“Exemplary ‘I’: Individuality and scripted role in devout song and prayer”

In his treatise De libris teutonicalibus, Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen defends the use of the
vernacular (as opposed to Latin) in texts intended for devotional practices by the laity.
He explains why and under what circumstances such texts are to be not only permitted,
but even recommended. He closes the treatise with a strong case for prayers and psalms
in the vernacular: if the believer is able to understand the words, his personal devotion
will be roused. For that reason the use of the vernacular is beneficial.
From this passage it can be inferred that according to Zerbolt, prayers and psalms
were very similar in the way they should be used by the individual believer, and in the
function they could have in religious practise. This is an interesting position, particularly
because there is little explicit reflection on the use of song in the writings of the Devotio
moderna, while at the same time hundreds of vernacular songs from this religious
movement have come down to us.
Hugh of St Victor’s De modo orandi informed the doctrine of prayer of the Devotio
moderna. He highlights another aspect of the relation between a Psalm or prayer and the
individual believer: the problem of the possible incongruity of the affects expressed in
the Psalm and the feelings of the person actually praying them, as well as the implications
of such incongruity for the efficacy of the prayer.
In our paper we take these treatises by Zerbolt and Hugh as a point of departure for
an analysis of the function of the first person singular in devout song. Both in songs and
in prayers the ‘I’ persona is exemplary. Each individual believer takes on the role of the
‘I’ while singing or praying. Thus the individual can construct and express an actual or
aspired self in performance by re-enacting the articulated expression of devotion. We
expect that songs and prayer have much more in common than we usually presume.