Intellectual History Review

ISSN: 1749-6977 (Print) 1749-6985 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rihr20

Ancients and moderns in medieval music theory:

from Guido of Arezzo to Jacobus

Constant J. Mews & Carol J. Williams

To cite this article: Constant J. Mews & Carol J. Williams (2017) Ancients and moderns in
medieval music theory: from Guido of Arezzo to Jacobus, Intellectual History Review, 27:3,
299-315, DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2017.1333684

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2017.1333684

Published online: 26 Jun 2017.

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INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW, 2017
VOL. 27, NO. 3, 299–315
https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2017.1333684

Ancients and moderns in medieval music theory: from Guido

of Arezzo to Jacobus
Constant J. Mewsa and Carol J. Williamsb
a
Centre for Religious Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; bCentre for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Medieval discourse about both the theory and practice of music Aristotle; ars antiqua; ars
featured much debate about the views of moderni and antiqui nova; Boethius; emotions;
from when Guido of Arezzo devised a new way of recording pitch Guido of Arezzo; Guy of Saint-
in the early eleventh century to the complaints of Jacobus in the Denis; Jacobus; Jerome of
Moravia; Johannes de
early fourteenth century about new forms of measured music in Grocheio; John of Garland;
the ars nova. There was also a shift from a Boethian notion that music theory; Peter of
practical music was a manifestation of cosmic music, towards a Auvergne; plainchant; cosmic
more Aristotelian model, that privileged music as sensory music; Thomas Aquinas
experience. That this could have a profound effect on human
emotion was articulated by Johannes de Grocheio writing about
music c. 1270 and Guy of Saint-Denis soon after 1300 about
plainchant. Jacobus, writing in the 1320s, was troubled by this
shift in thinking about music not as reflections of transcendent
realities, but as sounds of human invention that served to move
the soul. He argued that musical patterns should reflect a
transcendent harmony that was both cosmic and celestial.

Quanto juniores, tanto perspicaciores – “the younger, the more perspicacious”.1 This pithy
aphorism, formulated by Priscian in the early sixth century to justify the creation of his
new grammatical treatise, the Institutiones grammaticae (a text that would enjoy unpar-
alleled influence in the schoolrooms of Europe for the next thousand years), provided
both medieval and early modern thinkers with a snappy phrase that justified the notion
of progress in the realm of ideas.2 The term modernitas, had a limited vogue in the late
eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but would not be widely used before Coluccio Salutati
(1331–1406).3 While Petrarch (1304–1374) used antiqui to refer to classical writers, it was
already an established tradition in the medieval period to contrast antiqui with moderni.
This distinction was also central to a much studied topic, namely debate about new
ways of thinking about music in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, as tra-
ditional Boethian (and Pythagorean) perspectives clashed with an Aristotelian model,
shaped more by sensory experience.4 Developments attributed to moderni in the mid-thir-
teenth century were being significantly expanded in the early fourteenth century into a
style known as the ars nova, which adopted much more flexible ways of dividing up
musical time. This move was perceived by its critics as shifting away from the notion
that musical structures could reflect a cosmic and transcendent reality.5 Priscian’s

CONTACT Constant J. Mews constant.mews@monash.edu.au

© 2017 International Society for Intellectual History
300 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

saying that younger scholars were more perspicacious could create disagreement about
how far to develop new ideas.
The music theorist who has become most well-known for praising the ancients against
the distortions of certain moderni was Jacobus “of Liège” in his vast Speculum musicae,
written perhaps in the 1320s.6 His identity has recently been subject to much debate.7
What matters for our purposes, however, is his attitude to two theorists in particular, Phi-
lippe de Vitry (1291–1361) and Johannes de Muris (c. 1290–c. 1355), whom he addresses
as quidam modernus doctor.8 He criticised both these writers for departing from what he
called the ars antiqua, which he saw as exemplified in the work of Franco of Cologne in the
second half of the thirteenth century.9 He disliked the way they were abandoning Franco’s
way of dividing musical time. Yet while Jacobus urged respect for older traditions of both
compositional practice and Boethian music theory, he was also fully aware of newer nota-
tional techniques and ways of thinking about music which had gained ground in the Par-
isian schools over the thirteenth century. In order to appreciate the rhetorical stance that
Jacobus employed in his polemic against certain moderni and against the ars nova, we
need to trace the variety of ways in which the distinction between antiqui and moderni
had been drawn over the preceding centuries. In particular, we argue that Guy of Saint-
Denis in his Tractatus de tonis, written soon after 1300, offers a much less polemical
way than Jacobus of combining respect for both antiqui and moderni.10 In this treatise
about the principles and emotional power of plainchant, Guy combined the authority
of Guido of Arezzo (c. 990–after 1033) with the much more recent ideas of Peter of
Auvergne (d. 1304), inspired by the discussion of music in the eighth book of Aristotle’s
Politics. Guy presented his treatise as the final item of an anthology of texts about chant
and music in general that opened with writings by or attributed to Guido of Arezzo, and
continued in a second part with more modern writings: the Ars musice of Johannes de
Grocheio (in which Aristotelian physics plays an important role), the relatively brief Trac-
tatus de tonis of Petrus de Cruce, and his own exposition of the subject, which brought
together the ideas of both antiqui and moderni on the subject.11

The ancients on music theory

The Latin West always knew indirectly about Pythagorean and Platonic ideas about music,
as in Homer’s account in The Odyssey of the dangerous enchantment offered by the Sirens,
who lived on an island near Scylla and Charibdis – a story taken over by Vergil in the
Aeneid, and adapted in Plato’s reflection on a cosmic harmony of sound in The Republic.12
Plato tells how the soul of the warrior Er sees the Spindle of Necessity, drawn through a set
of eight nested bowls, the top surfaces of which create a series of rings, representing the
fixed stars and the planets. On each of the rings there stood a Siren, each singing a different
note, so that the eight notes together sounded the scale.13 Through Cicero’s account of the
myth in the Somnium Scipionis, and the commentary by Macrobius, the “planetary
harmony of the Sirens” became widely known in the Latin West, along with the idea
that sound was produced by these orbits.14
Plato’s Timaeus, translated and commented on by Chalcidius, was always known to
scholars in the Latin West.15 His interpreters understood musica as about the ordered har-
monies that underpinned the universe, and thus the binding of body and soul. In such a
perspective emotion was a dangerous distraction, led by senses that might lure lofty spirits
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 301

into dangerous sensuality. In the sixth century, Fulgentius interpreted the Sirens in a mor-
alistic fashion, luring Ulysses (the Latin name for Odysseus) away from his true goal, the
pursuit of wisdom.16 The suspicion of the Church Fathers towards the sensuality of sound
would continue to be invoked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, precisely when great
compositional developments were taking place in music.17
A similarly cautious attitude to the seductive power of music was introduced by
Boethius (c. 480–526), who mentions Sirens only once, at the beginning of his Consolation
of Philosophy (c. 523), where Lady Philosophy calls the Muses of Poetry “hysterical sluts”
and “deadly sweet” Sirens.18 More important for music theory, however, was his summary
of Pythagorean theory in his De institutione musica in which he described three types of
music: musica mundana or cosmic music, musica humana or the harmony between body
and soul, and musica instrumentalis, audible music whether produced by the voice or a
physical instrument. Boethius was more concerned with the mathematics of concord
and discord than with how melody could affect the soul. He did know about the seven
different modes of ancient Greek music, and described how Pythagoras knew that the
Phrygian mode could calm a drunken youth, but he had nothing systematic to say
about the different kinds of melody and their emotional effect. Given that, prior to the ele-
venth century, there was no widely accepted way of recording musical pitch, melodies
being transmitted orally rather than through writing, the study of musica was rooted in
the theoretical teaching of the ancients rather than in observation of musical practice.
In the eleventh century, the term modernus was particularly associated by music theor-
ists with innovations in notation, of which none was more important than Guido of
Arezzo, who devised the first successful system for designating pitch in music. Guido jus-
tified his innovations by referring back to the authority of “Boethius and the ancients”,
speaking unfavourably of certain moderni, who unwisely restricted the symbols used to
represent the pitches of the gamut to four rather than the first seven letters of the alphabet
for the seven distinct pitches of the repeating octave. Commenting on the seven notes
referred to by Virgil in the Aeneid (6.646), Guido alludes to a system of Daseian
symbols used in the ninth century that represented the pitches of the four finals, reversed
and inverted to make further sets of disjunct tetrachords:
Therefore, the poet spoke very rightly of the seven different notes because even if more occur
it is not an addition of other ones, but a renewal and repetition of the same ones. For this
reason, we, like Boethius and the ancient musicians, indicate all musical sounds by seven
letters. But certain modern musicians quite incautiously use only four symbols. They indicate
every fifth sound always by the same symbol, though it is true beyond a doubt that some
notes disagree completely with those a fifth away and that no note agrees perfectly with its
fifth. For no note agrees perfectly with any other except its octave.19

Having dismissed the moderni of the ninth century and with due respect paid to Boethius,
Guido ultimately discards the philosopher’s achievement as not relevant to singers, and
offers instead his own, more practical solution:
And let anyone who is diligent seek out our little book whose name is Micrologus, and like-
wise let him read the book Enchiridion, which the most reverend Abbot Odo composed most
brilliantly. And because I adjusted my presentation for children, I departed from his example
only in the forms of sounds, in this following Boethius, whose book is useful only to philo-
sophers, not to singers.20
302 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

In this respect, Guido effectively presents himself as a modern, different from the ancients.
Guido is aware of a debate between ancients and moderns in certain matters of the per-
formance of chant, as in this passage of his Regule rithmice, about the use of b-flat:
There are those who add this [b-flat] next to the first (pitch letter a) in the acute register, but
this indulgence scarcely pleases Father Gregory; moreover, the wise moderni do not mention
it. Therefore, however much the little pitch itself may be made among some, nevertheless, it is
rightly called superfluous among many others. However, the other second note [b-natural] is
always genuine.21

While Gregory the Great is one of the revered ancients, Guido counts himself amongst the
wise moderni and clearly approves of their tacit acceptance of the marginalisation of the
b-flat. The allusion may refer obliquely to the performance practice of singing unwritten
accidentals to correct and improve the melodic line.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, references to moderni in discussion of music
were not necessarily pejorative. Around 1100, the monk John of Affligem, also known
as John Cotton, quotes Priscian’s phrase about the greater insight of more recent theorists
when discussing the need to improve the way pitch is identified: “the moderns, looking at
everything more subtly and wisely (because as Priscian says, the younger the more perspi-
cacious) see that those [limited] pitches do not suffice to express every melody”.22 The
development of the new ways of denoting sound on which John reflects, constituted an
intellectual revolution. In the later thirteenth century, Priscian’s phrase was invoked by
the Franciscan music theorist, Juan Gil de Zamora (1241–1318), who studied in Paris
in the 1270s, to justify his comment that Tubal, identified as the first musician in the
Bible, did not define all music: “the present time brings new considerations and new
experiences”. What Socrates and Plato had to say, was surpassed by what a younger
man, Aristotle, had to say in the time of Alexander the Great.23 Zamora drew on both
Pliny and Ambrose to make the point that we all learn from experience: “We know by
experience that birds gather to listen to a melody, to learn it willingly, to educate their
young freely”.24 Rather than invoke the loaded literary image of Sirens who seduced
sailors by their song, he preferred that of the nightingale as an example of creating
melody. Zamora wanted to find his own way of recognising that listening to music was
first of all a human experience. His use of Priscian’s praise for the perspicacity of the
young parallels that of another Franciscan, Roger Bacon, who also used it in his Metaphy-
sica when writing in the 1270s to celebrate intellectual progress.25

The Boethian model revived

Very different from the Franciscan emphasis, expounded by Zamora, of learning to sing
through experience, was the account of musica offered around the same time (c. 1270) by
the Dominican theorist, Jerome of Moravia.26 Jerome was more of a compiler than an
original theorist, but he did seek to combine in his own way the theoretical perspective
of Boethius, whose treatise on music he reproduces extensively, with that of various
moderni who had written about new ways of notating music, transforming traditional
plainchant in the process. In chapter 25 of his treatise, “about the way of singing and
forming notes and pauses in ecclesiastical chant”, Jerome introduces the way moderni
understand tempus (a measure of time), as capable of being divided into three, a
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 303

process embedded within the rhythmic modes and exemplified by Franco of Cologne.
While Jerome knew that older theorists (veteres) had defined a tempus as the measure
of a single discernible moment of sound, he preferred the more modern analysis, which
privileged movement and thus made the connection to Aristotelian thinking: “But the
opinion is better, it seems, of the moderns, who place the succession [of notes] in harmo-
nic tempus, as subject to movement”.27 He defined “harmonic tempus” as “the measure of
all notes, by which each note is measured”.28 Jerome then explains new developments in
denoting measure in music, following with chapter 26 about discantus, in which he quoted
in extenso treatises of John of Garland, Franco of Cologne and Petrus Picardus on the
subject.29
Yet while Jerome supported moderni in the notation of music, he was much less enthu-
siastic about incorporating new ways of thinking about music and its capacity to move the
soul. His dominant authority is Boethius. He refers to Guido of Arezzo only occasionally,
and then when quoting other writers, notably John of Affligem.30 When he quotes John’s
passage about “moderns seeing all things more subtly and wisely”, he omits Priscian’s
phrase quanto iuniores, tanto perspicaciores, presumably because he did not value the
encouragement it gave to newer modes of explanation.31
Jerome’s cautious attitude to modernity in the realm of ideas is also evident from the
fact that only in a single passage does he draw on Aristotelian thought, namely in his
quotation of part of the commentary of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) on the De caelo
in which Aristotle criticises the Pythagorean teaching that the music of the spheres
could be heard. Drawing on a Byzantine interpreter, Eustratius, Thomas explains
that Aristotle was criticising the idea that they produced physical sound, not that of
an underlying harmony to the universe. Because Thomas, who was staying in Paris
1269–1272, only started to write that commentary on the De caelo during the last
years of his life, Jerome may have acquired it directly from Thomas at Saint-Jacques
during those years.32 Jerome does not identify its author, suggesting that Thomas
had not yet become an authoritative figure in the community. In adjudicating
between the views of Boethius and Aristotle, Jerome’s only comment was to observe:
“This is therefore the way and teaching of Aristotle criticizing the said opinion. But
which opinion of such great men is more true, we do not rashly assert, but leave to
our superiors to be determined”.33 For anyone brought up in a philosophical perspec-
tive, shaped by the full range of Aristotelian thought, Jerome’s Tractatus de musica left
many issues unresolved.

An Aristotelian model: Johannes de Grocheio

By contrast, Johannes de Grocheio (John of Gruchy), a secular master from Normandy,
had no compunction in criticising John of Garland for following Boethius in his teaching
about musica mundana in his Ars musice, also composed around 1270.34 Whereas Jerome
shared the same Boethian assumptions about cosmic music as John of Garland, who died
around 1270, Grocheio was much more systematic than Jerome in applying Aristotelian
physics to music, declaring that such knowledge was essential “for those wishing to
have a complete knowledge of moving things and of movements, for it seems to be
more concerning sound, which is found among the proper sensibles, and is the object
of our apprehensive ability”.35 From the outset Grocheio begins not with an idealised
304 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

norm of harmony, but with sound that is audible to the ears. He begins with the experience
of diversity, through which one has to identify an underlying rationale:
But there is a diversity of opinions about human arts, as in the mechanical arts. A diversity in
buildings and in clothes is evident to man through the senses. For human art and its work can
always be improved, since it never reaches divine nature or art, which always produces what
is better in everything. For although these days many people seek out the practice of this art,
few, however, pay attention to its theory.36

Grocheio’s distance from Boethian musical theory is evident from his critique of followers
of John of Garland for not taking sufficient notice of Aristotle’s criticism in the De caelo of
the Pythagorean notion that planetary bodies create an audible sound as they travel
around the earth, as the ancients taught:
But those who divide in this way either construct their claim or wish to submit to the Pytha-
goreans or others more than to the truth, or are ignorant of nature and logic. For first they say
universally music is concerning numbered sound. But celestial bodies in movement do not
make a sound, although the ancients believed this, nor do they plough through the orbs
according to Aristotle, whose idea and hypothesis ought to be followed in the book On the
Theory of the Planets.37

Grocheio considered that such doctrines did not respect Aristotelian science. Grocheio
eschewed Platonic literary imagery about the Sirens. His starting point was the musica vul-
galis (“music of the people”), performed in the city of Paris, distinct from “composed or
regulated or canonic music, which they call measured music”. He saw ecclesiastical music
as derived from both traditions, and “assigned for the praise of the Creator”.38 This was his
way of understanding both monophonic song (cantus) and measured music, a new devel-
opment in music that facilitated the development of polyphony.
Grocheio distanced himself from John of Garland and Franco in the way he understood
the tempus, the unit of time within measured music. Whereas Jerome largely followed
John and Franco in the way they divided tempus Grocheio discussed the issue by reference
to Aristotle’s Metaphysics:
The first measure is called tempus, whether it be in the thing itself or in the intellect only. For
tempus is the measure of motion, both of the first motion and of the primum mobile and of
whatever else that follows, just as is investigated carefully by the Philosopher.39

While Jerome had considered both John and Franco as moderni, Grocheio realised that
they did not have the last word in how music was measured
Others have put these (rhythmic) modes at 5 through reduction, like Master Franco. But, as is
apparent, reduction does not prevent plurality. For although all syllogisms are reduced to 4
basic ones, their plurality is not prevented because of this. And perhaps those who have
posited 6 modes have spoken better. For many of the moderns still use these and reduce
all their cantus to these. But if there are only 6 or more or less, it makes little difference,
because the same measure is kept on both sides.40

Grocheio went further than the moderni of the mid-thirteenth century in thinking about
the extent to which a measure could be divided, laying the foundation for the more
complex musical patterns that would evolve with the Ars nova in the fourteenth
century. Grocheio acknowledged, but did not feel bound to accept the specific teachings
of those Jerome had identified as moderni.
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 305

Peter of Auvergne and Guy of Saint-Denis

When Thomas Aquinas was in Paris for the last time, Aristotelian thought was still pro-
voking much controversy. Only after his death in 1274, did his synthesis of Aristotelian
metaphysics and Christian thought become more widely accepted, not least through the
input of Peter of Auvergne, who completed Thomas’s unfinished commentaries on
both the De caelo and the Politics. A canon of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, he was
appointed rector of the University of Paris in 1275, after three years of internal schism
in the Faculty of Arts over support within the Norman nation for Siger of Brabant.
While Peter of Auvergne applied himself to theology in the 1280s, most of his writing
related to science and philosophy. His attitudes were shaped by those of Thomas
Aquinas, in particular in relation to his understanding of the passions. Of particular inter-
est are two discussions, both relating to the power of music, in the last of his quodlibetal
discussions delivered in 1301, in which he explores how music can affect “primary qual-
ities” in the body, normally in balance, but which can create differing emotional states in
different situations.41 These discussions were used by Guy of Saint-Denis, in the first
decade of the fourteenth century, to reflect on the power of music on the soul.42
A mysterious authority quoted by Guy in his treatise is a libellus valde antiquus which
he claims included a fanciful account of how the tones originated in hissing sounds made
by water coming through holes in the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. Whether Guy actually
found such an account or was inventing the story as a pseudo-authority is impossible to
establish. What is evident, however, is that Guy was distancing himself from such a per-
spective: “But this saying ultimately seems to be more Pythagorean or Platonic than Aris-
totelian or in accord with the truth”.43 While Guy was writing for an audience still familiar
with a Platonic understanding of music as part of the structure of the universe, his per-
sonal preference was to follow Aristotle, as expounded by Peter of Auvergne. He was par-
ticularly interested in what Peter of Auvergne had to say about the soul’s appetitive or
desiring part as stimulated by the senses in the same way as the will (or intellectual appe-
tite) follows the intellect.44 The sensitive appetite varies in individual people according to
their particular disposition of qualities.45 Just as some people are hotter, others colder, in
disposition, thus some are bold, some jealous, and some wrathful.46 By the various pro-
portions making up different kinds of music, so is there an impact on the differing con-
stitutions of the human soul, mediated through varying moods.47 While Guy’s
argumentative style (like that of so many scholastics) was to present his exposition as
from antiquity, he was silently drawing on a “modern” expositor of Aristotle to offer a
more profound reflection on how music could move the soul to various emotions,
whether of ecstasy or sadness.48 This led him to insist that the various modes or
melodic formulae into which chant was organised should not be followed automatically,
but rather express the particular mood of any liturgical text.
In particular Guy disliked the tendency to create an office in which each antiphon or
verse cycles through the various modes, 1–8, in mechanical fashion, without any regard
for the meaning of the text and the particular mode of chant that might be appropriate
to its message. He concludes:
It should be known, however, that although later and more modern musicians or cantors,
who seem to have composed ecclesiastical chants recently, have generally proceeded accord-
ing to the order of the eight tones … yet the ancients and the first cantors, who rarely or
306 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

never seem to have been concerned with such an order, (which seems to have been intro-
duced more for a certain ornament or elegance than for the requirement of the Divine
Office) seem to have been concerned more with the moderation and sobriety of chants
and also with the quality of the material upon which they based their ecclesiastical chants.
For just as elsewhere it is written that expressions are to be crafted according to subject
matter, so also it should be in this way for ecclesiastical chants. For it is fitting that ecclesias-
tical chants be adapted not just in any way but appropriately to the material on which they
are founded.49

Guy’s reference to discourse (sermones) being crafted according to subject matter, comes
from Aristotle’s Ethics.50 Guy is here cleverly pointing out an unexpected affinity between
Guido of Arezzo and Aristotle, whom he saw as sharing a practical sense of the primacy of
subject matter. If new chants were to be composed, their melodies should be dictated by
subject matter rather than by the mathematical logic of where they came in the course of a
liturgical office. Primacy of subject matter allowed an emotional response to be facilitated,
rather than subordinating melody to a mathematical sequence. Guy may have criticised
certain moderni for their disregard of the particular impact of modes in chant, urging
his readers to turn back to the ancients. Yet he was himself a modernus in the way that
he compiled an anthology of texts for his students, beginning with various writings of
Guido of Arezzo, and matching this with the writings of three moderns: namely, Grocheio,
Petrus de Cruce and himself. It may have been stock in trade for theorists to contrast views
of ancients and moderns. In practice, however, what was under debate was the way in
which older and more recent ideas about music and its composition could be brought
together. As a Benedictine monk, Guy’s preference was not to present himself as a mod-
ernus but rather to show how the ideas of all the great teachers of music, from Guido of
Arezzo to Johannes de Grocheio could be brought together with the philosophical ideas of
Aristotle, as expounded by recent thinkers like Peter of Auvergne, into a creative synthesis.
In the process, he transformed the teaching of Guido in the light of new ways of thinking
attracting attention in his own day.

Jacobus and the conflict between Ars antiqua and Ars nova
Perhaps only one or two decades after Guy’s treatise on plainchant, Jacobus (traditionally
designated as of Liège) compiled his Speculum musicae, a vast synthesis on the nature of
musica as a whole, including both plainchant and in polyphony.51 That Jacobus may have
been familiar with Guy’s treatise is suggested by the fact that he used the first letter of each
of the seven books to spell out his name, just as Guy of Saint-Denis had used the opening
letter of each of his five chapters to spell out his name, an idea possibly suggested by a verse
acrostic of Guido of Arezzo on his own name. Jacobus imitated Jerome of Moravia in
keenly defending the authority of Boethius in the understanding of music. Yet unlike
Jerome, Jacobus also combined Boethius with Aristotelian perspectives, including com-
mentary on what Aristotle had said about music in the eighth book of his Politics, a
text to which Grocheio never made explicit reference, perhaps because it only started to
become widely known during the 1270s. Invoking Aristotle’s Metaphysics to justify exam-
ination of the being (esse) of music, beyond the sensible, Jacobus transformed the tra-
ditional Boethian tripartite conception of musica, by arguing that its most profound
level was musica coelestis, beyond musica mundana – not a concept invoked by any pre-
vious theorist.52 Jacobus also turned for support to the De ortu scientiarum of Robert
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 307

Kilwardby (c. 1215–1279), a Dominican who taught at Oxford from around 1245 until
1272, when he became Archbishop of Canterbury.53 While Kilwardby had encountered
Thomas Aquinas at a Dominican General Chapter in Paris in 1269, the 30 articles that
he condemned at Oxford in 1277, touched on a number of his teachings.54 Kilwardby
belonged to an older generation, suspicious of the type of Aristotelianism gaining
ground in France with Aquinas. The allusion of Jacobus to Kilwardby supports Margaret
Bent’s hypothesis that he might have been Jacobus de Hispania (c. 1267–1332), an Oxford
master originally from Spain and a nephew of Eleanor of Castile (1241–1290).55
Jacobus railed against certain moderni within his seventh book, in particular the depar-
ture of certain composers from the compositional style associated with Franco in the thir-
teenth century, which he identified as the ars antiqua. Yet he still repeated Priscian’s
famous phrase about the greater perspicacity of a younger generation when reproducing
a passage from John of Affligem.56 His concerns were more about the dangers of taking
Priscian’s adage too far in the field of music, especially the new techniques expounded
in the Notitia artis musicae (1320) by Johannes de Muris and Ars nova (1322) by Philippe
de Vitry. Fundamental to the conflict was the way of dividing the rhythmic values of
musica mensurata. As soon as composers wanted to secure certainty of one or more
pitches against another there was a need for accuracy in the notation of the measure of
rhythm. In the thirteenth century, the practice of contextual rhythms, based on the
triple division of note values and notated using a set of known rhythmic modes, was devel-
oped by the “moderns” of the day, in particular by Franco of Cologne.
With this system, much admired by Jacobus, musical time was conceptualised within
trinitarian perfection, a consideration that both theoreticians and theologians grasped
as a way of justifying the use of elaborate musical styles in divine worship. Music itself
reified the perfection of the Trinity through triple meters and triple divisions of rhythmic
values. There was a rhythmicised scale of perfection from the longest note, the triplex
longa, to the shortest and indivisible element, the semibreve. For Jacobus, the symbolic
figure of the Ars antiqua was Franco, for whom musical time was divided into uniform
cycles, each of which was articulated and varied by substituting it with its parts. The
longa perfecta was the fundamental measuring unit and was divided into either three
equal parts or two unequal parts, one longer than the other in the proportion 2 to
1. The three equal parts that resulted from this level of the partition could be further sub-
divided into either 3 equal parts or 2 unequal parts in the proportion 2 to 1. The three in
one, the longa perfecta, represented the Trinity. The longa of only 2 units was named the
longa imperfecta and never appeared alone as it had to function within a cycle of trinitarian
perfection. Duple division was simply not possible.
In the early fourteenth century, Johannes de Muris acknowledged that there could be a
trinitarian justification to a ternary series:
That all perfection lies in the ternary number follows from many likely reflections. In God,
who is most perfect there is one substance yet three persons; he is threefold yet one, one yet
threefold. Very great therefore is the correspondence of unity to trinity. In knowledge one
finds after God in a ternary series: being, essence and their composite. In the first of corporeal
entities, the heavens, there are the thing that moves, the thing that is moved, and time. There
are three attributes in the stars and the sun: heat, light and splendour; in the elements: action,
passion and matter; in individuals: generation, corruption and dissolution.57
308 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

This complex trinitarian system was developed in order to justify the use of measured
music and thus polyphony for use in the church. For Johannes de Muris this explanation
was the established ground upon which he constructed his defence of the new technique of
measuring rhythmic values. Put simply he developed a mathematical pathway to assimi-
late both ternary and binary divisions of time. He justified the new system not by blurring
the distinction between triple/perfect and duple/imperfect values, but by expanding the
concept of perfection to include binary values that are also multiples of 3, such as 6, 12
and 18.
Now since the ternary number is everywhere present in some form or another it may no
longer be doubted that it is perfect. And by the contrary of this proposition the binary
number, since it falls short of the ternary, and is of lesser repute remains imperfect. But
any composite number formed from these may properly be considered perfect because of
its similarity and correspondence to the ternary.58

Johannes de Muris skilfully sought to weave traditional and innovative methods into a new
synthesis.
Not all appreciated such tendencies, however. In 1324, Pope John XXII (1316–1334)
fulminated against such endeavours in ways that parallel those of Jacobus:
Certain disciples of the new school, much occupying themselves with the measured dividing
of the tempora, display their prolation in notes which are new to us, preferring to devise
methods of their own rather than to continue singing in the old way … Moreover, they trun-
cate the melodies with hoquets, they deprave them with discants, sometimes even they stuff
them with upper parts made out of secular songs. So that often they must be losing sight of
the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual, and may thus
forget what that is upon which their superstructure is raised … This state of things, hitherto
the common one, we and our brethren have regarded as standing in need of correction; and
we now hasten therefore to banish those methods, nay rather to cast them entirely away and
to put them to flight more effectually than heretofore, far from the house of God. Wherefore
… we straitly commence that no one henceforward shall think himself at liberty to attempt
those methods, or methods like them, in the aforesaid Offices, and especially in the canonical
Hours, or in the solemn celebrations of the Mass.59

While John XXII perceived compositional liberties as a challenge to theological orthodoxy,

Johannes de Muris sought to find a way of bringing together the different perspectives that
Jacobus considered diametrically opposed. The erosion of the idea that measured music
reflected Trinitarian doctrine provided a way forward for a more sophisticated polyphony,
in which contextual rhythms were overtaken by the intrinsic value of separate note shapes.
Technical progress in notation paralleled recognition of ever more complex ways of
explaining how words in general could define reality.

Conclusion
The contrast that Jacobus made in his Speculum musicae between the teaching of antiqui
and moderni was a rhetorical strategy that conceals the extent to which he was himself
shaped by the transformation in thinking about music that took place over the course of
the thirteenth century. By 1270 Johannes de Grocheio had moved away from a Boethian
(and Pythagorean) model towards a greater appreciation of music as a sensory phenom-
enon, following Aristotelian principles. By the early fourteenth century, Guy of Saint-
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 309

Denis was using Aristotelian ways of thinking to understand the emotional power of
different types of plainchant. More controversial in the eyes of Jacobus were changes
made in compositional practice by a new generation of musicians, who had moved
beyond the techniques developed in the mid-thirteenth century by moderni like
Franco of Cologne. By the 1320s, Jacobus considered that generation pursuing the Ars
antiqua as distinct from the Ars nova pursued by individuals like Johannes de Muris
and Philippe de Vitry. Not only were they understanding measured time in much
more flexible ways, but they were perceived by their critics (such as Jacobus and Pope
John XXII) as detaching musical structures from transcendent realities. In this
respect, Jacobus was closer to the Dominican Jerome of Moravia, for whom John and
Franco were moderni to be respected, unlike Grocheio, who did not feel constrained
to follow everything they taught. The way Grocheio considered how musical time
could be subdivided foreshadowed the Ars nova in the early fourteenth century. Yet
whereas Jerome had only limited familiarity with Aristotle, reliant on a passage from
the commentary of Thomas Aquinas on the De caelo, Jacobus reacted against Grocheio’s
arguments by showing how Aristotelian metaphysics might be combined with Boethian
traditions through creating a notion of celestial music beyond that of musica mundana
or cosmic music. In this Jacobus drew on ideas of Robert Kilwardby, a Dominican auth-
ority on Aristotle from the mid-thirteenth century, suspicious of certain of the new ideas
being promoted by Thomas Aquinas.
The defence of the ancients mounted by Jacobus against certain moderni was a rhetori-
cal ploy that conceals the extent to which he was just as concerned to weave together the
best of the contribution of ancients and moderns as his contemporaries. Discussion of
music throughout the thirteenth century tended to be couched in terms of the contri-
bution of both moderni and antiqui. Even if Aristotle had never devoted a specific treatise
to music, discussion evolved profoundly over the thirteenth century away from the domi-
nant Boethian model dominant in earlier centuries. Not everyone agreed, however, with all
the implications that might follow from Priscian’s adage about the greater perspicacity of
the young, at least in the field of music.

Notes
1. Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae, ed. Hertz, Pref., 1: “cuius auctores, |quanto sunt iuniores,
tanto perspicaciores, et ingeniis floruisse et diligentia ualuisse omnium iudicio confirmantur
eruditissimorum … ”.
2. On the introduction of the term modernus by Cassiodorus and others see, Curtius, European
Literature, 254.
3. While no examples of modernitas are recorded in the Brepols Library of Latin Texts, the
Corpus Corporum (www.mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/) identifies three authors using the term prior
to Salutati, De laboribus Herculis, 1.11.50, 2.5.1, 3.20.47, 49, and 62. These are Berthold of
Constance, Annales [1075], PL 147: 359A, speaking of the reforms of Gregory VII as restor-
ing canons and practices that “modernity” had annulled; Suger of Saint-Denis, declaring that
neither in “modernity or antiquity had France ever performed more brilliantly” in a victory
against Germany, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, 28, 230; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosoly-
mitana, ed. Migne, PL 155: 868A, referring to “in the modernity of his reign (of Baldwin I)”.
4. On this theme, there have been many studies. See, for example, Tanay, Noting Music,
Marking Culture and various articles of hers: “The Transition from the Ars Antiqua”;
“The Image of Music and the Bodies of Knowledge”; and “Time and Money”. On the
310 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

Boethian image in the twelfth century, see the Ph.D. dissertation of Hicks, “Music, Myth, and
Metaphysics”.
5. Hartmann comments briefly on this distinction in music theory in the late eleventh and
twelfth centuries, “‘Modernus’ und ‘Antiquus’”. No other paper in this volume (Antiqui
und Moderni) speaks about music.
6. Leodiensis, Speculum musicae, 7: 1.
7. Karen Desmond has produced some important studies of Jacobus and his milieu particularly
her Ph.D. Dissertation, “Behind the Mirror” and article “New Light on Jacobus”. Bent argues
in Magister Jacobus de Ispania that Jacobus is Jacobus Hispaniae, an illegitimate child of
Enrique of Castile, the half-brother of Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I of England,
who became an Oxford master and spent significant periods of time on the continent. She
argues that the references (often critical) to the practice of chant in certain secular churches
of Liège (Book 6) do not imply that he came from Liège. Her hypothesis has been challenged
by Wegman, “Jacobus de Ispania and Liège” in which he argues that Hispania is a form of the
name of the region of Hesbaye, near Liège.
8. See de Muris, Notitia artis musicae, and de Vitry, Ars Nova. See also Fuller, “A Phantom
Treatise of the Fourteenth Century?” and Desmond, “Did Vitry Write”.
9. Hughes, “Franco of Cologne” acknowledges that most authorities date his Ars cantus men-
surabilis to around 1260, although observes that some scholars date it to c. 1280.
10. Guy of Saint-Denis, Tractatus de Tonis; a new edition and translation of this text is
being prepared by the authors, with C. Jeffreys and J. N. Crossley, for the TEAMS
series (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute). References
below cite the forthcoming edition as well as that of Sieglinde van de Klundert’s 1998
edition. While his Tractatus seems to come from the first decade of the fourteenth
century, there are grounds for identifying him with Gui de Châtres, who became treas-
urer and then abbot of Saint-Denis 1326–1342/43 (when he stepped down on grounds
of age) and was born perhaps c. 1270.
11. Guy’s involvement in compiling this anthology is discussed in Mews et al., “Guy of Saint-
Denis and the Compilation of Texts” http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2008articles/article6.html
(accessed 12 May 2017). For editions of the other two “modern” texts in this anthology,
see Grocheio, Ars musice, and de Cruce, Tractatus de tonis.
12. The Odyssey 12.39–54, 154–765 and 184–200; Vergil, Aeneid III, 420–32 concerning Scylla,
the six-headed monster and Charybdis the whirlpool; and V: 838–842 for a reference to the
Sirens, which no longer sing, perhaps because of the successful escape of Odysseus.
13. Plato, The Republic X, 614–21.
14. Macrobius, Commentaria in Somnium Scipionis 2.3.1, 103; Haar, “Music of the Spheres”,
15. Plato, Timaeus, 44.
16. Fulgentius Mythographus, Mitologiarium libri tres 2.8, 48.
17. See, for example, John of Salisbury complaining about male voices as imitating those of sirens
in Policraticus 1.6, 48–9; Pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber de modo bene vivendi. PL 184:
1285C–1286A.
18. Boethius, Philosophiae consolatio 1 prosa 1, 1.
19. Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus, 112–3: “Unde verissime poeta dixit: septem discrimina
vocum, quia etsi plures fiant, non est aliarum adiectio sed earundem renovatio et repeti-
tio. Hac nos de causa omnes sonos secundum Boetium et antiquos musicos septem litteris
figuravimus, cum moderni quidam nimis incaute quattuor tantum signa posuerint,
quintum et quintum videlicet sonum eodem ubique charactere figurantes, cum indubitan-
ter verum sit quod quidam soni a suis quintis omnino discordant nullusque sonus cum
suo quinto perfecte concordat. Nulla enim vox cum altera praeter octavam perfecte
concordat”.
20. Guido of Arezzo, Epistola ad Michahelem in Regule rithmice, 530–1: “Autem curiosus fuerit,
labellum nostrum cui nomen Micrologus est querat; librum quoque Enchiridion quem rever-
entissimus Oddo abbas luculentissime composuit perlegat. Cuius exemplum in solis figuris
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 311

sonorum dimisi, quia parvuli condescendi, Boetium in hoc sequens, cuius liber non cantor-
ibus sed solis philosophis utilis est”.
21. Guido of Arezzo, Regule rithmice in Regule rithmice, 348: “Sunt qui addunt in acutis iuxta
primam alteram, / sed Gregorio vix placet patri hec lascivia; / at moderni sapientes hanc
neque commemorant. / Quamvis ergo apud quosdam ipsa fiat vocula, / apud multos
tamen iure dicitur superflua. / Altera vero secunda semper est autentica”.
22. Affligemensis, De musica cum tonario, 59: “Moderni autem subtilius omnia atque sagacius
intuentes, quia, ut ait Priscianus, quanto iuniores tanto perspicaciores, viderunt notas illas
ad melodiam quamlibet exprimendam non sufficere … ..”.
23. de Zamora, Ars musica, 42: “praesens tempus, ut infra dicetur, nouas considerationes et
nouas experientias habuerunt, et prioribus addiderunt, sicut in aliis scientiis satis patet. Siqui-
dem secundum Priscianum in principio Maioris: quanto iuniores, tanto perspicatiores, ut
patet etiam [in] antiquis philosophis, deinde in Socrate, deinde in Platone, tandem in Aris-
totele iuniore tempore Alexandri Magni”.
24. Ibid., 44: “Experientia nouimus, aues ad audiendam melodiam festinanter descendere, ipsam
libenter addiscere, discipulas liberaliter erudire”.
25. Bacon, Metaphysica, 5.
26. de Moravia, Tractatus de musica, xi–xiii, for discussion of whether de Moravia might refer to
Bohemia or Moray in Scotland, as suggested by Michel Huglo, without deciding the issue.
27. Tractatus de musica 25, 167: “Sed modernorum, ut uidetur, melior est opinio, qui scilicet in
tempore armonico motui subjecto successionem ponunt”.
28. Ibid., 168: “Et secundum hoc quantum ad aliquid antiquorum saluatur opinio. Vnde a mod-
ernis quidem nomen sed res ipsa non abicitur, sed interdum recipitur, ut potea ostendetur,
hoc igitur tempus armonicum est mensura omnium notarum, qua scilicet unaqueue mensur-
atur nota”.
29. Baltzer argues that he flourished c. 1270–1320 (and is thus distinct from the grammaticus of
that name, c. 1190–c. 1270) in her article, “Johannes de Garlandia”. This seems unlikely given
that his De musica plana demonstrates no knowledge of Aristotelian texts. It seems much
more likely to have been written c. 1230, as argued by Meyer. As Hammond and Roesner
note in their Grove discussion “Hieronymus de Moravia”, Jerome must have completed
his Tractatus soon after 1271; nothing is to prevent Jerome having written the treatise in
the 1260s, just as Humbert of Romans was reforming the Dominican liturgy, and then
adding the excerpt from Thomas Aquinas c. 1270/71.
30. Tractatus de musica, Prol., 4, quoting the verse of Guido’s Micrologus about the distance
between Musici and cantores from John (Cotton) of Affligem, and 9, mentioning Guido
within a passage from Hugh of Saint-Victor.
31. Tractatus de musica, 40, in which the text of John Cotton (n. 27 above) is quoted but with the
phrase of Priscian omitted.
32. Tractatus de musica, 23–31.
33. Tractatus de musica, 31: “Hic est igitur modus et sentencia Aristotilis dictam opinionem
reprobantis. Sed que tantorum uirorum sit uerior opinio, id non temerarie diffinimus, sed
nostris maioribus determinanda relinquimus”.
34. In our edition-translation of Grocheio, Ars musice (n. 11 above) we proposed a date of
around 1275, rather than 1300, as conventionally claimed. While Grocheio’s arguments
about the civic benefits of different types of music recall Aristotle’s Politics, the fact that
this enthusiast for Aristotle does not explicitly name this work, first referred to by
Thomas Aquinas in Paris (c. 1269–1272) in his Summa theologie, suggests that Grocheio
may have been writing no later than c. 1270.
35. Grocheio, Ars musice 0.2; he alludes to Aristotle, Physica 3.1.200b12: A proper sensible is
something that can be sensed by one of the five senses only. Cf. Aristotle, De anima
2.6.418a15.
36. Grocheio, Ars musice, 0.5.
312 C. J. MEWS AND C. J. WILLIAMS

37. Grocheio, Ars musice 5.6, referring to Aristotle, De caelo 2.9.290b30. Aristotle is not men-
tioned in the Theorica planetarum Gerardi; see Pedersen, “The Origins of the Theorica
planetarum”.
38. Grocheio, Ars musice 6.2.
39. Grocheio, Ars musice 16.1: “Omne autem mensurans prima mensura utitur aut eius virtute
operatur, quemadmodum omne movens in virtute primi moventis. Primum enim in uno-
quoque genere causa est omnium posteriorum. ut in .10o. prime philosophie scriptum est.
Prima autem mensura tempus dicitur sive in re fuerit sive secundum intellectum tantum.
Est enim tempus mensura motus et est primi motus et primi mobilis et ex consequenti
cuiuslibet alterius prout a philosopho subtiliter perscrutatur”. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica
10.1.1052b18, trans. Moerbeke, 196: See also Metaphysica 2.2.994a12, trans. Moerbeke, 44,
and Aristotle, Physica 7.1.242a17, trans. James of Venice, 257–8.
40. Grocheio, Ars musice 17.10: “Alii autem istos modos ad .5. per reductionem posuerunt, puta
magister Franco. Reductio tamen ut videtur pluralitatem non impedit. Quamquam enim
omnis sillogismi ad .4. primos reducuntur: propter hoc non est eorum pluralitas impedita.
Et forte qui .6. modos posuerunt melius dixerunt; plurimi enim modernorum adhuc eis
utuntur et ad illos omnes suos cantus reducunt. Si vero fuerint tantum .6. sive plures sive pau-
ciores parum differt, quia eadem mensura utrobique reservatur”. He cites Franco of Cologne,
Ars cantus mensurabilis 3.1–4, 26–27: “Modus est cognitio soni longis brevibusque tempor-
ibus mensurati … Nos autem quinque tantum ponimus, quia ad hos quinque omnes alii
reducuntur”.
41. Hentschel, “Der verjagte Dämon”. See also Dyer, “Music, the Passions, and Virtue in Two
Quodlibetal Questions”. We are indebted to the author for sharing an advance copy of
this work. Catherine Jeffreys explores Peter’s impact in “The Exchange of Ideas about Music”.
42. Mews, Crossley, and Williams, “Guy of St Denis on the Tones”.
43. Guy, Tractatus 1.2.6, 2: 23: “Sed istud dictum ultimo magis Pitagoricum vel Platonicum
videtur quam Aristotelis opinio vel veritatem consentaneum”.
44. Guy, Tractatus 1.4.1, 2: 38.
45. Ibid., 39.
46. Guy, Tractatus 1.4.2, 2: 40.
47. Ibid., 41.
48. Guy, Tractatus 1.3.20, 2: 35.
49. Guy, Tractatus 1.4.22, 2: 55–6: “Sciendum est autem quod, licet posteriores modernique
musici vel cantores qui ecclesiasticos cantus ultimo composuisse videntur, plerumque secun-
dum ordinem octo tonorum processerint, … antiquiores tamen et primi cantores de tali
ordine, qui potius ad ornatum quemdam vel decorem quam ad necessitatem divini officii
introductus videtur, raro vel numquam videntur curasse, eo forte quod ad mediocritatem
ac sobrietatem cantuum vel etiam qualitatem materie, super quam cantus ecclesiasticos fun-
daverunt, attendere potius videbantur. Sicut enim, ut alibi scribitur, sermones exigendi sunt
secundum materiam subiectam”.
50. Aristotle, Ethics 1.3.1094b27: “Sermones inquirendi sunt secundum materiam de qua sunt”.
51. See n. 6 above.
52. Jacobus, Speculum musicae I.8, 1: 29.
53. Ibid., 29–32, alluding to Robert Kilwardby on the place of music, De ortu scientiarum 18–21,
50–60.
54. On Kilwardby, see Thom and Lagerlund, A Companion to the Philosophy and on the Oxford
condemnations, Callus, The Oxford Condemnation.
55. See above n. 7.
56. Jacobus, Speculum musicae VI.61, 6: 162; see above n. 22.
57. Muris, Notitia, 67 (see above n. 8).
58. Ibid., 68–9.
59. Docta sanctorum patrum, in A. Richter and A. Friedberg (eds), Corpus iuris canonici (Leipzig:
Tauchnitz, 1922), 1: 1255–7. On this decree see Hucke, “Das Dekret”.
 INTELLECTUAL HISTORY REVIEW 313

Notes on contributors
Constant J. Mews is director of the Centre for Religious Studies and Professor within the School of
Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University. He has published widely on
medieval thought, ethics, and religious culture, with particular reference to the writings of Abelard,
Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen and their contemporaries, including Abelard and Heloise (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005) and The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dia-
logue in Twelfth-Century France, 2nd edn (New York: McMillan Palgrave, 2008). His research inter-
ests range from the early Middle Ages to late medieval religious and philosophical culture, as well as
the interface between music theory and intellectual tradition.
Carol J. Williams as an adjunct research fellow of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
of Monash University has an established academic career in both musicology and history. She is one
of the collaborating editors and translators of the Ars Musice of Johannes de Grocheio (Medieval
Institute Publications, 2011) and the Tractatus de tonis of Guy of Saint-Denis (Medieval Institute
Publications, forthcoming 2017). Solo publications include the essay “Modes and Manipulation:
Music, the State, and Emotion” in Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100-1800 (Brill, 2015), a memor-
ial volume for Philippa Maddern. She is also a performing musician, playing harp and rebec in the
early music ensemble, Acord.

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