The text above is an alleluia verse for St. Catherine of Alexandria, which appears in a series of small sixteenth-century printed graduals entitled Misse familiares. It refers to St. Catherine's martyrdom and her ability to intercede on behalf of her supplicants, themes that we have seen in confraternity rituals throughout this book. St. Catherine continued to thrive in popular devotional consciousness well into the sixteenth century; in the various editions of the Misse familiares, she appears paired with St. Nicholas, showing the continuing relationship that the two saints had to each other. Their connection was widely recognized in Western Europe and is neatly summed up by William Caxton in his 1483 edition of the Golden Legend translated into English, where he refers to St. Catherine's virtues and her relationship to other saints:

The advertisements on the title and colophon pages of the Misse familiares imply that they were produced for a very broad market, which likely included Parisian trade and devotional confraternities, students at the University of Paris, and other types of religious settings. This series of printed graduals, which contain five widespread votive masses and a full kyriale, were produced in Paris during the early decades of the sixteenth century, first by Geoffrey Marnef and later by François Regnault. They were associated with a number of other small liturgical books entitled Misse solenniores (which contain a dozen Mass ordinaries for major feast days), Communes prose (which contain fifteen popular sequences), and Passiones novissime (passions according to Matthew and John).

This antiphon text is one of many examples of intercessory prayers found in popular devotions meant to establish a direct connection between saint and supplicant. It appears as part of the Office for St. Barbara in Tournai, Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale MS A 12 (B-Tc A 12), a chant manuscript with additions from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries used by the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Tournai. Many of the chants for the Mass and Office in liturgical books used by confraternities are in first person narrative and end with the formula “Ora pro nobis,” or “pray for us,” and indeed, this text asks the saint to “make us to be rendered worthy of the laurel of heaven.” In addition to laudatory texts like the one above, devotional literature (Books of Hours, Miracles of the Virgin, the Golden Legend) and the liturgies that developed from it encouraged the laity to identify with the suffering of the saints by focusing on the details of their martyrdom. Music, text, and image all worked together to engage the “emotional imagination,” creating a personal experience of the saint's pain and salvation. New liturgical texts and music created for confraternities in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries were integral to this process.

In this chapter, I explore the material culture of the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Tournai cathedral—in particular, three manuscripts they owned—and what it can tell us about the development of liturgical practices in private devotional communities at this institution. In the absence of any archival documents recording the everyday acts of the confraternity (how they interacted with the diocese, payment of musicians, and all other sundry activities), these manuscripts are the only existing sources reflecting their rituals and place within the cathedral. Since the discovery of these books in the nineteenth century, scholars have investigated isolated parts of their contents but have not sought to view each one as a whole.

In the introduction to this book, I broadly explored how the movement of individuals (clerics and the laity) through different physical and social spaces could be related to the circulation of popular devotional practices cultivated by confraternities. In many cases there are no documents or confraternity registers recording the inner workings of these organizations, or informa-tion about those who were paid to compile and perform their services. Due to these limitations, I have relied on the contents of their existing liturgical books to investigate how the religious practices of these communities developed. As a result of my focus on the musical and textual contents of these sources, I have demonstrated how decentralized religious and spiritual authority was during the time period under study. As individuals, confraternity members were people who worked as merchants and artisans, clerics, and students. As communities, they had the power to develop their own corporate identities. I do not mean to imply that the laity directly challenged ecclesiastical authority. Instead, it is evident that lay authority and ecclesiastical authority were two different things, and that popular devotions, such as those promoted by confraternities, occupied a different space altogether from that of larger ecclesiastical and monastic institutions.

Confraternity liturgies were created and mediated by individuals and communities and were heavily influenced by contact between different networks. The various types of interactions between these entities could have been responsible for the dissemination of religious ideas, and particularly in times of plague, widespread beliefs concerning the healing attributes of certain saints. Those most commonly revered at the time were the fourteen holy helpers, which in northern France included St. Barbara, St. Catherine, and St. Nicholas. The popular devotional practices in this study did not travel in direct, easily traceable lines, but instead through constellations of individuals and communities, all of which were marked by movement—physical, social, and spiritual—resulting in the formation of different identities, with music playing a central role. While my interest has been northern France, looking at these types of movement would be a useful tool for investigations into other geographical areas further north in the Low Countries, east in the Hapsburg lands, and south in Italy. Below, I recap some of the examples from the present work that illustrate each type of movement.

This appendix records all the manuscript and printed liturgical books containing music that were used by confraternities at various institutions in Tournai through the end of the sixteenth century. Because musical sources from Tournai have not been the object of an in-depth study, sources used in the main sanctuary of the cathedral, as well as those used in other chapels at this institution, are included in the appendix with truncated descriptions. Within the inventories, all Mass ordinary chants are listed in the order in which they appear in the manuscript or printed book, along with a “C” number that has been assigned solely for the purposes of the present study. The appendix also takes special care to indicate sequences appearing outside of the Mass in these sources. The numbering system in this appendix corresponds to the numbers assigned to the sources in appendix 1, which are used for all comparison tables in the chapters and appendices throughout the present study.

Liturgical Books Used by Confraternities in Tournai

10. Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale de Tournai, Manuscript 12 (B-Tc A 12). 270 x 185 mm. Late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century binding (a date determined based on the index of the source's contents, discussed in chapter 1), consisting of brown leather over wooden boards, with evidence of missing clasps. 1 unnumbered parchment flyleaf + 216 numbered parchment folios. Foliation in a modern hand beginning on the second parchment folio in pencil, using Arabic numerals written only on the recto of each leaf in the lower right-hand margin. Penwork initials, and use of red, blue, and yellow throughout. No illuminations. The music notation, which appears on red four-lined staves, consists primarily of a hybrid form commonly found in the southern Low Countries, which mixes elements of French and German neumes. There is also square chant notation on four-lined red staves throughout.

Antiphoner and gradual used by the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Cathedral of Tournai, with original contents and later additions dating from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. There is a card glued to the front of the book in the nineteenth century indicating the source's place of origin, “Cathedral de Tournay” [sic].

This is a Mass offertory for St. Sebastian found in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 204 (F-Pa 204), a fifteenth-century Parisian liturgical book for the Confraternity of the Bourgeois Archers. This organization comprised men of different trades, who resided in neighborhoods throughout the city but came together to function as the citizen's guard of Paris. It is personal and urgent in nature, calling upon the saint directly with the plea, “Quick, soldier, help us.” This prayer to St. Sebastian alludes to his power as a plague saint and healer, which is based on his ability to deflect the anger of God. It is not unlike the other laudatory texts discussed in chapters 1 and 2 that made references to a saint's healing ability, martyrdom, and miracles. St. Sebastian was one of the most revered plague saints in northern France, along with others counted among the fourteen holy helpers in this geographical area. The contents of this confraternity manuscript reveal St. Sebastian to be the most important figure of veneration for the archers, for the saint himself was shot with arrows in an attempted execution at the hands of the Roman emperor Diocletian. This is the only source in the present study that is devoted exclusively to plague saints, as it also contains masses for St. Roche, St. Anthony the Abbot, and St. Genevieve. In this chapter I explore how Parisian confraternities in the fifteenth century refashioned St. Sebastian into a local protector through textual and melodic references to historical persons and places—and in particular, places that held relics.

In addition to the text's allusion to healing, it has a notable reference to place through the line “In this fatherland and in others which request your help.”