This new monograph by Sarah Ann Long represents the outcome of many years of intricate archival research into late medieval devotion among the non-elite institutions of Paris and Tournai. Long's study focuses primarily on sources from various types of confraternities—lay confraternities of tradesmen, ecclesiastical confraternities, student confraternities, and groups with mixed membership—and provides a close examination of the purpose and transmission of ideas and repertoires among these sources and the communities that they represent.
The first three chapters focus on sources that show confraternities appealing to carefully chosen saints for protection from the plague and other illnesses, analyzing the unique musical and textual choices that each group made in their worship of the Mass proper and the Office, and the relationships between these two categories. Chapter 4 examines a broader network of connections between confraternity practices in Tournai and Paris through examples from the Mass ordinary, particularly in cantus fractus and polyphonic settings (including the Tournai Mass). Strands from the previous chapters are recalled in the last chapter, which documents how specialized devotions found their way into printed books in early sixteenth-century Paris, revealing close connections between printers and the confraternity community. Long's close engagement with archival sources, many of them obscure and previously little studied, is evident throughout the volume. Fourteen liturgical sources from the confraternities of Paris and Tournai are at the core of the study (including the recently rediscovered liturgical manuscript from Tournai's Confraternity of the Transfiguration, B-Tc A 58), but a further 121 liturgical sources are listed in an appendix. Long also makes extensive reference to administrative records from the confraternities, as well as to sources from larger institutions such as Tournai Cathedral and major Parisian churches.
Long's close source study enables a surprisingly intimate glimpse into the private devotions of these communities, given that this evidence is understandably fragmentary and most key personages remain anonymous. By viewing unique chants and texts as meaningful representations of a confraternity's priorities and activities, rather than mere digressions from mainstream or standardized practices, Long advances an argument for a decentered approach to devotional music in late medieval society. The better-preserved and more easily negotiated sources from elite institutions such as major cathedrals and court chapels have been studied extensively, so Long's methodology shifts attention onto sources from broader society and—importantly—views such sources not as peripheral, but as evidence of initiative and authority emerging outside the sphere of elite culture.
This approach resonates with recent scholarship in many fields of cultural studies whereby a multifaceted engagement with the past emerges through the consideration of personal, local, or popular cultures. Sometimes the materials under question might be interesting for allowing close focus on individuals, but Long's case studies are more significant for the light they shed on interaction within and between communities in society: she frames the confraternities’ choices of saints, texts, and music as processes of group identity formation that empower the confraternities in both their own worship and in their influence on larger, more powerful institutions. A particular strength of this monograph is Long's thorough unearthing of connections between the manuscripts, prints, and institutions, through which networks of exchanges and influence begin to emerge and boundaries are blurred between confraternity and diocesan worship, or between popular piety and ecclesiastical doctrine.
As a monograph that relies heavily on detailed archival research, Long's volume benefits from clear presentation, a high standard of editing, and aids that help readers to navigate and follow the sources being used, including many well-produced musical examples, paralleled Latin-English translations, and rubrics such as tables of contents for key sources. In addition to the appendixes in the book itself, three further appendixes on the Boydell & Brewer website give almost one hundred pages of additional information and are a helpful resource for the scholar wanting to delve more deeply into Long's source material. While this volume will certainly be of great interest to scholars working with related sources and topics, it will also appeal to those with an interest in religious practices on local and specialized levels, as well as scholars interested in the decentering of elite environs and the distribution of authority through networks within society.
