Three of the articles in this issue of Plainsong & Medieval Musicwere presented at a session devoted to medieval saints' officessponsored by the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society at the 1999International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. Two of thepapers (Caldwell, Hiley) are devoted to English saints, while a third(Hankeln) surveys offices, monastic and secular, of the sainted royalpatrons of the diocese of Bamberg, Henry and Kunigunde. ElizabethLeach's article on the four-voice balades of Guillaume de Machaut bringstogether considerations of transmission, fourteenth-century contrapuntaltheory, and performance practice.

Beginning with this issue of Plainsong & Medieval Music every articlewill be preceded by a short abstract. Brief identifications of theauthors, who will most likely be already known to readers in therelatively small field of medieval music research, will includetheir e-mail addresses.