Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Finding (and Losing) Johannes de Bosco

Abstract

The name Johannes de Bosco is listed frequently in late fourteenth-century papal records. Of these numerous individuals, some hold musicological interest. In existing scholarship, the idea pervades that one such de Bosco might have held a number of high-profile positions: familiar in the household of Cardinal Jean de Blauzac; singer in the papal chapel under Avignonese Popes Clement VII and Benedict XIII, possibly also a musician in the court of Louis II, Duke of Anjou; vicar and com- poser in the Sainte-Chapelle in Bourges; and he might have also been one or both of the composers only known as Bosquet and Pelisson. Although Giuliano Di Bacco has convincingly identified Johannes de Bosco alias Peliçon, possibly the composer Pelisson, as a different person, the other “Johannes de Bosco” personages remain largely conflated. In this article, I use papal records to revisit these candidates and demonstrate that the Johannes de Bosco who was a familiar of Jean de Blauzac is also a separate person who must now be distinguished from the other, more overtly musical Johannes de Boscos.