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.