During the 15th century, the area in which the music was copied was the southernmost part of the Holy Roman Empire, which during this era had an extensive musical establishment. Emperor Frederick III's cousin Sigismund, who was Duke of the Tyrol, had a large and sophisticated musical chapel at Innsbruck. The area around the Brenner Pass, including Innsbruck on the north and Trent on the south, was a crossroads through which many musicians traveling between Italy and the musically rich Low Countries would be expected to pass. It is reasonable to suppose that Trent, as a central location and a commercial center on a major trade and travel route, was a central musical repository as well. The Codices may have been the principal anthology of all the polyphonic music sung in all the chapels and courts in the Habsburg domains of northern Italy and southern Germany in the mid-15th century.