In this chapter, I examine how Old Testament longing for a homeland is reimagined as Mary's body as it becomes a place for a new beginning, because within it, for nine months, Christ dwelled. Because it is where Christ cast aside his divinity to ‘take the form of a slave’, it is a place of humility. When the Virgin's body becomes Christ's resting place, it is imbued with the qualities of places where the Ark, which held God, rested. When filled with the presence of God as his resting place on earth, it is where God's power overcomes darkness. I examine the theology of home and the metaphor of the Virgin-home.

Subsumed within the architectural place, home, there lie a number of different places of varying qualities: house, dwelling place, hall, or palace. Many of these places have interior spaces within them, such as the bedchamber, bridal chamber, or banqueting hall. Each has its biblical and liturgical antecedents, and each its own particular meaning. Each, like any other sacred space, has its point of entry. I re-examine home imagery in medieval Marian literature, evaluating concepts of domestic space and how it is constructed. Just like the Temple, home has its threshold, a place of supreme importance with its own ritual functions.

However, home can also represent the idea of safety and comfort for exiled people, and it is where those lost and in exile return to when they have strayed. Home may mean homeland, with its sense of permanence, to which God's people return. Home is also a place of refuge and may be an expression of hope for the future.3 Places where God stays and rests, such as God's tabernacle, his tent, and his pavilion, may demonstrate short-term occupancy, prefiguring the nine months in Mary's womb. For authors writing about the Virgin, she may, therefore, be both a constructed space and a conceptual place of shelter.

The Virgin, a Resting Place for God in the Loores de Nuestra Señora

Gonzalo de Berceo in his Loores is the first poet in Hispanic literature to turn the Virgin into a domestic space, referring to her as God's ‘cambariella’. ‘Cámara’, from which ‘cambariella’ and ‘camarilla’ derive, has a number of meanings: ‘Commonly it is taken to be the bedroom, set apart, where the Lord sleeps.’

At the age of six or younger, Lucy inherited the manors of Danby, Brotton, Skinningrove, Yarm and Kirkburn (Yorks.), and Bozeat (Northants.), which were thought to be worth at least £241 13s. 8½d. a year, and were probably worth rather more. The Yorkshire lands were held in chief so custody of them during her minority, and the right to award her marriage, belonged to the king, Edward I. This was one of the occasions when secular rights conflicted very obviously with the church's view of the primacy of consent in making a marriage.

The implications of the marriages of minor heirs differed according to whether the heir was male or female. A royal grant of the marriage of a minor male heir offered a father the opportunity to marry off a daughter without paying a cash portion, although very often these were bought and sold and in these cases the difference was immaterial. The marriage of a minor heiress was far more significant because of the land she brought with her. The official attitude to these young girls is displayed in the terminology of administrative records. This was simply commercial and there is little or no indication that they were considered as persons in their own right. The inquisition after the death of Roger de Merlay concluded that the heirs were Merlay's three daughters, aged twenty-four, ten and eight, and that the eldest and the youngest were married before their father's death, the former to William de Greystoke and the latter to ‘the son and heir of Marmaduke de Thweng’. Of the five young persons concerned, only Greystoke is actually named. The important points were that one daughter was of full age and her one-third of the estate would pass to her husband, Greystoke, who would take possession in the usual way. The king would have custody of the other two-thirds of the estate because the other two daughters were minors, but he would have the marriage of only one of them because the other was already married.

Roger of Howden provides a detailed description of a procession which arrived at the doors of Westminster Abbey on 3 September 1189. In the vanguard were clerics carrying holy water, crosses, candles and thuribles, closely followed by priors, then abbots, then four barons carrying four golden candlesticks processing amongst the bishops. Godfrey de Lucy and John Marshal followed side by side, Godfrey carrying a felt cap and John a large pair of heavy spurs made of gold. Then came William Marshal, here described as earl of Striguil, with a golden sceptre topped by a cross, accompanied by William FitzPatrick, earl of Salisbury, carrying a golden rod decorated with a golden dove. Then came the triumvirate of David, earl of Huntingdon, John, count of Mortain, and Robert, earl of Leicester, each bearing a sword from the royal treasury. Behind them came six earls and nobles carrying the royal insignia and clothing, then William de Mandeville, count of Aumale, bearing a large and weighty golden crown, decorated with precious stones. Finally came Richard, duke of Normandy, flanked by Hugh, bishop of Durham to his right and Reginald, bishop of Bath to his left. The duke, under a silken canopy, held aloft by four barons, entered the abbey in which he was to be transformed from a duke into a king. His transformation is echoed in the language used by Roger of Howden. Richard arrived at the cathedral as dux Normanniae. Following his anointing, crowning and investiture with the objects carried in procession by his barons, he departed Westminster as dominus rex. Roger continues his account to tell us that the king swapped his coronation crown for a lighter version and that, ‘thus crowned he came to eat, and the archbishops and bishops sat with him on one table, each seated according to his order and dignity. The earls and barons served in the royal household just as their dignities demanded. The citizens of London served in the buttery and the citizens of Winchester in the kitchen.’

Roger's account is suffused with the language of rank. Richard's rank had been enhanced. The churchmen took their places at the king's table according to their order and dignity.

THIS book explores music written and performed for St Cecilia's Day (22 November), or on the theme of St Cecilia, in Britain between 1683 and 1739. The period begins with the first recorded celebration of St Cecilia's Day, for which Henry Purcell's ode ‘Welcome to all the pleasures’ was written, and closes with Handel's second Cecilian ode, a setting of Dryden's A Song for St Cecilia's Day, 1687. Encompassed within these boundaries are Dryden's aforementioned Song and Alexander's Feast, Henry Purcell's ode ‘Hail, bright Cecilia’ and Handel's settings of Dryden's odes, works that have come to be among the best known and most highly valued contributions to the Cecilian tradition in Europe. It is perhaps ironic they should have been written in a Protestant country in a period in which Catholicism was seen as a clear and present danger to the national polity. This book seeks to engage with this problem by examining the circumstances that led to a flourishing of tributes to Cecilia in this period. The characteristic form of tribute to Cecilia in Britain was the musical ode. It was distinct to Britain, and its secular emphasis suited a context in which Cecilia was figured as a secular saint. When sacred music was introduced into British celebrations of St Cecilia's Day, the saint was side-lined; she is never mentioned in sermons preached on her feast day, or in the texts sung in religious services held on the same.

In order to better understand the unique approach to celebrations of St Cecilia in Britain, it is helpful to explore briefly the history of her legend and the way in which she came to be associated with music and musicians. St Cecilia first enters the written record in the Passio Sanctae Caeciliae probably composed at some time in the late fifth century. This is a fictitious account of a beautiful Roman noble woman who, having committed herself to life as a virgin in the service of Christ, is betrothed by her father against her will to a young aristocrat named Valerian. On the wedding night she informs Valerian of her intention to remain a virgin, and of the Angel of God that protects her. Inspired by her ardour, Valerian seeks out Pope Urban and converts to Christianity.

This chapter examines the centrality of Bethel Farm, the Basotho's communally owned farm, and its features in the everyday life of these Basotho. The cemetery, in particular, became a key feature of the farm and a marker of the Basotho's attachment to the land. The chapter also explores the various factors that influenced most members of the Basotho community's decision to bury their dead at Bethel Cemetery and the social significance attached to this exclusive Basotho burial place. Being recent immigrants, ownership of land and attachment to it, often established through links to graves and other landscape features, became factors in how the Basotho formulated and continue to formulate their sense of belonging to the land. This is, arguably, the reason why kuBhetere, as Bethel Farm is called by the surrounding communities, became a symbol of the Basotho's belonging in the Dewure Purchase Areas.

BETHEL FARM AND THE BASOTHO's BELONGING

As highlighted in the previous chapter, as Alien Natives, the Basotho's belonging in the purchase areas largely hinged on ownership of freehold farms and establishing an attachment to these farms. It is, however, important to note that as well as purchasing their individual farms, the Basotho also bought a community farm, which became a feature in the Basotho's everyday life. As the leader of the community, Jacob Molebaleng sent numerous letters to the Native Land Board on behalf of the community requesting a farm that would be used as a site for building a ‘non-denominational’ church, school and clinic. They also planned to make the farm a site for a community cemetery and a dip tank. While the establishment of a school, dip tank and clinic represented the Basotho's desire to foster development through the provision of education and health services, the cemetery largely showed their keenness to establish an attachment to the land through graves. In essence their desire was to make the farm the centre of all their activities and a spiritual marker of their unity as a community.

The idea of having a community farm in a purchase area was quite a novel one. Consequently, it began to be suggested by some colonial officials that, as ‘Alien Natives’ without any rights in the reserves, maybe the Basotho wished to establish a ‘reserve’ of their own.

The Gentlemen of the Musical Society

FROM 1684 the entertainments held on St Cecilia's Day in London were organized by the Gentlemen of the Musical Society. Who constituted this society, and what was its role in promoting the annual Cecilian celebrations? The best sources of information regarding its membership are the names of stewards for the Cecilian feasts. Of the sixteen celebrations between 1683 and 1700, the names of some or all of the stewards are known for nine. The names are recorded in publications of odes and sermons, in the newspapers and other press and on tickets for the event, and in one instance, annotated on the back of a single-sheet copy of the poem circulated at the feast (Table 2.1). In 1691 Peter Motteux described the constitution of stewards as four ‘Persons of Quality or Gentlemen of Note’ and two ‘Gentlemen of their Majesties Music, or some of the chief Masters in Town’. In fact, the number of stewards increased over the period of the festivities. Four were named the first year for which a record exists (1684), and by 1695 there were eight, though the number of professional musicians remained constant at two. An investigation of the stewards reveals the diversity of the social and economic groups that supported the Cecilian celebrations, and that were, by implication, involved more widely in musical patronage and consumption in London during this period. The range of backgrounds evident among the stewards, and particularly the involvement of merchants and other men of business, helps to contextualize the increasing commercialization of music in London, in terms of both the growth in music printing and the development of the concert culture of the city.

Only two sets of stewards are known for the Cecilian feasts held before the hiatus of 1688–89, those for 1684 and 1686. Several of these persons can be linked circumstantially with the society of amateur musicians described by Roger North, who held weekly music meetings at the Castle Tavern on Fleet Street. As we have seen in Chapter 1, this group probably played an important role in the development of the Cecilian feast and likewise may have provided the foundation for the musical society that supported it. North's comments imply that he was himself a member of the group, and though he provides no dates, Jamie Kassler suggests his participation from about 1679 to about 1689.

Perfume created a purified space, allowing the divine and the human to commune. In the Jerusalem Temple, perfume signalled God's presence and, in the Old Testament, Wisdom, a semi-deity, evokes incense in her self-eulogy: ‘like the smoke of incense in the tent’ (Ecclus. 24.21). In Byzantium, burning incense ‘indicated the descent of divine grace’. Perfumes recalled paradise, since, according to medieval writers, India lay close to Eden and spices came from India. In this chapter, I look more fully at the sweet air occasioned by perfumes, showing how perfumed spaces act as symbols of the Virgin.

I focus first on Gonzalo de Berceo and Juan Gil de Zamora, showing how understanding perfume's attributes increases modern-day comprehension of the Virgin. After examining their poems, I discuss some of the principal aspects of medieval perfumes, for perfumes like ambergris created an exotic, evocative space. I then examine fray Ambrosio Montesino's poetry.

Perfumes in Early Marian Poetry

Because it is impossible to fully understand how perfumed plants adorn the verses of late medieval poets without acknowledging their use in earlier poems, I first examine Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros and Loores to show how perfumes evoke the Virgin's essence.

The prologue to the Milagros constructs a ‘logar cobdiciaduero’, redolent with scents, where a person may take his ease. Berceo highlights the fragrance of flowers, since they give off scent, ‘olor’, and are sweet-smelling, ‘olientes’: ‘davan olor sovejo las flores bien olientes’. He returns to scent two stanzas later:

The scent Berceo mentions is a source of comfort to the weary pilgrim, so powerful that it can restore man to new life in Christ (2 Tim. 1.1), and so intense that it can almost be tasted: ‘sabroso’, delicious, sweet-tasting, or flavoursome. Its restorative powers are for the end of time: ‘those who did good will come forth to life’ (John 5.29). Scent is so intrinsic to Berceo's sense of the sacred that I return to this stanza, after examining scented plants in the Milagros litany.