The idea of the healing power of music-rooted in Platonic and Aristotelian psychologies and Galenic humoral theory-has a long-standing tradition in European intellectual thought and occurs in several texts of the medieval and early modern periods. In contrast to the abundance of references in theoretical discussions, however, historians today face the scarcity of evidence documenting specific, actual uses of music as therapy. Among such rare evidence are two documents emanating from the chancery of late-fourteenth-century Bologna, which form the focus of this article. The documents, which concern a musician and an itinerant healer, provide new insights into musical practices directed in particular to the cure of psychic sufferings. The documents make clear that the secular authorities of Bologna considered the agency of these two practitioners and their medical and musical skills to be crucial for maintaining or restoring individual and collective health. The evidence discussed here suggests that the use of music toward curative ends must have been more widespread than hitherto acknowledged. It also highlights the powerful association between notions of musical healing and ideas of individual and civic well-being that underlay the Bologna officials' idea of the state.1 Useful outlines of ideas on the impact of music on the body and soul in the ancient and medieval traditions may be found in Francesco Pelosi, "Music, Mind and Well-being in Antiquity" and Andrew Hicks, "The Regulative Power of the Harmony of the Spheres in Medieval Latin, Arabic and Persian Sources," in The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind and Well-being, ed.
The manuscript Chicago, Newberry Library 54.1, copied in Pavia in 1391 by an English friar, has been the object of attention of scholars for some time now. Because of the presence of Senleches's song La harpe de melodie (famously notated in the shape of a harp), and of the earliest known dated copy of the Tractatus figurarum (which reflects late fourteenth-century developments in the notation of complex rhythms), the Chicago manuscript has often been cited in support of the historiographical hypothesis which sees the Visconti court of Pavia–Milan as the main centre of production of Ars subtilior repertory in Italy. In the absence of records on the scribe ‘G de Anglia’ and the context in which he worked, it has been almost inevitable thus far to associate the compilation of the manuscript with the Visconti court and the city university (founded and supported by the Visconti). A recently identified document, however, provides some clues to the identity of the scribe of Chicago 54.1, who can now be identified as an Augustinian Hermit. This is confirmed by various elements in the manuscript that also indicate Augustinian connections, placing the compilation of the manuscript in the context of the Augustinian house of Pavia. These elements help to shift the focus of attention to other cultural contexts that may have played a role in the compilation of the manuscript, and invite a reassessment of the hitherto assumed connections with the Visconti court and secular university.
On 11 November 1417, the election at the Council of Constance (1414–18) of Oddo Colonna as Pope Martin V brought to an end a period of almost forty years of instability and crisis within the Church, which had begun with the outbreak of the Schism in 1378. After his consecration, the new pope set out to return to Rome, intending to re-establish there the Holy See, while the Council continued. Martin V entered Rome in September 1420, after travelling through Geneva, Pavia, Mantua, Milan and Florence. In the latter city he resided for almost two years, from 26 February 1419 to 9 September 1420. It was most likely during the pope's residence there that an Italian student in law, Antonio Baldana, wrote and dedicated to him a peculiar work: a narrative of the Schism written in the form of prophecy, in a mixture of prose and verse, Latin and Italian, and accompanied by thirty watercolour illustrations. The only known surviving version of this work is contained in a manuscript now preserved in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, as MS Parmense 1194. The manuscript has been studied primarily for its iconography, while its musical implications, which form the subject of the present study, have so far passed unnoticed. In fact, as we shall see, Baldana's work is also designed as a framework for a discussion encompassing the disciplines of trivium and quadrivium – a small encyclopedia, where a distinctive connection is drawn between rhetoric, astrology and music.
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