The Netherlanders have been severely reproached for their frequent use of non-ecclesiastical subjects for their church compositions, and at first thought such a practice would seem to be entirely indefensible and reprehensible. The censure was undoubtedly merited when the secular words accompanied the folk-melodies in their forced journeys into such sacred regions. It was equally merited in the early periods when the meagre art of the discanters possessed so few resources either to conceal the identity of the secular tune or to expunge its secularity by rhythmic alterations. The case was quite different, however, with the complicated polyphonic structures into which the later masters of the ‘new art’ (_ars nova_) injected the secular melodies. With the early discanters ‘the _tenor_ (the voice that carried the subject) formed the foundation of the arches, now it became one of the arches which, united in harmonious structure, formed the bridge.’[18] With the contrapuntists the subject itself became more plastic and submitted to whatever rhythmic changes were desirable in the working out of their contrapuntal purposes; each part became entirely independent in its melodic and rhythmic movement. In the complex interweavings of voice-parts the identity of the subject itself became practically lost. The ear could no longer identify it in performance as a complete melody, though the eye could recognize it on the printed page. In such a case the secularity of its origin became a largely negligible element, swallowed up by the purely ecclesiastical manner in which the subject was handled. In an era when it was not the custom for composers to invent their own subjects, this practice of using merely the melodies of secular songs for church compositions was no more censurable than the later employment of folk-songs as the basis of many of the splendid chorales of the German Protestant movement. Moreover, it must be borne in mind, in justice to the Netherlanders, that during this whole period there were no essential differences of style or treatment to distinguish secular from sacred compositions.