Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300–1550 by Sarah Ann Long (review)

The struggles of the past two years with COVID-19 cannot help but remind us of the devastating tolls of earlier pandemics, especially the episodes of bubonic plague that raged with chilling regularity during the Middle Ages. On the first page of her masterful study, Sarah Ann Long bridges a seven-century gap with the statement, "Plague epidemics affected everyone, forcing men and women of all walks of life to come face to face with their mortality. … One can imagine a certain helplessness that people felt when confronted with this disease, causing them to routinely seek divine intervention from patron saints thought to have special protective powers" (p. 1). It is the devotion to these saints, specifically to the music and liturgy inspired by that practice, that provides the focus of Long's work. She examines fourteen liturgical books containing devotional music and texts produced between 1300 and 1540 for organizations in Paris and Tournai. Significantly, the books were not intended for monastic or cathedral use but rather for the various confraternities having a presence in these two cities. Confraternities, Long explains, were smaller institutions than the ecclesiastical communities that sponsored them. Purely devotional in purpose, their membership could be drawn from trades and professions, social groups, and religious laity, and included both men and women.

The devotional material in the volumes pertains to four saints: Sebastian, Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, and Nicholas, bishop of Myra. These were among the fourteen holy helpers—saints venerated together because their intercessions were believed especially effective against sickness and death—most often invoked in the environs of northern France for protection against the plague. Long lays out in detail the importance of confraternities to the rising trend of popular piety in the late fourteenth century, along with the development of devotional practices and their importance in sponsoring new music and texts for their services. It is in this last area that her study breaks new and important ground. Hers is the first to directly connect the confraternities of northern France as patrons to the composers of plainchant and polyphony in honor of these specific saints, as well as to describe the place the chants had within the devotional life of the organizations.

The book is divided into five chapters, with a comprehensive introduction and a brief conclusion. Most of the content of each chapter is interrelated. Notes and bibliographic references are comprehensive and abundant (fifty-six pages of explanatory endnotes and twenty-six pages of bibliographic references necessary for understanding the notes) and together serve as an invaluable summary of scholarship pertaining to Mass and Office composition in late medieval northern France. There are six appendixes that are also integral to understanding the contents of all the chapters: three are provided after the conclusion, and three are available through a companion website that must be either downloaded or viewed online.

In the engagingly written introduction, Long not only explains her goal—to demonstrate how liturgical books for confraternities mirror the popular devotional trend in northern France—but also outlines the importance of these confraternities and describes their relations with sponsoring institutions. She discusses the limitations of available sources, documents the structure and importance of the liturgy (and, consequently, liturgical books) to these societies, and chronicles the resulting development of specialized liturgies in response to the plague. Long describes a fascination with mortality, "which resulted in the production of new literature which circulated widely, first in manuscripts and later in print" and explains how her study of these fourteen books demonstrates "why specific chant melodies were chosen and how contrafacta were carefully crafted with an awareness of the theology they expressed" (p. 8).

In her introductory discussion, Long also explains the important connection...