Johannes Pullois was probably born in Pulle, a village in the Kempen region near Antwerp. From 1443 to 1447, Pullois was a singer and then the singing master at the Church of Our Lady, where his colleagues included Johannes Ockeghem. He applied in vain for a job at the Burgundian court chapel, but he had more success at the papal music chapel in the Vatican: from December 1447 until August 1468, he served under no fewer than four popes (Nicholas V, Callixtus II, Pius II and Paul II). During his stay in Rome, he received several benefices from the dioceses of Cambrai and Utrecht. Pullois returned to Antwerp in 1468 and worked at the Church of Our Lady for another ten years.

Like Ockeghem, Pullois experimented in the 1440s with the new principle of the cyclic mass, in which the same thematic material recurs in the different parts of the mass. The principle was already established in English music. Did Pullois have access to the same English sources that inspired Ockeghem to compose his Missa Caput? Motets and chansons by Pullois have also been preserved, along with the oldest known polyphonic songs in Dutch. His work was also distributed in Italy, and much of Pullois’ work is now found in Italian manuscripts. Incidentally, the Christmas motet Flos de spina is also included in a Czech source. Instrumental adaptations of two chansons (Pour toutes fleurs / Sutoutes and De ma dame / De ma dame) are included in the German Buxheimer Orgelbuch. The ballad La bonté du Saint-Esperit was written in honour of one of the popes under whom Pullois served.

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