Guillaume Du Fay’s Moribus et genere/Virgo est electus and Burgundian devotion to the virginal Evangelist

Guillaume Du Fay’s motet Moribus et genere/Virgo est, transmitted uniquely in ModB, venerates St John the Evangelist as a virginal visionary and benefactor of the city of Dijon. Yet despite the specificity of these hagiographic and locational references, the language and symbolism of the poetry has not yet been fully deciphered and the circumstances of the motet’s performance remain elusive. Compounding perceived linguistic problems is the fact that the plainchant tenor, the text and melody of which quote the first phrase of the Matins responsory Virgo est electus a Domino from the office of St John, has previously been identified not in Dijon but in the liturgy of Cambrai. This locational discrepancy has generated conflicting hypotheses about the motet’s intended function and destination: for the Burgundian Sainte-Chapelle in Dijon (De Van, Besseler, and Lütteken); for the entry of the newly consecrated bishop Jean de Bourgogne into Cambrai (Fallows, Haggh-Huglo, and Holford­Strevens); or, most recently, as a mobile work conceived by Du Fay early in his residence at the cathedral of Cambrai but performed during Philip the Good’s 1441 Christmas visit to Dijon, placing the motet in the company of polyphonic masses that Du Fay composed for the Burgundian court (Planchart). Building on Planchart’s theory of mobility, I situate the motet’s cantus firmus within the broader circulation of chants for the Evangelist and examine a wider array of material evidence of St John’s cult in Dijon than has hitherto been considered. Drawing from varied primary sources—the chants and readings of the office for St John preserved in an antiphoner and breviary from Cambrai, rubrics in an ordinal for the Sainte-Chapelle in Dijon, archival documents detailing the circumstances of the chapel’s establishment and subsequent foundations by Philip the Good, widely-known hagiographic narratives—as well as church décor and objects, I propose a more nuanced interpretation of the motet’s meaning and argue for the primacy of Dijon as the locus for its ongoing performance. From this re-examination, Du Fay’s Moribus et genere emerges as a richly intricate paraliturgical work, illuminated by the interplay of mobility and materiality.