A Previously Unknown Ordo Prophetarum in a Manuscript Fragment in Zagreb

A Previously Unknown Ordo Prophetarutn in a Manuscript Fragment in Zagreb Clyde Brockett, Jr. This paper must begin with an explanation since I can only present what is necessarily incomplete research—incomplete because of the recent fragility of Yugoslavia's political climate and the havoc which has descended upon Croatia's cultural life. Nevertheless, the very good fortune I have had in receiving the enabling microfilm in the first place prior to those hostilities from Dr. Doris Baricevic of Zagreb has provided me with information about an important document for the study of medieval music-drama—a unique Ordo Prophetarum—though the fragment is inaccessible to me and hence cannot be personally examined. The manuscript fragment—written on parchment and measuring 20x30 cm.—which is the subject of this report is conserved in the Metropolitanski Archiv in Zagreb, where it is identified as Archbishop's Archive Collectiofragmentorum, No. I.1 The fragment , consisting of two folios bound together, is reported to have been used as a book binding. One side of the first folio is too damaged even to determine the number of systems on it, but the repertory appears to be Kyrie tropes. The reverse side of this folio contains a syllabic setting of what appears to be a trope or sequence to the Virgin Mary. However, it is not this folio that concerns us here. The other recto and verso, from a different codex altogether, preserve what a glimpse at their rubrics tells us is an uncommon composition of words and music (figs. 9-10). Fortunately, this folio is more legible, though it is shredded as well as damaged by wear at its assumed bound end, leaving the assumed outside edges of these pages more readable and the inside edges far less so. There are thirteen systems to the page, and musical notation appearing to date from the same epoch as these texts—late twelfth or early thirteenth century—accompanies 114 Clyde Brockett, Jr.115 them throughout. The rubrics, which verify that the content of this fragment is a music-drama, designate characters, not genres or liturgical assignments. The two most frequent designations announce a Chorus and Cond—an abbreviation which must signal either Accusers , condemnatores, or Authors, conditores. Since the "author ," Pseudo-Augustine, is given an autonomous role in the play, condemnatores seems the better option. This role, then, assimilates the cantores, appellators, or vocatores of other versions of the Ordo (processio) prophetarum. At the same time, this role determines the content of the play, only four sources of which are complete: the Officia propria Festorum Salernitanae Ecclesiae (Naples, 1594); the Ordo Prophetarum of a troper from Saint-Martial (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Lat. 1139); the Ordo Prophetarum in a troper-hymnary from Laon Cathedral; and the Ordo Processionis Asinorum secundum Rothomagensem Usum from Rouen Cathedral. All four exemplars fashion into discursive form the anti-Semitic portion of the pseudo-Augustinian sermon on the Creed which is known under the title Contra Judaeos, Paganos, et Árlanos? The content of the first speech—not the beginning of the Ordo, but the text on the previous (now lost) folio—is Isaiah's familiar proclamation (Isaiah 40.4) ("Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low"), here literally translated as follows: "from mountain stone has been made, from stone, mountain has been made." Though the beginning of the following speech by the Jews cannot be read, it continues: "They delight in our prophets, but claim not to comprehend their hounding [canitas] well." But the accusers do their own hounding : "Untrue synagogue," they continue. This speech is unrestorable because of a large blemish in the center of the page as well as the obliteration, noted above, of about one-sixth of the left end of every system of both words and music. But as a consequence of the melody's formulaic structure, we can both reconstruct the music and confirm the number of missing text syllables : four in the blemish, four more at the illegible left end, illustrated later in this paper. Concordance of the next speech with the published versions of the Ordo Prophetarum gives us the capability for accurate transcription of the text if...