<i>Cantiones sacrae</i>: the history of consept
The authors examine the history of the concept of cantiones sacrae (“sacred chants”), often found on the title pages of the partbooks in the XVI century, as well as the authentic meaning of the term. The study of the musical sources of that time allows us to conclude that sacred chants, on the one hand, were understood as motets, and on the other hand, this concept did not refer to a specific musical genre, but to a corpus of various compositions written not only in spiritual, but also on secular texts. Moreover, other variants of names were used in Renaissance partbooks of vocal compositions.