MUSIC, MEDITATION, AND MARTYRDOM IN A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH SEMINARY.

Literary responses to the martyrdom of English Catholic clergy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England have attracted much attention from scholars in recent years. Musical studies of English Catholic meditations on martyrdom have usually followed on from these: William Byrd's so-called scaffold motets and two motets of unknown origin in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Th. b.2, a Catholic encyclopedia (once thought to have been compiled by Thomas Tresham) are reputed to be musical settings of these priests' last utterances. Given the number of priests who are reported to have sung music either after being sentenced to death or at their execution, however, it would appear that music was used in English Catholic seminaries to help intending martyrs to construct their identity as much as it was used by the laity to venerate them. This study considers the musical practices of the English College at Valladolid during the seventeenth century in the context of the practices surrounding the veneration of 'La Vulnerata', a statue of the Virgin Mary desecrated and defaced by English and Dutch troops when they sacked the Spanish port of Cadiz in 1596. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]