Saints Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis were patron saints of Cordoba whose importance is attested to in their home region from the 7^th century onwards. Yet a specific liturgy to be performed on their feast day only survives in one manuscript from northern Iberia many centuries later. In a sense, the creators of this manuscript had the opportunity to compile these saints anew. In this talk I will explore how the identity of Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis was shaped through strategic borrowing from the liturgical material for older saints and how borrowed material---its text and music—works to cast our trio of saints as the three Hebrew men in the fiery furnace of Babylon. These biblical heroes were well known in Iberian visual and literary culture, and I will argue that by presenting them as models for Faustus, Januarius, and Martialis, liturgical compilers crafted for them saintly identities that evoked their particular status in and origin from Cordoba.   

Bio

Melanie Shaffer received her PhD in 2020 from the University of Colorado Boulder with a dissertation that considered the music found in 13^th-century “St. Victor” miscellany in the context of the manuscript’s other literary components. She has presented her work widely at national and international conferences and her articles can be found in the Journal of the American Music Research Center and Plainsong and Medieval Music. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen where she is exploring the role of chant and liturgy in the devotional cult of saints as part of an interdisciplinary project entitled Making a Martyr in Medieval Iberia (659-1080) led by Kati Ihnat.