This second motet of the cycle Ave mundi domina is also transmitted only in Librone 1, ff. 127v–128r, and thus edited from it. Except for two little changes (‘virgo’ for mater in the Bassus in the first stanza, and ‘virgo’ for virga in the Altus in this same stanza) the copyist (Scribe A) was quite careful. He did use a number of phonetic variants typical of medieval Latin, for instance substituting c for t (when they are followed by an i), as in ‘spetiosa’ for speciosa or m for n (as in ‘senper’ for semper). In both cases the letters were perfectly equivalent for medieval Latin scribes. The omission of double consonants as well is typical for this period and can be found here in two instances: ‘Iese’ for Iesse and ‘ilibata’ for illibata.

The topic of this motet is again Marian devotion. The short text contains no narration whatsoever and consists of a first part (stanzas 1 and 2) in which Mary is addressed (as mother, descended from Jesse and thus of royal descent, and as untouched virgin and star of the sea) and a second part in which she is called upon as intercessor for sinners before God.

It is still rather unclear from which source Weerbeke drew the text for his motet. It is attested with minor changes in slightly older and contemporary sources, and in later sources as well. As motet text it is also used in a polyphonic setting for four voices in a fifteenth-century choirbook copied in Bruges but then brought to Lucca, where it was used in the cathedral (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, MS 238, f. 50r-v).^[1]

^[1] For mere information on this text see Agnese Pavanello, ‘Praying to Mary: Another Look at Gaspar van Weerbeke’s Marian Motetti Missales’, in Motet Cycles between Devotion and Liturgy, ed. Daniele V. Filippi and Agnese Pavanello, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta 7 (Basel: Schwabe, 2019), 339–80, at 350–51.