A Historical Overview of Musical Worship & Culture in Sardinia 439
spiritalibus (all that night in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs).”17 However
this practice is probably a literary echo of the epistles of St. Paul.18 An excerpt
from Fulgentius, which is decisive for the attribution of the hymn Splendor pa-
ternæ gloriæ to Saint Ambrose,19 gives evidence of the African bishop’s hymnic
sensitivity.20 He also wrote a peculiar “hymnic” composition, Psalmus contra
vandalos arrianos, with an abecedarian text, along the lines of Saint Augustine’s
Psalmus contra partem Donati (354–430).21 This composition is a sort of popu-
lar religious poem, where at least the hypopsalma, a refrain interspersed by the
assembly between a stanza and the other, is intended for singing.22 During his
Sardinian experience, Fulgentius’s strong poetic-musical sensitivity, which he
had acquired in the ancient African liturgy, probably intensified.
In the Gregorian correspondence concerning Sardinia, references of litur-
gical interest with possible musical implications are minimal. In September
593, Gregory the Great, observing that some nuns arbitrarily came out of the
monasteries to visit their possessions, recalled the monastic ideals from which
the “maids of God” had to draw inspiration: devote themselves selflessly and
without distractions to Deo laudes (the divine office).23 In another of the
pope’s letters, reference is made to a certain Musicus, the abbot of a mysterious
monastery called Agilitanus, which may have been dedicated to the African
martyr Agileus.24
17 Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus [...]. Series Latina, no. 65, col. 149D.
18 Eph 5:19: “in psalmis et hymnis et canticis spiritalibus.” Col 3:16: “psalmis hymnis canticis
spiritalibus.”
19 Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum, no. 19349; Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi L, no. 5,
11–12–II, nos. 1, 31; Bruno Stäblein, Hymnen (I). Die mittelalterlichen Hymnenmelodien des
Abendlandes (Kassel, 1956), nos. 2, 26, 86, 163, 183, 213, 253, 362, 441. See also, Giampaolo
Mele, Giampaolo Mele, Psalterium-Hymnarium Arborense. Il manoscritto P. XIII della
Cattedrale di Oristano (secolo XIV/XV ). Studio codicologico, paleografico, testuale, storico,
liturgico, gregoriano. Trascrizioni. 1. Hymni (Roma, 1994), p. 175, no. VI (musical transcrip-
tion 251, no. VIa); Giampaolo Mele, Manuale di innologia. Introduzione all’innodia dei
secoli IV–XVII in Occidente (Cagliari, 2012), p. 190.
20 Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus [...]. Series Latina, no. 65, cols 401C-D, 457B. On
Fulgenzio, see also the bibliography in Antonio Piras, “Lingua et ingenium.” Studi su
Fulgenzio di Ruspe e il suo contesto (Cagliari, 2010), pp. 211–263.
21 Antonio Isola, ed., Fulgentii Ruspensis, Psalmus contra vandalos arrianos (Turin, 1983).
22 Ibid., pp. 19–20, nn. 57–58.
23 Dag Norberg, ed., Gregorii Magni registrum epistularum libri I–VII (Turnhout, 1982), IV, 9
(593, Sept.), p. 225.
24 Ibid., V, 2, 267.