Marian aspects of Montpellier Codex motets

• Main Author: Davies, Rachel Lindley
• Published: University of Birmingham 2013
• Subjects: 780; M Music
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.577859

This thesis explores the means by which, and the forms in which, the Virgin Mary and her medieval Cult are represented in the motets of the thirteenth-century northern French Montpellier Codex (Mo). It reveals how various musical and poetic techniques are used to worship and address the Virgin and to make her the central focus, even in works addressing apparently non-Marian aspects of Christianity. I demonstrate that the repertoire uses linguistic, musical, and numerical symbolism for Marian purpose, and consider how these symbols would have been understood by a medieval audience. This analytic approach reveals that the Feast of the Annunciation features more frequently in the Codex than has previously been recognised, and that the Virgin, and her Feasts of the Annunciation and Assumption, are of great, and previously unexplored, significance to Fascicle IV of the Codex. This thesis provides new insight into how the theme of mystical marriage is emphasised in Mo, and the final two chapters explore how the Virgin, and the Marian model of mystical marriage, were used as a means for molding and critiquing a variety of women, including the stock characters of the dame courtoise and the shepherdess Marion.