The Angevin Struggle for the Kingdom of Naples (c.1378–1411) and Politics of Repertoire in Mod A: New Hypotheses
The inner gatherings of the music manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS. α.M.5.24 (Mod A II-IV ) contain a tangle of politically-charged songs, mostly in French, referring to the tumultuous Great Schism of the Western Church (1378–1417) and the prowess of several princes of ascendant Italian states during the same period. Some scholars have connected the repertoire of Mod A II-IV with Petros Filargos, sometime Archbishop of Milan and then the short-lived conciliar pope Alexander V. Yet art-historical evidence now strongly suggests that Mod A II-IV was completed during the pontificate of Alexander’s successor, John XXIII, between September 1410 and March 1411 in Bologna. During the first two years of John’s pontificate the influential and wealthy prince of France, Louis II of Anjou, prosecuted his claim for title of the Kingdom of Naples in Italy, simultaneously supporting John XXIII’s military campaign to reclaim Rome. This article explores a new hypothesis that part of the repertoire of Mod A II-IV —and possibly the manuscript’s very structure—reflects the presence of the Angevin prince at the court of John XXIII in Bologna in the second half of 1410. It considers how other political threads running through this manuscript render it an unlikely candidate for a source connected with the pro-Visconti Alexander V.
Vernacular dedicatory motets in fourteenth‐century France
Abstract This study suggests that three French‐texted motets from the fourteenth century refer to specific living women, named by the liturgical context of then‐tenors. These motets link upper‐voice amatory texts in French with tenors taken from chants for virgin martyrs, a combination not seen elsewhere in the motet repertory. After considering how virgin martyrs differ from other female saints, and some of the ways saints are used in late‐medieval art and literature, the conclusion is drawn that these motets are most likely to celebrate not a martyred saint but a living namesake. Two motets can be linked to Agnès de Navarre, wife of Gaston Fébus, count of Foix and Beam, and one to Lucia di Bernaoò Visconti, onetime fiancée of Louis II of Anjou. These dedicatory connections support previously‐known connections of their respective manuscript repertories: the Ivrea codex with the French royal court and with Gaston Fébus, the Chantilly codex with the claimants to Sicily of the second Angevin house and with Visconti Milan.
John of Bridlington's Prophecy: A New Look
The political prophecy ascribed to John of Bridlington (died 1379) consists of twenty-nine poems, each about twenty to thirty lines long in rhyming hexameters; in four manuscripts it is accompanied by a prose commentary, which explains the cryptic codes and interprets the prophecies.' The Commentary is "signed" in a cryptogram "Ergom," that is, John Ergom (Erghom, Erghome), an Austin friar of the priory at York.2 Recent scholarly opinion has generally held that the attribution to (St.) John of Bridlington, John Thwenge, is a late fiction, as contemporaries would not attribute a "prophecy" to someone who had manifestly witnessed the events that he claimed to foretell; and that Ergom himself was the author of both the Prophecy and the Commentary.3 Only Paul Meyvaert has dissented from the second view, arguing that Ergom did not make use of the attribution to "Robert the Scribe," which was attached to the poem in its earliest version; Meyvaert also notes that Ergom's version of the Prophecy lacked verses found in other manuscripts and that Ergom did not have the command of vocabulary shown by the original author.4 The most recent investigator, Michael J. Curley, has presented both sides of the argument judiciously; in favor of Ergom's authorship he draws attention to the commentator's interpretative skill, which, he argues,