This meticulously argued book is pathbreaking on several counts. First, Catherine Saucier transforms Reinhard Strohm's concept of ‘soundscape’ into a narrative history – of the sanctity of the city of Liège as it was sung in local officia sanctorum, hymns and sequences that were heard in the cathedral and seven collegiate churches, as well as in outdoor and indoor processions. Second, she reveals a little-studied cultivation of civic identity in chant and hagiography of what is often termed the feudal period, which preceded by centuries the establishment in the Low Countries of city councils with mayors and requirements for citizenship. Third, she reconstructs her history in song with only incidental recourse to archival documents, often regarded as purveyors of ‘truth’, instead using hagiography, chronicles and gesta, which, as she demonstrates, reinvented history for political purpose. To support her claims, Saucier analyses for the first time the officia propria for two early bishops of Liège, Theodard (d. c.668) and Hubert (d. 727), as well as better-known offices; the hagiography of Lambert (d. c.705), Theodard and Hubert in relation to their sung officia; and several hymns, sequences, and the polyphonic motet Fortis cum quevis actio, attributed to Johannes Brassart, whose subject matter if not texts are also derived from local hagiography. All this is accomplished in an introduction and five broadly chronological chapters and a conclusion. Clearly readable musical examples appear alongside her text, and accurate translations of cited Latin texts are provided, too. The musical repertory discussed in the book is substantial, and some of it is edited here for the first time. The result is a new reading of the hagiography and a rightfully prominent place for the analysed chant and polyphony in the history and historiography of Liège.

The book opens with the final antiphon of the office of St Lambert, Laetare et lauda, a springboard for Catherine Saucier's claim that civic identity in Liège was promoted by the repeated singing of chants like it. (Here, this chant reappears on more than twenty pages.) Such chants told of local saints in diachronic liturgical veneration; consequently, to Saucier, the chants sanctified the site of Liège more than relics. Saucier then traces a brief history of Liège, called a ‘paradise of priests’ in 1554 due to its prince-bishop, cathedral and prominent clergy, and presents a methodological overview and summary of what is to come.

Three early saintly bishops distinguish Liège. In chapter one, Saucier shows how their hagiography and proper offices construct them as martyrs sanctifying Liège by their blood. Since Lambert's body was in Maastricht, his vita prima had him plead posthumously for the return of his relics to the site of his martyrdom in Liège. His successor, Hubert, had the relics translated, establishing Liège as diocesan seat, just as Lambert had done for his predecessor, Theodard. That Translation was chanted in Theodard's office at Lauds. Where proper offices are discussed, Saucier gives the texts of the vita and the chants in parallel, showing borrowings, and comments on the chant, mainly on text-emphasis by pitch or melisma, or the presence of musical rhyme. On p. 20, an antiphon derived from several vitae is of later date. In this case, one would have wanted to know if this antiphon's style differed from that of the older antiphons; in proper offices, new chants, often canticle antiphons or final Matins responsories, sometimes replaced their older counterparts over time.

In this chapter as elsewhere, Saucier identifies the methods and purposes of the storytelling in the vitae, exploring language and rhetoric as well. For example, she explains how Sigebert of Gembloux, finding precedents in writings of late antiquity that associate civic prestige with saints, includes Liège in an Ode he composed for Metz and then ends his vita for Theodard with a similar acclamation to the city. While Sigebert's emphasis on the city was a political ploy to protect local territory, Lambert's new vita of 1144–5 by canon Nicolas sought to restore the grandeur Liège had achieved in Sigebert's time. To that end, Nicolas introduced a fictitious chapel built on the location of the future site of Liège and Lambert's martyrdom. The antiphon Laetare et lauda is shown to be derived from Nicolas's vita; its use in processions and singing in Aachen and Tongeren, but not in Maastricht, is discussed.

In chapter two, Saucier considers the intersection of the cults of Lambert and Theodard, saints who appeared in each other's vitae, rested at opposite ends of the cathedral's choir, were carried in the same processions (reconstructed here with their chant), had feast days in proximity, and had hymn texts contrafacted to the same melody. Since neither saint was martyred for his faith, the hagiographers infused the two martyrdoms with allusions: Sigebert drew on biblical texts to compare Theodard to Christ on the cross and Stephen the protomartyr; those comparisons resurface in a hymn and sequence identified by Saucier. Very interesting is Saucier's unpicking of the intertextuality of two other chants, the sequence Urbs legia and the Marian sequence Hodiernae lux diei celebris, whose chant it borrows. The Marian sequence engendered many other sequences for martyrs, no doubt because Mary gave birth to Christ who would be crucified.

Lambert's own martyrdom became a problem. In his first vita, he dies on account of an earlier murder committed by his relatives, and his status as martyr rests on his refusal to defend himself at his death. A spicier tale is in a tenth-century Carmen de sancto landberto, in which a Merovingian king's adulterous affair brings on Lambert's death. By the early eleventh century, that immoral king had become Charlemagne's grandfather, Pippin, who approved Lambert's killing. Sigebert reinstated Pippin as a pious man, however, making his corrupt wife the one to plot Lambert's murder. Saucier discusses historical parallels to all of these tales.

A more effective vita was the fourth by canon Nicolas, which emphasised the biblical models of Elijah and John the Baptist: the adulteress is a second Herodias and Lambert himself is martyred as a sacrificial offering at an altar (decades before Thomas of Canterbury) in the early morning. Lambert's tenth-century office gives no cause for his death, but later liturgical texts and music for the saint use language inspired by Nicolas's vita, which established Lambert as nothing less than the mystic lamb of the Apocalypse. Although Saucier is careful to show how the chanted texts reflect the vitae, she does not recognise that they also borrow short expressions from other proper offices or hagiography in general: such as ‘athleta Dei’ or ‘athleta Christi’, or the phrase ‘sancte Dei preciose’.

In Chapter 3 Saucier turns to St Hubert, whose hagiography aligns him with the two earlier founding bishops. Beginning again with civic sanctity, she cites a poem of 1612 stating that Liège is blessed by Hubert, the bishop and founder credited with changing Legia into Leodium. She explains associations made between Hubert, Lambert and St Peter, to whom two churches founded by Hubert were dedicated. The oldest collegiate church of Liège, St Peter, was the site of Hubert's burial, which is described in a first vita for the saint. Hubert's remains left Liège after this for the town of Andage, however, as a second vita commissioned from Jonas of Orléans (d. c.841) explains, whose texts were selectively used in an office sung for St Hubert at the cathedral. As Saucier points out, that office omits the Translation to Andage, concluding as if the relics were still in Liège by describing their elevation at St Peter's Church (which preceded their translation). It took a decree of Pope Leo X to prove that the uncorrupted body of Hubert was in fact in Andage.

Hubert's cult inspired three more vitae, all by canon Nicolas. As Saucier explains, Hubert died by political action and thus required a more idealised profile. Canon Nicolas's third vita therefore tells the influential story of Pope Sergius's dream that Lambert's staff was passed to Hubert as he arrived in Rome to be consecrated as bishop. Hubert also had a magic key with the power to restore sanity. Similarly, Hubert's office sets him alongside the apostle Peter and Lambert, a sequence for Hubert names Lambert five times, and the chapters of the cathedral and St Peter's held an annual mass for Hubert on the feasts of Sts Peter and Paul. St Peter's church became a site of pilgrimage and headquarters of all of the Liègeois chapters, the location of collective celebrations and where civic officials were sworn in.

In Chapter 4 Saucier considers bishop Notger (972–1008), who rebuilt the cathedral, cloisters, episcopal palace and baptistery, initiated the construction of five collegiate churches, and built a wall around them for protection. He was especially remembered at the church of St John the Evangelist, which he consecrated and where he was buried. Saucier argues that the churches he built were intentionally situated in a pattern modelled after John 19:25–7, a recreation of the veneration of the cross by John the Evangelist as discussed in Notger's vita, read yearly on the anniversary of Notger's death. After a traditional archive-based discussion of the clergy of Liège in order to show how their dispersal in different churches was counterbalanced by their prayer confraternities and participation in processions, Saucier turns to the biography of the composer Johannes Brassart, who served four Liègeois churches, mainly that of St John the Evangelist. A motet by Brassart naming Liège, which merits two pages of commentary, draws on Notger's vita, which Brassart would have heard, and on a sequence he would have sung for John the Evangelist, Laus gloria virtus. The chapter ends with a discussion of the performance context of this motet. Saucier has since identified two other motets, one by Brassart, as based on local hagiography.Footnote ¹

The subject of Chapter 5 is St Lambert as protector in battle. His vitae portray him as vigorous in battle during his life, likewise emphasising his piety. Then a short history of his Translations and reliquaries with military allusions is followed by discussion of a hymn that presents Lambert as martyr invincible in battle. The main part of the chapter concerns showings of his relics in battles in 1141 and 1213 and in civic processions in 1489, 1512 and 1536, and the music accompanying them. In each case Saucier meticulously examines the event, the exposition of the relics, the texts and music of chants known to have been sung on these occasions, and the memorialisation of these occasions with feast days that were intentionally placed in the calendar. A description of the battle of 1213 and its music was found in a vita of an entirely different saint, Odilia, evidence of the historical value of hagiography. When the early medieval battles were memorialised in the liturgy, the translations of the relics were re-enacted inside the church, but when Lambert's relics failed to produce a victory against the Burgundians and his battle standard was shredded in battle, the latter standard became obsolete.

Of interest is Saucier's discussion of the aftermath of the Burgundian destruction of Liège, for the military might and piety in the hagiography are here combined in actual historical events. Thus Charles the Bold, while his armies destroyed Liège, saved its churches and built homes for dispossessed clergy, also commissioning art objects. His lieutenant, Guy de Brimeu, likewise helped protect the churches and recover their property. He commissioned a silver reliquary to encase Lambert's skull, and a votive Requiem mass for himself with prayers for Lambert to be said by a canon in the nave of the cathedral.

The chapter's final section is on elaborate processional displays of Lambert's skull that took place in 1489, 1512 and 1526 at the behest of Bishop Erard de la Marck. In 1489, the mass and the following procession to the episcopal palace included the entire clergy of Liège, instrumental musicians playing in the middle of the cathedral, an alternatim Te deum sung by cantores in polyphony and monks in plainsong, and the unison singing by all of Laetare et lauda and the Magnificat antiphon Magna vox.

After 1489, indulgences for attendance at St Lambert's feasts financed his new reliquary, whose design included scenes discussed earlier in the book; the mass and procession of 1512 celebrated its completion and acknowledged Hubert's translation of Lambert's relics to Liège. The procession of 1526 initiated a yearly event on the feast of Lambert's Translation; it circumnavigated the city and may have retraced part of the path of the original translation. Prominent during this procession was the singing of O sacrum convivium for Corpus Christi, a feast instituted in Liège; Bishop de la Marck added prayers memorialising his episcopal predecessors before the procession. In this chapter, as before, Saucier demonstrates that new musical compositions were sometimes complemented by new art and poetry: between 1526 and 1530 Bishop De la Marck commissioned tapestries with lives of the Virgin and Lambert and the singing of a polyphonic Libera me and the sequence Letabunda. Returning to Laetare et lauda in her conclusions, Saucier again emphasises the extent to which the hagiographical messages were sung. In her opinion, ‘Liège owed its civic progress to idealized attributes deeds and oversight of episcopal martyrs . . . Singers transformed Liège into a Paradise of Priests.’

Despite their medieval interrelationships, the disciplines of hagiography and music rarely meet in modern scholarship. The primary and secondary sources for local hagiography are not easily assembled, and the texts can be challenging to interpret. Saucier's discussion of the associated musical repertory, the historiae, necessarily situates them in her broader goal of emphasising the civic purpose of music, so texts take priority. She comments on tonal features of the chant only as they relate to the meaning of the text. There is no discussion here of the appearance of these chants in the manuscripts, of variants in transmission, or of dating. The locations of the chants in manuscripts are cited exactly in the endnotes, but the list of service-books from Liège given on pp. 205–6 is of little use: it provides only manuscript numbers, book type, and (a single) date – no origin or provenance, size, part of the church calendar, or bibliography. This is especially regrettable, because these books are not in major libraries nor available online or in facsimile. Nevertheless, all manuscripts cited in the book are indexed on pp. 220–1. Of great interest, however, are Saucier's descriptions of liturgical events, such as the Translations, which are without precedent in musicological scholarship. And Saucier goes even a step further, to interpret the hagiography in its multidisciplinary reappearances: not just as music, but also as art, reliquaries, liturgical foundations, even ecclesiastical topography. She thus points to a need for similar scrutiny of the hagiography from other locations. Liège was dominated by bishops, prince-bishops and diocesan politics; other cities such as Durham, Münster or Würzburg also had prince-bishops; but Regensburg, to some extent Paris, and Ghent were defined by their Benedictine abbeys. How did that affect civic messages in hagiography and chant? Saucier recognises that in Liège the clergy defined civic life, but this should come as no surprise, for throughout the Low Countries they owned most property until the late eighteenth century. More interesting in Liège and elsewhere is the relationship between the secular clergy and the monasteries – in Saucier's book monastic hagiography is never mentioned.

A major contribution to the study of the medieval Low Countries, this book reads beautifully, but the publisher does a great disservice to the author by insisting on endnotes, which should have no place in scholarly books: here, without flipping back and forth in the book constantly, one cannot know whose ideas are whose, recognise if a medieval text is the author's new edition from a manuscript or borrowed from a well-known previous publication, or see if a subject has an abundant bibliography or if the author is the first to consider it. The book was carefully edited, but the odd cadences on E and b on p. 43 are not explained, and one is not told where the unchecked chants in Table 2.1 can be found. Indexes of chants by incipit and of editions of medieval texts separated from the general index would have helped. A pertinent book that should have been cited, because Lambert and Hubert are among the saints discussed, is Monique Goullet, Ecriture et réécriture hagiographiques: essai sur les réécritures de vies de saints dans l’occident latin médiéval, viii^e–xiii^e s. (Turnhout, 2005). Finally, Saucier has shown that the evidence for Lambert's cult dates from the early eighth century. Michel Huglo noted in 1971 that six antiphons for St Lambert earlier than those in the office attributed to Stephen of Liège are found in Leipzig, Musikbibliothek, Rep. I 93.Footnote ²