1 Day 01 (Summer 2019 rev) MUAR 211-Art of Listening-Dr. Jerry Cain I. Music and Mysticism in the Medieval Christian Church: Introduction A. Early Christianity, like its ancestor Judaism, was a social institution that inherited a very long and important written historical tradition, consisting of a vast collection of sacred texts: for instance, the old and new testaments of the Bible, the biographies and testimonies of saints and other church fathers, numerous canonic interpretations of scripture, etc. This reliance on scripture gave the Christian church a special reason to preserve literacy during the political turmoil of the early medieval period, and to promote it among priests, monks, nuns, and other members of the clergy. After the fourth century, centers of power in the Christian church-from prosperous Italian courts to the widely scattered monastic communities throughout Europe- - created libraries, book binderies, and scriptoriums, and served as centers of learning and book making. The manuscripts created, copied and disseminated by this relatively small class of literate men and women provide evidence that music-in addition to architecture and the visual arts-was an essential medium of worship in the early Christian Church. B. As Europe gradually became Christianized after the fourth century, its worship and musical practices diversified, due largely to lack of centralized authority and difficulty of travel over continental distances. 1. The strongest political, cultural and musical center was the eastern portion of Christendom, centered in the new capital of the Roman Empire at Constantinople, or Byzantium, to use its traditional name (modern Istanbul). This branch produced the modern Eastern Orthodox Church, the liturgy and music of which is only loosely connected to the Church of Rome. 2. St. Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan (now in Italy), promoted the singing of hymns and composed texts of several great hymns, though he probably did not invent the music. The musical and liturgical tradition that grew out of this practice became known as Ambrosian: i.e., the "Ambrosian chants," "Ambrosian hymns," etc. 3. Other more or less independent traditions of liturgical music developed in Ireland (the Celtic tradition, founded in the fifth-century monasteries of St. Patrick ), in the Frankish territory (the Gallican tradition in monasteries in what is now western France and the Netherlands), and in the Iberian Peninsula (the Mozarabic tradition of Spain and Portugal). C. One of the great accomplishments of the early Medieval Period was the unification of the Christian Church throughout western Europe as the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope in Rome as the seat of power. 1. The famous pope and church father St. Gregory I (c. 540-604) is particularly noted for promoting a unified, standard liturgy, under the central authority of papal control. a. Medieval tradition credited St. Gregory I with assembling and even creating the plainchants (sung sacred texts, see below) required for Roman Catholic Church services (Mass and Divine Office) of the middle- and late-medieval Christian Church, although many of the plainchants are known to pre-date the sixth century. b. Although it is