Anima Christi Chant Origins?
  • frlukewetzel
    Posts: 8
    GregoBase has five different Latin chants for the Anima Christi. Does anyone known when people started setting that prayer to chant and for what purpose? I have not been successful finding anything out about it.

    https://gregobase.selapa.net/incipit.php?letter=Anima Christi

    Thank you,

    Luke+
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    I don't find it listed in the "Cantus" index of medieval chant manuscripts, and that's not surprising, considering that it is not a text for the Mass or the Office, and appears to have been composed relatively late, around the mid-1300s. To answer this question will probably require looking for sources for the various melodies.

    For example, one of the melodies appears on this page:
    https://www.verbumgloriae.es/project/anima-christi-v/
    which cites a video from chant expert Giovanni Vianini, who shows a score on-screen:
    https://youtu.be/cHzp1R082Y0?t=1030
    and the score bears a notation that the melody appeared in a journal, "Sanctificatio Nostra", published in Milan in 1936.

  • frlukewetzel
    Posts: 8
    I ran into the same dead end at Cantus. The other four settings are on the Verbum Gloriae site too, but only cite the GregoBase in which no one showed their work (not that I should complain, having never contributed there). Nice work squinting at that video for a citation. I had to watch that section a couple times just to find it at 480p.

    I'm still curious about who was setting it, to what melodies, and why. My modest skills and non-existent languages peter out pretty quickly.
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