Ridgefield, CT, Private collection (Fragmentarium: F-e78r)

This partial page of chant likely came from a thirteenth-century antiphoner (a book of chants for daily services) used by a monastery or convent of the Cistercian order in northern France or Belgium. Cistercian monks and nuns sang distinctive, and consistent, chants that varied little from one institution to another, making their books readily recognizable. Some time in the eighteenth century, this book was recycled for other purposes, and several pages were cut up for use as bindings for a multi-volume work on church history—where they remained hidden until their host volumes were disbound by a collector in 2023. Two pieces of this page were used for Volume 14, two others for Volume 22; the whereabouts of the other half of the page is unknown. When used as a binding, the pieces acquired their current “comb” shape: the vertical margin aligned with the covers of the book, while the strips curved over the spine, and the gaps left room for the stitching that held pages together. (In its current state, the performers have to decide how to stitch together these gaps in the music!) The chants are responsories for the celebration of the feast of Agatha, an early Christian martyr, commemorated on February 5. According to legend, Agatha was put to death by the Roman prefect Quintianus when she refused to abandon her faith and marry him. The chants give voice to several of Agatha’s statements against her tormentors, and the structure of the most complete chant loops back to repeat her accusation against the “impious tyrant.”

• Anna de Bakker