Collecting Music in Emigration? A Catholic Source of Sacred Songs with a Cantilena inhonesta from Early Hussite Bohemia

Abstract This study focuses on an understudied Bohemian manuscript from c.1380–1430 in the collection of the National Library in Prague (I G 39): a collection of sermons with a small anthology of texts of sequences, cantiones, and other pieces of medieval poetry. A thorough codicological analysis yields a precise dating and detailed evidence as to the genesis of the book. The manuscript demonstrates clear links to the environments of Prague University and the Cistercian order. The new dating of the collection of sacred poetry makes it possible to interpret it as written by a Catholic at a time when Catholic clergy were emigrating from Hussite Bohemia in the 1420s. The manuscript also preserves a copy of Quidam triplo metro, a Latin song with an implicitly lascivious double meaning that was used as a mischievous carol. This study provides a Central European context for a song whose other sources are found in Italy and England.