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Ambrosian Mass chants before the Carolingian intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Terence Bailey
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Abstract

The service books of the Ambrosian rite were produced relatively late: the oldest copy of the Manuale, the first to record the texts and some rubrics, dates from the early eleventh century; the earliest redaction of the ordinal, from shortly after 1126; the oldest copy of the antiphoner, which contains the notated melodies of both Mass and Office, from the mid-twelfth. All these books document a liturgy that had been extensively revised after the Frankish conquest of northern Italy in 774. The Frankish reforms did not result in the suppression of the Milanese rite (as they had the Gallican), but many changes were effected, changes that brought the ancient liturgy of northern Italy – without destroying all of its indigenous features – closer to the new, international, Gregorian rite. The purpose of this article is to re-examine the earliest references to the Mass of pre-Conquest Milan and its archdiocese, which reveal more than has been suspected, and to present new evidence concerning the Ambrosian sacrifice as it was in the earliest centuries, even before the time of St Ambrose.

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Research Article
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

We know nothing certain about the Milanese liturgy in the first Christian centuries, and next to nothing about the period between the earliest sparse references of the fourth and fifth century and the first Ambrosian service books from the eleventh. In this article, I want first to re-examine the well-known early texts that relate to the Ambrosian Mass in this period of darkness, engaging in some reasonable speculation that they contain more information than has been seen; second, to draw general inferences from my own recent work about the history of the Milanese Mass chants prior to the Carolingian intervention; and third, after presenting important evidence that has gone unnoticed in the Manuale,Footnote 1 to venture some surprising conclusions about the Milanese Mass in the time of St AmbroseFootnote 2 and even earlier.

The earliest reference to the Ambrosian ‘Mass’ was made by the great bishop himself. It is important for our purposes to note that for him the word meant the Sacrifice:Footnote 3 the preparation of the elements, their consecration, and the distribution of the sacrament. In a letter written in 385 to his sister Marcellina, he writes:

After the lessons and the sermon, having dismissed the catechumens … word was brought to me that [the Imperial regime] had indeed sent officials from the palace to the Porcian basilica.… But I remained at my place and began to say Mass (missam facere coepi).Footnote 4

Two other celebrated bishops, in the sixth and in the seventh century respectively, followed the usage of Ambrose: St Caesar of Arles writes, ‘you will recognize that missae are not celebrated when the divine readings are recited in the church, but [only] when gifts are offered and the Body and Blood of the Lord are consecrated’;Footnote 5 and Isidore of Seville defines ‘Mass’ as ‘the time of the sacrifice, when the catechumens are sent out’.Footnote 6

The lessons mentioned in the citation from Ambrose's letter to Marcellina were those of what we would call the foremass. In De sacramentis and in De mysteriis Footnote 7 there are further references to such readings, from the Old Testament, the Epistles and the Gospel,Footnote 8 which were – and are – features of the Ambrosian Mass. Later in the same letter, Ambrose cites a sermon in which he mentions responses to such lessons: ‘This morning there was a reading, as you brothersFootnote 9 remember because we were responding with the greatest agony of spirit, O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance.’Footnote 10 Psalm 78, no doubt chanted at length by a solo singer, followed this reading. Deus, venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam was the communal refrain. The imperfect tense, ‘we were responding’ (respondebamus), should be noted since it seems to confirm that this refrain was sung repeatedly.

The occurrence related by Ambrose should be understood in the light of the roughly contemporary direction in book 7 of the Apostolic Constitutions: ‘After two lessons let someone else [i.e., a different reader] sing the hymns of David, and let the people respond with verses (ἀκροστíχια).’Footnote 11 From this we may infer that the specific instance mentioned by Ambrose was typical. It is important that we should not jump to conclude that Deus, venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam was the text of a developed chant such as the psalmellus or respond-gradual. There is no trace of these in the writings of Ambrose, nor does he mention an antiphon in the foremass corresponding to the ingressa-introit,Footnote 12 nor any chants in the Mass of the Faithful such as were later associated with the preparation and distribution of the Eucharist.

References to the liturgy of Milan in the writings of Ambrose's contemporaries do not refer directly to the Mass, although it is worthwhile to review them. St Augustine, writing in 397–98, provides further information about the events referred to in the letter to Marcellina. He tells us that Ambrose, to occupy the orthodox community of Milan during the prolonged sit-in of 386 – an act of defiance that prevented the Empress Justina from transferring the church to the Arian faction:

so that the people might not be worn out in dreary tedium, introduced the singing of psalms and hymns in the manner of the East, [a practice] maintained from that day to this – imitated in many, in fact in almost all, of yourFootnote 13 congregations throughout the rest of the [Western]Footnote 14 World.Footnote 15

Augustine's words ‘institutum est’ might be taken to suggest that the psalms and hymns became a regular part of the liturgy only in 386. But Psalms, at least, must have been part of the cathedral liturgy from the beginning; the innovation must have been the way they were sung, that is, ‘in the manner of the East’. What this was can be inferred from a slightly later source.

Augustine's comments were amplified (either in 412–13 or 422, the date is disputed) by Paulinus of Milan,Footnote 16 the secretary and biographer of Ambrose, a man certainly familiar with the Milanese liturgy. Paraphrasing the account of Augustine, Paulinus makes the same points. He tells us that the innovations of 385 ‘continue to this day, not only in the Milanese Church, but in almost every archdiocese in the West (Occidentis provincias)’.Footnote 17 But there are interesting differences between the two accounts. The younger man does not repeat that ‘psalms and hymns’ began to be sung at that time, but ‘antiphons, hymns and vigils’. The correspondences between Augustine and Paulinus allow us to infer that ‘antiphons’ refers, not to the chants we know by this name, but to congregational ‘responses’ (ἀντιϕώνος=‘sounding in answer’) that punctuated the psalms and canticles sung in the Mass and Office. What I am suggesting is that ‘antiphons’ was his word for ἀκροστίχια, and that in saying ‘antiphons’ Paulinus is telling us ‘the manner of the East’ was the manner described by the Apostolic Constitutions, that is, with congregational responses. As for ‘vigils’, the term suggests protracted observances in a night Office. Presumably, the people trapped in the church during the siege were present at what was in effect a greatly elongated, exceptional night Office. It was perhaps only thereafter that Ambrose introduced a regular night Office – originally a monastic observance – into the cathedral liturgy,Footnote 18 an Office the laity may have been expected to attend.Footnote 19

A few words now about the early references to hymns. In one of his sermons, written a few years later than the letter to Marcellina, Ambrose exhorts his congregation: ‘to come to church promptly at noon: there are hymns to be sung and Mass is to be celebrated’.Footnote 20 Lessons and a sermon were regular features of the foremass everywhere; hymns were not.Footnote 21 That said, in view of Ambrose's fame as a hymn-writer one should not rule out that the early Milanese Mass differed from others in this respect. And we should also consider the possibility that Ambrose intended ‘hymni’ to include the psalms: as we have seen, the Apostolic Constitutions refer to ‘hymns of David’; and as we will see presently, Augustine speaks of ‘hymns from the Book of Psalms’. Further, there is the question of performance. In our day, the singing of hymns and psalms is pre-eminently a congregational activity. Are we to think that in the fourth century the people sang in the same way? Probably not. For one thing, we should not take for granted that the general congregation would have been able to commit lengthy texts to memory, even texts heard as often as the psalms. Beautiful as they are, they are famously difficult of meaning; and hymns of the sort composed by Ambrose are no easier. Both employ an elevated language far from the Latin of the streets. Today, handouts might be employed, but no such aids were available to congregations in the fourth century. Early evidence of liturgical psalmody attests to brief congregational (or clerical) responses to a psalm read out by a solo singer. This practice was, if not universal, very widespread (it is a feature of the psalms themselves). The citation from Augustine seems to say that hymns and psalms were both sung ‘in the manner of the East’. As far as hymns (in the usual sense) are concerned, only for those sung in processions is there evidence of refrains, but it is possible that there was some sort of alternation, perhaps of stanzas, that involved two or more clerics. In Milan in the High Middle Ages – and perhaps much earlier – the hymns were sung ‘in alternation’ (‘alternatim’, ‘vicissim’) by the boy scholars and the chorus.Footnote 22 We would be right to question the existence of a chorus in Milan in the fourth century, but Ambrose does mention specially trained ‘readers’ and ‘cantors’,Footnote 23 and two or more of these fourth-century clerics might have sung the hymns in the manner described in the early twelfth.

The circumstances of 385–86 in Milan are referred to yet again in an anonymous (and somewhat ungrammatical) treatise written, probably, in Frankish territory in the mid-eighth century: ‘The blessed Bishop Augustine reports that there is another cursus that blessed Ambrose composed as a response to the different liturgy (ordinem dissimilem) of the heretics that was previously being sung in Italy.’Footnote 24 This reference is probably based entirely on Augustine, but it does widen the discourse to suggest that the innovations of Ambrose were understood to have a doctrinal component. ‘Cursus’ in this passage has usually been taken to mean the ‘course’ of psalms and readings of the Divine Office, but since the word is used as a synonym of ‘ordo’, and since this word might easily mean the ‘ordering’ of public worship, that is, the liturgyFootnote 25 (see Walafrid Strabo, just below), it is reasonable to suppose that author was thinking of the Mass as well – the more so as the Mass, not the Office, would have been the crux of the dispute between Arians and orthodox. The defining heresy of the Arians, who controlled the Milanese Church for twenty years until Ambrose was made bishop in 374, was to deny that Jesus was coeternal with God – in every respect his equal. And an Arian Mass, whatever it was like, must have differed significantly from the orthodox, whose central act was the sacrifice of Christ, God himself, for the salvation of mankind.

It is only with Strabo, who died Abbot of Reichenau, that one reads explicitly of a Mass that owed something to Ambrose. Strabo writes (between 840 and 842) that: ‘Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, organized (dispositionem ordinavit) the Mass and other Offices, and these have been maintained to this day in his own church and in others in Liguria.’Footnote 26 That Strabo merely recycles Augustine is interesting. The abbot, who lived c.809 to 849, was a tutor of Charles the Bald (a grandson of Charlemagne) and could hardly have been unaware of the liturgical reforms that followed in the wake of the Frankish conquests. But if Strabo knew of Romanizing innovations in Milan that took place in his own lifetime, he says nothing that would suggest the Milanese Mass in his day was not still the Mass of Ambrose. Of course, the rite could not have continued unchangedFootnote 27 for so long; in fact, we cannot be sure that anything of his hand is to be seen in the Milanese Mass as we know it. It seems safe to say that no changes to the Milanese liturgy were more rapid and far-reaching than those that followed the conquest of northern Italy by Charlemagne in 774. If it was not his intention to suppress the Milanese rite, as he had suppressed the Gallican, he or those he left in charge of the city clearly intended to bring its liturgical practices more into line with the Franco-Roman that as much for political as religious reasons he championed throughout his territories. That Strabo seems to have known nothing of these developments may be an indication that they took place only after his time, later in the ninth century or even in the tenth. However, at the beginning of the eleventh, the Manuale, the first book to detail the contents of the Ambrosian Mass, contained significantly fewer Mass chants than do Gregorian books of about the same age, Einsiedeln 121, for instance. If the importation of Gregorian chants occurred as late as the beginning of the eleventh century, we would expect the size of the two repertories to be about the same, for if the Milanese were importing whole repertories, we can assume they would take over everything available.

The Roman influences on the Milanese customs have tended to be underestimated or ignored, especially by the many eminent scholars who were citizens of the city and treasured the ‘independence’ of ‘their’ liturgy.Footnote 28 It is likely that the first bishop of Milan was sent from Rome (probably not before the second or third century),Footnote 29 and if so, the earliest liturgy – no doubt relatively simple – would have had a Roman basis. Roman influence in Milan in the fourth century is confirmed in De sacramentis: ‘we [the Milanese] follow the form and fashion of the Roman Church in all things’Footnote 30 – although in the continuation the author is careful to say that the Ambrosian rite had customs not found in the Roman.

The very considerable differences between the Roman and the Milanese Mass in their earliest documents are to be explained as the result of independent development. While the provinces of the Latin Church were expected to defer to Rome in doctrinal matters, there is very little evidence that the popes made any sustained effort to regulate the components of the local liturgies. It was only after Charlemagne made the Franco-Roman ‘Gregorian’ rite the official liturgy of his empire that pressure, ultimately irresistible in the West (except in Milan and vestigially in Toledo), was applied to bring all practices into conformity with the centre – notionally Rome, although, in fact, it was the Frankish redaction of Roman practices that ultimately prevailed.

Though no one has ever denied that Roman influences are visible in the Milanese Mass – the canon is essentially the same in both – the dependence of the Ambrosian chants has largely been unrecognized. Anyone familiar with the sung items of the Gregorian and the Ambrosian Mass will have noticed that the same texts are often shared; the fact is, texts shared in Ambrosian books and in the six oldest Franco-Roman Mass-books – those edited by René-Jean Hesbert in his Antiphonae missarum Sextuplex Footnote 31 – amount to half or more of the ingressae, psalmelli, offerendae and confractoria. And those who did draw attention to significant similarities between Ambrosian and Gregorian melodiesFootnote 32 chose to be cautious, if only because the determination of the nature of the relationship requires extensive comparison. What has emerged only recently is that the chants that share texts are set to versions of the same melody.Footnote 33 I will not repeat here the demonstrations of this relationship, or the various arguments indicating that the Roman chants came to Milan via the Franks, and that the imported introits, respond-graduals, offertories and communions had originally been sufficient for all the occasions of the year.Footnote 34 There are, of course, indigenous, i.e., authentically Milanese, psalmelli, offerendae and confractoria, but these – mostly the result of the growing fashion for proper Footnote 35 chants – aggregated around Franco-Roman nuclei. There is no fundamental difference in style between the borrowed and indigenous chants, but then, there is no reason to question that the underlying style of ecclesiastical chant was basically similar in all the provinces of the Western Church. Let us now consider what chants the Ambrosian Mass might have included before the Franco-Roman importations.

The proper chants of the foremass

I will begin with some remarks about the transmission of Roman Mass-chants to Milan. The books of the Sextuplex, the earliest to detail the contents of the Roman Mass, were compiled, roughly speaking, in the first half of the ninth century. They are certainly based on the practice of Rome, but they have been edited for Frankish use and may therefore be taken to contain the ideal liturgy that Charlemagne intended for his expanded empire. It is clear (from a comparison of their contents) that none of the six early Gregorian books was the direct source for the borrowed repertories in Milan. This, conceivably, was another book of the same kind (if so, probably older) but it is also possible that no such service book was involved. The Roman repertories adopted in Milan (and perhaps those brought earlier to Gaul) might have been conveyed in simple libelli that contained no more than a list of items grouped loosely – as is suggested by the variability in the Ambrosian and Gregorian assignments – by season and according to the nature of the occasions (whether for Sundays or for saints’ festivals). It is likely that the chant assignments in eighth-century Rome were not all as they are entered in the Sextuplex. Many might have been decided by the Franks. As for the melodies, in an age before pitch-accurate notation, Milanese singers would have to learn them by rote from others, Frankish or Roman.

The ingressae

As its name implies – and as is described c.800 in the Ordo Romanus I – the introit was sung as the celebrants approached the altar before Mass. If the Milanese once had an indigenous entrance-antiphon such as that in the Roman, Old-Iberian and Gallican Mass, nothing remains: the core repertory of the ingressae is Roman.Footnote 36 In the Mass of the earliest Ambrosian ordinal, as in later Roman books, the ‘entrance-antiphon’ was begun only after the celebrants reached the altar.Footnote 37 Perhaps, by the time of the Frankish intervention (and before the introit lost its original function in the Roman Mass), there was no longer any actual need for the chant in Milan. This might explain why the Milanese did not take over the introit-verses (or later abandoned them). To mention only the obvious reasons for thinking there was no indigenous ingressa: if entrance antiphons had been in use, circumstances suggest they would not have been discarded but left in place and doubled, as were the antiphonae post evangelium by the offerendae, and the confractoria by the communiones.Footnote 38

The psalmelli

Just as there is no evidence for an indigenous collection of entrance antiphons, so is there none for responsories to follow the first Mass-lesson: the core repertory of the psalmelli is made up of Franco-Roman respond-graduals.Footnote 39 Ambrose himself, as we have seen, refers to a psalm sung after a lesson. The melodically developed respond-graduals of the Roman Mass are usually understood as (musically elaborated) abridgments of such psalms. Even if they had already been curtailed in Milan c.800, the one or two remaining verses might still have been sung to very simple formulae such as those employed in the Gregorian responsoria brevia. And neither extensive psalmody chanted by a singer to a recitation tone (even with congregational responses which perforce would be simple) nor abbreviated psalmody sung ad hoc to simple formulae would leave a trace if superseded. This could explain why no Ambrosian counterpart of the respond-gradual is in evidence (for another explanation see, below, the remarks about the cantus).

The antiphons ‘before the Gospel’

The next item in a list of Ambrosian Mass-chants is the antiphon ‘before the Gospel’, a chant that is often taken to be characteristically Ambrosian. It is not.Footnote 40 The ordinal of Beroldus says nothing about it; and except for the very few occasionsFootnote 41 when an antiphon is assigned, the procession from the sacristy to the pulpit with the Gospel-book (corresponding to the Little Entrance in the Greek rites) would appear to have been carried out in silence – although I would like to suggest that an unchanging ordinary chantFootnote 42 may once have been taken for granted. The antiphon ‘before the Gospel’ is certainly a late addition, probably in imitation of similar practices (also recent) in Gregorian books,Footnote 43 where the same antiphons sung in Milan for Christmas, Epiphany and Easter were assigned to the same occasions.

The Mass-alleluias

There is no way of being sure that alleluias were a regular part of the Ambrosian Mass before the coming of the Franks. But when Ambrose writes ‘we receive into ourselves the coming grace of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost: fasting is at an end, God is praised and alleluia is sung’,Footnote 44 he almost tells us that alleluia was sung in Paschaltide; for if on Pentecost then on Easter, and likely during the whole of the period between them. Augustine could hardly be plainer when he tells us that in his day it was the general custom to sing the Alleluia in Easteride, and in some places even outside this period: ‘That the alleluia [it can be taken for granted that this was the Mass-alleluia]Footnote 45 is confined to the fifty days [of Eastertide] is not everywhere observed in the Church. In some places it is sung on other days, but it is sung everywhere on these fifty.’Footnote 46 Augustine had lived for some years in or near Milan and must have known the Milanese Church very well (he was baptised by St Ambrose). He might therefore be supposed to have mentioned an Ambrosian exception to his ‘everywhere’. There is an even greater expectation that Augustine would mention an exception in Rome, for in saying ‘the Church’ in the passage cited above, he could not conceivably mean to exclude the city, where he was a regular visitor. What are we to make, then, of the historian Sozomenus, who in 445, that is, fifteen years after the death of Augustine, speaking of the peculiarities of Roman customs wrote, ‘moreover, in Rome they sing the alleluia only once a year, on the first day of the Easter festival’?Footnote 47 Conceivably, the alleluia was sung in a particular way on Easter Day (perhaps very elaborately) and less notably on other occasions? I should also mention the possibility that Sozomenus was referring to a papal liturgy that was more conservative than that employed in the other churches in the city and throughout the West. In any case, whatever the earlier practice in Milan, the Mass-alleluia in the earliest Ambrosian service books appears to have a Roman basis: the Ambrosian melismas used for the opening alleluia are significantly related to those assigned for the most important occasions in Franco-Roman books.Footnote 48

The alleluia-versesFootnote 49

If it seems likely that the alleluia-melisma was sung at Mass from Easter to Pentecost in Milan in Ambrose's time, we cannot be as sure about the verses. They may have been added long before Frankish influence was brought to bear in Milan (if so, most likely in imitation of Roman practice) or they may, until then, have been absent from the Ambrosian Mass. The two parts of the Mass-alleluia correspond formally to the caput Footnote 50 and verse of the respond-gradual, and served, in effect, as another of the usually bi-partite responsories sung between readings – in this case between the Epistle and the Gospel. But it is unlikely the alleluia was originally understood this way: it appears to have begun as a joyous introduction to the Gospel account of the Resurrection read on Easter Day.

It is a reasonable hypothesis that the Mass-alleluia acquired verses only after the chant lost its exclusive association with Eastertide, for when that occurred it must have seemed desirable to sing something distinctive, if not actually topical, to connect the alleluia-melisma to the particular occasion or season.Footnote 51 That the alleluia was in some places sung outside Eastertide is attested to by Augustine; Pope Gregory I appears to give evidence (if we accept the usual reading of his famous letter to John of Syracuse)Footnote 52 that Rome was among such places, and had been since the time of Damasus. Now, Damasus was pope at the time Ambrose was elected bishop of Milan. It is by no means certain that a Roman practice of the fourth century would immediately have influenced the Milanese, but Ambrose did maintain contact with the papacy and, and as we learn from De sacramentis, Milan followed Roman practices closely.Footnote 53

The oldest of the books of the Sextuplex (from Monza, copied at the beginning of the ninth century) contains thirty-three verses, but the six books taken together contain a hundred. This number was to grow rapidly. Karl-Heinz Schlager has catalogued several hundred Gregorian alleluia-melismas and alleluia-verses in manuscripts of the eleventh century and earlier.Footnote 54 The Ambrosian Manuale of the eleventh century and the antiphoners of the twelfth include only fifty-five alleluia-verses and – even more conservatively – these employ not hundreds but a mere ten melodiesFootnote 55 for the caput (the word alleluia sung one or more times). All the verses sung throughout the year were associated with these ten alleluia-melismas.

In the Ambrosian books, there are only sixteen alleluia-verses with counterparts in the manuscripts of the Sextuplex. This is half the number of verses in the Monza manuscript and an indication, one of several, that the Roman borrowings in Milan were from a source older than any of these six, or at any rate different. We may almost take for granted that these sixteen contain the oldest Milanese corpus, since they include those for some (although not all) of the most important festivals. The alleluia-verses of the Temporale with Gregorian counterparts are for the Octave of Christmas (Iubilate deo omnis terra, a commune chant in the Sextuplex), Easter, the Vigil of Pentecost, Pentecost Sunday and Ascension; and in the Sanctorale only for the feasts of St Victor, St Dionysius and Sts Peter and Paul. The commune items are for ordinary Sundays (four chants, all used similarly as commune chants in the Sextuplex), for festivals of more than one martyr (three chants), and for Virgins (one chant).Footnote 56 Of the five verses de tempore, those for Easter, Ascension and Pentecost have texts specific to the occasion; these are given the same assignments in the Sextuplex. Two of the three Roman counterparts of the Ambrosian verses assigned to specific saints (the exception is Tu es Petrus for the Feast of St PeterFootnote 57 in Hesbert's MSS M and B) have texts of a general nature and are not assigned to specific occasions in the books of the Sextuplex.

The interesting question (without a ready answer) is why the Gregorian choices for Christmas and Epiphany are not those of the Ambrosian books, and what this might mean. Instead of Dies sanctificatus (the so-called Frankish alleluia),Footnote 58 the Milanese assigned Hodie in Bethlehem puer natus est to the main MassFootnote 59 on Christmas Day.Footnote 60 And instead of Vidimus stellam eius on Epiphany, they sang Magi venerunt ab oriente. The text of Vidimus stellam was indeed sung on Epiphany in Milan, but in a responsorium in baptisterio; just conceivably, this assignment was in place before the Franco-Roman revisions and might have forestalled the use of the same text at Mass. The alleluia-verses for Christmas and Epiphany assigned in the earliest Ambrosian service books conceivably replace the chants assigned in the Sextuplex – chants that the Milanese later discarded. But if so, how are we to explain why local verses would be preferred to the Sextuplex choices: the corresponding texts for Christmas are both non-scriptural and of a similar type; and for Epiphany, the Gregorian and Ambrosian chants are both taken from Matthew 2:2. These circumstances reinforce the suggestion that the source of the Milanese borrowings was a Roman Mass repertory that differed in some respects from that represented in the books of the Sextuplex.Footnote 61

The cantus

The cantus Footnote 62 (like the Roman tracts) were sung when the alleluia was not, and the suggestion is that they and the tracts were displaced by the alleluia – presumably when it became a responsory and a normal item of Mass. By the time the first Ambrosian service books were compiled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, not many cantus remained, but they are not exclusively penitential,Footnote 63 they were not confined to Mass and, interestingly, their melody (there is only one) was also used for extensive psalmody. These cantus have structural characteristicsFootnote 64 that make them significantly similar to the Old-Iberian threni (if one can gauge from the cheironomic neumes of the latter). This latter observation, that there might be a connection with the Visigothic Mass, would suggest that the cantus were ancient features of the Ambrosian and in use before the Frankish Conquest. This impression is strengthened by certain conservative features: the employment of single g-mode melodyFootnote 65 – an elaborated recitation tone that is adapted to all the texts – and the exclusive association of this melody with texts from the psalms or canticles.

A version of the cantus melody is employed in the Gregorian tracts of the g-mode. In the case of other Milanese chants with Roman counterparts, I have argued that the use of what are essentially the same melodies in both is explained by the adoption of chants of the Roman Mass around the beginning of the ninth century. The cantus melody may be Roman in origin but adopted far earlier. Although the single Ambrosian melody is related to that of the eighth-mode tracts in Gregorian books, the complex structural features of the former (some of them shared with the threni) are not found in the eighteen Gregorian tracts represented in the Sextuplex.Footnote 66 Moreover, the number of shared texts is not as great as one might expect: only three psalmsFootnote 67 were set as cantus and also as tracts, and never for the same occasion. Further, in two of the three where the same psalm was set, the Ambrosian texts are shorter and the cantus lack the verses found in the Sextuplex. From these indications, we should probably conclude that the Ambrosian practice for the cantus was not directly dependent upon the Roman use of c.800. This is not to say, however, that every one of the cantus dates from before the Conquest. The constitution of a full Mass on the Saturday when the Creed was taught to those who were to be baptised is certainly a late development.Footnote 68 There is no reason to doubt that a cantus would have been sung on this occasion even before the Mass was expanded, but although Laudate dominum is set to the usual Ambrosian melody, one may wonder whether this chant was the original assignment. Psalm 116 is singularly joyous in Lent, an anomaly that is probably explained by the second verse, which includes the serendipitously topical phrase, ‘and the truth of the Lord [i.e., the Creed] endures forever’.

Some further speculation about the cantus: perhaps, before it was displaced by the alleluia, the single cantus melody was used for any psalms sung between the readings of the foremass – two different responsorial psalms but both sung to the usual cantus melody. Or it may be that in the early Milanese Mass there was only one responsorial psalm sung after the first two readings (from the Old Testament and the Epistles) – this is what is called for by the Apostolic Constitutions. Either circumstance would offer the other explanation (promised earlier) why there was no counterpart to the respond-gradual in the Milanese Mass before the Carolingian revisions, namely, that the function of the respond-gradual in the Roman Mass was in Milan fulfilled by a text set to the melody of the cantus.

The proper chants of the Mass of the Faithful

The antiphonae post evangelium

The indigenous Milanese offertory-chants (the antiphons ‘after the Gospel’)Footnote 69 survive alongside their imported Roman counterparts, so there is no need to argue that the Ambrosian chants are pre-Conquest. Their antiquity is, of course, another matter, but nothing about these antiphons would argue against an age as great as that of the Roman Mass chants.

The communion antiphons

The confractoria are usually taken to be characteristically Ambrosian, but the different name notwithstanding, the core repertory consists of Roman communiones – the imported repertory, as in the case of the ingressae, psalmelli and offerendae, greatly supplemented by locally produced additions.Footnote 70 The Roman name, communio, requires no explanation; the Ambrosian tells us that the confractoria were sung in Milan during the fraction, that is, before the distribution of the Eucharist. The Ambrosian communion-antiphon is the transitorium:Footnote 71 this is made clear by the texts, for example, Accedite ad altare, Accedite et edite, Corpus Christi accepimus,Footnote 72 that show they were sung as the people approached the altar to receive the Eucharist. The transitorium had a counterpart in the Old-Iberian Mass,Footnote 73 namely, the antiphon ‘ad accedentes’, that is, ‘when [the communicants] approached’. This might seem a strong reason for believing that the transitorium was an ancient feature of the Ambrosian Mass. Perhaps it was. But the fact that only oneFootnote 74 of sixty-three has a psalmic text, and that so many are non-scriptural (a few of these have been identified as Greek in origin, although their melodies are typically Ambrosian)Footnote 75 suggests that the medieval repertory, or most of it, does not belong to the earliest stratum of the Milanese liturgy.

In the books of the Old-Iberian rite no antiphon ‘ad accedentes’ is assigned outside Lent and Eastertide, and it seems there must have been an ordinary chant that would be taken for granted when none other was specified. Some scholars, trying to explain the circumstances, have suggested that the text of this chant would have been Gustate et videte (‘O taste and see how sweet is the Lord’) from Psalm 33. This is such a compelling choice that it seems surprising not to find it among the transitoria,Footnote 76 but we may speculate whether a similar chant had once been the only Ambrosian communion-antiphon (any of the three from the Commune dominicarum given as examples in the previous paragraph would be a likely choice) until the repertory was augmented by topical, or at least proper, assignments. The transitoria in the service books of the High Middle Ages (like the antiphons ‘after the Gospel’) have no concordances in Gregorian books and were almost certainly known before the coming of the Franks. But how long before remains a question.

Provisional summary

Although facts are admittedly few, we can be reasonably confident that only the alleluia (without verse), the cantus, the antiphon ‘post evangelium’ and the transitorium were in place before the Frankish Conquest – before, but not necessarily long before, and not necessarily as we know them. In fact, one may wonder which chants – if any – of the eleventh-century repertories of these four would have been in place even two centuries before the coming of the Franks. James McKinnon has argued convincingly that the repertory of proper chants of the Roman Mass was constituted only in the latter part of the seventh century.Footnote 77 Joseph Dyer has recently concluded that the offertorium we know (adopted as the Milanese offerenda) was not introduced before the eighth.Footnote 78 Especially considering the prevailing chaos of its circumstances beginning five years after the death of Ambrose with the invasion of Alaric and the Goths, Milan is unlikely to have been in advance of Rome in the matter of liturgical innovation. Moreover, after 649, when the bishop and his clergy returned to Milan from an eighty-year exile in Genoa (which finally fell to the Lombards), and until the Franks seized control 125 years later, the continuing enmity between the papacy and Lombard rulers of northern Italy would have tended to isolate the Milanese Church from Rome and from Roman innovations such as any recently developed Mass-chants.

The Ordinary chants of the Mass

I will give only a brief account. The unvarying chants of the Milanese Mass, the Gloria, Credo and Sanctus, offer less scope for speculation and are less important than the proper chants, if only because the number of melodies was so small. Moreover, there is no way of knowing whether those we know are ancient. The Ambrosian service books contain only one Mass-GloriaFootnote 79 and one Credo, this last constructed on two simple recitation-tones that alternate irregularly except for the last few words and a brief melisma on ‘amen’. There are two apparently Ambrosian settings of the Sanctus, but one is only a modestly decorated version of the very simple Sanctus ferialis. Copies of the antiphoner from the sixteenth century and later sometimes include Gregorian settings.Footnote 80

The Milanese Mass came to include the Gloria and the Credo on most occasions: the former after the ingressa, the latter after the offerenda. In Rome, the Gloria was introduced in the night Mass of Christmas (an occasion for which the ‘angelic hymn’ has an obvious special appropriateness) as early as the second century,Footnote 81 but it became a normal feature of the episcopal Mass around the beginning of the sixth.Footnote 82 Whether the circumstances of the Milanese Mass were similar is uncertain. From the Ambrosian ordinal we learn that in Milan, as elsewhere by the early twelfth century, the Gloria might be sung even when the bishop was not present.Footnote 83

The Credo, although its text was known long before as a baptismal profession, came to be a regular Mass-item. This was ordered for Visigothic Spain by the Council of Toledo in 589 (at the time the Arian rulers accepted orthodoxy)Footnote 84 and was probably customary in Frankish territories by the eighth century. In Rome, however, it was not adopted until the twelfth, at the insistence of Emperor Henry II.Footnote 85 Whether the Milanese followed the early lead of the Visigothic and Frankish usage or waited like the Romans is unknown. The Credo is not mentioned in the Manuale of the eleventh century, but there would be no reason to specify it in a book that was so much devoted to the changeable parts of the Mass. It was a regular feature of the Ambrosian Mass when the ordinal was compiled, shortly after 1126.Footnote 86

The characteristic form of the Roman Mass-Kyrie (‘Kyrie eleison’ three times, ‘Christe eleison’ three times, ‘Kyrie eleison’ three times) was never adopted in Milan. There the ‘ter Kyrie’Footnote 87 (just the two words, ‘Kyrie eleison’, three times) was sung frequently in Mass and OfficeFootnote 88 to punctuate the liturgy and mark certain important junctures; its place at Mass was before and after the readings, and again after the distribution of the Eucharist. No early source for the melodies of these invocations is known. As for the Sanctus, since this hymn is documented so early, perhaps even in the first century,Footnote 89 and since it was a shared feature of the Gallican, Old-Iberian, Roman and Milanese Mass, it is reasonable to assume it was an early feature of the latter; nevertheless, it should not be taken for granted that its simple Ambrosian melody is ancient.

That the Milanese never adopted the Roman Kyrie or the Agnus DeiFootnote 90 should be seen as a confirmation that the Franks meant to stop short of imposing their official (Roman) liturgy on Milan. No doubt some Frankish coercion was involved in the liturgical revisions in Milan after the Conquest, but this would not explain all. The Masses I have been discussing thus far, celebrated on Sundays, festivals and a few other important occasions, were singularly complex and protracted, with more sung items (because some were doubled by their Roman counterparts) than anywhere else. Length and complexity were notable attributes of the Ambrosian liturgy of the High Middle Ages, and it is worth considering whether the Roman importations were accepted willingly (not forced upon the Milanese) precisely to increase the splendour of the city's archiepiscopal liturgy, a liturgy that was doubled in two cathedrals, featured frequent stational celebrations at all the important churches of the city, impressive processions (even those that were penitential) to bring the cathedral clergy to these stations, and a vast body of clerics – so many that a complex rota was needed to apportion the large but finite number of liturgical functions equitably among them.

A glimpse further into the past? The penitential Masses

Now, at last, we come to the new evidence promised at the beginning of this article. In the preceding pages, I have been reflecting on the Ambrosian Mass in the early Middle Ages, before the coming of the Franks; I want now to consider certain special Masses – unnoticed by scholars, as far as I know – that might allow us to see further, even to a time before St Ambrose. Since these Masses have no documented counterparts outside Milan, and since, as I will show, they were progressively expanded until all had achieved the same form as the Masses sung on Sundays and festivals, we may take for granted that their simplest form is early rather than late; actually, I want to suggest that with respect to the use of chants they preserve the very oldest Ambrosian practice.

What might appear to be abbreviated Masses are entered in the Manuale on certain penitential occasions. For the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and SaturdaysFootnote 91 in Lent, a psalmellus (sung after an Old Testament reading) and a cantus (sung after a reading from the EpistlesFootnote 92) are entered under the heading ‘ad missam’Footnote 93 – a psalmellus and a cantus, these two chants and no others. On Christmas Eve (‘in vigiliis nataliis domini’) and on the eve of Epiphany (‘ad [primas] vesperas’) Masses of the same kindFootnote 94 (i.e., with no other chants assigned except a psalmellus and cantus)Footnote 95 are embedded in Vespers. And in the Ambrosian Great Litany – perhaps, as tradition (or at any rate Cesare Cantù) would have it,Footnote 96 instituted in the fifth century by the Milanese bishop Lazaro Beccardi (438–49) to seek God's mercy at the time of Alaric's invasionFootnote 97 – the Mass could be even briefer: the only sung item at the last station on each of the three days was a cantus (sung between a reading from the Old Testament and a reading from the Gospels; there was no Epistle).

Since on the penitential occasions just listed the only items entered are chants that separate readings from the Old Testament, the Epistles (except in the three-day litany) and the Gospel, it would be easy to suppose – as I once didFootnote 98 – that the ‘missa’ in these instances was only a foremass. But, at the beginning of this article, we saw that for Ambrose and other churchmen in Spain and Gaul the ‘missa’ was ‘the time of the Sacrifice’. Missa might be used in a wider sense to include the lessons from the Old and New Testament, prayers, a sermon – it was this more comprehensive use that became the norm – but it can hardly be doubted that in Milan in the eleventh century, as in the time of Ambrose,Footnote 99 something called a ‘Mass’ would always have included the Eucharist.Footnote 100

For the first week of Lent, in the oldest copies of the Manuale, the brief penitential Masses are entered for all the weekdays, including Saturday. This is the earliest stage which, apparently by inadvertence, has survived in the Manuale.Footnote 101 The second stage, whenever that occurred (most of the revisions are already included in the oldest manuscripts of the Manuale Footnote 102) was the expansion of the Masses for Lenten Saturdays, when (except for the first and the last)Footnote 103 the full complement of Mass chants was sung. The quasi-festal nature of the seventh dayFootnote 104 and the exemption from fastingFootnote 105 seem to have suggested that the old Sabbath need not share the overarching penitential theme of Lent, and this decision no doubt explains why the Saturday Masses were the first to be expanded. The final stage – probably inevitable considering the liturgical inflation (so to speak) that is characteristic of the late Middle Ages – is seen in a manuscriptFootnote 106 of the Manuale that is usually assigned to the last quarter of the thirteenth century. This copy, Magistretti's MS M, which was used in the summer cathedral of Santa Tecla and may therefore be taken to represent the official Milanese liturgy, contains additions not found in earlier versions. For the Monday of first week in Lent, MS M supplements the original items, adding an ingressa, an offertorium,Footnote 107 a confractorium and a transitorium (but no antiphona post evangelium).Footnote 108 These additional chants are simply cues to those of the preceding Sunday.Footnote 109 By this simple expedient, the characteristic penitential Mass has been expanded and only the cantus remains to reveal that the Mass was originally penitential. The revisions specified for Monday are not repeated for the other days, but it is clear that the intention was to make similar changes for the rest of the week; and since there is no reason to single out Week 1, we may suppose that extra items (repeated from the previous Sunday) were, from the last part of the thirteenth century at least, to be sung in all the weekday and Saturday Masses of Lent, except only that of the Easter vigil.

To return to the constitution of the simple penitential Masses, although it may be difficult now to contemplate that the bread and wine were ever prepared and distributed to the faithful in silence, that is, without any kind of offertory- or communion-chant, there is evidence that suggests exactly that. James McKinnon has argued that the latter part of the seventh century was the terminus a quo for the (Roman) Mass-chants as we know them; Augustine, in defending the singing of psalms at the altar, seems to provide a terminus ante quem non for singing of any kind during the preparation and distribution of the Eucharist, for no one could have objected to psalms per se. In about 427, he wrote:

I do not know why, but in the meantime a certain Hilarus, a catholic layman of tribunal rank, setting himself against God's ministers (as often happens) railed angrily wherever he could at the custom that started then in Carthage that hymns from the Book of Psalms be sung at the altar,Footnote 110 whether before the sacrifice (oblationem) or while what had been sacrificed (oblatum Footnote 111) was distributed to the people.Footnote 112

It is just conceivable, as the ultracautious sometimes argue, that ‘oblatio’ in the preceding citation referred to the whole Mass of the Faithful, not to the consecration, and that the psalms ‘ante oblationem’ belonged to the foremass.Footnote 113 This interpretation might be more acceptable if Augustine did not pair ‘before the oblation’ and ‘while what was sacrificed was distributed’. In any case, that Hilarus objected to psalms sung during the distribution of communion seems perfectly clear. The context seems also to make clear that the innovations Augustine defended were introduced in his lifetime. We may thus be reasonably confident that psalms sung in the Mass of the Faithful (psalms that later crystallized into chants such as the offertory and communion) were not widely accepted at Mass at the beginning of the fifth century. If the practice described by Augustine had been known in Rome or Milan, he would surely have mentioned that in its defense (we may wonder whether he would have bothered to defend it at all). So we may reasonably infer that at the beginning of the fifth century the preparation of the elements (accepting the most obvious interpretation of Augustine) and the distribution of the Eucharist were carried out without the accompaniment of singing.Footnote 114 And thus we are led to suggest that the form of Mass that survives on penitential occasions in the oldest Ambrosian service books might once have been the usual and only one – in Carthage until the innovations attacked by Hilarus, but before that, and for who knows how long afterward, in Milan.

References

1 The Manuale (Magistretti, Marco, ed., Manuale ambrosianum ex codice saec XI, 2 vols., Milan, 1904–05Google Scholar) is the service book that contains the texts and some rubrics for the Mass and Office.

2 Although Ambrose is often given credit for the formation of the rite and music that bear his name, in much the same way as St Gregory is given credit for the Gregorian, the basis for both these claims is slight. But the terms Gregorian and Ambrosian are too well established to be replaced, and moreover useful because Gregorian refers to much more than the practices of Rome and Ambrosian to those of a large region of northern Italy. This extended from Switzerland to Florence, where in 393–94 St Ambrose brought the relics of Sts Vitalis and Agricola and, as archbishop, dedicated a basilica to house them.

3 Missa is usually derived from the closing formula, ‘ite missa est’, that is, ‘go, you are dismissed’. This seems doubtful to some, and other derivations have been offered. See the interesting discussion in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York, 1907–12)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Liturgy of the Mass, Name and Definition’.

4 ‘Post lectiones atque tractatum dimissis catechumenis … nuntiatum est mihi comperto quod ad Porcianam basilicam de palatio decanos misissent … ego tamen mansi in munere; missam facere coepi’. Letter 20, vv. 4–5 (accessed online at Biblioteca Augustana: www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/amb_ep20.html).

5 In his twelfth sermon, Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis Sermones, ed. Morin, Germain, Pars I, Editio 2 (Turnholt, 1953)Google Scholar=Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 103:67–9.

6 Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. Lindsay, W.M. (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar, Bk. 6 (De officiis), ch. 19.4.

7 Most accept that Ambrose was the author; virtually all agree that the documents date from c.400.

8 See Strawley, J.H.'s introduction to On the Mysteries and the Treatise on the Sacraments by an Unknown Author, ed. Thompson, T. (New York, 1919), section V, ‘The Lessons from the Scriptures’Google Scholar.

9 Cf. the Mass-prayer, ‘Orate fratres ut meum et vestrum sacrificium…’. It is not clear whether Ambrose is addressing his clergy or the congregation.

10 ‘Matutinis horis lectum est, ut meministis, fratres, quod summo animi dolore respondebamus: Deus, venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam.’ Letter 20, vv. 4–5 (accessed online at Biblioteca Augustana: www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/amb_ep20.html).

11 From section 57; see McKinnon, James, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987), item 233, p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Apostolic Constitutions ‘appears to have been written about 380 by a Syrian’. McKinnon avoids the question, but ἀκροστίχιον suggests something sung at the end (ἀκρον) of (each) verse (στίχος).

12 St Ambrose or whoever was the author of De sacramentis mentions (ch. 8.43) that the newly baptized approached the altar singing Ps. 42 (‘the cleansed people hastens to the altar of Christ, saying, And I will go unto the altar of God [Introibo ad altare Dei]’), but this cannot be accepted as evidence for the introit-antiphon (cited in On the Mysteries and the Treatise on the Sacraments).

13 Augustine is addressing God.

14 See, below, the citation of Paulinus of Milan.

15 Confessiones 9.7.15: ‘Tunc hymni et psalmi ut canerentur secundum morem orientalium partium, ne populus maeroris taedio contabesceret, institutum est, ex illo in hodiernum retentum multis iam ac paene omnibus gregibus tuis et per cetera orbis imitantibus.’ Confessions, Introduction and Text, ed. O'Donnell, James J. (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar.

16 See Ramsey, Boniface, Ambrose (New York, 1997), 195Google Scholar. Paulinus also knew Augustine personally.

17 Vita S. Ambrosii, ed. Pellegrino, Michele (Rome, 1961), ch. 13, p. 68: ‘Hoc in tempore primum antiphonae, hymni et vigiliae in Ecclesia mediolanensi celebrari coeperunt, cujus celebritatis devotio usque in hodiernum diem non solum in eadem ecclesia verum per omnes paene Occidentis provincias manet.’Google Scholar

18 And with this Office the sequential cursus, the singing of all 150 psalms in a regular cycle? See Bailey, Terence, Antiphon and Psalm in the Ambrosian Office (Ottawa, 1994)Google Scholar.

19 If the ‘brethren’ addressed by Ambrose (see above, note 9) were the people, they were presumably at a regular morning Office. A century or so later, Bishop Caesar of Arles (c.470–542) seemed to expect the laity to be present at Matins in his cathedral. See Taft, Robert, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 2nd rev. edn (Collegeville, MN, 1993), 152Google Scholar.

20 ‘Ut statim meridianis horis adveniendum sit in ecclesiam, canenedi hymni, celebranda oblatio.’ Expositio psalmi cxviii, 8.48; Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum (hereafter CSEL) 62:180 (also Patrologia latina 15, col. 1314). See Schaff, Philip, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, 14 vols., Volume X, Ambrose: Select Works and Letters (New York, 1896; repr. edn, Grand Rapids, MI, 2007Google Scholar), xix: ‘From various allusions, it would seem that the completed work [the sermon] dates from about 388.’

21 Apart from the sequences and tropes, which are a late development and had no place in the Milanese liturgy.

22 ‘Magister scholarum canit hymnum cum pueris alternatim cum choro’; ‘magister pergit in medium chorum cum pueris suis ad canendum hymnum vicisssim cum choro’. Beroldus sive Ecclesiae ambrosianae mediolanensis kalendarium et ordines, ed. Magistretti, Marco (Milan, 1894), 64, 81Google Scholar.

23 See De officiis 44.215; McKinnon, , Music in Early Christian Literature, item 297, p. 132Google Scholar.

24 ‘Est et alius cursus quem refert beatus Augustinus episcopus quem beatus Ambrosius papa propter hereticorum ordinem dissimilem composuit qui in italia antea de cantabatur.’ London, British Library, MS Cott. Nero, A. ii, sec. VIII (‘Cantuum et cursuum ecclesiaticorum origo’), f. 35v et seq.; cited in Haddan, Arthur West and Stubbs, William, eds., Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1869), 140Google Scholar.

25 λεîτα, ‘public’+ἔργα, ‘duties’.

26 ‘Ambrosius quoque Mediolanensis episcopus tam missae quam caeterorum dispositionem officiorum suæ ecclesiae et aliis Liguribus ordinavit, quæ et usque hodie in Mediolanensi tenentur ecclesia.’ Harting-Correa, Alice L., ed., Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in rebus ecclesiasticis rerum (Leiden, 1995), xxiiGoogle Scholar. ‘Aliis Liguribus’ is presumably a reference to the Milanese archdiocese.

27 The remarkable Cesare Cantù informs us – typically, without naming his authority – that Ambrose's successor, St Simpliciano Soresini, ‘added much’ (‘Dopo sant'Ambrogio ai nostri riti religiosi molte cose aggiunse il vescovo san Simpliciano’. Milano e il suo territorio (Milan, 1844), 1:116Google Scholar). This remark has been widely and uncritically repeated. During the exile of the Milanese hierarchy between 570 and 649 in Genoa (which remained under Imperial control in this period), the characteristic Milanese liturgy (with its two cathedrals, two baptistries and its frequent processions to stations throughout the city) would need to have been adapted to local circumstances. Moreover, there is reason to believe that during this period in Genoa the rite was subject to Roman influences. In 601, Pope Gregory I insisted on his right to confirm the election of Deusdedit (Deodatus), the Ambrosian Bishop in exile. Gregory I, Registrum Epistolarum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae 2, XI.14, p. 274.

28 Consider the comment of Louis Duchesne who observed, ‘it is not readily admitted that the Ambrosian rite has undergone so many Roman retouches that it now is very far from its primitive forms’. (On n'avoue pas volontiers que le rit ambrosien a subi tant de retouches romaines qu'il est maintenant très loin de ses formes primitives.) Origines du culte chrétien, 5th rev. and augmented edn (Paris, 1925), 92, n. 1Google Scholar.

29 The credible lists of Milanese bishops name only five before Merocles, who attended the council convened by Emperor Constantine in Rome in 313.

30 ‘Ecclesia romana … cuius typum in omnibus sequimur et formam’ (De sacramentis III.1.5). Monumenta eucharistica et liturgica vetustissima, ed. Quasten, Johannes, Florilegium Patristicum 7 (Bonn, 1936), 152Google Scholar.

31 (Rome, 1935).

32 Such as Caldwell, John in ‘Modes and modality’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed. Bailey, Terence and Santosuosso, Alma (Aldershot, 2007), 35–48Google Scholar.

33 One has, of course, to rely on later sources for the melodies; the books of the Sextuplex contain only text, as does their Milanese counterpart, the Manuale.

34 See the articles referred to, seriatim, in the following notes.

35 By proper I mean intended for a particular occasion or not sung on any other.

36 Bailey, Terence, ‘Introits and ingressae; Milan and Rome: The elaboration of chant-melodies: The operation of musical memory’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 19/2 (2010), 89–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Beroldus, 49.

38 It is conceivable that discarded entrance-antiphons are among the vast number of Ambrosian processional antiphons, the psallendae.

39 See Terence Bailey, ‘The adoption of the Roman respond-gradual in Milan’, in the Festschrift for Giacomo Baroffio (forthcoming).

40 See Bailey, Terence, ‘The Milanese Gospel-processions and the antiphonae ante evangelium’, in Antiphonaria. Studien zu Quellen und Gesängen des mittelalterlichen Offiziums, ed. Hiley, David. Regensburger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 7 (Tutzing, 2009), 1–15Google Scholar.

41 One usually reads that there were only three Ambrosian antiphonae ante evangelium, but in fact the number is a somewhat larger than that. See Bailey, ‘The Milanese Gospel-processions’.

42 Such as the aius of the Gallican Mass described by ‘St Germain’. I have identified (in ‘The Milanese Gospel-processions’) what might have been the corresponding Ambrosian chant.

43 See Baroffio, Giacomo's table entitled ‘Antifone ante evangelium nell'Italia settentrionale’ in ‘Antifone ante evangelium: un nuovo testimone’, in Signum sapientiae, Sapientia signi. Studi in onore di Nino Albarosa, ed. Conti, Giovanni, Cantus gregoriani helvetici cultores (Lugano, 2005), 107–16Google Scholar. Borders, James (‘The Northern Italian Antiphons ante evangelium and the Gallican Connection’, Journal of Musicological Research, 8 (1988), 1–53)CrossRefGoogle Scholar advances the arguments in favour of a connection between the Gregorian and Gallican practices.

44 Apologia prophetae David, 1.8.42. For an excerpt, see McKinnon, , Music in Early Christian Literature, item 282, p. 128Google Scholar. Ambrose must be referring to the resumption of the alleluia after the penitential observances of the Pentecost vigil. Other than on this occasion there would be no fasting in Eastertide.

45 See below, note 52.

46 ‘Ut autem Alleluja per illos solos dies quinquaginta in Ecclesia cantatur, non usquequaque observatur, nam et aliis diebus varie cantatur alibi atque alibi, ipsis autem diebus ubique’ Epistola 55.17; accessed online at www.augustinus.it/latino/lettere/lettera_055_testo.htm. Some would ‘correct’ this text (‘hic non diceretur); see below, note 52.

47 πάλιν αὖ ἓκαστου ἔτους ἅπαξ ἔν Pώμη τὸ ἀλληλούϊα ψάλλουσι κατὰ τὴν πρώτην ἡμέραν τῆς πασχαλίου ἑορτῆς. Church History, 7.19; Patrologia graeca 67, col. 1476.

48 Bailey, Terence, The Ambrosian Alleluias (Egham, Surrey, 1983), 51ffGoogle Scholar. That the Ambrosian and Gregorian verses with shared texts have related melodies could probably be demonstrated, but the extraordinary development of the melodies in Milan makes the comparison quite complicated and difficult to demonstrate.

49 Because I have not turned my attention recently to the Ambrosian and Gregorian alleluia-verses, I include in this section rather more detail than for the other Ambrosian Mass chants I have written about in the last two years. The fact is, I became aware of the extent of the Milanese borrowings only well after the publication of The Ambrosian Alleluias; there, the question was only adumbrated.

50 This is a useful Milanese term for the first section of multipartite chants.

51 It should not be ruled out, however, that verses were enhancements added while the Mass-alleluia was confined to Eastertide.

52 ‘That the alleluia should be sung at Masses outside of Paschal time was adopted through St Jerome … at the time of Pope Damasus’ (Quia alleluia dici ad missas extra Pentecostes tempora … de Jerosolymorum Ecclesia ex beatae memoriae Damasi papae traditur), Patrologia latina 77, col. 956. The letter neither confirms nor refutes the testimony of Sozomenus, for its text has been disputed. This article is not the place to consider the matter further, but a brief summary of the disagreement, which hinges on whether the text is properly ‘ut alleluia hic diceretur’ or ‘ut alleluia hic non diceretur’, is given in Apel, Willi, Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, IN, 1958), 376–7Google Scholar. See also Roederer, Charlotte, ‘The Frankish Dies sanctificatus at Gaul’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 30 (1977), 95–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 See note 30, above.

54 Thematischer Katalog der ältesten Alleluia-Melodien aus Handschriften des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1965).

55 I refer only to the opening section. The repetition after the verse was on many occasions greatly elaborated with ‘melodiae’, long melismas.

56 Perhaps, before the local expansion of the repertory, for festivals of a single martyr Dextera domini fecit virtutem for St Victor was repeated, and if a verse were required for a confessor, perhaps Elegit te dominus for St Dionysius (Bishop of Milan, died c.359). Neither of the two alleluia-verses assigned for confessors in the Ambrosian books, Euge serve bone and Confessus es bonum, is found in the Sextuplex, although Schlager (Thematischer Katalog, 86) mentions a single Gregorian appearance of the former; nor is Tu est sacerdos included, although Bede mentioned it well before the books of the Sextuplex were copied and it is found widely as a commune chant in other Gregorian manuscripts. In Milan, Tu es sacerdos was assigned for St Ambrose alone.

57 There is no combined feast for Sts Peter and Paul in the books of the Sextuplex.

58 Roederer, ‘The Frankish Dies sanctificatus’.

59 We can ignore the first and second Masses of Christmas; see Bailey, Terence, ‘Christmas Masses in the Ambrosian Liturgy’, in Ambrosiana at Harvard: New Sources of Milanese Chant, ed. Kelly, Thomas Forrest and Mugmon, Matthew, Houghton Library Studies 3 (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 125–36Google Scholar.

60 The text Hodie natus is not found in the Septuplex; Dies sanctificatus was not used in the Ambrosian liturgy.

61 Consider also the circumstances of Commune confessorum (see note 56, above).

62 Cantus and also the Gregorian tractus are probably abbreviations of cantus tractus, that is, protracted chant, a reference to their use in extensive psalmody. (I should perhaps mention that cantus is a word of the fourth declension, and its nominative singular and plural are the same.)

63 The text Laudate dominum omnes gentes is used in a cantus and in a tract, and also as an alleluia-verse in three of the books of the Sextuplex.

64 For the details, see Bailey, Terence, The Ambrosian Cantus (Ottawa, 1987)Google Scholar.

65 A different melody is used for the ‘cantus’ on Palm Sunday, and on the sixth Sunday of Advent, but these chants, Pacifice loquibantur mihi and Suscipiant domine montes, are properly psalmelli.

66 The melodies, of course, must be sought in later sources.

67 De profundis clamavi (Ps. 129), Qui regis Israel intende (Ps. 79) and Laudate dominum omnes gentes (Ps. 116).

68 See, below, the discussion of the penitential Masses.

69 The designation ‘after the Gospel’ has, naturally enough, misled some to think that the antiphons were sung to accompany the Gospel book back to the sacristy. The ordinal makes it clear that they were not. See Bailey, Terence, The Chants of the Ambrosian Offertory: The Antiphons ‘after the Gospel’ and the Offerendae (Ottawa, 2009)Google Scholar.

70 See ‘Rome, Milan and the confractoria’, Proceedings of the 15th Meeting of International Musicological Society Study Group ‘Cantus Planus’, Dobogoko, 23–29 August, 2009 (forthcoming).

71 No satisfactory explanation has been offered for the name.

72 That is, ‘Come to the altar’, ‘Approach and eat’, ‘We receive the body of Christ’.

73 And perhaps also in the Gallican. In the sole manuscript of the first ‘letter of St Germain’, there is a lacuna precisely where the Gallican communion-chant would be mentioned. See Ratcliffe, E.C., ed., Expositio antiquae liturgiae gallicanae, Henry Bradshaw Society 98 (London, 1971), 17Google Scholar.

74 Laudate deum in sanctis, from the Commune plurium martyrum.

75 See Bailey, Terence, The Transitoria of the Ambrosian Mass (Ottawa, 2002)Google Scholar.

76 The text is sung in a responsory-verse at Vespers on the Wednesday in Easter Week.

77 The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper (Berkeley, 2000)Google Scholar.

78 ‘The Roman Offertory: An Introduction and some Hypotheses’, in The Offertory and its Verses: Research, Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of an International Symposium at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Trondheim, 25 and 26 September 2004, ed. Hankeln, Roman (Trondheim, 2007), 15–40Google Scholar.

79 The Ambrosian Antiphonale missarum (1935) contains four settings, but these include the melodies intended for the discontinued Gloria in excelsis at Matins.

80 The melodies ad libitum in the Ambrosian Antiphonale missarum (1935) are modern fabrications.

81 In the Liber pontificalis, we read that ‘Pope Telesphorus [128–39?] ordered that … on the Birth of the Lord Masses should be said at night … and that the angelic hymn, that is Gloria in Excelsis Deo, should be said before the sacrifice’ (cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’). The original Catholic Encyclopedia, like the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, is more complete than any of its successors, and remains an almost indispensable, work of reference, conveniently accessible online in more than one location. See, for example, www.catholic.org/encyclopedia.

82 Pope Symmachus (498–514) ordered that ‘the hymn, Gloria in excelsis, should be said every Sunday and on the feasts [natalicia] of martyrs’, but only by bishops. Liber pontificalis, cited by the Catholic Encyclopedia s.v. ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’. Berno of Constance (Reichenau), who died in 1100, ‘thinks [this practice] a grievance’. Libellus de quibusdam rebus ad Missæ officium pertinentibus, ch. 2, in Patrologia latina 142, col. 1059, cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’. Berno's Micrologus, written towards the end of the eleventh century, seems tacitly to allow it.

83 Beroldus, 53.

84 Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Mozarabic Rite’.

85 See Berno of Reichenau (Constance), De quibisdam rebus ad missae officium spectantibus, Patrologia latina 142, col. 1060 et seq.

86 For this dating, see Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. 11.1, col. 1083; see also the ‘Praefatio’ to Magistretti's edition (Beroldus, ix).

87 A twelvefold Kyrie eleison was sung at Vespers and Matins.

88 Also in processions.

89 St Clement of Rome (d. c.104) mentions it, quoting the text in Isaiah 6:3 (Patrologia graeca 1, cols. 276–7; Die apostolischen Väter I, ed. Funk, F.X. (Tübingen, 1906), 51–2Google Scholar). Some believe that Clement was saying the Sanctus was sung at Mass (see the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Sanctus’).

90 Said to have been introduced by Sergius, Pope I in 687: ‘Hic statuit ut tempore confractionis dominici corporis Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, a clero et a populo decantetur.’ Le Liber pontificalis: Texte, introduction, et commentaire, 2 vols., ed. Duchesne, Louis (Paris, 1886, 1892), 1:381Google Scholar.

91 No Mass was celebrated on Fridays.

92 The cantus was followed by a reading from the Gospel.

93 See Manuale, 126, 128, 129, etc.

94 In these cases, the rubric ‘ad missam’ has been supplied by the editor, Magistretti.

95 In these instances too, an Old Testament reading is followed by a psalmellus, a reading from the Epistles by the cantus, and the cantus by a Gospel reading.

96 Cesare Cantù, Milano e il suo territorio, 116, says ‘secondo una fondatissima tradizione’. But there is a similar account crediting the introduction of the Great Litany to Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne in 477 (Council of Orléans, canon 27, cited by Duchesne, Origines, 305).

97 Actually, Alaric I died in 410, and Alaric II was not king of the Visigoths until 485.

98 Since none of the chants associated with the preparation and distribution of the Eucharist was entered, I suggested some time ago that it might have been consecrated beforehand, as in the so-called Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday in the Gregorian rite. I see now that this idea must be abandoned. For one thing there are too many such occasions. Moreover, if there were reasons not to celebrate the Sacrifice on a particular occasion, Mass was simply omitted, as on Good Friday (and in commemoration of the Crucifixion, on all the other Fridays of Lent).

99 We read in the Encyclopedia Britannica (s.v., ‘Mass’) that the pilgrim Etheria, about the same time as Ambrose, used missa ‘indiscriminately of the Eucharist, other services, and the ceremony of dismissal’. The suggestion is that Etheria was not a discriminating witness.

100 Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Aliturgical Days’: ‘we have indications in Tertullian and other writers of a current of opinion which tended to regard the offering of the Holy Sacrifice as inconsistent with the observance of a true and serious fast’. But short Masses were sung on the first and last Saturdays of Lent (formerly on all Lenten Saturdays), and Saturdays (and Sundays) were not days of fasting in Milan (see below, note 105).

101 It seems likely that at an even earlier stage Mass was sung only on Sundays and festivals – there are no Mass-items in the Ambrosian Commune feriarum or Commune sabbatorum. Odd, that reforms in evidence even in the early copies of the Manuale were never entered for the first Saturday (Manuale, 134); but the oversight is useful, since it allows us to look back at an earlier stage in the development of the penitential Masses.

102 See Manuale, 142, 151, 159, 168.

103 For Holy Saturday, the brief form of Mass was never replaced: the only items entered, even in the late copies of the Manuale, are two alleluias with verses, these, for obvious reasons, replacing the usual psalmellus and cantus.

104 The Matins cursus of the lectio continua included only Monday through Friday: Saturday had its own fixed psalms and canticles (as, of course, did Sunday).

105 Ambrose's contribution (‘when in Rome, do as the Romans’) to collections of famous sayings is based on his remark (De Elia et jejunio liber unus, ch. 18; Patrologia latina 14, col. 720): ‘When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. You too should follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive offense.’

106 Milan, Biblioteca capitolare metropolitano, MS II.D.2.28.

107 Sic. Although offerenda is usually considered the characteristic Ambrosian designation, offertorium is also found in the service books.

108 There is some evidence that this chant began to be considered obsolete in the Ambrosian Mass. See Terence Bailey, ‘Christmas Masses in the Ambrosian Liturgy’, in Ambrosiana at Harvard, 133–4.

109 The psalmellus and the cantus were not those of the preceding Sunday, but those originally assigned.

110 It is likely that ‘ad altare’ means no more than ‘at Mass’, and that the singer would have stood a little apart on a podium of some sort. He was perhaps the deacon assisting the celebrant. Consider the epitaph of the Roman archdeacon Deusdedit in the fifth century: ‘Hic levitarum [i.e., deacons] primus, in ordine vivens / Davidici cantor carminis iste fuit’; however, ‘Pope Gregory the Great in the council of 595 abolished the privileges of the deacons in regard to the chanting of Psalms … and regular cantors succeeded to their functions’ (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v., ‘Deacons’).

111 The word means ‘laid down’, as an animal upon the altar prior to sacrifice. Cf. Leviticus 10.19: ‘Aaron said unto Moses, Behold, this day have they laid [oblata] their sin offering and their burnt offering [on the altar] before the Lord (respondit Aaron, oblata est hodie victima pro peccato et holocaustum coram Domino).’

112 ‘Inter haec, Hilarus quidam uir tribunitius laicus catholicus nescio unde aduersus dei ministros, ut fieri assolet, inritatus morem, qui tunc esse apud Carthaginem coeperat, ut hymni ad altare dicerentur de Psalmorum libro, siue ante oblationem siue cum distribueretur populo quod fuisset oblatum, maledica reprehensione ubicumque poterat lacerabat.’ Retractationes 2.11, ed. P. Knöll (1902), CSEL 36:144. Between 398 and 404 (the date is disputed), Augustine had written a treatise, Contra Hilarum, now lost.

113 This is an old idea. Palmer, William (Origines liturgicae (Oxford, 1839) ch. 4, sect. VIII)Google Scholar, perhaps looking for early evidence of the foremass, could write: ‘But I think Augustine there refers to the anthem called Introit, sung before the lessons.’ Peter Wagner seems to have taken Palmer's remark seriously (Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, 3 vols., repr. edn (Hildesheim, 1962), 1:107, note 1). Much more recently Joseph Dyer has written categorically that ‘the first reference, albeit fleeting, to an offertory chant in the West’ is found in Ordo Romanus I, that is, in the early eighth century. See his ‘Augustine and the “hymni ante oblationem”: The Earliest Offertory Chants?’ Revue des études augustiniennes, 27 (1981), 87Google Scholar. Dyer was principally concerned with the elaborate Roman offertoria and offertory-processions, and I do not wish to suggest that the psalms mentioned by Augustine had anything to do with these, but for Dyer to dismiss the remark in the Retractationes with the comment that it ‘tells us far less than has been generally assumed’ (ibid., 92) is to beg the question.

114 It may be significant that none of the psalmelli and cantus assigned to the Milanese penitential Masses has a Gregorian counterpart. It is conceivable that even these chants, sung in the foremass, were later additions, and that the penitential synaxes were once conducted entirely without liturgical chants.