It is an increasingly accepted view that chant in general, and the historia genre in particular, is not merely the musical expression of religious belief or devotion to a given saint. Rather, it can be considered to convey multiple layers of meaning, either implicitly (e.g. in the music) or explicitly (e.g. in the text). Chant texts may articulate a community's sense of identity or adherence to theological views. Sometimes, the meaning of chants may also be described as ‘political’. The book Political Plainchant? Music, Text and Historical Context of Medieval Saints’ Offices, edited by Roman Hankeln, proposes to study this kind of ‘meaning’ in historiae.

The publication presents the papers of a conference at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Trondheim in the autumn of 2005. It contains eleven articles, most in English, one in German. They deal with sources from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, from northern, western, central and southern Europe (Scandinavia, England, France, Hungary, Italy and Spain). As Hankeln states, research to date has mainly focused on musicological matters, much less on ‘context, genesis, transmission and style’ (p. 8). Therefore, this book aims to stimulate a broader interdisciplinary discussion, and a deeper study of the (con)texts and the ‘functional significance’ of text and music of historiae (p. vi).

What this ‘significance’ actually entails is explained in Hankeln's introductory article, ‘A Blasphemous Paradox? Approaches to Socio-Political Aspects of Medieval Western Plainchant’. More precisely, the author specifies what the designation ‘political’ stands for in the context of the historiae. This seems legitimate, given that secular rulership was articulated explicitly in terms of its sacral qualities (p. 1). The cult of regional or national saints frequently legitimised territorial power ‘in a quest for political identity on a quasi national level’ (pp. 6–7). Conversely, the saints – frequently themselves former figures of power on earth – were credited with considerable ‘political’ power in their role as mediators between heaven and earth and protectors of those who venerated them.

Even though there is no doubt about the manifold interrelations between what is commonly understood as ‘political’ and the cult of saints and its musical manifestations, Hankeln proposes to adopt a working definition of ‘political’ denoting ‘the contexts of medieval Western plainchant which do not belong entirely to the system of religious ideal’ (p. 2). In other words, ‘political’ indicates that which belongs to the public sphere and is associated with bearers and structures of power. Furthermore, he extends the meaning of ‘political’ to point to the contrast between Christian ethos and religious ideals on the one hand, and historical reality on the other. Sung liturgies in honour of ‘ruler’ saints contributed to bridging the sometimes inconvenient gap between ideals and realities. Hankeln warns that, consequently, this book does not consider music as a device of calculated public propaganda, but more subtly questions the function of historiae chants in their context and in their interaction with those ideals and realities (p. 3). As Hankeln justly points out, hagiography is the central ‘bridging’ element here: the selection of passages from vitae and other text sources was often targeted at making a saint fit a certain mould that would identify him or her henceforth directly with a specific city, country or community (p. 8). But while the author acknowledges that ‘the annual celebration of a proper historia was a vital contribution to the transformation of these political rulers into “real” saints, not only in an ecclesiastical but also in a public, more concrete political sense’, a few phrases later he states that the historia ‘was never designed to function in a public context’ (p. 9). I beg to differ with the latter statement: the widespread practice of singing several antiphons and/or responsories carefully chosen from a historia during (often public) processions at saints’ celebrations is only one case in point.

More importantly, Hankeln's efforts to build a conceptual framework for the study of the interrelations between the ‘political’ and the historia encourages the reader to explore the remaining contributions through a ‘political’ lens.

The first of the three sections of the book (a division explained in the Prolegomenon (pp. v–vi) but not apparent from the Table of Contents) deals with politically motivated transition processes. It consists of two articles exploring the changes that historiae underwent under the dominance of new political reigns in northern Italy and on the Iberian peninsula. In his ‘Historiae from Alta Italia and their Frankish Models: A Progressive “Romanisation” by the Carolingian Franks (750–900)’, Jean François Goudesenne warns against any simplification of the process of Romanisation that resulted in Gregorian chant. The sources and repertories, he argues, point to a more complex reality (pp. 22–3). His point becomes immediately apparent when venturing into the details of his study material, the historiae common to the Ambrosian, Beneventan and Gregorian repertories, which he tells us were later used as stylistic models in the reform by the Carolingians. The importance of Goudesenne's contribution is that it points our attention towards the often neglected older layers of the historia repertory, including chants for such saints as Apollinarius, Nazarius and Celsius, or Gervasius and Prothasius, ‘very ancient patron saints, martyrs of the third and fourth centuries favoured by royal dynasties, [whose] basilical offices represent, after common offices and universal saints, the most ancient layer of the Roman-Frankish sanctorale. They are modelled on great Roman historiae of the seventh and eighth centuries, for example, Paulus, Johannes Baptista and the first martyrs, Laurentius, Stephanus, Innocentes’ (p. 19). Goudesenne's writing style is compact, skipping analyses, stylistic argumentations and assumptions about influences between repertories and their historical layers to lead to conclusions that are far-reaching: the early historiae call into question the existence of an ‘archetype’ of the Roman antiphoner, the supposed boundaries between chants of different rites (such as the Ambrosian, Beneventan, Gregorian) and the ‘unifying’ effect of the Carolingian liturgical reform, supposedly politically motivated, which rather led ‘to an increase of texts, melodies and traditions’ (p. 22).

Susana Zapke's contribution, ‘New Politics, New Cults: The Cross and the Sword in Times of Political Transition on the Iberian Peninsula (9th–12th c.)’ also leaves no doubt about the direct interrelation between politics and liturgical use: ‘the history of liturgical reform in the Spanish terriories cannot be divorced from the history of the different political strategies which took shape in ecclesiastical circles and centres of civil power’ (p. 31); therefore, it ‘should be interpreted in the first instance as the history of a confrontation between different political forces’ (p. 33). Zapke's view of the change from Visigothic to Romano-Frankish liturgy and its repercussions on the saints being celebrated is based on a very useful list of what she considers to be significant ‘transition’ sources of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, displaying characteristics of multiple traditions such as the combined use of Visigothic script and Aquitanian musical notation (pp. 34–7). Like Goudesenne, Zapke warns that the politically motivated ‘process of liturgical reform was not as abrupt or as homogeneous as it has now come to be considered’ (pp. 32–3).

Among the articles that follow, the contribution of the late Andrew Hughes stands out, not only on account of its length, but also because it is not a case study on the historia of an individual saint. Hughes is able to depend on a formidable quantity of historia chants, the result of lifelong data-mining which contributed to his reputation as one of the leading scholars of the genre. As in other of his later publications, his contribution to the present volume focuses on his idiosyncratic concept of the ‘chantword’, which can briefly be defined as the musical setting of a given word, in casu within the historia genre. After introductory paragraphs on the importance of context and methods for a systematic study of text and music, Hughes's analysis of ‘chantwords’ related to kingship follows, focusing on the musical emphasis on names and on borrowing from earlier material in historia chants. That his approach has not been adopted by other scholars to date is partly due to the fact that the database on which his research is based is not publicly accessible. Hughes partly compensates for this in five appendices (pp. 139–54) that accompany his article, in which he provides examples and other data supporting his argumentation. In addition to the appendices, there is also a brief Postscript on the office of Erik of Sweden (pp. 137–8).

The second section of the book and the greater part of the third are case studies of individual saints, the majority of which were sainted rulers. John Caldwell's brief account of ‘St Ethelbert, King and Martyr: A Royal Migration and a Migrating Cult’ points out the great distance between the only historical account of Ethelbert's murder in 794 and his later hagiography and cult, centred on Hereford. Only the thirteenth-century breviary Hereford P.ix.7 contains the office texts and music. Caldwell hypothesises on the role of Gerald of Wales in the development of a liturgical celebration and the composition of a secular office in honour of Ethelbert, and spells out the liturgical consequences of the date of Ethelbert's feast celebrated on 20 May, which may fall within or outside Eastertide (p. 46).

‘Between Politics and Devotion: The Canonizations of Knud Lavard and Edward Confessor’, John Bergsagel's essay, is the first of the three articles focusing on historiae for sainted Scandinavian kings (Knud Lavard of Denmark, Erik of Sweden and Olav of Norway; the latter two appear in the contribution of Ann-Marie Nilsson and in Roman Hankeln's second article in the book). After sketching the biography and canonisation process of Knud Lavard, Bergsagel identifies the position, and shifts in position, of the protagonists, a pope and an anti-pope (Alexander III and Victor IV) and their respective allegiances (Bishop Eskil and King Valdemar), draws parallels between the sanctification of Knud Lavard in 1169 and that of Edward the Confessor in 1161, including the respective bulls of canonisation by Alexander III, the saints’ biographies and those of their petitioners. He also advises a less sceptical view of sanctification, which was not merely a ‘deal’ between interested ‘stakeholders’ but a process that did not necessarily compromise the sincerity or integrity of the actors (pp. 56–8). Sadly the author does not here mention how these fascinating canonisation stories find a reflection in, or are even relevant to, the music of the corresponding historiae – answers are to be found separately in his facsimile and edition of the Mass and Office for this saint (The Offices and Masses of St Knud Lavard (+1131) (Kiel; Univ.Lib. MS S.H. 8 A.8), 2 vols., Copenhagen and Ottawa, 2010).

There is no lack of historia chants in M. Cecilia Gaposhkin's article ‘Political Ideas in Liturgical Offices of Saint Louis’, in which she studies all four of the offices for Louis IX. Her interesting point of departure is the literary tradition of the Specula principum, describing the virtues of the ideal king (personal virtue, humility, generosity and justice). In the historiae that make use of biblical references, the texts thus ‘draw on the rote language of good kingship’ (p. 66). It will be worthwhile to see to what extent this concept can be successfully extrapolated to other historiae.

The only German article in the collection is Janka Szendrei's ‘Commune pro missionariis? Die ältesten Offiziumsgesänge für König Stephan, den Heiligen’. It is immediately followed by a second essay on another historia for the same saint, ‘From “Crudelitas” to “Credulitas”: Comments on Saint Stephan's Historia rhythmica’, one of the last publications of László Dobszay. The history of Stephen (István, 967–1038) and his cult reads as a classical example of the saintly king, who in his lifetime organised medieval Hungary's political and ecclesiastical structures.

While Szendrei comments on the individual chants making up the earliest office chants (in the first third of the twelfth century), Dobszay focuses on the rhymed office of St Stephen, completed c.1250. Dobszay convincingly argues that ‘this historia presents a kind of political philosophy in poetic-liturgical guise’, in which the responsories offer a character-sketch of the saint, while the antiphons contain a political commentary (p. 97). Dobszay interprets this commentary as ‘counter-ideology’ supporting King Lászlo IV (p. 101), though apart from this hypothetical line of thought, he does not offer any supporting historical or analytical insights.

The historiae for Stephen of Hungary are among the rare examples that have been studied and discussed repeatedly. Much historia scholarship commendably sets out to present previously unstudied material, but scholars have never agreed on, let alone felt the need for, a ‘canon’ of historiae deserving of long-term and repeated investigation. Other rare examples are the historiae for Thomas Becket (extensively studied by Andrew Hughes) and St Augustine (whose historia has been studied by Walter Berschin, Eyolf Østrem, Janka Szendrei and Roman Hankeln). To this small body of Augustine literature the present book now adds a second article by Roman Hankeln, ‘St Olav's Augustine-Responsories: Contrafactum Technique and Political Message’, in which the author focuses on the text–music relationship in the contrafacta.

Both Hughes's article and Hankeln's study of Olav form part of the third section of the book, dealing with text–music relationships. To this section also belongs Ann-Marie Nilsson's case study, ‘St Erik's Two Bodies and Chants’, in which she comments on the two versions of the office of St Erik (presumably the two ‘bodies’ mentioned in the title), summarises the views of Toivo Haapanen's first discussion of the material (1927) and adds information and valuable comments on new sources. An appendix adds observations on the office for the patron saints of Sweden (pp. 165–6), which shares characteristics with the office for Birgitta of Sweden, composed by Birger Gregersson.

The many appendices throughout the book include much interesting material which, together with the rich array of ideas and concepts proposed in this book, invite further study. Abstracts are not included, and, more regrettably, neither is an index for a volume so rich in names and places. There is, however, a truly outstanding multilingual bibliography (including titles in Danish, Hungarian, Polish and Swedish; some Hungarian and Norwegian references even include translations into English), and a very helpful list of sources. This useful point of reference, combined with the methodological and historiographical perspectives offered by Hankeln, Goudesenne, Zapke and Hughes, as well as many of the case studies, will prove indispensible tools for further research.