Trent only signed the death certificate

Claim (verbatim)

Everyone knows the headline: the Analecta Hymnica prints something on the order of 4,500 medieval sequences, and the Tridentine Missal of 1570 kept four (a fifth, the Stabat Mater, was admitted in 1727). But the famous number hides the real mechanism, which is that the collapse was a steep regional gradient centuries before Trent ratified it. The sequence was a living, proliferating genre in the German, central-European, and English (Sarum) uses, where a festal missal might carry dozens of proper sequences; it had already withered in the Roman-curial books, because the thirteenth-century Franciscan-curial plenary missal - the template that Trent would universalize - had itself retained almost none. Trent did not cut 4,500 sequences to four; it imposed a curial book that had already made the cut, and the apparent guillotine of 1570 is really the export of a long-standing regional minimum. The mechanism is institutional templating, not sudden reform. Prediction restated: within the Analecta Hymnica sequence corpus, sequences assigned to German, central-European, and insular uses outnumber those assignable to Roman-curial use by at least ten to one, and a typical late-medieval regional festal missal carried at least thirty proper sequences where the contemporary curial missal carried under five.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Prediction: in the Analecta Hymnica sequence volumes, the number of sequences whose source apparatus assigns them to German, central-European, or insular (Sarum and related) uses exceeds the number assignable to Roman-curial use by at least a factor of 10, and the median count of proper sequences in a sampled late-medieval regional festal missal is at least 30 against under 5 in the contemporary Roman-curial missal (primary clause: the at-least-10x regional-over-curial sequence share in Analecta Hymnica; the verdict follows it). Use is read from the edition's source sigla; coverage guard: unassignable sequences are excluded from both sides, and the test voids if use can be assigned for fewer than 500 sequences.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill (partly built): the Analecta Hymnica sequence volumes with their manuscript-and-print source apparatus, counting sequences by liturgical use and comparing per-missal sequence counts curial versus regional; the operation is a regional-gradient census of the sequence corpus, distinct from the familiar post-Trent survivor count.

Novelty / leakage triage

already answered in the literature

Every element of the primary clause is stated in print: the Analecta Hymnica sequence corpus of roughly 4,500 against the four Tridentine survivors (with the Stabat Mater admitted 1727) is the textbook headline, and the mechanism the conjecture presents as hidden - that the 1570 book universalized a thirteenth-century Franciscan-curial missal which had already excluded the sequence riches - is precisely the published thesis of van Dijk and Walker on the origins of the modern Roman liturgy. Since the curial repertory was a single-digit handful while the AH corpus is thousands of sequences drawn overwhelmingly from German, central-European, and insular sources, the 10x regional-over-curial share is guaranteed by orders of magnitude; this is the flagged post-Trent sequence-collapse leak with its standard scholarly correction already attached.

• G.M. Dreves, C. Blume & H.M. Bannister (eds.), Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 55 vols (Leipzig, 1886-1922), the sequence volumes
• S.J.P. van Dijk & J. Hazelden Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy (London, 1960)
• D. Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford, 1993), sequence chapter

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.