 28 Dale, Thomas E.A., 129 Dandolo, Andrea, 227 Dandolo, Andrea, doge, 10, 13, 42, 56, 99, 110, 124 Apparitio feast, development of, 131 Cancelleria ducale (ducal chancery), development of, 192–93, 193 Chronica brevis, 201, 202 Chronica per extensum descripta, 152, 201–2 death, 227 ducal role, development of, 197 procurator of San Marco, 13, 131 tomb, 110, 111, 112 Dandolo, Enrico, doge, 30, 131 Dandolo, Francesco, doge, 198, 213, 214 de Monte, Christeforus, Plaude decus mundi, 195 death, 231, 232 decay, 232 Deesis, 65–66 del Friuli, Pace, Descriptio festi Virginis, 81, 84, 100 Demus, Otto, 147, 154 Devaney, Thomas, 114 Di Bacco, Giuliano, 219

dispute, 8, 44 laudes (acclamations), resolved through, 52–55 over ritual participation, 50 documents administrative records, 46 chronicles, 3–6, 31, 46, 84 Concessio insulae Cretensis (land ownership records), 8, 19–20, 37, 42–43, 49 laudes (acclamations) in, 19–25 materiality of, 156, 173 vs. oral culture, 58–59 perdurance of, 9, 26 vs. performance, 42–44 see also cartularies. doge acclamations to, 29 ceremonial costume of, 100 Festa delle Marie and, 83, 85 jurisdiction of, 106 Mark, substitute for, 106–7, 196, 197, 198, 217, 227 representational function of, 196–97 representations of, 105 San Georgio Maggiore, affiliation with, 201–3 spiritual role of, 196–97, 213 tombs of, 110–12 see also Cancelleria ducale. Dolfin, Giorgio, Cronaca di Venezia, 98 drama in Annunciation song dialogue, 96, 101 in Festa delle Marie, 81–82, 83–84 Drandaki, Anastasia, 60 Du Fay, Guillaume, 195 ducal chancery see Cancelleria ducale. dukes of Candia, 24, 29 Ecce ancilla domini (antiphon), 91, 92, 94, 96, 97 effigies actors’ costumes, similarity to, 100–1 animation, 82 construction and decoration, 98–99 of Jesus, 103–4 legal protection of, 114 of Mary, 9, 10, 103–4 in Festa delle Marie, 81–82, 83–84, 98–99, 100–1, 114 music, relationship with, 83–84 perdurance of, 82 as physical proxies, 114 in public statuary, 110 in Purification enactments, 103 as relics, 114

Index

representation and, 82 in ritual, 82, 83–84 Sedes Sapientia (Throne of Wisdom), 101 song and, 83, 112–13 substitution and, 82, 114 empire consensus in, 33 image as emissary of, 35–39 Roman, 6–7, 25–29 empire, Venetian, 7, 21, 232–33 emperor, lack of, 37 governance and administration as art, 23 bureacracy, 37–39 through feudatories, 37 through laudes ritual, 38–41 size and structure of, 24–25 laws and legal system, 19–25 legitimacy of rule in, 7 relics and, 10 through romanitas, 27–29 losses in, 130 music ritual, consolidated by, 8–9 rebellions against, 21, 23, 41, 48, 77 Eudochia, Roman empress, 27 Exultet, iubilet Venetorum Ecclesia (Apparitio First Nocturn antiphon), 165, 166, 166–67 Falier, Vitale, doge, 119 Fasoli, Gina, 22 Fassler, Margot, 125, 185 fealty, 21, 22, 37, 51, 58 Felix regio Magnificat antiphon, Apparitio liturgy, Vespers, 138, 145–55, 148 responsory, Apparitio liturgy, First Nocturn, 165, 172–84, 174 Festa delle Marie (Feast of the Twelve Marys), 9–10, 81–115 abolition, 114 Boccaccio’s Decameron, satirized in, 115 effigies, 81–82 actors’ costumes, similarity to, 100–1 construction and decoration, 98–99 legal protection of, 114 music, relationship with, 83–84 as physical proxies, 114 fertility rites and, 113 music and, 83 state control of, 85 see also Annunciation procession and exchange, Santa Maria Formosa.

fiction limitations of, 115 as procreative act, 113 Fleischman, Suzanne, 167–68, 175 flux, 43, 170, 184 transformation, 204–5, 213 form as container, 156 and content, 185–88 liturgical, 157 materiality of, 157–58 representation and, 162–72 Forsyth, Ilene H., 114 Foscari, Francesco, doge, 204, 232–33 Fozi, Shirin, 82 Frere, Walter, 169 Gabriel, Angel Annunciation sculptures of, 107–13, 108, 109 in Boccaccio’s Decameron, 115 priest, role performed by, 9, 10, 85, 88, 91 effigies, similarity to, 100–1 Gallant, Thomas, 55 Gallo, F. Alberto, 198, 199, 202, 204 Ganz, David, 6 Gargan, Luciano, 193 Gaudete et exultate Veneciarum cives (Apparitio Vespers antiphon), 138–41, 141 Geary, Patrick, 44, 122, 143 Georgopoulou, Maria, 20, 21, 38, 51 Ginzburg, Carlo, 82, 123, 218 Giorgio Cracco, 132 Glixon, Jonathan, 153 God gaudium (joy) and, 234 laudes (acclamations), 33 ratio (rationality) of, 234 Gombrich, E.H., 82 Goudesenne, Jean-François, 185 government as art, 23 bureacracy, 37–39 of Commune, 24, 37–39, 191–92, 196–97 through feudatories, 37 imperial, 23, 24–25, 37, 38–41 through laudes ritual, 38–41 performance of, 22 representation in, 22–23, 196 substitution and, 37–39 Gradenigo, Bartolomeo, doge and Duke of Candia, 21, 110

273

274

Index

grammar nouns, 173–75, 176 pronouns, 213 tense, 167–68, 169, 170–71, 175 verbs, 176 Grand Council, 98, 100–1, 114, 197 Grazia, Francesco de, Chronicon Monasterii Salvatoris Venetiarum, 113 Greek language, 29, 62 Günther, Ursula, 215, 216

imago (proxy/representation), 218, 232 aural, 217, 226 doge as, 14, 15 for government, 197 for Roman emperor, 123 for Saint Mark, 217, 227 of state, 38 as valid substitute, 36 imitation, 14, 15, 215–27 inscriptions, 26–28, 59

hagiography, 131–33, 134, 139, 141–42 Hahn, Cynthia, 127, 129, 148, 150, 178, 187 Hankeln, Roman, 185 harmony, 32–33 Heinrichs, Johanna, 27 Heraclius, Roman emperor, 27 Herzfeld, Michael, 55 Hic est beatissimus martyr (Theodore Vespers, Magnificat Antiphon), 151, 151–53 historiography biblical exegesis and, 180–84 cartularies, 194 historiae, 157, 185 latent content in, 186–87 liturgical, 12, 13 liturgy as, 184–90 relics and, 157–58, 187–88 reporting vs. witnessing, 175–76 ritual as, 157 textual, 229 traces of the past in, 188–89 see also chronicles. hocket, 226 Hornby, Emma, 162, 186 Hucke, Helmut, 63 Hughes, Andrew, 162 Huizinga, Johan, 112 humanism, 15, 193, 231 hymns see Akathistos hymn.

Jameson, Fredric, 236 Jeffery, Peter, 147 Jesus Christ, 70 Deesis, 65–66 effigies and substitutes for, 103–4 Johannes Ciconia, Venecie mundi splendor / Michael qui Stena domus, 195 John the Baptist, 65 Jonsson, Ritva, 157, 162, 168 joy (gaudium), 234–35 Jung, Jacqueline, 82

icons, Marian litanies for, 45–46, 56–57 Madonna Hodegetria, 56–57, 74–75, 76 Madonna Mesopanditissa, 45–47, 46, 48–56 processions, 45–47, 48–57 veneration of, 50–52 identity, colonial, 8, 9 images as substitute for state/person, 35–39 theory of, 84 see also effigies; icons; mosaics; wall paintings.

Kaegi, Walter, 28 Kallergis family, 74–78 kanonarchema (calanarghare), 63–64, 70 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 7, 20, 34–36, 82 Katzenstein, Ranee A., 130, 146 Kazanaki-Lappa, Maria, 63 Kreiner, Jamie, 185 Kreuger, Derek, 126 land ownership, 19–20, 25 Lando, Gerolamo, Archbishop of Crete, 51, 53 Lane, Frederic C., 130, 191, 196 languages Greek, 29, 62 Latin, 29 see also grammar. Lantins, Hugo de, Christus vincit, 195, 233 Latin language, 29 laudes (acclamations), 7–9, 25–28, 31–41 in Akathistos hymn, 57 anathema, link to, 53 Annunciation procession, 107 Byzantine polychronion, 28, 29–31, 30, 32–33, 53 and colony-metropolis likeness, 39–40 in Cretan ceremonies, 28–31 in De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae, 32–33 Festa delle Marie and, 9–10 in icon procession litanies, 45–46 images and, 35–39

Index

in imperial documentation, 19–25 imperial sovereignty, symbol of, 38–41 imperially commanded, 19, 20–22 laudes regiae, 19–20, 29, 31, 33–36 legal and constitutional use of, 35 mysticism and, 34–36 to doge, 85, 106–7 to God, 33 to Mark, 106–7 to Virgin Mary, via effigies, 84 law and legal processes, 52–55 anathemas, 52–55 doge, jurisdiction of, 106 Statuta Venetorum (legal code, Crete), 52 treaties, 21 Legenda de apparitione Sancti Marci, 119 Leggendario San Marco (Marciana, MS Zanetti Lat. 356), 139, 192 legitimacy of imperial rule, 7, 15, 50 relics and, 10 through romanitas, 27–29 performance vs. text, 16 political self-definition, 3–6 Liber albus (cartulary), 20, 42, 194, 196 Liber blancus (cartulary), 194 Liber pactorum (cartulary), 20, 192 Liber Processionalis (Cathedral of Padua), 97 likeness between colony and metropolis, 38–41 of effigies, 100–1 mimesis, 14, 15, 82, 175 litanies, for icon processions, 45–46, 56–57 literacy, 62–63 liturgy, 10–14 Byzantine wall paintings, represented in, 62–64 form of, 157 freedom from, 88–89 Gloria in excelsis, 33 historiae (narrative offices), 11–12 historiographic function of, 125, 126, 133–34 prayer and, 60 relics and, 121, 124–25 ritual representation in, 126–28 for San Marco Basilica, 95 see also Akathistos hymn; Annunciation liturgy; antiphons; Apparitio (Feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition) liturgy; chant; offices. Luke, Saint, 51 Maderakis, Stavros, 71 Magnificat antiphons

Felix regio (Apparitio Vespers), 138, 145–55, 148 Hic est beatissimus martyr (Theodore Vespers), 151, 151–53 Maloy, Rebecca, 162 Maltezou, Chryssa, 25 manuscripts see archives/manuscripts. Marce, Marcum imitaris (motet), 13–14, 195, 196, 197–98, 215–27, 220 Marchetto of Padua, 14, 199–200 Ave regina / Mater innocencie, 199, 204 Lucidarium, 199 Marcon, Susy, 121, 192 Mark, Saint, 29 apparition of relics, 11–12, 119–20, 133–34, 158–62 historiography, 158 in visual art, 135, 136, 137, 146–48, 158–62, 160, 161 doge as substitute for, 106–7, 196, 197, 198, 217, 227 feast day (25 April), 144 translation, 9, 85, 104–7, 105, 119, 132 vita mosaics, 131–32 see also Apparitio (Feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition) liturgy. Marsilius of Padua, 14 Mary, Virgin Annunciation sculptures, 107–13, 108, 109 Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Matins, 94 effigies, 9, 10, 103–4 in Festa delle Marie, 81–82, 83–84, 98–99, 100–1, 114 governance, connection with, 57 icons, 47, 74–75, 76 litany for, 56–57 Madonna Hodegetria, 56–57, 74–75, 76 Madonna Mesopanditissa, 45–47, 46, 48–56 processions, 45–47, 48–57 veneration of, 50–52 priest, role performed by, 9, 10, 85, 88, 91, 103 costume, 99–100 in wall paintings, 65, 70–71 see also Annunciation liturgy; Annunciation procession and exchange, Santa Maria Formosa; Festa delle Marie. masses endowment of, 60 icons and, 51, 53, 54, 74 material culture, activation of, 78 materiality abundance, 175

275

276

Index

materiality (cont.) historiographic function of, 196 in liturgical text, 173 musical form and, 157–58 opulence, 100–1 perdurance of, 9, 26, 82, 124, 131 sanctity, bestowed on, 145–46, 154–55, 156 spiritual possibilities of, 182–84 textual, 156 McKee, Sally, 23, 24, 77 melisma, 95, 101 in Apparitio liturgy, 141, 143, 144, 175 Melissenos, Michael, 21 melody, 94–95 in Annunciation liturgy, 94, 95–96 in Apparitio liturgy, 141, 143, 149, 149 First Nocturn, 168–72 Matins, 157 Matins Felix regio responsory, 173–75 in Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani, 213–14 grammar and, 168, 169, 170–71 narrative function of, 168–72 Memmo, Tribuno, doge, 201 memorialization, 228 memory, 162–63 communal, 77 failures of, 123 Mercati, Silvio Giuseppe, 34 meter, 226 Michael VIII Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor, 48 miracles, 123, 180–84 narrative, substituted by, 157 performance, re-created through, 123 presence, evidence of, 150 relics, performed by, 131 see also Mark, Saint: apparition of relics. mode in Apparitio liturgy, 141, 148, 149, 168, 169–70 First Nocturn, 170 Matins, 157 tetrardus, 94–95 monasticism, 15, 201–2 Monticolo, Giovanni, 158, 179 Moody, Jenny, 40 Moro, Simeone, 135, 192 Morosini, Marino, doge and Duke of Candia, 24 mosaics Crucifixion (Basilica San Marco), 227–29, 228 Porta Sant’Alipio lunette (Basilica San Marco), 104–7, 105 Preghiera–Apparitio (Basilica San Marco), 135, 136, 137, 146–48, 158–62, 197 vita (Basilica San Marco), 131–32

motet, 13–14, 194–96 ars nova, 13 ceremonial, 13–14 ducal, 195, 195, 204, 233 see also Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani; Marce, Marcum imitaris. Muir, Edward, 83, 197 Multa quidem (Apparitio Vespers antiphon), 155, 156 Muraro, Michelangelo, 99–100, 113, 146 Nádas, John, 219 Nam scissis sanctissimis (Apparitio First Nocturn antiphon), 165, 167, 170, 170–71, 171 narrative diegesis, 175 grammatical tense, 167–68, 169, 170–71, 175 historiographic, 157, 175 legends (legenda), 122–23, 134 liturgical, 126 reporting vs. witnessing, 175–76 responsories, as medium of, 180 sanctity in, 156 temporality of, 64–65 Nelson, Robert S., 59, 74 Newes, Virginia, 199, 217 nobility, 75–77 nod (nutus), 176–78 notation, 199 nouns, 173–75, 176 nutus (nod/gesture), 176–78 O’Connell, Monique, 24 offices Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Matins, 94 First Nocturn, 164–84, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 174 historiae (narrative offices), 11–12 Matins, 12, 92, 144, 156–57 Vespers, 12, 151–53 First, 92, 137–55, 139 Second, 155, 156 oral culture and performance, 58–59 order, 5–6, 32, 33 Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum (chronicle), 3–6, 31 Orpheus myth, 4–5 pacts, 21 Padoan, Giorgio, 115 Padua, 13, 102, 199–200 Padua Annunciation enactments, 92, 96, 97

Index

Papadopulo, Giovanni, 51, 52 Papalexandrou, Amy, 59 Parkes, Henry, 126 patronage, 74–78 Pentcheva, Bissera, 38 performance acclamations as, 26 art of, 112 authority through, 58–59 of government, 22 historiographic, 175–76 joy and, 234 of laudes, 8–9 miracles re-created through, 123 oral culture and, 58–59 vs. text, 16, 42–44 variation and, 43 visual representation of, 65–66 Petrarch, Francesco, 15, 16, 193, 230–31, 232 De remediis utriusque fortunae, 230, 234 philology, 232 Pietro Calò, Legendae de sanctis, 134 pilgrimage, 129, 146, 147, 154–55 Pincus, Debra, 194, 197, 200 place liturgy as, 156 locus sanctus, 145–48 plastic arts, 10 music, relationship with, 83–84 sculpture, 107–13, 108, 109 see also effigies. plasticity, vs. life, 100–1 Plousiadenos, Ioannis, 61 Polani, Pietro, doge, 84 polyphony, 2, 12–14, 194–96 Pozza, Marco, 191, 192 prayer music as, 205 power of, 159 public observance, 120 relics’ receptivity to, 122 representation of, 187, 214–15 Precibus populi exauditis (Apparitio First Nocturn antiphon), 165, 167, 169, 169–70 presence, 121, 153 miracles as evidence of, 123 music, created by, 143 naming, created by, 143 narrative, created by, 158 representation, established by, 123 temporality of, 189 Principum nobilissime (motet), 195

processions Annunciation procession laudes sung to doge, 85 length and route of, 85–88, 101 of Marian icons, 45–47, 48–57 Profluentibus lacrimis (Apparitio Vespers antiphon), 142 pronouns, 213 Psalm (Apparitio Vespers antiphon), 138 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, 98 Quomodo fiet istud (chant), 90, 92, 95, 97 Rackham, Oliver, 40 Rampani, Georgios, 50 Rankin, Susan, 126, 171 rationalism (ratio), 234 Ravignani, Benintendi, 192, 227, 230 reading, 62–63 rebellions, against empire, 21, 23, 41, 48, 77 records, administrative see documents. relics, 10–12, 15 acquisition of, 128–29 authentication of, 131 citizens, 204 contact with, 145–46 containers of, 145–48 effigies as, 114 historiography and, 157–58, 187–88 humanist distaste for, 231 latent power of, 122 liturgy and, 121, 124–25 of Mark, 11–12, 119–20, 133–34, 137, 158–62 historiography, 158 in visual art, 135, 136, 146–48, 160, 161 miracles and, 131 narrative/story as substitute for, 187 ostentation (showing) of, 128 past, traces of, 188–90 presence, evidence of, 124, 131 of Stephen, 121–22, 124–25, 129 of Titus, 31 religious feasts Advent, 90, 92 Annunciation, 90, 102, 107–13, 108, 109 Assumption, 90 laudes for, 28, 32 Mark’s Apparition, 11–12, 120, 122–23, 133–34 Mark’s Translation, 9, 85, 104 Nativity of the Virgin, 90

277

278

Index

religious feasts (cont.) Purification (Presentation), 9, 84, 90, 102–4, 107 see also Annunciation liturgy; Annunciation procession; Apparitio liturgy; Festa delle Marie. religious tolerance, 55 repetition, 175, 205–10 eternity, substitute for, 124 historiographic function of, 13, 134 imperial legitimacy through, 15, 50 in liturgy, 150, 163, 166, 203, 212–13, 218, 219, 226 ritual, required for, 7 in visual art, 66, 123 representation, 7, 14–16, 231 authority of, 133 dramatic, 96 effigies as, 82 governmental, 196 imperial, 22–23 mimesis, 14, 15, 82, 175 mixed media in, 102–7 musical form and, 162–72 of music-making, 104 plastic, vs. live, 112–13 presence established through, 123 reality, relation to, 178–79 repraesentatio (proxy/substitute), 14–15 time and, 160–72 see also imago. resemblance see similarity. responsory Apparitio liturgy, First Nocturn, Felix regio, 165, 172–84, 174 Apparitio liturgy, First Vespers, Beatissimus Marcus, 138, 143–45, 144 rhythm homorhythm, 225 isorhythm, 204 Ricœur, Paul, 163, 188–89 ritual, 5, 7 civic, 9–10 declining power of, 16 documentation of, 9 imperial governance by, 8–9, 31–34 inscription and, 59 participation, 33, 49–50 see also Annunciation procession and exchange, Santa Maria Formosa; effigies; Festa delle Marie; icons; liturgy; relics. Rolle, Richard, 235

Roman Empire, 6–7, 25–29 romanitas, 8, 232 absence of, in Venetian history, 6–7 imperial legitimacy through, 27–29 plunder, achieved through, 24 Romano, Dennis, 15, 197 Romano, Marco, 108, 109 Romanus (Antonio Romano) Carminibus / O requies, 195 Ducalis / Stirps, 195 Rosand, David, 23, 110 Roueché, Charlotte, 53 Ruggiero, Guido, 194 San Giorgio Maggiore monastery, 198, 201–2, 213 San Marco antiphoners, 92–94 Sansovino, Francesco, 153 Sanudo, Marino, 113, 124, 128 Schramm, Ernst, 35, 38, 84 sculpture, 107–13, 153–54 Annunciation figures, 108, 109 see also effigies. self-definition, political, 3–6, 27–29 self-referentiality, 13, 204 in Akathistos hymn, 64, 68 in Apparitio liturgy, 135, 156, 157, 163, 166 similarity between colony and metropolis, 38–41 of effigies, 100–1 mimesis, 14, 15, 82, 175 singing, 9 invitations to, visual, 66, 70 kanonarchema (calanarghare), 63–64, 70 reading and, 62–63 Skordyles, Nicholas, 21 social status, 75–77 song as bureaucratic tool, 7 dialogue, 83 effigies and, 83, 112–13 litanies, 45–46, 56–57 Madonna Mesopanditissa, icon procession, 45 vernacular, 217 see also Akathistos hymn; Annunciation liturgy; antiphons; Apparitio (Feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition) liturgy; chant; liturgy; offices. sound, 178–79, 183, 231–32 sonus, 178–79 space architectural, 134, 147–48

Index

imperial, 26 liturgical, 64, 65, 88, 102 monumental, 27 physical and narrative, convergence of, 120, 176 ritual, 41, 53, 55, 82 time and, 166 Spatharakis, Ioannis, 70 Speculum ecclesiae (treatise), 234 Spiritus Sanctus in te descendit (antiphon), 91, 92, 97 spolia, 24–25, 27 statecraft as art, 23 music as, 3, 8 performance of, 22 ritual and, 8–9, 31–34 statuary, 153–54 Steiner, Ruth, 185 Stephen, Saint, 212 relics, 212 stones, 31, 59, 149, 173, 182–84 spolia, 24–25, 27 structure, musical, 5 substitution, 14–15, 184 doge and, 196, 197, 198 by effigies, 82 effigies and, 114 of image for emperor, 36–37 and imperial government, 22–23, 37–39 by narrative/story, 157, 187 triple, 198 see also imago. tableaux vivants, 107–13 talea, 203, 205, 212 Taruskin, Richard, 164 taxation, 21, 25 temporality see time. tense, grammatical, 167–68, 169, 170–71, 175 text materiality of, 156, 173 vs. oral culture, 58–59 perdurance of, 9, 26 styles of, 192 see also documents. Theodore, Saint, 151–53 Thomas Aquinas, 5 thresholds, crossing of, 102, 104 Tiepolo, Giacomo, doge and Duke of Candia, 52 Tiepolo, Jacopo, doge and Duke of Candia, 24 Tiepolo, Lorenzo, doge, 132

time chant, 162–63 compression of, 28 flux of, 170 grammatical tense, 167–68, 175 motion in, 159 narrative, 159 past, traces of, 188–89 past/present, elision of, 138, 145, 188–89 present, 138–41, 162–63 representation, 160–72 shifts in, 64–65 static, 143 Titus, Saint, 29, 31 Tomasi, Michele, 134, 146 transformation, 204–5, 213 treaties, 21 Treitler, Leo, 162 Trivan, Antonio, 48–49 Troelsgård, Christian, 63 Truitt, Ellie, 101 Urban V, Pope, 50 Vauchez, André, 129 Veneziano, Paolo, 10 Pala feriale, 159, 161 Venice bubonic plague, 113, 130 Commune, 24, 25, 191–92, 196–97 Council of Ten, 196 creation and building of, 4–6 earthquake, 1348, 113, 130 Grand Council, 98, 100–1, 114, 197 historiography, 3–6, 152 Marciana Library, 233 Piazzetta columns, 153 Republic, 232–33 Roman history, absence of, 6–7 San Giorgio Maggiore monastery, 198, 201–2, 213 Santa Maria Formosa church, 9, 83 self-definition, political, 3–6, 27–29 Senate, 52, 54–55 SS. Giovanni e Paolo church, 134 see also Archivio di Stato; empire, Venetian. verbs, 176 Vespers, 12, 151–53 Apparitio liturgy, 137–55, 139 Magnificat antiphon Felix regio, 138, 145–55, 148 Multa quidem, 155, 156 narrative rupture in, 138, 141, 142–43

279

280

Index

Vespers (cont.) responsory Beatissimus Marcus, 138, 143–45, 144 First, 92, 137–55, 139 Second, 155, 156 Theodore Vespers, 151, 151–53 Videntibus omnibus (Apparitio First Nocturn antiphon), 165, 167, 172, 172 Voragine, Jacobus de, Legenda aurea (Golden Legend), 103, 134

Throne of Mercy, 66 wars/warfare, 130 White, Hayden, 185, 186–87 Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich, 26 William of Conches, 5 writing, 26 inscriptions, 26–28, 59 liturgy, copying of, 92–94 vs. oral culture, 58–59 Young, Karl, 103

wall paintings, 47, 57–77, 67 Akathistos program, 47 commissioning of, 74–78 liturgical text in, 62–64 Panagia, Roustika, 66–74, 69, 72, 73 performance in, 65–66

Zayaruznaya, Anna, 204, 205 Zeno, Ranieri, doge, 85, 124, 130, 131–32 Ziani, Pietro, doge, 8, 19 Ziani, Sebastiano, doge, 201 Zumthor, Paul, 9, 43