Since 1999, the Rare Books & Special Collections of the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney in Australia have acquired what Grayson Wagstaff has described as ‘one of the most important groups of Spanish chant manuscripts outside the Iberian Peninsula’. This book, in two sections entitled ‘From the Cloister’ and ‘From the Cathedral’, includes eight articles on ten previously unstudied manuscripts of that collection, some which report analyses of pigments made by Sydney Analytical. The articles are models of detective work on these ‘late’ manuscripts, which date from 1480 to the eighteenth century, and of the treatment of sources with material changes and marginalia resulting from the decisions of the Council of Trent. Nine manuscripts are notated liturgical books, and one is a manuscript copy of Clarist documents from Cuzco in Peru. All are digitised in full and available at https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/, but black-and-white and colour images are included in each article to assist the reader.

‘From the Cloister’ are two processionals from female communities, Fisher Library, Rare Books, Add. Ms. (hereafter Ms.) 416 and Ms. 420; two Augustinian antiphonals, Ms. 367 and Ms. 411; Clarist texts, Ms. 364; a compendium with offices from a female probably Jeronymite house, Ms. 376; and a Spanish office cantorale, Ms. 413. To begin, David Andrés Fernández builds on his 2018 study of four Sydney processionals,Footnote ¹ here comparing Ms. 416 and Ms. 420, each with chant from the Purification to the Assumption but with distinctive additions. Ms. 420 is one of many processionals to survive from the Dominican nunnery of Poissy near Paris, the subject of exhaustive scholarship by Joan Naughton, but most are early; this small parchment book dates from the first third of the sixteenth century. Distinctive in this book are its lengthy processional liturgy for each day from Good Friday to Easter Friday, the reference on f. 10r to two ‘sorores’ who are to sing the Trisagion, and, at the end of the book, a processional chant for the Dedication, a liturgy for receiving an unspecified individual, the liturgy for a private procession for the sisters in the cloister, and a mass for a time of plague, the last of which Andrés Fernández dates to sometime after 1500. The erroneous rubrics for Gloria laus (perhaps to reflect whether soloists (V) or the choir (A) are singing) are listed on page 37 and chants unique to Poissy are discussed on page 39.

More challenging to assess was the much-used Ms. 416, a large thick-paper manuscript too tightly bound to evaluate its composition. Dated by Les Enluminures to c.1480–1540 with seventeenth-century additions, this book is concordant with Cistercian manuscripts, but the additions, which comprise chant for the Virgin of Mount Carmel and the Seven Sorrows, do not correspond to Carmelite processionals. Rubrics mention an abbot, priests and deacons who would have performed the liturgy for the women, suggesting a nearby male community. This book contains the chant for six yearly processions, of which five followed the same itinerary, according to rubrics. They led Andrés Fernández, who compared the length of the chants in staves used, to conclude that the chants were selected to fit the itinerary and that they would have been sung slowly. Andrés Fernández identifies two related Cistercian liturgies in a printed processional in Zaragoza in 1550 and the late fourteenth-century customary, Burgos, Las Huelgas, Ms. 6. He also notes a face within a small initial, a distinctive sign of liquescence and a variant first-mode melody for Gloria laus. At the back is a chant for a new abbot, a tonary, which unfortunately is not described or discussed, a chant from the two offices and an eighteenth-century Franciscan Credo, but we are not told if it includes mensural signs. Without more possibility of comparing melodies in Spanish sources, Andrés Fernández concludes that Ms. 416 is from a Spanish Cistercian women's community. The chant of the two added offices does not match Carmelite processional chant.

Next, Simon Polson asks why two manuscripts of quite different content, since one is a diurnal, were both catalogued as ‘Augustinian antiphoners’: Ms. 367 is Spanish and dates from between 1714 and 1759, and Ms. 411, from Germany, France, or the Netherlands to judge from the initials according to Les Enluminures and from the sixteenth century but after 1530. Polson first discusses the palaeography and initials of Ms. 367, and its Sanctorale from Christmas to the next calendar year. This manuscript includes an Augustinian liturgy for the Blessing of Bread by Nicholas of Tolentino that preceded a bread distribution at the end of the Mass, which includes a rare hymn, Ad panem medicum. That is fascinating, because such bread distributions are documented in the late Middle Ages throughout Western Europe and were often requested in foundations.

Ms. 411 includes the Temporale and Sanctorale for the year from Advent to Palm Sunday. There follow the Commons, Marian chant for Saturdays, chant for the Dedication and other occasions and lessons of the Office of the Dead. Polson provides an analysis of the paleography, decorations and included feasts. Unusual features include a large initial from another manuscript glued in and a palimpsest litany, which I transcribe here: Scolastica, Walburga, Gertrudis, Gudila, Margarita, Katherina, Barbara, [illegible], Anna, [illegible] (images pp. 50–2). These many female saints, some Benedictine, suggest a book for a female community, possibly the abbey of Nivelles, which was close to Brussels and Liège (see in the following).

Of special interest in this manuscript is the apparently exclusive use of square notes with long stems for single pitches in chant for the procession of Corpus Christi,Footnote ² and antiphons for the Little Hours of the Annunciation. As I have explained elsewhere,Footnote ³ this is an archaic practice dating back to the earliest chant books in square notation when the pulse of mensural music fell on the longa, before the brevis sign was invented. Taken together with the palimpsest litany, the model for this manuscript must date from the second half of the thirteenth century, given that the feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated in Liège in 1246.

Robert Curry provides a close examination of Ms. 364, a paper copy of the Second Rule of Pope Urban IV for the Sisters of St Clare, dated 1 June 1638, and the General Constitutions of the Order of St Clare dated 11 June 1639, which were copied at an undetermined date and location, but found their way to the library of the convent of St Anthony of Padua in Cuzco, Peru. Curry explains the Clarists, the history of their rules, their application, content and social issues related to them, and the organization of Franciscan women's communities and their Peruvian history. He situates the rules within Franciscan reforms. There is no discussion of music, but in the Rule of Urban IV, chapter 3 is on the Divine Office, chapter 10 on the choir mistress and chapter 11 on the vicars and confessors (an image and comparative table of this section is shown). A table compares texts from Clare's Forma Vitae, Urban IV's Rule, and the General Constitutions. A table of contents of the manuscript is in the appendix.

Barbara Swanson discusses Ms. 376, a miscellany of offices in eight sections dating from 1587 to the eighteenth century, which she argues is Jeronymite, since four of the eight sections have liturgy for St Jerome. Parts I, II, V, VII and VIII include liturgies of many Marian offices, including Mary of the Snows (p. 128), Sts John the Baptist, Jerome, Paula the Widow (an unicum, cf. pp. 137–43) and the Apparition of James. Sections I and VIII from the sixteenth century are related, and II and III have different scribes but are related. At the centre of the manuscript, sections VI a–b, is an eighteenth-century Kyriale with time signatures and bar lines, and with a polyphonic Kyrie in black mensural notation with some hollow notes (image on p. 126). Swanson emphasises and discusses a dedicatory text from ‘a slave to the Virgin Mary’ to an unidentified female house, which she discusses on pages 125 and 127, the Jeronymite material, the unique office for Paula the Widow, who was Jerome's greatest disciple, and the Magnificat antiphon Sancta Maria succurre for the feast of Mary of Snows, which was widely sung, but here has a variant text and melody.Footnote ⁴

This disparate material must take us back to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site of Christ's birth. The earliest church on the site of what is now Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome dates from the fourth century; in the seventh century, the church was called Sancta Maria ad Praesepe, because it had acquired a relic of the manger of Christ. The Dedication of Santa Maria Maggiore was celebrated as the feast of Mary of Snows, because of a miracle of snow known by c.1000. St Jerome died near Bethlehem and was originally buried in the Church of the Nativity, but his body was moved in the twelfth century to Santa Maria Maggiore. Paula was Jerome's disciple in Bethlehem, where they founded a double monastery. Jerome was initially buried near her in the Church of the Nativity. Finally, although this could be accidental, the eight sections of the manuscript could be symbolic, since eight is the number representing the Resurrection.

Kathleen E. Nelson's subject is Ms. 413, which she has indexed for CANTUS. This large and heavy office cantorale, which is dated 1550–1600 and without hymns, has a Temporale beginning in Advent and ending with Pentecost and Eastertide. It belonged to a Dutch priest who bought it in Belgium, but Nelson, using the CANTUS Analytical Tool and other methods, concluded that it was a secular Roman-Franciscan book probably prepared and used in Spain, and not the New World, and associated it with a female Franciscan house – it has marginalia in Spanish. The palimpsest colophon with the relatively common surnames Quinoñes and Mendoça, and Vespers written as ‘Bisperas’ are insufficient to place the manuscript. Nelson discusses its palaeography, ink, pigments, four categories of initials, and notation, as well as its annotations, alterations and additions. The Invitatory for Epiphany with rubrics for a ‘i chorus’ and ‘ii chorus’ (p. 168) is based on the Vulgate text, but one phrase is from the Roman Psalter; a similar invitatory is in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, MPCANT/68, which is Franciscan. The appendix lists the manuscript's content, differentiae and included invitatory tone incipits.

‘From the Cathedral’ are a cantorale and graduale, Ms. 370; a possibly Catalan book with an office of the dead and Requiem, Ms. 377; and a graduale de tempore from Salamanca, Ms. 379. Santiago Ruiz Torres analyses Ms. 370, a miscellany that was bound out of order and probably after its content was no longer in use, in those respects like the cantorales 33, 35 and 36 of Segovia Cathedral. The scribes were working throughout Iberia; the rubrics are in Spanish. The first section dating from 1500 to 1550 has masses for the Trinity, Corpus Christi, the Common of Saints, and mass ordinaries with many tropes. A seventeenth-century antiphonal follows it, with Roman Christmas Matins (a palimpsest of the antiphons O virum ineffabilem and Oculis ac manibus from an office for Martin of Tours on f. 99v), then a sixteenth-century breviary with the end of a Sanctorale with feasts of the last part of November; Ruiz Torres found the selection of saints most concordant with sources from the Diocese of Burgos, but the liturgies are from the Commune. Important in this compilation are its thirty-five mass ordinaries of which sixteen have tropes (listed on pp. 214–15), but there are no mensural elements in these. The tropes were studied earlier; here the palaeography, notation, decoration and the nature of the original books prior to their dismemberment are explained. Four chants could not be identified (discussed on pp. 217–18); some changes resulting from the Council of Trent are evident. Other topics covered are uncorrected errors of scribes in translating the Aquitanian notation into square notation, the use of B and E more than C and F, and four chants with modal irregularities that here end on their normal finals. In the appendix is a detailed list of the formularies in the manuscript.

Grayson Wagstaff's subject is Ms. 377, which contains a complete office and mass for the dead with chants for burial and a text about the scribe on f. [67]v, whose name is Catalan: ‘Scripsit frater Nicolaus Paretis [… 22 July 1642].’ After describing the history in Spain of the office of the dead, Wagstaff identifies this liturgy as Roman-Franciscan and observes slightly shortened melodies but a more melismatic invitatory Regem, which he thinks may have been required for a more important ceremony and found in the Enchiridion sive Manuale Chori printed in Salamanca in 1557 and in a book from the Capilla Real in Granada. Wagstaff finds the information insufficient to propose an origin or destination but considers Ms. 377 to be probably Spanish with some features of Mexican or Latin American manuscripts.

Jane Morlet Hardie situates Ms. 349 as dating from the ‘long sixteenth century’ with respect to the seventy-six choirbooks of Salamanca Cathedral that were studied and catalogued by James Boyce. Fr Boyce concluded that many choirbooks had been used there, but that many were lost, and Hardie argues that Ms. 349, a winter graduale de tempore, is closely related to Salamanca Ms. 11, which she thinks may have been copied from it, and the companion volume to the pre-Tridentine winter graduale de sanctis, Salamanca, Ms. 10. Hardie provides a codicological description of Ms. 349, noting decoration, square notation, a Dominican binding perhaps made by Alonso Sánchez (like those of Mss. 53 and 237 of Salamanca) and post-Tridentine adaptations to Roman practice (shortened melismas, replaced texts), and she analyses the Alleluia verses from Advent to Lent in Ms. 349 and Salamanca Ms. 11.Footnote ⁵ Her Appendix 1b compares chants found in sources from Toledo and Salamanca. Appendix 2 is a detailed table of contents, and Appendix 3 a list of sources consulted.

In the Afterword, Andrés Fernández argues for the need for a liturgical topography of Spain, further study of the reform and preservation of older liturgies, the use of new technology, and the need to develop methods for describing and analysing compendia or compilations. The book ends with a bibliography of the project to study the Sydney manuscripts and with Works Cited.

Some errors crept in: on page 25 the translation of ‘dormitorium’ should be ‘dormitory’ not ‘bedroom’; page 33 ‘eighteent[h]’; page 53 Helias should be capitalised; page 41 Cister[cian]’; page 60 ‘Birthday of Mary’ should be ‘Nativity of Mary’; page 75 diurnals are so-called because they lack Matins; page 167 ‘Ephiphany’ [sic]; page 279, note 3 not ‘Karl-Heinz’ but ‘Karlheinz’; and page 287 not ‘Sundy’ but ‘Sunday’.

This very useful book will assist scholars taking on the terra incognita of late Spanish, Mexican and Latin American liturgical manuscripts, which have much to teach us about the reception and transformation of early chant and liturgy – and practices of book-making – in later centuries.