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PERFECTION OF GREGORIAN CHANT 99
torum pro doctrina est traditus' 1 (he was entrusted to the director of
the singers for teaching) : and he ordered that clerks and people should
sing the Agnus Dei in the Mass. Catalanus Maurianus and Virbonus,
abbots of St. Peter, revised new editions of the chant for the newly
established feasts. Hadrian I (772-95), who was skilled in music, sent
Theodore and Benedict at the request of Charlemagne to France for
the purpose of teaching the Gregorian chant : their first work was done
at Rouen, Metz, and Soissons.
DIFFUSION AND DECAY
The speed with which the Roman chant spread over Europe in postthe
desire
Gregorian times is amazing. Its progress was spurred on by
for musical and liturgical unification expressed by the Roman pontiffs
of the period. The Schola cantorum in Rome also took great pains to
send skilled cantors to the different countries of Europe, so that they
could teach the liturgical melodies. In this matter one of the most
favoured nations was England, and St. Gregory, when sending St.
Augustine and his thirty-nine companions to this country in 596, made
use of the missionaries to bring in the Roman liturgy and chant. The
musical tradition of the Church in England can be followed up for
some decades after the death of the Pontiff who had reformed it: and
in 630 Canterbury already had a flourishing Gregorian school.
The arrival of John, the Precentor of St. Peter's, in England was
an epoch-making event for the artistic tradition of this country. With
the permission of Pope Agatho he assisted at a national council, and
stayed for two years, teaching the chant in different parts of the
country; after which he retired to the monastery of Wearmouth, to
which clerics and monks went 'ad audiendum eum, qui cantandi
2
erant periti' (to hear him, they themselves being versed in the chant).
Bede speaks of two English singers who had been instructed by
disciples of St. Gregory: the date of one of them, the deacon James,
is given as 625. By the Council of Cloveshoe (747) all the churches
under its jurisdiction were obliged to sing plainchant in accordance
with the antiphoner received from Rome. Egbert, archbishop of
York (732-66), mentions the Antiphoner and Missal of St. Gregory,
brought to England by St. Augustine and his missionaries. The
Cathedral monastery of Worcester is famous for its classical tradition
of Roman chant, dating from the time wb^ the monastery of Corbie,
near Amiens, sent over two cantors to teach liturgical chant after the
1 Ibid, p. 371.
a Migne, Patrologia Latina, xcv. 199.