Christian texts, melodies, images, buildings and rituals are experienced in combination, not one-by-one. This presentation describes some of the research Hornby undertook during her research leave in 2023-24. She offers an intertextual reading of multiple kinds of evidence relating to Saint Michael the Archangel, focusing on the monastery of San Miguel de Escalada, 30km from León, whose foundation inscription dates it to 913AD. This monastery is thought by many scholars to have been the original destination of MS 644 of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, a mid-tenth-century illuminated copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. Chants for the Old Hispanic feast of Saint Michael survive in the León antiphoner, a mid-tenth-century manuscript associated with León Cathedral. The biblical books of Daniel and the Apocalypse, Beatus’s commentary and its illustrations combine with the Old Hispanic chants, prayers and readings, and with the architectural particularities of San Miguel de Escalada, to allow a multifaceted reading of how the 29 September feast of the Archangel Michael might have been experienced in one of his patronal monasteries in the mid-tenth century. The chants invoke the Archangel’s presence at his feast. The texts also concentrate on Saint Michael’s role as the prince of heaven’s army, as holder of the Book of Life, and as a powerful intercessor on behalf of the faithful.

Biography

Emma Hornby is Professor of Music at the University of Bristol. She has run multiple collaborative projects on the musical and liturgical culture of early medieval Spain.