Introduction and edition by Barbara Haggh-Huglo. Format: Musical Score.
This volume includes the first critical edition of the earliest of three medieval proper offices (historiae) to survive for St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368), bishop and oldest Western doctor of the Church, defender of the Trinity, prolific theologian, and hymnodist (feast 13 January). The office, edited from Paris, BnF, lat. 16309, one of only four known sources with notation, was probably composed for the church that is now St. Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers, where the saint’s relics have been kept. The lengthy introduction, in English and French, includes discussions of Hilary’s life, works, and cult, and of the sources and content of the three offices. Six supplements to the edition provide variants and chants from the other offices, and eight appendices represent the complex interrelationships between the monastic and secular versions of the earliest office, and the other chant for St. Hilary.