Two English motets on Simon de Montfort

Abstract

The libraries of Jesus College and St John's College, Cambridge, preserve two fragmentary motets of thirteenth-century English origin which bear witness to the veneration in which Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, was held by many in the years immediately following his death in 1265. One of these motets, Miles Christi from St John's, provides two new texts for Simon's hagiology, though they are both unfortunately incomplete. The other motet, Salve Symon from Jesus College, also incomplete, is a previously unnoticed setting of the Latin poem on Simon which is the last entry in the Evesham collection of Simon's miracula. These two motets are among the very few polyphonic compositions from England that refer directly to contemporary events of the later thirteenth century. The unusually precise terminus ante quem which they share provides the music historian with one of the few firm guideposts to the chronology of the contemporary musical repertory and its notation. In addition, the decoration of Simon's feast-day with polyphony, for which there is evidence here, emphasises not only the specific regard in which the earl was held by the religious establishment, but more generally the functional context of the English motet in the liturgy of services dedicated to the saints and Mary. These motets are also witnesses to the familiar insular patterns of preservation and destruction of polyphonic music from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

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