Re-Imagining Jubal and the Art of Music: From Augustine and Isidore to Peter Comestor and Leonius of Paris

Abstract This paper considers the transformation of perception of the figure of Jubal as the inventor of the art of music brought about in the second half of the twelfth century by Peter Comestor in a passage within his Historia scholastica , a prose summary of biblical history, and the much expanded versification of this passage in the Historie veteris testamenti , by Master Leonius, active in Paris ca. 1150–1200. It examines how Comestor challenged the traditionally cautious patristic attitudes to worldly music making, perpetuated in the Glossa ordinaria , and implicit in hitherto unnoticed discussion of excessive “organum” by Peter the Chanter (d. 1197). It also observes that Leonius provides considerably more detail than Comestor about music, defining it as concordant discord, the phrase Guido of Arezzo uses of “organum.” This study contributes to the debate provoked by Craig Wright’s argument that Leonius (also known as Leonin or Leoninus) was both a poet and musician: a composer not just of “organa” but also of verse. It also examines the significance of the Metrologus , a commentary on Guido’s Micrologus , which begins with Comestor’s account of Jubal and emphasizes parallels between measure in verse and music.