James Grier (ed.), Ademari Cabannensis opera liturgica et poetica: Musica cum textibus. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 245 and 245A. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Volume 1: cxxxvii+697 pp. Volume 2: 468 pp. ISBN 9782503543987 and 9782503540900.

It is rare honour for a musicologist to have a work published in Corpus Christianorum, a series launched shortly after the Second World War by the Benedictine scholar Father Eligius Dekkers with the aim of providing scholarly editions of early Christian and medieval texts. James Grier has broken new ground by supplying the first volumes to include music. His chosen subject, Adémar of Chabannes (989–1034), has previously featured in the series as the author of a three-volume history of the Franks,1 which was written in part at his adopted abbey of St-Martial of Limoges, the institution that saw the defining moment in his career: the failed inauguration of a new apostolic liturgy for the abbey’s patron saint on 3 August 1029. The campaign to promote St Martial to the status of an apostle has been described several times; Grier has spent over two decades immersing himself in the associated manuscripts with music. These volumes represent the culmination of his own single-minded pursuit of what he has elsewhere termed ‘the most stupendous and successful scam of the entire Middle Ages’,2 gathering together for the first time the ritual component of Adémar’s output, which is described on the cover as his opera liturgica et poetica. The implications of the title become clear in the Introduction. The edition is described initially as a collection of items whose text and music were both copied by Adémar, in which dual capacity he recorded music and texts for the Mass and Offices of St Martial and his companions (i.e.