Tallis, Isidore of Seville and Suscipe quaeso

The text of Thomas Tallis ' s seven-voice motet Suscipe quaeso Domine is not (as has previously been suggested) a liturgical collect or a piece of Marian Catholic pro paganda. It is taken from a devotional soliloquy by the early medieval churchman and polymath Isidore of Seville. This fact links it closely to Byrd ' s motet Tribue Domine, which appears near it in the 1575 Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur. In an era marked by escalating religious controversy, both composers chose to adorn their musical offering to Queen Elizabeth with large-scale settings of patristic or quasi-patristic texts, an implicit nod to the era of at least nominally undivided Christianity.