The Beaupre Antiphoner: Liturgy, Community, and Continuity (1290-1795)

In 1290, members of the de Viane family donated a six-volume set of large, deluxe liturgical manuscripts to the Cistercian nuns of Beaupré in Grimminge, East Flanders now known as the Beaupré Antiphoner (Walters Art Museum, Walters Ms. 759-762). The nuns used, extensively revised, and supplemented the antiphoner for the next five hundred years. Their alterations are notable because the original forms of the chant copied into the manuscript were the standardized, authoritative, Cistercian forms. By changing them, the nuns bucked the authority of the order and a central pillar of its monastic identity.

Evidence from the Royal Library of Belgium suggests that the nuns of Beaupré may not have acted alone. In the late fifteenth century, Beaupré entered into an informal confraternity with the Benedictine nuns of Ghislenghien and two other abbeys of women. Although the nuns of Ghislenghien remained Benedictines, they adopted the Cistercian liturgy of Beaupré between 1500 and 1650 at which time the abbot of Saint-Denis en Brocqueroie intervened and forced the nuns of Ghislenghien to readopt Benedictine use. The Ghislenghien Antiphoner includes the same original Cistercian chant forms with similar erasures and edits as the Beaupré Antiphoner. The parallels suggest that Beaupré’s influence on Ghislenghien’s liturgy was not a discrete event, but an ongoing exchange. If so, the circulation of liturgical and musical theoretical ideas among these nuns opens a new and previously unknown sphere of learning and sustained critical engagement among religious women outside of male mediation.