Seminar: “Local or Imported? Between Shared Tradition and Local Innovation in Beneventan Neo-Gregorian Historiae”
Alessandra Ignesti (Mellon Fellow, PIMS)
This seminar presents findings from my research on the neo-Gregorian corpus of historiae—cycles of liturgical chants for the Divine Office—developed in southern Italy within the cultural sphere of the Beneventan script. Focusing on three case studies with different patterns of diffusion, I examine distinct compositional approaches in both text and music, and explore the political, exegetical, and spiritual aims underlying their creation.
The first case study, the Office of Modestus, is a unique local formulary likely devised for political purposes around a martyr whose hagiographical profile remains vague. The second examines the Office of Mary Magdalene, a relatively late addition to the liturgy. Originating in France, her cult reached southern Italy in the late twelfth century, where it prompted the reception and adaptation of transalpine chants. The third case-study focuses on the Transfiguration, likewise a later liturgical development. Some of its earliest Western attestations are preserved in Beneventan manuscripts, which transmit an exceptionally rich repertory of chants for the feast.
Taken together, these historiae reveal the coexistence of newly composed chants—often shaped through processes of quotation and borrowing from earlier texts and melodies—alongside chants imported from other traditions and variously adapted.