we are uncertain, of course about what the music of Jesus' time was like. However an interesting thing shows up in the record set used in Music History classes for many years called HAM (History of Music in Sound). In the examples of Jewish music, there is a cantor singing a Psalm 8 ("O Lord, Our Lord, How excellent is thy name in all the earth...). In the section on Plainsong there is an example of a Psalm 8 and it is unmistakably the same melody (no doubt filtered through a Roman ear). Food for thought. If anyone has access to HAM, check it out.

Another correspondence is the tonus perigrinus, which to this day is associated with In exitu Israel both in the Catholic Church and a variety of Jewish communities throughout the world, including an ancient and isolated community in Yemen.
(The Lutherans, on the other hand, associate it with the German Magnificat.)

What are 'Baxae and Altae'?
'draw the Mass out a whole hour longer than is proper' Wow, why did people stay? Was it just regarded as a concert?

The work of Suzanne Haik Vantoura is certainly interesting, here for an 8 minute talk on NPR. Obviously her work is no more definitive than that of Dom Guéranger.

IMO it’s reasonable to suppose that the historical Christ would have spoken Latin to some appreciable degree. Given an interest in “current affairs” I’d think it’s not unlikely that he’d have endeavored to learn something of the language of his people’s oppressor.

Felipe, I hope that you are not distinguishing the 'historical' Christ from some 'other' Christ. And by the way, He didn't have to study up on Latin. Being a Member of the Trinity has its perks, ya'know.

Although not a matter of Church doctrine, it is probable theological opinion that Christ's human mind had perfect infused human knowledge. Esteemed doctors of the Church, such as Augustine and Aquinas, have held the opinion that Christ's human mind always had perfect human knowledge by virtue of his being a divine person and the union of the divine and human natures hypostatically.

If that is the case, Christ would have known Latin, indeed all languages, and been able to write and speak any language fluently by virtue of infused knowledge. Yes, even Klingon. Even emoji.

Having perfect infused human knowledge in his human mind wouldn't diminish Christ's human nature in the least: it would be the perfection of human nature, which would be fitting for the New Adam as well as an incarnate divine person, the head of the Body of Christ.

Again, this is all theological speculation, not Church doctrine, but it's interesting to ponder and study.

A brain is a biological, physical organ but the intellect/mind is an immaterial reality and is the actual seat of cognition, not the brain. Human immaterial minds interact with their brains and, apart from infused knowledge, depend on sensory experience of the world filtered through the brain to inform their intellects. If Jesus had perfect infused human knowledge, his intellect would have known all things possible for a human being to know without having had to use sense experience to acquire that knowledge.

The Gospel of Luke affirms that the child Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and men (2:52) and the Church has dogmatically defined that Christ's humanity was fully, really, truly human in all respects.

If you want to read what Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote on this matter, look at the Summa Theologiae, Part III, Questions 9-12.

In summary, Aquinas argues that it was fitting that the human nature assumed by the Word should not be imperfect. But the human intellect is imperfect if it does not know all things it can know. Therefore for Christ's intellect (not his brain) to be perfect, it had to have known all things possible for a human to know via infused knowledge.

Your intelligent doubt and the Gospel of Luke imply that Jesus did acquire knowledge in some fashion because he was human, and Aquinas affirms that besides his perfect infused human knowledge, Jesus also acquired knowledge.

Though it seems contradictory to state that Jesus had perfect knowledge and also acquired knowledge, Aquinas gets around that by arguing that although infused perfect knowledge was present in Christ's human mind from the very beginning of the existence of his soul, such infused knowledge known abstractly is not (if I may be permitted to grossly simplify for the sake of brevity) the same as knowing how or when to apply or use that knowledge. This is stated in detail by Aquinas in ST III, Q9, A4 and in ST III, Q12, A2, in which he says that the human intellect has two habits: passive and active. The passive intellect would have been infused with perfect human knowledge; the active intellect would have formed knowledge to apply to concrete life situations as they arose in life experience (again a gross simplification for brevity). Christ wasn't following a computer program or algorithm robotically even though he had perfect knowledge: he genuinely, humanly, personally, authentically responded to people and events as he lived his life, and in that genuine human response he grew in knowledge by applying what he already knew perfectly in the abstract to his actual life from moment to moment.

I hope I haven't done Aquinas a disservice by simplifying things that way for brevity's sake.

To exemplify the distinction using the aforementioned question of Christ's knowledge and use of Latin: by virtue of infused perfect knowledge, Christ knew everything about Latin abstractly; he did not have to study Latin to learn the language. When he encountered someone who spoke Latin to him or to whom he wanted to speak in Latin, he formed (grew in) new applied knowledge (as opposed to abstract knowledge) in that moment about what specifically to say because it was an authentic human encounter, not a memorized script as if it were a play being acted on a stage.

I understand it as meaning 'human nature of Christ', which is as real as His devine nature.

The term 'historical Christ' is a Bultmann-ism. Careful when and how you use it!

'Psalm' and 'hymn' are pretty much synonymous in New Testament translations.

"loquentes vobismetipsis in psalmis, et hymnis, et canticis spiritualibus..."

"Speaking to one another in psalms, psalms, and psalms." [/purple]