Cover illustration: Detail, Liber authenticus sacratissimae utriusque sexus christifidelium confraternitatis septem dolorum beatae mariae virginis nuncupatae, Archives of the City of Brussels/Archief van de Stad Brussel, Historical Archives/Historisch Archief Register 3413, fol. [2]r.

Devotion to the Virgin of Seven Sorrows flourished in the Low Countries in the late fifteenth century during a period of recovery from civil war, famine and economic instability. The Burgundian-Habsburg court took a special interest in this popular lay movement and, in an unusual move, sponsored a competition to generate a liturgy – a plainchant office and mass – for the growing devotion. This article identifies new sources for the text and music of the Seven Sorrows liturgy and ties them to the court’s competition. An examination of the surviving office and mass demonstrates the texts’ dependence on an earlier Marian celebration of the Compassion of the Virgin. The reworking of this older devotion reveals that the plainchant competition and the creation of the new Seven Sorrows liturgy were part of the court’s political agenda of restoring peace and unity to their territories.

Reviews 63 chapels, each of which is examined individually. These are followed by an examination of the main altar, the cupola, and the parish hall. Chapter five looks at the artistic and cultural value of the decorative stonework and painting in the church while simultaneously contextualising its religious iconography and ornamentation within the larger framework of church decoration in Italy, thus moving the study beyond its local context. This volume is an excellent chronicle of the spiritual and secular history of the confraternity and its two churches. Though the study is largely focused on the modern period, it is a fine example of the wide-ranging impact a confraternity can have in shaping the cultural, social, and artistic identity of a city over time.

The devotion to the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin in the early sixteenth century has produced a treasury of music that has long interested musicologists. An illuminated choirbook, Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 215-16 (hereafter B-Br 215-16), contains plainchant, motets, and polyphonic masses, all of which celebrate the Feast of the Seven Sorrows.1 B-Br 215-16 was copied in the workshop of Petrus Alamire, a scriptorium that produced numerous illuminated music manuscripts, many of them for the Burgundian-Habsburg court.2 The plainchant of B-Br 215-16 is in fact tied to a competition organized by the court under the direction of Philip the Fair.

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