Re-envisioning the Visitatio Sepulchri in Medieval Germany: The Intersection of Plainchant, Liturgy, Epic, and Reform.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the history of Latin sung reenactments of Christ's Resurrection performed on Easter Sunday in medieval Germany. It is the first study of the Visitatio sepulchri to investigate how and why a new form, identified in the modern secondary literature as type two, gained precedence in the twelfth century over type one, first documented in German lands in the tenth century. Type-one Visitationes incorporated mostly preexisting Office antiphons with Gospel texts; type two comprised newly composed antiphons with non-scriptural texts and melodies in post-Gregorian style. Type-two Visitationes thus shared little, musically and textually, with type one and emerged under different circumstances. In contrast with previous scholarly assertions, this dissertation argues that type-two Visitationes were not mere expansions of type-one Visitationes. Techniques adapted from medieval biblical study and pedagogy also played vital roles in the creation of the type-two Visitatio.

As the dissertation demonstrates, type-two Visitationes originated in Augustinian communities that the reforming Archbishop Konrad of Salzburg (1075-1147) founded for the purpose of educating the clergy, among other reasons. They grew out of an earlier German practice of public, sung performances of Gospel Harmonies, texts that combined the four Gospels into a single, unified narrative. Similar harmonization is encountered in the two hundred type-two Visitationes covered in this dissertation, and their sung performance connects them with earlier renditions of Gospel Harmonies as epics. The harmonized type-two Visitationes both re-enacted and harmonized the events of the Resurrection for Augustinian clerical students and simultaneously asserted the Gospel truth to the wider German Christian community.