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Jerome of Moravia, O.P.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2024

Edward A. Maginty
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Jerome of Moravia was born on the 30th of September 1200, at Olmutz, the Fortress gate of Bohemia, where his father, one of the Minnesingers attached to the Emperor’s Court, had been rewarded with an estate by Frederick Barbarossa. As these Court musicians were, to a man, the creatures of the Ghibelline sovereigns, the son could not altogether escape the taint of heterodoxy that stamped the enemies of the Church, though this malign spirit was largely neutralised by the fidelity of his mother, Ysen-trude, who, as a maid.of honour to the wife of Conrad II of Hungary, had caught some measure of the intense piety that distinguished his daughter St. Elizabeth. At an early age the boy was placed in the care of the Archbishop, who wisely recommended the tempering influence of the severe discipline of the Song School. During his leisure hours between school and chancel Jerome found delight in fingering the psaltery, rota, gigue and symphony, and made the day merry with the simpler songs of the Troubadours. He would listen wide-eyed to his father’s tales of the fifth Crusade and the Wartburg Tournament, though more frequently—for his father’s visits were rare—he would fall asleep to his mother’s stories of Tristram, Parsifal, the Nibelungs, and the Holy Grail. Soon ambition awoke and made the Cathedral school with its midnight Lauds distasteful. At fourteen he entered upon his trivium at Brunn, but he was old enough even then to find a magnet in Cologne, which was nearer Eisenach, the home of Reinmar, Wolfram and other stars in the Minnesingers’ firmament; and nearer also to his father. He attained his immediate goal in 1216. At Cologne the quadrivial course was lightened by his passion for harmony and acoustics, but his hopes were dashed when his father made it plain to him that the knightly singers’ calling was hastening to decay.

Type
Original Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 12 , Issue 130 , January 1931 , pp. 17 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © 1931 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

This short essay in aid of a biography of Jerome of Moravia is founded upon the following facts. (1) His musical compositions assigned to the first third of the century by Coussemaker, who thus dates J's birth about 1170; (2) The testimony of Echard that he entered (or left) the Sorbonne in 1260; (3) His treatise written after 1263; (4) Sundry fleeting references; (5) Naumann's evidence that he taught at Paris all his life and that all the notable musicians down to the time of John de Muris (d. 1380) were connected with Notre Dame and the Sorbonne. Grove's Dictionary dismisses Hieronymus de Moravia in four lines, but supplies a whole column, replete with dates, for his contemporary, Garland. Musical archaeology is still in its infancy. When Dr. Farmer's Arabian studies, the English Plain-song Society's works, the Notre Dame, La Sainte Chapelle, the Sorbonne, the Vatican and the Dominican archives have been ransacked, Jerome's career will stand out more clearly; but it will probably fall fairly closely within the lines I have indicated.

References

2 John Garland (see Grove) was English (according to W. G. Flood, Irish, from County Louth). At Oxford, 1206. At Paris, 1212, where he opened a school. In 1218 at the siege of Toulouse (probably invited by De Montfort to entertain the troops). After the migration from Paris, 1229, assisted in the formation of the University at Toulouse. Forced by Dominican ‘persecution’ to leave. After many dangers, escaped to Paris, where he was residing in 1245. Wrote five treatises. Roger Bacon declares that a man of some eminence named Garland was known in Paris about 1267. The reference to persecution leads to the surmise that Garland was either himself a heretic or an abettor of Count Raymond of Toulouse and that, when the Dominicans were charged with the duty of examining Manichaean suspects, Garland was refused a licence to teach. Since his ‘escape’ occupied some fifteen years, it is presumable that he returned to England. With respect to the date 1245, when Henry III of England was defeated in 1242 or the Albigenses were reduced to impotence in 1244, Garland may have thought himself free to revisit Paris.

3 The Dominican Order, at this time, were singular in chanting the office coram Sanctissimo.

4 An historic personage, fl. 1250. Wagner makes him a competitor at the Wartburg, 1207; also a suppliant at the feet of Urban IV (1261–1264)!

5 The copy (1260) in the Brit. Mus. Add. 23935 is of French workmanship. Jerome was in Paris. The most expert musicians of the four provinces had wasted nine years on an unsatisfactory Gradual; Humbert uses a more trustworthy source and an unimpeachable book is complete in as many months. If the successful compiler were not Jerome, it is hard to believe that he allowed his name to be incorporated in a work that had come from the hand of a rival. As an archetype superior to that of St. Gall numerous Gregorians down to Dom Pothier have had recourse to the Montpellier MS.

6 Echard (Scrip. Vol. I, p. 159) says: ‘He seems to have flourished in the middle of the thirteenth century about the time of Aquinas, and for some years at least to have lived in the Priory of St. James at Paris. I infer this from the testimony of Peter of Limoges, the socius both of Jerome and Robert of Sorbonne, the latter of whom was Jerome's Socius et aequalis (the technical term for an accredited member) from 1260.’Socius may mean contemporary, fellow student, candidate on probation, or merely friend. Robert (1201–1274) was an accredited member from the start (1258) and Peter and Jerome became attached between 1258 and 1274. Since both St. James's and the Sorbonne were theological colleges, Jerome must have developed his musical powers before he entered either. As a professed monk he could not have proceeded from the Dominican to the secular institute. He joined the Sorbonne first. As he was not a theologian he must have been one of the paying guests. The citation reads as if he were accepted in 1260 and after some years (when, according to Coussemaker, he would be approaching ninety) he became a Dominican. It is more reasonable to believe that he entered in 1258 and that 1260 marks the date of his departure, after which Robert and Jerome continued the intimate relations (socii).

7 Jerome begins his description of the Ars cantus mensurabilis with the remark, ‘This work, commonly attributed to Franco of Cologne, was written, as we have heard from his own lips, by John of Burgundy, Provost of the Hospital of St. John at Cologne’ (founded 1263). (Oxf. Hist., Vol. ii). The value of his own treatise is measured by the verdict that the four rules of harmony he enunciated have remained unshaken to this day (Naumann).

8 It may have been the ‘Tournai’ mass which roused the Pope to action. This mass which harmonised even the response to the ‘Ite’ was one bespoken by the Tournai notaries for performance at their Guild service. So far as we know, it was the first attempt to deprive the laity of their right to sing the Ordinary of the Mass in a public church. Machaut's Messe du sacre 1360 (for the consecration of Charles V), was no invasion of this right. The harmonised mass is legitimate even in the cathedral. In 1408 (Oaf. Hist.) the only harmony employed at Notre Dame was organium or faiso bordone supplied occasionally by boys. Pope John's Extravaganza was therefore a self-denying ordinance for the sake of example.