Manuscript Witness to Power and Politics at Central European Episcopal Centers

Abstract

Medieval institutions have frequently been considered either in terms of physi- cal edifice or, in the discipline of musicology, in terms of a so-called, often ill- defined, but nevertheless taken as self-evident, music liturgical “repertories.” This contribution discusses a more elusive, yet authentic, relationship between spiritual-social-physical cathedral institutions and the manuscripts produced by these institutions, concentrating on, and comparing, episcopal centers in central France and central Europe.