PART ONE—
MUSICIANS AT ST PETER'S

Chapter One—
Before the Hiring of Northerners:
1380-1447

St. Peter's and Rome Circa 1400

The old basilica St. Peter's was in equal measure a monument to Christian and pagan Rome, no less than the city it faced across the Tiber. By the time Julius II began the destruction of the original basilica in 1507, it housed over ten centuries of accumulated Christian relics, one hundred or more altars, and numerous works of art. Some of the altars are visible in Figures 1 and 2, both of which were drawn approximately a century after Julius commenced the destruction of old St. Peter's (both figures show the so-called muro divisorio , which separated the front of the church from the area of construction). Crowded among the altars were the tombs for a pantheon of saints, popes and cardinals, chapter officials and Roman aristocrats. And because the basilica was constructed by quarrying the necessary stone and marble from ancient Roman buildings, fragments of classical inscriptions covered the walls and floors. Pilgrims who came to worship the bones of St. Peter or to see the lance that pierced Christ's side would have stepped over the names of Titus, Trajan, and others while walking past pagan busts such as that of Emperor Hadrian.^[1] The burial chapel that Sixtus IV founded

[1] The most detailed inventory of old St. Peter's, including a plan, is that of Tiberio Alpharano from ca. 1571, published in 1589-90 (De Basilicae Vaticanae antiquissima et nova structura ). For a plan drawn decades after the construction, it is remarkably accurate but not infallible; see Jan Hendrik Jongkees, Studies on Old St. Peter's , 3-4. Giacomo Grimaldi's early seventeenth-century description of the old basilica appears in Descrizione della Basilica antica di S. Pietro in Vaticano: Codice Barberini latino 2733.

for himself in 1479 had columns taken from the baths of Domitian.^[2] Tuscan artists who came to decorate Roman churches and palazzi could not escape the influence of ancient styles, though few imitated them as successfully as Arnolfo da Cambio. Until the 1950s his early fourteenth-century bronze statue of St. Peter was assumed to date from the fourth century, to be as old, in other words, as the building itself.^[3]

Near the west end of the basilica, the tomb of St. Peter projected out of the floor, sheltered by a large canopy that rested on a set of ornately carved, twisting marble pillars. Thought in the Renaissance to be from King Solomon's tomb in Jerusalem (but probably from Constantinople, ca. 300 AD ), these pillars attracted ailing pilgrims, who came to touch the one that Christ was supposed to have leaned against. Raphael depicted them in his monumental cartoon for the Sistine Chapel tapestry The Healing of the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple . And Bernini later duplicated them on a massive scale for the spiral columns that now stand over the high altar.^[4] The Florentine businessman Giovanni Rucellai mentions them specifically in his description of St. Peter's in 1457 as he had seen it seven years before, during the Jubilee Year. He begins conventionally by comparing the basilica to a familiar local church:

First and above all the church of St. Peter's, approximately the same size as the church of Santa Croce in Florence, a magnificent and gracious church with five naves and five doors, 200 braccia long and 100 in width, and with the middle door of bronze, and with four rows of columns, each row with twenty columns. The pavement of this church is of white marble and the pavement of the choir is all of large slabs of porphyry: and next to the main altar are sixteen storiated columns of white marble, somewhat rounded and very gracious, that they say come from Jerusalem. And one of these columns is able to cure the possessed.^[5]

[2] This is the report of Francesco Albertini, who moved to Rome from Florence in 1402; see his Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris urbis Romae , 508.

[3] Richard Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, 312-1308 , 215.

[4] Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations , 249. This motif is also present among other places in Jean Fouquet's miniatures for the Jewish Antiquities of Rome , his illustration of the temple in the book of hours of Étienne Chevalier, in Schiavone's Adoration of the Magi , and into the seventeenth century, in Rubens's The Gonzaga Adoring the Trinity from 1604-5.

[5] Giovanni Rucellai, Della bellezza e anticaglia di Roma , 402. According to a more scientific estimate of its dimensions, the old basilica was approximately 64 meters in width and 120 in length, or 222 if the quadriportico and stairs were included. See Carlo Galassi Paluzzi, La Basilica di S. Pietro , 67-104; S. Schüller-Piroli, 2000 Jahre Sankt Peter, die Weltkirche von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart , 81; and Archim Arbeiter, Alt-St. Peter in Geschichte und Wissenschaft: Abfolge der Bauten, Rekonstruktion, Architekturprogramm , 75-191.

To enter St. Peter's from the medieval piazza, much smaller and less focused than Bernini's, one first of all climbed the broad steps framed with statues of Sts. Peter and Paul (these steps are pictured at the center of Figures 3 and 4). The vestibule at the top led to the quadriportico and the atrium, the interior courtyard known as "paradiso" that had a large bronze pine cone in the middle, perhaps appropriated from the Pantheon. Across the atrium were the five doors to the basilica and above them the facade, decorated shortly before 1300 with a mosaic by Giotto. Running alongside the atrium and adjoining the church St. Apollinaire in front of the basilica was the palace of the cardinal arch-priest of St. Peter's. It overlooked the piazza and had a loggia of its own, smaller and on the opposite side of the steps from the papal loggia that Rosselino built for Plus II. Both are clearly visible in the drawings Martin van Heemskerck made circa 1538.^[6] The new and far larger St. Peter's occupies the space not only of the old basilica but also of the atrium, quadriportico, and vestibule. The old piazza ended in the center of the new, approximately where the obelisk stands today. Some of the basilica's singers lived across the piazza in rooms attached to the church San Gregorio in Cortina, as singers had for centuries before them.

Old St. Peter's even had its predecessors of the modern-day panini e bibite stands and postcard and trinket sellers. There were vendors of water, herbs, and bread (erbivendoli, paninai ), and souvenir sellers (paternostrari ), as well as tour guides (guidones ) to explain the treasures of the basilica. Pilgrims could also hire pictores veronicarum to draw images of relics on demand, above all the pictures of Christ as preserved in the Vulto santo . It was these last "artists" that the north Italian humanist Pier Paolo Vergerio scorned in 1398, when he named the two arts that still thrived in Rome, providing pilgrims with images of Jesus and plundering old buildings for lime.^[7] By the mid-fifteenth century the canons of

[6] See Alberto Carlo Carpiceci, "La Basilica vaticana vista da Martin van Heemskerck," 68; he convincingly disproves the previously accepted dates of 1533-35.

[7] Pier Paulo Vergerio, "Epistolo LXXXVI," 97.

the basilica charged all of these peddlers rent for their booths, ideally situated for exposure to their customers at every step of the entrance: on the stairs leading up to the basilica, within the courtyard in front of the basilica, beneath the Giotto mosaic ("sub navi musayco"), and even inside St. Peter's.^[8] Although Nicholas V tried to suppress this practice, Alexander VI reinitiated it in time for the Jubilee in 1500. Northern merchants were still ensconced in 1506: Petrus Regis theutonicus, Petrus gallicus, Martinus theutonicos, and others sold images of the Vulto santo in the first portico, and Ludovicus gallicus was one of the bibliopole , or booksellers.^[9] Symbolic of how much St. Peter's gained from its proximity to the pope, the canons had two levels of rents, high for when the pope was in Rome, low in years marked in the account books "curia absente."^[10]

The fortunes of the basilica and of all Rome turned around the presence or absence of the papacy. In the last decades of the thirteenth century Rome thrived with the papal court, enjoying the opulence of wealthy popes and cardinals. These officials and their relatives financed a spree of building projects and artistic commissions that attracted the likes of Giotto, Cimabue, Arnolfo di Cambio, Cavallini, and Torriti. Pope Nicholas III enlarged the Vatican Palace, and he and his immediate successors extensively remodeled the papal cathedral St. John Lateran. At Santa Maria Maggiore two members of the Colonna family erected the transept and apse, while French and Italian cardinals beautified their titular churches throughout the city. Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi brought Giotto to St. Peter's, perhaps in preparation for the Jubilee of 1300, and paid him a small fortune, 8,000 gold ducats, for three major projects: the Navicella mosaic, an altarpiece, and work in the apse.^[11] But these decades have been termed "a beautiful short Indian summer," as much for the glories they contained as for the decay they presaged.^[12]

[8] Pio Paschini, "Banchi e botteghe dinanzi alla Basilica Vaticana nei secoli XIV, XV, e XVI," 97.

[9] Introitus, 1506, fols. 5v-6. This Censualia is in ACSP, Arm. 44, Sacristia 2; and Paschini, "Banchi e botteghe," 105-6.

[10] Paschini, "Banchi e botteghe," 105.

[11] Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City , 207-8.

[12] Ibid., 210.

By the end of the fourteenth century the grandeur of ancient Rome, the Eternal City, had almost entirely disappeared. Rome had shrunk in size from a sprawling city of several million at the height of its imperial glory to perhaps as few as 17,000, largely clustered between the Campidoglio and the Vatican. This population grew seasonally, as peasant families descended every winter from the surrounding hills, bringing with them thousands of cattle, sheep, and goats. Since much of the area within the city walls was then open field—expanses of ruins and uncultivated land separated St. John Lateran and even Santa Maria Maggiore from the inhabited region—there was plenty of room for the livestock. Rome, as most European cities, doubtless had suffered greatly from the plagues of 1348 and the 1360s, though figures are lacking. But Florence, which had declined from about 80,000 people to 30,000 in 1348, was still probably two or three times larger, as was Siena. In the year 1400 towns such as Pistoia probably had more inhabitants than Rome.^[13]

Beyond the effects of plague, Rome had suffered other disasters: an earthquake in 1349, a fire that destroyed the roof of St. John Lateran in 1361, an inadequate supply of water, and general lawlessness, but most of all the absence of the papal court after 1305. Once settled in Avignon, the popes made a concerted attempt to govern Rome and the Papal States in absentia , now and then sending money for cosmetic repairs to churches, as well as armies and a series of legates to maintain order. Typical of the concern for the well-being of St. Peter's are payments to mend the bellows and the "broken organ" in 1345 and for more repairs in June 1347, shortly before the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (docs. 1345a and 1347a). These notices are as important for the information that St. Peter's still had a functioning, if problematic, organ forty years after the papal court had left as for the documentation they provide about papal financing of organs at St. Peter's.^[14]

Nothing the Avignon popes sent to Rome from afar could make up for what they had taken. Much like modern-day Washington, D.C.,

[13] Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance , 420; Pio Paschini, Roma nel Rinascimento , 3-5; Eugene Müntz, Les arts à la cour des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècles , fasc. 4, 2-3.

[14] I would like to thank Dr. Sible de Blaauw for informing me of these notices.

the city had no self-sufficient community of merchants, bankers, and lawyers to sustain itself in the absence of the curial bureaucracy and no natural resources to retain the foreign income previously gained by papal taxation. Pilgrims continued to come, especially during the Jubilee of 1350, and some like Petrarch and St. Brigetta of Sweden were illustrious. But there was no replacing the money formerly spent by the popes and the curial cardinals. The impact on musicians was surely immediate and far-reaching. Many of the best adult musicians doubtless followed their ecclesiastical patrons to Avignon; as for young boys, the schola cantorum that had operated at St. Peter's and St. John Lateran and for centuries had trained an elite group of singers struggled through much of the century before closing in 1370. It was not replaced until Pope Julius founded the Cappella Giulia some 140 years later. In a recent survey of music in fourteenth-century Italy, Rome does not even enter into the discussion.^[15]

Avignon gained what Rome had lost. Italian bankers and businessmen quickly turned Avignon into a financial center, and construction to house thousands of new residents attracted workers from all over Europe. New building commenced in earnest with Pope Benedict XII (1334-42), the first pope to abandon any pretense of moving back to Rome, and the one who instigated work on the Palace of the Popes. To help decorate the new buildings Simone Martini came from Siena, one of many artists who helped to establish an Italian style. Subsequently Matteo Giovanetti, prior of San Martino in Viterbo, arrived in 1342 to become pictor pape .^[16] Pope Benedict also founded St. Stephen's, the small private chapel of twelve musicians in addition to the grande chappelle of some thirty to forty clerics. Numerous singers came from northern France and Flanders, attracted by a system of patronage that relied on benefices to an unprecedented degree. Setting an international pattern that endured for the next two centuries, Italians shaped artistic styles and northerners the musical.

Aside from musicians, artists and architects, poets and patronage

[15] F. Alberto Gallo, "Dal Duecento al Quattrocento," 245-63. See also his "The Musical and Literary Tradition of Fourteenth-Century Poetry Set to Music," 55-76.

[16] Bernard Guillemain, La cour pontificate d'Avignon 1309-1376: Étude d'une société , 585, n. 111. Guillemain surveys the patronage of popes and cardinals in his paper "Le mécénat à la cour pontificale d'Avignon."

seekers of all kinds that had flocked to Rome between 1278 and 1303 now stopped in Avignon. Petrarch's career is representative. Regardless of his dislike of the French, his loathing of Avignon, and his support for a renewed Roman Republic, he spent much of his life in Provence. From 1326 to 1337 he was a beneficed familiar of the Italian Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in the Court of Rome at Avignon. Petrarch came to Rome once to receive his laurel crown and twice as a pilgrim, first to see the ruins in 1337, again during the Jubilee of 1350. His career is very much a mirror image of the paths northern musicians and bureaucrats took a century later to serve curial cardinals in Rome.

Despite the wishes of the French king and French cardinals, Avignon did not replace Rome in the loyalties of the devout. As the cardinals grew wealthier, more powerful, and more French, other countries had an easier time distancing themselves from a church they had less control over. Of the 134 cardinals created in Avignon, 113 were French as opposed to only 14 Italians and no Germans.^[17] Symbols of the faith such as the tomb of St. Peter, the papal cathedral St. John Lateran, or even Rome's strong ties to antiquity could not be superseded by extravagant new palaces and churches in Avignon. After the plagues, which many took as a sign of divine disfavor, and in the face of increasing losses of authority and revenues to various secular powers, the pressure to return to Rome mounted. When Pope Gregory XI finally did so in 1377, persuaded by a Roman threat to elect a pope of their own if he remained in Avignon, the serious political divisions between the pope and the cardinals precluded any possibility of restoring order either in Rome or the Papal States.

In these schismatic decades before the return of Martin V, the extant records at St. Peter's suggest a modest role for music. There was no organ—the one repaired in the 1340s had doubtless long since stopped working—and the singers mentioned by name were first of all Italian clerics. During the lean and politically volatile year of 1414, the entry for Corpus Christi identifies the singers by titles only, paying "the singers, that is, the canons, beneficiaries, and clerics" of the church

[17] John F. Broderick, "The Sacred College of Cardinals: Size and Geographical Composition (1099-1986)," 21. Denys Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , 269, lists the number of Italians as thirteen.

(doc. 1414a). Occasionally they included some of the basilica's high of-ricers, like Anthonio de Sutrio in 1384, a camerarius canonicus , and Luca Paloni in 1384 and 1395, both years the camerarius exceptorum . When Niccolo Guadagnolo was first paid for singing in 1404, he had already served at St. Peter's for at least thirty years, since 1372, and had been a beneficiary there from 1390. At his death ("de morte subitania") in 1416 his fellow canons honored Niccolo by burying him inside the basilica, in front of the Cappella SS. Angeli.^[18]

In keeping with the lawlessness of Rome after the death of Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404), the canons and beneficiaries who sang at St. Peter's were a fractious bunch.^[19] Luca Pippi sang from 1404 until Easter 1409, after which he was arrested for burglarizing a house near Piazza Santo Spirito. Caught by neighbors, he returned everything the next day. A month later in May, he gave testimony against another beneficiary of St. Peter's, Giovanni Cottolano, who was as a result shackled and imprisoned in the sacristy of the basilica. Four days later Cottolano's jailers freed him when they discovered that Pippi had lied. In the meantime Pippi had fled to Naples with his father, mother, and brother.^[20] And then there was Giovanni Manduzio, another singer and beneficiary of St. Peter's. The chapter first imprisoned him and two others in the sacristy for two weeks in January 1411, and then had them flogged. The three had damaged a tomb in the chapel of Pope Boniface VIII, very probably the tomb in the canopied and domed chapel finished in 1299 by Arnolfo di Cambio.^[21] These were light punishments compared to the St. Peter's cleric who was tortured on the Campidoglio in 1409 until he confessed his sins, or the canon who

[18] Antonio de Pietro dello Schiavo, Il diario romano di Antonio di Pietro dello Schiavo dal 19 Ottobre 1404 al 25 Settembre 1417 , 102.

[19] The dangers of thieves and murderers may have been worse at times when the popes resided away from Rome, but the perils did not disappear when they returned. Romans had to contend both with external threats from Ladislas of Naples and with the internal rivalry of the Colonna and Orsini families, who warred with them as with each other; Besso, Roma e il Papa nei proverbi e nei modi di dire , 169-75, compiles northern complaints about the trials of Roman life.

[20] Dello Schiavo, Il diario romano , 36-40. The account of his capture is particularly detailed. First seen by a woman, others gathered "et dixerunt sibi aliqua verba: quare hoc tu facis? Et ipse Lucarellus: nichil, eis respondit" (p. 39).

[21] Ibid., 64-65.

was murdered in 1417 because of his involvement with the concubine of a cardinal.^[22]

The number of feast days celebrated with music varied from year to year, and within each year from season to season (shown in Table 1). After the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul at the end of June, the earliest feast at which the singers' presence was recorded was not until the middle of November, the Dedication of a Basilica. Just as often singers were not recorded before the middle of December, on Gaudete Sunday. Even in later decades the summer months were less active because the pope and cardinals would leave town, fleeing the oppressive heat and danger of plague. But the length of these breaks, sometimes as much as half a year, suggests either a problem finding singers in these troubled years, or that services were sung completely in chant during the months between the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul and the Dedication of a Basilica, two occasions particularly important at St. Peter's.

What meager evidence there is that these singers were responsible for polyphony is largely circumstantial. Usually the number of voices present would have been sufficient for three parts, varying from three or four singers in most years to six in April 1409. Even in those years in which only two singers were named (1384, 1397, 1398, and 1407), there were additional payments to "the other singers," often in bread and wine rather than money. In every case payments dealing with music books prescribe repairs to existing manuscripts rather than new copying.^[23] And none of the choir books named during this period refers to anything other than chant, though two unspecified "books of the choir" repaired in 1395 could have contained polyphony (doc. 1395a). They were repaired nine days before Gaudete Sunday, when the singers "announced" the antiphon Juste et pie "as usual" (doc. 1395b). Again in 1404 and 1424 payments to the musicians single this antiphon out by name. Since the accounts name no other chant (or composition) during these decades, some special performance tradition may have existed for this particular antiphon (docs. 1404b and 1424e).

Under these circumstances the administrators of St. Peter's may have

[22] Ibid., 52 and 108.

[23] Massimo Miglio, "Materiali e ipotesi per una ricerca," 17-18, quotes a 1398 diatribe against the Romans who destroyed monuments and books.

depended on their own clergy principally for chant and on occasional visits from outside musicians for polyphony, either individual singers from other Roman churches, the papal choir when a pope resided in Rome, or hired instrumentalists from the city. At least twice each year brass and wind players came across town from the Campidoglio. As indicated in Table 1, Christmas and Easter at St. Peter's regularly featured the contribution, and added expense, of "banditoribus, tubatoribus, et biffaris." And the chapter had dispensed with them even for these celebrations by 1409. In that year the accountant explained that trumpeters could not come to play at the Feast of St. Stephen (26 December) "as usual" because of bandits.^[24] Rome was then under siege by Angevin troops fighting Ladislas of Naples. Ladislas, who had previously taken Rome at the end of April 1408, yielded it shortly after the Feast of St. Stephen on New Year's Day 1410. When he attacked again in 1413, the battles through May and June made it impossible for services to be held in St. Peter's. The chapter met instead in the house of the Bishop of Ascoli Piceno, "propter maximas guerras et tribulationes."^[25] Pope John XXIII fled Rome for good while Ladislas and his troops pillaged the basilica and other buildings.^[26] From that time the two Italian popes, judging Rome ungovernable, found other more hospitable sites for their respective entourages. Rome remained without a pope until the return of Martin V.

As a cultural and intellectual center, Rome circa 1400 may not have been able to compete with Avignon fifty years earlier or Rome fifty years later, but neither was it barren. From Florence came the young humanist Poggio Bracciolini in 1403 and Leonardo Bruni, and, lured by the opportunity to study Roman ruins, perhaps also Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello. From the standpoint of the papal administration during the Schism, the intellectual abilities of the personnel have

[24] Doc. 1409b; see also doc. 1388b.

[25] Dello Schiavo, Il diario romano , 81. See also Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V: The Administration and Government of the Temporal Power in the Early Fifteenth Century , 19-21. The delayed payment on 13 January 1410 to those who participated at Christmas 1409 is another indication of confusion in late December.

[26] On the severe damage sustained by St. Peter's, see Eugene Müntz and A.L. Frothingham, "Il Tesoro della Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano dal XIII al XV secolo con una scelta d'inventari inediti," 5.

actually been judged "consistently higher" than those who served the Avignon popes, despite their bureaucratic inexperience.^[27] The papal choir also had its share of northern singers, especially from Liège, a city notoriously loyal to the Roman obedience. No fewer than five singers from Liege sang during the papacy of the strong-willed Boniface IX. At least one from Liege and three from Cambrai sang for John XXIII in 1413, and with them the Italian composer, Antonius Zacharias de Teramo.^[28]

At St. Peter's extra singers and dramatic props apparently helped the chapter to celebrate from time to time, when the need arose and peace allowed. In 1409 "cantores forenses" were compensated with wine for assisting at Mass on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (doc. 1409a). This may be the first indication of foreign singers at St. Peter's, probably hired from those employed in the papal chapel. For Vespers of Pentecost 1404, a canon and a beneficiary from St. John Lateran participated in the choir (doc. 1404a). The theatrical and symbolic elements of liturgical celebrations included provisions on Pentecost for thirty doves to be freed and the crowing of a live chicken, the latter a reminder of Peter's three denials, as in 1403. On Easter, flowers and "clouds" (nebulas , probably pieces of wool) were thrown to announce the coming of the Holy Spirit.^[29] Indeed, the account books give the impression that the chapter considered outside musicians (whether singers or instrumentalists) in the same way as they did flowers, doves, and clouds: as ornaments necessary for liturgical celebrations.

In more prosperous decades later in the century, these ornaments, musical and otherwise, grew more lavish. The visual splendor of major feasts benefited greatly from numerous candles and torches, those affixed to the walls, hanging from candelabras, or dispersed to the clergy

[27] Jean Favier, Les finances pontificales a l'époque du grand schisme , 141; and Arnold Esch, "Dal Medioevo al Rinascimento: Uomini a Roma dal 1650 al 1450," 8; see also his "Florentiner in Rom um 1400: Namensverzeichnis des ersten Quattrocento-Generation," 476-525.

[28] On these musicians see Agostino Ziino, "'Magister Antonius dictus Zacharias de Teramo'"; John Nádas, "Further Notes on Magister Antonius dictus Zacharias de Teramo"; Richard Sherr, "Notes on Some Papal Documents in Paris"; and Manfred Schuler, "Zur Geschichte der Kapelle Papst Martins V."

[29] Mariano Armellini, Le chiese di Roma dal secolo IV al XIX , 2:910-12.

on the basis of rank. In the central nave the 138 lamps could each hold 3 candles, 414 in all.^[30] These must all have been lit for the visual and aural spectacle that greeted one of the most important relics to arrive in the fifteenth century: the head of St. Andrew (Peter's brother) in 1462. Plus II vividly described the entrance into St. Peter's: "And then he processed into the church, which seemed ablaze with lights; for it too was full of men and women, and there were few who did not have large or small candles lit in their hands, and there was also the glow of innumerable lamps and candelabras; all of this was made still more marvelous by the music of instruments and the singing of the clergy."^[31] Candles made it possible to admire the banners often painted for such occasions by local artists from Santa Lucia, the church that eventually became a chartered confraternity for artists. For Corpus Christi in 1461 the chapter brought in Taddeo di Giovanni, a Roman, to paint eighty-eight copies of the crests and arms of Pope Pius II, of the Cardinal Archpriest Pietro Barbo, and of the basilica itself (doc. 1461d). This is small compared to the ceremonies a few years later at the coronation of Pietro Barbo as Pope Paul II. Then an artist named Juliano and his associates painted 225 arms of the pope and of St. Peter's.^[32]

Music Under Martin V and Eugenius IV

Having resided in Florence since February 1419 while the Vatican apartments were made habitable and civil order was tentatively secured, Martin V arrived back in his native Rome in September 1420.^[33] Although he is not remembered for his interest in artistic matters, he can hardly be faulted for that given the daunting financial and political problems he faced locally and internationally. Leading a united but impoverished papacy back to Rome, Martin's very survival depended on

[30] Filippo Maria Mignanti, Istoria della sacrosanta patriarcale Basilica Vaticana dalla sua fondazione fino al di presente , 2:228-29.

[31] Pius II, Commentarii: Rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contigerunt , bk. 8, vol. 2, 482. Regarding earlier mistranslations of this passage, see Christopher Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs at San Pietro in Vaticano," 42, n. 10.

[32] Censualia 9, int. 2 (1464), fol. 69.

[33] Franz Ehrle and Hermann Egger, Der vaticanische Palast in seiner Entwicklung bis zum Mitte des XV. Jahrhunderts , 90-91. On the bad state of churches in Rome ca. 1400, see Arnold Esch, Bonifaz IX. und der Kirchenstaat , 11 and 26.

his ability to replenish the papal treasury and to show the College of Cardinals that he could overcome the factionalism of the past thirty-nine years. The finances of the church had suffered catastrophically during the schism. It has been estimated that when Martin assumed control, he inherited a treasury approximately a third the size of that enjoyed by the popes in Avignon before the schism. While rival popes had competed for revenues, regional secular authorities had taken advantage of the confusion to increase their own wealth.^[34]

Martin also returned to Rome with an injunction from the Council of Constance to build an international curia. The extent to which he adhered to the will of the council is visible in his appointments of cardinals. Setting the pattern for his immediate successors, Martin appointed more non-Italians than Italians to the College of Cardinals. Though the first two cardinals that Martin created were Italians (in 1423), he did so in a secret consistory; that is, these appointments were to be confidential until Martin's death or whatever moment he saw fit to reveal them. Then three years later, at the first public promotion of cardinals, he favored non-Italians. By the end of his term his creations of cardinals included five French and one each from England, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Following Martin's example, every pope until Plus II in the 1460 advanced a preponderance of non-Italians.

The international constituency of clerics in Rome is visible at all levels of the curia during these years, including the musicians in the papal choir.^[35] After coming south from Constance Without any Italian singers, and attracting several other northern singers along the way, it was only near the end of his residency in Florence that he hired Nichola Zacharie of Brindisi. Zacharie, who served until 1424, evidently remained the only Italian to serve in the papal choir during

[34] Adolph Gottlob, Aus der Camera apostolica des 15. Jahrhunderts , 238. Martin's Italian struggles are recounted in Partner, Papal State under Martin V ; see esp. pp. 42-45 and 192.

[35] Denys Hay, "The Renaissance Cardinals: Church, State, Culture," 35-46; and for the curia at large, see W. von Hofmann, Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen Behorden , 1:238-42. For musicians, see Franz X. Haberl, "Die römische 'schola canto-rum' und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts"; and Schuler, "Zur Geschichte der Kapelle Papst Martins V"; and idem, "Zur Geschichte der Kapelle Papst Eugens IV."

Martin's lengthy term. Extraordinarily, almost half of the many northern singers who served him (twenty of forty-six) left within three years of arriving. Poggio Bracciolini alluded to this when he declined an invitation to return to Rome from England: "when I hear of the state and the apprehension in which the members of the Curia are living, I am a little discouraged and I do not see what purpose there would be in going to a place that everyone is leaving, as I hear."^[36]

The effect of the rapid arrivals and departures in the papal choir on the smaller choirs at Roman churches such as St. Peter's can only be imagined. At the least it would imply a similar turnover among northerners—if St. Peter's then employed northern singers—since the waiting period for a spot in the papal chapel would have been shorter. But in fact there is no reason to suppose that St. Peter's hired northern musicians on a salaried basis either during Martin's papacy or that of his successor Eugenius IV; rather, as before and after, papal singers probably helped out at St. Peter's. Such a dual service would correspond to Martin V's stay in Florence, when the choir performed normally at Santa Maria Novella, and occasionally at Santa Maria del Fiore.^[37] In 1424-25 the chapter paid unnamed foreign singers, doubtless from the papal chapel, for Easter, Pentecost, and the feasts of St. Peter in Chains and of St. Mark (docs. 1425a and b). Indeed, the word feast may have taken on a new meaning for these singers, who by 1424 could look forward to being compensated with meat in addition to the usual bread and wine.^[38] Beyond this small indication of increased prosperity, the organ that the basilica may have received as early as circa 1420-21 would have contributed greatly to the musical life of St. Peter's. Payments made in the only year of Martin's papacy for which there are records at St. Peter's, 1424-25, name the Italian organist Gregorio da Pisa.

Music undoubtedly benefited from Martin's appointment of the Venetian Antonio Correr as cardinal archpriest of the basilica in 1420. As part of his effort to restore the churches and dwellings of Rome,

[36] Poggius Bracciolini, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis , 53.

[37] Frank D'Accone, "Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore in the Early Quattrocento," 115-16.

[38] Censualia 4, int. 4, fol. 23v, 21 Dec. 1424.

Martin charged all resident cardinals with the responsibility for making repairs to their titular churches, that is, to the church at which they were presiding bishop.^[39] While Martin is thought to have spent considerable sums on the roof of the basilica, the portico, and the Giotto mosaic, Correr's possible responsibility for such improvements as the organ is great, particularly since Correr is potentially the first of a series of links between the Veneto and organ construction at St. Peter's. A nephew of the schismatic Pope Gregory XII, Correr's interest in musical matters may be presumed from the early fifteenth-century motet Salve vere gracialis written in his honor, probably by Johannes de Limburgia.^[40]

From the perspective of the St. Peter's chapter, the papacy of Eugenius IV (1431-47) was actually less stable than Martin's. Although by the 1430s ambitious courtiers of all disciplines found their way to the papal court, that court fled to Florence in 1434, following Eugenius, who barely escaped with his life. They did not return until 1443. Thus when Lapo da Castiglionchio noted the concentration of international talent in his Dialogus super excellentia et dignitate Curiae Romanae (1438), praising the opportunity to meet with scholars and experts of all kinds from all of Christendom, it was for much of this time a court in exile.^[41] It is indicative that one of the most famous compositions to come from this papacy, Du Fay's Nuper rosarum flores , celebrates a Florentine event.

As when the papacy left Rome in the early years of the century, so in 1434: the social order deteriorated greatly. St. Peter's suffered economically, not only from the absence of the curia and all those who came to do business with the pope, but because they were unable to charge as much rent on their properties. The more obvious dangers were the more violent. Soon after Eugenius departed, thieves broke into St. John Lateran, taking jewelry given to the church by the King

[39] Müntz, Les arts  la cour des papes , fasc. 4, 2, n. 3; and Ruth Kennedy, "The Contribution of Martin V to the Rebuilding of Rome, 1420-1431," 34. Information about the cardinal archpriests of St. Peter's comes from ACSP, SPH59B, a sixteenth-century list of canons, and ACSP, SPH65, a seventeenth-century listing of archpriests.

[40] Giulio Cattin, "Formazione e attività delle cappelle polifoniche nelle cattedrali: La musica nelle città," 272.

[41] Richard Scholz, "Eine humanistische Schilderung der Kurie aus dem Jahre 1438," 108-53.

of France, Charles V. Roman crowds burned San Thomasso in Formis to the ground in 1434 or 1435. Looters did not spare St. Peter's, robbing and vandalizing tombs, works of art, and even the pontifical throne.^[42] Clerical discipline among the St. Peter's clergy deteriorated to the point that Eugenius issued a bull in 1437 threatening the clergy with excommunication for entering the basilica dressed improperly.^[43] When the pope finally returned in September 1443, Vespasiano da Bisticci described the city as "a village of cow-herds; sheep and cattle wandered through the streets."^[44]

The absence of the pope also affected the music heard at St. Peter's. As in 1424-25 singers are not identified by name, and the organist is an Italian, Johannes Jacobus, a beneficiary of the basilica. However, in the list of services that include payments to singers (Table 2), the number of occasions in 1436 is lower either than that for 1424-25 or for 1444, after Eugenius had returned. And instead of earlier payments to "foreign singers," those in 1436-37 simply cite singers; records for 1444 instead specify "singers of the Pope" for Pentecost, Sts. Simon and Jude, and St. Thomas in addition to other feasts "as usual" (docs. 1444b, c, and e). Tellingly, the summer break reverted to the length seen during the worst years of the schism, extending from the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul at the end of June to St. Thomas in Formis on 21 December. Only in the last months of Eugenius's long papacy do we know of a northern singer employed at the basilica, Johannes Grone. This Flemish tenor, who held (or sought) benefices in the diocese of Cambrai and in Leuven (diocese of Liege), identified himself as a singer of St. Peter's in February 1447.^[45]

During the years the pope was absent, instruments other than the organ occur only for the observance of the Feast of Corpus Christi and its Octave in June 1436. The basilica paid Cola Vecchio for playing a

[42] Armellini, Le chiese di Roma , 1:126; and Müntz, Les arts à la cour , fasc. 4, 39.

[43] 23 July 1437, in Collectionis bullarum, brevium aliorumque diplomatum Sacrosanctae Basilicae Vaticanae , 2:91.

[44] Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vita di Eugenio IV , quoted in Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages , vol. 7, pt. 1, 1421-1496 , 89.

[45] Reg. lat. 439, fols. 132v-34r (8 Feb. 1447); Reg. suppl. 420, fol. 8v (30 Sept. 1447); and Reg. suppl. 423, fols. 28r-v (8 Feb. 1447). I am very grateful for the benefice records of several singers present in the 1440s, 1450s, and 1460s communicated to me by Pamela Starr.

plucked stringed instrument identified only as a cythara .^[46] Could this refer to the former papal singer and composer Nichola Zacharie of Brindisi? This Nichola, now securely distinguished from Antonio Zachara da Teramo, may have deserved the description vecchio . Martin V had found him employed as a singer and chaplain at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence in 1420. By June Nichola had joined the papal chapel. He then followed Martin to Rome and remained a papal singer until June 1424. After Eugenius IV replaced Martin in 1431, Nichola was one of three former singers to return for a few months, though unlike Mattheus Hanelle and Johannes Redois, who appeared on the payroll at the outset of the new papacy in 1431, Nichola rejoined in April 1434, shortly before the pope fled. He departed from papal service the following November.^[47]

The most explicit and unusual record of music at St. Peter's concerns the use of the organ. Bookkeepers notated each small payment to those who pumped the bellows, leaving a daily record of when the organ played in the morning at Mass and when in the evening at Vespers. Table 3 is a composite listing of these occasions for 1436-37 and 1438-39 (incomplete), years that Eugenius IV spent in Florence, and for 1444-45. The combined total of 117 services over 68 days is probably high for any single year, but the yearly figure of 64 services in 48 days in 1436 still amounts to at least one day per week with organ music. Summer months required little activity from an organist, perhaps because heat and humidity frequently induced curial officials to leave the city for less pestilent environs. And other than December, the most active times for the organ were between April and June, roughly from Easter to the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Sunday services predominate, as they apparently did throughout the century; the importance of Sunday organ music is evident again in 1485 when the chamberlains hired a temporary organist "pro quatuor dominicas" after the death of the

[46] Docs. 1436b and c. The broad use of the term cythara is discussed in William Prizer, "Isabella d'Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, 'Master Instrument Maker,'" 107; and Laurence Wright, "The Medieval Gittern and Citole: A Case Study of Mistaken Identity," 23.

[47] The three compositions safely attributed to him are a Gloria in BolQ15, the motet Letetur, plebs , and the ballata Già per gran nobiltà . See Nádas, "Further Notes on Magister Antonius"; Ziino, "'Magister Antonius dictus Zacharias de Teramo'"; and Gilbert Reaney, "Zacar."

regular organist (doc. 1485c). That is also the case in Tatershall, England, where an organist of circa 1455 played "on Sundays, on greater and double feasts, and at Lady Mass."^[48]

Finally, it is indicative of difficult times in 1436 that the St. Peter's singers were not paid to process. While a procession doubtless took place (this type of pageantry was too important in Rome) the music provided by St. Peter's was likely confined to the chanting of its clergy. Because there are comparatively few indications of how music contributed to them, it is worth surveying the entire period. Nothing provides a more revealing glimpse of the relentlessly competitive nature of Roman life. In addition to the recurrent ecclesiastical processions, the coronation of a pope, and the arrival of a visiting dignitary, even the baptism of Lucrezia Borgia's son Rodrigo sent curial officials and ecclesiastics of all kinds parading through the city streets. Cardinals hung tapestries outside their palazzi and stationed musicians with trumpets and other instruments along the route to accompany the marchers. Plus II mentions trumpets and organs in one procession, and trumpets and other instruments are indeed visible in a fifteenth-century miniature of Martin V's possesso , the procession from the Vatican to St. John Lateran for the new pope to take possession of his cathedral as Bishop of Rome.^[49] St. Peter's singers apparently also processed with an organ, certainly a small portative. For the Rogation procession in 1438, two St. Peter's clerics, Bartholomeus Petro and Juliano Menico, received two bolognini to pump the bellows of the organ "in this [Rogation] procession and on the Vigil of Ascension [21 May]" (doc. 1438a).

Processions served many purposes. Quite apart from the entertainment provided by the pageantry, or the fulfillment of duty by the timely observation of liturgical rites, processions had a propagandistic role that allowed the pope and his familiars, the cardinals and their familiars, and the clergy of the various churches, hospitals, and convents to display their magnificentia . Popes and cardinals could impress the crowds by the amount of alms they distributed as they walked along the route;

[48] Roger Bowers, "Choral Institutions within the English Church: Their Constitution and Development 1340-1500," 5,099.

[49] The illumination, in a pontifical from 1451, is discussed by Mark Dykmans, "D'Avignon à Rome: Martin Vet le cortège apostolique," 202-309.

cardinals could impress the pope and each other by the size and dress of their retinues; and churches could impress by the number of clergy participating, by the beauty and value of whatever crosses, relics, and banners they chose to march behind, and evidently also by the quality of their musicians. According to a detailed account of a sixteenth-century procession to St. Peter's (Christmas 1547), more impressive than any individual group was the overall effect. Having gotten up early in the morning to be sure of getting a good vantage point, this British observer watched for two hours as Paul III (who for his Anglican readership he calls "the Bishop") and some forty cardinals made their way from Castel San Angelo to the Vatican Palace, and from there to St. Peter's. As he estimated the length, "the foremost of this order was distant from the hindermost more than a quarter of a mile." This procession would differ from one in the early fifteenth century primarily in its greater number of marchers.

And as soon as the cardinals approached [the Vatican Palace], the drums and fife began to play and so continued till the cardinals were well entered amongst the [Swiss] guard. Then the trumpets blew up another while till the cardinals were almost at the gate, and as they should enter, the shawms began to play and ceased not till they were alighted and mounted up the stairs to the Bishop's lodging.

There was no cardinal that came without a great train of gentlemen and prelates, well horsed and appointed—some had forty, some fifty, and some sixty or more—and next before every of them rode two henchmen, the one carrying a cushion and a rich cloth, and the other a pillar of silver; and the cardinals themselves, appareled in robes of crimson chamlet with red hats on their heads, rode on mules.... [Once Paul III had mounted his sedan chair, they were ready to enter St. Peter's.] Thus being set, the prelates and clergy with the other officers passed on afore him; which are such a number as were able to make the muster of a battle if they were well ordered in the field: dataries, treasurers, clerks of the chamber, penitentiaries, prebendaries, notaries, protonotaries, and a thousand mo, each order of them in his divers device of parliament robes, all in scarlet and for the most part finely furred. Then came the double cross, the sword, and the imperial hat, and after that the cardinals by two and two, and between every two a great rout of gentlemen [i.e., the familiars of the cardinals]. Then came the ambassadors and next them the bishop himself, blessing all the way and carried in his chair by eight men, clothed in long robes of scarlet; and on either side of him went his

guard, making room and crying, Abbasso, Abbasso , for they that will not willingly kneel shall be made to kneel by force.^[50]

The careful attention given here to who marched in what order touches on the most significant and contentious aspect of processions for the participants: their position in the parade. The question of who got to process in front of whom was a vital indication of rank and prestige within the city. The papal master of ceremonies Johannes Bur-chard devotes pages in his diaries to listing meticulously the marching order of church dignitaries (resident and visiting), officers of the curia, and papal familiars. Burchard had once asked Pope Innocent VIII for advice about ordering the members of the curia for a procession on Corpus Christi, because in his words this "was an occasion on which they always quarrel for precedence." Innocent sent Burchard to the master of his household, the Bishop of Tours, who in turn directed him to the Chamberlain, the Cardinal of San Giorgio, who quickly passed him on to the Vice-Chancellor.^[51]

In processions the pope marched or was carried in a sedan chair under a baldachino, as depicted in the miniature of Martin V's possesso . Before him came the cardinals (with their own internal order of cardinal deacons, cardinal priests, and cardinal bishops) and immediately after the papal marshall and soldan, tossing money into the throngs. Papal singers went between royal ambassadors and the acolytes who did not carry candles.^[52] The more ambiguous the question of rank, the more vociferous the protests when a rival group received permission to go first. Sixtus IV ultimately resolved a fifty-year-old dispute between the papal secretaries (humanists) and consistorial advocates (lawyers) with the Solomonian decision that they should process together, mixed.^[53]

[50] William Thomas, The History of Italy (1549) , 47-49.

[51] John Burchard, The Diary , 146; the year was 1485, and the feast was Innocent's first as Pope. For the same reasons, curial officials argued over their seating in the papal chapel; see John O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1451-1521 , II, n. 15.

[52] Denys Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century , 45-46. For a discussion of the papal musicians in processions, see Pamela Starr, "Music and Music Patronage at the Papal Court, 1447-1464," 249-54.

[53] D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation , 31-32.

Because the St. Peter's chapter and the canons and clergy of St. John Lateran both had strong connections with the pontiff, they were natural competitors for prestige. During the Great Schism the Roman Pope John XXIII called a council in 1412 that commenced with services at St. Peter's. The Lateran clergy refused to enter St. Peter's unless they could do so in front of the St. Peter's clergy. Pope John sided with those from St. John Lateran.^[54] The diarist Stefano Infessura told of a similar occasion in 1468, only this time the canons of St. Peter's pressed their claims in court, the Rota Romana, to settle once and for all which chapter would take precedence in processions. Again they lost the battle, though they may have received some comfort that the curious decision favored St. John Lateran but declared St. Peter's the more deserving of the two churches.^[55] Sometimes the decisions went their way, as in 1439 when a papal bull decreed that the important procession on the Feast of St. Mark should end at St. Peter's rather than at the Lateran basilica.^[56] The St. Peter's clergy held themselves superior to other Roman clergy in general, to the evident annoyance of papal officials. At the Corpus Christi procession in 1485 the pope forbad the chapter of St. Peter's to go before the clergy from other Roman churches. They came last, immediately before members of the curia. Three years later when they insisted on marching immediately before the papal cross, Burchard ordered them "not to hinder our procession nor come with us."^[57]

While the higher clergy of St. Peter's worried about their position, the singers attended to musical preparations. Principally this meant copying (and perhaps also composing) the appropriate music, but also arranging for boys or indigents to carry the necessary books and lectern. From what the occasional payments to singers summarized in Table 4 reveal, it appears that their participation at processions changed twice during the first half of the century: first at the return of Martin V, again during the pontificate of Nicholas V. Martin may have insisted on more frequent marches to St. John Lateran, perhaps because his

[54] Dello Schiavo, Il diario romano , 73.

[55] Stefano Infessura, Diario della città di Roma , 18; and Collectionis Butlarum , 2:21, n. a.

[56] Collectionis bullarum , 2:96.

[57] Burchard, Diaries , 147 and 223.

family, the Colonna, were traditionally associated with that basilica. Under his successor Eugenius IV, as just noted, even the goal on the Feast of St. Mark changed from St. John Lateran to St. Peter's. Martin also may have started or reinstituted a procession on Rogation Sunday. By 1438 the chapter compensated its singers for their efforts with a meal "as is customary."^[58]

With the election of Nicholas in 1447, the activities of the St. Peter's singers in processions on Rogation Sunday, the Feast of Corpus Christi, and perhaps also on Pentecost appear to have ended. Nicholas is also the only pope for whom we can be sure that the singers also marched on his election and his death. Among the extra festivities during the Jubilee Years 1450 and 1500, the St. Peter's choir processed on the Vigil of Ascension and on the Anniversary of the Creation of Alexander VI. It is striking that the basilica's choir seemingly had little to do with the major liturgical processions of the papal court, those on Palm Sunday, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and, grandest of all, Corpus Christi, despite the fact that the latter two processions concluded at the basilica. The clergy of St. Peter's evidently continued to process on Corpus Christi, even if the singers did not perform. Meanwhile, the singers assumed an active role in processions on the Octave of Corpus Christi and the Feast of St. Mark. The new recognition of the Octave of Corpus Christi may indicate that the celebrations for Corpus Christi itself had grown unwieldy, and that some of the traditional participants had to be excluded. In this respect as in others, the patterns assumed during the papacy of Nicholas V were substantially those that prevailed for the rest of the century.

[58] Censualia 4, int. 6 (1438), fol. 25.

Chapter Two—
Northern Musicians at St. Peter's:
1447-1513

Northern Dominance: Nicholas V To Sixtus IV

While Eugenius IV's most substantial artistic contribution to St. Peter's was the pair of bronze doors by Antonio Filarete, Nicholas V had more ambitious goals, initiating the remodeling of the basilica itself. The inspirations for their respective contributions indicate how bold Nicholas's vision was in comparison to that of his predecessor: Eugenius had been impressed by Ghiberti's doors for the Baptistry of Florence; Nicholas planned a basilica whose magnificence would surpass that of the Temple of Solomon. Eugenius wanted to put Rome on an equal footing with Florence; Nicholas had a vision of Rome as the new Jerusalem. Eugenius saw in the individual panels of the doors an opportunity to record the important events in his papacy; Nicholas sought a basilica that would provide a fitting tribute to the Prince of the Apostles. Both in his model for the new basilica and in his building plans in general, Nicholas emulated King Solomon, and in this emulation provided the precedent for his successors.^[1]

It is customary to see the election of Thomas Parentucelli on 6 March 1447 as the beginning of a new era, in part because of the grand ambitions that Nicholas had for Rome and for his interests in human-

[1] Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome , 222-26; Carroll William Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447-55 , 102-27. For a description of Nicholas's influence on Rome and on later popes, see also John Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic , 69-114.

ism and the arts, and in part because the struggle for survival that characterized the papacies of Martin and Eugenius was waning. During the first half of the fifteenth century not only Rome but all of the Italian powers encountered repeated military challenges. Rome had faced up to grave territorial threats from north and south, first from Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Ladislas of Naples, later from Filippo Maria Visconti and Alfonso V of Aragon. Eugenius also had to contend politically with the reemergence of a papal schism, when the Council of Basel chose Amadeo VIII of Savoy as Pope Felix V (5 November 1439).^[2] Felix abdicated early in Nicholas's papacy (7 April 1449), and one of the most serious military dangers that Nicholas faced, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, was not only comparatively distant, it posed a common enemy that helped bring the various peninsular factions to a temporary peace. Thus when Maffeo Vegio wrote his funeral epigram for Nicholas, comparing him to Emperor Augustus for his learning, his many architectural projects, and the tranquility of his reign, Vegio observed that Nicholas "preferred peace to arms and holy hymns to the awful bugles of war. With wonderful devotion and faith he took care of the sacred rites."^[3] Nicholas took full advantage of opportunities his predecessors had not enjoyed.

For music at St. Peter's, Nicholas's papacy was indeed the turning point. On virtually every issue discussed in this and the following chapters, the basilica benefited during these years: the arrival of northerners, the expansion and administration of the choir, the granting of benefices, the presence of boys, organ construction, and music copying. Franz X. Haberl long ago pointed out that under Nicholas the papal choir grew from a group of ten or eleven singers to fifteen and that their wages nearly doubled, rising from 5 ducats per month to 8.^[4] But the dramatic musical changes at St. Peter's have yet to be noted. Within three weeks of Nicholas becoming pope the administration of the choir had changed; instead of being compensated with meals after

[2] Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571) , 2:39-97.

[3] Iiro Kajanto and Ulla Nyberg, Papal Epigraphy in Renaissance Rome , 57-58.

[4] Franz X. Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum' und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts," 50. See also Pamela Starr, "Music and Music Patronage at the Papal Court, 1447-1464," 5-6; and Adalbert Roth, "Zur 'Reform' der päpstlichen Kapelle unter dem Pontifikat Sixtus' IV. (1471-1484)," 181.

services, singers now regularly collected salaries, albeit only 8 carlini (eight-tenths of a ducat) per month.^[5] Aided by this more stable financial arrangement, the basilica immediately began to hire singers, beginning with Richardus Herbare and Rubino and expanding during the Jubilee Year 1450 to as many as twelve. Thus on occasions when Nicholas celebrated in the basilica, the fifteen singers in the papal choir and twelve at St. Peter's together could have created one of the larger choirs in Europe, although there is no record of them ever singing together.

Judging from the first two singers to be hired in his term, Nicholas intended from the outset to make the St. Peter's choir an illustrious group. Herbare was clearly only a temporary employee, brought in for two months until a suitable replacement could be found. A fixture in the papal choir for nearly twenty-five years (1432-56) and a native of Bayeux in Normandy, Herbare held the degree of master of arts and the lucrative curial posts of procurator audientiae litterarum and papal credentiarius .^[6] Although his two months at St. Peter's represent the only recorded instance of a papal singer being "lent" to the basilica, this practice may have been an extension of earlier arrangements, by which papal singers worked at St. Peter's not for months at a time but for individual liturgical feasts. After May the basilica replaced Herbare with another northerner, Hervé.

Like Herbare, the singer Rubino must have resided in Rome when Nicholas became pope, otherwise he could not have been hired so quickly. Present from April 1447 through at least February 1448, there are two payments to him for expenses related to two boys in his care (docs. 1447a and c). For that reason alone he is likely to be a northerner, although not, as previously suggested, Robinet de la Magdalaine (also Robert Pele), from 1450 to at least 1474 a singer at the Burgundian court. The putative connection between Robinet and Rubino stems from a mid-sixteenth century account of Robinet's life in the Catalogue des provosts du monastère de Warren ... diocèse de Saint-Omer , and the mistaken impression from Haberl that Rubino sang at St.

[5] Roth, "Zur 'Reform' der päpstlichen Kapelle," 181, notes that in the papal chapel, Nicholas also placed a "sacrista capelle" on a monthly salary.

[6] Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 188-90.

Peter's for May and June 1447 only.^[7] But since Rubino remained at St. Peter's longer, he could not have left Rome in 1447 as Robinet did in order to return to his studies in Caen. From there Robinet went on to appear in Brussels for Easter in 1448.^[8]

It is unclear whether Rubino is the singer Robinetto paid in 1449-50.^[9] Although there are few surviving payments for 1449, the basilica chapter collected a rent from magister Michaele, "relative of Robinetto our singer."^[10] Unlike Rubino, Robinetto received no payments for boys in his care, and he was also a beneficiary of the basilica; moreover, the names are never confused—the singer in 1447-48 is never identified with the diminutive "-etto," while that present in 1449-50 is never named without it. The last payment to mention Robinetto in November 1450 was a division of money owed to ten chapter members that had recently died in the plague.^[11] Robinetto was only one of several victims of a particularly virulent attack of the plague that disrupted the

[7] Regarding Robinet, see pp. 280-89 of the edition of the Catalogue des prévosts du monastère de Watten ... diocèse de Saint-Omer by Aimé Leroy. Leroy proposes (p. 262) that the manuscript catalogue was based on an older manuscript at the monastery of Watten. The connection with the St. Peter's Rubino appears in Jean Marix, Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la tour de Bourgogne sous le regne de Philippe le Bon (1420-67) , 202-4. Marix depends on André Pirro, "Robinet de la Magdalaine," 15-18.

[8] Furthermore, the supposed date of Robinet's trip to Rome is incorrect. According to the Catalogue des prévosts , Bishop Johannes Castiglione, Robinet, and three other singers left Normandy for Rome on 31 August 1446 in order to greet Pope Nicholas V. But Nicholas did not become pope until the following March. They would not have left in 1446 to pledge obedience to Eugenius IV since England had consistently supported Eugenius from the beginning of his pontificate. Instead, Castiglione and his entourage left in August 1447, after Rubino had been hired at St. Peter's. King Henry VI informed the University of Caen on 21 June 1447 that he would forward their requests to Rome with Castiglione, who was soon leaving; see Henri Prentout, "Esquisse d'une histoire de l'université de Caen," 48.

[9] The last references to Rubino appear in a fragment of an undated Exitus register now bound as fols. 87-91 of Censualia 15 (1492). He and Aruc (i.e., Hervé) are paid 8 carlini each for January and then again for February. This amount is the same, and also recorded in carlini rather than ducats, as singers were paid in 1447-48. This register may be a second copy from that year.

[10] He paid 12 ducats auri in 1449 and 1450 for a house with the sign of St. George in the parish of Santa Maria Virgariis; Censualia 5, int. 5 (1448), fol. 44v; and Censualia 6, int. 1 (1450), fol. 45v.

[11] Doc. 1450e. The use of the diminutive "-etto" could signify a physical distinction of age or size between two singers with the same name, as may have been the case in 1461, when Guillaume des Mares sang alongside Guillelmino.

Jubilee celebrations during the summer and fall months. Seven papal singers quit their positions between March and August, and at least three of them died.^[12]

Rubino sang with two tenors: Johannes Grone in 1447 and Hervé (June 1447 to at least February 1449), who arrived at St. Peter's in June, at the same time that Johannes Puyllois surfaced in Rome.^[13] Joining them at least in 1448 was a singer described as a cleric from Troyes, Theodericus de Beaunes.^[14] Hervé was evidently replaced by Andreas de Palermo, a beneficiary of the basilica, and the only certifiably Italian tenor at the basilica in the fifteenth century. Though Andreas is named only in August 1450, he may well have been one of the anonymous singers present the whole Jubilee Year. Lists of beneficiaries paid at Easter and St. Mark's in 1450 include payments to Andreas de Palermo. But starting in August similar lists identify him as "Andreas tenorista " and "Andreas cantore ." In 1452 he is apparently still present, there named "Andreas Guglielmi."

The Jubilee of 1450 provided Nicholas with a financial windfall from the throngs of pilgrims who came to Rome in search of plenary indulgences. He began serious preparations on 19 January 1449 with his bull declaring the coming Holy Year. To receive an indulgence, by which one was absolved of past sins, it was necessary to repent, confess, and to visit all four of Rome's basilicas: St. Peter's as well as St. John Lateran, Santa Mafia Maggiore, and San Paulo.^[15] To ready the

[12] Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 165, n. 187. This plague forced Nicholas to flee in the summer and fall; Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages , 2:84-88. For a list of papal abbreviators that died from it in 1449-50, see Hermann Diener, "Ein Formularbuch aus der Kanzlei der Päpste Eugen IV und Nicholas V," 390-92.

[13] Grone, never listed in pay records, appears for the last time in a benefice letter from 30 Sept. 1447 (Reg. suppl. 420, fol. 8v). "Hervé" was a name common in Brittany and Normandy. It could apparently also be rendered in French as "Hugues" or "Huguet," as with Hervé, bishop of St. Brieuc (1432-36), also known as Huguet de Boiscrobin. In St. Peter's records Hervé also is called Aruc. The linguistic translation of "her-" into "ar-" in "Aruc" and "Hervé" also occurred for the papal singer Richardus Herbare, listed in some St. Peter's records as "Arbore" (e.g., in the Exitus for 1450, fol. 10v).

[14] Reg. suppl. 431, fol. 2851 (5 Nov. 1448).

[15] Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise , 21-24; Antonio Samoré, "Aspetti caratteristici degli Anni Santi: Dalla documentazione dell'Archivio Segreto Vaticano"; and Stinger, Renaissance in Rome , 44 and 151.

city Nicholas attempted to repair buildings, clean streets, and build up supplies of provisions for the countless thousands expected to descend on Rome.^[16] That these preparations extended to the basilica's singers is indicated by the construction of a new organ, of payments in 1450 for a new robe for Robinetto, and, most of all, by a considerably increased monthly expenditure of 11 ducats to unnamed singers in addition to Robinetto and Andreas da Palermo. In April the accountant specified monthly wages for twelve singers, a far cry from three or four singers in previous years (docs. 1450a and c).

Among the unidentified singers, two are known from benefices they gained: Andreas de Bray, a priest from the diocese of Cambrai who received a new provision to a church near Chartres;^[17] and an Italian cleric, Loysio de Diano, from the diocese of Capaccio near Salerno. Although pay records do not mention him as a choir member until the 1460s, Loysio was no supernumerary. Already in 1450 he was a beneficiary and regens chori , a title used again in a supplication from 1464.^[18] Rather than indicating musical leadership of the singers, this title probably denotes administrative responsibility for the musicians, as in the papal chapel, where the magister cappelle was generally not a musician at all. Loysio, at any rate, collected many benefices in his native Mezzogiorno before his death in May 1467.^[19]

Because of the money that the pilgrims brought to Rome, Nicholas had the means to pursue numerous building projects, above all new construction on St. Peter's. It was also feasible to maintain the larger choir. To the end of his papacy in 1455 the choir comprised at least six singers, judging from the consistent monthly payments of 10 ducats to anonymous singers. Payment records identify two singers: Gomaro, in November 1452, and Britoni, paid in 1452 and 1453 for repairing and

[16] Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise , 118, n. 56; Pastor, History of the Popes , 2:74-78.

[17] Reg. suppl. 446, fol. 289r (31 Oct. 1450).

[18] Reg. suppl. 448, fol. 194v (17 Feb. 1450); and Reg. suppl. 574, fol. 15r (20 April 1464).

[19] Regarding other benefices, see Reg. suppl. 473, fols. 227v-28r (25 June 1454); Reg. lat. 496, fols. 243r-44r (25 June 1454); ASV, Liber annatarum 16, fol. 151v, (19 July 1465); Reg. lat. 600, fols. 52v-54r (15 Jan. 1465); Reg. suppl. 589, fols. 169v-70r (6 Nov. 1465); Reg. suppl. 594, fol. 45r (14 April 1465); and regarding his death, Reg. suppl. 609, fol. 207r (11 May 1467).

binding two missals as well as other unspecified "books of the choir." He is presumably the Bertoni still present in 1455-56.^[20]

But once again papal records name others. Establishing a significant precedent for his successors, Nicholas extended to singers at St. Peter's the preferential treatment regarding benefices that he accorded his own singers. In a bull of 1 June 1451, he gave them the same priority over expectative provisions to benefices that papal familiars of all kinds enjoyed. He named five singers and the dioceses with which they had a connection: Johannes Robelier (accolitus , Le Mans), Nicholas Petri (clericus , Utrecht), Johannes Jorland, alias Corbie (deacon , Amiens), Nicholas de Gras (archdeacon , Lièege), and Egidius de Nemius, alias Vulpius (clericus , Tournai). Robelier and Corbie remained in the St. Peter's choir until 1456, Corbie probably until he joined the papal choir in May. Corbie apparently also served briefly at St. John Lateran in 1455 where he received a minor chaplaincy.^[21] Finally, two Italians sang with the choir during these years, Gabriele Juliarius (granted a perpetual choral benefice at St. Peter's in 1453) and Gregorius Antonius Petruccius (who sought a choral benefice at St. John Lateran in 1455).^[22]

Of these singers, Corbie evidently had the most impact in Rome. Known both by the names "Corbie," a city near Amiens, and "Jorland," he sought benefices in the dioceses of Cambrai and Amiens. After some thirty-five years in Rome, he left the papal choir in 1485 for Cambrai where he was briefly master of the petits vicaires in 1493. Corbie is possibly the musician named "Corbet" in Compère's motet

[20] Regarding the scribal payments, see chapter 4. A Johannes Britoni in artibus magister from the Norman diocese of Avranches was at the Council of Basel in 1440; Concilium Basiliense: Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte des Concils yon Basel , 7:44. Other possible references to him are at Treviso in 1448, where Johannes Brit cantor may have served as magister; at Mantua (or Ferrara) in 1460, where a Giovanni Brith sang "moderno maxime arie alla Veneziana"; and in Udine, where Giovanni Britti was maestro di cappella at the cathedral in 1471; see Giovanni D'Alessi, La cappella musicale del duomo di Treviso (1300-1633) , 44-45; and Giuseppe Vale, "La cappella musicale del duomo di Udine," 95.

[21] Starr discusses the 1451 provision (Reg. suppl. 452, fols. 76v-77r) and the St. John Lateran reference in "Music and Music Patronage," 146. The report in Haberl that Corbie also served at St. Peter's during 1457, after becoming a papal singer, is in error ("Die römische 'schola cantorum,'" 48, n. 1).

[22] Reg. lat. 485, fol. 40v-42v (7 Sept. 1453); and Reg. suppl. 479, fols. 86v-87r (29 April 1455).

Omnium bonorum plena , variously dated between 1468 and 1474: "ac Okeghem, Des Pres, Corbet,/Hemart, Faugues et Molinet,/atque Regis omnibusque/canentibus simul et me."^[23] He also may be the "Courbet" criticized by Tinctoris in the Proportionale for his supposed misuse of prolatio maior to signify augmentation in the tenor. Tinctoris there named him next to Faugues. Since Corbie lived until 1504, he must have arrived at St. Peter's while still a youth.

Groups of singers from outside of Rome occasionally performed at St. Peter's, as when Frederick III had Nicholas celebrate his wedding and coronation as Emperor in 1452.^[24] Singers of King Alfonso V of Aragon made a habit of visiting from Naples every few years, evidently without Alfonso. Their performance in St. Peter's on the Feast of St. Alexis (18 July 1447) was not part of the embassy that Alfonso had already sent to Rome in March, to pledge his allegiance to the newly elected Nicholas.^[25] When they returned in 1452 for the Octave of Sts. Peter and Paul, they perhaps were an ensemble of eight: their payment consisted of five pitchers of white wine (vino greco ) and three of red.^[26] Two months after the election of Calixtus, they came on a possible ecclesiastical mission related to negotiations over the abbey San Martino de Fara, a wealthy abbey in Neapolitan territory. While in Rome, the "tenor of the King of Aragon and his associates" sang Vespers on 7 July 1455. The identity of Alfonso's tenor is uncertain, but Aragonese court records mention the composer Johannes Cornago in connection with a confidential mission this very year. Very shortly after the Vespers service in St. Peter's, the chapter sent its own emissary to Naples: Loysio, the St. Peter's official who had paid the visiting singers, left for Naples

[23] The proposed dates are respectively by Fallows, Dufay , 77-78, and Hamm, "The Manuscript San Pietro B 80," 48-49.

[24] Pastor, History of the Popes , 2:152-57; and Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 254-56. Firsthand reports describe the extravagant ceremonies attending this or that service in St. Peter's without specifying which choir sang or what. The papal singer Goswinus Mandoctus left one, published in Joseph Chmel, Regesta chronologicodiplomatica Friderici III.... The autograph manuscript is in Vienna, Bibl. Pal., Cod. 9110.

[25] Doc. 1447f. Pastor, History of the Popes , 2:34, describes the ceremony on 24 March 1447.

[26] Doc. 1452a. These singers probably also visited St. Peter's in 1451 on their way to Florence, where they heard a Vespers in June (Pentecost Sunday) 1451; D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the 15th Century," 317.

himself on 16 July, on business related to the abbey San Martino de Fara, which had been claimed by the St. Peter's chapter in 1453.^[27]

Other than at St. Peter's, the 1450s and 1460s were not the best years for northern musicians to seek a job in Italy. This is particularly noteworthy since these decades from the end of Nicholas V's papacy to the beginning of Sixtus IV's were the most peaceful of the entire century. Alarmed by the Turkish victory over Constantinople in 1453, Venice and Milan ended their conflict with the Peace of Lodi in 1454, after which they and Rome, Florence, and Naples agreed on the formation of the Italian League and on twenty-five years of peace. Rather than political tranquility enhancing the opportunities for northern singers in Italy, just the reverse occurred. Interest in supporting a polyphonic choir disappeared in Ferrara with the death of Leonello d'Este in 1450, not to emerge at all during the twenty-one year reign of Borso; and in Florence at the Baptistry of San Giovanni and the cathedral, whose musicians were sponsored by the Medici, there was no polyphonic chapel to speak of between 1458 and 1469. Milan, Naples, and Rome still patronized northern musicians, but the papal choir had very few new openings. They hired nine new singers between 1456 and 1459, but then only seven over the next decade. St. Peter's therefore looms as the major exception in these years, employing at the very least thirty-seven foreigners between 1455 and 1473.

Clearly, the musical legacy of Nicholas V endured in a way that his far more expensive literary and architectural schemes could not. In his generosity to the papal choir and the creation of an independent choir of northerners at St. Peter's, Nicholas embarked on a path that his successors by and large chose to follow, although under Calixtus III and Pius II the size of the choir temporarily diminished. At least for the papal chapel, Calixtus built on Nicholas's contributions with a few of his own. He formalized the administration of the papal chapel by reinstating the office of magister cappelle, and he increased the number of

[27] Docs. 1453e and 1455d and e. Regarding Cornago, see Isabel Pope and Masakata Kanazawa, The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871, 69. Allan Atlas, however, argues against Cornago's participation, in Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples , 62-69. Doc. 1455d makes his participation look more probable. Regarding the incorporation of San Martino, see Montel, "Premières recherches sur la mense capitulaire de la Basilique Saint-Pierre de Rome," 1-2.

singers by two, while leaving salaries at previous levels.^[28] His interests, as virtually all commentators have agreed, lay not with the humanities and the arts favored by Nicholas, but with the political and military struggle against the Turks.

At first the personnel of the St. Peter's choir remained constant at about six. In February 1456 it included Guillelmus, Gabriele, and Johannes Robelier, in addition to Johannes Corbie, Bertoni, and the organist Johannes Jacobus. But in contrast to the expansion of the papal choir in the next years, the choir at the basilica then decreased to three or four singers. By the end of Calixtus's short term in 1458, the personnel had changed completely: Decano, the tenor Lupo, Nicholas Volfardo, and Johannes Monstroeul, known at St. Peter's as Johannes Castiglione (or Piccardus).^[29] Archangelo Blasio joined the choir for the first time in July 1458, one month before Calixtus died. Through the ensuing years of periodic employment at St. Peter's and finally the Sistine Chapel (1476-92), Fr. Archangelo maintained his ties with the nearby hospital Santo Spirito. Another Italian, Bononinus Bononius, was present by the end of the year, when this beneficiary of the basilica decided to study civil law.^[30]

With the exception of Archangelo, Bononinus, and the organist, most

[28] Roth, "Zur 'Reform' der päpstlichen Kapelle," 181-83, stresses the importance of these administrative changes at the expense of Nicholas's contributions.

[29] The one payment to Johannes Piccardus mentions his promotion to the papal chorus (doc. 1458e). This is certainly the longtime papal singer Monstroeul, admitted into the papal choir on 19 September, two weeks before the farewell notice at St. Peter's. He is also likely the Johannes Piccardus who, from August 1454, rented a house from the basilica near San Lorenzo de piscibus, sharing it with a countertenor in the papal choir (Censualia 6, int. 5 [1453], fol. 49; and Censualia 7, int. 1 [1454], fol. 56). In 1455 the chapter had to force him and the tenor Richardus Herbare to pay rent (doc. 1455c). At St. Peter's, Piccardus was generally known as Johannes de Castiglione. While there are no other payments to Piccardus, de Castiglione was paid the same amount (2 ducats) for the half year before Piccardus in September. The other two singers always received 1 1/2 or 2 1/2A ducats, and the order of the names remains unaltered, with Johannes listed after Lupo. Five months after Piccardus had stopped singing for the basilica, de Castiglione received one ducat retroactively for his salary the previous September. The appellation de Castiglione may refer to a connection with Cardinal Johannes Castiglione, known as a patron of musicians. On Monstroeul, see Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 155-60; and Émile Brouette, Les "Libri annatarum" pour les pontificats d'Eugene IV à Alexandre VI , 51, no. 142.

[30] Reg. suppl. 515, fols. 150v-51r (28 Nov. 1458).

if not all of these singers were northerners. Guillelmus may be the Norman composer known variously as Guillelmus da Francia, Guillaume des Mares, and Guillaume Faugues (chapter 7). And Lupo may be Egidius de Nemius, alias Vulpius, who had sung previously in 1450; however, soon after Lupo left St. Peter's in 1459, a Johannes Lupus from France evidently began a lengthy career at St. Mark's in Venice. Notarial records first mention "prete Giovanni de Franzia, cantore nella detta chiesa [di S. Marco]" in 1460. Subsequent payments from 1467 and 1468 name "dominus Johannes Lupus cantor S. Marci," who was still there in 1490 as "Giovanni Luppi de Francia cantore della chiesa di s. Marco."^[31] While Lupo was at St. Peter's the basilica had a potent link to Venice in the person of its cardinal archpriest, the Venetian Pietro Barbo (later Paul II). Regarding Volfardo, he was the "Nicolas teotonico cantore" who renounced his status as a cleric of the basilica on 1 June 1459. Therefore the northern form of his name must have been Wohlfahrt, Wolfaert, Wulfaert, or some related spelling.^[32] Indeed, partly because of the limited opportunities for employment elsewhere in Italy, and partly for reasons discussed in chapter 5, northern singers achieved an unsurpassed dominance at St. Peter's during most of the 1460s and 1470s.

But in the first years of Plus II's papacy, the smaller choir of 1458 continued its decline. As had Calixtus, Plus directed his time and energy not to support the arts, but to oppose the approaching Turkish forces. Whatever his own inclinations as a humanist, because of his mission to defend the faith, Pius initially did not have the financial resources to build or to be a patron of the arts on a scale comparable to that of Nicholas V. Elected on 19 August 1458, Pius had already decided by early October to hold a general congress in northern Italy to galvanize a unified European response. He left Rome for Mantua on

[31] B. Cecchetti includes these notices in "Appunti sugli strumenti musicali usati dai Veneziani antichi," 82. Lupo is not the Austrian Johannes Lupi (Wolf) intimately associated with the Trent Codices and organist of the Trent Cathedral from 1452 until his death in 1467. Peter Wright has placed Johannes Lupi in Trent during this whole time, including a document dated October 1458 ("On the Origins of Trent 87(1) and 92(2)," 245-70).

[32] Doc. 1459a. Jan Wulfaert, an organist, worked in Bruges between 1411 and 1448 (Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 190).

22 January 1459 and did not return until October 1460, almost two years later.^[33] At St. Peter's the choir quickly disintegrated: Nicholas Volfardo left at the end of March, Lupo a month later. Archangelo remained with the organist. During the pope's absence, it must have been hard to avoid parallels with the lean, unsettled years that Eugenius had spent away from Rome two decades earlier.

Sometime during 1460, perhaps only after Plus returned, the choir reformulated. By March 1461, when records resume, there was once again a group of four singers and an organist. Among the three likely to be northerners was the tenor Guillelmus, probably the one who for years had traveled between Rome and Padua, where he was known at the cathedral as Guillaume da Francia. Not just a singer, he composed and copied music for the choir (see chapters 4 and 7). With him were Egidius, Guillelmino, and the St. Peter's beneficiary and regens chori , Loysio de Diano. This Egidius is likely Egidius Crispini (Gilles Crepin), who asked for a new provision at the parish church of Wonne in Utrecht in March 1461, while identifying himself as a cleric from the diocese of Cambrai.^[34]

Every one but Loysio left at the end of October 1461, a pivotal month for the St. Peter's choir. Either the singers quit, or someone—whether Plus II, the cardinal archpriest Pietro Barbo, or chapter officials—decided to overhaul the way music was performed at St. Peter's. The former is the more likely possibility, given Guillelmus da Francia's negotiations in September to return to Padua, and the demise of the organ in November. Once again Archangelo Blasio stepped in to fill the breach, singing for four months with Alfonso Hyspano.

Thus for a second time in two years the basilica recruited an entirely

[33] Setton, The Papacy and the Levant , 2:204-14; Pastor, History of the Popes , 3:45-111; and Dieter Brosius, "Das Itinerar Papst Plus' II," 421-32. Probably during the summer of 1460, Plus drew up a proposal for church reform that he never issued. In his section on the proper comportment of cardinals, he prohibited banquets, except when in honor of visiting princes or their ambassadors. In that case the only music allowed was "music of a serious character" (Pastor, History of the Popes , 3:400).

[34] Reg. suppl. 538, fol. 210r (19 Feb. 1461). Crispini may have appeared first at St. Peter's in 1459; that is when an Egidius sang for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. An Egidio presbiter di Francia sang near Rome at Rieti Cathedral from March 1448 through June 1456. Also called Egidio di Salomone, he was described as an ottimo maestro di musica . As part of his duties in Rieti he repaired some antiphonaries (Sacchetti-Sassetti, "La cappella musicale del duomo di Rieti," 122).

new choir, one that from the outset was evidently intended to perform without organ. The arrival of Gregorio, the new tenor, in January 1462 was a significant step toward stability. The apparent musical leader of the choir for the next five years, Gregorio from the outset received higher wages than his colleagues (3 ducats as opposed to 2 1/2 or 1); from September 1463 it rose to 4 ducats per month, extraordinary for his time and matched only by the former papal singer Johannes Fede.^[35]

Included in the choir of five during Gregorio's first year were Lamberto and two beneficiaries of the basilica, Loysio de Diano and Bonomo.^[36] When Gregorio left during the summer of 1462, Gaspare replaced him as tenor, as he did again in 1464. Gregorio's two absences may have been for the purpose of recruiting. After Gregorio was away for two months in 1462 and eight months in 1464-65, groups of new singers joined the choir within two months of his returning: in 1462, Salmone and Guillaume Rose, and in 1465, Carulo Britonio, Johannes Cornuel, and Ludovico Gregori, who was perhaps his pupil.^[37]

For most of his tenure at St. Peter's, Gregorio sang with the contra and priest Philippo (April 1462-May 1465). A supplication dated 19 February 1465 reveals him to be Philippus de Holland, cleric from the diocese of Worms, a singer at St. Peter's as well as rector at the altar of

[35] A Grégoire who may have been a composer, Grégoire Nicolai, was a canon at Cambrai Cathedral. At his death in 1469 he left to the cathedral thirteen velum gatherings [cayers ] of Masses that had been copied by Simon Mellet, the cathedral copyist (Jules Houdoy, Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai, ancienne église métropolitaine Notre-Dame , 265: "Item ont este trouvés XIII cayers de velim contenant plusieurs messes escriptes de la main M.S. Mellet"). Barbara Haggh kindly informs me that Grégoire Nicolai, canon of Antwerp, Cambrai, and Arras, was present in Cambrai from 1439 and that he served as an ambassador to the duke of Burgundy in the service of the papacy.

[36] Although Bonomo was to stay in the choir until 1476, it is questionable whether he sang polyphony, since until 1471 his wages were only a half ducat per month.

[37] For singers, who were often foundlings, names like "Gregori" seem not always to have been patronymics but instead to have indicated a teacher-pupil relationship or something similarly close. Thus Bartholomeus de Castr'ls (at St. Peter's for October 1482) enjoyed an association with Isaac while they were in Florence: once Isaac arrived in July 1485, de Castris was called "Bartolomeo d'Arrigo da Fiandra" as if a familiar of Arrigo (see D'Accone, "Singers of San Giovanni," 342; and Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum,'" 56). On the role of the church as a provider for orphans and foundlings, see Mollat, Les pauvres au moyen age: Étude sociale , 11-29; Brian Pullan, Orphans and Foundlings in Early Modern Europe ; and Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages , 155-61 and 183-208.

St. John Chrysostom. On this day he received his promotion to the order of priest; indeed, during March the chapter of St. Peter's granted him two ducats as alms for his first Masses "sung in our church."^[38] He may be the Philippus de Hollandia who was a vicar at Antwerp Cathedral in 1441 (although a promotion to the priesthood usually took place at age twenty-five), or the composer of the Missa Je ne vis oncques la pareille copied in 1476 into Munich 3154 and attributed only to "Phi. Hol." After leaving St. Peter's in May 1465, Philippo Holland is documented in Budapest at the court of Mathias Corvinus and Beatrice of Aragon in 1478.^[39] At St. Peter's Philippo was the scribe of approximately eight quinterns of music for the choir in 1463, music that presumably survives in the basilica's choirbook, SPB80.

The choir finally regained or surpassed the size it had attained under Nicholas V in December 1462, for reasons that surely have less to do with a new attitude toward northern polyphony than with a renewed ability to support the necessary forces. Approximately six months earlier, vast deposits of alum were found near Tolfa in the papal states. Pius himself reported that he learned of this unanticipated wealth in May when the discoverer told him, "Today I bring you a victory over the Turk." By 1463 the efforts of some 8,000 miners contributed an estimated 100,000 ducats per year to the papal treasury.^[40] What the Jubilee had done for Nicholas V's ability to pursue architectural and artistic endeavors, the mines did for Pius II's. In August Gregorio left

[38] The supplication is in Reg. suppl. 578, fol. 217r. Doc. 1465a records the alms. Although this payment is dated 31 March 1465, payments made on the last day of the month were often for services made in preceding weeks.

[39] Regarding Antwerp, see J. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, "De koralen de zangers en de zangmeesters van de Antwerpse O.-L.-Vrouwekerk tijdens de 15e eeuw," 38. The Mass in Munich 3154, fols. 131v-37v is discussed in Tom Noblitt, "Das Chorbuch des Nikolaus Leopold (München, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms. 3154): Repertorium," and "Die Datierung der Handschrift Mus. Ms. 3154 der Staatsbibliothek München." For the Hungarian reference, see Peter Király, "Un séjour de Josquin des Prés à la cour de Hongrie?," 147. Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the Fifteenth Century , 47, 50, 161, 316, records a Niccolo Philippo de Olanda at Ferrara from 1446 to 1448 and 1471 to 1481. This singer was, however, a soprano. A year after Philippo left St. Peter's, a Ffelippo de Burgunya copied "diversos officis ecclesiastichs" into a "libro de cant orgue" for the chapel of Ferrante I in Naples; see Tammaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d'Aragona , 2:247, no. 226.

[40] Pastor, History of the Popes , 3:261-63.

on the first of his presumptive recruiting trips, and in December the choir grew to seven. And in contrast to the preceding years of short-term employment, the personnel of the choir remained essentially unchanged until June 1464, Pius's last weeks in Rome. Only after the ailing pope set out for Ancona, on his quixotic attempt to lead the crusade in person, did the choir begin admitting several new singers (Francisco Radulphi, Hugoni, Gofredo, Guillelmo Parvo, Johannes Sclavolini, and Gregorio's temporary replacement Gaspare, who himself gave way to Thomaso). There are no records of any singers at the basilica in August, the month that Pius died.

Over the next decades the St. Peter's choir proceeded on a more stable basis. More singers remained for longer periods, with length measured not in terms of decades as in the papal chapel, but in periods of three to five years. And although the choir occasionally endured sudden turnovers, the causes were usually health related rather than political or economic. After Pius the main threat to the basilica's choir was not fiscal austerity, but flooding and the plagues that periodically descended on Rome, as in 1476, 1478, 1485, or 1493-94. Thanks to the alum mines, popes after Pius could pursue artistic and architectural projects as well as the crusade. Paul II, distinctly less avid in his crusading instincts and in his support of humanists, turned instead to such endeavors as the completion of his family palace at St. Mark's in Rome. Perhaps because he had been cardinal archpriest of St. Peter's, Paul II evidently had a strong interest in the welfare of the basilica, manifested perhaps most of all in his resumption of construction on the new choir initiated by Nicholas V.

As many more northern musicians found positions in the basilica's choir, their standing could only have been enhanced by Paul's decision to replace himself as cardinal archpriest with Richard Olivier de Longueil, the only Frenchman to hold this post in the fifteenth century. During the latter half of the 1460s, there were invariably only two Italians in the choir at a time, the chapter officials Loysio de Diano and Bonomo, who were paid less than the others, Gabriele Cappellano (replacing Bonomo) or Marcho de Setia. The preponderance of French or Flemish names is clear, many whose movements can be traced to other courts: Carulo Britonio (also Karulo Sancti Briotii; that is, San Brieuc in Brittany); Egidius Crispini (Gilles Crepin), for a time

at Cambrai and the Court of Savoy,^[41] and Johannes Cornuel, who in the 1470s sang at Milan.^[42] So too did his colleagues, the peripatetic duo of Giletto and Jacotino. They are presumably the singers that had been known in 1456 at the court of Ferrante I in Naples as Giletto di Barcellona and Jacotino di Borgogne, and as Gilet and Jacotino again in Milan in 1474.^[43] Three later joined the papal chapel: Guillaume des Mares, Guillaume Rose, and Johannes Raat. The last two of these, along with Johannes Maas, evidently had ties to Bruges.

Two of the premier journeymen musicians of the age passed through St. Peter's during this period: Johannes Fede and Jachettus di Marvilla. Fede is the Jean Fede alias Sohier active in several of the major musical centers of the time—Paris, Cambrai, Ferrara—and a member of the papal chapel of Eugenius IV from 1443 to 1445. Shortly before coming to St. Peter's in December 1465, Fede was with Marie Anjou, wife of King Charles VII, in 1462, and probably as a notary and secretary first with Charles VII and then Louis XI between 1461 and 1464.^[44] While in Rome he requested a canonry at Noyons Cathedral.^[45]

Regarding Jachetto (known variously as di Rouen, di Marvilla, and di Lorraine), he may have sung at St. Peter's for as long as three years, from early 1469 through 1471. This possibility stems from a letter Jachetto wrote to Lorenzo de' Medici (21 March 1469) in which Jachetto reported that he had arrived in Rome the previous January, ostensibly to find some good singers for Lorenzo. Having located a tenor, three sopranos, and a contratenor (himself), he announced his

[41] See pp. 94-95.

[42] In addition to these and the singers named below, there were Francisco Radulphi (a Bono Radulphi sang in the Sistine Chapel from 1500 to 1507, as did two singers named Johannes Radulphi in 1484-94 and 1507-14, all of them northerners); Johannes Guillant (Guillaume des Mares replaced him in July 1471, shortly before the death of Paul II; when des Mares joined the papal chapel in 1472, Guillant returned, described as tenoriste antiquo ); and Petrus Johannes (also Pierino, Pierret).

[43] Allan Atlas, "Alexander Agricola and Ferrante I of Naples," 319, and Guglielmo Barblan, "Vita musicale alla corte sforzesca," 826, 830, and 836. They were also in the list that Barblan dates before 1474.

[44] This information is taken from Paula Higgins, Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée , v-vi.

[45] Reg. lat. 634, fols. 3r-4v (14 April 1466). This document identifies the singer as Johannes Fede, rather than merely as "Fede," as in ACSP records, and suggests that he was still employed at St. Peter's in April 1466 (ACSP records break off after February).

readiness to lead them all to Florence.^[46] Lorenzo apparently did not accept this offer; at any rate, when the St. Peter's records resume in March 1471 after a three-year hiatus, a Jachettus who sang contratenor was present.

Toward a National Balance: Sixtus IV to Julius II

The first della Rovere pope, Sixtus IV, quickly earned his reputation as a patron of the arts, founder of the Vatican Library, restorer of old churches, and builder of new. Spending freely, he also elevated nephews to key positions, who, like newly installed Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, established themselves as prominent patrons in their own right. That Sixtus did much for musicians is well known, particularly because the new cappella magna , as well as the enlarged choir that performed in it, has been known ever since as the Sistine Chapel. Starting out with sixteen singers when Sixtus succeeded Paul in 1471, the papal chapel, doubtless in preparation for the upcoming Jubilee Year of 1475, added five singers in August 1474, thereby increasing the size to nineteen. By the dedication of the Sistine Chapel in 1483, Sixtus had increased the size of the choir to an unprecedented (in Rome) twenty-four singers.^[47]

The choir also added new members at St. Peter's, albeit more modestly and chiefly by the addition of Italian singers. Although the Italian presence increased after the first few years of Sixtus IV's papacy (Table 5) to as much as half the choir, the old hierarchy endured. Italians for the most part continued to be clerics of the basilica who were paid only 1 ducat per month, as compared to 2 or 3 for the northerners.

[46] The letter appears translated in D'Accone, "Singers of San Giovanni," 324, after the Italian published by Bianca Becherini, in "Relazioni di musici fiamminghi con la corte dei Medici," 111-12; this version is more readily accessible in Roth, "Primus in Petri aedem Sixtus perpetuae harmoniae cantores introduxit : Alcune osservazioni sul patronato musicale di Sisto IV," 233, n. 48. D'Accone also discusses it in "The Performance of Sacred Music in Italy during Josquin's Time, c. 1475-1525," 603-4, with regard to the size of performance forces.

[47] Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum,'" 42-44, 53-54; Roth, "Primus in Petri ," 226-28. On the relative sizes of choirs in Italy, Flanders, and England, see Christopher Reynolds, "Sacred Polyphony," 187-88; and Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 83ff.

Bonomo was joined by Christoforo Sancti, Hieronymus Johannes de Pazillis, and Cambio. A couple of Italians collected a wage of 2 ducats, Archangelo Blasio and Nicholas de Setia. Despite possessing the skills to join the papal chapel in 1475, Archangelo never matched the 3-ducat-per-month salaries of many of his northern colleagues.^[48]

The creation of the Cappella Giulia had strong precedent in the deeds of Sixtus IV, a precedent Julius was quick to acknowledge. Prefacing his specifications for the Cappella Giulia, Julius cited first the foundation and construction of the Sistine Chapel, the ceremonial sanctuary of the Vatican Palace, begun shortly after 1475.^[49] But Sixtus had also built at St. Peter's a smaller chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Anthony of Padua, which, according to his instructions, was to house his tomb upon his death. This chapel, also known for a time as the Cappella Sistina, was consecrated on 8 December 1479.^[50] Within a month Sixtus had directed the St. Peter's chapter to staff the chapel with a choir of ten singers (bull of 1 January 1480) and, following the example of Nicholas V, granted those singers all "privileges, favors, and graces" normally extended to the papal choir (doc. 1480a). The haste of Sixtus to specify a body of singers for the basilica accords with his apparent planning of the entire physical setting of his chapel, down to the iconography of his tomb.^[51] Sixtus wanted to ensure that his final resting place would be appropriately dignified, both visually and aurally.

The bull of 1480 has wrongly been deemed ineffectual, due either to lack of money or lack of interest on the part of the St. Peter's chap-

[48] During the 1470s these included Guillaume des Mares, Egidius Crispini (both returned after several years in the north), Anthonius de Mota (from Rouen), Rainaldus de Meis, Johannes Marescalli, Winochus de Oudenorde, Nicholaus Ausquier, Remigius Massin, Johannes Piccardus, Johannes Alfonsus Salamantinus, and Georgius de Dunis. This last may be the composer of a textless and incomplete chanson in Seville, where the partially obscured name appears to be "Georgius Zuny"; it is transcribed in A. Moerk, "The Seville Chansonnier: An Edition of Sevilla 5-I-43 & Paris N.A. Fr. 4379 (Pt. 1)," 371.

[49] L.D. Ettlinger considers this dating "almost certain"; see The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy , 14. The chapel was completed in 1483.

[50] Collectionis bullarum, brevium aliorumque diplomatum Sacrosanctae Basilicae Vaticanae , 2:205-6.

[51] L.D. Ettlinger details Sixtus's active role in "Pollaiuolo's Tomb of Sixtus IV," 268ff. Ettlinger made a similarly persuasive case for the participation of Sixtus in the artistic scheme of the papal chapel in The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo .

ter.^[52] But despite the absence of Exitus records for the years 1479-82, important changes in the choir clearly took place at just this time; the annual celebrations held after 1480 in the basilica's Sistine Chapel on the feasts of St. Francis and St. Anthony were by no means the only outcome of the bull.

Of the stipulations prescribed by Sixtus, the easiest to account for concerns the size of the choir (in Table 5 the column for "Totals" gives the accumulated number of singers for the entire year; that for "Maximum" gives the largest size reached in any single month; the best indication of the overall dimensions is in the column "Average per Month"). The number specified by Sixtus, ten singers, was not achieved until the end of his papacy in 1483-84, and this includes the organist. Counting only the singers, the plateau of ten was not reached until December 1484, four months into the pontificate of Innocent VIII. Nevertheless, the consistently larger choirs in this decade clearly mark 1480 as significant. After comprising six to seven singers through the 1470s, the St. Peter's choir increased to an average of nine or ten members per month in the 1480s and early 1490s, then passed into a time of greater fluctuation. Changes in the choir's numbers correspond roughly to the lengths of papal terms: under Innocent VIII came a period of stability, while during Alexander VI's papacy (1492-1503) the size varied between two and twelve. In the years before the Cappella Giulia, the choir had once again returned to ten members.

Of Alexander VI's years, 1495 was the most turbulent, with services completely disrupted at St. Peter's as the choir dropped from ten to three singers for half of June and all of July and August. The basilica turned to singers from Santo Spirito. Charles VIII of France, who had begun his march through Italy in 1494, initially reached Rome in the first days of 1495. Despite the pleas of his companion Giuliano della Rovere, Charles did not attempt to depose Alexander VI, but instead headed south to conquer Naples. That accomplished, he delayed his return north until 20 May. By the time he reached Rome on 1 June, the pope and twenty cardinals had fled to Orvieto; and when Charles

[52] Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia au XVIe siècle, depuis sa fondation par Jules II (1513), jusqu'à sa restauration par Grégoire XIII (1578)," 185; and Jose Maria Llorens, Le opere musicali della Cappella Giulia I, manoscritti e edizioni fino al 1700 , vi. Ducrot errs, giving exactly the opposite impression, by claiming that during the succeeding decades "le chapitre ne trouvent que des chanteurs étrangers."

left Rome on his way toward Orvieto (3 June), Alexander and his entourage moved further away to Perugia (5 June). This time Charles did not pursue, heading instead for Siena (13 June).^[53] In the absence of the pope in Rome, the members of the papal choir that had remained behind celebrated Vespers on the eve of Pentecost (5 June) in St. Peter's, rather than as customary in the Sistine Chapel. For Corpus Christi the basilica once again took part musically in the procession, something they had not been permitted to do in fifty years (docs. 1495a and b). Alexander VI chose to return on one of the great feast days of the Roman liturgical calendar, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (27 June), making his entrance "cum ingenti pompa et triumpho."^[54] For their part of the festivities, the St. Peter's singers had enlisted the aid of their colleagues from Santo Spirito to welcome him. Evidently expecting them the evening before, the chapter paid these extra singers to greet Alexander at the door during Vespers (26 June) as well as at Mass the next morning.^[55]

The greater stability of the choir in the 1480s (evident in the "Average per Month" column of Table 5) deserves comment. Despite sharp differences in the number of singers employed annually, the monthly size remained steady.^[56] Not even the devastating plague in 1485 impaired the ability of the basilica to fill its choir stalls. As in the plague of 1478, every northern singer in the choir either left or perished. Johannes Teutonicus came from Naples in May and died in June; Hugoni, also from Naples and a scribe as well as singer, appeared in June and died in July; and Bernardinus de Flandria arrived in mid-September and died two weeks later.^[57] But while in 1478 the choir size slipped to five during the most dangerous months of the summer, in

[53] Pastor, History of the Popes , 5:450-74.

[54] Pastor, History of the Popes , 5:474, n. 2.

[55] Doc. 1495c. Still in October the basilica's choir needed help. The papal singers sang on the Feast of St. Simon (28 October) in 1495 "out of courtesy" (doc. 1495d).

[56] Singers present for three months or less in the 1480s include (for one month) Amaneo, Bartholomeus de Castris, Bernardinus (1483), Bernardinus (1488), Bernardinus de Flandria, Bernardus, Jacobus; (for two months) Hieronymus Sanctus Spiritus, Hugoni, Johannes Teutonicus; (for three months) Johannes de Rouen, Johannes de Tornaco, Petrus Guida Guillelmus. This does not count singers whose service at St. Peter's is indeterminate because of a break in the archival records.

[57] See, for Hugoni, Censualia 12, int. 7 (1485), fol. 75v, 31 August; and, for Bernardinus, Quietanza 12 (1485), fol. 97. This Bernardinus therefore cannot be the Bernardinus Vale active in Bruges until 1498 as suggested in Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 189. A payment for Easter 1485 conveys the desperation of turning to an older cleric (and former singer): "pay ... Dns. Nicolas de Setia, cleric of the basilica, for Easter for his singing in our church during Holy Week, due to the inability to find anyone who might sing" (doc. 1485a). He had already been a cleric of the basilica when he witnessed the sale of a house near San Eustachio in 1448 (Collectionis bullarum , 2:128). The course of the plague in 1485 is vividly reflected in the crescendo of monthly funerals at San Agostino: March (3), April (4), May (5), June (6), July (15), August (10), September (13), October (15), November (10), and December (5); these figures are compiled from ASP, Congregazioni religiose, busta 107, San Agostino, introitus 1474-96, fols. 55ff.

1485 there were always eight or nine singers and an organist present each month. Hiring new singers as fast as the old ones died or departed, St. Peter's employed twenty-four different musicians that year.

The expansion witnessed in the St. Peter's choir after 1480 came at a time when ecclesiastical and court chapels throughout Italy spent extravagant sums on singers, polyphonic manuscripts, and organs to build up their musical establishments. That the trend is visible in the papal chapel only emphasizes that growth was not dependent on the size of the choir during the previous decade. Where decreases occurred in any court choir, they followed some political or economic crisis; thus the assassination in Milan of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1476, the Ferrarese-Venetian conflict in 1482, and the fall of the Medici in 1494 led respectively to declines in the choirs at the courts of Milan and Ferrara and at the SS. Annunziata in Florence.

But the growth at St. Peter's differs from that experienced at other major Italian churches. Compared to performance forces at churches in Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, and other cities from circa 1430 to 1540, the additions at St. Peter's lag noticeably behind those at churches of a comparable ecclesiastical rank.^[58] While choirs of five to seven adult singers were widespread during the 1470s, forces in the next decade swelled to ten to eighteen adults at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, ten to seventeen adults plus ten to fifteen boys at St. Mark's in Venice, and nine to thirteen adults with up to ten boys at the Milan Cathedral.^[59] St. Peter's fared only slightly better than Padua Cathedral, which employed from four to nine adults and an unspecified number of boys during the later fifteenth century, or that at

[58] D'Accone, "The Performance of Sacred Music," 601-18.

[59] Ibid., 603-6.

Treviso, with eight adults and as many as five boys. But as D'Accone rightly observed, the choirs at each church were designed to meet the needs of widely divergent musical and social environments. St. Peter's meager showing as compared to Santa Maria del Fiore and St. Mark's in particular must take into consideration the absence of any large private chapel in Florence and Venice. In these cities the church choirs were the "focal point of musical activities,"^[60] whereas in Rome, the St. Peter's choir yielded that position to the singers of the papal chapel.

Another factor was more likely to have spurred the changes at St. Peter's. If a rivalry with other choirs had any bearing on the basilica's hiring of additional singers, it must be questioned whether the Sistine Chapel or choirs elsewhere in Italy would have had so competitive an influence as choirs at the larger churches and basilicas in Rome. For the last decades of the fifteenth century, archival and manuscript evidence indicates the existence of music establishments at several Roman churches. Aside from the presence of an organ, St. John Lateran evidently maintained some sort of polyphonic choir from the 1450s, when they employed the former St. Peter's singer Johannes Corbie.^[61] Cardinal d'Estouteville provided exceptional support for music at both Santa Maria Maggiore and San Agostino. The choir at San Agostino had new polyphony copied for its use in April 1497, when Frater Giorgio di Sancto Apostolo notated a Te Deum, a Credo, the responsories Sub tuum praesidium and Porta caeli , and four Marian antiphons: Alma redemptoris mater, Salve regina, Regina caeli , and Ave regina caelorum (docs. 1497a and b). San Agostino also had a functioning organ by 1479, and by 1485 there was one at San Jacopo de Spagnoli, played by a Spanish organist.^[62] And the choir at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, which sang at the basilica in 1495, at some time during the fifteenth century had as one of its members Gerardo di Toul, magnus cantor .^[63] He may be the Hieronymus Sanctus Spiritus who temporarily filled in as tenor at St. Peter's for two months in 1488.

[60] Ibid., 602.

[61] Starr, "Music and Music Patronage." 146.

[62] ASR, Congregazioni religiose, busta 107, San Agostino, introitus 1474-96, fol. 21; and Exitus, fol. 32v.

[63] Pietro de Angelis, Musica e musicisti nell' Arcispedale di Santo Spirito in Saxia dal Quattrocento all' Ottocento , 49.

Nevertheless, increased size and consistency were not the most significant changes at St. Peter's. The basilica maintained its larger choir with a larger proportion of Italian singers. When the basilica started hiring Italians to succeed Italians—as when Augustinus Romanus replaced Hieronymus Beltrandus de Verona in 1492—a much different approach to hiring is evident than in 1475, when it had filled in for Archangelo Blasio with either Remigius Massin or Matheus Gay. A quota system evidently existed after 1480, when at least half of the personnel were Italian. The balance in the last years of Sixtus IV—seven of twelve were Italians (1481), seven of thirteen (1482), six of twelve (1483-84)—continued into the papacy of Innocent VIII—seven of twelve (1486), six often (1487), and so forth. Even in 1485 they managed to hire eleven of twenty-four. Innocent, although ill for much of his eight-year reign and politically weak, had a strong and influential adviser, who also resided in the Vatican Palace: Giuliano della Rovere, dubbed "Pope and more than Pope" by the Florentine ambassador.^[64] Whether the future Julius II concerned himself with details of the St. Peter's choir may be doubted, but his interest in preserving the legacy of Sixtus assuredly did not begin in 1503.

With parity in numbers came equality in wages. Among many northern singers,^[65] the Italian contingent was for the first time paid on an equal footing: Angelus Ghisleri, Dominicus Stephani, Anthonius Fabri de Verulis, Petrus Torelli, Anthonius Martinus, Hieronymus Beltrandus de Verona, Fr. Alberto Sipontino, Augustinus Romanus, Bartholomeo de Ferrara, and for 1485-89 a soprano named only Serafinus. This last is not Serafino dall'Aquila, the eminent poet-musician and familiar of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, because he was in Milan with Sforza in 1487. But he could be one of the few Italian composers of church Polyphony in the latter Quattrocento, with two possible works: a structurally unorthodox Credo by Seraphinus in Per431, a Neapoli-

[64] Pastor, History of the Popes , 5:242.

[65] Such as Bertrandus Vaqueras, Johannes de Barneston, Roberto Anglico, Johannes Cameracensis, Bernardus Besson, Petit Johannes Teutonicus, Johannes Juvenis, Matheus and Guillaume Bras, Georgius Gerardus, and Johannes Brunet. Nicholas Sardigo (1490-91) is probably the Nicholas Sarigot de Scriva who sang in Bruges from 1485 to 1489, when he made a pilgrimage to Rome; Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 188.

tan manuscript from the 1480s; and a lauda by Seraphinus Baldesaris in Petrucci's Laude libro II (1508).^[66] Moreover, the usual allotment of St. Peter's clerics included several who sang polyphony, judging both by their salaries and indications that they sang something other than soprano: Hieronymus Johannes de Pazillis (contra) and Jacobus Antonius (tenor, and from 1490 also contrabasso).

Once Alexander VI succeeded Innocent VIII, this equilibrium between singers who were Italian and those who were not yielded to a three-way division between Italians, northerners, and Spaniards. The new group of Spanish singers in the 1490s came largely at the expense of northern musicians, who found their number greatly reduced, culminating in the replacement of Anthonius Waltheri with Theodericus in 1497.^[67] But St. Peter's also employed one or two fewer Italians every year, a decline from six, seven, and eight Italians a year before Alexander to four, five, and six. For several years the Spanish contingent made up a full third of the choir, a far greater percentage than then existed in the Sistine Chapel.^[68] Whoever hired singers at the basilica was as eager to employ Spaniards as he was determined not to exceed the choir size established in the early 1480s. These changes reached the top of the administration when the cardinal archpriest Battista Zeno died in 1501 after serving the basilica for thirty-one years. Alexander VI appointed a Spaniard, Cardinal Giovanni Lopez, as his (short-termed) successor.

With the Spanish musicians and clergy came a new performance style, especially for Holy Week music. At St. Peter's and in the papal

[66] Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples , 131; see also Allan Atlas, "On the Neapolitan Provenance of the Manuscript Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, 431 (G20)," 64-65; and Giulio Cattin, "Il repertorio polifonico sacro nelle fonti napoletane del Quattrocento," who disputes Atlas's identification of Per431 as the product of a Benedictine monastery; instead, he proposes a Franciscan origin on the basis of two Franciscan texts in the manuscript. Since I argue below (chapter 7) that Faugues worked at St. Peter's, it may also be relevant that the Seraphinus Credo quotes three voices from Faugues's Missa Je suis en la mer ; see Christopher Reynolds, "The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses," 234-36.

[67] Before summer 1499 northerners may have included only Fr. Anthonius Waltheri and Petrus Paulus de Mastaing (both future Sistine Chapel members), as well as Petrus Johannes (?) and Guy.

[68] Spanish singers may have included Valentinus de Peynetis, Diecho, Francisco Scarafanfara, Thomas de Licio (?), Theodericus, Rodorico, and Assalon.

chapel, Spanish singers introduced new performances of the Passion and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. From the first year of Alexander's papacy the papal singers presented portions of the Matins for Holy Wednesday, that is, the Lamentations, "more hispanico" (in Spanish style).^[69] The vogue was such that by 1499 one could hear the papal musicians sing the Lamentations in the Sistine Chapel during Matins for Wednesday through Good Friday, or in St. Peter's at a second reading of the Good Friday Matins.^[70] One year earlier the St. Peter's choir had prepared its own performance. On the Friday before Palm Sunday (6 April 1498), the singer Theodorico received more than three ducats for "collating, binding, and covering the Lamentations" (doc. 1498b). Judging from Theodorico's name, the basilica also embraced the Spanish style, a style Schuler theorized may have featured a four-voice, falsobordone technique. The Lamentations that Theodorico prepared may have been used again the next year when all six members of the choir collected an extra ducat for their singing of Matins during Holy Week in April 1499.^[71]

Within two weeks of that performance, someone at St. Peter's decided to reinstate the earlier north-south balance among the singers. That, at any rate, is the impression given by the complete reversion to former ways over the next year. The choir of April 1499, perhaps composed entirely of Italians and Spaniards, disbanded at the end of the month.^[72] In May everyone but the organist Aloviso de Spiritu and the boy Gabriele de Gabrielis left. Perhaps in order to prepare for the invasion of northern pilgrims in the Jubilee of 1500, the choir was reconstituted between October and December with a reinvigorated

[69] See Manfred Schuler, "Spanische Musikeinflüsse in Rom um 1500," 27-36; and Richard Sherr, "The Papal Chapel ca. 1492-1513 and Its Polyphonic Sources," 96ff. The description of the Lamentations is from Burchard, Liber notarum , 1:414.

[70] Burchard, Liber notarum , 2:133; Schuler, "Spanische Musikeinflüsse," 33f.

[71] Censualia 16, int. 6, fol. 55, 15 April 1499: "pro matutinis Cantatis in hebdomoda Sancta ducatum unum." The chapter's first expenditures for Passions occur in 1497, listing a total of four (one for each Gospel?) during Holy Week. Those on Palm Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were sung by clerics, while that on Thursday included two singers, Francisco Scarafanfara and Guglielmo de Amelia; Censualia 16, int. 2, fol. 48v, 3 April 1497.

[72] In March and April 1499 it consisted of Bernardinus Ladei de Narnia, Gerundinus de Fabriano, Rodorico, Bernardinus de Neapoli, Johannes, Jacobus Antonius, Aloviso de Spiritu, and Gabriele de Gabrielis.

northern presence. For the first time since Gregorio in the 1460s, the chapter may have hired a northerner and charged him with recruiting new singers. The Fleming Nicholas de Furnis participated at the Octave of Corpus Christi in June, was paid for ten days of July, before leaving for August and September. He then returned to head a choir—as scribe, singer, and eventually teacher of boys—that by January was essentially half northern, half Italian, with a token Spaniard.^[73] Sometime in 1500, after Assalon departed, the Spanish presence ended.

Until the foundation of the Cappella Giulia, that balance appears to have held (although only records from 1506 and 1507 survive). Even the duties of leading the choir were split along national lines, with both Nicholas de Furnis and Bernardinus Mutinensis (de Modena) designated as magister.^[74] This is precisely the juncture when the Julian initiatives at St. Peter's had begun, both construction on the new basilica and financial assistance for the choir. Indeed, one of the best justifications for the large endowment awarded the Cappella Giulia is the progress of work on the new St. Peter's. Though the building plans approved by Julius called for a gradual destruction of the old Constantinian basilica, the pace was sufficiently quick to earn Bramante the nickname "maestro ruinante." Not long after Julius had laid the first stone on 18 April 1506, entries in the diary of Paride de Grassis testify to the growing discomfort of holding services in the basilica. The pope heard Mass on All Saints of 1507 against the better judgment of de Grassis, but by Epiphany of 1508 services usually heard in St. Peter's began to be moved to the Sistine Chapel.^[75] By 1513 even Christmas

[73] Nicholas de Furnis, Johannes Pipelare, Jacobus Piccardus, and Michael, with the (presumably) Spanish singer Assalon, and three Italians, Sebastiano da Ravenna, Johannes Tarentinus, and Hieronymus Venetus (plus the Italian organist Aloviso de Spiritu and Gabriele).

[74] Northerners include Johannes Lezelier, Guillaume Dufay (!), Guillaume Leultier, Ludovicus Coysi, and Anthonius Camarescho (Piccardo); Italians are Dns. Philippo Dionysio (see p. 121, n. 30), Georgio Asculano, Hieronimus Florentino, Julio Romano, Placentino, and Laurentio de Gaeta. Table 5 for 1506 and 1507 counts two unnamed boys who sang with Aloviso de Spiritu as unknown; but as all other boys named at this time were Italian, these probably were as well.

[75] These references are among those cited in Christoph Frommel, "Die Peterskirche unter Papst Julius II, im Licht neuer Dokumente," 57-136; see his docs. nos. 92 and 106. The progress of the construction also required that the organ of Alexander VI be relocated in the basilica (Dec. 1507-Jan. 1508); docs. nos. 102 and 107.

Eve services had to be celebrated in the Sistine Chapel and not in the basilica "propter ruinam illius."^[76] Soon after the destruction started, Julius began to issue bulls supporting the singers of St. Peter's. In addition to that of 1513, he had previously offered assistance circa 1507, and again in 1511 and 1512.^[77]

The sustained decline in northern influence at St. Peter's is thus the most important musical ramification of the bull of 1480, particularly since the implementation of that bull during Innocent VIII's papacy may have played a formative role on Julius's conception of his chapel. When Sixtus published his plans for the singers at St. Peter's, he did so within a month of the dedication of his recently constructed St. Peter's chapel. Even though there is no provision specifying a balance of Italians and northerners in Sixtus's founding bull, the hiring practices of the ensuing decades primarily benefited Italians, except during the first years of Alexander VI. Northerners were by no means excluded from the Cappella Giulia—in the papacy of Paul III (1534-49) northern influence would enjoy an Indian summer with Arcadelt, François Roussel, and others as members—but the conditions that had made possible the northern dominance of dozens of singers, composers, and scribes in the decades before 1480 had long since passed.

[76] This is again according to de Grassis; see Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia," 186-87.

[77] Ibid., 180-85.

Chapter Three—
Organs

If the dating of polyphonic manuscripts contributes to a sense of how compositional styles developed, of what works were popular when and where, and if archival studies help to shape the biographical outlines available for composers and performers, it is worth asking what is to be gained from the study of organs, particularly when there are few specifications available for the size and musical capabilities of the instruments. At the very least, because of their considerable cost, the five organs built at St. Peter's in the 1400s are important as symbols of a prosperity and a heightened interest in music that were not always present. The remarkable willingness of each successive generation to purchase a new organ is in stark contrast to the previous century, when no new organs were constructed, and also the next, when the chapter acquired only one, and that not until 1580.^[1] Because organs were valued for their visual as well as their aural contributions to the basilica, the documents about their decoration are as revealing of the chapter's aspirations as the notices pertaining to construction and repairs.

But beyond considerations of symbolic value, this period is of interest because it encompasses what must have been an awkward transition in several large Italian churches, when established Italian organists found themselves confronted with increasing proportions of services sung in polyphony and with a new breed and nationality of singers. The duties and abilities required of organists must have changed considerably. Questions about organ patronage, even about whether or not

[1] Regarding the repair of organs in 1345 and 1347, see docs. 1345a and 1347a, and above, p. 15.

to have an organ at all, are linked to the development of the choir charted in the preceding chapters.

Construction

In the years after the curia returned to Rome in 1420, there were at least two organs in Roman basilicas, in addition to the one built at St. Peter's. The canons of St. John Lateran commissioned an organ in 1427 from Andrea di Francesco Pinelli, a chorister from the Roman church San Lorenzo in Damaso. Typical of the competitive environment in papal Rome, the only concern that the canons specified in the contract was that the organ should be larger than that owned by Santa Maria Maggiore; in fact, they wanted an instrument a third larger. Judging from the proposed dimensions of the choir loft—4 meters by 2.60 meters—which would hold the organ and the organist, the instrument was of moderate size.^[2] However meager this description, it is still more than we know about the organ then at St. Peter's.

Although the earliest account books of St. Peter's are from 1372, there is not a payment regarding an organ at the basilica until that to the magister organorum during the papacy of Martin V. From August 1424, it could be either for repairs to the organ or for salary to the organist (doc. 1424a). Regular salary payments commence in October, and these name Gregorius de Pisa as presbyter et organista . His wages were set at 1 gold ducat per month, as opposed to 1 1/2 ducats for the only other organist known at St. Peter's during the first half of the century, Johannes Jacobus. The organ played by Gregorius and Johannes was probably that constructed by the German organ builder Paulus Henrici dicti Wenchen, whose death was entered into the basilica's Liber anniversarii sometime during the century preceding the election of Nicholas V in 1447. Noting the date of his death (31 August) but not the year, the Liber adds that he "built and assembled [composuit ] our organ as a testament to his life, and his parents; and in his death [he]

[2] Renato Lunelli, Der Orgelbau in Italien in seinen Meisterwerken vom 14. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart , 133-34. Lunelli quotes from an unpublished study of Raffaele Casimiri, "Memorie e documenti per servire alla storia della Chiesa Lateranense." In 1434 Andrea da Roma, identified as a canon at San Lorenzo in Damaso, turned up at Orvieto Cathedral to repair 171 organ pipes. See Luigi Fumi, Il duomo di Orvieto e i suoi restauri , 455, col. 2.

bequeathed 200 gold florens to our basilica," some of which was to be devoted "to the repair of the house with the sign of the organs."^[3]

The terms of the bequest make it possible to estimate the date of the organ Paulo di Henrico built at St. Peter's. Before 1395 there is no mention of a house cure signo organum among the dwellings owned by the basilica, but from then through 1454 the account books locate it in the parish of San Gregorio de Cortina. This medieval church, situated squarely in front of the basilica (approximately where the obelisk is now), served as a residence for the singers of St. Peter's.^[4] Among its tenants were Paolo Tebaldeschis in 1405, then a prebendary and singer at the basilica, and, before him in 1397, a German scribe of Pope Boniface IX named Henrico (doc. 1397a). If this Henrico theotonico is the father whom Paolo honored by building an organ, then this organ was probably constructed in the first part of the fifteenth century. This possibility is all the more credible for the 1407 report of damage to the house Henrico had rented. Decrepit and uninhabited, the house with the sign of the organs had broken windows, stairs, and doors doubtless among the repairs Paolo hoped to effect.^[5] Because the pay books from 1407 to 1416 contain no references at all to organs, Paolo's work at St. Peter's must fall between 1416 and the next accounts in 1424. Almost certainly it occurred after Martin V entered Rome at the end of September 1420 and, with the assistance of the cardinals he brought with him, set about rebuilding the palaces, churches, and streets of Rome. He assumed responsibility for renovating St. Peter's, the Vatican Palace, and St. John Lateran. While the locus cantorum in the papal chapel was restored in 1420-21, it is tempting to think that St. Peter's acquired its first organ in at least fifty years.^[6]

[3] Tiberio Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae antiquissima et nova structura , 60-61, n. 2; and Lunelli, L'arte organaria del Rinascimento in Roma ... dalle origini a tutto il periodo frescobaldiano , 37.

[4] Christian Huelsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo , 257. Regarding the house itself, Pio Pecchai implies that there was also a house cum signo organorum in the parish of Santa Maria de Virgariis, a church next to San Gregorio de Cortino on the piazza; see his "I segni sulle case di Roma nel medio evo," 31.

[5] Doc. 1407a. If the chapter ever spent his money to that end, the improvements were temporary. The notices from 1448 to 1454 bluntly state: "Domus cum signo organorum est in ruina"; e.g., Censualia 5, int. 5, introitus (1448), fol. 42v.

[6] Regarding repairs to the papal chapel, see Franz Ehrle and Hermann Egger, Der vaticanische Palast in seiner Entwicklung bis zum Mitte des XV. Jahrhunderts , 90-91.

Considering all the building Nicholas V sponsored at St. Peter's—in 1453 alone he spent over 30,000 gold ducats on construction at the basilica and the papal palace^[7] —and considering the other signs of musical expansion evident during his reign, a new organ would have ranked among the lesser of his contributions to the luster of ceremonies in the basilica. Yet there is only the slimmest evidence that such construction actually transpired, in the form of a legal document from 1448, briefly summarized as an instrumentorum obligationis pro capitulo Sancti Petri . This links a Venetian organ builder (organorum artifex ) named Urbano Spera to the basilica, without supplying details about the nature of his dealings with St. Peter's.^[8] And while no archival records survive for 1448 or 1449, information from the years preceding and following suggests that the chapter did indeed issue a commission for another organ shortly before the Jubilee of 1450.

Of the fifteenth-century organs in St. Peter's, that built by Paulo di Henrico looms as one of the sturdier, apparently surviving through most of the papacy of Eugenius IV (1431-47) and his decade-long absence from Rome. Admittedly the sparse documentation for this period does not cover the years from 1424 to 1436. But if the organ in use through February 1445 was the one first recorded in 1424, then St. Peter's maintained its organ only slightly longer than did the chapter of St. John Lateran. They evidently replaced an organ constructed in 1427 sometime between 1444 and 1447. For much of this time the magister organorum at St. Peter's was Johannes Jacobus, a prebendary and in 1438 also a chamberlain of the treasury. His long career stretched from 1438 at the latest to 1456, with the telling exception of 1447.

During this first year of Nicholas's papacy, as St. Peter's hired several northern singers, the basilica had not one but an odd collection of organists drawn from the ranks of the St. Peter's clergy. And even though Johannes Jacobus was present, regularly collecting his ecclesiastical sti-

[7] Eugene Müntz, Les arts à la cour des papes pendant te XVe et le XVIe siècles , fasc. 4, p. 72, n. 1.

[8] The document is cited in Antonio Bertolotti, Artisti veneti in Roma nei secoli XV, XVI, e XVII: Studi e ricerche negli archivi romani , 13. See also Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 60-61, n. z; and Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 2-3. In 1489-90 a ftate Urbanus Venetus built the large organ "in cornu Evangelli" in the basilica St. Mark's of Venice; see Lunelli, Studi e documenti di storia organaria veneta , 227-29; and Der orgelbau in Italien in seinen Meisterwerken vom 14. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart , 188-89.

pend, he did not serve as an organist. Nicholas had evidently been pope for over three months before anyone played an organ in the basilica. Then for the Octave of Corpus Christi—one of the more important feasts celebrated at St. Peter's—the chapter allocated 'a meager 6 bolognini for the meal of "one who plays the organ" (doc. 1447b). Another several months passed before a group of fourteen clergy, mostly clerics, received an extraordinary "organ payment" (solutio organorum ) at the end of October, "for the organ on several occasions." A second such listing occurred in January or February 1448 (docs. 1447h and 1448a), this time naming ten individuals. In contrast to previous years in which one or two bolognini were frequently given to "he who agitates the bellows," the accounts do not mention that chore at all in 1447.

Yet the sums after each name are too high to be for the menial task of bellows pumping. Nor could they be the accumulated expenses from several weeks or months of pumping an organ, because either of the lists alone—each for three or four months—easily exceeds the total bellows expenses of any single year before or after. A similar payment occurs only in February 1493, shortly before the 1475 organ ceased to function, when the mansionario or custodian Christoforo was paid for playing the organ. The organ duties in 1447-48 were certainly temporary and likely basic, perhaps only to provide intonations for antiphons, hymns, and magnificats during Vespers, or for the Gloria of the Mass. Two of the tasks specified for a new organist at Udine Cathedral in 1454 were to play the cantus firmus and the intonations.^[9] It also seems doubtful that the various clerics at St. Peter's were playing a large organ, given the absence of bellows payments and the inactivity of the regular organist Johannes Jacobus.

From no organist at all to a communal corps—in this abnormal context the unspecified contract between St. Peter's and a Venetian organ builder looks more plausibly like an agreement to replace an old and irreparable instrument. When accounts resume in the Jubilee Year 1450, Johannes Jacobus is once again salaried as nostro beneficiato et horganiste (doc. 1450b), albeit intermittently. Furthermore, in this same

[9] These are among the most basic functions enumerated in Otto Gombosi, "About Organ Playing in the Divine Service, circa 1500," 51-68. See also, Vale, "La cappella musicale del duomo Udine," 93.

year two carpenters received telltale compensation, one for "expenses to the organ" and the other "for a door on the stall [case] of the organ" (docs. 1450d and 1451a). These are probably not repairs, always the responsibility of the organist, but actual construction, presumably on the case of an organ completed in time for the extensive Jubilee Year celebrations.

Once the basilica had its own choir of northerners, the organ appears to have become less important in the 1450s and even completely irrelevant between 1461 and 1475. The organ from Nicholas's papacy evidently broke down in 1461; moreover, after Johannes Jacobus retired, the basilica employed organists on a short-term basis. Beginning in July 1458 the sporadic accounts identify three organists, at least two of whom were clerics (listed in Table 6): Frater Antonio, "master of organs and sacristan in our sacristy," Frater Francisco, and then for eight months in 1461, Johannes "magistro nostro horganistae." Following the last payment to Johannes in November, the basilica did not have a functional large organ until 1476. While someone could have played a small portable organ, there are no payments of any kind regarding an organ until those pertaining to the construction of a new organ in March 1475.^[10] Because this loss coincided with far-reaching changes in the basilica's choir, both in the number of singers and in the amount of salaries, the absence of an organ after 1461 was probably the result of a conscious decision to change past musical practices. Italian organists who were accustomed to performing according to older, less often polyphonic, traditions must eventually have encountered problems accompanying choirs composed of northerners. For roughly fifteen years music heard at St. Peter's and that heard in the papal chapel therefore followed the same tradition of liturgical music performed without organ. But while this evidently represented a long-standing practice for papal singers, at St. Peter's it may have represented a practical solution to the problem of how older Italian organ traditions yielded to northern polyphony.

St. Peter's acquired not one organ but two in 1475. The identity of the organ builder, Jacobus Johannes da Lucca, is revealed in a contract

[10] Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs at San Pietro in Vaticano," 43; the payment is given there in Appendix 1, no. 4, P. 55.

between him and the Orvieto Cathedral in 1480 to build an organ pair just like the one he had recently completed for St. Peter's in Rome.^[11] According to the Orvieto specifications the large organ had four registers, and the small organ, evidently a rückpositiv , could "sound both separately from the large organ and together according to the will of the player." ^[12] At Orvieto they had first attempted to engage the German organ builder Fra Leonardo tedesco .^[13] When he did not come, the bishop of Orvieto proposed Jacobus Johannes da Lucca, who then submitted his designs to the chapter. The bishop recommending Jacobus Johannes was Giorgio della Rovere, a man with ideal connections to act as an artistic liaison between Rome and Orvieto. Not only was he a relative of Sixtus IV, but, more significant for his awareness of Jacobus's work, he was papal vicar at St. Peter's from 1477 to 1483.^[14] Word-of-mouth reports on past commissions must have played a large role in the job prospects of organ builders, particularly when the words of recommendation came from the presiding bishop. The contractual stipulation in Orvieto to build an instrument like the one recently completed at St. Peter's speaks well for the satisfaction of the basilica chapter and its vicar.

The inaugural performance of the new St. Peter's organ pair must have occurred one year later, not long after Ausquier finished copying the manuscript SPB80. By March 1476 the basilica had in its employ a Spanish organist, Johannes Alfonsus Salamantinus, who signed his first receipts proudly, "organista in basilica Sancti Petri."^[15] Although the organ was musically functional, work on the decoration of the organ

[11] The work at Orvieto is described in Luigi Fumi, Il duomo di Orvieto e i suoi restauri , 456-57. It and the organ at St. Peter's are discussed in detail in Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 43-49.

[12] Fumi, Il duomo , 457, col. x; Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 45.

[13] Lunelli identified him as the Augustinian frate Leonardo de Alamania active in Spoleto (1470) and then Rieti. Leonardo returned to Spoleto in late 1479 (Der Orgelbau , 103).

[14] He became bishop of Orvieto in 1476 (Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario d'eriduzione storico-ecclesiastico da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni , 49:221).

[15] Quietanza 8 (1476-77), unfol. This is also cited in Roth, "Primus in Petri aedem Sixtus perpetuae harmoniae cantores introduxit : Alcune osservazioni sul patronato musicale di Sisto IV," 234-35. There he repeats Lunelli's erroneous contention that Sixtus IV built an organ in his St. Peter's chapel in 1479; for a discussion of Lunelli's arguments, see Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 43-45.

described below continued still for another several months. So successful was the novel organ pair that Antonio de Thomeis, a Roman notary, specifically mentioned it in verses he wrote in 1477 or early 1478 to honor Sixtus IV. Lauding the sculptures and marble of the first altar, Antonio describes "the opposing organs, so excellent that they appear serene atop the sea."^[16] The reference to the sea must have something to do with artistic decoration and its probable position in a balcony above the early Trecento tomb of Orso Orsini (d. 1304) and the ancient altar, already present in the eighth century and known simply as buon Pastore .^[17]

As before these organs did not last long. Sometime during a two-year break in the records (March 1493 through February 1495), they expired.^[18] By 1496 the chapter had hired an organ builder of renown, Domenico di Lorenzo da Lucca (1452-1525). Midway through a career that began before 1479 and spanned half a century, he had already constructed at least a dozen organs, five of them in Padua and three each in Pisa and Lucca. From Rome he went on to work in Milan, Siena, Florence, and Genoa among other places.^[19] Domenico may have answered a summons to St. Peter's by the beginning of 1496, only months after contracting to build a fourth organ in Lucca.^[20] By February 1496 two canons at St. Peter's signed a contract with the principal

[16] The poem is published in Fabio Carboni, "Un capitolo ternario di Antonio de Thomeis in onore de Sisto IV," 273-85. The relevant verses are: "Del principe San Pier la sepultura/nella tribuna dello primo altare/quante figure di nobile scultura/marmoree, degno, como evidente appare, /colli organi in opposito si excellenti/che pargono serena sopra el mare" (p. 279).

[17] Arthur George Hill found this placement over an altar "peculiar" (The Organ-Cases and Organs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance , 2: 53). Cerrati summarizes the history of the altar, in Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 60, n. 1.

[18] For details on this and the organ of Alexander VI, see Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 49-52.

[19] See ibid., 50. On Domenico di Lorenzo, see Franco Baggiani, "Gli organari lucchesi," 5-19; and Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 40-43. See also his Studi e documenti di storia organaria veneta , 33 - 35, 181.

[20] He assumed the rent of a house occupied until December 1495 by Bartolomeo di Cristoforo, a papal instrumentalist ("tubicina di S. Sta.") from Mantua; see A. Bertolotti, Artisti lombardi a Roma nei secoli XV, XVI, e XVII: Studi e ricerche negli archivi romani , 1:380. Yet on 10 Dec. 1495 Domenico had agreed to terms with San Pier Maggiore in Lucca. Regarding the contract and the specifications for the organ, see Baggiani, "Gli organari lucchesi," 13 and 16.

artist and goldsmith charged with decorating the organ, so Domenico must have secured his own agreement by then, to the point of describing the size and capabilities of the instrument.

Given the rapid mortality of the organs that the basilica had purchased earlier in the century, it is not surprising that this time the chapter went to the trouble to deputize a distinguished committee of Isacco Argyropulo, Lorenzo de Corduva, and Stefano da Salerno "master of organs" to oversee Domenico's progress. Argyropulo, an organ builder and virtuoso, had resided in Rome since 1479 as a cubicularius secretus of Sixtus IV, and he occasionally came to read the Epistle in Greek at services in St. Peter's.^[21] Stefano da Salerno is doubtless the organ builder Fra Stefano del Paone da Salerno, active in Naples (1474), Florence (1483-84), and also at the court of Mathias Corvinus and Beatrice d'Aragona in Budapest. Fra Stefano was present in Rome by 1483 and then more permanently from 149O.^[22] Paolo Cortesi praised both Argyropulo and Lorenzo de Corduva in his De cardinalatu , written circa 1503-10, the latter for his dexterity (interpuncta facilitas ) on the clavichord.^[23]

In this same passage Cortesi mentions another organist, otherwise unknown, a Dominicus Venetus, whom others had lauded despite his "intemperate use of quick runs (effusa percusione ), by which the sense of the ear is filled with variety."^[24] Even though the Domenico hired by St. Peter's in 1495-96 was born in Lucca, there is reason to identify him with Cortesi's organist from the Veneto. Paduan churches had commissioned more of his organs than any other city, and in the contract for the two he had constructed for the Basilica del Santo of Padua, Domenico is described as a resident of Treviso. Moreover, between his arrival in Rome and his work a decade later in Milan (1506),

[21] See Celani's remarks in Burchard, Liber notarum , 1 :386, n. 1. On at least two occasions (in 1480 and 1483) he borrowed books from the papal library founded by Sixtus IV (Eugene Müntz and Paul Fabre, La bibliothèque du Vatican au XVe siècle , 281 and 290.

[22] Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 3-4, and 40; and Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples , 47.

[23] Pirrotta translated this passage of De cardinalatu in "Musical and Cultural Tendencies in Fifteenth-Century Italy," 103, with commentary on p. 107.

[24] Pirrotta, "Musical and Cultural Tendencies," 103.

the only reference to his presence away from Rome is in Venice in 1502; that is, just before Cortesi began his final essay.^[25] Other wandering musicians were identified as "from" more than one place, or as from someplace other than where they had been born. For Domenico to be born in Lucca yet called "Venetus" by Cortesi has parallels with Stefano del Paone da Salerno, also known as Stefano da Napoli; with Bernardo Pisano, born in Florence; and with the Frenchman Maitre Jhan, called Johannes da Ferrara in one Sistine Chapel manuscript. After finishing the organ at St. Peter's, Domenico went on to build another at the Roman church San Salvatore in Lauro. And in 1501 he was evidently available to tune the organ for St. Peter's. That is the implication of a brief, one-line summary of a chapter meeting in January 1501 about the "out-of-tune" organ and a "needy" Domenico da Lucca (doc. 1501b).

Although there is no contemporary description of the organ Domenico built for the basilica, its general features can be deduced by comparing other organs he had constructed to the itemized account of the renovations made on the St. Peter's organ in 1720. Although most of the fourteen registers would date from the renovation of 1624-26, Domenico had previously built organs in Padua (1479) and Lucca (1480) with a single keyboard, flute register, five bellows, and pipes made of tin and lead. The Lucca organ included a flute register, then a novelty, as did later organs in Lucca (1495) and Siena (1508). And if the St. Peter's organ resembled the one Domenico had just contracted to do in Lucca, it would have had five registers, pedals, and a range in excess of four octaves.^[26] It was therefore a larger instrument than that acquired in 1475-76 with four registers, but it could not equal contemporary German or French organs, either in terms of the number of stops or their variety; for example, the Innsbruck organ of Paul Hofhaimer which was restored in 1497 had six registers plus tambourines, bells, and bird whistles. In 1517 this exotic range of sounds

[25] Baggiani cites a Venetian notarial document signed by Domenico in "Gli organari lucchesi." 13.

[26] Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 41-42, and 87. He printed the Padua contract in Studi e documenti , 33-35. Baggiani presents a tabular comparison of six organs built by Domenico between 1480 and 1509 ("Gli organari lucchesi," 15-16).

still amazed Antonio de Beatis as he journeyed from Rome to Flanders.^[27] Nevertheless, the last of St. Peter's fifteenth-century organs was among the premier Italian instruments of its time.

Decoration

Beyond its musical function in services at St. Peter's, the organ also had a visual contribution to make to the artistic splendor of the basilica. Alpharano plainly acknowledged both facets of the magna modulatissima et elegantissima organa that existed for "the harmony of the choir's singing and the adornment of the basilica."^[28] Organ cases, first of all designed for the practical purpose of covering and protecting the pipes, were commonly painted, carved, and gilded according to the wishes and wealth of the church or donor. Sometimes major artists were engaged to paint the doors or shutters, usually on the inside surface, since the doors were seldom closed. Thus Paolo Veronese illuminated organ doors for San Sebastiano in Venice, and Domenico Ghirlandaio painted those for the organ Domenico di Lorenzo da Lucca built for the Pisa Cathedral in 1490.^[29]

For the St. Peter's organs, payments to artists and goldsmiths survive to the exclusion of expenditures to the organ builders. There is reason to presume that the primary responsibility of the chapter was for the decoration of the instrument and not its actual construction. The canons of St. Peter's may have relied on gilding to achieve the necessary level of elegance, because their primary concern was clearly not the prestige of the painter. While Sixtus IV patronized the likes of Botticelli and Alexander VI hired Pinturicchio, St. Peter's called Bongiovanni Benzoni from Ferrara and the aged Giovanni Aspertini from Bologna. The fragmentary records for the adornment of the 1475-76 organ account for only 20 ducats, as opposed to well over 300 in 1496; and no goldsmith is named even though one certainly would have

[27] His description is translated in John R. Hale, The Travel Journal of Antonio de Beatis , 62.

[28] Referring to the organ of 1495-96, Alpharano stresses the decoration: "... e metallis lignisque deauratis exornata sex columnis porphireticis sustentata ad concentus cantus chori et Basilicae decorem suffecta fuerunt" (De Basilicae Vaticanae , 60-61).

[29] See Hill, Organ Cases and Organs , which, however, is best on British organs. On the Pisa organ see Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 45.

been employed. Of the two receipts in the hand of the artist Bongiovanni of Ferrara, the first is dated 10 April 1476, just over a year after the preparatory work of Blasio the carpenter and one month after the new Spanish organist first appeared on the St. Peter's payroll.^[30]

This artist is certainly the Ferrarese Bongiovanni Benzoni, who by 1465 was acknowledged to be an "expert master of the pictorial arts."^[31] Benzoni was especially active between 1465 and 1473, on projects in the Palazzo Schiffanoia for Borso d'Este, and in the ducal chancellery for Ercole, as well as in the Certosa, the church of San Giacomo, and the cathedral. He then disappears from Ferrarese accounts until his last recorded work: some supplementary decoration of the organ case in the Ferrara Cathedral in 1492, the doors of which had long since been painted by Cosimo Tura. This was perhaps related to his work in 1473, when he painted a tableau of the twelve apostles for the altar underneath the organ loft, as well as the organ loft itself, "el quale anche so-plisse per edifizio all'organo."^[32] Those in charge of overseeing the decoration of the organ in St. Peter's, which was also housed above an altar in a free-standing balcony, sought out an artist recently experienced with just this sort of arrangement.

The organ built under Alexander VI received a far more lavish decoration. At least four artists and the goldsmith Sigismondo Conon (or Cormon) worked over five years, the latter receiving 188 ducats and the principal artist Giovanni Aspertini 342. The chapter also sold a Roman vineyard to Aspertini for painting the organ. It is possible that this "sale" to Aspertini was actually a payment in land instead of money, because the price of the vineyard he bought, 330 ducats, is nearly the full amount of his contracted fee.^[33] Having signed a contract in 1496,

[30] Docs. 1476b and c. They are translated and discussed in Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 45; see also Roth, "Primus in Petri ," 234, n. 50.

[31] "Magistro perito in arte pictoria"; quoted in L. N. Cittadella, Notizie relative a Ferrara per la maggior parte inedite , 1:30. The following summary of his career draws on ibid., 1: 66-67; Gustave Gruyer, L'art ferrarais a l'époque des princes d'Este , 2: 40-41, and 124; and Ulrich Thième and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart , 3: 362-63, who supply further bibliography.

[32] Cittadella, Notizie relative a Ferrara , 1: 30.

[33] Raffaele Casimiri, Memorie sugli organi ... di S. Pietro , 9, discussed in Lunelli, Der Orgelbau , 133-34; see also Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 44-45, n. 28. Other notices have been cited in Franz X. Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum' und die päpst-lichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts," 53; and Müintz, Les arts à la cour ... (1484-1503) , 195. The sources are found in ACSP, Arm. 16-18, no. 16 Demetrii Guaselli , fols. 15-18, 151, 152-53, and 249-50. The goldsmith may have been German, with "Cormon" signifying Kormann. The same Romanization occurs in early seventeenth-century Rome for another goldsmith, Johann Jakob Kornmann, also called Corman or Cormano; Thième and Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon , 21:319. About the other artists, see docs. 1499a and 1501f.

Aspertini was still working in April 1497 and still paying the annual tax on his vineyard (one barrel of wine) through 1504.^[34] The St. Peter's commission was undoubtedly one of Aspertini's last; the aged artist had already gained a reputation in 1450.^[35]

The St. Peter's librarian Jacopo Grimaldi, in his Description of the Old Basilica of San Pietro in Vaticano (1619), identifies as the artist not Giovanni Aspertini but his more famous son, Amico Aspertini (1475-1552). Called by Vasari a "uomo capriccioso e di bizarro cervello," he is today best remembered for a series of frescoes in Lucca, the three sketchbooks he filled with drawings of Roman ruins, statues, and sarcophagi, and a recently discovered organ case that he painted for San Petronio in Bologna in 1531.^[36] Amico evidently worked with his father, as Amico's older brother Guido had in the Bologna Cathedral, five years before. As Grimaldi cited Amico rather than Giovanni, later writers in Bologna also acknowledged Guido.^[37] Thus the formative influences of ancient Rome on Amico's style, his first Roman sketch-book with its depiction of objects at St. Peter's, and his work for Alexander VI in the castle at Civita Castellana all likely date from the years after Giovanni was commissioned in 1496, several years earlier than now supposed. Grimaldi's attribution to Amico rather than Giovanni should be taken in a similar vein as his attribution of the papal loggia for benedictions to Bramante rather than to the architect Gra-

[34] See Censualia 16, int. 4, fol. 7v. The vineyard had previously belonged to Martinus de Roa, a canon of the basilica; see Antonio Bertolotti, Artisti bolognesi, ferraresi ed alcuni altri ... :Studi e ricerche tratte dagli archivi romani , 9. Rodolfo Lanciani prints a notice of the sale preserved in the Archivio storico capitolino in "Notae topographicae de Burgo Sancti Petri saeculo XVI ex archiviis capitolino et urbano," 240.

[35] C. Ricci commences with Giovanni Aspertini in his study "Gli Aspertini." Bertolotti suggests that he may be the Giovanni da Bologna who worked for Nicholas V in 1450-51, in Artisti bolognesi, ferraresi ed alcuni altri , 8-9.

[36] See Phyllis Pray Bober, Drawings after the Antique by Amico Aspertini: Sketch-books in the British Museum , and Jadranka Bentini, "Una scoperta nella Basilica di San Petronio a Bologna: Due tavole di Amico Aspertini."

[37] Ricci, "Gli Aspertini," 83-84. On Silvestro da Lucca, see Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 49, n. 40.

ziadei. In each case Grimaldi credits the figure better known to his early Seicento readers.^[38]

The subject matter of the Aspertini paintings is important for understanding how the basilica assimilated a modern organ into its prominent position over the tomb of Orso Orsini and the buon Pastore altar. According to Grimaldi, Amico Aspertini decorated the organ with pictures of the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul and the story of Simon Magus. Whether this means that there were several separate scenes or one large composite—precedents exist for each—these episodes were particularly favored in St. Peter's: the distinctive head-down crucifixion, the decapitation of St. Paul, and one of several scenes from the life of the sorcerer Simon; either his disputation with Peter and Paul in front of Nero, his attempt to demonstrate his divinity by flying to heaven and his subsequent fall as Peter looked on, or Simon's dead body lying at the feet of Peter. All of these were not only common in the basilica, they were commonly found side by side. A visitor to the old basilica would have first encountered them at the front of the portico, portrayed in thirteenth-century pictures placed above the columns. Grimaldi names the first four: (1) the fall of Simon Magus; (2) Domine Quo Vadis ; (3) the crucifixion of St. Peter; and (4) the beheading of St. Paul.^[39] A still earlier exemplar stood at the entrance to the altar of Pope John VII. There one could see eighth-century depictions of Nero watching the disputation with Simon Magus and also Simon's fall combined into one scene with the martyrdoms of Sts. Peter and Paul, perhaps the exact combination painted by Aspertini.^[40] These three events came together for a third time in successive blocks of the marble ciborium for Sixtus IV commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Millini (d. 1478), a monument only recently reassembled.^[41]

[38] Cerrati reviews the Bramante attribution in Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 20-22, n. 3.

[39] Giacomo Grimaldi's enumeration, with sketches, is on 167-79 (fols. 135-43v) of his Descrizione della Basilica antica di S. Pietro in Vaticano: Codice Barberini latino 2733 . He also mentions another, Simon Lying on the Ground , which was by his time barely visible. See also Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 16, n. 1. The juxtaposition here with the encounter of Christ and St. Peter, the Domine Quo Vadis , lends credence to Roberto Longhi's suggestion that an Aspertini sketch of the same subject may have originated for the organ decoration (Ampliamenti nell'officina ferrarese , 21).

[40] These are mentioned by Grimaldi, Descrizione , 105 (fol. 71v).

[41] Ibid., 198-203 (fols. 159v-64).

The artistic imagery could hardly have been more traditional. Representations of Simon Magus, who by his attempt to pay Sts. Peter and John to grant him their spiritual powers forever lent his name to the vice of simony, would undoubtedly have reminded its viewers of Peter's earthly virtues and his triumph over an evil still prevalent in their own day. The organ was thus made to promote the veneration of Peter visually as well as aurally. But art here served a dual purpose. By the very familiarity of the pictorial message, the modernity of the musical instrument was accommodated and tempered. Through the replication of an easily recognizable series of images, the adornment of the Renaissance organ aided the integration of this large new structure into its place over a medieval tomb and an ancient altar.

Patronage

After approximately seventy-five years without an organ, the chapter purchased five between circa 1420 and 1495. Doubtless technological advances in organ' construction made ever newer instruments desirable; and the employment of northern rather than Italian organists may also have affected attitudes toward the organs. But quite probably the pope and not the St. Peter's musicians or chapter officials had determined when the basilica received a new organ. In the fourteenth century, as noted in chapter 1, and again late in the sixteenth century the hand of the pope in providing organs is clearly evident. When St. Peter's received a new organ in 1580—the first since 1495—it was thanks to the benevolence of Pope Gregory XIII; similarly, Clement VIII took the initiative for St. John Lateran at the end of the century.^[42] From this time come also the first written acknowledgments that St. Peter's owed the 1495 organ to papal generosity. Tiberio Alpharano wrongly attributed the 1495 organ to Calixtus III (1455-58) in his De Basilicae Vaticanae antiquissima et nova structura (Rome, ca. 1571). Writing in the reform-conscious climate of post-Tridentine Rome, Alpharano evidently identified the coat of arms of the libertine Alexander VI with that of his puritan uncle Pope Calixtus—they both belonged to the same branch

[42] Lunelli supplies the documentation respectively in L'arte organaria , 53, and Die Orgel von San Giovanni in Laterano , 3.

of the family—and so erroneously predated the organ built during Alexander's term by several decades.^[43] Grimaldi correctly attributed the organ to Alexander VI. Further testimony associates the construction of two other Roman organs to Alexander. Grimaldi supplies one, identifying him as the benefactor of an organ built by Domenico da Lucca for San Salvatore in Lauro, and an anonymous chronicler at Santa Maria del Popolo, writing in 1501, records the sponsorship of Alexander for the instrument they had gained only two years before.^[44] Indeed, few other Renaissance popes or cardinals could match this degree of support for music.

Alpharano and Grimaldi presumably based their attributions for the organ on the Borgia coat of arms that had been painted by Aspertini or one of the lesser artists. Patrons—papal or otherwise—traditionally affixed their name, their family's insignia, or both, to anything they had financed, no matter how small. Patrons proclaimed both their own generosity and their particular interests to future generations by signs such as Martinus de Roa's coat of arms on St. Peter's manuscripts, the inscription "Nicholas PP. 1449" in the basilica over each of the doors at the entrance of the atrium, or the ubiquitous Orsini crest on everything from books to altars. But as Grimaldi noted, the organ bore two coats of arms; the Borgia bull was paired with the basilica's insignia, the crossed keys of St. Peter. As with similar combinations this undoubtedly denoted a shared patronage, as on the roof of the atrium where the arms of Martin V were displayed in marble alongside those of the Duke of Brittany;^[45] or in the six windows of the facade designed by Michelozzo Michelozzi, three of which carried the insignia of the

[43] Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 60-61: "iuxta altare sancti Pastoris Calixto tertio Pont. Max. magna modulatissima et elegantissima organa e metallis lignisque deauratis exornata sex columnis porphireticis sustenata ad concentus cantus chori et Basilicae decorem suffecta fuerunt." Cerrati explained Alpharano's confusion over the Borgia coat of arms (ibid., 60, n. 2). See also Müntz, Les arts ô la cour , fasc. 4, p. 197. The attribution to Calixtus has been repeated as recently as Carlo Galassi Paluzzi, La Basilica di S. Pietro , 102.

[44] The reference of Grimaldi is in Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 60, n. 2; regarding Santa Maria del Popolo, see Enzo Bentivoglio and Simonetta Valtieri, Santa Maria del Popolo a Roma, con una appendice di documenti inediti sulla chiesa e su Roma , 46, n. 60, and 47, for a citation from 1646 about "l'organo già fatto fare dal sommo Pontefice Alessandro VI, Borgia."

[45] Alpharano, De Basilicae Vaticanae , 6o, n. 2.

original donor Cosimo de' Medici and three the Farnese arms of Paul III, who paid to have the windows refurbished.^[46]

There is no record of an agreement between the basilica chapter and Alexander VI, yet some sense of how the financial responsibilities would have been apportioned may exist in the documents that have survived. Regarding the two major expenditures, for construction and for decoration, I have already noted the absence of any payments to Domenico da Lucca, either for his wages or his expenses, and suggested that St. Peter's was therefore primarily charged with decorating the organ. This does not preclude payments to the organ builder as well, but if the chapter paid for everything, there would have been no reason to affix the Borgia coat of arms. The source of funding for the organ built for Santa Maria del Popolo in 1499 is no less ambiguous. Curiously, the contract between the church and organ builder never names Alexander VI, despite his receiving the credit two years later. Moreover, the contract explicitly spells out a separation of responsibilities: The organ builder was to pay all his own expenses, while the church would finance the decoration and the carpenters who prepared the spot assigned to the organ.^[47]

Legal action taken against St. Peter's offers another indication of papal involvement with the 1495 organ. Years after most of the work had been completed, agents of the pope applied extreme pressure on the canons of St. Peter's to get them to fulfill their obligations regarding the organ. From August 1501 through February 1502, the chapter weathered a series of ecclesiastical injunctions pertaining to their failure to meet their contracted payments. The first sign of trouble, a payment for a "seal on the lifting of the excommunication of the papal vicar [Pietro Strozzi?] over the 19 ducats for the organ" (doc. 1501d), was soon followed by others. In September the chapter met to discuss the censure they had received over "the money owed for the organ" and "other matters." The vague archival summaries of the meetings that followed tell us that the debts persisted and little else. Moderate sums demanded monthly attention in the fall of 1501; and in December, a brief four days before the arrival of their new cardinal archpriest,

[46] Ibid., 15, n. 1.

[47] T. Valenti, "Il contratto per un organo in S. Maria del Popolo a Roma (1499)," 289-96.

Ippolito d'Este, the chapter convened to deal with "the remainder [of the debt] and the painting of the organ," as if to put its house in order (docs. 1501e and g).

The trouble came to a head in February, when a papal functionary threatened to place the basilica under an interdict and to excommunicate all of its canons. While excommunication seems a drastic measure, it was not an uncommon weapon for collecting debts. Indeed, precisely because ecclesiastics were susceptible to this form of intimidation, they were apparently reliable debtors.^[48] Papal patience with this debt had worn thin after six months of inaction. For the first time the account indicates who the chapter owed, not an artist or an organ builder, but a member of the papal household who had lent 39 ducats "for the rest of the organ" (doc. 1502a), evidently for unfinished painting.

Receipts and other records for painting the organ always name one or two of the canons, but they were the agents of the chapter, "especially delegated" to oversee the details of the various expenditures;^[49] the St. Peter's official with the greatest responsibility for bringing papal programs to fruition, or for initiating some of his own, was the cardinal archpriest. His role in all this is unknown, but some contribution is indicated by a striking coincidence. Beginning with Antonio Correr (1420-34), present when the basilica probably gained its first fifteenth-century organ, all the important work on organs took place during the tenure of a cardinal archpriest from Venice. That early instrument was apparently rebuilt or replaced shortly before 1450 under the Venetian Pietro Barbo (1445-64), the future Pope Paul II. Then Battista Zeno (1470-1501) served sufficiently long to witness the construction of an organ pair plus the last and most durable organ of the century. And after another forty years, when it too was rebuilt in the 1530s, the archpriest was Cardinal Francesco Cornaro of Venice (1530-43).

Whether the regional consistency of this series is simply a chance occurrence or the product of a local tradition is unclear; however, from the list of archpriests we can draw an inference about the partic-

[48] Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 , 213.

[49] In 1496 Nicholas de Campania and Franciscus de Anguillaria were called "Basilicae Principis Apostolorum de Urbe canonici et commissarii ad fabricam organorum a canonicis et capitulo ejusdem basilicae specialiter deputati" (Müntz, Les arts à la cour , 195).

ular influence each cardinal had in the commissions. Not only were all of the organ builders from the north, rather than from Naples or even Rome, three of them had demonstrable ties to the Veneto: the Venetian Urbano Spera in 1448, Domenico di Lorenzo da Lucca (probably the Dominicus Venetus cited by Cortcsi) in 1496, and Alessandro Trasuntino di Venezia in the 1530s.^[50] In contrast, the chapter hired its first local builders in 1580, Mario and Vincenzo da Sulmona, at a time when the cardinal Alessandro Farnese, a Roman, was archpriest. Whatever this suggests about the sway a cardinal archpriest could muster in favor of awarding a commission to a compatriot, there is nothing to indicate a financial stake, such as in the numerous works at St. Peter's widely attributed to the patronage of the archpriest. Elsewhere in Rome the cardinal archpriest evidently took full responsibility for both commission and payment. There is a report from St. John Lateran of an organ sponsored by the cardinal archpriest Antonio Martins de Chavez before 1447,^[51] and by the 1460s at Santa Maria Maggiore its cardinal archpriest, Guillaume d'Estouteville, had supplied the church with both organ and organist, according to Gaspar of Verona.^[52] Lastly, while he was cardinal archpriest at St. Peter's, Ippolito d'Este apparently gave an organ to the Ferrarese church Santa Maria in Vado in 1515.^[53]

As I have argued elsewhere, the lengthy lifespan of the organ of 1495-96 is due as much to its lavish artistic decoration as to the presumed merits of its construction, since the money that purchased the time and materials of three artists and two goldsmiths represented an investment far beyond that seen for the earlier organs.^[54] But another factor would single-handedly have reversed the free-spending policies of the Quattrocento, when each successive generation commissioned a new organ: namely, the construction of the new basilica. Alexander VI was the last Renaissance pope whose approach to patronage was es-

[50] Lunelli describes his work in L'arte organaria , 49-50.

[51] Moroni cites the patronage of this Portuguese cardinal (Dizionario , 12:33). However, Lunelli states only that an organ was renovated under Nicholas V (thus after 1447), apparently unaware of the reference in Moroni (Die Orgel von San Giovanni in Laterano , 3).

[52] Gaspar Veronensis, De gestis tempore Pontificis Maximae Pauli Secundi liber secundus , 1,031.

[53] Lunelli, L'arte organaria , 22.

[54] Reynolds, "Early Renaissance Organs," 53-54.

sentially medieval.^[55] It lacked the focused resolve of the visionary Nicholas V, a resolve that Julius II forced on all of his sixteenth-century successors by the initiative he took toward St. Peter's. In this century papal money for organs is notable for its absence until 1580. Thus when the chapter showed its old impulse to have an up-to-date organ after the Sack of Rome (1527), the musical response of the 1530s was to renovate, the artistic to retouch. But these were mere concessions to modernity made in the face of the incomparably greater expense of rebuilding the basilica itself.

[55] Pius III reigned too briefly to implement a policy of patronage.

Chapter Four—
SPB80 and the St. Peter's Manuscript Tradition

Every manuscript collection of polyphony contains within its pages, in addition to the music, information that contributes substantially to what is known about the personal taste of the collector—and by extension the aesthetic values of the society that the collector belonged to—and also about the tastes and needs of the group for which it was written. The size of a manuscript, the composers represented within it, the genres and dates of the compositions, the number of scribes, the presence or absence of revisions and corrections, and various indications of performance traditions all provide data about how music served the institution that commissioned the manuscript. The polyphonic manuscript San Pietro B 80 (SPB80) contains roughly three generations of polyphony that served the choir at St. Peter's. At least a decade older than Cappella Sistina 35 (CS35), the oldest polyphonic manuscript certain to have been copied expressly for the papal chapel, it reveals much about the musical practices of the basilica between circa 1447 and 1500.

Physically, SPB80 is large in its contents (249 parchment folios) while small in its dimensions—each page measures 35.2 × 25.1 cm. At one time it was larger, both in terms of the number and the size of the folios. That small format could comfortably accommodate performances by a choir of three or four singers or, as a maximum, six to eight; in other words, more or less the size of the choir present at St. Peter's between 1447 and the end of the century. The manuscript contains sacred polyphony from the middle decades of the fifteenth century, including Vespers polyphony by Binchois, Du Fay, and Busnois, Mass cycles by Du Fay, Faugues, and Martini, motets by Puyllois, Compère, and Josquin, and hymns in the style of Pipelare from circa 1500.

In its present form there are eighty-four compositions, only four with attributions.^[1] Composers of twenty-eight pieces more can be identified from concordances—twelve of them to hymns and Magnificats by Du Fay—or attributed on stylistic grounds. Most of the smaller compositions such as hymns and antiphons remain anonymous.

The fascicle structure of SPB80, shown in Table 7, and the quality of the parchment bear on the origins of the manuscript. The twenty-four quinterns and one quatern (fols. 31-38) were bound according to an alphabetical series of letters written lightly in the extreme right-hand corners on the opening recto of each fascicle ("a" to "z" in lower case letters, followed by capitals "A" and "B" and "cc" and "dd").^[2] Because this series now lacks the letters "c" and "d," it is clear that two complete fascicles have disappeared, and with them the conclusion of Du Fay's Missa Ave regina coelorum , a complete three- or four-voice Mass, and the opening sections of the Mass by Lanoy that now consists only of the Benedictus and Agnus (fols. 21-25).^[3] The parchment of these quinterns has differences in character that correspond to internal divisions with musical significance. Suparmi Saunders has noted the "fine quality" of the first four fascicles (not counting the two that are missing), the "coarse and freckled" appearance of the next seven (fols. 39-108v), the consistently clearer quality of the next eleven quinterns (fols. 109-218v), and the "greyish appearance" of the rest.^[4] These different sections of parchment are signified in Table 7 by dashes.

The decorative ornaments in SPB80 are simple pen-and-ink initials,

[1] This total does not count four other entries: the second copy of the hymn Qui vult venire (fol. 232v), the ornamental superius for the antiphon Da pacem (fol. 233v), the Magnificat fragment (fol. 213v), or the fragment of the hymn Veni creator spiritus (fol. 49). For a facsimile edition of SPB80, see Christopher Reynolds, ed., Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, San Pietro B 80 .

[2] This alphabetical series omits the letters "j," "u," and "w" and lacks "a" and "r," which have been worn away by page turners. Further details about the structure of the manuscript and a review of scholarship are given in Christopher Reynolds, "The Origins of San Pietro B 80 and the Development of a Roman Sacred Repertory," 257-71.

[3] The loss happened after the manuscript had been bound, for there was a noticeable gap between fascicles b and e when I first inspected the manuscript in 1976. The condition of the binding has deteriorated considerably during the past twenty years of scholarly inspection. Now several fascicles are completely independent of the binding.

[4] Suparmi Saunders, "Archivio capitolare di San Pietro, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: A Study of the Manuscript 'San Pietro B80' and Aspects of Its Magnificat Tradition," 5.

voice nomenclatures, and occasional grotesques. Of the two principal types of initials, those done in red and violet ink, simple letters placed on a background of thin vertical lines, are the more frequent. Drawn through the entire manuscript, they are not northern as previously assumed but found in at least two St. Peter's chant manuscripts, SPB85, a fourteenth-century collection of psalms, hymns, and other office music, and the breviary SPB81, dated 1467.^[5] The other type of initial is larger, written in the same dark-colored ink as the notes and text, most probably by the main scribe. Some of these are embellished with humorously drawn creatures. This type occurs in seven Masses only, written on the seven "coarse and freckled" quinterns of folios 39-108. The tops of these initials were lopped off when the folios were trimmed before binding.^[6]

Roman Characteristics

Before discussing archival evidence about the copying of SPB80, the manuscript itself contains several clues to its provenance. The strongest indications relate to the local musical-liturgical traditions of Rome and St. Peter's, especially regarding the Magnificat antiphons and hymns. To begin with, the set of eighteen Magnificat antiphons copied by the main scribe is practically unique in the fifteenth century. Only Tr89 has a comparable set, and the pervasive musical similarities between those in Tr89 and SPB80 are well known.^[7] Although there are twenty-one antiphons between the two sources, only the selection in SPB80 is comprehensive; in other words, the scribe of Tr89 omitted antiphons

[5] Reinhard Strohm kindly communicated his view that these initials are characteristic of central Italian manuscripts from the mid-fifteenth century.

[6] The grotesques are on fol. 65v ("P" of "Patrem" is made with a dragon), fol. 67v ("S" of "Sanctus" is a now headless mermaid), fol. 80v ("K" of "Kyrie" supports a standing bear), and fols. 91v and 100v (both "E"s of "Et in terra" have the same humorous face).

[7] Charles Hamm, "The Manuscript San Pietro B 80," 45, considered them to be "so similar to one another in style that they must all be by the same composer"; (see also pp. 50-51). I have previously described how the main scribe in SPB80 originally copied a version of Prudentes virgines (fol. 237) that contained the same errors as that in Tr89; Reynolds, "The Origins," 290-93. The other antiphons in both sources are extremely close.

for sovereign pontiffs (perhaps of more use in Rome), doctors, and the dedication of a church among others, while the SPB80 series omitted antiphons only if another for the same class of feast were present.^[8]

Particularly revealing of a local Roman tradition is the pairing of the antiphons Petrus apostolus and Da pacem , doubtless related to the local importance of St. Peter. SPB80 has not one but two pairings of these two antiphons, first by the main scribe, and then in four-voice versions by hand E at the end of the century. These were the only antiphons added by hand E, who also added three hymns; and the main scribe signaled the importance of Da pacem by writing out a rhythmically complex, ornamental superius line on the facing page (fol. 233v). This pairing of Petrus apostolus and Da pacem also exists in two settings by Palestrina copied into Cappella Giulia VIII. 39 (fols. 191V-92 and 192v-93) as well as in CS15 (from the 1490s) and CS18 (from 1539).^[9] These Sistine Chapel copies are particularly noteworthy because before the seventeenth century the papal choir did not have a polyphonic collection of Magnificat antiphons. Aside from hymns and Magnificats, papal manuscripts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have polyphonic antiphon settings only for Marian texts and occasional pieces for Office hours other than Vespers, except for Petrus apostolus and Da pacem . The Magnificat antiphons honoring the basilica's patron saint are thus unique in SPB80 (as the only such pieces set twice) and in the papal chapel during this period.

The hymns in SPB80 point even more directly to its St. Peter's heritage. As Tom Ward demonstrated, the twenty-three hymns copied by the main scribe form a complete cycle for the liturgical year; a cycle, moreover, that is consistent with other Italian sources in the melodic and liturgical assignments to specific feasts.^[10] Whenever a hymn has more than one possible tune, that present in SPB80 is consistent with

[8] For One or several martyrs, Paschal, SPB80 has Lux perpetua rather than Sancti et justi ; for Several martyrs out of Paschal, Istorum est instead of Gaudent in celis ; and for a Confessor bishop, Sacerdos et pontifex instead of Amavit eum .

[9] The Ferrara Ordo lists Da pacem as an antiphon for peace and as an antiphon for St. George, the cathedral patron. This is analogous, therefore, to an association with Peter in Rome. I am grateful to Tom Ward for this information. While Petrus apostolus is concordant in Tr89 (fol. 89v), Da pacem is not.

[10] Tom Ward, "The Polyphonic Office Hymn and the Liturgy of Fifteenth-Century Italy," passim ; see also Gerber, "Römische Hymnenzyklen des späten 15. Jahrhunderts," 40ff.; and Kanazawa, "Polyphonic Music for Vespers in the Fifteenth Century," 202ff., 235ff., and 320.

the St. Peter's chant tradition as shown in several of the basilica's chant books from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: SPB84, SPB85, SPB86, and SPB88.^[11] Thus with Jesu corona virginum , while Du Fay set the melody S115, a setting present in CS15 and other Italian polyphonic sources, that in SPB80 employs S750.^[12] More striking, the Epiphany hymn Hostis Herodes impie copied by the main scribe is unusual for its use of the tune S53. Tom Ward located only one instance in Italian monophonic sources where this text has this melody.^[13] Yet at St. Peter's this combination was the traditional one. Likewise, the melody for Urbs beata Jerusalem is unique to SPB80 among polyphonic hymn settings. Ward listed nearly two dozen settings in other Italian and northern manuscripts, most of which use Du Fay's setting of S140. A few adhere to a central European tradition. Only SPB80 uses S56, in keeping with the tune present in SPB84, SPB85, and SPB88.^[14]

Musical and scribal parallels between SPB80 and papal manuscripts also indicate an origin in Rome. From a repertorial standpoint SPB80 shares several key works with the first two polyphonic manuscripts that were definitely copied for the papal chapel, CS35 in the 1480s and CS15 in the 1490s. The two earliest sources of Josquin's motet Domine, non secundum , a work certainly composed in Rome, are CS35 and SPB80.^[15] Also the Christmas motet by Puyllois, Ftos de spina , appears in SPB80 following a motet for the Octave of Christmas, the anonymous O beata infantia ; not only do both appear in CS15, they appear there in the same reverse liturgical order (though separated by a Regis

[11] The following dates of the manuscripts are taken from Cosimo Stornajolo's early twentieth-century catalogue, Inventarium codicum manuscriptorum latinorum Archivii Basilicae S. Petri in Vaticano ... : SPB84 (1300s); SPB85 (1300s); SPB86 (1400s; this manuscript belonged to the St. Peter's canon Martinus de Roa [d. 1475], and at the bottom of fol. 1 a later hand added "Cappella Julie"); and SPB88 (1400s).

[12] The tune numbers are from Bruno Stäblein, Hymnen : vol. 1. As Ward points out, the mid-fifteenth century monophonic hymnary CS6, a Venetian source brought to Rome by Paul II, uses S750. The St. Peter's chant tradition had S750 for Jesu corona virginum, Jesu corona celsiorum , and Jesu redemptor omnium perpes corona . The tune S115 is usually found in Italian chant sources with the text Deus tuorum militum ; "Polyphonic Office Hymn," 184-86.

[13] Ward, "Polyphonic Office Hymn," 186-87.

[14] Tom Ward, The Polyphonic Office Hymn 1400-1520: A Descriptive Catalogue .

[15] On the papal tradition of Domine non secundum motets and Josquin's place in it, see Richard Sherr, "Illibata Dei Virgo Nutrix and Josquin's Roman Style," 455-62.

motet). SPB80 also has a superius fragment of Veni creator spiritus (fol. 49) copied by hand F that is concordant and probably contemporaneous with the unique CS15 version of this hymn (fol. 30v).^[16] Stylistically, the influence of CS15 hymns on one of the hymns added to SPB80 by hand E is profound. As in the composite settings in CS15, the large four-voice version of Hostis Herodes (fols. 246v-48) presents each verse with a new polyphonic elaboration.^[17] The likelihood that the papal master of ceremonies Johannes Burchard described a performance of this particular setting is discussed below.

Among liturgical considerations, the disposition of the musical breaks in the Credos of SPB80 follows a pattern that parallels the situation in the earliest Sistine Chapel codices. The earliest Masses in SPB80 show no consistency whatsoever about where the musical breaks fall in the Credo text; however, the last Masses added to SPB80, those in the first fascicles (fols. 1-38v), all have a break in the Credo before the text "et incarnatus est," as required by papal liturgical practices. There is a pause in the Credo before the "et incarnatus est" so that the pope and cardinals might kneel and the celebrant bow his head; indeed, in 1510 the papal master of ceremonies Paride de Grassis specifically complained about his inability to hear these words in a polyphonic Credo.^[18] In SPB80 this pause is present in each of the first three Masses: the Missa Au chant de l'alouete , the Du Fay Missa Ave

[16] In Reynolds, "The Origins," 26o-66, I argued that the binding of SPB80 had ornaments made by the same tools as the tenth volume of the Obligationes communes , a series of papal taxation records in the cameral registers of the Archivio Vaticano from the years 1489-92. Without reiterating those arguments here, I uphold my original contention, which has since been challenged by Adalbert Roth, Studien zum frühen Repertoire der Päpstlichen Kapelle unter dem Pontifikat Sixtus IV. (1471-1484): Die Chorbucher 14 und 51 des Fondo Capella Sistina der Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana , 567-77. After first denying that the tools are the same, Roth concludes that the cover of SPB80 is too worn to make a comparison. In view of the concordant hymn fragment in CS15, however, the point is moot, since the original aim of pointing out the similar bindings was to place SPB80 in Rome by the 1490s. The details of Roth's views about SPB80, while not enumerated below, are all dealt with.

[17] Richard Loyan, "The Music in the Manuscript Florence, Fondo Magliabechiano XIX, 112bis," 93-95, discusses these similarities. Helmuth Osthoff suggested that the CS15 cycle may have been the work of Josquin and Mabrianus de Orto ("Mabrianus de Orto," col. 425).

[18] Recounted in Richard Sherr, "The Singers of the Papal Chapel and Liturgical Ceremonies in the Early Sixteenth Century: Some Documentary Evidence," 255; Sherr discusses the prescriptions for the "et incarnatus" in the Ceremoniale of de Grassis on pp. 252-54.

regina coelorum , and the Credo of the Lanoy Missa that was copied on the missing fascicles (between fols. 20v and 21) and that now survives in the Speciálník manuscript. Masses in the earlier portion of SPB80 (fols. 39-181) generally do not have this pause; it is present in only four Masses of thirteen.^[19]

Just how important this trait became in Rome during the papacy of Sixtus IV is clear in a comparison of Credos in the manuscripts CS14 and 51 with those in CS35. Like the older Masses of SPB80, the thirty-one Masses originally in CS14 and 51 have only twelve Credos with a structural break before the "et incarnatus est."^[20] By contrast, in the fifteen Masses in CS35 with Credos (counting also the Mass that its main scribe added at the end of CS51), fully thirteen have this break. This difference between CS14 and 51 and the later CS35 can be interpreted in two ways: either the earlier sources contain a nonpapal repertoire (and thus the Credos would not conform to papal liturgical practices), or they preserve a papal repertoire, but there was a change in musical-liturgical practices made sometime during the 1470s.

Musical differences and scribal alterations within the manuscripts support (but do not prove) the latter hypothesis. In particular CS51 replicates this shift within the main body. The last five compositions by the main scribe are independent Credo settings, including at least three by the papal singers Gaspar van Weerbecke and Bertrandus Vaqueras. Four of these break at "et incarnatus est." And since six of the eight preceding Masses also make this break, the number of Credos with an "et incarnatus est" pause is disproportionately high in the last half of CS51, ten of the last thirteen.^[21] Other Masses in CS14 and 51 were clearly altered by a later scribe to create the desired pause. The Caron Missa Accueilly m'a la belle (CS51) had note values changed and fermatas added by a secondary hand for this purpose, and Vincenet's Missa Aeterne rex had fermatas added, as well as the words "et incarnatus est" in the lower three parts. Even in CS35 someone revised part of

[19] Layer 2: Missa D'ung aulter amer and the anonymous Missa on fols. 90v-98v; layer 1: the Cervelli-Domarto Missa and the Missa Thomas cesus .

[20] This does not count the Obrecht Missa Salva diva parens , which was added to CS51 at a later date.

[21] Subtracting these Credos from the CS14 and 51 repertoire, the rest of the collection includes twenty-three Credos, only seven with this break.

the Credo in the Ockeghem Missa L'homme armé , adding a full-stop cadence in all voices just before the "et incarnatus est."^[22] Although in SPB80 nobody tampered with the earlier Masses, the consistency of the last Credos added to the manuscript suggests that the presence of the "Et incarnatus est" pause may have been one of the chief criteria for choosing these particular new works.

The most likely cause of these different musical divisions is a change in the coordination of the Credo recited by the celebrant with that sung by the choir. As Pamela Starr has observed, mid-fifteenth-century ceremonials are ambiguous about whether the texts of the Mass Ordinary were to be spoken by the clergy before they were sung or spoken and sung simultaneously. In contrast, by the early sixteenth century Paride de Grassis leaves no doubt: the singers and the celebrant had to accommodate each other.^[23] While the dating of CS14 and 51 is not precise enough to say when this change might have occurred (and in any case, too many questions remain about their chapel of origin), evidence about the copying of SPB80 indicates that it probably occurred early in the reign of Sixtus.

The principal scribe left a motto that has Roman associations, copied at the start of the Pattern in Barbingant's Missa Terriblement . Written into the "P" of Patrem is the hexameter "Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori" [Love conquers all and we yield to love], from Virgil's tenth Eclogue (Figure 5).^[24] The very act of citing Virgil may have been enough to allude to Rome, so closely were Rome and Virgil linked in medieval writings and legends.^[25] Once again CS15 has a counterpart. The "S" of "Sicut erat" in an anonymous Magnificat (fol. 160) contains the related motto "Amor vincit omnia," quoting a sequence that

[22] Gustave Reese commented on this in Music in the Renaissance , 125, n. 154.

[23] Pamela Starr, "Music and Music Patronage at the Papal Court, 1447-1464," 242-43, n. 46; Sherr, "The Singers of the Papal Chapel and Liturgical Ceremonies," 252-54, notes the warnings to the clergy to wait until the singers have finished before continuing.

[24] Virgil, Eclogue 10, 1. 69. Another possible Roman association for this quotation during this period is the octavo print Predicatio amoris , which begins with it. Tommaro de Marinis, Catalogue d'une collection d'anciens livres à figures italiens , no. 150, pp. 60-61, identifies it tentatively as Roman, ca. 1500. Max Sander, Le livre à figures italiens depuis 1467 jusqu'à 1530 , vol. 6, no. 790, reproduces the first folio.

[25] Domenico Comparetti argued that Rome and Virgil presented "such a homogenous idea" that they were impossible to separate (Virgil in the Middle Ages , 295).

paraphrases Virgil, "Amor vincit omnia potentia vincit yma."^[26] These differences are probably insignificant, since the arrangement of the words in both cases creates a retrograde impression of the word Amor as Roma . In CS15, reading downward from the top of the "S" results in "Roma vincit"; in SPB80 Virgil's words move around the "P" in a tangled arrangement, with "amori" tucked into the middle rather than ending on the far right. By locating "et nos cedamus" in the outer curve of the "P," Ausquier wrapped the text in a circular pattern that leads into "amori" from the bottom, which suggests an altogether more political reading: et nos cedamus i[n] Roma [and we yield in Rome].

The play on amor and Roma had ample precedent. In the Middle Ages Amor was deemed Rome's mystical name; a collection of sayings from the first decades of the Quattrocento included a conditional version of "Roma vincit omnia": "Roma ruit, si star; si vertitur, omnia vincit."^[27] Earlier medieval writers of graffiti had created others, such as the palindromes "Roma summus amor" and "Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor," and the palindromic "quadrato magico," "Roma olim Milo amor," which could be written so that the perimeter of Roma and amor made sense no matter which direction one read:^[28]

Beyond these connections to Rome and St. Peter's, there is archival and paleographic evidence that between 1474 and 1476 the chapter

[26] In this form the phrase had a musical setting in the motet Amor-Marie preconio-Aptatur in Las Huelgas, fols. 116v-17, in Montpellier, fol. 321, and in Paris 11266, fol. 37; see Higinio Anglès, El codex musical de las Huelgas: (Música á vens dels segles XII-XIV) , 1:287-89, and 3:244-48.

[27] H. Walther, ed., Proverbia sententiaeque latinitatis medii aevi , vol. 4, no. 26,938. See also Arturo Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del medio evo , 10, n. 25.

[28] Filippo Magi, Il calendario dipinto sotto Santa Maria Maggiore con appendice sui graffiti del vano XVI , Memorie, vol. 11, part 1, p. 72; and Margherita Guarducci, "Il misterioso 'quadrato magico': L'interpretazione di Jerome Carcopino e documenti nuovi," 219-70.

paid the newly arrived singer Nicholaus Ausquier to copy the manuscript long known as SPB80. A comparison of Ausquier's work to earlier and later copying will follow.

The Principal Scribe: Nicholaus Ausquier

In Sixtus IV's first years St. Peter's singers engaged in a flurry of manuscript copying and repairs. Were Sixtus not so well known for his interest in books and libraries, the approaching Jubilee in 1475 may have provided impetus enough; in any case, records indicate perhaps five or six books, not counting the missal that the St. Peter's canon Martinus de Roa had prepared for the basilica, now known as SPB72:^[29] There were five payments in 1472-73 for the preparation of a lectionary, including binding and illumination (docs. 1472a-d and 1473a); a psaltery and missal (docs. 1474a-b); an "old book" of the singers, the repair of which apparently involved three members of the choir, Nicholaus Ausquier, Egidius Crispini, and David Fornant (docs. 1475a-b); and several payments between 1474 and 1476 to Ausquier for copying a large unidentified book (docs. 1475c-e and 1476a). The last of these are sufficiently specific in their description of the number of quinterns and the rate of pay that they can be associated with SPB80. Moreover, as three of them are receipts in Ausquier's hand, a positive identification of his connection with the manuscript can be made on the basis of his handwriting as well. Aside from his two years as a scribe and contra at St. Peter's (half of May 1474 through July 1476), Ausquier has not yet been located in any other choir.^[30]

Before interpreting the payments to Ausquier, it will be useful to summarize them.

Item 1. [doc. 1475c] This is a lump-sum payment of extraordinary size, 27 ducats and 46 bolognini , made at the very end of the year (28 February 1475; thus it refers largely to actions that took

[29] The completed missal bears the date 18 July 1475, eight days before Martinus de Roa died (26 July); see Eugene Müntz, Les arts à la our des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe sièes , fasc. 28, p. 268, n.

[30] A Johannes Ausquier paid taxes on a benefice in Arras on 11 April 1475 (ASR, Camerale I, busta 1132, Quietanza per minuti servizi, 1471-1476, fol. 55v).

place in 1474). Most of it is not for scribal work but for the past year's salaries to Antonio de Mota and Nicholaus Ausquier (de Mota sang his final month in March 1474, and Ausquier soon replaced him). It also refers to the payments for notating some parchment quinterns and to money for the stationer Johannes Fini for the parchment. For the details of the payment it refers to the book of quittances, folio 87.

Item 2. As indicated in item 1, the details of the large year-end expenditure are given in the Quietanza register for 1474-75 on folio 87 recto and verso:^[31]

• [fol. 87r; Figure 6] for salaries for Ausquier and de Mota, a combined total of 21 ducats

• [doc. 1475d; fol. 87v; Figure 7] for notating seven quinterns, 2 ducats, and to Johannes Fini for the parchment, a slightly greater sum, 2 papal ducats

• [doc. 1475e; fol. 87v; Figure 7] for "residuo undecim quinternarum," for copying and for the parchment, 2½ ducats

The total of these payments equals 27 ducats, 46 bolognini , exactly the amount recorded in item 1.

Item 3. [doc. 1476a; Figure 8] Last of all, Ausquier was paid both for the copying and the parchment of an unspecified number of quinterns, 9 ducats in auro, 3 carlini .

The interpretation of these payments makes two assumptions: first, that SPB80 originally had the size indicated by the alphabetical letters, with twenty-seven parchment quinterns, or twenty-six plus a quatern. The quatern may also have lost an inner bifolio; if so, the loss probably

[31] There are two different kinds of ducats recorded in this payment: ducati d'oro papale , worth 77 bolognini , and ducati d'oro di camera , worth 72 bolognini . The latter are often identified as ducats without further qualification. One ducat di camera was worth 10 carlini (see the summary of prices in Paolo Cherubini, Anna Esposito, Anna Modigliani, and Paolo Scarcia Piacentini, "Il costo del libro," 331-32). I follow the exchange rate given in Roth, Studien zum fruhen Repertoire , 572, which is accurate for these years.

happened after Ausquier completed the antiphon Regina caeli on its first folio.^[32] Second, since Ausquier's itemized receipts all mention money for parchment preparation and music copying, it is safe to assume that the slightly disparate rates for these activities specified in the first receipt also apply to the others. The payments then relate to SPB80 as follows.^[33]

Item 2. For copying seven quinterns:

For seven quinterns of parchment:

If, as Hamm first proposed and as seems entirely probable, the principal scribe began copying with the Barbingant Mass on fascicle 7 (fol. 39), then seven quinterns corresponds to the group of seven quinterns Saunders described as "coarse and freckled."^[34] These quinterns are also the only ones to have the brown-ink initials and grotesques.

The next receipt mentions the "rest of the eleven quinterns," that is, eleven minus the seven already copied. For these Ausquier received 2 1/2 ducats, the equivalent of 180 bolognini . This works out to

Therefore, Ausquier was apparently paid 10 bolognini too much for this group, an amount equal to an extra half quintern of copying. The next payment compensates.

Item 3. The last payment, 9 ducats in auro plus 3 carlini ; that is, 670

[32] A bifolio could be missing from between fols. 31 and 32, since fol. 32r is blank, as is the other half of this bifolio, fol. 37.

[33] I am most grateful to Richard Sherr for suggesting this interpretation to me. The key point is the reading of "residuo undecim quinternarum" (doc. 1475e) as "the rest of the eleven quinterns" rather than as I had previously: "the remaining eleven quinterns"; Reynolds, "The Origins," 276. The implications for the dating of SPB80 and the relationship of SPB80 to earlier St. Peter's manuscripts are considered below.

[34] Hamm, "The Manuscript San Pietro B 80," 42; Saunders, "Archirio capitolare di San Pietro," 5.

bolognini (648 + 22). Since originally in SPB80 there were twenty-seven fascicles, subtracting the eleven already copied leaves sixteen:

Ausquier was thus paid 10 bolognini too little for this group.

The underpayment in item 3 makes up for the earlier overpayment in item 2. If Ausquier began on folio 39, then the first group of eleven quinterns would end on fol. 148, which is halfway through the Domatto Missa . But Ausquier presumably continued copying to the end of that Mass, notating half of the next quintern (fols. 149-54 equal eleven of twenty pages). Therefore, rather than an overpayment, the extra 10 bolognini would reflect accurately the additional effort that Ausquier had expended to complete the Mass. The accountant was later careful not to pay Ausquier twice for these folios, explaining the corresponding reduction in the final receipt.

The money that Ausquier received accounts precisely for the original size of SPB80. In all, this manuscript cost the basilica the equivalent of 15 ducats, 68 bolognini (or 1,148 bolognini ), for the twenty-seven parchment fascicles and Ausquier's copying. Of that, slightly more than half went to the stationer Johannes Fini for preparing the parchment—7 ducats papale , 55 botognini (or 594 bolognini )—leaving Ausquier 7 ducats, 50 bolognini (or 554 bolognini ), or a bit more than two months of salary for the best northern singers at the basilica. Payments for the binding do not survive.^[35] Bolstering this archival record and the Roman characteristics of the repertoire, there are two further paleographic arguments to be made for identifying Ausquier as the main scribe: not only do Ausquier's receipts match the main text hand, but

[35] In this regard doc. 1474b is suggestive. The stationer for SPB80, Johannes Fini, was paid in 1474 both for binding and illuminating a missal. Thus his responsibility for SPB80 may also have included binding and drawing the type of initial found throughout the manuscript. A resident of Rome from 1453 to 1489, Giovanni di Pietro Fini Fiorentino had many dealings with the papal court (see Cherubini et al., "Il costo del libro," 431-32). In 1484 the will of Cardinal d'Estouteville names Johannes Fini regarding an inventory of the cardinal's library; Müntz, Les arts à la cour , fasc. 28, p. 294.

the script of hand B, who must have worked at roughly the same time as Ausquier, matches that of another St. Peter's singer.

Although Ausquier used one script for receipts, a littera bastarda curtens , and another for the text of SPB80, a littera textualis , the hands can fruitfully be compared.^[36] On a general level, it is feasible to compare diverse scripts simply because, while scripts as a whole may differ, some individual letters will be the same; in the particular case of Ausquier, these similarities are increased because his script for SPB80 is at times extremely casual and rushed. Also he occasionally was forced to crowd words together under a line of music, especially in Credos, and in the process resorted to the very same abbreviation signs found in his receipts.

Among the many points of resemblance the following will suffice to show the striking similarities: (1) the word est in Ausquier's final receipt is found throughout SPB80, as in "Et incarnatus est" and "sepultus est," as in the last word of Figure 5 and the "est" preceding Ausquier's signature in the middle of Figure 8; (2) often, especially in the first fascicles, Ausquier used exactly the same capital "E" for "Ego", in his receipts as in "Et in terra" or "Et incarnatus est" (as on fols. 3v and 4). Ausquier made the top curve of the "E" as a squiggle that had either two or three loops, both in his receipts and in SPB80 (see Figure 9a); and (3) all abbreviation symbols that Ausquier employed in his receipts are easily observed in SPB80; to cite only two, the curved loop for the "m" of "unum" in SPB80 (as in the last line of fol. 4v) occurs at the end of Ausquier's first receipt, also in "unum" (Figure 9b); and the distinctive "us" sign in SPB80 (as on fols. 2v-3) appears in all of his receipts (Figure 9c).^[37]

Two of the secondary scribes, hands B and C, likely worked at about the same time as Ausquier, contributing respectively the "Cervelli"

[36] I would like to thank Gino Corti for his advice on the comparison of these two hands and for confirming and amplifying my conclusions here in his own inspection of the sources. Roth, Studien zum frühen Repertoire , 570, dismisses the possibility of comparing the two. Joshua Rifkin, "Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana," 284-85, used the same method to establish Bonnel as a scribe in FR2794. And Knud Jeppesen, "Die drei Gafurius-Kodizes der Fabbrica del Duomo Milano," 16, n. 1, identified a scribe as Franchinus Gafurius by comparing his hand to Gafurius's autograph copy of the Harmonicorum libri tres by Ptolomeus.

[37] For a comparison of other letters, see Reynolds, "The Origins," 278, n. 36.

Kyrie for the Domarto Missa and the Magnificat (fols. 219v-24) likely to be by Busnois. Hand B can be identified as Ausquier's senior northern colleague at St. Peter's, Egidius Crispini, because of the strong resemblances between the script of hand B's texts and Crispini's receipts. Hand B copied the Kyrie on folios that Ausquier had left blank, partially before the Gloria (fols. 143v-44) and, because that space was insufficient, partially after the Agnus (the lower staves of fols. 153v-54). He also drew the pen-and-ink initial and wrote the attributions to "Egidius Cervelli" over the Kyrie and to "P. de Domatto" over the "et in terra." The initial is a florid imitation of the red-and-violet initial found most often in SPB80. Thus hand B must have worked after all these initials had been drawn.^[38] And at several spots within the body of the Domarto Mass, hand B added a custos to the ends of staves neglected by Ausquier.^[39]

Handwriting samples exist for all of Ausquier's colleagues, and of these, none compares to the many similarities of Crispini, who is named with Ausquier in one payment concerning a manuscript (doc. 1475a).^[40] His script for "Egidius" in his signatures for 1476 has much in common with the slightly more formal SPB80 attribution to "Egidius Cervelli"; also the "C" and "s" of "Crispini" resemble the same letters in "Criste"; and the capital "P" in his receipt matches that in the attribution to "P. de Domarto."

Egidius Crispini, known in the north as Gilles Crepin, was probably employed by St. Peter's in 1461 (from March perhaps until October), during which time he sought a benefice in Utrecht. From there he moved to the Court of Savoy, where he served as a chaplain and singer from 1 September 1461 through December 1464. He then sang at Cambrai Cathedral as a petit vicaire in 1465 and perhaps also 1468.

[38] Charles Hamm and Ann Besser Scott, "A Study and Inventory of the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Á. X. 1. 11 (Mod B)," 101-44, show that among the five hands present in ModB, the first scribe to follow the main scribe decorated his additions with "clumsy imitations" of the main initials.

[39] Fols. 144v/5; 145/3 and 9; 146v/5; 147/3; 147v/6; 149v/6; and 150/8.

[40] Another colleague of Ausquier, Matheus Gay, copied a manuscript of polyphony for the Siena Cathedral in 1482, at the instigation of Alberto di Francesco Aringhieri, overseer of the cathedral; see Frank D'Accone, "A Late Fifteenth-Century Sienese Sacred Repertory: MS K. I. 2 of the Biblioteca comunale, Siena," 125-26, n. 14.

Crispini worked at St. Peter's at least from 1471 until 1481, but quite possibly he arrived as early as 1469. Sometime during 1468-69 he passed through Savoy on his way to Rome from Picardy, bringing with him certain newly composed Masses by "Messire Guillaume Du Fays."^[41] Elsewhere I have raised the possibility that Crispini may have actually composed the Kyrie he attributed to the otherwise unknown "Egidius Cervelli," because the scribe made several alterations to notes in the Kyrie that are essentially compositional revisions and not corrections of errors.^[42] On the basis of Egidius Cervelli's connection with Petrus de Domarto in SPB80, Clement Miller surmised that he is the "Egidius" who figures in a treatise by Franchinus Gafurius. In his Tractatus practicabilium proportionum written circa 1482, Gafurius criticizes the "inexcusabiles errores" in the mensuration signs of the Missa Spiritus almus by Petrus de Domatto and also the Missa Veni sancte spiritus by a composer he names only as "Egidius." ^[43] It is suggestive in this regard that from 1476, that is in the years immediately before Gafurius wrote the Tractatus , Crispini always signed his name at St. Peter's as Dominus Egidius, or simply Egidius, and not with any surname whatsoever.

Hand C entered the Magnificat octavi toni on fols. 219v-24, which Hamm recognized as a "virtual twin" of the Busnois Magnificat in Br5557.^[44] Whereas the Cervelli Kyrie was added after Ausquier had written the Domarto Mass, hand C probably copied the Magnificat before Ausquier had finished. Its uncrowded placement near the beginning of a quintern suggests that Ausquier wrote around it, adding a hymn before it and the two Christmas motets plus another hymn after

[41] David Fallows, Dufay , 75-76, and 247; see also Bouquet, "La cappella musicale dei Duchi di Savoia dal 1450 al 1500," 283. Regarding his presence in Rome in 1461, see p. 44. The evident overlap of his employment at Savoy and Rome is discussed on p. 200.

[42] Christopher Reynolds, "The Music Chapel at San Pietro in Vaticano in the Later Fifteenth Century," 82-85.

[43] Clement Miller, "Early Gaffuriana: New Answers to Old Questions," 376. The Missa Veni sancte spiritus has not been identified. The Missa Spiritus almus is known in five sources: Tr88, fols. 401v-410r; CS14, fols. 38v-47r; ModE, fols. 117v-29v; and Luc238, fols. 11v-17r; and Po27022, fols. II/8r-9v and II/11r-12v.

[44] Hamm, "The Manuscript San Pietro B 80," 45; "With its alteration of verses set for two, three and four voices, its canonic beginning, its use of the uncommon signature O₂ and other details, it is a virtual twin to the Busnois Magnificat found in Br5557."

it, and then beginning the group of antiphons. Also, although hand C supplied the voice nomenclatures, this Magnificat is the only piece written by a secondary scribe to be decorated with the red-and-violet-colored initials found most often in Ausquier's quinterns. From his script it is plain that hand C was a northerner. Aside from Crispini, there were only two other northerners present in the choir until the end of Ausquier's residency: David Fornant and Winochus de Oudenorde. Either may have been hand C. Fornant was paid to notate "some new quinterns in the old book which was destroyed" (doc. 1475b). But in terms of handwriting and heritage, the more likely candidate is Winochus, who from his entry into the choir (by March 1474 at the latest) until his departure at the end of September 1478 was the basilica's only tenor. If he is the Winnocus who sang tenor in Bruges in 1470-71, then he would have been well positioned to acquire the Busnois "twin" in the first place.^[45]

Ausquier's copying must date, at the earliest, from his arrival in mid-May 1474 and, at the latest, from his final receipt at the end of February 1476 (doc. 1476a). But in fact the first payment with dates (doc. 1475c) is merely a year-end summary of earlier expenditures, as is probably also Ausquier's last receipt. Therefore Ausquier's first two receipts (docs. 1475d-e) indicate only that by the end of February 1475 he had copied eleven quinterns or, because of the small overpayment, eleven and a half, presumably folios 39-153v. Ausquier left a small clue to his progress, and also to the identity of one of the St. Peter's singers who would be performing from the new manuscript, in the direction to turn the page on fol. 71, "volue archangele" [turn archangel]. This must refer to his fellow singer Fr. Archangelo Blasio, who had rejoined the St. Peter's choir in March 1473, coming from the Hospital of Santo Spirito. Since Archangelo sang soprano, Ausquier fittingly wrote the direction underneath the superius part for the Missa So ys emprentid , Kyrie I. And because Archangelo left the basilica to join the papal choir in December 1475, that direction must have been written before the end of November, quite possibly at least a month before that. From this it is clear that by fall 1474, that is, in the last months before the start of the Jubilee Year celebrations, Ausquier had begun.

[45] On this Winnocus, see Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 191.

With eleven quinterns completed by the end of February 1475, most of the manuscript remained uncopied. Ausquier, with help from hand C, doubtless accomplished much from March through June 1475, a period for which archival records do not survive. When the records resume in July, Ausquier was the only singer to have received a raise (from 2 to 2½ ducats), perhaps in gratitude for the new choir-book. If Egidius Crispini added the Cervelli Kyrie after Ausquier had finished and the red-and-violet initials had been drawn, then he probably did so before Crispini left for nearly a year at the end of November 1475. An estimate for Ausquier's work on SPB80 of approximately fall 1474 to early summer 1475 is quite feasible for a manuscript of its size. For comparison, the Cappella Giulia purchased twenty lined quinterns in mid-October 1513, paid for copying in April 1514, and for binding in July.^[46]

Dating SPB80 between 1474 and 1475 suggests an association between the most modern repertoire that Ausquier copied and Johannes Martini's probable visit to Rome in 1473. In the fascicles that now precede Ausquier's presumptive starting point on folio 39, the repertoire consists of Masses by Martini, Du Fay, and Colinet de Lanoy, along with motets by Du Fay and Compére. As Adelyn Peck Leverett has proposed, these works may have arrived in Rome when a Ferrarese delegation stopped for several days on the way back to Ferrara from Naples, where the wedding by proxy of Ercole d'Este and Eleanora d'Aragona took place in May 1473.^[47] Because the large entourage accompanying Eleanora is thought to have included Johannes Martini, Leverett theorizes that Martini was the source of the repertoire in the first fascicles of SPB80. The arrival of these fascicles in 1473 would also fit well with Alejandro Planchart's conclusion that the Du Fay Missa Ave regina coelorum was written for the dedication of the Cambrai Cathedral to the Virgin in 1472.^[48]

[46] Ariane Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia au XVIe sièle, depuis sa fondation par Jules II (1513), jusqu'à sa restauration par Grégoire XIII (1578)," 513.

[47] Adelyn Peck Leverett, "A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378)," 196-201.

[48] Alejandro E. Planchart, "Guillaume Dufay's Masses: Notes and Revisions," 20-23. And Gerald Montagna, "Caron, Hayne, Compère: A Transmission Reassessment," 111-12, argues that Compère's Omnium bonorum plena stems from the same occasion.

In Leverett's view, Martini's connections not only with Ferrara but also to the Imperial Court explain several musical links between this repertoire and Ferrarese sources and Tr91: the similarities between the SPB80 version of Du Fay's Missa Ave regina coelorum and that in ModD, the influence of Faugues's Masses in ModD on the anonymous Missa Au chant de l'alouete , the "close correspondence" between the unusual notation of Compère's Omnium bonorum plena in SPB80 and Tr91, the match between the Marian antiphon Regina caeli laetare (fols. 30v-31) and the anonymous Mass on that tune in Tr91, and the musical traits of Martini in the anonymous and now fragmentary Missa (fols. 21-25). Martini's responsibility for this repertoire becomes all the more plausible in view of the recent discovery that the fragmentary Missa is ascribed to Martini's friend Lanoy in Speciálník, and since there are strong grounds for attributing the Missa Au chant de l'alouete to Martini (see chapter 9).

Aside from the first fascicles of SPB80, much of the Mass repertoire was between ten and almost thirty years old by the time Ausquier copied it, and the Vespers music of Du Fay, Binchois, and Dunstable older still. Having identified one distinct repertorial layer within SPB80, the consideration of others requires a review of Ausquier's scribal predecessors at St. Peter's.

Before Ausquier

The heritage of music copying at St. Peter's probably dates back to the establishment of a full-time salaried choir in 1447 under Nicholas V. As in the first year of the Cappella Giulia, one of the first concerns of the new choir must have been to acquire a collection of polyphony. This seems especially probable under a pope like Nicholas whose interest in library building was unsurpassed. Although no payments to singers specifically mention copying, that is one explanation for the extra 2 ducats given to Rubino (doc. 1447d) in June 1447, his third month, in addition to his salary of 8 carlini and an extra 30 bolognini for the expenses of caring for two boys (docs. 1447a and c). Unusually, this payment came at the request of both the vicar and the chamberlains. Likewise, the months before the Jubilee in 1450 doubtless contained payments for new polyphony, at a time when the choir expanded to as many as twelve singers. But records no longer exist.

Book-related payments that survive from Nicholas V's years pertain not to copying but to extensive repairs. Britoni worked from September 1452 into February 1453 mending and binding missals and other books of the choir (docs. 1452b, d, and 1453a-c). For his efforts he received 7 ducats papales , equivalent to what Ausquier later received for SPB80. St. Peter's certainly owned a collection of polyphony by 1454, when the inventory of the library lists one music book "in canto figurato Bartholomeus de mag[na?] societate" (doc. 1454-55a). This potentially refers to either of two Italian composers, the Benedictine prior Bartholomeus da Bologna (fl. ca. 1410-25) or the composer of the popular chanson Entrepuis suis , Bartholomeus Brollo (fl. ca. 1430-50).^[49]

In succeeding years the northern singers at St. Peter's steadily added to the supply of polyphony. In Calixtus III's last year (1458) they gained eleven quaterns of "canto figurato" in the possession of the singer identified only as Decano (doc. 1458b). This may have constituted the collection identified variously as "the book of the church" and "our book" when Guillelmus was paid for composing and copying "certain songs" in 1461.^[50] This payment and that in 1463 to Philippo (Philippus Holland) for "notating certain quinterns" (doc. 1463a) came during the papacy of Pius II, who earlier may have helped with the compilation of the Aosta manuscript and even for a time have had it in his possession.^[51] Philippo received 2 ducats, 22 bolognini , ap-

[49] It seems less likely that the enigmatic "de mag" is to be construed as "de la Magna" (i.e., Alemagna). This is the only mention of a polyphonic choirbook in fifteenth-century inventories of the St. Peter's library. Such references remained rare in the sixteenth century, in contrast to chant books. None of the collections of polyphony copied between 1458 and 1467 were listed in the inventory of 1466-77, ACSP, Inventario 5. SPB80 was probably not listed until the inventory of 1567, SPA77, fol. 19v, where it may be the "Missa diverse in canto figurato" (this is in addition to the inventories listed in Reynolds, "The Origins," 272). By then it had long since fallen from use. Regarding the incompleteness of an inventory for the Cappella Giulia, see Jeffrey Dean, "The Repertory of the Cappella Giulia in the 1560s," 480.

[50] Doc. 1461c is a copy of doc. 1461b. Regarding the possibility that this scribe may have been Guillaume Faugues, see chapter 7.

[51] Pius's musical connections and interest in manuscripts include previously unknown contact with the Florentine tenorista Set Ghoro di Maso, while bishop of Siena. In an unpublished letter from Cardinal Piccolomini to the administrator of the Opera del Duomo in Siena in 1457 (Harvard University, Houghton Library, Lat. 298), he offered to arrange the hiring of Ghoro to sing at the Siena Cathedral as compensation for a missal that Plus had appropriated without permission from the cathedral. Ghoro had enthralled the Sienese in 1456 at the celebration of a pact between Rome and Milan to fight the Turk; see V. Lusini, Il duomo di Siena , 2:86-88. Thanks to James Hankins for providing me with a transcription of Pius's letter. On Ghoro di Maso, see D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the Fifteenth Century," 313. On Plus and Aosta, see Marian Cobin, "The Compilation of the Aosta Manuscript: A Working Hypothesis," 76-101; and Ann B. Scott, "English Music in Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha X. 1. 11., and other Italian Manuscripts," 148.

proximately enough for eight quinterns (assuming 21 bolognini per quintern at prevailing rates). The last surviving payment for polyphony before Sixtus was to Johannes Raat in 1467 for "notating" a Mass in the "book of the church" (doc. 1467a).

All of these notices testify to a lively tradition of copying polyphony at St. Peter's that seemingly culminated—indeed, virtually ended—in SPB80, aside from sporadic additions over the last twenty-five years of the century. There are indications that SPB80, considerably larger than any of its known predecessors, actually contains its predecessors, or repertoires from them. The origins of SPB80 would therefore follow a pattern common to many medieval books: One scribe copies several separate manuscripts copied at different times by diverse scribes, thereby obscuring the composite nature of the new manuscript.^[52] By leaving blank folios, Ausquier in turn left space for the accretion of new layers, not at all an unusual practice.^[53] I have already discussed what might be called the "Martini layer"; there are other potential layers simply in the various repertorial groupings: the collections of Magnificat antiphons, Magnificats, and hymns. But within the large collection of Masses distinctive subgroupings are harder to circumscribe, given the number of unica and anonymous Masses. Table 8 provides an inventory of the Mass section, with attributions and associations to be discussed in part 2.

It is probably coincidental that the amount of music accounted for by the scribal payments before 1470 corresponds to the number of quinterns in SPB80. The following estimations of the size of the earlier sources are only approximations: (1) the 1458 notice mentioned eleven quaterns, or 176 pages, the equivalent of just under nine quinterns; (2) Guillelmus received 56 bolognini , or, at 16 bolognini per quatern, three-and-a-half quaterns, roughly equivalent to three quinterns; (3) Philippo, as indicated above, may have copied eight quinterns; and

[52] E. Philip Goldschmidt discussed the working habits of medieval scribes in Medieval Texts and Their First Appearance in Print , 90-95.

[53] See note 60, below.

(4) Johannes Raat copied just one. Together this comprises twenty-one quinterns, exactly the amount that Ausquier copied together with hands B and C, minus the late "Martini" layer from SPB80. However suggestive, this page-by-page equation is of limited value because in order to make a meaningful comparison with SPB80 one would have to know such details as the page size of the earlier manuscripts and the number of lines per page. Even assuming that SPB80 had exactly the same dimensions as its forerunners, records from too many years do not survive, especially from the papacy of Nicholas V.

Within the group of Masses there are other indications of layers. The scribal peculiarities of Ausquier's first seven quinterns (beginning on fol. 39)—the brown-ink initials, the grotesques, Ausquier's only attribution (to F. Caron, with a portrait), and the correspondence of these with a distinct type of parchment—all suggest a discrete internal layer. Two scribal details in these quinterns may relate to the papacy of Plus II, both of them in the Missa Terriblement . First of all the quotation of Virgil, "Omnia vincit amor," was never more appropriate in Rome than during the years when even the pope had a Virgilian name, Aeneas Sylvius. Both Domenico de' Domenichi (bishop, doctor of theology, and diplomat for Pius) and Giannantonio Campano (bishop, poet and orator, biographer of Plus) compare the pope to his namesake in the Aeneid ; and Plus sprinkled numerous quotations from and allusions to Virgil throughout his Commentaries .^[54] Furthermore, in the crusading atmosphere fostered by Plus, representations of a victorious Rome were common. In a poem written for him by Campano, it is not Rome but Pius that "conquers all," the leader who got from his father the means of visiting the world, and from his mother the means of conquering it.^[55]

Another scribal ornament in this Mass also has potential emblematic

[54] See John McManamon, "The Ideal Renaissance Pope: Funeral Oratory from the Papal Court," 28.

[55] "Iure igitur late spatiatur et omnia vincit: / Patris obire orbem, vincere matris habet." This is quoted from Pius II, Commentarii: Rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contigerunt , bk. 9, vol. 2, 519. See also I commentari , 5:xxiii-xxiv, n. 25. Another Amor reference from about this time is the untexted composition by John Hothby entitled simply Amor . The tenor apparently begins with the motive of the chanson Adieu mes amours . Stylistically it shows the influence of Puyllois rather than English composers as his other works do. Although copied with Hothby's other compositions into Faenza 117 in 1473-74, it seems characteristic of the mid-1460s.

significance for St. Peter's during these years: the letter "K" of the Kyrie I. Ausquier filled it out with a large upright bear holding a small animal in its two front paws. Rather than a scribe's flight of fancy, this drawing may represent the Roman Orsini family (orso = bear) and refer to a contemporary Roman victory that would also accord with the idea expressed in the Virgilian motto of the Credo. By this time the Orsini family had founded twelve chapels at St. Peter's, and during the 1400s several held prominent posts at the basilica. Cardinal Giordano Orsini was archpriest, the sixth Orsini to hold this position, during the difficult years from 1434 until his death in 1438, and he willed his large personal library to the basilica.^[56] Latino Orsini started his association at the age of ten, when Martin V named him a canon of the basilica in 1428. At thirty Nicholas V made him a cardinal. And Pius appointed Rinaldo Orsini a subdeacon in 1459 and a canon the next year. But the most likely reference of the SPB80 bear is to Napoleone Orsini, whom Plus elevated to commander-in-chief of the papal armies on 22 August 1461, praising him as the "head of the Orsini family, who had fought for King Alfonso [of Aragon] and the Venetians with the greatest distinction."^[57] Under Paul II he rose further to captain general of the church in 1464, a position he attained again under Sixtus in 1477. The dire circumstance behind his appointment by Pius was the battle being waged against the papal states by Sigismondo Malatesta.

The possibility that these seven quinterns are based on a manuscript copied during Plus II's years is attractive as well because it is approximately the size suggested by the payment to Phillipo in 1463. A date of 1463 does not mean that all works in these quinterns were composed in the years immediately preceding, though for the Barbingant Missa (fols. 39-48v) and the Caron Missa L'homme armé , that seems likely.^[58] The Missa So ys emprentid , and the anonymous Missa attributed in Tr90

[56] On the Orsini discussed here, see Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri italiane , vol. 5, tables 6, 9, 22, 23, and 27; and E. König, Kardinal Giordano Orsini (1438): Ein Lebensbild aus der Zeit der Grossen Konzilien und des Humanismus .

[57] Pius II, Commentarii , bk. 5, vol. 1, p. 355. Pius's nomination of Napoleone Orsini is published in Ludwig Pastor, Ungedruckte Akten zur Geschichte der Papste , vol. 1, (1376-1464) , 145.

[58] Saunders, "The Dating of the Trent Codices from Their Watermarks, with a Study of the Local Liturgy of Trent in the Fifteenth Century," 91, dates the Tr89 copy of Barbingant's Mass at ca. 1466, based on the watermark present in this fascicle.

to "anglicu" are certainly from mid-century, as is probably also the Missa Terriblement . And at least one Mass is later, the anonymous Missa D'ung aulter amer (fols. 49v-61), perhaps even as Rob Wegman has argued, from "the early 1470S."^[59] But since Johannes Raat added a Mass to the "book of the church" on 30 November 1467, this payment offers a precedent for the way in which a later Mass—if not also this very Mass—could have entered a source that was itself later copied into SPB80.^[60]

Unlike the Masses in these seven quinterns, the Masses that follow the Caron Missa L'homme armé appear stylistically to stem from about the same time. They are compatible with datings in the late 1450s or early 1460s; in other words, compatible with the scribal payments of 1458 and 1461. The attribution of the Missa Pour l'amour to Guillaume Faugues is therefore significant in view of the payment in 1461 to the St. Peter's singer Guillelmus [da Francia] for composing as well as copying. And the Missa Thomas cesus , identifiable as an early work by Caron, may have been composed for a Roman event that took place on 7 March 1461, the arrival of Thomas Paleologus on the newly popular Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. Finally, since Crispini evidently copied the Cervelli-Domarto Kyrie in 1475, and since Crispini was potentially in Rome during 1461, his connection with this Mass may stem from his previous employment at St. Peter's.^[61] The possible

[59] Rob Wegman, "The Anonymous Mass D'Ung aultre amer : A Late Fifteenth-Century Experiment," 569 and 593. Saunders argues that de Rouge's Missa So ys emprentid was copied into Tr90 between 1454 and 1456 and the "Anglicu" Missa about 1456; "The Dating of Trent 93 and Trent 90," 70 and 75.

[60] There is no indication from this payment that Raat is the composer of the work he copied (doc. 1467a). Raat joined the papal chapel in 1470; if CS51 contains a papal repertory, then Raat could potentially have been responsible for its copy of this Mass as well. Raat may be the Carmelite priest, Johannes de Raedt, in Bruges in 1457 (Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 187). Payments to scribes for copying music into the "book of the church" imply a practice of principal scribes leaving a fascicle or two blank to provide room for future additions, as Ausquier did as well. Regarding this practice—whether uneconomical or far-sighted—in other sources, see Saunders, "The Dating of Trent 93 and Trent 90," 64; and Gary R. Spilsted argues that Tr87 once had empty fascicles to permit the later addition of works ("The Paleography and Musical Repertory of Codex Tridentinus 93," 56).

chronological layers of the Mass section, corresponding to the dates that the Masses may have been copied previously at St. Peter's, are numbered in Table 8.

After Ausquier

Appropriately for a manuscript begun shortly before a Jubilee, additions to SPB80 continued sporadically for the next twenty-five years, concluding with music copied in preparation for the Jubilee of 1500. Hand D may have added Josquin's motet Domine, non secundum in the mid- to late 1480S.^[62] That is the implication of the concordance of this motet in CS35, which can be dated toward the end of Innocent VIII's papacy (1484-92), because a secondary scribe copied a coronation motet for Innocent's successor Alexander VI at the end of the manuscript. A slightly earlier date is suggested by the possibility that hand D was also the scribe of the Kyrie for the Caron Missa Jesus autem transiens in CS51 (fol. 46v-47r). If hand D was responsible for adding the Kyrie in CS51, his presence in both sources is easier to account for if CS14 and 51 also were copied in Rome. The other late concordance in SPB80 with a papal source is the fragmentary addition of the Pentecost hymn Veni creator spiritus on folio 49 by hand F. The only piece written in a humanistic script, it could be the last piece added, or it could date from the 1490s, near the time the same work was copied into CS15.^[63]

The last substantive additions to SPB80 are the five anonymous hymns and antiphons copied by hand E:

[62] Charles Hamm argued that the SPB80 copy predates that in CS35; but he did so under the impression that Josquin's motet was the last piece added to SPB80 and that it was copied onto an independent fascicle that was "completely different in paper" ("The Manuscript San Pietro B 80," 42 and 48; and Harem, "Manuscript Structure in the Dufay Era," 168).

[63] I am indebted to Tom Ward for calling this concordance to my attention.

This scribe was probably Johannes Tarentinus, singer at the basilica from mid-October 1499 to April 1501. Among the expensarum generalium for December 1499, a time when Rome and the basilica were engaged in final Jubilee preparations, a singer identified only as Johannes was paid 3 ducats for "notating other quinterns for the chapel" (doc. 1499b). St. Peter's had two singers named Johannes in its employ at the time, Johannes Burgus Tarentinus and Johannes Pipelare. The hymns strongly resemble the style of Matthaeus Pipelare, with the use of Latin puzzle canons and dense, elaborate imitation.^[64] Attempts to identify the one Pipelare with the other have failed, since Mattheus sang at 's-Hertogenbosch until May 1500. Johannes came to Rome from San Donatien in Bruges, where he sang tenor from 1493 to 1499.^[65] The previously unrecognized stylistic resemblances could indicate that Johannes and Mattheus were related.

In any case, the SPB80 scribe seems to have been the other Johannes. Two months after the December notice, the general expenses of March 1500 include one to "Johannes Tarentino [our] singer, for his salary plus that promised [to him] for two months" (doc. 1500a). In spite of the date 26 March, the payment itself was from early February, that is, two months after the initial payment to Johannes.^[66] If "turunt" can be understood as a corruption of "tarent," the Latin name for the city Taranto, then Johannes may also have left the colophon on the inside of the front cover, a barely legible signature, "Ego Johannes paulus turunt."^[67]

Hand E had no interest in supplying music for new texts: four of

[64] Vexilla regis prodeunt has a pervasive canon at the fourth below, a semibreve apart, with the inscription "Canon. Precedat mea me semper odda ples." In Hostis Herodes verse 3 has the identical canon for its third stanza.

[65] Ronald Cross, "The Life and Works of Mattheus Pipelare," 97-114; Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 187; and Mary Jennifer Bloxam, "In Praise of Spurious Saints: The Missae Floruit egregiis by Pipelare and La Rue," 169-71.

[66] The item falls between expenses for the Feast of San Biagio (3 Feb.) and those for the Feast of St. Mary, which can only be Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification (2 Feb.); Censualia 16, int. 6, fol. 89v.

[67] Photographs of this signature are available in Reynolds, "The Origins," 264, and in the facsimile edition, Reynolds, Vatican City ... San Pietro B 80 , facing p. xii. There is also a colophon on the inside of the back cover, "carisimo frateto" [your beloved brother], but the hand is too different to be related to the signature on the front cover, as I suggested in Reynolds, "The Music Chapel at San Pietro," 89-90.

the five additions are new settings of texts already present in SPB80. One consistent difference between the hymns and antiphons he copied and those transcribed by Ausquier is an increase in the number of voices from three to four. Presumably the choir needed more modern music for the extraordinary responsibilities that they bore for the Jubilee celebrations in 1500. Traditionally both the start and finish of a Jubilee Year fall on Christmas Eve, but late in 1500 Alexander VI extended the year until Epiphany 1501 so that pilgrims still on their way to Rome might receive their indulgences. That this ceremony took place in St. Peter's at all was due to a much more significant departure from tradition. Previously the only basilica to have a holy door opened and closed was St. John Lateran, but Alexander VI ordered doors opened at the three other basilicas as well—San Paolo, Santa Maria Maggiore, and St. Peter's.^[68]

At least one of the new hymns can be associated with the Jubilee. For Hostis Herodes hand E provided a new melody, one more common in the Italian tradition.^[69] This large and impressive setting may have been specifically added for the Epiphany Vespers of 1501, the last day of the Jubilee. A hastily scrawled note at the back of the pay register for 1500 records special instructions for this service:^[70]

The method of service for closing the holy door of the Centennial Jubilee year [1500]^[71] which is open only for the year 1501 up until the day of

[68] Alexander gave the order in a bull of 18 Dec. 1499 (Burchard, Liber notarum , 1:179-80, and 2:189-91; and Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages , 6:148.

[69] Ward, "Polyphonic Office Hymn," 186-87.

[70] Doc. 1501a gives the complete text. The account of the service left by Johannes Burchard confirms each detail, including the reference to Hostis Herodes (Liber notarum , 1:253). The main difference is that doc. 1501a prescribes the form of the service while Burchard's report describes what actually took place. Burchard also indicates (ibid., 252) that Alexander VI waited until the evening of 5 Jan. to delegate the cardinals of Cosenza and Modena to officiate at St. Peter's. Therefore doc. 1501a must date from 5 or 6 Jan. 1501.

[71] "De anno centesimo" was the term for Jubilees that fell at the turn of the century, as in the account of the Jubilee of 1300, De Centesimo seu Jubileo . A sixteenth-century copy exists in BAV, SPG3. A short description of this work appears in Giuseppe Cascioli, La navicella di Giotto a S. Pietro in Vaticano , 10-11.

Epiphany: ... The procession after Vespers proceeds one by one [in the order of] canons, beneficiaries, and clerics, a burning candle carried in their hands. The hymn Hostis Herodes is sung by the singers, etc. The procession of the chorus exits through the church's golden door, then follows the cardinals, and after them, nothing.... The wall builders seal the door and every-one departs.

The latest additions to SPB80, like the few notices for music copying from the early sixteenth century, may all be related to liturgical processions. In preparation for the Octave of Corpus Christi in 1502, the singer Nicholas de Furnis copied the text and music (scriptura et notatura ) "in that book to be carried and sung from, which was made for the use of our chapel" (doc. 1502d). Nicholas had also copied music for the Feast of St. Mark the previous year: "pay Dimitrio ... for certain copies made by Nicholas the contra alto for singing on the day of St. Mark's" (doc. 1501c). The need for these copies perhaps relates to a policy, seen also in 1499, of hiring additional musicians to swell the ranks of the St. Peter's choir. In the St. Mark's procession that year the size of the choir more than doubled from five singers to thirteen, thanks to eight supemumerari , who included the organist Aloviso and his discipulo .^[72] In 1502 the chapter again welcomed "some other outside singers to sing sweetly and earnestly in this [St. Mark's] procession for the honor and satisfaction of the chapel and audience of our basilica" (doc. 1502c).

While these copies do not survive, some conclusions both about the format and the contents of his books are possible. Small groups of singers could process and sing from one common manuscript. Amico Aspertini depicted just such a scene a few years after he had helped paint the 1495 organ at St. Peter's. In a fresco of a procession he executed for the church of San Frediano in Lucca, he pictured four singers walking together out-of-doors, gathered around a small book, evidently bellowing more than singing. Yet for the larger St. Peter's choir, augmented by as many as eight others, this would have been physically impossible. Another option, singing from scrolls (or rotuli ), as the choir at Santa Maria Maggiore evidently did under Robin Malapert in the 1530s, is unlikely since the payments mention a small

[72] Censualia 16, int. 6, fol. 58, 10 May 1499.

book.^[73] A third option exists in the library of the Cappella Giulia, in a manuscript made for the same purpose, CG. XIII. 26. Copied for processions in the Jubilee Years 1600 and 1675, it too is a little book, both in terms of the number of folios (sixteen) and their dimensions (mm. 215 É 155). But it is also a set of part books and as such raises the possibility that the little books copied by Nicholas de Furnis a century before were as well.

One scribal oddity of hand E's additions to SPB80 is relevant in this context. The first composition in SPB80 is the hymn for Passion Sunday, Vexilla regis . As in all of the pieces he added, hand E copied the text with special care, placing the entire first verse under each of the four voice parts and writing out the text to all other verses in the margins. None of the other scribes approaches this attention to the text. Of particular interest in Vexilla regis , there are light pen strokes between three syllables in the cantus part and the appropriate note, indicators for the alignment of text and notes. They were not a scribal aid for copying the notes or words in SPB80, because they clearly came after both were already in place. And more than a singer reading from the manuscript, the person most likely to benefit from them would have been a scribe using SPB80 as a source for another copy, a copy in which the placement of the text was an important consideration. While the Passion Sunday hymn Vexilla regis would not have been sung on the Feast of St. Mark's or the Octave of Corpus Christi, its presence in the Cappella Giulia processional CG. XIII. 26 shows that the clergy and singers of the basilica probably marched to it on Passion Sunday.

If Nicholas de Furnis copied processionals, they are likely to have contained hymns, antiphons, and perhaps a Te Deum and motet. That is in keeping with the repertoire preserved in CG. XIII. 26, which begins with three Te Deums and includes hymns such as Veni creator spiritus and Pange lingua . Other reports of music sung at processions mention hymns, such as in the account of the 1433 arrival of Emperor Sigismund in Rome for his coronation. Poggio Bracciolini first re-

[73] G. Ferri, "Le carte dell'archivio Liberiano," 170. He publishes an inventory that includes books left to the church by magister Robino de Francia, probably Robin Malipiero, who had been there in 1538-39. These include "XI. rotuli in pergameno advoluti cum diversis hymnis, quibus utuntur pueri cum pergunt cantando processionaliter."

ported instruments—"there was a crowd of trumpet players and flutists and many other people who filled the ears of the onlookers with the sounds of various instruments"—and then singers: "Finally the priests came just before the King, singing hymns."^[74] And the processional rotuli left to Santa Maria Maggiore by Robinus also contained "diversi hymni." The hymns and antiphons copied by hand E also belong in this category. In addition to singing Hostis Herodes as they filed out of St. Peter's during Epiphany Vespers in 1501, and Vexilta regis on Passion Sunday, the choir also may have processed to the others, the hymn Ut queant laxis (St. John the Baptist) and the antiphons Petrus apostolus and Da pacem (both probably for Sts. Peter and Paul).

One of the few records of what the basilica's choir did when the pope and his choir came to the basilica is a reference in Burchard's diaries to a procession at a special service during the Jubilee. On 12 January 1500 Alexander VI went to St. Peter's to view the spear of Longinus, which was reputed to have pierced Christ's side and was housed in the chapel built for it by Cardinal Lorenzo Cibo. Leading the clergy through St. Peter's, "the singers of the basilica were proceeding ... singing Pange lingua gtoriosi ."^[75] A different element of procession is present in the choir's contribution at papal services much later in the sixteenth century. Three motets written for the choir in 1568 by Johannes Animuccia were sung as the pope passed by, "quando passa il Papa."^[76]

If the final additions to SPB80 match the musical needs of the basilica circa 1500, it remains to determine how much the earlier layers reflect local composers and traditions. To what extent is the repertoire copied by Ausquier a collection of music written and performed at St. Peter's? As long as the manuscript was thought to have been copied in the north and brought south, that question was not relevant. The Du Fay

[74] Poggius Bracciolini, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis , 178.

[75] Burchard, Liber notarum , 2:198. Pastor describes the arrival of the spear in 1492 (History of the Popes , 5:316).

[76] Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia," 515. Two of the motets, unnamed, were written for "la vigilia di Natale" and "la mattina d'Ogni santi." The third was Ascendens Christus in altum , probably for Ascension.

hymn cycle was likely written elsewhere, as probably were also those portions of the Vespers repertoire that circulated widely in Italian sources from the 1430s and 1440s, sources such as BolQ15, FM112, and ModB. Aside from hand E's additions, local contributions doubtless include the earlier antiphons (especially Petrus apostolus and Da Pacem ), the hymns that adhere to the St. Peter's melodic usage, and the motets by Puyllois and Josquin (preserved also in CS15 and 35, respectively). Even the modification of Magnificats to conform to polyphony on odd verses only is a sign of institutional usage.

The question thus has most importance for the collection of polyphonic Masses, largely anonymous. The absence of concordances for most of the works in layers 1 and 2 actually may be an indication of the localized nature of this repertoire. Remarkably, aside from the four Masses also present in the Trent codices, SPB80 is either the only source or the oldest (Rome also may have been the source for some of the Masses as well as Magnificat antiphons in Tr89). Other indications of the Roman heritage of at least some of this repertoire remain to be discussed. For the time being, the evidence suggests that Ausquier probably brought no new polyphony with him but rather only copied music already present at St. Peter's.

Chapter Five—
The Patronage of Northerners at St. Peter's

Northern musicians who sought employment in Italy, or in other areas away from their native lands, were lured by a variety of financial enticements. Salaries may have provided little more than pocket money for some singers. Success was often measured by other types of remuneration: benefices, gifts of property, lucrative administrative posts, and the like.^[1] Occasionally an employee could argue successfully for a higher salary due to the absence of a benefice, or conversely, a patron could dispense with a salary altogether when nonsalary incomes were high; indeed, Paulo Cortesi advised cardinals to give familiars benefices as part of their salaries.^[2] In considering the economic aspects of music patronage at St. Peter's, it should be remembered that the most visible type of financial support, salary payments, was likely to be the least consequential.

However, patronage cannot be defined solely in terms of monetary transactions. Perhaps more important at St. Peter's, and more revealing

[1] Christopher Reynolds, "Musical Careers, Ecclesiastical Benefices, and the Example of Johannes Brunet," 87, n. 122; and Gregory P. Lubkin, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan (1466-1476)," 2:220. On the relative worth of a papal singer's salary, see Pamela Starr, "Music and Music Patronage at the Papal Court, 1447-1464," 90-96.

[2] Paolo Cortesi, De cardinalatu , fols. 57v-58. Simon du Puy, an assistant collector in the diocese of Aix, successfully argued that he should receive additional wages since he was not beneficed. Although he requested an extra 150 florins in 1405, he settled for 80 (Jean Favier, Les finances pontificales a l'époque du Grand Schisme d'Occident 1378-1409 , 115-16). And at Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza decided that because his singer Rainero made so much from his nonsalary income, Rainero's salary could be dispensed with altogether (Lubkin, "The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza," 2:220).

about the attractions of Rome to northerners of many callings, was the variety of patronage sources available to them. With the papal chapel as a career pinnacle reached only by a few, singers coming to Rome had several other options: On a corporate level there were churches, confraternities, and hospitals; on an individual level there were the families of cardinals and other highly placed ecclesiastics. Salaries, benefices, shifting political alignments far from Rome, and changes in the national makeup of the curia—all of these had an impact on the number and nationality of singers seeking employment at St. Peter's. Finally, the limitation of measuring patronage in terms of income from salaries or benefices is most telling in the type of patronage that is easiest to overlook because the singers were usually not paid at all (or not paid through conventional channels) or even named: the patronage of northern boys in Rome. This likely had a considerable impact on the slow development of educational opportunities for Roman boys.

Salaries

Singers at St. Peter's began to receive a regular wage only from the papacy of Nicholas V. For 1447 and 1448 the small salaries of Rubino and Hervé grew from just 8 carlini (about 0.8 ducat) to 1 ducat, thanks to a raise in February 1448 made effective the preceding October. Then, as a measure of Jubilee prosperity, salaries and the number of singers increased substantially in 1450. Monthly disbursements of 11 ducats were probably split among six singers, though the accounts mention twelve in April (doc. 1450c). This would have provided salaries of 1½ to 2½ ducats each month, the rates still paid in the 1460s. In comparison, under Nicholas V the salaries of papal singers rose from 5 to 8 florins (or 5 to 8 ducats) per month, roughly three to four times as much as at St. Peter's.^[3] Nevertheless, these lower wages were sufficient to attract northern singers capable of meeting the musical needs of the basilica.

Over the last half of the Quattrocento these wages changed infrequently. Three decades later the figures were the same. However, for

[3] Franz X. Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum' und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts," 36.

nearly sixteen of the intervening years (1462 to fall 1478), the basilica grew more competitive and offered selected musicians, usually the tenor, 3 ducats a month; the tenor Gregorio and the contra Johannes Fede even received 4. While this raise initially affected just one or two of the singers, it was accompanied by the expansion of the choir from four voices to seven. Both events followed the apparent loss of the basilica's organ late in 1461. The impression that more and better singers were required to compensate for the lack of organ is supported by the gradual decline in wages in 1478, returning salaries to the earlier scale within two years after a new organ had become operational. The same pattern recurred in the 1490s. There were new raises in the fall of 1495, after the 1475 organ seems to have ceased functioning, yet before another was built; and slight cuts again when the new "Alexander VI" organ was completed.

These cuts were more sophisticated than before. Novel and strict accounting procedures, in place by March 1497 at the latest, caused wages to decline slightly for the members of the choir. That is when the basilica began to pay its singers in carlini instead of ducats, and, rather than the fixed wages customary for the previous half century, the amounts began to rise and fall slightly each month. Francisco Scarafanfara, for example, collected 22 carlini (a little more than 2 ducats) in April 1497 and then 24, 23, 23, 20, and 22.3 carlini in the following months. In previous years he had regularly received 2 ducats, 30 bolognini , roughly 24 carlini . Thus during that half year the St. Peter's chapter shaved an entire ducat off of his earlier salary, a figure they repeated with nearly every singer in the choir. Over a full year these accounting procedures saved the basilica the annual salary for one singer, at least. Evidently in response to absenteeism among its singers, the basilica chapter had instituted a "points" system, whereby singers would forfeit a portion of their salary for each service, or partial service, that they missed. The account books state this explicitly in the August payments: "pay the singers named below for their salaries for the month of this past August, retaining points [punctis ] for their absences" (doc. 1497c).

Wages rose definitively just months before the start of the Jubilee Year 1500. A completely new group of singers was in place by October 1499, now paid 30 carlini (or 3 ducats) monthly; moreover, because

this sum did not waver, the "points" system utilized through April 1499 had been jettisoned. These singers quickly received a second raise during the Jubilee Year. Probably in April 1500 salaries for three of the singers and the organist Aloviso de Spiritu reached 40 carlini (4 ducats), while three others got 3 ducats each—a considerable improvement over the 2½-ducat maximum singers claimed as late as April 1499.^[4] This time the wages of the Sistine Chapel musicians did not climb. According to the new balance of salaries the best St. Peter's singers had a salary half the size of those in the papal chapel. The accelerating salary increases around the turn of the century must have been part of the chapter's preparations for the expanded role Alexander VI assigned to St. Peter's in the Jubilee festivities.

Curial Patrons

Whatever the correlation between fluctuations in salary and changes in the numbers of northerners in the choir, salaries reveal little about the large-scale shifts in the northern presence at St. Peter's during the fifteenth century. If salaries and wages might be termed "direct" patronage, then in this case it is a type of "indirect" patronage that helped draw northerners to the basilica: the chance to work in a city with many resident patrons—preeminently the pope and the cardinals—as well as a continual flow of visiting patrons from Italian and northern courts. The numbers supported by cardinals alone were substantial. Paolo Cortesi prescribed 150 members as the ideal size for the family of a cardinal, this at a time when Plus III (1503) kept 370 in his own. By the census of 1527 the average household of a cardinal numbered 150.^[5] Although Cortesi identified palazzi for forty cardinals, the

[4] The Exitus for 1500 notes the salary of the organist alone, listing a half-ducat raise in April. Though the number of singers is recorded each month, neither their names nor their wages were included. By March 1501, when detailed figures return, the higher wages were in effect: 4 ducats for Nicholas de Furnis, Johannes Pipelare, and Bernardinus Mutinensis; 3 for Michael, Pitigian, and Benedictus.

[5] Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500-1559: A Portrait of a Society , 135; G. Dickinson, Du Bellay in Rome , 90; John F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation , 39-42; Arnold Esch, "Maezenatentum im Rom des 15. Jahrhunderts und seine politischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen," 16-17. The recommended number of familiars for a cardinal in the 1460s was already forty to sixty; see R. Haubst, "Der Reformentwurf Pius des Zweiten," 213.

number resident at any given moment was probably between twenty and thirty during the latter decades of the fifteenth century, judging from the number of cardinals present in conclaves to elect a new pope.^[6] At the very least, curial cardinals therefore must have supported some 2,000 persons. Among the desired types of familiars that Cortesi recommended for cardinals were silversmiths, artists, sculptors, and musicians.^[7]

For its high visibility and proximity to the pope, a job at St. Peter's must have compared favorably to many other prospects in Rome. If this is a polite way of saying that employment at St. Peter's was desirable because a job there could provide an entree into a more lucrative position, there is ample evidence for that conclusion. This view of short-term service at the basilica is exactly that of Cortesi on the merits of low-paying jobs with a curial cardinal. In his evaluation of which nationalities made the best employees, Cortesi criticized Neapolitans for their sloth and the Florentines their avarice; northerners, however, were willing to "serve in any capacity in a cardinal's household, even without salary," simply to get a foot in the curial door.^[8] For them the hope of acquiring northern benefices in Rome was not idle. Short-term servitude could be tolerated for long-term profit. Although formulated in the early sixteenth century, Cortesi's description of the eagerness that prompted northerners to accept any low-paying job reiterates a similar opinion written during the pontificate of Eugenius IV. Lapo da Castiglionchio also discusses the willingness of these stranieri to do virtually anything—even cook—in a brief treatise, his Dialogus super excellentia et dignitate curiae Romanae (1438). Often bitingly ironic

[6] Denys Hay, The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century , 38. Cortesi's figure of forty resident cardinals is supported by his contemporary Francesco Albertini, who lists the same number of residences belonging to cardinals, although in fact some on his list belong to other high church officials (in Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris urbis Romae , 516-26).

[7] Cortesi, De cardinalatu , fol. 55v; "qui cum aliquo artificii genere excellent, questus mercedisque utilitate serviunt: quales Argentarii, Pictores, Statuarii, Musici, et qui sunt generis eiusdem vocari sunt."

[8] Cortesi, as translated in Dickinson, Du Bellay in Rome , 90-91.

and sarcastic, Lapo is quite earnest when he identifies the "great honors and benefits" given to northern priests in their own lands as the reason why so many came to Rome.

And for this reason from France, Germany, England, and other nations, because great honors and benefits are given to priests in those nations, many of them converge on the curia who undertake the vilest jobs, nor do they refuse any servile condition; but they especially exercise the art of cooking cheerfully and they are very good at it. For this reason this kind of man, almost totally barbaric, is in the curia; and there are no Italians, or very few, who would be found there.^[9]

The paths of northern singers to and from St. Peter's indicate that a job there was a stepping stone or a way-station. Easiest to document are the fifteen singers who went on to careers in the papal chapel, not counting Johannes Fede, whose employment at St. Peter's followed by two decades his papal service. These singers, listed in Table 9, generally seem to have sung at the basilica for two, three, or four years before moving directly into the papal choir. But some, like Guillaume Rose and Georgius de Dunis, had a hiatus between these positions, perhaps in the service of a curial cardinal. Except for Archangelo Blasio and Hieronymus Beltrandus de Verona, all were northerners. And although he joined the papal bureaucracy rather than the chapel, Nicholas Rembert should be mentioned as one who successfully used St. Peter's as a springboard to a much sought-after position as a notary of the Sacred Rota and a papal abbreviator.^[10]

Other St. Peter's singers were willing prey to Italian patrons from outside of Rome. Guillelmus da Francia managed in the 1450s to move back and forth between St. Peter's and Padua. When Ercole d'Este set about building up his cappella of musicians in the early 1470s, St. Peter's provided several, all of them contras: Jachettus di Marvilla in 1472

[9] "Hanc ob causam ex Gallia, Germania, Britannia aliisque ex terris nacionibus[que], quod magni apud illas sacerdotibus honores et premia habeantur, plurimi in curiam confluunt, qui fedissima queque ministeria subeant nec ullam serviendi condicionem recusent, sed imprimis coquinariam exercent libenter eamque probe callent; quare hoc hominum genus in curia totum fere barbaricum est, Italici nulli aut pauci admodum invenirentur." This passage is from the edition by Richard Scholz, "Eine humanistische Schilderung der Kurie aus dem Jahre 1438," 140. I am grateful to Professor Wendell Clausen for his translation.

[10] Jeremy Noble, "New Light on Josquin's Benefices," 82-84.

and 1473, and then probably also Johannes Marescalli and Rainaldus de Meis (if he is Rainaldetto Cambrai), who both arrived at St. Peter's in the fall of 1472 and then apparently sang together at Ferrara from 1474 to 1476.^[11] Some years later Rome was the goal of Sienese talent scouts. After his departure from St. Peter's in 1478, Matheus Gay copied a polyphonic manuscript for the Siena Cathedral. The month after Gay finished, Alberto di Francesco Aringhieri, overseer of the cathedral, sent to Rome for several singers: some "sopranos, a contra, and tenorista for our cathedral church."^[12]

For the average singer in Rome the variety of potential employers was probably as often a question of simultaneous patronage as successive. Many St. Peter's singers enjoyed a shared patronage with the basilica and a pope, cardinal, or other ecclesiastical official. Those identified as members of the papal household include Ludovicus d'Armelli and Johannes Brunet.^[13] And Winochus de Oudenorde and Nicholas de Furnis may have become papal familiars after arriving at St. Peter's.^[14] For a few singers there is evidence that they traveled with the pope. The timings of the on again, off again presence of Guillaume Rose in the 1460s suggest an involvement with Pius II or someone near him. Guillaume arrived at St. Peter's in mid-December 1462; Pius had just returned to Rome on 13 December following a six-month absence. Guillaume then left the basilica in March 1465 and returned in

[11] Rainaldus may have worked at Rieti Cathedral immediately before appearing at St. Peter's. As Gustave Reese realized, a singer named Rainaldus appeared successively in many Italian cities: Magister Rainaldus in Rieti (April-Aug./1472); R. de Meis at St. Peter's (Oct./1472-73); R. de Cambrai in Ferrara (1474-76); Magister R. Odenoch de Fiandra in Treviso (1477-79); Don R. Francioso in Florence (1482-83); Magister R. Francigena in Padua (1489-91); and R. Odena in Rome in the papal chapel (1491-93). This list revises that in Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance , 220, who has an error that has been repeated, i.e., that R. Odenoch taught at Treviso, 1477-88. Knud Jeppesen, La Frottola , 1:162, n. 2, also adds to Reese's list a Raynaldus who taught in Concordia, but he taught there in 1552.

[12] "Paghamo ... per mandare a Roma per la chondotto nuovamente factta de' cantori, sobrani, contra e tenorista per la chiexa cathedrale nostra." For the full citation, see Frank D'Accone, "A Late Fifteenth-Century Sienese Sacred Repertory: MS K. I. 2 of the Biblioteca comunale, Siena," 126, n. 14.

[13] See, respectively, Reg. vat. 630, fols. 108v-10r; and Reynolds, "Musical Careers, Ecclesiastical Benefices," 55-73.

[14] See Reg. vat. 571, fols. 231r-32r (12 Sept. 1475) for Winnochus de Paris regarding a benefice near Oudenorde; and Reg. vat. 915, fols. 52v-54v (24 Jan. 1506) for Nicolas Fermis, scribe and papal familiar.

mid-May; Pius journeyed to and from Siena from 4 April to 19 May. And Guillaume left again for June through September; Pius took his final trip to Ancona on 18 June, dying there in August. For Matheus Gay, this kind of connection need not be inferred. He explained his absence between June and October 1476 in a receipt: "I, Matheus Gay, receive from Dns. Dominico Pauli my [salary] for part of June, when the pope left Rome" (doc. 1476d). As the result of the Tiber overflowing in January 1476, the plague broke out in March. By June Sixtus IV decided to retreat to Viterbo, taking with him the cardinals Borgia, d'Estouteville, and Carafa, among others. Leaving Rome on 10 June, they did not return until 23 October.^[15] Though other singers also chose this moment to leave St. Peter's, Matheus is the only one with a tangible connection to the papal entourage, both because of his receipt and because he reappeared at the basilica just when the pope returned.

The following list is representative of the variety of officials who had musicians in their care. By February 1477 Nicholas Corel, a contra and a cleric from Cambrai, was a familiar of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere.^[16] The organist Johannes de Montibus (October 1492) served with Giuliano de Cesarinis, for many years an apostolic protonotary and chamberlain of St. Peter's.^[17] Hieronymus Beltrandus de Verona sang in 1492 while in the family of another Veronese, Francesco Maffei, then a papal scribe and later a deacon of the Verona Cathedral.^[18] For at least a portion of the time that Aloviso de Spiritu played the organ from circa 1497 until his death in 1508, he was a familiar of Cardinal Johannes Antonius de San Giorgio, since 1478 an auditor of the Sacred Palace and from 1493 to 1509 titular Cardinal of SS. Nerei and Achillei.^[19] And in 1458 Johannes de Castiglione (or Piccardus), known in the papal chapel for thirty-five years as Johannes Monstroeul, was probably a familiar of Cardinal Johannes Castiglione. Appointed bishop

[15] Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes , 4:288-90.

[16] Reg. vat. 583, fols. 9r-11r.

[17] Censuatia 15, int. 1 (1492), fol. 53.

[18] For the month of Feb. 1492 Francesco signed on behalf of "Jeronimo familiari meo" (Quietanza 17, unfol). Regarding Maffei, see D. S. Chambers, "The Housing Problems of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga," 22-23 and 39-40; and Alan Preston, "Sacred Polyphony in Renaissance Verona: A Liturgical and Stylistic Study," 66-67.

[19] Reg. vat. 894, fols. 56r-59r. Johannes was bishop of Alessandria (1478-99) before becoming bishop of Parma (1499-1509).

of Coutances (in Normandy) in 1444, he came to Rome in 1447 as an envoy of the English King Henry VI, bringing with him four singers, including Robinet de la Magdalaine. After Castiglione served as bishop of Pavia in 1453 and papal nuncio to the Imperial Court of Frederick III in 1456, Calixtus III made him cardinal of San Clemente in 1457.^[20]

Finally, two classes of cardinals deserve mention because their patronage involved, in the first instance, extraordinary flexibility from familiars and, in the second, special connections for St. Peter's musicians: namely, cardinal legates and cardinal archpriests. Papal legates may have been key contributors to Rome's fluid market of talent. As emissaries of the pope to a particular city, they had to travel periodically between Rome and their stations. Such illustrious patrons as cardinals Johannes Castiglione, Guillaume d'Estouteville, and Giuliano della Rovere doubtless brought northerners with them on their return trips from France and the Imperial Court. For a northern cleric who had reason to seek patronage in Rome, musical or otherwise, this was an advantageous way to make the trip south. The northern humanist and historian Mattheus Herbenus went from Maastricht to Rome in 1469 in the company of the papal legate Onufrio and then remained in his service until the death of his patron two years later. Herbenus then did what many singers did in the same situation; he found a new patron in Rome, this one Italian.^[21] Lhéritier traveled to Ferrara in 1506 with the cardinal legate to Avignon, and in 1480 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, legate to Bologna, kept the poet Angelo Poliziano in his family.^[22] One of Gonzaga's predecessors, Cardinal Angelo Capranica, was for a time a patron of the singer Jachettus di Marvilla in the years immediately before Jachettus came to St. Peter's in 1469.

Jachettus's service with Capranica has been overlooked, eclipsed by his years with better-known Italian employers. The cities, courts, and

[20] On Castiglione, see Pastor, History of the Popes , 2:458, n. 5; Chacon, Vitae et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S. R. E. Cardinalium , 2:994; and Charles Robillard de Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges et les assesseurs du procès de condamnation de Jean d'Arc , 114-17.

[21] Jozef Ijsewijn, "The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries," 230-31.

[22] Giuseppe Frasso, "Un poeta improvvisatore nella 'familia' del Cardinale Francesco Gonzaga: Francesco Cicco da Firenze," 395-400.

churches on this journeyman's resume stretch up and down the Italian peninsula, covering the entire second half of the fifteenth century. Roughly in order, he is known to have served in Naples beginning in about 1455, and then Siena (1468), Rome (1469-71), Ferrara (1472-73), and Milan (1474), settling finally in Ferrara (1476-99).^[23] But he did not remain in Naples until his brief stop in Siena. There is more to glean from a letter he had written to Lorenzo de' Medici seeking his patronage (15 September 1466). In this letter it is plain that Jachettus had already left Naples, since he wrote from Bologna, where he said he served the bishop of Rieti, who was then Angelo Capranica. No mere bishop, Capranica had become a cardinal in 1460. More important, in 1458 he was named papal legate of Bologna, the governatore di Bologna e della provincia .^[24] Since Jachettus claimed to have come to Bologna recently with Cardinal Capranica, and to have passed through Florence on the way, he must have referred to the most recent of Capranica's periodic trips between Rome and Bologna, one that had begun in Rome five months before in early May 1466.^[25]

In this same letter of 1466, Jachettus further claims to have sung "in the chapel of the Pope (so that seeing me your most honoured Lordship would recognize me)."^[26] His assertion is revealing of the close relations between musicians of popes and the cardinals traveling with them. Papal records, complete for this period, contain no reference to him; yet because Jachettus also implies that Lorenzo had seen him in the papal chapel, and would therefore recognize him, some credence must be given to his account. Before 1466 there are only two occasions when Lorenzo could have heard the papal singers: in 1459 when Pius II stayed in Florence from 25 April to 5 May on his way to Mantua, and on his return trip in January 1460, when, however, the papal entourage paused only for a night en route to Siena. On the former

[23] Recent summaries of his career appear in Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the Fifteenth Century , 166-67; and Allan Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples , 37-38.

[24] Salvatori Muzzi, Annali della città di Bologna dalla sua origine al 1796 , 4:452.

[25] Capranica left Rome on 5 May 1466; see Conrad Eubel, Hierarchia catholica medii aevi , 2:38, no. 237.

[26] Frank D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the Fifteenth Century," 321; see also Bianca Becherini, "Relazioni di musici fiamminghi con la corte dei Medici," 96-97.

visit the elaborate entertainments included "theatrical performances, combats of wild beasts, races and balls."^[27] It is possible that the papal choir was augmented for the journey, but if so, this probably occurred on an informal basis, by drawing on singers who traveled with a cardinal. Among those cardinals making the trek to Mantua with Pius was Guillaume d'Estouteville, archbishop of Jachettus's native Rouen. But so too, at least for the return trip, was Capranica.^[28]

Whether with Capranica, d'Estouteville, or some other church official, Jachettus's recollection of being in the "chapel of the pope" at a time when Lorenzo de' Medici would have seen him must refer to an incident from 1460 at the latest. Thus Jachettus did not remain long in Naples, perhaps leaving as early as 1458, after the death (in June) of his first known patron Alfonso I of Aragon. The following November in Rome, Plus II made Capranica the papal legate of Bologna.

The cardinal archpriests of St. Peter's have already been discussed with regard to their possible assistance in acquiring organs for the basilica. Because of their dual loyalties—to the basilica and also to their familial city—cardinal archpriests were well situated to influence the hiring of acquaintances in both locales. After Cardinal Ippolito d'Este became archpriest in 1501, two relatives of Philippo de Primis de Fano joined the choir. A papal singer from 1491 to 1502, and probably until his death circa 1507, Philippo had sung in Ferrara in 1491 for Ippolito's father, Ercole d'Este. His defection to the papal chapel had caused Ercole no small consternation, as a series of letters between him and his Roman ambassador attest.^[29] Ippolito, who became bishop of Modena in 1507, is also the probable agent for bringing the theorist-composer Lodovico Fogliano from Modena to the Cappella Giulia in 1513; during this same period Ippolito arranged for Lodovico's brother Giacomo to teach organ to Giulio Segni.^[30]

[27] Pastor, History of the Popes , 3:56.

[28] Muzzi, Annali , 4:468.

[29] Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara , 193-95.

[30] On his appointment by Julius II, see Gaetano Moroni, ed., Dizionario d'eriduzione storico-ecclesiastico da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni , 22:103-5; see also H. Colin Slim, "Giacomo Fogliano," 687-88. The Philippo Dionysio at St. Peter's in 1506-7 may be the Don Dionysio Cappellano who sang with Ippolito in 1511 (see Lewis Lockwood, "Adrian Willaert and Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este," 111). He may also be the singer Fra Dionisio da Firenze at S. Petronio in Padua in 1494 through 1496 (Osvaldo Gambassi, La cappella musicale di S. Petronio: Maestri, organisti, cantori e strumentisti dal 1436 al 1920 , 57). Ippolito included in his familia Ariosto, who feared losing his benefices when he refused to accompany Ippolito to Hungary (Ludovico Ariosto, The Satires of Ludovico of Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography , 12-13). Ariosto's satires contain many references to the problems of making a living from benefices.

The regional connections of a cardinal archpriest could work in two directions. During the tenure of the Venetian Pietro Barbo as archpriest, the singer Lupo worked at the basilica (1458-59). If he was the French priest Johannes Lupo who subsequently sang at St. Mark's from 1460, then this may be an instance in which an archpriest served as a conduit from St. Peter's to his ancestral home rather than from it. Much more direct is the connection between one of the first singers in the Cappella Giulia, Johannes Lourdel, and Ippolito d'Este. At St. Peter's in 1514 and presumably 1515 (though records do not survive), Lourdel joined the familia of Ippolito and worked for him in 1516-17 and 1520 in Ferrara and Hungary.^[31]

Aspects of Benefice Patronage

In describing the willingness of northerners to work for little in Rome, both Cortesi and Lapo da Castiglionchio refer to the hope of acquiring northern benefices. The essential workings of this system and many of the implications for music patronage are by now common knowledge.^[32] But the extent to which political considerations shaped the conferral

[31] The information on Lourdel comes from Ariane Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Grulia au XVIe siècle, depuis sa fondation par Jules II (1513), jusqu'à sa restauration par Grégoire XIII (1578)," 188-89, and Lockwood, "Adrian Willaert and Cardinal Ippolito I," 111.

[32] If the details of procuring benefices today seem intricate, benefice seekers also needed specialized assistance. Among the most popular juridical books printed in Rome between 1485 and 1500 were several how-to manuals, texts such as Modus vacandi et acceptandi beneficiorum, Modus servandus in executione gratiae expectative , and Termini causarum in Romana curia servari soliti in causa beneficiali . Many of these works often do not survive today in Italian libraries, suggesting that they were designed for northern markets. Musicians were but a small portion of the interested audience (Massimo Miglio, "Materiali e ipotesi per la Stampa a Roma," 222-24). Regarding benefices and musicians, see Pamela Starr, "Rome as the Center of the Universe: Papal Grace and Music Patronage"; idem, "Music and Music Patronage"; Alejandro E. Planchart, "Guillaume Du Fay's Benefices and His Relationship to the Court of Burgundy"; Reynolds, "Musical Careers, Ecclesiastical Benefices"; and the extensive bibliography cited in these.

of benefices is less well understood. Because papal privileges were sensitive to political changes, especially in the north, the regions from which foreigners came to Rome did not remain constant, with the exception of the diocese of Liege and, to a lesser extent, Cambrai. Certain of these changes can be detected in the makeup of the St. Peter's choir.

The prominence of northerners at the curia described by Lapo relates directly to a distinction between ecclesiastical patronage for Italians as opposed to northerners. It cannot have helped that benefices in Italy were generally far less lucrative than those in the north, if only because it increased the competition among the Italian aristocracy for those that did pay.^[33] Although there were some 700 bishoprics in Europe at this time, they ranged greatly in size and wealth. France, for instance, had only 131 sees, while the kingdom of Naples had 138; and the thirty-three bishops in England, Wales, and Scotland generally presided over far wealthier sees than the 125 who served in northern and central Italy. In contrast to prized northern sees like Rouen, most of those in the south of Italy were small and desperately poor. Incomes from the smallest have been estimated at less than a 200th of the wealthy bishoprics in the north.^[34] Put in other terms, a good canonry in the north yielded more than many Italian sees. When Leo X promised the papal musician Gaspar van Weerbecke the next canonry worth 200 gold ducats in the dioceses of Cambrai or Tournai, he promised an income equal to or greater than that of many Italian bishoprics. Italian church salaries for canons and lower officials diminished commensurately.

As was typical for a large church in Italy, benefices at St. Peter's rarely went to musicians, and then usually to individuals who were first of all chapter officials—some of the thirty canons, thirty-six bene-

[33] Local rulers and their families controlled the major benefices in their domains. They viewed these positions as economic rewards for political service, rewards to be given to relatives, faithful employees, or politically useful allies. Among recent studies, there is Giorgio Chittolini, "Stati regionali e istituzioni ecclesiastiche nell'Italia centrosettentrionale del Quattrocento," 163-68; for Florence, Roberto Bizzocchi, "Chiesa e aristocrazia nella Firenze del Quattrocento," 248-53; for Milan, L. Prosdocimi, Il diritto ecclesiastico dello stato di Milano dall'inizio della signoria viscontea al periodo tridentino (secc. XII-XVI) , 51ff for Ferrara, A. Prosperi, "Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche e le idee religiose," 128-29, n. 13; and for Venice, Antonio Menniti Ippolito, "Ecclesiastici veneti, tra Venezia e Roma," 209.

[34] Denys Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , 269; as well as his The Church in Italy , 10-11, and also the tax tables for Italian sees on 110-22.

ficiaries, or twenty-six clerics—who like Loysio de Diano (beneficiary and regens chori ) by 1450, Christoforo Sancti (beneficiary and from 1481 to 1489 also a soprano), and Cambius (cleric and from 1476 off and on until 1489 a soprano) also sang.^[35] In the 1450s at least three singers were awarded benefices, Robinetto (beneficiary) and Andreas de Palermo (beneficiary and tenor) in 1450-51, and Nicholas Volfardo, a northerner who was made a cleric and then forced to resign it in 1459.^[36] By the second half of the century, popes conferred benefices at St. Peter's on their familiars or local residents with complete freedom, and not only popes, but papal relatives. Alexander VI's son Cardinal Cesare Borgia saw to it that Nicola di Canosio received one in 1497.^[37] In the absence of a pope, even the papal master of ceremonies could wield power over chapter officials.^[38] Exceptionally, two musicians who became canons after 1460 were both organists, Bartholomeo de Ferrara and Aloviso de Spiritu. They held one of the two Sistine canonries that Sixtus IV had created in a bull of 1 March 1482.^[39]

[35] On the organization of the St. Peter's chapter, see Filippo Maria Mignanti, Istoria della sacrosanta patriarcale Basilica Vaticana dalla sua fondazione fino al di presente , 2:264-68; and the writings of Robert Montel, especially his "Premières recherches sur la mense capitulaire de la Basilique Saint-Pierre de Rome." Mr. Montel kindly provided me with a copy of this unpublished paper.

[36] On Volfardo, see pp. 42-44; the monthly disbursements to Robinetto and Andreas are listed in Censualia 6, int. 2, passim .

[37] Mario Menotti, ed., Documenti inediti sulla famiglia e la torte di Alessandro VI , 35.

[38] During the funeral ceremonies for Sixtus IV in 1484, Burchard recounted in his diary that, as instructed by the College of Cardinals, "I forbade the canons and the clergy of [St. Peter's], under penalty of being deprived of their benefices, [to allow] any man to touch the deceased, or to dare to remove the said signet-ring, or the chasuble, or anything else" (The Diary of John Burchard of Strasbourg, 1483-1506 , vol. 1, 1483-1492 , 9-10).

[39] Bartholomeo was, from Aug. 1482 until his death in Aug. 1493, one of the original Sistine canons. He remained active in Rome, buying two bellows of the organ at San Agostino in April 1491 (ASR, Congregazioni religiose, busta 107, San Agostino, introitus 1474-96, fol. 105v [April 1491]). Aloviso received his Sistine canonry on 6 July 1505, identified as "de Gaeta" and a papal familiar. His successor Anthonio de Piperno was provided in Sept. 1508 because of the death of Aloviso. This information comes from a sixteenth-century list of canons, SPH59B, fol. 77; the reference to him as a continuus commensalis is in ACSP, Arm. 16-18, Privilegi e atti notarili 16, fol. 241v. Thus he is not, as previously supposed, the first organist of the Cappella Giulia in 1514, Aloysio from Bourges (Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia," 502). On the reception of the new members see L. Martorelli, Storia del clero vaticano dai primi secoli del Cristianesimo fino al XVII secolo , 237-38, who claims—quite plausibly—that the rest of the chapter did not easily accept the Sistine additions.

In part because desirable Italian benefices were the prey of the upper class, in part because he had compelling economic and political reasons for doing so, Martin V hired northern rather than Italian musicians, even before he reached Rome in 1420.^[40] Northern musicians helped Martin fulfill his obligation to broaden the international makeup of the curia; they also made it possible for him to award comparatively lucrative northern benefices to his familiars, benefices that then contributed much-needed tax revenues into papal coffers. The taxes they generated may have amounted to a trickle, but with all of the papacy's financial reserves depleted, Martin was compelled to exploit every potential source of income.^[41] This papal need to benefice (as opposed to the desire of a singer to be beneficed) may well explain the difference between the speed and abundance with which benefices were awarded by Martin as opposed to popes in the latter decades of the fifteenth century. Within two or three months of becoming pope, Martin V liberally rewarded several singers with canonicates and prebends. Northerners who subsequently joined his choir in Rome also received provisions with equal haste. Richardus de Bellengues came to Rome in January 1422 and by March was provided with a benefice in Antwerp, despite his inability to speak Flemish. Nicholas Grenon apparently received a benefice in Cambrai as soon as he arrived in June 1425. In contrast, Josquin may have waited three-and-a-half years before Innocent VIII gave him a provision. That singers under Martin did not have to wait also helps to explain the rapid turnover in his choir. From the standpoint of the singers, the quick rewards may have been necessary to offset the poor condition of the

[40] That the nationality of artists could serve political purposes was nothing new in 1417. Thirty years earlier Gian Galeazzo Visconti had hired German and French architects to build the Milan duomo, the northernmost Gothic building in Italy. This forwarded his aim of being named duke by the German emperor (John Onians, "Brunelleschi: Humanist or Nationalist?" 259-72). As recently as the papacy of Boniface IX (1391—1404), a majority of the singers in the Roman chapel were Italian; see Richard Sherr, "Notes. on Some Papal Documents in Paris," 8. These political reasons do not obscure the educational advantages of northerners discussed on pp. 131-38 and 290-91.

[41] Martin V made the payment of the first year's taxes, the annates, payable in Rome, before delivery of the bull of provision to the benefice. The annates could be paid either in person or by a proctor (William Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327-1534 , 428).

city.^[42] Much later Pope Clement VII vainly tried to persuade Michelangelo to become a cleric by arguing that "there is money of the church that one spends within the church."^[43] Until the discovery of the alum mines in 1462, this money lay largely in the north.

Following this early period when the papacy sought to reclaim its right to benefices throughout Europe, northern rulers began to impose various restrictions to defend their own claims. Papal rights in France declined markedly with the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438, according to which the king and the French clergy reserved to themselves most of the relevant powers to confer benefices and to settle grievances previously handled in papal courts.^[44] Not until Louis XI revoked it in November 1461 were popes able to award and, just as crucially, to tax many French benefices. This moment constituted one of the great political triumphs of Pius II, despite subsequent French threats to restore the sanctions (as Louis XII eventually did in the 1490s). From then on musicians from France had more incentive to come to Rome.

St. Peter's may have become a particular goal because of one well-connected French cleric. At the head of the large delegation that Louis XI sent to Rome to renounce the Pragmatic Sanction were two cardinals, including Richard Olivier de Longueil, bishop of Coutances.^[45] Originally from Normandy, de Longueil had proven ties to the king of France. Before his service for Louis XI, he had been Charles VII's am-

[42] Schuler, "Zur Geschichte der Kapelle Papst Martins V." Martin's haste to provide benefices has also been noted in a study of Roman attitudes toward Scottish clerics; see D. E. R. Watt, "The Papacy and Scotland in the Fifteenth Century," 121.

[43] "[É] danari della Chiesa si spendono in chiesa." This is quoted by Romeo De Maio, Michelangelo e la Controriforma , 355.

[44] Noël Valois, Histoire de la pragmatique sanction de Bourges sous Charles VII ; Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 215; and Joachim Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church , 64-71.

[45] He and the other cardinal, Jean Jouffroy, bishop of Arras, headed a group of high clergy and nobility numbering approximately 120; see Chr. Lucius, Pius II. und Ludwig XI. von Frankreich 1461-1462 , 67-68; and Joseph Combet, Louis XI et le Saint-siège (1461-1483) , 8-15. The three-day ceremonies marking the arrival in Rome on 13 March 1462 are described by Pius II in Commentarii: Rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contigerunt , 1:454-56. On their passage through Florence, see also D. S. Chambers, "Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in Florence," 241-61.

bassador to the duke of Burgundy in 1459.^[46] As noted above, with the accession of Paul II in 1464 de Longueil became cardinal archapriest of St. Peter's. And since the papal chapel had scant openings during these years, it is to St. Peter's that Johannes Fede came from France, where he had been serving Marie Anjou, her husband Charles VII, and then Louis XI between 1461 and 1464. Other Frenchman in these years include Carulo Britonio, Gilles Crepin (Egidius Crispini), and Molinet's friend, Johannes Cornuel.^[47]

Even during the 1450s and 1460s many singers and clerics came to Rome from one particularly embattled region of France: Normandy. The conclusion of the Hundred Years War between France and England in the early 1450s gave way to more fighting in the 1460s and 1470s as Charles the Bold and Louis XI struggled for control of the region. Cardinals d'Estouteville, Johannes Castiglione, and Olivier de Longueil were the most prominent of those who found refuge in the curia, but the number of Normans living in Rome in the 1450s and 1460s was such that a cleric in England could reasonably argue that it was unnecessary for him to prove the legitimacy of his birth by going to Normandy (where it was dangerous); instead, among the "many Normans" living in the papal court there were "sufficient witnesses."^[48] Normans filled positions from the upper echelons of the curia to the lowest. Among the fifteen potentially Norman singers listed in Table

[46] Charles Fierville, Le Cardinal Jean Jouffroy et son temps (1412-1473) , 98-99. See also the entry in Moroni, Dizionario , 39: 180-81.

[47] In the 1470s Cornuel sent a verse letter to Nicholas Rembert in Rome, in which his ties to France are plainly stated. Pleading for assistance in procuring benefices, Cornuel reveals that he and Rembert were both from Boullenois. He also mentioned two other French musicians; Michault and Leporis. Michault is most likely Michault Sauvage de le Lutin, a singer in the French Royal Chapel from 1461-62 to 1469-70. And Leporis is surely the singer Thomas Leporis, in the papal chapel from 1458 to 1472 (thus he and Cornuel were in Rome at the same time). In the 1470s Leporis went to Paris and Savoy recruiting singers for Milan, implying that he also had some more stable connection with Paris. Michault's dates are in Perkins, "Musical Patronage at the Royal Court of France under Charles VII and Louis XI (1422-83)," 554; on Leporis see Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 191-96. For Cornuel, there is André Pirro, "Jean Cornuel, vicaire à Cambrai"; and E. Droz, "Notes sur Me Jean Cornuel, dit Verjus."

[48] Letter of 25 August 1461, Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, XI, A.D. 1455-1464 , 599-600.

10, the papal singers have been identified by benefice records and those at St. Peter's by name.^[49]

Northern political realignments occasionally led to precipitous changes in the sources of patronage available to musicians in search of jobs. The death of Charles the Bold in 1477 and the subsequent partitioning of his Burgundian territories had an immediate impact on where singers could hope to find benefices, and this in turn sharply affected the paths musicians took in search of patronage. To take singers known, or likely, to have had ties to Bruges as an example, those with foreign affiliations between 1452 and 1477 (Table 11) differ markedly in their destinations from those who left in the next twenty-five years, 1477-1502 (Table 12). Once Bruges became part of the empire, the identifiable journeys of musicians to St. Peter's (Table 13) and the Sistine Chapel dwindled from eight singers out of eleven to just three out of thirteen. Among those in the papal chapel during the 1470s, Johannes Margas left in 1483, shortly after the Peace of Arras (December 1482) had determined exactly which territories belonged to Archduke Maximilian, and Johannes Raat left the next year. The decline in the number of Rome-bound musicians is all the more dramatic because a succession of disasters between 1481 and 1492 hit the Low Countries all at once: plague, rebellion, currency troubles.^[50]

With the Peace of Arras the courts of Maximilian I and Philip the Fair in Vienna and Spain were easily the most promising foreign sources of patronage—that is to be expected given their political power in the Netherlands. What is surprising is how poorly Rome fared in comparison. After 1483 the only resident of Bruges admitted to the

[49] Regarding the papal singers, see the individual biographies in Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," chapter 3. The trip of Robinet de la Magdalaine with three other singers in the entourage of Cardinal Castiglione is discussed above, pp. 35-36. Herré is a name common in both Normandy and Brittany; regarding Britoni see p. 39, n. 20; the possible connection between Guillelmus and Guillaume des Mares is discussed in chapter 7; Jachettus and Johannes are both identified as "di Rouen"; Anthonius de Mota is listed in a papal tax account (ASV, Liber annatarum 24, fol. 151r, 20 May 1476) as a cleric from Rouen and also in 1480 as "cleric of Rouen and magister in artibus (Reg. vat. 605, fols. 158v-60r, and Reg. vat. 606, fols. 303v-6v); and Fr. Francisco de malo passu may have had ties to the Capella de Malo passu near Bayeux (on which, see Chanoine Beziers, Histoire sommaire de la ville de Bayeux , 49).

[50] On these disasters and others, see Wim Blockmans, "Die Niederlande vor und nach 1400: Eine Gesellschaft in der Krise?" 117-32. I compare northern pressures to emigrate with enticements to come to Italy in "Aspects of Clerical Patronage."

papal chapel, Frater Anthonius Waltherus, is also evidence of the serious difficulty papal singers had gaining or holding benefices in Bruges. Despite identifying himself as a musician from Bruges on the tomb he left himself in the Roman church San Giuliano dei Fiaminghi, Anthonius received no benefices in Bruges.

Patronage of Boys

The ongoing flow of northern adult singers and their clerical patrons doubtless affected the need for choir schools in Rome. Nevertheless, one of the most remarkable aspects of Julius II's concern to create a school for Italian boys is that none of his fifteenth-century predecessors had thought to take the same action, not Eugenius IV when he provided for a series of cathedral schools in Florence (1436), Treviso (1437-38), Padova (1439), and Verona (1440), not Pius II when he established a similar school at Vicenza, not even Sixtus IV when he founded his own chapel at St. Peter's.^[51]

Julius did not lack precedents. He had himself previously founded a school for the teaching of plainchant to boys at Avignon Cathedral. As the first archbishop of the new archdiocese created by Sixtus IV, Cardinal della Rovere revealed to residents of Avignon the same trait as an ecclesiastical patron that he later demonstrated to the world: a concern for building. He renovated both the papal palace at Avignon and the palace of the archbishop, he sponsored repairs at the cathedral and elsewhere in the city, and he completely reorganized the administrative structure of the cathedral.^[52] When he had first visited Avignon in 1476 he founded the Collège du Roure, providing a building and the revenues necessary to support thirty-six students, one rector, and four priests or chaplains. On his second visit in 1481, Giuliano also created a school for the musical training of the youths of Avignon, a maîtrise

[51] Giulio Cattin, "Formazione e attività delle cappelle polifoniche nelle cattedrali: La musica nelle città," 270ff; and Alberto Gallo and Giovanni Mantese, Ricerche sulle origini della cappella musicale del duomo di Vicenza , 31-33. Following Eugenius's example, bishops founded cathedral schools for limited numbers of boys in Bologna, Pistoia, Venice, Catania, and others (see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 , 6-11; and Luigi Pesce, Ludovico Barbo vescovo di Treviso (1437-1443) , 1:120-31, and 2:13-17).

[52] Léon Honoré Labande, Avignon au XVe siécle: Légation Charles de Bourbon et du Cardinal Julien de la Rovère , 335-39.

for six boys and one instructor of chant. One stipulation he placed on them was a daily Mass sung by the boys.^[53] These previously unnoticed precedents for the educational mission of the Cappella Giulia come from the early years of Julius's career. While the maîtrise followed Sixtus IV's establishment of a music chapel at St. Peter's by one year, it is independently conceived: Sixtus made no provisions for a school, and Giuliano clearly was not at a place or stage in his career to be concerned with providing himself with a burial chapel.

The oldest Roman predecessor of the Cappella Giulia was the medieval schola cantorum, which dated at least from the papacy of St. Gregory (590-604).^[54] An institution with a different organization and a greater international prominence than the Cappella Giulia, the schola had several functions and two residences, one at San Gregorio in Cortina near St. Peter's, and its principal one at San Stefano near St. John Lateran. Both as performers and educators, the members of the schola were an elite group of musicians, perhaps the earliest polyphonic ensemble outside of Byzantium. And in the face of Julius's intent to educate Roman youths to lessen the dependence on northerners, it is ironic that by the twelfth century northern clerics regularly came to the schola cantorum for a musical education.^[55] In this century and the next the schola was one of the most durable agencies of the papacy in Rome. While the papal court camped for several years at a time in cities from Viterbo to Lyon—it lived away from Rome more often than not—the papal choir school remained behind.

Thus when Clement V presided over the first years of papal residence in Avignon, the schola cantorum survived independently, as it was accustomed to doing. How quickly its standards slipped and when it ceased functioning are not known. However, by the time Pope Urban V reassigned the financial assets of the schola in 1370, it had undoubtedly disintegrated along with the rest of the city from too many

[53] Ibid., 334-35; and E. A. Granget, Histoire du diocèse d'Avignon et des anciens dioceses dont il est formé , 13-14.

[54] Many have discussed this early chapel. See among others Starr, "Music and Music Patronage," 63-67; S. J. Van Dijk, "The Urban and Papal Rites in Seventh-and Eighth-Century Rome"; Helmut Hucke, "Zu einigen Problemen der Choralforschung," 399-408; Casimiri, "L'antica 'schola cantorum' romana e la sua fine nel 1370"; Haberl, "Die römische 'schola cantorum.'" On the early centuries of the schola, see Josef Smits van Waesberghe, "Neues über die Schola Cantorum zu Rom."

[55] Casimiri, "L'antica 'schola cantorum,'" 192.

decades of papal neglect.^[56] Its continued existence became irrelevant to the French popes and cardinals in Avignon who came to depend on musical clerics educated in Flanders and northern France. These clerics relied in turn on the system of patronage with benefices that reached new heights of accessibility early in the Babylonian captivity, under popes Clement V (1305-14) and John XXII (1316-34).^[57] During the Great Schism the Roman popes were unable to rebuild St. John Lateran, let alone the schola. And the return of the papacy to Rome in the fifteenth century did nothing to diminish the advantages of the system developed in Avignon.

If the preference shown to northern adults in the papal choir helped make the expense of a new Roman schola cantorum unnecessary, it is probably also true that a choir school at St. Peter's was not founded much earlier because the availability of northern boys in Rome during the 1400s and early 1500s was adequate to meet the needs of the pope, of Roman cardinals, and their churches. The superiority of northern training is indicated both by the popularity of northern boys in Italian choirs throughout the Renaissance and indirectly by the number of Italian choir schools headed by French or Flemish teachers. Northern boys are documented in Rome already in the 1420s. The choir of Martin V had as many as six of them affiliated with it by 1425 or 1426, all apparently under the care of Nicholas Grenon, Du Fay's friend from Cambrai. One of these boys, the composer Bartholomeus Poignare, joined the papal choir himself in 1427. Grenon was doubtless one of the first northerners to arrive in Italy accompanied by boys, but he was assuredly not the last. Jean de la Fage did so when he came to Rome in 1516, and the French cardinal Jean du Bellay brought two with him to Rome in 1548.^[58]

At St. Peter's, reports of boys are infrequent in the fifteenth century (Table 14). In this case there is no way of knowing whether the lack of archival references accurately reflects an absence of boys or simply

[56] Casimiri prints the bull in its entirety in ibid., 197-99.

[57] Reynolds, "Musical Careers, Ecclesiastical Benefices," 75-76; Andrew Tomasello, "Musical Culture at Papal Avignon," 405-82; E. Delaruelle, E.-R. Labande, and Paul Ourliac, L'église au temps du grande schisme et de la crise conciliaire (1378-1449) , 1:306 and 2:1,138.

[58] See, respectively, Lewis Lockwood, "Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: New Evidence on French Music and Musicians in Italy, 1505-1520," 222, and Dickinson, Du Bellay in Rome , 90.

means that boys would not have been paid and that their adult guardians were normally paid without any mention of this responsibility. Early in the papacy of Nicholas V, the singer Rubino twice collected extra wages to cover the expenses of two boys (docs. 1447a and c). The next reference is not until August 1485, when the choir lost six singers in three months, suffering with all of Rome from a particularly virulent plague. Under these extreme circumstances, Johannes Purro Parvo appeared for two weeks, when he was paid for singing "with the voices of the boys" [cum voce pueribus ]. Whether he brought the boys with him or they were present all along is not stated.^[59]

In addition to the presence of boys in the care of adult singers, there was at least one more stable source of trained youths in Rome. Cardinal d'Estouteville provided for the instruction of boys at Santa Maria Maggiore, where he served as archpriest from 1443 to 1483. According to the contemporaneous report by. Gaspar of Verona, d'Estouteville had also rewarded musicians at Santa Maria Maggiore "with very high salaries" and benefices to teach music and grammar.^[60] One of these has been identified as Johannes Tondrif, a Flemish musician, Carmelite friar, and "expert in the musical arts" [in arte musice peritus ]. Cardinal d'Estouteville hired him in 1472 to direct the choir and instruct the boys.^[61] As protector general of the Augustinian Order from 1446,

[59] Censualia 12, int. 7, fol. 75v. Rome was hardly the only goal for northern boys. At Ferrara a choir of garzoni tedeschi sang for Ercole d'Este in the 1470s. It numbered as many as fourteen in 1473 and included boys from Bruges, Flanders, and Trent (Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara , 157-58 and 318). Flemish boys remained desirable right up to the religious wars at the end of the next century. The mathematician and theorist Jean Taisnier was sent from Rome to Flanders in 1550 by his patron, Cardinal Francesco de Mendosa, to recruit a whole choir for Palermo Cathedral: ten singers and two boys. In Madrid, Philippe II asked the Tournai Cathedral and collegiate churches in Bruges, Douai, Soignies, and Leuven to send him sopranos (1559); and then every few years, presumably as their voices changed, he requested new groups of boys from Flanders, in 1564, 1573, and 1577 (Edmond Vander Straeten, La musique au Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle: Documents inédits et annotés , 3: 230-31 and 312-17).

[60] The passage occurs in Gaspar's biography of Paul II. See Gaspar Veronensis, De gestis tempore pontificis Maximae Pauli Secundi liber secundus , 1,031: "Quid dicam de praeceptoribus Grammaticae & Musicae, quos & salariis optimis & dignitatibus insigniri eo loco procuravit." Regarding his dates as cardinal archpriest, see Morom, Dizionario , 12:130.

[61] Roth prints the text of a supplication on his behalf, in "Primus in Petri aedem Sixtus perpetuae harmoniae cantores introduxit : Alcune osservazioni sul patronato musicale di Sisto IV," 238, n. 62.

d'Estouteville also had responsibility for San Agostino during the last years of his life. In addition to completely rebuilding the church from 1479, he probably also provided for the musical needs of the church. A reference to Baptista de Papia, magister puerorum , in 1482 indicates that his "other" Roman church also had a choir of boys.^[62]

Italian boys evidently first began to sing at St. Peter's around the turn of the century, anticipating not only the practices of the Cappella Giulia by more than a decade but also the papacy of Julius II. During the final years of Alexander VI, the Italian organist Aloviso de Spiritu regularly played with individual singers, apparently Italian boys in his familia. Vincentio adolescenti (1497-98), Gabriele de Gabrielis (1499-1501), and Minico puero (1502-3) sang with the organ. To judge from the rapidity of their turnover, they performed with Aloviso until their voices changed. Minico, the last of these boys, overlapped with Alexo puero de Primis and Paulo de Primis, who sang in 1502-3. Both doubtless related to the papal singer Philippo de Primis de Fano, they were paid as actual members of the choir, and thus presumably performed with the choir and not with Aloviso or Minico puero. According to the phraseology of the account books, Vincentio and Minico sang "in organo," Gabrielo "cum organis," a designation that probably signifies a simple, nonpolyphonic style of music such as the lauda . It is likely related to performances in Florentine churches of the time at which a boy sang with organ "in sul' organo." In Florence this phrase was used interchangeably with "cantare le laude," a type of performance that always involved boys singing with organ from the first citation of it at the Annunziata in 1488 through the next century. There a contrast of singing "in sul' organo" with singing "figural music" underscores the monophonic (or soloistic?) nature of the performance. But "in organo" at St. Peter's and "in sul' organo" in Florence also seem to indicate something of the physical arrangement of the performance, that the boys sang with the organist in the loft above the altar.^[63]

[62] ASR, Congregazioni religiose, busta 107, San Agostino, exitus 1474-96, fol. 16V (April 1482).

[63] Frank D'Accone, "The Musical Chapels at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry during the First Half of the Sixteenth Century," 12. Thanks to David Nutter for his suggestion that the phrase "in sul' organo" might have implications for the physical setting of the performance. See also Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges , 53, for a reference to "in organis decantabuntur" already in 1425, which he interprets as "sung in discant with organ."

In the few records from the papacy of Julius II—from 1506 and 1507—the St. Peter's choir anticipated the founding of the Cappella Giulia in two important respects: Italian boys in the choir and, to teach them, a pair of choirmasters. Pay records identify Nicholas de Furnis as magister in 1506, just as he started to collect supplementary wages for the care of two boys. The records never identify the boys by name, but the first two may have been Hieronymus Florentinus and Julio Romano, because both their names and the 4 ducats they were paid disappear from the account books just as Nicholas de Furnis started to receive 4 ducats each month for two unnamed boys.^[64] Along with Nicholas de Furnis the basilica also designated Bernardino di Modena (Mutinensis) as magister. Although their duties are nowhere stated, the pairing of a northerner and an Italian suggests a division of labor that would recur in the Cappella Giulia forty years later, when François Roussel taught music and Verzelino taught grammar. Thus the essentials of the Cappella Giulia were in place even before April 1506, the month that Julius laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's.

In its choice of northerners (Rubino, Nicholas de Furnis, François Roussel) to teach Italian boys polyphony, St. Peter's was very traditional. The number of Italian ecclesiastical and court music chapels headed by foreign musicians up until the Counter-Reformation was substantial, rivaling in our own century the legions of foreign conductors leading American orchestras. Willaert and Tinctoris are hardly the only northern teachers "who can be adduced as links between north and south" in support of the primacy of northern contrapuntal skills.^[65] From the mid-1400s until the 1550s and beyond, French and Flemish instructors were much in demand. As a boy in the 1530s, Palestrina studied with Robin Mallapert and Firmin Lebel; Pietro Gaetano, a

[64] There is a possibility that this boy singer is the artist Giulio "Pippi" Romano born in Rome in 1499. Yet among accounts of Giulio later in life, there are none that describe him as musical, as exist for Benvenuto Cellini, Leonardo, and others; and the first known reference to Giulio Pippi by the name "Romano" is not until 1526, by which time he had been in Mantua for four years (Frederick Hartt, Giulio Romano , 1:80; regarding his birth year, see 1:3-4, n. 1).

[65] Claude Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought , 10.

singer and theorist at St. Mark's in Venice later in the century, acknowledged Lhéritier as his praeceptor . Northern instructors were more often than not undistinguished composers, if indeed they composed at all. Men like Desiderius Babel at San Luigi dei Francesi (1515-19) and Adrien Valent at Santa Maria Maggiore (?1553-61) are much more representative than the towering figures of Willaert and Tinctoris. In Rome the influence and presence of these northern teachers persisted until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it nearly—but not entirely—disappeared within the space of twenty-five years.

Elsewhere, generations of boys in the musical heartland of Italy, the Veneto, learned about music from northern masters. In Venice the identifiably northern chapel masters include Willaert's immediate predecessors at St. Mark's, Albertus Francigena (1485-91) and the Fleming Petrus De Fossis, entrenched from 1491 to 1527. At Treviso Raynaldus Odenoch and then Petrus Bordonus de Flandra were preceded and followed by the Flemish singer and printer Gerardus de Lisa (1463-76 and 1488-96); during his second tenure the choir was composed entirely of Italians, and his duties included teaching the zaghi [ragazzi] del domo canto figurà . Similar figures taught at Padua (including Johannes Marescalli in 1492 after he had sung at St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel), Vicenza, Loreto, and Rieti (the magister Rainaldus at the cathedral in 1472 is perhaps the Rainaldus de Meis at St. Peter's immediately after).^[66] While this list could continue, it is enough to document the sustained popularity northern teachers enjoyed long after Italian teachers were available.

It is therefore striking that well into the sixteenth century, after the foundation of the Cappella Giulia and other Italian choir schools, and

[66] Even when Italian musical styles became dominant and northern singers more and more unusual, Lenard Meldert served as chapel master for the cardinal of Urbino at least from 1578, Claudio francese taught in the Umbrian town of Spello (1591), and Renaude de Melle followed Cardinal Gabriele Paleotto to Magliano in Sabina (1591). For a list of chapel masters in sixteenth-century Rome, there is Christopher Reynolds, "Rome: A City of Rich Contrast," 69-71; for Rieti, A. Sacchetti-Sassetti, "La cappella musicale del duomo di Rieti," 157; for Treviso, Giovanni d'Alessi, "Maestri e cantori fiamminghi nella Cappella Musicale del duomo di Treviso (Italia), 1411-1561," 155; for Loreto, Floriano Grimaldi, ed., La cappella musicale di Loreto nel Cinquecento , 13 and 19; for Spello, L. Fausti, "La cappella musicale della Collegiata di S. Maria di Spello"; on Rainaldus de Meis, see p. 117 n. 11; and on the two cardinals, Vander Straeten, La musique , 6:489-91.

despite decades of hiring northern choirmasters, there is ample evidence that popes, cardinals, and many secular leaders from Sicily to Milan still preferred to seek out northern boys. Given the common presence of northern teachers in Italy, the methods of an education in the north cannot have been so different from those available to many Italian boys. So why did French and Flemish youths still come to Rome with other singers, with the families of cardinals, and also as gifts, as when Louis XII sent three to Leo X when he became pope in 1513? And why after the Sack of Rome in 1527 did Pope Clement VII recruit a new trio of French rather than Italian boys?^[67]

There remains a crucial difference between the training a child would receive in any Flemish cathedral school and that available in the Cappella Giulia. The advantage of a northern education is not that there were more schools or better instructors in the north: French, Flemish, and German boys had significantly more opportunities to practice and perform simply by virtue of the greater number of services requiting polyphony north of the Alps. Tinctoris touches on this point at the end of the Liber de arte contrapuncti :

For, as Cicero says in his Ad Herennium , in every discipline the teaching of art is weak without the highest constant effort of practice, since it is constant effort alone and unique which, after a certain general knowledge of pitches, notes, quantities and concords, and having relied upon the arithmetical rather than the musical training of Boetius, has made numerous singers and those men particularly whom I have mentioned above as most outstanding and most celebrated composers. Nor must it be thought that the former or the latter have completely devoted themselves to a constant effort in this kind of composition or in singing super librum from advanced age, like Socrates studying the lyre, but rather from childhood.^[68]

While the "certain general knowledge" of musical grammar may have differed little between north and south, the same cannot be said about the opportunities for "constant effort of practice" in reading and improvising polyphony. The daily rounds of services in northern

[67] Two of these boys were supplied by the archbishop of Sens (Anne-Marie Bragard, "Détails nouveaux sur les musiclens de la cour du Pape C1ément VII," 12-18).

[68] Johannes Tinctoris, The Art of Counterpoint , 140.

churches gave Flemish and French boys a life-long advantage by providing them with regular chances to apply in practice the rules they had learned in study. For the sake of comparison, the charter of the boys' choir established in 1485 at Florence Cathedral required them to sing every Saturday morning and on "every solemn occasion, day of indulgence, and holy day," a stipulation that D'Accone has shown generally added only nine more services per year; and within a matter of months, these nine services were sung by adults.^[69]

Even as late as 1517-18, the astonishment of one Italian visitor to France and Flanders indicates how drastically the regimen of services in the north differed from what he was accustomed to in Italy. In Flanders every parish church had two Masses sung each day as well as a Salve "sung each evening," all assisted by "a great number of servers of from ten to twelve years old"; while in France they "often have fine churches, where divine worship is well performed; and there is not a cathedral or main church anywhere which does not have polyphony [musica figurata ] and more than one sung mass daily, led by six to eight choirboys who are learning to sing and who serve, tonsured like little monks, in the choir, receiving free food and clothing in return."^[70] This reaction is all the more pertinent since it comes from the familiar of a curial cardinal. It is therefore the opinion of an ecclesiastic intimately acquainted with the everyday practices of Roman churches during the papacy of Leo X, by all accounts one of the golden eras of sacred music in Rome, an era that encompassed the first years of the Cappella Giulia.

Italian singers in the fifteenth century were twice disadvantaged as children: there were fewer schools for them than in the north and

[69] D'Accone, "The Musical Chapels at the Florentine Cathedral," 6. There was no shortage of endowed Masses in Italian churches; but compared to the north, few specified polyphony. On the practices of endowed Masses in Florence and the problems that the clergy had in coping with votive and anniversary Masses, see Robert Gaston, "Liturgy and Patronage in San Lorenzo, Florence, 1350-1650," 111-34.

[70] Hale, The Travel Journal of Antonio de Beatis , 105 and 166. I have slightly altered the second translation. The original Italian text is in Ludwig Pastor, Die Reise des Kardinals Luigi d'Aragona ... beschreiben von Antonio de Beatis , 165; see also Don Antonio de Beatis, Voyage du Cardinal d'Aragon en Allemagne, Hollande, Belgique, France et Italie (1517-1518) , esp. 32-33 and 259.

fewer opportunities for them to develop in performance. By the time they matured and began competing with northerners for jobs in the major courts and churches, these handicaps were compounded by the poorer treasuries of Italian churches and by their inability to profit from one of the most lucrative forms of ecclesiastical patronage: northern benefices granted by the pope.