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Atelier doctoral : Outils et méthodes pour l’histoire des Églises entre Orient et Occident

The content and the ideological construction of the early pontifical manuscripts

Arthur Westwell

Résumé

This article addresses the earliest manuscripts of the ‘pontifical’ genre which are to be found in the Latin West from the ninth century. Pontificals contain the liturgical ceremonies peculiar to a bishop. Here are examined two distinct and particularly expressive manuscripts from France: eleventh-century London British Library Add. MS 15222 and ninth-century Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 227. Traditionally, liturgical studies has focused on the practical utility of these kinds of books, but the two examples here expand our understanding of what they might be designed to do. Each explains and explores its ritual texts, contextualises and justifies them and offers alternatives. Most dramatically, they link their rituals to the practices of the wider Church, particularly to Rome. Papal practice is transmitted and imitated in actively creative, not passively obedient, ways. This methodology is suggested as an essential element of the earlier pontifical manuscripts, that they allow readers to perceive liturgical usages in the broadest possible context. This is wholly in keeping with the priorities of liturgical scholarship from the Carolingian era, when these books first appear.

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Introduction

  • 1 Leroquais 1937; Rasmussen 1976; Gamber 1968 vol. II, p. 559-566; Kay 2007.
  • 2 Phrasing is used throughout Andrieu 1931-1961, e.g. vol. II 1948, p. 370 or vol. IV 1956 p. 164: “ (...)
  • 3 For example, in the 903 Passau library catalogue quoted by Leroquais vol.I 1937, p. iv, an identif (...)
  • 4 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I, 1965, p. 494-545; Challenged in Parkes 2015, p. 183-211; Parkes 2015a.
  • 5 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I 1965 p. 476-481, vol. II, p. 491: “les unes étaient des pontificaux encor (...)

1Origins for the book type known as the pontifical have been fixed by liturgical scholars to the turning of the ninth century, the age of Charlemagne. Almost immediately we find manuscripts across the Latin West to which the title is applied, and by the close of the Middle Ages the genre is ubiquitous and essential, as it is maintained in the Catholic tradition to this day.1 Put very simply, a pontifical is a book offering the rituals that are peculiar to a bishop, church dedication, ordination, episcopal blessings at Mass, and often several others. Naturally, liturgical scholars have attempted to explain how and why these first books came to be and to clarify their evolution into the modern form. However, it must be acknowledged that there is not yet a comprehensive explanation of the pontifical’s beginnings. Most manuscripts remain very meagrely studied, if at all. For one thing, the conventions of liturgical scholarship often assumed the existence of the modern “pontifical” as a historical inevitability. Thus, the earliest manuscripts were framed principally as ‘embryonic’, ‘primitive/rudimentary’ or ‘attempted’ pontificals.2 But these manuscripts are never called pontificals until the 13th century at the earliest, and it is difficult to see to what extent medieval scribes recognised a strict genre in them (rather than a practical or ideological necessity, perhaps).3 Scholars tended to focus attention on ‘official’ turning-points, over more diverse and incremental efforts. A highly influential example was the increasingly fraught editorial construction of the Pontifical Romano-Germanique, falsely ascribed to c. 950 St-Alban’s of Mainz.4 As here, editorial practices promoted the imagined archetype over the physical diversity of available manuscripts. Some scholars also assumed they could exclude certain manuscripts on the basis of their idea of what a pontifical ought to look like. For example, a pontifical had to be a manuscript for liturgical use, and not one for studying the liturgy. A manuscript was not a ‘true’ pontifical but something else, sometimes a collection didactique, if its material was too weighted to study, and not to practice, according to the judgement of the scholar.5 Yet this was simply not a recognised distinction to medieval compilers, since liturgical manuscripts of all kinds, and especially pontificals, teem with commentary, justification and meditation on the liturgy. Study and use co-exist quite happily in these manuscripts.

  • 6 Leroquais 1937 vol. I, p. xiv-xxviii; Bourque 1949-1952, vol. II, 1958, p. 511-519.
  • 7 E.g. the Sacramentary of Gellone, 770-780 (Paris BNF Lat 12048) Dumas 1981, vol. I, p. 347-485; vo (...)
  • 8 Martimort 1991; Parkes 2015, p. 12, 219.
  • 9 Examples include the “Kollektar-Pontifikale” supposedly of Baturich of Regensburg, (Vienna Österre (...)
  • 10 Rasmussen 1998.
  • 11 Rasmussen 1987; e.g. ordo romanus manuscripts were not true ‘pontificals’ Rasmussen 1976, p. 398.
  • 12 Rasmussen 1998, p. 453: “Le document liturgique dont il est ici question est un document qui sert (...)
  • 13 Hen 2001, p. 14; Jones 2005; Hamilton, 2011; Gittos 2015.

2Broadly, two explanations have been offered for the techniques, processes and priorities that gave rise to the “pontifical”. Leroquais, followed by Vogel, suggested that “pontificals” were an attempt to fuse together two separate types of liturgical texts, the “sacramentary”, representing the prayers said in the various rituals but which was absent rubrics, and the ordo, which represented gestures, actions and movements of ritual, but which was absent prayers.6 The practical solution to combine in one book certain elements from these separate texts for all the elements of the bishop’s pontifical liturgy arose, according to Leroquais, in various places concurrently without obvious connection. However, neither original genre was as watertight as they presented it. Already by the turn of the ninth century, the Gelasian Sacramentary of the eighth century contained a “pontifical” section that presented both ordines/rubrics and prayers, and many other forms of sacramentary through the century took this even further.7 Ordo manuscripts are difficult to disentangle from, or practically identifiable with, pontificals already (the ordo title is also widely applied to pontifical manuscripts in book lists).8 A number of early “pontificals” are also enclosed in or joined to other liturgical books.9 The second explanation for the ‘pontifical’ was offered by Niels Krogh Rasmussen who argued that it first came about through the combination of separate libelli, liturgical booklets that each described a single ritual, into a single book describing several rituals.10 This was a tendency visible in a few of the manuscript he examined, but is not sufficient to explain many others, and Rasmussen’s “typologie of episcopal manuscripts also imposed limits unrecognised by medieval authors.11 Like Andrieu, Rasmussen represented the pontifical as a manuscript for use, but his focus on the purely practical function of the manuscripts could be artificial and confusing.12 Processes of combination are essential to these manuscripts but these processes also transformed the texts by placing them in a new context, and added layers of interpretation and context which changed how a simple prayer or ordo would have been read. There is an urgent need to go down to the level of the individual manuscripts and see how they present the episcopal texts which modern eyes have deemed constituent parts of the “pontifical”.13 While the label is therefore problematic, the term “pontifical” is not easily dispensed with, and there should be ways to use it as a means to compare manuscripts of varying aspect rather than to rigidly define and exclude. Hence, I will use pontifical manuscript as a compromise.

3In this article are discussed two early pontifical manuscripts, which are both from France, one from the ninth century (at the beginning of the “pontifical”) and one from the beginning of the eleventh (a period when liturgical books begin to codify somewhat). These are two particularly complex manuscripts, and they reveal with unusual expressiveness tendencies visible elsewhere in the tradition. Each make a distinguished use of what are known as ordines romani. Therefore, they are uniquely useful also to display the relation of the “pontifical”, a genre that had no model from the Church of Rome but was entirely a Frankish invention, to the authority of the Holy See and the premier model of a bishop, the Pope. These manuscripts vividly display how the Franks actively received a knowledge of Roman traditions and displayed them in purposeful and self-conscious ways within manuscripts that transmitted Roman and Frankish usages side-by-side, arguing for a clear and rational continuity of tradition but not a straightforward and rigid uniformity. Both manuscripts present the local and regional liturgical traditions of their churches as being continuous with the Roman Church’s traditions, appropriating Roman and Carolingian liturgical peculiarities as a part of their inheritance. They make starkly plain the historical dimensions of liturgy, and the values the Franks placed on that, as well as the ideological utility of the pontifical format that compilers had in mind. But they also show the contribution of scribes and compilers across Western Europe, here in France, in creating a liturgical tradition that we see today as Roman. The two examples also display well the stark codicological variations among the early pontifical manuscripts. They also are good examples of the variation in users and compilers that standard definitions of these books as straightforwardly episcopal do not make clear. One manuscript is clearly from a cathedral and was at times in the hands of several bishops, but the other was created in a monastery and has a more ambiguous representation of the bishop’s rituals.

A pontifical manuscript of the bishops of Besançon

4We begin with the later manuscript, London British Library Additional Manuscript 15222. It was created around or just before the year 1000 and is the work of a single scribe.14 It came to London from the Cathedral of Besançon where it was likely written and certainly used. In its own way, this particular manuscript does address the ninth century beginnings of the “pontifical”, despite its later date. Clearly it does address the rituals of a bishop, as a pontifical manuscript should.15

Table 1 – Contents of London British Library Add. MS 15222.

Foliation Text Subject
ff.1v-4r Ego Lucia nunc… Professions to the Archbishop of Besançon
ff.4v-17r Ordo Romanus 35 Franco-Roman ordination from lector to bishop
ff.17v-27v Edictum An edict for the newly ordained bishop
ff.27v-42r Ordo Romanus 1 Papal stational Mass
ff.42v-51v Ordo Romanus 11 Scrutinies and Baptism
ff.51v-63v Ordo Romanus 27 Holy Week
ff.63v-65r Ordo Romanus 42 Church consecration (by relic deposition)
ff.65v-70r Ordo Romanus 34 Roman ordination from acolyte to bishop
ff.70v-73r Angilramnus praesul… Payment of clergy in Lent and Holy Week
ff.73r-79v Pseudo-GelasianDecretal On books received as canonical or rejected
ff.79v-81v Ordo Romanus 13A Non-gospel readings through the liturgical year
ff.81v-83v Ordo de sacris ordinibus Frankish ordination from psalmist to priest.
ff.84v-86v Secundum Mattheum Some instructions for those to be married (partial)
  • 16 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I, 1965, p. 467-470; sometimes this is called Pippin’s Collection or imagin (...)
  • 17 Various revisions to Andrieu’s initial claims have shown substantial Frankish editing of Ordo 27 ( (...)
  • 18 Andrieu’s ‘Collection B’ also called (even more misleadingly) the ‘Gallican Collection’ Andrieu 19 (...)
  • 19 Leroquais 1937 vol. I p. xx; Bourque 1949-1952, vol. II 1958, p. 512.
  • 20 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol.I, 1965, p. 473: “une pièce de bibliotheque”.

5As is visible here, the manuscript is made up principally of the texts known as the ordines romani, and particularly a set which their editor, Andrieu, had called ‘Collection A’, or ‘the Roman Collection’.16 Ordines romani given here, except Ordo Romanus 35, are found in the various manuscripts of this collection. This is already a curiosity for a number of reasons. The ordines romani began to be copied in the ninth century and are a thoroughly Carolingian phenomenon. They tend to record practices as these occurred in the papal church of Rome, the celebrant is often the domnus apostolicus (the Pope’s liturgical title) and the setting is the named churches and the streets of Rome itself. Scholars have used the ordines romani principally or exclusively to understand the Roman liturgy, assuming them to be documents which were intended to straightforwardly replace native Frankish practices with Roman ones. Thus, the Frankish contribution to shaping these documents, and even in inventing many of them, was somewhat inconvenient. One of the ways the Franks at the time of the Carolingians reinterpreted the ordines romani was to gather several and transmit them together in a single manuscript: the set called “Collection A”, which is represented in Add. MS 15222, is one of the more widespread of these Carolingian gatherings. It is not a Roman gathering– the ordines here all vary in their date, textual origin, and the closeness of their relation to Rome.17 Like Add. MS 15222, some Collections of the ordines romani resemble or have been termed ‘pontifical’.18 A relationship between the text type ‘Ordo Romanus’ depicting Roman practice and the new Frankish manuscript type ‘pontifical’ is very clear in the evidence.19 Like these other early ‘pontificals’, Add. MS 15222 generally describes practices as they occurred in Rome, not as they would have unfolded in a Frankish Cathedral like Besançon, and it also represents a gathering of material originally from the Carolingian era (with some additions). Notably, Andrieu presumed that ‘Collection A’ had become what he called a ‘library piece’ in the course of the ninth century.20 He supposed that Frankish scribes had decided that these specialised texts had no liturgical utility for performance, but were retained only for studying Roman practices in the abstract. But Andrieu assumed a very strict dichotomy between manuscripts for liturgical use and those for studying liturgy. Here, he was thinking in terms of modern liturgical books, but the early pontifical manuscripts are among the best demonstrations that medieval books of the liturgy were certainly more complicated.

  • 21 These are edited in Waitz 1895, p. 196-198.
  • 22 ‘Over the holy altar with my own I hand I sign’.
  • 23 Kay 2007, p. 63: “Probably given to Hugh de Salins, abp Besançon 1031-1066 by his consecrator, Bru (...)
  • 24 Waitz 1895, p. 196: in prasentia domni Hugonis archiepiscopi and in prasentia domni Guidonis Vienn (...)
  • 25 They include the nunneries of Fauverney (Faverniacensis) and Château-Chinon (Castrum Carnionis), t (...)

6If our manuscript is a “pontifical”, we should assume it had liturgical use, according to the widely used definition of this type. Add.15222 does provide some particularly clear evidence that the manuscript had an active role in liturgical ceremonies. On ff.1v-4r there are a series of oaths of obedience to the Archbishops of Besançon, from the eleventh and the twelfth centuries.21 Some are from bishops of sees suffragen to this archbishopric, Basel, Lausanne, Belley, others are from abbesses and abbots under their rule. The majority were signed at the time of the consecration itself, over the altar itself, by the persons being ordained: Super sanctum altare propria manu firmo.22 The earliest is that of Bishop Hugh of Lausanne, named specifically as the filius unicus of King Rudolf III of Burgundy (he was illegitimate), who was ordained in 1019, a terminus ante quem for our manuscript’s presence in Besançon. Thus, while has been an attempt to link the creation of this manuscript to the ordination of Saint Hugh I of Salines (1031-1066), it was already there a few decades before the famous Archbishop.23 Hugh of Salines did later use the book, and the presence of the future Pope Calixtus II (at the time Guy, Archbishop of Vienne) is also recorded at two ordinations of 1107, standing in during a sede uacante at Besancon. 24 One curiosity is that four much earlier consecration oaths were also copied into this book from an earlier record in a single hand, these are certainly not contemporary to the consecrations themselves: Adalbald of Belley (886), Jerome of Belley (932) Albero of Basel (999) and Henry of Lausanne (985). Likewise, a document of 932 is copied on the first page in the same hand before the oaths, in the only copy of it we possess. This document of King Rudolf II of Burgundy (912-937) gave the right to Archbishop Gerfroi of Besançon to ordain three bishops for Belley, Lausanne and Sion. Complicatedly, the manuscript is both recording contemporary oaths of obedience but also restating Besançon’s historical rights to have that obedience by giving its historical precedents. The oaths of abbesses and abbots are equally telling because Add. MS 15222 actually gives no text of the ritual to consecrate either abbot or abbess.25 The bishops’ ordination ceremonies might have followed the script given in the manuscript (there are two rituals for bishops in Ordo Romanus 34 and 35), but there was no script here for the abbot or abbess, who nevertheless signed the book as well. Thus, this pontifical manuscript was also playing an active role as a prop and record in ceremonies it actually did not itself narrate! It had become something more than a liturgical book narrowly conceived, acting here as seal of bishop’s authority and record of the diocese’s history and rights over a century.

  • 26 Edited in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 33-46.

7Within the main content of the manuscript, we are given some further indications of the complex roles its liturgical texts played (outside of a strict dichotomy between books for study and books for practice). The ordines romani already challenged scholarly assumptions, by giving Roman rituals that required significant processing before they could be practiced in Frankish cathedrals (hence Rasmussen’s hesitation with them). Certainly, such texts might also be studied for evidence of Roman norms, which could then be imitated in practice in greater or lesser part if the reader desired. Ordo Romanus 35, which is unique to this manuscript, is useful to demonstrate how complex these kinds of texts are.26 The text addresses ordinations of the various grades of the church, from lector to bishop. It is found only in Add. MS 15222, though forms of it were also available to certain compilers of manuscripts in the tradition grouped under Pontifical Romano-Germanique. One might note that this manuscript actually gives three separate narratives of ordination, as if inviting readers to compare between them: Ordo Romanus 34, part of “Collection A”, is of Roman origin, the ordo de sacris ordinibus was the Frankish ritual from the Sacramentary and Ordo Romanus 35 is a complex fusion of both texts with additions. These compilation practices, repeating oneself several times over the manuscript, must complicate seeing these ordination rituals as purely functional.

  • 27 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 33: “In the name of the Lord, how lectors are ordained in the (...)
  • 28 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34: Apostolicus taliter eum benedicit, quia pontifex maximus e (...)

8Ordo Romanus 35 is grandly entitled: ln nomine Dei summi ordo quomodo in sancta romana ecclesia lector ordinatur.27 It begins by giving exactly that. The young lector, educated in the church, is blessed by the domnus apostolicus and it is noted that the Roman pope gives this blessing on account of his unique position and authority.28 But the Frankish bishop, who had no such claim of authority, is not to straightforwardly imitate the Pope, as we might suppose, because it immediately goes on to say:

  • 29 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34: “But other bishops from diverse provinces should give a bl (...)

Nam ceteri episcopi per diversas provintias hanc ei benedictionem dare debent, die et tempore quo voluerit, imposita manu super caput ipsius: Domine sancte pater omnipotens aeterne Deus benedicere digneris….29

  • 30 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 35: “By our bishops he is consecrated thus”.
  • 31 Dumas (ed.) 1981, p. 383; Metzger (ed.) 1914, p. 7* from the Pontifical of Basel, Freiburg in Brei (...)
  • 32 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34-35: Et numquam est ausus postea quoquam absque chrysma perg (...)
  • 33 The subdeacon (Andrieu 1931-61, vol. IV 1956, p. 35-36) is performed by the domnus apostolicus acc (...)
  • 34 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 38: “But when other bishops consecrate a priest, two or three (...)
  • 35 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 40: Hic ordo in cardonalibus presbiteris vel diaconibus agitur (...)
  • 36 Pope Zacharias himself calls the urban clergy cardinals in his 747 letter to Pippin, distinguishin (...)
  • 37 I consulted a facsimile at the Courtauld Institute’s Conway Library, e.g. in the Episcopal ordinat (...)
  • 38 Ordo Romanus 37B, in a number of other ‘pontificals’ from the ninth century carries a short excerpt (...)

9The given prayer is the blessing of the lector as it is found in the Frankish prayer books from before the Carolingians. The blessing detailed to be said by the Pope was not said by the Archbishop of Besançon, but this alternative was. The acolyte’s ceremony is given in similar terms, a brief account of how it unfolded in Rome (substantially the same as that in Ordo Romanus 34), and then: A nostris episcopis consecratur ita: Domine sancte pater omnipotens eterne Deus qui per Iesum Christum…30 The prayer given here is one found in Frankish prayer books and in several early Frankish pontifical manuscripts.31“Our bishops” are the Franks reading this, so the Roman ritual is again not to be actually performed by them. There is also a small note (unique to this manuscript) on how acolytes always should carry oil, which does not pertain to the ritual directly, but is a more general guideline – this is likely also of Frankish origin since it uses pontifex rather than domnus apostolicus.32Again, such a note does not directly touch the ceremony at hand. Similar presentation occurs in the subdeacon and deacon’s ordinations which follow the acolyte’s.33Again, after detailing Roman practice, the priest’s ordination makes reference to ceteri episcopi, by which it recalls the Frankish practice: Nam ceteri episcopi, quando consecrant presbiterum, alii presbiteri astantes duo vel tres cardonales manus super caput ipsius qui consecratur inponunt.34 The specification of the presence of presbiteri cardonales differentiates this ritual from the usual Frankish rubric found in the sacramentary and later on in this book, and it is a puzzle. Apparently, cardinals should be present for the ritual here, but this is not the Roman ritual here, rather it is that intended for ceteri episcopi. In fact, a lengthy comment placed after the priest’s ordination clarifies. This ordo, it says, is intended for ordaining cardonalibus presbiteris vel diaconis, cardinal priests and deacons, who are distinguished strictly from priests and deacons forenses, from whom much of the rite was restricted.35 Andrieu assumed that these specifications were of Roman origin, but there is actually nothing in it to suggest that: the celebrant is still a pontifex and no Roman details are provided. Furthermore we know that, from Carolingian times, priests and deacons within certain French cities were honourably known as cardinals, and specifically distinguished as such from the country clergy, the forenses, exactly as they are here.36 Indeed, another pontifical of around 1050 copied directly from a Besançon exemplar used by Hugh of Salines, Besançon Bibliothèque Municipale MS Z 174, gives the honour of the cardinal title to certain clerics in this very city.37 This short text on the cardinalate is not Roman, I would argue, and addresses these Frankish cardinals. The priests and deacons of the metropolitan city were to be liturgically marked out from their rural brothers by a Roman title, deepening their liturgical connection to the urban church sine qua non, Rome.38

  • 39 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 45: Hac aexpleta, consecrat ei manus si nondum habuit consecra (...)

10The episcopal ordination, which ends Ordo Romanus 35, has further interesting features. Ordo Romanus 35 nn.38-55 narrates the interrogation of the candidate on the Saturday, nn. 56-74 gives the ceremony of consecration on the Sunday. The text again bases itself substantially on Ordo Romanus 34, the Roman consecration. Curiously here, though not elsewhere in the ordination rituals, the words apostolicus have been scraped out only slightly after the original writing and replaced by pontifex, literally writing the Frankish archbishop into the place of the Pope (fig. 1). It seems that active choices were being made at each stage of the ordinations how to combine the Roman and Frankish traditions. The bishop’s ordination, as written, might be performed by the pontifex as it was by the domnus apostolicus, whereas for other grades the Roman ritual and Frankish ritual were kept separate or offered as alternatives. Noticeably, a sacring of hands is added if the bishop had not already had his hands anointed (should he not yet be a priest?).39 The moment of consecration itself, however, changes tack to lay out exactly where the Pope’s privileges could assert themselves. One might follow the Roman rite in everything up until here:

  • 40 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 44: “The archdeacon places the closed book of the four gospels (...)

Ponit archidiaconus quattuor evangelia super cervicem eius et inter scapulas clausa. Nam quamdo apostolicus consecratur, aperta ponuntur evangelia super eum. Et benedicet eum domnus apostolicus solus per sepetipsum inposita manu super caput eius. Nam a ceteris episcopis episcopus benedici non potest minus quam a tribus, unus qui dat benedictionem et alii duo qui imponunt manum super caput ipsius qui benedicitur.40

Fig. 1 – London, British Library, Add. MS 15222 fol. 14r.

Fig. 1 – London, British Library, Add. MS 15222 fol. 14r.
  • 41 In Ivrea of this time this was not obeyed, as can be seen in the image from Bishop Warmund’s sacra (...)
  • 42 E.g. Andrieu’s Ordo Romanus 40 is a widespread description of papal ordination found in numerous p (...)

11The ritual, where the book of four gospels is placed upon the back of the new bishop, is the same in each case. But three variants are actually given here. The first is the ordination of the Pope himself, where the book is placed upon him open, in all other cases it was closed.41 The second is when the Pope blesses another bishop, where he only has to the privilege to stand alone in doing so. The third is for ceteris episcopis again, for the normal Frankish bishop, where at least three bishops were required to be present. The Roman ritual, with a variant that was so unique it was only performed for the Pope’s own consecration, was given, but it was explicitly forbidden to the Franks to actually perform this ritual. Nonetheless, it is actually fairly common for early pontificals to give a description of the papal ordination, which was never to be used outside Rome and performed only by his three suffragen bishops of Ostia, Porto and Albano.42

  • 43 Andrieu 1925.
  • 44 Wolfenbüttel Weissembourg 91 described in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. I 1965, p. 453-438, and on the c (...)
  • 45 Unterkircher 1962, p. 103-104.

12In the same way as these other examples, a text like Ordo Romanus 35 gave certain practices for performance, including the episcopal ordinations that were, it seems, actually performed with this book in Besançon cathedral, but they contextualised and contrasted them with rituals specifically forbidden to the users and makers of the book. The book contrasts the different practices passionlessly, with an anthropologist’s air. The Roman texts were not intended to be performed, but illustrated something about different forms of ordination, and what ordination meant. It is difficult to fit such impulses into the narrow confines of the modern understanding of a “pontifical”. Nor do they conform to easy assumptions about Frankish obedient reception of Roman norms. Andrieu, for example, wished to see Ordo Romanus 35 as a Roman creation because his priority was the Roman rituals. He argued that Ordo Romanus 35 gives us accurate and official Roman ordination practices from the first half of the tenth century (hence he had to argue that the specifically Frankish adjustments about ceteri episcopi and nostri were added only after the text passed into France).43 This is a question of emphasis, but an important one: Roman details were certainly there, but the structuring, editing and the addition of numerous alternatives and clarifications are all Frankish, as is the placing of the text in this “pontifical” format. Notably, the combination and contrasting of Roman and Frankish rituals is to found in a number of early “pontificals”: in Andrieu’s own “Collection B”, in the “Pontifical of Paris” discussed below over Holy Week, and, most significantly since they work with these same ordination rites, two ninth-century pontifical manuscripts which independently combined the same Frankish and Roman ordination practices: Wolfenbüttel Herzog August Bibliothek Weissembourg 91 (1/4 9th century, Worms) and Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod.ser.n.2762 (1/2 9th century, Regensburg).44 The Vienna manuscript, unknown to Andrieu, used the same Roman source as Ordo Romanus 35 for the acolyte and subdeacon’s ordination ceremonies, showing that multiple versions of Roman ordination at multiple stages of development were already circulating in the ninth century (Ordo Romanus 34 and a later source underlying the Vienna and London manuscripts both).45 With this source available from the ninth century, a Frankish pen was certainly capable of rendering a narrative of ordination like Ordo Romanus 35, the “pontifical manuscript” form being a readily available arena to contrast, combine and compare usages, some to be used, others studied. Indeed, what Ordo Romanus 35 did on the micro level, the whole manuscript of Add. MS 15222 does on the macro, by giving, in addition, both Ordo Romanus 34 and the Frankish ordo de sacris ordinibus, the sources and alternatives. The weaving of texts of Roman and indigenous practice, sometimes clearly identified, sometimes more ambiguously placed, often with repetitions or contradictions, was among the Frankish creative processes with liturgical texts that contributes to the formation of the pontifical manuscripts. Andrieu’s internal evidence for the text reflecting Roman practice was the passage on the cardinalate (actually Frankish) and the mention of papal ordination, which was circulated beyond Rome in other ordines romani and was common knowledge. There is, therefore, reason to doubt that Ordo Romanus 35 had much to do with Rome once the sources for it had left the city, probably already in the ninth century. Making conclusions based on this text about how Frankish ordination practices had infected Rome in the tenth century is best avoided. Instead, we are better placed to use this text to see how texts set in Rome were used by the Franks in the creation of new books like the pontifical manuscripts. It may be that Ordo Romanus 35 was created in Besançon, given the documented presence of “cardinal” deacons there.

  • 46 von Dobschütz, 1912; the same text is also found in Wolfenbüttel Weissembourg 91, also before Ordo (...)
  • 47 “An Edict which the Pontiff gives to the Bishop whom he blesses”; Edited in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol (...)
  • 48 “By the judgement and command of our Lord, N., the most excellent king, with the cooperation of Ch (...)
  • 49 One might speak of an “incarnation” of the local Church, as in Palazzo 2014; on another pontifical (...)

13To further influence these processes of reception, the manuscript carries a number of texts which are not liturgical in the strictest sense. Again, this is common in early pontifical manuscripts, despite the scholarly insistence that they should be ‘pure’ liturgical books for undiluted ritual use. Here, Pseudo-Gelasius’ decretum is a fifth century document, that has little to do with 11th century liturgy, presented here just before Ordo Romanus 13A, the ordo romanus that gives epistles and Old Testament readings, linking the liturgical usage of the day with the long history of the Roman Church.46 Besançon’s own liturgical history and practices are interwoven with Rome’s traditions and its venerable history, appropriating the latter for the Archbishops in whose hands the book now lay. Besançon’s episcopal rights are again written into the story in the second text: edictum quod dat pontifex episcopo cui benedicit.47 This was seemingly recited by the pontiff after he ordained the new bishop. It is an interesting text, where the pontiff informs the bishop of what he should believe (in a more rigorous version of the Apostle’s Creed), when to properly ordain and how he should live. It even encloses a liturgical text, nn.7-9 in Andrieu’s edition, an ordo for confirmation after baptism which is rather awkwardly inserted into the midst of the speech. Confirmation was another liturgical responsibility of bishops. This particular ordo was not to be recited, presumably, but suggests the edictum might be consulted afterwards by the bishop. Moreover, the manuscript specifically ties this edictum into the broader claims the manuscript makes for Besançon. A note was very soon added at the top of the folio where the edictum begins (fol.18r): Beronensi Lausonnensi episcopo atque Ansmundo Sedunensi episcopo. Sadly half destroyed by page trimming, this note clearly links the edictum to a historical event in Besançon which the manuscript itself already founded its claims upon, the 932 decree of Rudolf II giving the archdiocese rights to ordain other bishops. Bero of Lausanne and Ansmundus of Sion were two of the three bishops whom King Rudolf granted Archbishop Gerfroi rights to ordain. Both were named in the document on the first page which seems to be in the same hand as this note (Jerome of Belley was certainly in the note originally). Whatever this note said when complete, it was certainly presenting the edictum as a liturgical link to this important historical moment in the archdiocese’s history, one that could be recalled each time the archbishop read anew the edictum to the new bishops of these dioceses. It is unlikely this claim seventy years later is accurate, but the edictum has a particular passage recalling the king’s will which is not present in other manuscripts:<ad iussionem vel imperium domini nostri Ill. excellentissimi regis, Christi cooperante> te episcopum consecravimus.48 Even if the link is false, it is important to show that such ritual texts were simultaneously scripts of what to say and do, but are also actively presented by this manuscript as historical and intellectual pieces which construct a particular vision of the diocese, whose liturgical activities proclaimed its authority as archbishopric, and were closely linked (even if they differed in details) to the practices of the Roman see.49

  • 50 Edited by Andrieu 1930, p. 349-369.

14The final non-liturgical text in Add.15222 perhaps illustrates this best. This is a Carolingian text, not a Roman one, which is again related to liturgical matters but had absolutely no imaginable liturgical use by the beginning of the 11th century in Besançon. The text, unique to this manuscript, is given in the name of Angilram of Metz, bishop of that see from 768-791, and records how much he paid the various clergy who performed readings or chants during Lent and Holy Week (analysis of the amounts given proves the text is authentic).50 Just as Gelasius’ name was attached to the decretal, Angilram’s rulings give the liturgical content of the manuscript a historical grounding and resonances with which the Church of Besançon could draw, as these texts were copied, read and performed there. It may be that Metz’s role in the Carolingian period in mediating Roman liturgical practices into Francia was being acknowledged here. It is also quite likely that Collection A as it was transmitted to Besançon was put together in Metz and Angilram’s decree already attached there. Like Gelasius’ decretal, Angilram’s rule had no straightforward liturgical use, but was copied in the pontifical manuscript for its resonances beyond this, a history that spoke to the claims of history and prestige the Archbishopric of Besançon was making through liturgy. When liturgy was performed from this book or performed with and upon it (in the signing of obedience), the book itself suggested what resonances such rituals had. The expansive liturgical world it contained offered access to Roman rituals as alternatives and thus implied practices of reading outside of performance, in preparation for and in meditation upon the ritual itself. These dynamics were certainly intrinsic to early pontifical manuscripts and help explain their complex relationship to liturgical practice which was not easily recognised under the modern definition.

A pontifical of the monks of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés

  • 51 Digitized at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55005681f.r=pontifical%20poitiers?rk=85837;2.
  • 52 The date relies on several factors: a reference to Pope Nicholas’ letter to Rodulf of Bourges from (...)
  • 53 As shown, e.g. by invocations for the Abbas in the litany, Martini 1979, p. 223: Ut ill. abbatem e (...)
  • 54 Martini 1979, p. 245: Ut congregationem Sancti Petri in tuo apto servitio conservare digneris; Mar (...)
  • 55 Saints include Denys, Rusticus, Eleutherius, Geneviève, Marcellus Bishop of Paris, Germain, Vincen (...)
  • 56 Martini 1979, p. 61* n. 76: “L’unico codice che presenta qualche vaga somiglianza nella scrittura (...)
  • 57 Drawing from Wilmart 1924; Martini 1979.
  • 58 Fulda MS in Richter – Schönfalder 1912; Tours sacramentaries are Paris BNF lat. 9430 and Tours Bib (...)

15This is equally, perhaps especially, true of the second manuscript to be discussed, Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 227.51 The manuscript is of the later ninth century (around 870-880), and is therefore among the earlier incarnations of the “pontifical”, but it is astonishingly rich and creative.52 While it was once known as the “Pontifical of Poitiers”, this was a case of mistaken identity, and somewhere in central or Northern France, with Paris most likely, is now accepted as the place it was written. The “Pontifical of Paris” is a more suitable title. The manuscript was likely to have been written for a monastery, though it describes episcopal rituals at length.53 One of the litanies on Holy Saturday mentions the “congregation of Saint Peter”, which has led liturgists to suggest various foundations across the length and breadth of France, but Saint-Maur-des-Fossés near Paris, which was known in the ninth century as Sancti Petri Fossatensis, is now established as the most likely origin.54 Patron saints from across France are found in the litany, but the Parisian character of them is extremely marked.55Whether some material might have come from Saint-Denis, particularly the extensive use of Greek, or whether Saint-Maur-des-Fossés was an otherwise unknown liturgical atelier capable of creating this sophisticated and singular work on its own, is harder to tell.56A description of its contents and the sources put to use may help to demonstrate how complex and creative this manuscript is.57 Clearly, the compiler put to use a Supplemented Gregorian Sacramentary, a Gelasian of the Eighth Century, numerous ordines romani and additional liturgical sources that were also employed by the 10th century Sacramentary of Fulda (Göttingen Universitätsbibliothek Cod. theol. 231), and contemporary sacramentaries from Tours58.

Table 2 – The Contents of Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 227.

Foliation Text Nature and Sources
1r-7r Ordinations Supplemented Gregorian Sacramentary
7v-42v Rites of penance on Ash Wednesday A text like that found in the Sacramentary of Fulda, (with extra instruction and teaching e.g. on vices), prayers generally from the Gelasian Sacramentary and inspiration clearly Gelasian.
43r-69v Pre-baptismal scrutinies of Lent Gelasian Sacramentary of the Eighth Century (particularly the lost Sacramentary of St Remi), and thus of similar character to Ordo Romanus 11. Includes a full Greek credo in the rites of the third scrutiny.
70r-71v Saturday of Palm Sunday Readings given here are those of the Comes of Alcuin since this day was originally non-liturgical in Rome.
72r-94v Palm Sunday Theodulph of Orlean’s hymn (unattributed) Gloria Laus et Honor is sung during the procession.
95-129v Holy Week Recitation of the last chapters of all four Gospels, given in full, and including numerous repetitions.
130r-173v Maundy Thursday A ‘supercharged’ account of the ceremonies, highly elaborate. Reconciliation of the penitents is Gelasian with nine lessons, homily and sermon added. The oil consecration follows, over three stations. That pro baptizandis and the missa chrismalis are Gelasian, while the ad infirmos is Gregorian. Ordo Romanus 27 supplies various details in the rubrics. The Mandatum is accompanied by chants of Flavius of Chalons and Paulinus of Aquileia (attributed to Bede).
174v-192v Good Friday Structure and details supplied by Ordo Romanus 27, with added formulae and spoken texts. Most developed here is the Adoration of the Cross, with the Impropriae and Trisagion first attested in full.
193r-223r Holy Saturday Catechumenate reception is Gregorian/Gelasian, earliest mention of customs surrounding the Paschal Candle and of three candles blessed against lightning, storm and calamity, supplies both Gregorian and Gelasian readings, includes litanies terna, quina and septena in full. Actual baptismal formula is supplied in lower margin, includes vesting in a white robe. Four formulae give possible baptism variants from Gelasian.
227r-230v Easter Day Reproduces, with several changes, Ordo Romanus 27. Prayers are Gregorian.
230v-256v Week after Easter Each day a nocturne of three lessons, matins, mass and vespers, readings are those of Paul the Deacon. Stations indicated as in Gregorian, though prefaces are added. Antiphons concord with Roman. Monastic office of Octave Sunday.
258v Three Easter masses Missa in Octavis Paschae, Pascha annotina and pro parroechianis from Gelasian of the Eighth Century.
258v-269r Confession of faith Unique and concerned, above all, with Roman authority.
269r Mass for Sterile woman Elements of the Gelasian tradition.
273v-277v Various blessings 7 from the Supplemented Gregorian, 5 from the Gelasian, a benedictio salis ad pecora from neither (Fulda).
277v-278r Tonsure prayers Gelasian and the Supplement. Ad tonsurandum includes additional prayers also found in Fulda Sacramentary.
278r-279r Marriage blessing The Gregorian Mass with antiphons and readings.
  • 59 Rasmussen 1998, p. 423 is very terse.
  • 60 E.g, Martini 1979 p. 214: Quod aliter agitur si episcopus adest, atque aliter si deest, p. 217: Ub (...)
  • 61 Martini 1979, p. 312-322, entitled: FIDES CATHOLICA CONTINENS CREDULITATEM UERAE ET APOSTOLICAE AT (...)

16As is amply visible, this manuscript is vast for an early ‘pontifical’, almost three times the size of Add.15222 and the product of a heroic act of compilation, combining kinds of sources most ‘pontificals’ did not approach, as well as contrasting different traditions and practices in the manner of Add. MS 15222. Not only are ordines of Frankish redaction a framework (describing practices often otherwise unrecorded for the first time), but the ordines romani edited by Andrieu were also employed, as well as descriptions of Roman practices not available elsewhere. Prayers and masses are given in full, as are the chants, and, most interestingly, the appropriate readings from the Bible are also given, taking up much of the bulk of the text. Further, the compilers intervened constantly in all the different liturgical texts; offering clarifications, alternatives, fixing areas of doubt or confusion. One should not hesitate to call the text one of the monuments of Carolingian liturgical sophistication and creativity. Yet it does not often contribute to broader stories of that period, despite the availability of an edition. Partly this seems to be because the manuscript is such an uneasy fit for the modern “pontifical”, but it also speaks so strongly of Carolingian agency and creativity with authoritative sources that has not always been an acknowledged part of the story.59 Such a weighty book might have been difficult to carry around in ritual settings, and much of what is said or sung is done by actors other than the bishop himself, so we cannot call this simply a bishop’s personal book for liturgical performance. Such is the desire for complete pictures of rituals, it even provides alternatives for when the bishop was not present in certain ceremonies.60 Outside of the stricter boundaries of liturgical text is long profession of faith of ff.258v-269v which is given no explicit liturgical context (though it does follow a Mass of Easter time specifically for the growth of the church in true faith).61 It is of great depth and sophistication, including that the faithful person accept four ecumenical councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon and Ephesus), described with historical details that highlight the roles of the Popes, and also the decretals of all Popes from Clement and thereafter. Perhaps it was to be professed by a bishop in that Mass or merely pondered by a reader (a contemporary hand has added marginal signs of interest to this text only). In this, it may be like the edictum of Add.15222. (fig.2).

Fig. 2 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms 227, fol. 259r.

Fig. 2 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms 227, fol. 259r.

17One of the best examples of the book’s expansiveness comes from the narrative of Holy Saturday, when a number of readings were to be said, each of which was accompanied by a prayer. The Pontifical of Paris offers the means to perform the readings of the day according to both of the two differing sacramentary traditions: the Gelasian, which had twelve readings, and Gregorian, which had four, at fol.196r:

  • 62 Martini 1979, p. 215: “But if the readings are to be recited according to Gelasius, after the bles (...)

Si uero lectiones secundum Gelasium recitandae fuerint post benedictionem cerei, antequam legatur primo lectio In principo creavit deus, dicitur a sacerdote oratio haec: Deus qui diuitias misericordiae tuae. Quod si secundum Gregorium non dicitur hec oratio.62

  • 63 Deshusses 1971, p. 183.
  • 64 Bourque vol. II, 1958, p. 92-101; Vogel 1979.
  • 65 McKitterick 1997. Hen 2011.
  • 66 Vogel, 1986, p. 92-102.

18A few pages on, after the blessing of the candle itself, (fol. 204r), one finds that the prayers from both Sacramentary types are given in full, with accompanying canticles, first secundum Gelasium and then secundum Gregorium. Incidentally, the latter title is found attached to these same prayers in Paris BNF lat. 2290, a Gregorian Sacramentary produced at St-Denis.63It was once widely assumed that the Gregorian and Gelasian sacramentaires were in conflict in the Carolingian world, that the imperial will had attempted to impose the Gregorian to the detriment of the Gelasian.64 But it was never actually the case that accepting one form meant rejecting the other’s usefulness or authority.65 Our manuscript offers this material from both with equal care, and proselytises specifically for neither: the same expansive attitude animated the so-called mixed or Gelasianised Gregorian Sacramentaries of this period, also appearing from the mid-ninth century.66 Anyone employing this pontifical manuscript to shape his performance of Holy Saturday was clearly free to choose which tradition, each one specifically claimed to be authored by a famous Pope, he might follow.

  • 67 As noticed by Bischoff in Martini, 1979, p. 39*-40*, the first three quires (fols.1-23) including (...)
  • 68 For the Roman Stations, Baldovin 1987, p. 109-66.

19Again, as in Add. MS 15222, the presentation of peculiar Roman texts for contrast or clarification means that significant portions of the material are not usable by Franks. Unlike the London manuscript, here the rites of ordination are not developed particularly, but the heart of the text is its complex narrative of Holy Week and here Rome’s presence is strongly felt.67 While being creative with their sources, the compilers chose to copy Roman stational notices for the days of Holy Week, and the week after, giving on each day the Roman Church in which the Pope celebrated, as Carolingian books of all kinds did.68Such information was readily available in sacramentaries, which gave Roman stations through the year and would have made Carolingian liturgists intimately familiar with Rome’s liturgical topography. The Pontifical of Paris certainly goes beyond the notices in the Sacramentary in researching and giving alternative and historical names for the churches of Rome (perhaps from sources like the Liber Pontificalis or older station lists), adding colour and depth to its picture of the city:

  • 69 Martini 1979, p. 190: “This Friday, which is Good Friday, the station is at Suxurio, which is in t (...)

FERIA VI QUAE EST PARASCEVAE STATIO IN SUXURIO HOC EST IN BASILICA HIERUSALEM.69

20The idea the basilica is also “Jerusalem” is not insignificant in the same meaning.

  • 70 Martini 1979, p. 258: “This most Holy Saturday night, the station is at Saint John at the Lateran”

SABBATO SACRATISSIMA NOCTIS STATIO AD SANCTUM IOHANNEM IN LATERANIS.70

  • 71 Martini 1979, p. 264: “The Holy Sunday of Easter, the station ‘in principio’ which is at the basil (...)

DOMINICUM SANCTUM PASCHAE STATIO IN PRINCIPIO HOC EST AD BASILICAM SANCTAE DEI GENETRICIS QUAE PRAESEPIS HONORIFICE ATTOLLITUR FASTIGIO.71

  • 72 Martini 1979, p. 300, 307: “On this day the station is at Saint John at the Lateran, in the basili (...)

IN DIE STATIO AD SANCTUM IOHANNEM IN LATERANIS AD BASILICAM QUAE APPELLATUR CONSTANTINIANA.72

  • 73 Martini 1979, p. 161: Qua expleta, pontifex cum eclesiastico ordine pergit ad ecclesiam, ad quam s (...)

21The “Pontifical of Paris” also gives one of our better indications that the Carolingians actively imitated the stational masses of Rome, particularly for Maundy Thursday where ceremonies are anchored around three stations which are clearly Frankish appropriations of Roman ceremonial terminology, as was the “cardinal” title in Besançon.73 For the third of these, the author draws the explicit link between these Frankish imitations and the Lateran itself:

  • 74 Martini 1979, p. 165: “At the great church where the station is celebrated which in that Apostolic (...)

AD ECCLESIAM MAIOREM STATIONIS EIUSDEM CELEBRITATIS QUE IN SEDE QUIDEM APOSTOLICA AD SANCTAM IOHANNEM IN LATERANIS AGITUR. IN CAETERIS UERO URBIS SEU MONASTERIIS PRO OPORTUNITATE ET CONGRUENTIA UNIUSCUIUSQUE LOCII.74

  • 75 Häußling, 1973, p. 189-212.
  • 76 Ordo Romanus 1 which is found in Add.15222 and in many other pontifical manuscripts narrates the sp (...)

22This note invites the reader specifically to identify the various Roman churches listed with their own ‘stations’, whether that was churches of the city, or various places, likely individual altars, in a monastery. Monastery or city therefore became a simulacrum of Rome.75The relationship of pontifical manuscripts to the urban and monastic stational liturgies requires more study, but the Pontifical of Paris is one of our best indications of how such manuscripts allowed appropriation of Roman sanctity through liturgical imitation (notably an active adaptation of Roman norms that invited the creation of new forms of texts and manuscripts, not mere obedience to the forms of Roman texts already available).76 The use of ordines romani weaves mentions of Rome and Roman custom through the texts of Holy Week that generally describe usages appropriate to Francia, a fluid movement to and fro over the Alps that is similar to Ordo Romanus 35, but sustained over many more pages and extensive descriptions of rich ceremonial.

  • 77 Martini 1979, p. 218: “But the Roman Church customarily performs the custom of the blessing of wax (...)
  • 78 Martini 1979, p. 218: Et sicut fidelium relatione traditur, multa sanitatum genera per adhibitione (...)

23The brief prologue to the description of the lighting of the Paschal Candle is particularly illustrative (ff.198-199). A first description of the rites of Holy Saturday morning ends (with a concluding coda for UBI UERO EPISCOPUS NON EST), and this prologue begins with a title: MOREM AUTEM BENEDICENDI CEREI romana ecclesia frequentat.77 This ceremony is set in the consistorio lateranensi and performed by the domnus apostolicus. The text describes how the Roman Church makes lambs of blessed wax for distributing to the people, rather than the single Paschal candle. Again, this is not one of the ordines romani Andrieu edited, but a text of the same ilk found only here, probably based on observation of Roman practice by Franks. It ends with hinc eclesia romana cantat responsorium: Isti agni nouelli. Adding to the sense that this is based on pilgrim’s reports and given for devotional or observational interest, the compiler adds the testimony of the faithful that the application of the wax had powerful miraculous properties, even, some said, raising the dead.78 Then the text moves seamlessly to begin to describe the Frankish use of blessing the Paschal candle (cereum for the Frankish candles rather than cerei for the wax in Rome):

  • 79 Martini 1979, p. 219: “But the use of the blessing of the Paschal candles has come down to the chur (...)

Usum autem benedicendi cereum a beato Augustino repertum tradit eclesia. Qui benedictionem illius perficiens a sancto Hieronimo reprehensus est cur uirgiliaca uerba ibi inseruerit . Sed sicut ab eodem beato Hieronimo emendata tunc fuit, ita nunc per eclesias canitur.79

  • 80 Kelly 1996, p. 50-53.

24Here a historical context and separate authority is given to the non-Roman use. The reference is to the Exultet blessing which follows, and our manuscript is the first attestation of a vivid vignette attributing this text to Augustine’s over-exuberant use of Virgilian language (in the blessing of the bees) and Jerome’s sober correction.80 Their authority bolsters and contextualises the current usage of the Exultet, which our text rightly notes was a variance from papal practice.

25Another similar note addressed the singing of the Gloria on Maundy Thursday:

  • 81 Martini, 1979, p. 139: “Now on this day the Gloria Patri is not sung in the antiphon ad introitum, (...)

Ipsa quoque die Gloria patri in antiphona ad introitum non canitur sed uersus ad repetendum dicitur, Gloria etiam in excelsis deo secundum decretum Nicolai pape si episcopus adest canitur. Nam ipse sanctus pontifex sciscitante Rudolfo Bituricensis archiepiscopo utrum hoc fieri conueniret apostolica beati Petri auctoritate et sua inrefragabili sanctione metropolitis tantum episcopis hoc agere permisit.81

  • 82 MGH Epp 1925, p. 632-636.

26This refers to the correspondence of Pope Nicholas I with Radulf Archbishop of Bourges. Radulf had written to Nicholas for some advice on liturgical matters (particularly on the authority of bishops and coadjutor bishops) and Nicholas’ response of the year 864 is preserved.82 Our compiler consulted this document and noticed that Nicholas, who would have been Pope in recent memory, gave the privilege of singing the Gloria only to bishops. He thought it best to give his reader the exact authority by which the Gloria was given only by bishops, though curiously the second part seems to specify only metropolitans which does not cohere with Nicholas’ advice or the first part; an error, but perhaps a deliberate one, in the atmosphere where metropolitan authority was a debated issue.

27More blatant examples of the compiler’s attempts to interpret ritual for the reader abound through the manuscript. Not all of them may be listed here, but I finally wish to offer several examples to illuminate his motivations and methods. One comes again from the ceremonies surrounding Holy Saturday, where two candles are lit from the Paschal Candle (ff. 195v-196r) (fig. 3):

  • 83 Martini 1979, p. 215: “When this is finished, at once two candles are lit, each the height of a ma (...)

Qua expleta, statim illuminantur duo cerei staturam hominis habentes de cereo benedicto, et tenentur altrinsecus a duobus notariis in dextra parte et leua ; Et dexter quidem habet sibi impressum a suo notario. ANGELUS AD CAPUT SEDENS; SINISTER UERO A SUO ANGELUS AD PEDES SEDENS; Quique in typo duorum angelorum in sepulchro domini consedentium ab ipso die dominico usque in depositionem albarum ante euangelium illuminati deferuntur.83

Fig. 3 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 227, fol. 196r.

Fig. 3 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 227, fol. 196r.
  • 84 Hanssens 1939.
  • 85 In his Liber Officialis, 1;20;2 Hanssens 1939, p. 121: Diximus cereum consecratum Christi humanita (...)
  • 86 E.g. Liber Officialis 3;21;9 Hanssens 1939, p. 326-327: Ymnus sequens, qui additus est primaevo ym (...)
  • 87 E.g. for the Paschal blessing, he presents the Roman and non-Roman uses, while making it clear tha (...)
  • 88 Martini 1979, p. 214: “in the type of the column provided in order to lead the people fleeing out (...)

28Here the reader is invited to see the notarii carrying the candles in the type of the angels who sat with the body of the Lord on Easter morning, in John 20;12. This mode of analysis was certainly inspired by the most current and popular form of liturgical interpretation of the Carolingian era, represented by Amalarius of Metz.84 To Amalarius, as well, the Paschal Candle stood in Christi persona as is implicit in our pontifical manuscript, and in particular the candle and its wax stood for Christ’s humanity.85 Like the compilers of the manuscript of Paris, Amalarius was also a researcher of liturgical origins (and not simply the extravagant allegorist sometimes presented), and he always offered the authority and history of usages as he found them in decrees of Popes, the Liber Pontificalis, or other sources.86 He also presented various alternatives to his reader as a way into interpreting the reason why liturgical ceremonies happened in the forms they did.87 In another clear recollection of Amalarius at the opening of the same ritual, the Paschal Candle stands in the church as people enter (fol. 195r) in typo columpnae egredienti populo ex egypto ducatum praebentis.88

  • 89 Martini 1979, p. 219: Omni autem sollicitudine procuretur ut Gloria in excelsis Deo ea nocte ante (...)
  • 90 Wilmart 1924, p. 71; Liber Officialis I;16;3, Hanssens, 1939 p. 109.
  • 91 Bernardus Monachus mentions the same event in his Itinerary (c. 870), Tobler 1874, p. 92: veniente (...)

29An “apostolic” custom of timing the third litany of Holy Saturday so that its Gloria is not said before the first star appears on Easter Night, is given particularly rich explanation.89 Underlying this practice was the belief that Christ would return at midnight this very night so people must still be in Church then, as described in Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew which probably came to the compiler of this manuscript via Amalarius.90 Entirely singular in the “Pontifical of Paris” is a specific connection made to the liturgy of Jerusalem related by travellers lately come from the city. The rite of Holy Fire in the Holy Sepulchre, with its characteristic miracle, is even mentioned in what must be one of the earliest Latin witnesses to it.91

  • 92 Martini 1979 p. 219: “If indeed the tradition is apostolic, then in the middle of the night on the (...)

Si quidem traditio apostolica est, media nocte in huius sacratissimae noctis uigilia dominum ad iudicium esse uenturum, iuxta quod ipse in evangelio dicit: Media autem nocte clamor factus est, ecce sponsus uenit. Enim uero, sicut ueracium personarum relatione traditur, qui nostro tempore de Hierusalem aduenerunt, hac auctoritate et traditione fideles populi illic instructi in sabbato uigiliarum paschae in eclesiam conuenientes quasi dominum excepturi ac uelut ad eius iudicium properaturi, omni deuotione et sollicitudine intenti cum silentio et tremore horam in euangelio designatam praestolantur. Clerus etiam ea nocte cum suo pontifice in eclesiam degens, praedictam cum pauore et deuotione expectat horam. Nec ante ingrediuntur ad missas quam una ex lampadibus in sepulchro domini per angelicam illuminetur administrationem.92

30Like some of the references to Rome in our manuscript, and indeed some of the texts labelled and edited as ordines romani, this was less an ‘official’ liturgical document than it was colourful commentary on a ritual, giving it broader context and the means to see one’s own practice as part of a universal, but diverse, liturgical tradition shared with Jerusalem and Rome. This does not diminish its role in the manuscript, it simply questions some of our assumptions about what liturgical texts were intended to do.

Conclusion

31It is essential to both early pontifical manuscripts that their liturgy makes these connections, to Rome most intensely, but here also to Jerusalem, or to Carolingian Metz in Add.15222. Such connections allowed the user and reader to understand their own liturgical practices as intimately bound up in the ongoing history of the universal Church. Both compilers intended that liturgy be understood as a historical phenomenon, and intrinsic to this is an awareness of how it might vary and change. A Roman rite, they say openly, would not have the exact same form once it was enacted in a Frankish church or monastery. That did not diminish the ideological power of enacting such rites “as if in Rome”, or the inherent evocation of identity between the church performing them and the Roman urban space, as the whole history of that one church, and the Frankish Church in general, became coterminous with the history of the Roman Church. In the same way, if the bishop played the part of the Pope himself, that was a foundational statement of his own apostolic authority.

  • 93 For example, the Paris manuscript repeats a much older interpretation of the sevenfold scrutinies (...)

32Where the two pontifical manuscripts treated here present particularly intensive instances of liturgical sophistication, commenting, contrasting, interpreting and justifying, such processes enter to a greater or lesser extent into every early example. It is no accident, therefore, that such kinds of manuscripts emerge in the Carolingian era. The “Pontifical of Paris” is a distillation of trends found in manuscripts of all kinds that emerge from the reign of Charlemagne onwards, trends which Add. MS 15222 carried into the 11th century and restated for the utility of the Archbishops of Besançon.93 The ordines romani, which emerge first at the turning of the ninth century, express this desire to liturgically grasp at Rome, to see oneself walking in the footsteps of the Pope. Amalarius of Metz from the 820s gave fluent voice to the widespread and flourishing belief that liturgy was properly to be understood as a form of transportation that opened space and time in each new performance. Our manuscripts trained readers to see and understand liturgy in the same terms. If a definition of “pontifical” is to be arrived at which can encompass both our manuscripts, and the many other examples of such varying natures in this early period, it must account for these messages intrinsic to their construction. These are rich expressions of liturgical creativity in their own right. This creativity goes beyond the mere combination of pre-existing material, but also reimagines that material as it places it in a new manuscript context.

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Bibliographie

Archives

BNF = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.


Primary sources

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Becker 1885 = J.H. Becker (ed.), Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui, Bonn, apud M. Cohen et filium, 1885.

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Metzger 1914 = M.J. Metzger (ed.), Zwei karolingische Pontifikalien vom Oberrhein, in Freiburger Theologischen Studien 17, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder, 1914.

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Claussen 2004 = M.A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the eighth century, Cambridge, 2004.

van Dijk 1969-70 = S.J.P. van Dijk, The medieval Easter vespers of the Roman clergy, in Sacris Erudiri, 19, 1969-70, p. 261-363.

Ellard 1933 = G. Ellard, Ordination anointings in the western church before 1000 AD. Cambridge MA, 1933.

Gamber 1968 = K. Gamber, Codices Liturgici Latini Antiquiores, 2nd ed., Freiburg, 1968.

Gittos 2015 = H. Gittos, Researching the history of rites, in H. Gittos, S. Hamilton (ed.) Understanding medieval liturgy: essays in interpretation, Ashgate, 2015, p. 13-37.

Kelly 1996 = T.F. Kelly, The Exultet in southern Italy, Oxford, 1996.

Klauser 1930 = T. Klauser, Eine stationsliste der Metzer kirche aus dem 8. Jahrhundert Wahrscheinlich ein werk Chrodegang, in Ephemerides Liturgicae, 44, 1930, p. 162-193; reprint, in Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, kirchengeschichte und Cristlichen Archaologie, Munich, 1974, p. 22-45.

Langlois 1993 = B. Langlois, Le manuscrit W de l’Ordo Romanus XL (édition M. Andrieu), un ordo de la dédicace des églises, est-il un mauvais manuscrit, in Studia Patristica, 26, 1993, p. 47-58.

Leroquais 1937 = V. Leroquais, Les pontificaux manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 3 vols. Paris, 1937.

Hamilton 2011 = S. Hamilton, The early pontificals: Anglo-Saxon evidence reconsidered from a continental perspective, in D. Rollason, C. Leyser, H. Williams (ed.), England and the continent in the tenth century, Turnhout, 2011, p. 411-428.

Häußling 1973 = A. Häußling, Mönchskonvent und Eucharistiefeier. Eine Studie über die Messe in der abendländischen Klosterliturgie des frühen Mittelalters und zur Geschichte der Meßhäufigkeit, Münster, 1973 (Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, 58).

Hen 2001 = Y. Hen, The royal patronage of liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the death of Charles the Bald (877), London, 2001 (Henry Bradshaw Society, Subsidia 3).

Huglo 2008 = M. Huglo, Notes sur l’origine du ‘Pontifical de Poitiers’ (Paris Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal MS 227), in A. Andrée, E. Kihlman (ed.), Hortus Troparium: Florilegium in Honorem Gunillae Iversen, Stockholm, 2008, p. 176-188.

Jones 2005 = C. Jones, The Chrism Mass in later Anglo-Saxon England, in H. Gittos, B. Bedingfield (ed.), The liturgy of the Anglo-Saxon church, Woodbridge, 2005 (Henry Bradshaw Society, Subsidia, 5), p. 105-142.

Kay 2007 = R. Kay, Pontificalia: a repertory of Latin manuscript pontificals and benedictionals, 2007, retrieved on 25/02/2019, https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/4406/PONTIFICALIA.pdf;jsessionid=79575CD51CCFE94A0F89EB45FCEDEAE2?sequence=3.

Kaczynski 1988 = B. Kaczynski, Greek in the Carolingian Age: the St Gall manuscripts, Cambridge MA, 1988.

Martimort 1991 = A.-G. Martimort, Les Ordines, les ordinaries et les cérémoniaux, Turnhout, 1991 (Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge, 56).

McKitterick 1997 = R. McKitterick, Unity and diversity in the Carolingian church, in R.N. Swanson (ed.), Unity and diversity in the church, Cambridge MA, 1997 (Studies in Church History, 32), p. 59-82.

Palazzo 2014 = É. Palazzo, Le livre liturgique et son pouvoir d’incarnation de la liturgie des églises locales, in Chiesi locali e chiesi regionali. Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studio sull’alto medioevo, 61, Spoleto, 2014, p. 807-827.

Palazzo 1993 = E. Palazzo, Histoire des livres liturgiques. Le Moyen Âge, des origines au XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1993.

Parkes 2015 = H. Parkes, The making of liturgy in the Ottonian church: books, music, and ritual in Mainz, 950-1050, Cambridge, 2015.

Parkes 2015a = H. Parkes, Questioning the authority of Vogel and Elze’s Pontifical romano-germanique, in H. Gittos and S. Hamilton, Understanding medieval liturgy: essays in interpretation, Ashgate, 2015, p. 75-103.

Rasmussen 1998 = N.K. Rasmussen, Les pontificaux du haut Moyen Âge. Genèse du Livre de l’évêque, in Spicilegium Sacrum Louvaniense, Leuven, 1998 (Études et documents, 49).

Rasmussen 1987 = N.K. Rasmussen, Célébration épiscopale et célébration presbytérale : un essai de typologie, in Segni e riti nella Chiesa altomedievale occidentale, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 33, Spoleto, 1987, p. 581-603.

Rasmussen 1976 = N.K. Rasmussen, Unité et diversité des pontificaux latins aux VIIIe, IXe, et Xe siècles, in Liturgie de l’Église particulière et liturgie de l’Église universelle. Conférences Saint-Serge, XXIIe Semaine d’études liturgiques, Paris, 30 juin-3 juillet 1975, Rome, 1976, p. 393-410.

Rankin 2016 = S. Rankin, Carolingian liturgical books: problems of categorization, in Gazette du Livre Médiéval, 62, 2016, p. 21-33.

Reynolds 1983 = R. Reynolds, Image and text: the liturgy of clerical ordination in art, in Gesta, 22, 1983, p. 27-38.

Vogel 1986 = C. Vogel, Medieval liturgy: an introduction to the sources, translated by W. Storey and N.K. Rasmussen, Washington DC, 1986.

Vogel 1979 = C. Vogel, Les motifs de la romanisation du culte sous Pépin le Bref (751/768) et Charlemagne (774/814), in Atti del XVIII Convegno di Studi sulla spiritualità medievale, Perugia, 1979 p. 15-41.

de Vregille 1981 = B. de Vregille, Hugues des Salins, archévêque de Besançon(1031-1066), Besançon, 1981.

Waitz 1895 = G. Waitz, Obedienzerklärungen Burgundischer und Französischer Bischöfe, in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde zur Beförderung einer Gesamtausgabe der Quellenschriften deutscher Geschichten des Mittelalters, 3, 1895, p. 195-202.

Wilmart 1924 = A. Wilmart, Notice du “Pontifical de Poitiers” (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 227), in Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, 4, 1924, p. 41-81.

Westwell 2018 = A. Westwell, The Ordines of Vat. lat. 7701 and the liturgical culture of Carolingian Chieti, in Papers of the British School at Rome, 86, 2018, p. 127-52.

Westwell 2019 = A. Westwell, The Ordines Romani and the Carolingian choreography of a liturgical route to Rome, in Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 31, 2019, p. 63-79.

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Notes

1 Leroquais 1937; Rasmussen 1976; Gamber 1968 vol. II, p. 559-566; Kay 2007.

2 Phrasing is used throughout Andrieu 1931-1961, e.g. vol. II 1948, p. 370 or vol. IV 1956 p. 164: “pontificaux rudimentaires”; Vogel 1986, p. 226-229; Rasmussen 1998, p. 32 “pontificaux primitifs”; Rankin 2016 for the problems.

3 For example, in the 903 Passau library catalogue quoted by Leroquais vol.I 1937, p. iv, an identifiable pontifical manuscript is called liber sacramentorum, the title proper to the sacramentary! Can we easily distinguish these genres where medieval cataloguers seemingly did not? Original in Becker 1885, p. 61; The same title is given to another ‘pontifical’ in the 1036 dedication of Dijon Bibliothèque Municipale 122, fol.2v: “DATUS EST HIC SACRAMENTORUM LIBER SANCTO MARTYRI BENIGNO, DIVIONENSIS AECCLESIAE”.

4 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I, 1965, p. 494-545; Challenged in Parkes 2015, p. 183-211; Parkes 2015a.

5 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I 1965 p. 476-481, vol. II, p. 491: “les unes étaient des pontificaux encore rudimentaires, les autres de petites Sommes théologico-liturgiques, destinées à l'instruction des clercs”or vol.IV 1956, p. 312: “les uns sont de petits pontificaux remontant au début du IXe siècle, tandis que les autres appartiennent au genre des recueils didactiques constitués pour l'instruction des clercs”, p. 355 “pontificaux rudimentaires, vrais livres d'Église (FRT) et des ouvrages de bibliothèque destinés à l'étude”; the same caution applies more broadly to the distinction drawn by Palazzo 1993, p. 186 between “livres liturgique”(for actual use) and “livres de la liturgie” (for setting up the performance).

6 Leroquais 1937 vol. I, p. xiv-xxviii; Bourque 1949-1952, vol. II, 1958, p. 511-519.

7 E.g. the Sacramentary of Gellone, 770-780 (Paris BNF Lat 12048) Dumas 1981, vol. I, p. 347-485; vol. II p. xxxii; Ordines and prayers are fully integrated for example in the c.850 Gregorian Sacramentary of St Eloi from Corbie (Paris BNF lat. 12051), edited by Hugo Menard, Menard (ed.) 1642; Gamber 1968 vol. II, p. 409-410.

8 Martimort 1991; Parkes 2015, p. 12, 219.

9 Examples include the “Kollektar-Pontifikale” supposedly of Baturich of Regensburg, (Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek cod.ser.n. 2762, Gamber 1968 vol. II, p. 561) the “Sakramentar-Pontifikale” of Wolfgang of Regensburg (Verona Biblioteca Capitolare LXXXVII, Gamber 1968, vol. II, p. 418) and the Sacramentary-Pontifical of Hugh the Great of Nevers (Paris BNF lat. 17333, Gamber 1968, vol.II, p. 565).

10 Rasmussen 1998.

11 Rasmussen 1987; e.g. ordo romanus manuscripts were not true ‘pontificals’ Rasmussen 1976, p. 398.

12 Rasmussen 1998, p. 453: “Le document liturgique dont il est ici question est un document qui sert exclusivement à l’accomplissement d’un ou du plusiers rites liturgiques réservés d’un évêque” (emphasis mine); For example, Rasmussen 1998, p. 398-399 was confused why a ‘pontifical’ for a regular bishop would offer the ordo for a council that could only be called by a metropolitan bishop. But council texts are very common in ordinary pontificals, along with rituals like coronation which a bishop would realistically rarely perform, or papal ordinations entirely barred to him, see below. The practical performance of such rituals from the book was clearly not their only function. See Westwell 2018, p. 143.

13 Hen 2001, p. 14; Jones 2005; Hamilton, 2011; Gittos 2015.

14 Digitized at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_15222_fs001r; Described in Andrieu, 1931-1961 vol. I, 1965, p. 142-144.

15 Bourque 1949-1952 vol. II 1958, p. 358, no. 472: among “premiers essais de pontificale”.

16 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I, 1965, p. 467-470; sometimes this is called Pippin’s Collection or imagined to have been compiled by Alcuin in an indulgence to the narrative of ‘official’ liturgical change, Bourque 1949-1952 vol.II 1958 p. 143, n. 22; Hen, 2011, p. 62.

17 Various revisions to Andrieu’s initial claims have shown substantial Frankish editing of Ordo 27 (van Dijk 1993), Ordo 42 (Langlois 1969-70) and Ordo 11 (Aubert 2013).

18 Andrieu’s ‘Collection B’ also called (even more misleadingly) the ‘Gallican Collection’ Andrieu 1931-1961 vol.I 1965, p. 471-476; and Wolfenbüttel Weissembourg 91 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol. I 1965, p. 488-490: ‘embryon de pontifical’.

19 Leroquais 1937 vol. I p. xx; Bourque 1949-1952, vol. II 1958, p. 512.

20 Andrieu 1931-1961 vol.I, 1965, p. 473: “une pièce de bibliotheque”.

21 These are edited in Waitz 1895, p. 196-198.

22 ‘Over the holy altar with my own I hand I sign’.

23 Kay 2007, p. 63: “Probably given to Hugh de Salins, abp Besançon 1031-1066 by his consecrator, Bruno, bp Toul.”; de Vregille 1981 p. 340-341 discusses the manuscript’s connection to Hugh but does not make this claim.

24 Waitz 1895, p. 196: in prasentia domni Hugonis archiepiscopi and in prasentia domni Guidonis Viennensis archiepiscopi.

25 They include the nunneries of Fauverney (Faverniacensis) and Château-Chinon (Castrum Carnionis), the foundation of Baume-les-Dames (Palmensis) for canonesses, and the monastery of Lure (Lutrensis).

26 Edited in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 33-46.

27 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 33: “In the name of the Lord, how lectors are ordained in the holy Roman Church”.

28 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34: Apostolicus taliter eum benedicit, quia pontifex maximus est et auctoritatis sedis apostolicae.

29 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34: “But other bishops from diverse provinces should give a blessing to him like this, on the day and time that they choose, having placed a hand over his head”.

30 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 35: “By our bishops he is consecrated thus”.

31 Dumas (ed.) 1981, p. 383; Metzger (ed.) 1914, p. 7* from the Pontifical of Basel, Freiburg in Breisgau Universitätsbibliothek MS 363 (1 or 2/4 9th century).

32 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 34-35: Et numquam est ausus postea quoquam absque chrysma pergere, ut, ubicumque ad pontificem se iuncxerit et ipse aliquam confirmationem facere voluerit, semper paratus sit ad ministerium suum explendum.

33 The subdeacon (Andrieu 1931-61, vol. IV 1956, p. 35-36) is performed by the domnus apostolicus according to the pattern of Ordo Romanus 34, but the prayer Domine sancte, pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus is the Frankish prayer rather than Ordo Romanus 34’s text. An observation on the correct times to ordain the various grades follows, again with reference to the apostolic see (appealing to the authority of Rome from afar, surely suggesting a Frankish author): Subdiaconum vero vel ceteros gradus inferiores consuetudinem habet sedes apostolica consecrandos die dominico vel ceteris festivitatibus preclaris, in quibus pontifici conplacuerit vel quo tempore ipse missarum sollemnia agere voluerit. Nam presbiterum et diaconum nullatenus consecrat nisi in quattuor tempora, ordine quo inscribendum est ulterius; the deacon’s ordination is set ad sanctum petrum, but this text is based on the Gelasian Sacramentary, in rubrics not of Roman origin.

34 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 38: “But when other bishops consecrate a priest, two or three other cardinal priests standing around should place their hands over the head of he who is consecrated”.

35 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 40: Hic ordo in cardonalibus presbiteris vel diaconibus agitur. In forensibus autem nec dalmatica induitur, nisi tantum benedictione percepta pergit via sua. Similiter presbitero benedictionem illi dat et orarium. et manus consecrat, et exiit quo iturus est. Ut autem venerint ad communicandum, si cardonalis presbiter fuerit aut diaconus, ascendunt ad sedem eucharistiam de manu pontificis accipiendum et communicant sùper altare, iuxta morem. Forenses vero presbiteri vel diaconi nec ad sedem accedunt ad communionem percipiendum, nec super altare communicant. Et quomodo potest fieri ut super illud altare communicent, ubi licentiam non habent ministrare nec corpus domini consecrare. Formatam vero nullatenus accipiant presbiteri episcoporum.

36 Pope Zacharias himself calls the urban clergy cardinals in his 747 letter to Pippin, distinguishing them thus from country clergy: MGH Epp. 1892, p. 479-87, at p. 480: simili modo et presbiteri cardinales, and p. 481: Quartum capitulum de presbiteris agrorum, quam obendienciam debet exhibere episcopis et presbiteris cardinalibus; It appears that central episcopal (metropolitan?) churches were understood as cardinal and their priests thus also merited this title: in Hincmar of Rheims De jure metropolitani, PL 1852, col. 201: ‘sede cardonali’; Use of the title was restricted to Rome only in 1567 by Pope Pius V; On the Roman cardinals Andrieu 1946.

37 I consulted a facsimile at the Courtauld Institute’s Conway Library, e.g. in the Episcopal ordination, fol. 63r: Veniens electus cum suis ad urbem decanus archidiaconus et clerici ciuitatis illius cuius est ordinandus episcopus loquantur cum cardinali archidiacono et cancellario; on this manuscript de Vregille 1981, p. 325-327.

38 Ordo Romanus 37B, in a number of other ‘pontificals’ from the ninth century carries a short excerpt on the cardinalate likely for the same reason, Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p.250: tunc sacri ordines in aecclesia romana de eis qui dicuntur cardinales tradi consuerunt.

39 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 45: Hac aexpleta, consecrat ei manus si nondum habuit consecratas, ordine quo supra prefiximus; Ellard 1933, p. 75-76.

40 Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 44: “The archdeacon places the closed book of the four gospels over his back and between his shoulders. But when the Pope is himself consecrated, that book of gospels is put upon him open. And when the Pope blesses a bishop, he does so only by himself, placing a hand over his head. But for all other bishops, the bishop cannot be blessed except by three others, one who gives the blessing, and the other two who put their hands over the head of he who is blessed”.

41 In Ivrea of this time this was not obeyed, as can be seen in the image from Bishop Warmund’s sacramentary (Ivrea Biblioteca Capitolare, LXXXVI, fol. 8r), where the book is open on the ordinand’s back. I disagree with Reynolds 1983, p. 31 (who based this on his understanding of the “official” and unquestioned status of Ordo Romanus 35 that is only known from Add.15222 and likely not known in Ivrea) that this should depict Pope Sylvester’s ordination because only Popes were ordained this way; more logical is that, where Besançon had limited the open book to the Pope alone, Ivrea actively imitated him. Both were diverse ways of engaging with the relation of the individual bishop to the Pope.

42 E.g. Andrieu’s Ordo Romanus 40 is a widespread description of papal ordination found in numerous pontificals from the ninth century onwards, Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 290-308; Rasmussen 1998, p. 481-482 also struggled how to fit papal ordination texts into his conception of the ‘pontifical’.

43 Andrieu 1925.

44 Wolfenbüttel Weissembourg 91 described in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. I 1965, p. 453-438, and on the compiling method, Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. III 1951, p. 538 but his edition of Ordo 34 largely fails to give a true representation of this manuscript; Worms location by Bischoff 1981, p. 93, also Westwell 2020, p. 69-70; Vienna ser.n. 2762, edited in Unterkircher 1962.

45 Unterkircher 1962, p. 103-104.

46 von Dobschütz, 1912; the same text is also found in Wolfenbüttel Weissembourg 91, also before Ordo Romanus 13A.

47 “An Edict which the Pontiff gives to the Bishop whom he blesses”; Edited in Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. IV 1956, p. 47-57.

48 “By the judgement and command of our Lord, N., the most excellent king, with the cooperation of Christ, we consecrate you Bishop”.

49 One might speak of an “incarnation” of the local Church, as in Palazzo 2014; on another pontifical manuscript that embodies the Church of Chieti’s connections to broader Europe, Westwell, 2018.

50 Edited by Andrieu 1930, p. 349-369.

51 Digitized at: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55005681f.r=pontifical%20poitiers?rk=85837;2.

52 The date relies on several factors: a reference to Pope Nicholas’ letter to Rodulf of Bourges from 864, a litany invocation of St Maurus (fol. 208r) whose cult spreads from 863, references to a king rather than an emperor in the litanies (fol. 201v, 208v, 215r) and Exultet, while Bischoff’s most recent palaeographical analysis indicated a similar date, in the latter third of the ninth century, Martini 1979, p. 50*-53*.

53 As shown, e.g. by invocations for the Abbas in the litany, Martini 1979, p. 223: Ut ill. abbatem et cunctam congregationem sancti ill. in tuo apostolico servitio conservare digneris and p. 245: ut ill. abbatem conseruare digneris.

54 Martini 1979, p. 245: Ut congregationem Sancti Petri in tuo apto servitio conservare digneris; Martini 1979, p. 46*-62*; Huglo 2008.

55 Saints include Denys, Rusticus, Eleutherius, Geneviève, Marcellus Bishop of Paris, Germain, Vincent of Zaragoza who was the first patron of Saint-Germain, the martyrs George and Natalia of Cordoba (d.854), Samson of Dol in Brittany whose relics came to Paris, Cucufat of Barcelona whose head was in Saint Denis and Clodoald. Not yet noticed or given in Martini’s edition, two litanies have only Saint Mary and Saint Stephen in capitals (fols. 208r, 214r), Stephen was patron saint of Paris Cathedral at the time.

56 Martini 1979, p. 61* n. 76: “L’unico codice che presenta qualche vaga somiglianza nella scrittura con il nostro e il ms. Paris Seinte-Genevieve 111, probabilmente di St-Denis”; On Greek in Latin liturgical manuscripts Kaczynski 1988, p. 100-105.

57 Drawing from Wilmart 1924; Martini 1979.

58 Fulda MS in Richter – Schönfalder 1912; Tours sacramentaries are Paris BNF lat. 9430 and Tours Bibliothèque Municipale 184; the Gelasian employed might have been something like the lost Sacramentary of St Remi partially edited by Chevalier 1900 p. 305-307, but also numerous similarities to the example of Angoulême (Paris BNF lat. 816), edited by Saint-Roch 1987.

59 Rasmussen 1998, p. 423 is very terse.

60 E.g, Martini 1979 p. 214: Quod aliter agitur si episcopus adest, atque aliter si deest, p. 217: Ubi uero episcopus non est

61 Martini 1979, p. 312-322, entitled: FIDES CATHOLICA CONTINENS CREDULITATEM UERAE ET APOSTOLICAE ATQUE UNIUERSALIS ECCLESIAE FIDEI TAM DE PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI DIUINITATE, QUAM DE DOMINI ET SALUATORIS NOSTRI IESU CHRISTI INCARNATIONE; NEC NON ET DE CETERIS ECCLESIASTICAE SANCTIONIS DEFINITIONIBUS, QUIBUS UNIUERSITATI CREDENTIUM IUXTA APOSTOLICAM DOCTRINAM APOSTOLICORUMQUE UIRORUM TRADITIONEM ATQUE CANONUM PROMULGATIONEM . INUICITISSIMA CONTRA DIABOLICUM CUNCTARUMQUE HERESEON PRAUITATEM, PREFERUNTUR ARMA. QUORUM DOGMATUM UERA CREDULITAS CUM BONORUM OPERUM EXSECUTIONE REMUNERATUR A DEO IN HOMINIBUS IUSTIS SEMPITERNA BEATITUDINE IN UITA ETERNA QUAE EST COGNITIO IPSIUS PER IESUM CHRISTUM DOMINUM NOSTRUM; each word of this long title is marked out, suggesting recitation.

62 Martini 1979, p. 215: “But if the readings are to be recited according to Gelasius, after the blessing of the candle, before the first reading is read, In principio creavit deus, then this prayer is said by the priest: Deus qui diuitias misericordiae tuae. But if this is not said according to Gregory, this prayer is not said”.

63 Deshusses 1971, p. 183.

64 Bourque vol. II, 1958, p. 92-101; Vogel 1979.

65 McKitterick 1997. Hen 2011.

66 Vogel, 1986, p. 92-102.

67 As noticed by Bischoff in Martini, 1979, p. 39*-40*, the first three quires (fols.1-23) including the ordination ritual were actually copied later, in repairs made to the manuscript at the beginning of the 10th century, paleographically closer to Reims. It is possible that, while repairing the damaged penance rituals, this later scribe added ordination texts that were originally absent, to make the pontifical look more like other manuscripts of the type? Is this why the ordinations are so much less developed?

68 For the Roman Stations, Baldovin 1987, p. 109-66.

69 Martini 1979, p. 190: “This Friday, which is Good Friday, the station is at Suxurio, which is in the Jerusalem Basilica”; Suxurio is a corruption of Sessorianus found in later seventh-century comes from Rome.

70 Martini 1979, p. 258: “This most Holy Saturday night, the station is at Saint John at the Lateran”.

71 Martini 1979, p. 264: “The Holy Sunday of Easter, the station ‘in principio’ which is at the basilica of the Holy Mother of God which by the honorary title praesipio (of the crib) is raised to the heights of fame”.

72 Martini 1979, p. 300, 307: “On this day the station is at Saint John at the Lateran, in the basilica which is called Constantiniana”; name of the Lateran given in the Liber Pontificalis, for example.

73 Martini 1979, p. 161: Qua expleta, pontifex cum eclesiastico ordine pergit ad ecclesiam, ad quam secundum morem convenient populi ad stationem celebrandae missae, p.163 Hac missa expleta, pergunt ad stationem secundam, ubi missa chrismalis a pontifice ordine suo celebranda est, p. 166 Sane obsevandum est, ut in his tribus stationibus, quae hac die peragendae sunt, taliter processiones ordinentur, ut in prima tres quidem dyaconi cum suibecto sibi ordine et numero induti dalmaticis cum episcopo procedant; in secunda autem quinque; in tertia autem septem.

74 Martini 1979, p. 165: “At the great church where the station is celebrated which in that Apostolic See is done in Saint John at the Lateran, but in other cities and monasteries is done in whichever place there is for opportunity and suitableness”.

75 Häußling, 1973, p. 189-212.

76 Ordo Romanus 1 which is found in Add.15222 and in many other pontifical manuscripts narrates the spectacle of a Roman stational mass (Andrieu 1931-1961, vol. II 1948 p.3-108), while Angilram’s decree also gives details of how stations were performed in Metz over Lent and Holy Week, for which Klauser 1930; Claussen 2004, p. 276-289.

77 Martini 1979, p. 218: “But the Roman Church customarily performs the custom of the blessing of wax”.

78 Martini 1979, p. 218: Et sicut fidelium relatione traditur, multa sanitatum genera per adhibitionem ipsius cerae efficiuntur, etiam sicut dicunt mortuorum reuscitatio.

79 Martini 1979, p. 219: “But the use of the blessing of the Paschal candles has come down to the church, as it was redacted by Blessed Augustine, who while writing this blessing was rebuked by Saint Jerome as to why he had inserted Virgilian words therein. And it was emended thus then by the same Blessed Jerome, and now it is sung in churches”.

80 Kelly 1996, p. 50-53.

81 Martini, 1979, p. 139: “Now on this day the Gloria Patri is not sung in the antiphon ad introitum, but the versus ad repetendum is said. Still, the Gloria is sung, if a bishop is present, according to the decree of Pope Nicholas. For this holy pontiff having been asked by Radulf of Bourges whether this was suitable, by the apostolic authority of the blessed Peter and his irrefutable sanction, he permitted it only to be done by metropolitan bishops”.

82 MGH Epp 1925, p. 632-636.

83 Martini 1979, p. 215: “When this is finished, at once two candles are lit, each the height of a man, from the Paschal Candle, and each is held, one on either side, by two notaries, on the right side and the left ; and indeed the left one has in it the impression from its notary, of the angel sitting at his head : the left one from him has the angel sitting at his feet ; they are both in the type of the two angels sitting together in the tomb of the Lord are carried illuminated before the Gospel, on this Sunday until the deposition of the white robes” (this is referring to Sunday in Albis-the Easter Octave).

84 Hanssens 1939.

85 In his Liber Officialis, 1;20;2 Hanssens 1939, p. 121: Diximus cereum consecratum Christi humanitatem designare…Sit cereus consecratus in Christi persona.

86 E.g. Liber Officialis 3;21;9 Hanssens 1939, p. 326-327: Ymnus sequens, qui additus est primaevo ymno, a Sixto papa additus est, ut in Gestis pontificalibus legitur. Ita enim scriptum est: “Hic constituit ut intra actionem sacerdos incipiens populo ymnum decantaret: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deo Sabaoth.

87 E.g. for the Paschal blessing, he presents the Roman and non-Roman uses, while making it clear that the latter was still sanctioned by a Pope (the attribution coming from the Liber Pontificalis) just as the Pontifical of Paris appealed to Augustine and Jerome: Liber Officialis I;17-18, in 18;1 Hanssens 1939, p. 111: Romanis ita agentibus, nobis praeceptum est a papa Zosimo benedicere cereum (nobis being the Franks once again).

88 Martini 1979, p. 214: “in the type of the column provided in order to lead the people fleeing out of Egypt”; Amalarius has the same interpretation of it, Liber Officialis 1.18 1-2 Hanssens 1939 p. 111: Unanimitatem significationis vult habere cereus iste cum columna ignis quae inluminabat populum Israhel in nocte…Columna illa Christum praefigurabat.

89 Martini 1979, p. 219: Omni autem sollicitudine procuretur ut Gloria in excelsis Deo ea nocte ante non incipiatur quam stella appareat in caelo…Et facto interuello secundum congruentiam temporis, laetania terna ad introitum ita inchoetur, ut eadem finita, secundum quod statutum est ab apostolis iuxta euangelicam auctoritatem, stella in caelo apparente, Glora in excelsis Deo incipiatur. Ea scilicet ratione, ne populi ante medium noctis ab ecclesia dimittantur’; The litany itself is found, Martini 1979, p. 242-245, and the instruction, p. 245: Inluminatur ecclesia…Sequitur Gloria in excelsis deo.

90 Wilmart 1924, p. 71; Liber Officialis I;16;3, Hanssens, 1939 p. 109.

91 Bernardus Monachus mentions the same event in his Itinerary (c. 870), Tobler 1874, p. 92: veniente angelo, lumen in lampadibus accenditur, quae pendent super praedictum sepulchrum.

92 Martini 1979 p. 219: “If indeed the tradition is apostolic, then in the middle of the night on the vigil of this most holy night the Lord is to come for judgement, according to what he said in the Gospel: “But in the middle of the night a shout rings out: the bridegroom cometh” (Matthew: 25, 6). In any case, it was related by the testimony of reliable people, who in our time have come from Jerusalem, that, according to authority and tradition, the faithful people over there, having been so instructed, gather on the Saturday of the Easter Vigils in the Church as if to wait for the Lord and as if to be prepared for his judgement. With all devotion and most intent care, they wait with silence and fear the hour designated by the Gospel. And the clerics, passing this night with their pontiff, await the foretold hour with terror and devotion. No sooner than they enter for the masses, is one of the lamps in the sepulchre of the Lord lit by angelic ministration”.

93 For example, the Paris manuscript repeats a much older interpretation of the sevenfold scrutinies as gifts of the Holy Spirit (Martini 1979, p. 70-71: usque sabbatum sanctum, septem scrutinia peraguntur, secundum formam donorum spiritus sancti) first given in the Sacramentary of Gellone’s baptismal order, which was written decades before Amalarius, Dumas 1981, p. 73; or in Martini, 1979, p. 219: Numerus uero laetaniarum iuxta numerum personarum uiuificae trinitatis in mysterio ea nocte agitur.

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Titre Fig. 1 – London, British Library, Add. MS 15222 fol. 14r.
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Titre Fig. 2 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms 227, fol. 259r.
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Titre Fig. 3 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 227, fol. 196r.
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Arthur Westwell, « The content and the ideological construction of the early pontifical manuscripts »Mélanges de l’École française de Rome - Moyen Âge [En ligne], 132-1 | 2020, mis en ligne le 03 avril 2020, consulté le 20 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mefrm/7681 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrm.7681

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Arthur Westwell

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies - University of Toronto - arthur.westwell@utoronto.ca

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