“Comfort of the imprisoned”: A Saint Louis motet, restored

Composer Jean Richafort (born ca. 1480) evidently had close ties to the French royal court despite never appearing in known chapel records. The posthumously published partbooks of Joannis Richafort modulorum quatuor quinque & sex vocum, liber primus (1556, Le Roy & Ballard) contain an singular witness to that relationship: a four-voice motet praying to the thirteenth-century French saint king, Saint Louis, on behalf of Louis XII (r. 1498–1515). Yet Consolator captivorum has received only passing attention, owing perhaps to its fragmentary status, as the tenor voice of the 1556 collection is missing.

With its tenor voice newly reconstructed, Consolator captivorum emerges as an essential witness to our understanding of how devotional sound, hagiography, and politics interfaced in the early sixteenth century. The motet likely dates to ca. 1512, when Louis XII’s health, campaigns, and dynastic hopes were under strain and when Richafort first appears under French royal patronage, all set against rising French anti-papal sentiment during the Italian Wars. In this light, Richafort’s setting reads as a potent mediation of sovereign lineage and a response to crisis, invoking in polyphony the devotional image of Saint Louis “relinquishing the royal scepter.” Musically, the incessant and interlaced opening pleas to Saint Louis, a sudden moment of collective prayer, descending cascades from validum Ludovicum (“the powerful Louis”), and the florid rush over regale sceptrum sustain rhetorical variety and a smoldering intensity throughout the work.

While liturgies for Saint Louis had long been codified, as a historical figure he had come under criticism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Especially during the Hundred Years war, his cult was caught in competing political claims and polemics portraying him as having bankrupted France through crusades, fiscal mismanagement, and ransom payments. Around 1500, Louis XII’s court launched a program to rehabilitate his forebear and namesake, mobilizing official defenses of the saint-king from historian Louis Le Blanc and literary figures such as Claude de Seyssel and Pierre Gringore. This effort paired historical argument with hagiographic works designed to reaffirm Saint Louis as the model and foundation of a distinctively French Christian kingship. This context strongly implicates, and clarifies the spirit of, Consolator captivorum.

This reconstructed Consolator captivorum was premiered in May 2025 at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) by the ensemble Cut Circle, paired with Josquin des Prez’s Factum est autem, another French court genealogy motet. In collaboration with the VALSOUNDS project, the performance was heard in a historical acoustical model of the chambre du roi in the donjon of Vincennes, adapted into CCRMA’s CAVIAR system to create a virtual auditory environment evocative of those in which Louis XII is documented at prayer with his chapel.

Text and translation

Prima pars
Consolator captivorum Ludovice piissime Francorum atque Britonum.
Gloria nos respice omnium ad te clamantium vota pie suscipe
ut possimus una tecum sedes sanctas scandere.

Secunda pars
Modo in Gallis regnantem validum Ludovicum
facias diu viventem victoremque hostium.
Aeternum possides regnum ubi semper frueris
relinquens regale sceptrum gaudiis sempiternis.
Amen.  

O Louis, comfort of the imprisoned, most pious of the French and Bretons: look upon us in glory. Receive mercifully the prayers of all those who cry out to you, that we may ascend as one with you to the sacred thrones.


Grant that the powerful Louis, now reigning in Gaul, may live long and be victorious over his enemies.
You possess an eternal dominion, where you will forever delight, relinquishing the royal scepter, in everlasting joys.
Amen.

Edited, tenor completion, and translation by Simon Frisch