Angelas ad virginem

Angelas ad virginem A devotional Latin strophic song of the first half of the 13th century in five stanzas on the Annunciation of Mary. There is memorable testimony to its widespread popularity and longevity in England in a passage from the Miller's Tale introducing Chaucer’s poor Oxford scholar “hende Nicholas, ” who sings Angelus in his lodging to the accompaniment of his psaltery: And al above ther lay a gay sautrie, On which he made a-nyghtes melodie So swetely that all the chambre rong; And Angelas ad virginem he song. (MilT 3213-16) Most sources and references to Angelus ad virginem are insular (complete report in Stevens). One tuneful melody is transmitted in four English sources, twice monophonically and twice in polyphonic settings of the later 13th and mid-14th centuries; an entirely different melody survives uniquely in a 15th-century German source. Angelus was twice translated into English, once anonymously in the later 13t