The Marian Symbolism of Spring, ca. 1200-ca. 1500: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Abstract As the season of earthly rebirth, spring in the high and late Middle Ages provided both an ideal setting for secular love songs and a symbolic underpinning for the liturgical season of Eastertide. With the Virgin Mary acting as a spiritual point of mediation, Eastertide liturgy and secular springtime song resonated symbolically with one another, a resonance seen nowhere more clearly than in polyphonic compositions in which Eastertide chants, Marian prayers, and secular springtime songs sound simultaneously. This essay presents two case studies that explore the confluence of these diverse elements within polyphonic music. The first examines thirteenth-century compositions on the widespread tenor In seculum, positing its origins in the Mass for Easter Sunday —and by extension its associations with spring—as the reason that it was used so often and combined with such diverse textual and musical materials as pastourelles, dances, courtly love songs, and Marian prayers. The second study examines the use of multiple cantus firmi in Isaac's Laudes salvatori (from Choralis Constantinus) and Josquin's Victimae paschali laudes, both paraphrase settings of Easter sequences that comment upon their primary cantus firmus by simultaneously quoting additional melodies. Isaac uses the chants Regina caeli and Victimae paschali laudes to emphasize the central role that Mary plays in the miracle of the Resurrection, while Joquin accomplishes this same goal by employing the well-known chansons D'ung aultre amer and De tous biens plaine as vernacular symbols of Christ and the Virgin Mary, respectively. The two case studies, taken together, illustrate a consistent mode of symbolic thought that endured for over three centuries.