Holy women in the medieval music culture from the sources from the area of Slovakia

Abstract

Medieval chants celebrating the feasts of female saints can be divided into two major groups. The first group includes the repertoire of the mass liturgy, which, as a rule, is located in the proprium de sanctis part of the missals or graduals (or the so called sequentiale). The second, much more varied group consists of a repertoire of chants that are part of the liturgy of the hours (breviaries, antiphonaries, psalters). Ritus of Esztergom is documented by manuscripts from the late Middle Ages, especially from the 15th century, a smaller part from the 12th–14th century. The codices we have in Slovakia from the Middle Ages contain more or less Esztergom liturgical tradition, some of them show foreign influences. The central liturgy of the Esztergom rite is preserved in an extremely precise form especially in the notated manuscripts from Bratislava (Bratislava Missal I EC Lad. 3, the State Archive in Bratislava, Bratislava Antiphonaries I–IV). The Spiš codices show the Esztergom rite in a specific, regional version (Spiš Antiphonary Mss. No. 2, Spiš Graduale Mss. No. 1, Spišská Kapitula). Other Spiš manuscripts, preserved now in Budapest and Alba Julia, contain a number of specific features typical of Spiš (the library Batthyaneum Alba Julia: Breviary R. II. 46, Breviary R. III. 94, Breviary R II. 102, Diurnale R. II. 125; Budapest: Breviary 63. 74. I. C Hungarian National Museum, Breviary 63. 84. C Hungarian National Museum). Among the feasts of medieval female saints, the most prominent was the liturgical celebration of the various feasts of the Virgin Mary. Among those feasts, then, the most important feasts were Purificatio BMV (2. 2.), Annuntiatio BMV (25. 3.), Visitatio BMV (usually 2. 7.), BMV de Nive (5. 8.), Assumptio BMV (15. 8.), Nativitas BMV (8. 9.), Praesentatio BMV (21. 11.) and Conceptio BMV (8. 12). Besides them, within the Esztergom proprium de sanctis the most important are those female saints, to whom a mass form accompanied by music notation is dedicated, or those for whom a specific liturgy of the hours have been created. In the extant manuscripts from Slovakia, the most distinguished are the following female saints: St. Agnes, St. Agatha, St. Cecilia, St. Lucia, St. Margaret, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Ursula, St. Catherine, St. Dorothea, St. Anne and St. Elizabeth.

Keywords

• Middle Ages
• music
• female Saints
• liturgy
• Slovakia