A STUDY OF THE SIBYL CHANT AND ITS DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE IN THE SPANISH CHURCH (Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries)

This study encarpasses the development of the Sibyl Chant in Spain from its early beginnings within the liturgy as a musical piece, through its growth into a dramatic ceremony associated with t1n Play of the Prophets, its move from Latin into the vernacular and details of its performance, to its formal abolition in the sixteenth century. The Latin Sibylline poem, Judicii siqnum, which first appears in St. Augustine's City of God and the sermon Contra Judaeos, Paganos; et Arianos, prophesies the events on Judgement Day. Its entry into the liturgy in Spain is examined in the first chapter which, drawing on hitherto undiscovered examples of the chant from the ninth century to the fifteenth, concludes that, although the text of the chant my have been known within the Hispanic rite, its music is a product of French ecclesiastical influence. With its establishment within the liturgy and subsequent dissemination across the Peninsula bythe house of Cluny, it was sung in almost every cathedral city until the sixteenth century a