now I know very divinely indeed how to...dance the ‘Sanctus’ and the ‘Agnus’ and the
‘Cunctipotens.”’
Between the 6th and 17th centuries, the church frequently forbade dance on certain
occasions. In 1208, for example, the bishop of Paris declared it improper to dance the
carole in processions, and in 1209 the Council of Avignon issued an edict against
dancing caroles on the vigils of saints’ days, calling the dance “obscene motion.” In
1325, the general chapter in Paris forbade clerics, under pain of excommunication, from
participating in dances, with the exceptions of Christmastime and the feasts of St.
Nicholas and St. Catherine. The injunctions seem to be intended to regulate the use of
dance during sacred ceremonies and to purge it of improper content, in both text and
movement, but there is no suggestion that dance was unwelcome in the church. Its
presence is recorded in official French church documents into the 17th century.
A repertory of music for sacred dancing can be found in the approximately eighty
Latin monophonic rondeaux preserved in 13th-century French sources from the cathedral
of Notre-Dame in Paris. The rondeau is described ca. 1300 as a “round dance”
(rotundellus) by Johannes de
Clerics dancing. MS Pluteo 29, Is, fol.
463. Courtesy of the Biblioteca
Mediceo-Laurenziana, Florence.
Grocheio in his treatise on music, and he explains that its music is distinguished from
other types of dance in that the melody used for the refrain is similar to that of the verse
(see Example 1). In conformity with the 1325 edict cited above, the majority of the Latin
rondeaux texts are for Advent and Christmas, with several each for St. Nicholas and St.
Catherine, although there exist rondeaux for other feasts as well. Some of the rondeau
texts specifically mention dance: Leto leta concio, hac die resonet tripudio (“Let the
joyful company this day resound in a joyful dance”); and an illumination in the major
manuscript source depicts clerics in a “round” formation, probably dancing.
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