Musical Hagiography and the Medieval Cult of St. Nicholas in Western Europe (ca. 1100-1500)

FAIN: FT-278393-21

Mary Channen Caldwell
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)

Research and writing leading to a book about the music and hagiography of St. Nicholas in Western Europe, from 1100 to 1500.

One of the most widely-venerated saints in medieval Europe, St. Nicholas was also one of the most popular saintly subjects for composers and musicians. Music for Nicholas across genre, register, and language outpaced that composed for virtually all other non-biblical saints in the Middle Ages. Despite its quantity and diversity, however, Nicholas’s musical hagiography has yet to be examined. This project explores for the first time how the creation of new musical repertoires shaped and responded to the expansion of Nicholas’s cult, ca. 1100-1500. Nicholas presents an exceptional case among medieval saints since hagiographical texts repeatedly draw attention to song and its role in defining and disseminating his cult. I argue that music became a lynchpin in hagiographical and cultural negotiations, powerful enough to intervene in discourses around the saint and rituals of time and place, liturgy and devotion, race, religious identity, language, and nationhood.