Motetta brevia de tempore

Marcus Teller, son of Hendrick Teller and Cornelia Janssen, was baptized as ‘marcus henrici teelder’ on 17 December 1682 in St. Nicholas in Maastricht. The family name of Teller also appears in the archives as Tellers, Teelder, Teelers, Telders, or Tellder. 

The family must have been reasonably well-to-do, as father Hendrick Teller acquired a stately house in the Grote Looierstraat in 1708. Perhaps Marcus was a choirboy at the Basilica of Our Lady and received his education at the Jesuit school, but Maastricht’s archives tell us nothing. 

 We do know that on 29 August 1705 Marcus Teller, ‘Traiectensis’ (of Maastricht), enrolled at the faculty of the ‘artes’ at the university of Leuven. He was one of the ‘porcenses’, meaning that he resided in a so-called pedagogy by the name of ‘The Pig’, a house in which students lived and studied. The faculty of the ‘artes’ had four such pedagogies. Students completed these before being admitted to the higher faculties such as law, medicine and theology.