The song of the Erythrean Sibyl, describing the signs that would precede the second coming of Christ at the Day of Judgment. The most ancient version, in Greek, is found in Book VIII of the Oracula Sibilina, which dates from the dawn of Christianity. The lines were included by Eusebius of Caesarea (d c340) in his Oratio Constantini ad Sanctorum Coetum, and a century later they reappeared in St Augustine's De civitate Dei, translated into Latin from Greek and reduced from 34 hexameters to 27, a number symbolizing the Trinity. The next link in the transmission of the Sibylline verses is the Sermo de Symbolo, attributed to St Augustine during the Middle Ages but now to Quodvultus, Bishop of Carthage from 437 to 453. It is not known when or where the lines were set to music, nor when the pseudo-Augustinian sermon, which adds the evidence of 12 prophets and gentiles to that of the Sibyl on the coming of the Messiah, entered the liturgy, but this was an important factor in its diffusion. The earliest appearance of the lines in the form of a musical composition is in a miscellaneous 9th- or early 10th-century codex of St Martial de Limoges (F-Pn lat.1154), with a refrain consisting of the first line, ‘Iudicii signum: tellus sudore madescet’ (‘Sign of judgment: the earth grows wet with sweat’), alternating with 13 couplets formed by grouping the Sibylline lines in pairs. From the 12th century, in a significant number of French, Spanish and Italian monasteries, the pseudo-Augustinian sermon, with the verses read or sung, constituted the sixth or ninth Lesson for Matins on Christmas Day, a practice which spread to some cathedrals in the following century.
Some 50 versions of the Song of the Sibyl with the Latin verses are currently known, mainly in lectionaries, homiliaries and breviaries from the 10th to the 15th century. Most of these come from Spain (26) and the others from France (14) and Italy (7). No two versions are completely identical but the chant remains relatively stable in them all. The same applies to the six existing versions of the verses translated and adapted into Catalan, to the two in Spanish and to the one in Gallego-Portuguese, Madre de Deus, a Cantiga de Santa Maria of Alfonso el Sabio in imitation of the Sibyl's song. Seven polyphonic settings of the refrain exist in Spanish sources, one with the text in Latin, two in Catalan (Al jorn del Judici) by Bartolomé Cárceres and Alonso, and four in Spanish (Juicio fuerte), of which one is by Alonso de Córdoba, one by Juan de Triana and one by Cristóbal de Morales.
Except for that of Alfonso el Sabio, the vernacular versions date from the 15th and 16th centuries. It is known that in many places in the Iberian peninsula the Song of the Sibyl was dramatized, sometimes as part of the Ordo prophetarum, coinciding with the adoption of the vernacular. The leading role was usually taken by a boy dressed as a pythoness, and in some places, such as Toledo Cathedral, he was accompanied by two acolytes bearing swords and by two others with candles; the Sibyl sang the verses and a choir responded with the refrain. The introduction of the new Roman breviary in 1568, which omitted the reading of the Sermo de symbolo, led to the abolition of the Song of the Sibyl, but it continued to be used in some religious institutions as a supplement to Matins on Christmas Day. It is still sung in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca and the Majorcan monastery of Lluc, although both the Catalan text and the chant have suffered profound changes with the passage of time.
F.A. Barbieri: ‘El Canto de la Sibila’, Ilustración musical hispano-americana, i (1887–8), 50–51
F. Pedrell: ‘Antiguo canto de la Sibila’, La ilustración moderna, i (1892), 923–5
H. Anglés: ‘El Cant de la Sibilla’, Vida Cristiana, v (1917), 65–72
F. Pujol: El Cant de la Sibilla (Barcelona, 1918)
F. Raugel: ‘Le Chant de la Sibylle d'après un manuscrit du XIIe siècle conservé aux Archives de l'Hérault’, Congrès d'histoire de l'art: Paris, 1921, 774–83
H. Anglés: La música a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (Barcelona, 1935/R)
J.E. Gillet: ‘The Memorias of Felipe Fernández Vallejo and the History of Early Spanish Drama’, Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York, 1940), 264–80
R. Rodriguez: ‘El Canto de la Sibila en la Catedral de León’, Archivos Leoneses, i (1947), 9–29
P. Aebischer: ‘Le Cant de la Sibilla en la cathédrale d'Alguero la veillée de Noël’, Estudis Romànics, ii (1949–50), 171–82
G. Munar: La Sibila en Mallorca (Palma, 1950)
S. Corbin: ‘Le Cantus Sibyllae: origine et premiers textes’, RdM, xxxi (1952), 1–10
L. Pérez: Sa Sibilla en la Noche de Navidad (Palma, 1955)
M. Sanchis: El Cant de la Sibilla: antiga cerimònia nadalenca (Valencia, 1956)
R.B. Donovan: The Liturgical Drama in Medieval Spain (Toronto, 1958)
J. Baucells: ‘El cant de la Sibilla a la catedral de Barcelona’, Revista catalana de teologia, vi/1 (1981), 175–208
N. Sevestre: ‘La tradition mélodique du Cantus sibyllae’, Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologie, xx (1981), 269–83
A. Zaldivar: ‘El Canto de la Sibila: una aportación oscense al drama litúrgico medieval’, Signos: arte y cultura en el alto Aragón medieval (Huesca, 1993), 190–95 [exhibition catalogue]
M.C. Gómez: El Canto de la Sibila I. León y Castilla II. Cataluña y Baleares (Madrid, 1996–7)
For further bibliography see Medieval drama.
MARICARMEN GÓMEZ