Note 62 — Chapter V · THE AGE OF PLAIN-SONG

See ‘History of Irish Music,’ W. H. Grattan Flood, Dublin, 1906. Notker was the author of the famous Antiphona de Morte, beginning Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death), which was quickly adopted as a funeral anthem throughout Europe. Miraculous effects were attributed to it, and its use was so much abused that the council of Cologne (1316) forbade anybody to sing it who was not specially authorized by a bishop.