Item 3: Antiphonal-hymnal

We know a good deal about how this elegant book was used in the royal foundation of St Louis de Poissy, by the religious women who lived there. This is thanks to recent research, especially by two Australian scholars, art historian Joan Naughton and musicologist John Stinson, whose detailed studies are now accessible on the web.

In the middle of the 14th century, the community at this Dominican monastery, which was founded by King Philip le Bel, numbered some 150 nuns, several of whom were royal princesses. This antiphonal-hymnal was one of a pair used by the choir mistress and her assistant to lead the two sides of the choir in the singing of the Divine Office in the great church built by the king and finished in 1331. Philip also commissioned its liturgical books. The image of St Dominic on the page displayed of this manuscript is based on a legend in which Christ and the Virgin draw the saint up to heaven on twin ladders, and angels, travelling back and forth on the same connection, join in the welcome. Although the details of the story are simplified, the image conveys its essentials.

The community survived at Poissy, with some interruptions, up until the French Revolution. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the nuns updated older manuscripts and wrote and illuminated new ones themselves. Joan Naughton has identified more than 70 manuscripts associated with the monastery, these are either mentioned in archival records or dispersed in collections worldwide.

Please now listen to an example of a Dominican Chant from the Poissy Antiphonal, performed by Cantores Sumus.