Poor Clares, rich in music: unique polyphonic Benedicamus Domino settings from southern Polish convents in the late 13th and early 14th centuries

Abstract

Under the reign of Duke Bolesław V, Poland lived through a period of cultural prosperity with several newly founded monastic centres and productive scriptoria. Particularly important were two convents of the Order of St Clare, founded by the duke’s sister, the blessed Salomea, and his wife, St Kinga. Both cloisters were led in the spirit of royal foundations and were important repositories of medieval chant and polyphony. While Stary Sącz (founded 1280) is famous for preserving several polyphonic unica, such as the four-part conductus Omnia bene­ficia and fragments of Notre Dame motets, it also contains contrary-motion two-voice Benedicamus settings, added beneath monophonic Benedicamus melodies, which seem to be written records of the kinds of oral polyphonic practices common in female cloisters. Unique two- and three-part troped Benedicamus settings are also preserved in the archive in Kraków, where they too were a late addition to an earlier manuscript, revealing a particular interest in the provision of notated polyphony for the Benedicamus. This article investigates these polyphonic Benedicamus settings in their broader liturgical context. It identifies several new plainchant concordances and reflects on the status of music and polyphony in the Clarist Order in southern Poland.