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.