One of the most theologically important and emotionally wrenching scenes of the entire bible is that depicting Jesus's unjust and torturous death. In their Cantiones, Tallis and Byrd reconfigure this story as a tragedy that focuses on the act of sacred judgment that occurs when, on the Cross, He grants eternal life in heaven to one thief and not the other. Rather than portraying Christ's death as a single moment, the composers make this event part of an expanded scene, retelling this somber tale not simply with one work but with the first four motets of the set – Salvator mundi (1), Absterge Domine (2), In manus tuas (3), and Emendemus in melius (4). They line up these works not only to form a storyline but also in a way that emphasizes the act of judgment and runs very close to Aristotle's ideas about successful tragic plots, as outlined in his Poetics.

When seen in the terms of an Aristotelian tragedy, Tallis and Byrd's four-song depiction of Christ at Calvary could almost serve as a model of its poetic kind. Aristotle's prescription that a good tragedy contains the imitation of a “single action” became controversial in the Renaissance, as writers accustomed or inclined to the multi-plotted Romance struggled to confine their stories in this way. In their set overall, Tallis and Byrd find ways, however, to draw basic acts of sacred judgment into a singular line of development by moving from the judgment of individuals (the two thieves) to that of a nation-like collection of those who predeceased Christ (at the Harrowing of Hell), to the entirety of humankind at the Second Coming. It is also the matter of judgment that gives this part of the tale such a tragic quality overall. Just as an oracular prophesy and curse in Oedipus Rex colors that play from the start, the most dreaded fate of eternal damnation looms almost mysteriously over Tallis and Byrd's whole scene, well before it is evoked, shockingly, in Byrd's gripping Emendemus in melius (4), as shown below.

Although it took some careful study and ingenuity on their parts to discover it, Tallis and Byrd did not need to invent a judgment scene at Calvary. Christ’s deeds involving these thieves, as Augustine of Hippo makes clear, are acts of sacred judgment.