Painted altarpieces in the fifteenth century, though placed directly on a church's altar table, often contain a surprising array of secular images and objects; in a like manner, Josquin's early four-part Mass N'aray je jamais borrows a secular French love song (by Robert Morton) as a unifying device. In each of the five movements of this Mass, the tenor voice sings the liturgical text to the melody of the love song. Already by the middle of the century, this was becoming a common practice in the polyphonic settings of the mass popular in the more prestigious cathedrals and noble chapels of Western Europe. But the Missa di dadi (Mass of the dice) of Josquin's includes a second—and more blatantly "secular"— element in its structure: the first printed edition (1514) puts images of pairs of dice over the music at sectional breaks! The dice are superficially related to the proportional transformations of the cantus firmus. Kyrie I and II, where the cantus firmus is sung twice as slow as the original love song, both are marked with dice showing a "two" and a "one." The two halves of the Gloria movement, with 4:1 and 8:1 augmentation respectively, both show dice of "four" and "one;" the Credo has "six" and "one" for its dice throws, and 6:1 augmentation. But the very last dice open the Sanctus, a "five" and "one." In the rules of many medieval gambling games, a total of six or twelve was an automatic victory—"game over." Josquin, then, overwrites the secular image of gambling onto the whole worship service of the Mass, until the Sanctus, the most holy moment when the priest elevates the Host just prior to the Communion. For a member of a late medieval congregation, this was indeed the moment of victory. Josquin also imbues this "throw" of the dice with numerological symbolism: it is the seventh pair of dice, and its five spots may commemorate the five wounds of Christ. Furthermore, after this, the cantus firmus changes. For the first three and a half movements, the tenor has borrowed only the first line of the love song, which says, "Won't I ever have something better?" But after the Sanctus breakthrough, Josquin consummates the moment by quoting the song in its entirety. There to the end, the lover in the chanson and the singers in the choir both may sing "I am yours, and will remain so." People living in an age of the "separation of church and state" often find such a mingling of sacred and secular difficult to comprehend. But for the educated musicians of Josquin's time, and their noble patrons, even the lyrics of a popular song and the image of gambling could add a richness to the symbolism of a worship service.

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