Prutenic Tables See ASTRONOMY
psalmody The performance of psalms, one of the oldest
musical traditions in Christian and Jewish worship, re-
tained its importance in the Western Church throughout
the Middle Ages. In the Roman Catholic rites, plainchant
recitation at the monastic hours (the Divine Office) re-
mained the most frequent form of psalm-singing well
after the 16th century, and it is this which guided many
early psalm settings in polyphony. The musicians of
the later 15th and the 16th centuries who began to
create multivoice psalm compositions for liturgical use—
mainly for the important Office of Vespers—often adopted
structuring elements from monophonic psalmody: strict
musical division by verse, binary alternation patterns
p(for example, by setting only every other verse in
polyphony), and the use of the appropriate recitation for-
mula in one voice. Such approaches could have wider
effects; as an example, the alternation of two choirs for
different verses provided an early impetus for “poly-
choral” composition, which would become an important
form for writing in numerous genres by the later 16th cen-
tury.
A significant development of the early 16th century
was the use of psalm texts as the basis for polyphonic
motet compositions with no specific liturgical functions.
The psalm-motets of composers such as Josquin DES PRÉS
represent an approach to text setting that differs consider-
ably from the practices employed in liturgical psalm-
settings. Whereas the latter were structured clearly—
either by the traditional recitation formulae, which they
elaborated polyphonically, or by the binary verse form—
the new style of psalm setting relied on a freer treatment
designed to present the text rhetorically. By the middle of
the century, composers were creating freely composed,
nonliturgical Latin motets based on psalm texts with some
frequency. The form had already been introduced to Eng-
land in the first decades of the 16th century in foreign
manuscripts, and native composers showed a substantial
interest in writing such motets during the second half of
the century.
Psalm settings would prove particularly important in
the reformed branches of the Church. From the earliest
decades of the Reformation, poets such as Clément MAROT
set about translating the psalms into vernacular metrical
versions, which were particularly suitable for musical
treatment and amateur performance. Edition after edition
of such settings appeared throughout the century in every
country with a Protestant population. Reformers showed
themselves willing to adopt popular secular tunes to their
own use: the well-known collections of Souterliedekens,
settings of Dutch metrical psalm translations printed in
Antwerp from 1540 onward, indicate explicitly on each
page the original tune that has been recast as a psalm.
Originally published monophonically, these psalms were
worked into more elaborate settings for multiple voices by
Jacobus CLEMENS(NON PAPA) and Gherardus Mes. As the
prints themselves inform us, the settings in these books
were suitable for domestic recreation (as a deterrent from
other entertainments) and could be played equally well on
instruments.
See also: HYMNODY; LITURGYPsyche The heroine of a fable in Apuleius’s Golden Ass,
whose name is Greek for “soul.” The tale of the many vi-
cissitudes that befell her as the result of her love for CUPID
and her eventual union with him in heaven was allego-
rized in the Renaissance as the yearning of the human soul
for divine love. The story inspired the fresco cycle de-
signed by RAPHAELfor the Villa Farnesina (c. 1518).Ptolemaic system The definitive system of ancient as-
tronomy as fully described by Ptolemy (fl.127–161 CE) in
his Almagest. Manuscripts of this work had been known
throughout the Middle Ages, and the first printed edition
(Venice, 1515) was of the 12th-century Latin translation
made by Gerard of Cremona from the Arabic. A Latin
translation made from the Greek text by GEORGE OF TRE-
BIZONDin 1451 was printed in 1528, with the full Greek
text, edited by Simon Grynaeus, first appearing at Basle in- Erasmus REINHOLDbrought out a combined Greek
and Latin edition at Wittenberg in 1549 under the title
Mathematicae constructionis liber primus. At the instigation
of Cardinal BESSARION, Georg PEURBACHhad begun work
on an Epitome (or Epitoma in Almagestum Ptolemaei) with
a view to establishing a correct text, shorn of later accre-
tions; after Peurbach’s death his pupil REGIOMONTANUS
completed the work (1463), though it was not published
until 1496.
All observation suggested that the heavens revolved
around the earth; it also seemed obvious, given the stabil-
ity of buildings and the behavior of falling bodies, that the
earth was stationary. It was further assumed that all celes-
tial motion was “perfect” and as such must be both cir-
cular and uniform (see COSMOLOGY). These assumptions
were, however, too simplistic and soon required consider-
able modification. They could not, for example, account
for the varying brightness of Venus, or for the unequal
length of the seasons. The system was consequently
adapted in a number of ways. Planets, such as Venus, were
assigned a secondary epicyclic motion. Or, as with the
sun, they could be given an eccentric orbit. A third and
more controversial construction, the equant, identified a
point distinct from both the earth and the planet’s orbital
center, around which the planet moved uniformly. Despite
these, and other complications, the Ptolemaic system sur-
vived intact until the 16th century when it was slowly re-
placed by the COPERNICAN SYSTEM. See illustration
overleaf.
PPttoolleemmaaiicc ssyysstteemm 3 39955