A paradise of priests : singing the civic and episcopal hagiography of medieval Liège

Description

Embraces an all-encompassing interdisciplinary methodology to uncover the symbiosis of saintly and civic ideals in music, rituals, and hagiographic writing celebrating the origins and identity of a major clerical center. Medieval Liège was the seat of a vast diocese in northwestern Europe and a city of an exceptional number of churches, clergymen, and church musicians. Recognized as a priestly paradise, the city accommodated as many Masses each day as Rome. In this volume, musicologist Catherine Saucier examines the music of religious worship in Liège and reveals within the liturgy and ritual a civic function by which local clerics promoted the holy status of their city. Analyzing hagiographic and historical writings, religious art, and sung ceremonies relevant to the city's genesis, destruction, and eventual rebirth, Saucier uncovers richly varied ways in which liégeois clergymen fused music with text, image, and ritual to celebrate the city's sacred episcopal origins and saintly persona. A Paradise of Priests forges new interdisciplinary connections between musicology, the liturgical arts, the cult of saints, church history, and urban studies, and is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in the history of the Low Countries, hagiography and its reception, and ecclesiastical institutions. Introduction : the sound of civic sanctity in the priestly paradise of Liège -- Martyred bishops and civic origins : promoting the clerical city -- The intersecting cults of saints Theodard and Lambert : validating bishops as martyrs -- The civic cult of Saint Hubert : venerating bishops as founders -- Clerical concord, disharmony, and polyphony : commemorating Bishop Notger's city -- Military triumph, civic destruction, and the changing face of Saint Lambert's relics : invoking the defensor patriae -- Conclusion : hearing civic sanctity -- Appendix : medieval service books preserving the chant repertory sung in the city of Liège.