Historiae of saints
- This involves monographic treatment of the proprium de sanctis of individual Offices.
- Certain Office cycles may prove particularly interesting when large-scale reconstruction work on whole Office traditions, summaries of histories of sources and genres, or preparations are being made to publish certain sources. sanctis of individual Offices.
- Thin, condensed slices of the history of cantus planus may present and render conspicuous aspects which would remain hidden in a broader synthesis.
- Examination of the historiae of saints, which were seen initially as a research by-product, has developed into separate branch of the research.
- A fortunate conjunction took place in 1993 with the Historiae project in international plainchant research.
- So far three Hungarian volumes have appeared in the Historiae series of publications, two of them containing the Offices of Hungary’s two patron saints: St Stephen, King of Hungary, and St Demetrius of Thessaloniki.
The Department’s other main branch of research into the Divine Office, apart from exploration of all its traditions, concerns the hagiographic historiae of medieval Hungary and Central Europe. Its aims differ from those of the CAO‒ECE programme. In-depth analyses and monographic studies are done of the liturgical material for a sample of saints. The purpose is to trace the cult and the variant office cycles it produces, the forms in which its set of chants and melodies appear, and the routes by which they spread. This line of research has contributed for many years to the Historiae project coordinated by the Cantus Planus Study Group of the International Musicological Society.
