The discovery of the entire textual repertory of Jerusalem chant means that the history of this chant tradition can be traced from its origins in the fourth century to its decline in the twelfth. Testimonies of the tradition from Jerusalem survive in Greek texts which were translated into Georgian when the church of Georgia adopted the rite of Jerusalem as its own. Critical editions of these translations, made from tenth-century manuscripts, have recently been published. These translations show that the Jerusalem chant repertory had a significant influence on later medieval chant repertories in Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Latin. Furthermore, when texts from the original Jerusalem tradition are borrowed by other traditions, they tend to be set to melodies that are consistent with the modal assignments and neumes of the Georgian sources. This suggests that the features these melodies share do go back in some way to the lost melodies that were once sung in Jerusalem itself.

Index Classifications: Monophony to 1300

Contributed by: Elizabeth Stoner