Issues in Medieval Liturgy
2004 New York, New York
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Convener 2004
James Donohue, C.R. (chair of the theology department at Mount Saint Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, Maryland)
Seminar Participants 2004
Seminar members: David Chatford Clark, James Donohue, Michael Driscoll, J. Frank Henderson, James Hentges, Jan Michael Joncas, Donald LaSalle, John Leonard, Gary Macy, Nathan Mitchell, Joanne Pierce, Richard Rutherford, Michael Witczak, Anne Yardley
Visitors: Susan Boynton, Heather Josselyn-Cranson, Evelyn Cecilia Voelker
Seminar Report 2004
The first part of the seminar time was devoted to a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum and the Cloisters. Susan Boynton guided us in our examination of liturgical objects in the medieval and Byzantine galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, while Meredith Fluke, a doctoral student in art history at Columbia, provided a wonderful tour of liturgical vessels and objects at the Cloisters. Background reading included Elizabeth Parker McLaghlan, “Liturgical Vessels and Implements” in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, eds. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University, 2001) 369-429.
The second part of our seminar time was devoted to an update on the planned revision of C. Vogel’s Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, planned for 2006. John Leonard, Joanne Pierce, and Nathan Mitchell outlined a plan for revision and expansion, and further suggestions were made. Various presentations and papers took up the remaining time of the seminar.
Papers/Presentations
J. Frank Henderson made presentations on “Inclusive Language in Medieval Liturgical Texts” and “Women and Medieval General Intercessions.” Evelyn Cecilia Voelker introduced seminar members to her study of Charles Borromeo and his work to implement the reforms of Trent, particularly in church buildings.
Heather Josselyn-Cranson, O.S.L. presented a paper on Gilbert of Sempringham who lived in twelfth-century England and founded a monastic order for both women and men. Contemporary chroniclers worried about the propriety of men and women worshiping together. They described occasions of temptation for both nuns and canons, due to the attractions of beautiful singing voices, and they likewise specified the strictures that Gilbert placed on his nuns to prevent such temptations. Despite these descriptions, and contrary to the opinion of most Gilbertine scholars, the women of that order almost certainly did sing at worship. The strictures mentioned in medieval accounts were probably merely prohibitions against polyphony.
Anne Bagnall Yardley presented a paper entitled “The Consecration of Nuns” from her forthcoming book Performing Piety: Music in Medieval English Nunneries. The article traces the development of the ceremony in English sources noting the increasingly complex nature of the ritual. By the end of the Middle Ages it is a dramatic event that requires the active performance of the new nuns as dramatis /personae both individually and as a group in the enactment of this special wedding of the nuns as the brides of Christ. Musically the service is linked to the services of Sts. Agnes and Agatha as well as to the Common of Virgins. Thus the nun sang her understanding of her complex new role as the “sponsa Christi,” a calling that simultaneously limits her sphere of influence to the cloister even as it calls her to freedom from the restrictive roles of wife and mother in secular society.
Susan Boynton’s paper compared two versions of the customs of Cluny written around 1080 that represent insider and outsider views of the Cluniac liturgy. The customary of the monk Bernard is an exhaustively detailed witness that provides enough information to reconstruct services with reference to liturgical books of the period. The customary written by Ulrich of Zell, at the request of Abbot William of Hirsau, is a more limited synthesis. Moreover, Ulrich manifests an eclectic perspective by alluding frequently to liturgical traditions elsewhere, especially in the Germanic lands in which he had spent the first thirty years of his life.