Considerations on the Necessity of Restoring the Chant of the Church of Rome in All Churches of the Empire

they preferred, and they placed the doctrine of Saint Gregory before their rusticity: and when the altercation did not end, the most pious Lord King Charles said to his Cantors: Tell us openly which is the purest, and which is better, either the living fountain, or its rivulets running far away? They all answered together, the fountain, as the head and the origin, to be purer; but its rivulets, the further they receded from the fountain, the more turbulent they were and corrupted by filth and impurities; and the Lord King Charles said: Return you to the fountain of Saint Gregory, because you have manifestly corrupted the ecclesiastical chant. Soon the Lord King Charles asked Pope Adrian for Cantors who would correct the Chant in France. And he gave him Theodore and Benedict, most learned Cantors who had been taught by Saint Gregory, and he bestowed the Antiphonaries of Saint Gregory, which he himself had marked with Roman notation: but the Lord

great beasts. As this altercation would not end, the very pious King Charles said to his Cantors: Declare to us which water is the purest and the best, that which one takes from the living source of a fountain, or that of the trickles that flow from it only from very far away. They all said that the water of the source was the purest, and that of the trickles was all the more altered and dirty, the further it came from. "Go back, then," continued the Lord-King Charles, "to the source of St. Gregory, whose Chant you have obviously corrupted." Then the Lord-King Charles asked Pope Adrian for Cantors to correct the French Chant: and the Pope gave him Theodore and Benedict, two very learned Cantors, instructed by St. Gregory himself; he also gave him Antiphonaries of St. Gregory which he had noted himself in Roman notation. Of these two Cantors, the Lord-King Charles, upon returning to France, sent one to Metz and the other