BBC radio 4: Today Programme: Christmas Eve
Listen to the carol here (2:58)
image credit: © The Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge/English Heritage
Music lies at the heart of a major re-presentation of Battle Abbey, which explores the life of the medieval monastery. One of the pieces of music visitors to the abbey will hear is the newly discovered late medieval carol.
The carol was broadcast to the nation for the first time today (Christmas Eve) on the BBC Radio 4 programme.
The music was jotted down by a monk at the back of a prayer book from the abbey. The words were discovered by English Heritage historian Michael Carter.
The discovery led him to explore what it tells us about the monks’ lives at the end of the Middle Ages.
Musician Christopher Hodkinson, Director of the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, was given the challenging task of setting the carol to music.
Michael Carter said, “one of the great things about being an English Heritage historian is that you never know quite where your research will take you.
“I stumbled across it while I was examining a late medieval breviary (or prayer book) from Battle Abbey in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, looking for evidence of the spiritual life of the monastery. The breviary – the only liturgical book to survive from the monastery – dates to about 1500 and contains the texts for the services celebrated by the Battle monks throughout the year.
“Monks were great doodlers, and often filled the blank margins and endpages of liturgical books with annotations, jottings, even humorous drawings.
“This manuscript is no exception. Added to the blank leaves at the back are recipes for remedies to treat gastric complaints, a short poem about the deaths of three of Battle’s abbots, and then – most significantly of all – two versions of a carol.
“Although the carol was noted in the 1930s by Montague Rhodes (M.R.) James – who is best known today for his ghost stories but was a distinguished scholar of medieval manuscripts – the insights the carol provides about religious life at Battle Abbey have never been investigated before”.
The Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, is one of the best-known events in England’s history, when William of Normandy defeated the army of King Harold of England.
The battlefield owes its survival to William the Conqueror, who founded Battle Abbey on the exact spot where Harold died as ‘penance’ for the bloodshed of the Norman Conquest.
The abbey thrived as a Benedictine monastery for over 400 years,
The book is the only existing text of this kind from the East Sussex abbey, built on the site of the Battle of Hastings.
Visitors will be able to hear a recording of the song for the first time since the Reformation.
The carol “Be Mery” can be heard here in the closing credits to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001qh1
