Mass and Propers of St. Maurice for the Savoyard Court (Dufay)
Missa Se la face ay pale cum Propriis Sancti Mauritii
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.
Our renderingLord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
What it is
Dufay composed this Mass in the early 1450s for Duke Louis of Savoy, his most assiduous patron, during the third of his extended periods of residence at the Savoyard court (1452–1458). The accompanying Propers, preserved in Trent MS 88, honor St. Maurice — the soldier-martyr patron of Savoy and of the Order of St. Maurice founded at Ripaille in 1434 — forming a single liturgical unit designed for the feast of that Order. The work represents the summit of 15th-century cyclic Mass composition and the close integration of dynastic identity, chivalric order, and sacred music at a European court. Dufay drew the cantus firmus from his own secular song, a technique that paradoxically deepened rather than diminished the work's liturgical gravity.
Why it still matters
This Mass is regularly performed and recorded by early music ensembles; the Latin Mass Ordinary texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) it sets are identical to those still sung at every Catholic Mass, making the work fully accessible for prayerful listening alongside the Roman Missal.
Kept alongside
Hours of Charlotte of Savoy
Heures de Charlotte de Savoie (Horae ad usum Parisiensem)
This Parisian-use book of hours (Morgan Library MS M.1004) bears the added arms of King Louis XI of France and Charlotte of Savoy, his queen consort, confirming Valois royal ownership; Charlotte (d. 1483) was also the documented owner of Gerson's Montagne de Contemplation. The manuscript contains a full Paris-use devotional cycle: calendar, Gospel sequences, Obsecro te, O intemerata, Hours of the Virgin, Psalter of Jerome, Penitential Psalms, litany, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Dead, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, Seven Requests of Our Lord, and masses for major feasts. As a single royal commission subsequently kept within the immediate royal family, it never entered the commercial book trade. Its textual richness — combining the standard offices with the rarer Fifteen Joys and Seven Requests — makes it one of the more devotionally complete manuscripts in the Valois corpus.
Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis of Maria Antonietta of Savoy
Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis
An Italian manuscript Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary produced in the second half of the 15th century, attributed to the Flemish illuminator Willem Vrelant by multiple facsimile and art-historical sources. Acquired in 1764 by Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy from the ecclesiastic Sigismond Touttemps, it was subsequently used by his daughter-in-law Maria Antonietta (Maria Antonia Fernanda of Spain, wife of Victor Amadeus III), Queen of Sardinia-Piedmont. The manuscript features 13 full-page miniatures, 13 historiated initials, and 172 decorated initials, depicting scenes of the Annunciation and Lamentation. Now preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Torino—Museo dell'Archivio di Corte (inv. Imago JB.II.34), it remained in active Savoyard court use until the late 18th century.
Sforza Hours (Book of Hours of Bona of Savoy)
Ore di Bona Sforza
Commissioned around 1490 by Bona of Savoy (1449–c. 1503/1505), daughter of Duke Louis I of Savoy and widow of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, for her personal private devotion. Work ceased c. 1494 when Bona was excluded from Milanese power by Ludovico Sforza; the manuscript passed to Philibert II of Savoy and then, after his death in 1504, to his widow Margaret of Austria, who commissioned Gerard Horenbout to complete it c. 1517–1520. The manuscript contains the Hours of the Virgin, the Cross, and the Holy Spirit; the Seven Penitential Psalms; Office of the Dead; Gospel lessons; Passion narratives; and the Marian prayers Salve Regina, Obsecro Te, and O Intemerata. Now held at the British Library (Add. MS 34294), it is one of the supreme examples of Lombard and Flemish book illumination.