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.