Women religious virtuosae from the middle ages: a case pattern and analytic model of types

Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2002 by Barbara R. Walters

While church historians have traditionally attributed authorship of the liturgy for the "original office" of the Feast of Corpus Christi to a young and naive Canon John, I attribute authorship to Juliana. This attribution is based on the wording of the vita, which indicates that she "prayed" while John wrote. Since John was a naive young man, the phrasing suggests that he may have functioned as her scribe as was often the case for women composers of music. Under any circumstances, the liturgical text was pieced together from existing materials in the library at Mont Cornillon and the music is formulaic.

Juliana was entirely orthodox. The antiphons paraphrase tracts from Hugh of Saint Victor and Alger of Liege (Lambot and Fransen 1946). The most interesting item in the liturgy from a sociological point of view is the Victorine sequence, a long poem written in paired verses each sharing the same music. The structure is rendered more complex by the placement and repetition of venerable musical phrases from ancient settings of the Alleluia to highlight key structural transitions and phrases. The style was especially characteristic of the Dominicans (cf. Fassler 1993).

Verses 5a and 5b in the sequence attributed to Juliana mark the structural transition from the Old to the New Testaments. They are set to music that quoted directly from the most famous hymn of the late Middle Ages, Laudes crucis. Everyone knew and recognized this sequence and its music -- it would today be like a new song that opened with a musical quote from "Hey Jude." Laudes crucis was composed in the twelfth century for the office celebrating the finding of the true cross. Its music was developed from a Carolingian Alleluia and prosula from a Fortunatus poem brought together during the tenth century (see Liber Usualis: 1456). The text is translated from the Corrigan (forthcoming) transcriptions. (1)

4a The lamb without blemish,

also signified this,

The one that was once sacrificed and had to be eaten

According to Mosaic law.

4b The lamb of the Old law has now ceased,

for grace has come instead,

when the blood of Christ flowed,

expiating the sins of the world.

5a May his flesh so serene

be pleasant food for us

in the mystery of faith.

5b The manna from heaven

given as a noble exemplar to Israel

was a form of this food.

The Mosan Poems.

The orthodox piety and Eucharistic fervor among the Liege women gave rise to the circulation of vernacular religious poetry. Paul Meyer (1873) first identified this genre through the Grosbois Psalter, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (Pierpont Morgan 440). Meyer identified the Psalter as Mosan, or from the diocese of Liege, through the eight vernacular poems in Liege dialect that precede the Psalms. Meyer noted that the poems overlapped with the vernacular poetry in another Psalter. More recent scholars such as Sinclair (1965) and Oliver (1988) have identified twenty such vernacular poems connecting fourteen of forty-one Psalters now catalogued as Mosan. Authorship of the poems is unknown -- in fact, there may be multiple authors. Some make a speculative attribution of the prototype to Marie d'Oignies, who prophesied the new feast of Corpus Christi. Others attribute authorship to the mendicants who provided spiritual counsel to women in the Liege diocese. The Psalters in general are "folk art;" they circulated among and may well be the work of beguines (Oliver 1988).