The texts of this cycle were edited according to the manuscript D-Mbs 3154, ff. 38v–43r, known as the ‘Nicolaus Leopold Codex’.^[1] The scribe, who copied the texts only for the Cantus and the Tenor, was careful, but made some errors: the Latin verb transcendere (‘to transcend’, ‘to surpass’) in motet 1 was written ‘transiendis’ instead of transcendis, possibly a phonetic confusion. Occasionally, the scribe forgot some letters – ‘respledere’ instead of resplendere in motet 2 – or doubled the syllables – ‘celestitibus’ instead of celestibus in motet 5 (for the single motets see the individual edition and commentary).

The texts of the six motets that comprise this cycle were drawn from one and the same source, a poem in rhythmic verses^[2] about the celestial joys of the Virgin Mary, to which in two places, namely in motets 5 and 6, short additions were inserted. These interpolations are prayers in which the verbs are conjugated in the second person singular (‘you’: ‘Exaltata es, sancta dei genitrix’ in motet 6) and the addressees (Jesus and Mary) are explicitly stated and asked for help or benevolence (‘Domine Iesu, propitius esto mihi’, ‘Lord Jesus, be benevolent to me’ in motet 5; ‘intercede pro nobis’, ‘be our intercessor’ in motet 6). The second interpolation found in motet 6, identified by Thomas Noblitt as an antiphon for the first Nocturn of the feast of the Assumption,^[3] was already circulating together with Gaude flore.^[4] The first one in motet 5, instead, is associated to Gaude flore only in this source. With the exception of the addressee (‘Domine Jesu’ instead of ‘Deus’) the text corresponds to the antiphon derived from Luke 18:13, mostly sung during the Pentecost period.^[5] As a Christological prayer this antiphon perfectly fits with the liturgical moment in which motet 5 resounded (loco Sanctus): it was sung during the Canon – as Jesus materially manifests his presence on the altar in the transubstantiated Host – and was set in an evocative chordal style.^[6]

For a better overview of the composition and an easier comparison with the ‘standard’ text in Analecta Hymnica, the complete texts of both are reproduced here:

Some divergent readings between the text of the motet and the text edited in Analecta Hymnica point out the analogies between the motet text and the text transmitted in two manuscripts whose variants are listed in Analecta Hymnica. Two variants in particular connect our text with the text of the manuscripts called B and D, namely Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ross. 114 and Vienna, Schottenstift, Cod. 323 (Hübl 404) respectively:^[7] motet 5, line 5, has ‘et felicem’ instead of et fulgentem, just as in these manuscripts; moreover, these manuscripts and our motet have a different transmission of the first verses of strophe 6. Here instead of ‘Gaude, pia mater Christi, / Sola quia meruisti, / O virgo piissima, / Esse tantae dignitatis’ one reads ‘Gaude, humilis beata, / Corpore glorificata, / Meruisti maxima / Fore, tantae dignitatis’. Since both sources seem to have a connection to the North, this possibly points at a non-Milanese origin of this motet.^[8]

The topic of the poem, and thus of the motet cycle’s text, is the Virgin Mary. More precisely, the poem treats the joys experienced by Mary in heaven: the medieval sources call it ‘gaudia spiritualia’, ‘gaudia virginis Mariae caelestia’, or even more explicitly ‘gaudi[is] virginis gloriosae, quibus iam fruitur in caelestibus’ (see AH 31, no. 189, p. 199) and attribute the poem to Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. A small anecdote connected to the origin of this poem and its author is sometimes transmitted in the sources. For instance, in the ‘orationale windeshemense’ listed in AH one reads that the saint, famous for his devotion to the terrestrial joys of Mary (‘septem gaudia corporalia’), on which he prayed every day with great devotion (‘cotidie cum magna devotione recolebat’), had a visit from Mary herself and was admonished by her to praise instead her celestial joys, which in contrast to the transitory joys experienced in life do not perish, but last forever. According to this tale, Mary’s visit moved the archbishop to compose this rhythmic poem (‘venerabilis pontifex haec eadem gaudia perpetua virginis beatae secundum modum, qui sequitur, rigmice composuit’).^[9] Even if the Thomas’s authorship is rather implausible (Becket’s opus is limited to a series of epistles),^[10] the topic of the joys (gaudia) of the Virgin Mary interested medieval authors, as the vast tradition of poems and songs in Latin and the vernacular languages on this topic demonstrates.

^[1] For further literature see Felix Diergarten, ‘“Gaude flore virginali” – Message from the “Black Hole”?’, in Motet Cycles between Devotion and Liturgy, ed. Daniele V. Filippi and Agnese Pavanello, Scripta 7 (Basel: Schwabe, 2019), 429–55, at 430–31.

^[2] The rhythmic structure is 8p/8p/7pp/8p/8p/7pp; the rhyme scheme is aabccb.

^[3] Thomas Noblitt, Der Kodex des Magister Nicolaus Leopold: Staatsbibliothek München Mus Ms. 3154 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1987–1996), iv, 364.

^[4] See Diergarten, ‘Gaude flore virginali’, 432–33.

^[5] See Cantus Database, ID 002180 (https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca/id/002180 accessed 21.9.2020).

^[6] Concerning the Elevation section see Felix Diergarten, ‘“Aut propter devotionem, aut propter sonorositatem”: Compositional Design of Late Fifteenth-Century Elevation Motets in Perspective’, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 9, no. 1 (2017), 61–86; Agnese Pavanello, “The Elevation as Liturgical Climax in Gesture and Sound: Milanese Elevation Motets in Context”, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 9, no. 1 (2017), 33–59.

^[7] For the correspondences between the signatures provided in AH and the new ones, see Diergarten, ‘Gaude flore virginali’, 434, n. 19.

^[8] See Diergarten, ‘Gaude flore virginali’, 434.

^[9] This source is listed in AH as ‘orationale windeshemense’ or ‘prayer book of Windesheim’ (Orat. ms. Windeshemense anni 1508. Cod. 7955 der KK. Familien-Bibl. Wien, not clearly to be identified in the modern catalogues today). The same story with similar vocabulary, however, can be read, for instance, also in the manuscript Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1857, f. 15r–v.

^[10] See Konrad Hofmann, ‘Becket, Thomas’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Michael Buchberger, 10 vols. (Freiburg: Herder 21930–38), ii, col. 123.