Carmelite Liturgy and Spiritual Identity: The Choir Books of Kraków. By James Boyce. Medieval Church Studies 16. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. xv + 524 pp. €90.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)This monumental book is an exemplary case study of liturgy and religious life based on the close analysis of chant books used in a particular church, the convent in Krakow (Poland) founded in 1397 by Carmelite friars from the order's house in Prague. Boyce, the foremost scholar of Carmelite chant, focuses here on the convent's six extant medieval antiphoners and its thirty post-Tridentine liturgical manuscripts, revealing the continuity in the community's chant traditions over the centuries and the renewal of its repertory well into the eighteenth century. (The complete contents of all the manuscripts are listed in the appendix.) Not only does he present a corpus of material that has been relatively inaccessible to western scholars because of political as well as linguistic barriers, but he also demonstrates the methods by which the study of chant can yield a wealth of information on institutional identity, local history, and cultural responses to church reform.The first chapter gives a brief history of the Carmelite order and of the Krakow convent. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Carmelites' liturgy (introduced in the larger context of the liturgical practices of the religious orders) from its origins in the rite of the Holy Sepulcher to the ordinal of Sibert of Beka (1312) and the order's constitutions of 1357. Chapter 3 analyzes the contents of the six medieval choir books from the Krakow convent. A comparison of the Carmelite calendar to those of other religious orders frames the close consideration of distinctively Carmelite traditions such as the Commemoration of the Resurrection, the feast of St. Lazarus, and the feast of the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac, and Jacob. Boyce discusses the distinctively Carmelite versions of universal feasts such as the Transfiguration, Saint Anne, Mary Magdalen, and the Marian feasts (including the Conception and Our Lady of the Snows, for which the Krakow manuscripts preserve the Bohemian office tradition). The Krakow convent was dedicated to the feast of the Visitation, which was promulgated by Boniface IX in 1389 with the aim of ending the western schism. Boyce argues that the choice of this feast, with its eastern origins, is especially significant given the connection between Boniface and Queen Jadwiga, who invited the Carmelites to Krakow and also hoped to reunite the eastern and western churches. The Bohemian Carmelite version of this office in a Krakow choir book suggests the close relationship that Jadwiga promoted between Krakow and Prague through the Carmelite order.The presence in the earliest antiphoner of the Krakow Carmelites of rhymed offices for Saints Wenceslaus, Ludmila, and Elizabeth of Hungary shows the influence of regional liturgical traditions; Carmelites elsewhere did not venerate these saints. Since the Carmelite liturgy was (at least in theory) uniform throughout the order rather than adopting regional traditions, the observance of such local saints' cults is noteworthy. The last part of chapter 3 examines chants that are of particular interest because they are rare or because their melodies were adapted from other chants, creating new relationships between the feasts on which the chants were sung. …