collections of sequences, for example, date from the second half of the 10th century and
were copied in southern France.
Although each geographical region had its own style of sequence, these differences
have been little studied. The texts are written in art prose, carefully constructed and
commonly using such poetic devices as assonance and rhyme, yet following no presently
understood rules. The melodies of early-medieval sequences—simple, forceful, and
strongly reliant upon the modes—are different in style from the Alleluias themselves, and
from other Gregorian chants as well. Some early sequence melodies were frequently reset
or readapted for new texts. The late 10th and early 11th centuries in southern France
witnessed a second flourishing of early sequences, and here one can find an increasing
dependence upon rhyme.
Margot Fassler
[See also: ANALECTA HYMNICA MEDII AEVI; SAINTE EULALIE, SÉQUENCE
DE; SEQUENCE (LATE)]
Dreves, Guido, ed. Analecta hymnica medii aevi. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1889, vol. 7.
Björkvall, Gunilla. “En marge des plus anciennes sequences médiévales.” Revue bénédictine
88(1978):170–73.
Crocker, Richard. The Repertoire of Proses at Saint Martial de Limoges (Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries). 2 vols. Diss. Yale University, 1957.
——. The Early Medieval Sequence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Elfving, Lars. Étude lexicographique sur les séquences limousines. Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell, 1962.
Fassler, Margot. Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century
Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 38–57.
SEQUENCE (LATE)
. The late 11th and early 12th centuries were witness to a minor revolution in poetic taste
in northern Europe. Study of medieval treatises de rithmis reveals that rules for writing
rhythmic poetry were standardized during this period, just as great quantities of liturgical
poetry began to be written in this style: sequences, versus, conductus, rhymed offices,
some ordinary tropes, and liturgical plays. As Dag Norberg has argued, the patterns
predominating in rhythmic poetry are based on those found in quantitative verse but
depend on word accent rather than duration. Lines are governed by the number of
syllables they contain, and rhyme is used to underscore caesurae and ends of lines and
strophes.
Medieval France was an early fountainhead of liturgical rhythmic poetry, and this is
manifested particularly in the rise of the late sequence. Sequences with rhyming,
accentual texts, called “late sequences” or “second-epoch sequences,” were written only
in small numbers in the late 11th century but in ever greater numbers as the 12th century
progressed. By the second quarter of the 13th century, significant numbers of late
sequences were sung in cathedrals and monasteries throughout France, with only the
strictest monastic orders (Carthusians, Cistercians, and most Franciscans) not adopting
them. The late sequences were first championed by the Augustinian canons regular,
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