International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2009 - Space/l'Espace
Abstract

The French archepiscoal town of Sens, a magnet for political and obediential emplantations, saw constant processions; Sens’ Cathédral de St. Etienne’s canons visited several local parishes on their festival days. One royal monastery, St.-Pierre-le-Vif, east of town, figured in archbishopric enthronements and, per 13th century manuscripts, Palm Sunday events. Gathering at the cathedral, people processed a mile to the (now destroyed) abbatial church where palms were blessed, returning for the cathedral’s 10 AM missa maiore, chanting Gloria, laus, et honor.

Sens MS6, a typikon, or liturgical guide, includes an extensive consuetudinum giving each Chapter official’s job descriptions; fussy reminders to heat water for Maunday Thursday’s footwashing; and prompts that the Archbishop must serve the canons a dram of spirits in his palace, yearly (only) at Easter. Sens MS6’s instructions also, oddly, tell the precentor (choral director) to “restart the (Palm Sunday) hymn as the people, (returning to the cathedral with consecrated palms) pass under the gate.” Why? What gate?

A large calfskin map; rubrics for Domenica in Ramus in a processionale, Sens MS7; and a graduale, MS16, clarify this. The choirboys ascended the Portail de Notre Dame’s second story, singing as the crowd passed beneath them. Sound being slower than sight, restarting them caught the crowd up to the boys’ place in the hymn, once within hearing distance.

Such pragmatic instructions for the use of civic spaces and sites exemplify Sens’ extraordinary liturgical imagination. Synchronized singing between the Senonais townsfolk and the pueri, perched like angels above them,created a hopeful earthly scene of cosmic harmony. Honoring the entrance with palms into the Holy City long ago, they enacted an aesthetic identification with Jesus, and the people of Jerusalem. Sens’ liturgists’ purely enjoyable performative moment was also fully symbolic of space, time and place.

Briefly, heaven and earth were attuned