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includes the early eleventh-century feasts of the international Roman calendar for
Barnabas and the Transfiguration of the Lord. Based on these feasts, Tissot concluded
that the most probable date for the manuscript was the first third of the eleventh century,
i.e., before 1031. 11
Secondarily, the partially erased rubric for the feast of St. Martial in Pa903 could
be interpreted to reflect the contemporary controversy regarding this Proper. While St.
Martial had been traditionally honored in Francia as a confessor with a conventional
Gregorian Proper, in the late 1020s there was an initiative at St. Martial of Limoges (but
not favorably acted on until the end of the eleventh century) to venerate St. Martial as an
apostle, for which a new Proper for St. Martial, apostle, would be required. 12 But Pa903
transmits only the Proper for St. Martial, confessor; the partial erasure of the rubric for
this Mass may reflect some indecision regarding the Mass at the time Pa903 was being
copied.
No new findings have been published on the identity of the scriptorium where the
manuscript was copied; it remains unknown. Neither has there been a challenge to the
conclusion that St. Yrieix was the intended original owner of this manuscript. Tissot‟s
conclusions on the date of Pa903 have largely been accepted as the consensus opinion in
the literature, most often expressed as the first half of the eleventh century. 13 More recent
comments on the date, however, mention the second half of the eleventh century. 14 The
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11 Tissot, “Notes historiques et liturgiques,” PM13:10.
12 James Grier,. Musical World of a Medieval Monk Adémar de Chabannes in Eleventh Century
Aquitaine. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006):25-34. A new Proper and Office were
composed by Adémar de Chabannes, completed ca 1028.
13 See, for example, Chailley, L’école. :87, David Hiley, Western Plainchant A Handbook
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993): 597.
14 Dates suggested more recently have tended toward a period after 1050. See William P. Mahrt,
“Word Painting and Formulaic Chant,” in Cum angelis canere, Robert A. Skeris, ed. (St. Paul, MN:
Catholic Church Music Associates, 1990) : 113-144, referring to Pa903 as from the second half of the
eleventh century; and similarly Michel Huglo, “ Aux origins des tropes d’interpolation: le trope meloforme
d’introit,” Revue de Musicologie 64 (1978): 5-54. Further discussion of the date is reserved for Chapter V.