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A Motet by Constanzo Festa for the Coronation of Charles V

Although Albert Seay has previously suggested that Costanzo Festa’s motet Ecce advenit dominator may have been written for the coronation of Pope Clement VII, the actual function and use of the work has remained obscure. Its cantus firmus— Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat —comes from the song of homage of the Laudes regiae , a firm component of the liturgy for the coronation of an emperor until the high Middle Ages. Furthermore, because the principal text of Festa’s motet begins with the Introit text from the feast of the Epiphany—the mass Proper that had been sung at the coronation of emperors in the Aachen cathedral since the thirteenth century—the piece could scarcely have been written for any context other than an emperor’s coronation. An appropriately corresponding event would have been the crowning of Charles V in Bologna in 1530, at which Costanzo Festa himself was present as a papal singer. Furthermore, the fragmentarily surviving motet Coronat pontifex by the imperial chapel master Adrien Thiebault—who was also doubtless in Bologna at the coronation—corresponds textually to that of Festa, so that a complementary conception of the two compositions could be considered. Even though the surviving coronation ceremonial does not mention the use of polyphony at the coronation ceremony, the report of an observer to the event states that the singers sang several prayers between the actual crowning and the Laudes regiae, testimony that raises the possibility of the performance of the motets by Festa and Thiebault. Insofar as Festa’s Ecce advenit dominator was actually sung at this central moment of the coronation, it would have supplemented the liturgy in a highly symbolic way: The concept allied with the direct homage of the emperor to Christ without the pope as middleman was eliminated by Innocent III in order to place the papacy over the emperor in the theological hierarchy. The indirect reintroduction of this concept through Festa’s motet would have brought Charles V much