INTRODUCTION
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Lat. 7701, in common with most early medieval liturgical manuscripts, has received the cursory interest of specialists but little else.Footnote 2 In one classic treatment, representative of traditional modes of liturgical scholarship, it was sufficient to call it simply ‘the Pontifical of Central Italy’ (Vogel, Reference Vogel, Storey and Rasmussen1986: 228). Such a terse description reduces the richness of liturgical manuscripts, which can now be rediscovered as artefacts of agenda, principle and intention. Rooted firmly in the messy reality of the manuscripts available to us, recent studies have encouraged a move away from strict categorization, and towards a recognition of individual manuscripts' complexity and interest (Hen, Reference Hen2001; Gittos and Hamilton, Reference Gittos and Hamilton2015; Parkes, Reference Parkes2015).Footnote 3 They have given us tools to allow these manuscripts to speak, and for us to hear their ‘human stories’, as Parkes (Reference Parkes2015: 2) has memorably put it.
This process has been particularly fruitful for manuscripts of the Carolingian period (broadly 750–888), which is no accident. The intervention by the Carolingians in the liturgy has been recognized, since the writings of McKitterick and Hen, as profoundly local and diverse in its application, though guided always by a shared understanding of authoritative models, notably the Roman Church (McKitterick, Reference McKitterick1977: 115–54; Reference McKitterick and Swanson1997; Reynolds, Reference Reynolds and McKitterick1995: 620–1; Hen, Reference Hen, Bolgia, McKitterick and Osborne2011).Footnote 4 Previously, liturgists had more or less characterized the Carolingian project as the imperial imposition of uniformity upon a passive mass of subjects (Vogel, Reference Vogel and Braunfels1965: 217; Reference Vogel1979; Angenendt, Reference Angenendt1982: 173ff.). Significantly, this was the understanding of Andrieu (Reference Andrieu1931–61, particularly vol. II, Reference Andrieu1948: xvii–xlix), who offered the only sustained assessment of Carolingian liturgical ordines. But now it is understood that those who wrote liturgical manuscripts were active participants in shaping what a ‘correct’ liturgy would look like where they were. Therefore, a liturgical manuscript produced in any one diocese presents something of how the general Carolingian liturgical project was enacted or understood there. This article will examine Vat. Lat. 7701 as a liturgical product of ninth-century Chieti, reflecting attitudes and ideals there. It will also present a case study of how the Carolingian liturgical programme operated in the kingdom of Italy, particularly useful since Italy has been comparatively neglected in studies of the Carolingian programme of correctio (correction) (for example, Angenendt, Reference Angenendt and Ganz1992; Smith, Reference Smith, Mills and Grafton2003; De Jong, Reference De Jong and Story2005).
In 1985, Niels Krogh Rasmussen discussed Vat. Lat. 7701 with Roger Reynolds in Spoleto (‘Discussione’, Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen1987: 602–3). Reynolds called the manuscript a ‘strange little so-called pontifical’, and Rasmussen confessed he was ‘astonished’ by it. Both would later publish on the text, but their early confusion reveals a problem: they saw Vat. Lat. 7701 exclusively in the strict typological framework of the ‘pontifical’. Rasmussen later (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 375–99) gave a detailed description of the contents. In his introduction, he quoted correspondence from palaeographer Bernhard Bischoff who provided dating for the various scripts in the manuscript. Beneventan symptoms in the script made it clear that the text was central or southern Italian. For the relevant core in Caroline Minuscule, Bischoff pointed to the second half (fols 1–57r) or third quarter of the ninth century (fols 58f.), that is more or less between 850 and 875.Footnote 5 Locating it further evaded Rasmussen, but his one-time interlocutor in Spoleto, Reynolds (Reference Reynolds, Clerck and Palazzo1990: 441–2), revealed it was from Chieti. Reynolds noticed the significant attention paid to Saint Thomas the Apostle in Vat. Lat. 7701. Thomas comes first in the manuscript's litany of apostles on fol. 57v and, in the blessing which would be said on the anniversary of a church's dedication, his name is specifically given to the church in question:
Deus qui hoc templum sanctum suo gloriosissimo nomini in honore thome beati apostoli sui uoluit dedicari …Footnote 6
The cathedral in Chieti was dedicated to Saint Thomas the Apostle in the early Middle Ages, and it is the only cathedral church in the area to which this blessing could apply (Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1985: 439). However, Reynolds (Reference Reynolds, Clerck and Palazzo1990: 442) maintained an erroneous tenth-century date for the manuscript, based on an earlier palaeographical assessment that can no longer be substantiated. Therefore, he could not see the manuscript as Carolingian, nor compare it to contemporary manuscripts, both essential to interpreting it.
The Annales Regni Francorum described Chieti as having been seized from the Lombards and burned in the year 801 by King Pippin of Italy (773–810), son of Charlemagne (Kurze, Reference Kurze1895: 116). This savage conquest followed decades of devastating war in Abruzzo. But over the next few decades Chieti seems to have fully recovered, a measure of Carolingian success, and perhaps a sign of a deliberate policy to integrate this southernmost tip of the Empire via an effective bishopric at its heart, whose remit would include the restoration of cultural, intellectual and liturgical activity along Carolingian lines.Footnote 7 Crucially, on 14 May 840, Bishop Theodorich of Chieti, quite possibly of Frankish origin, organized the clergy into a foundation of secular canons at the canonica of San Giustino, attached to the cathedral of Saint Thomas.Footnote 8 The record of this reorganization, proclaimed at a local synod, was copied by Ughelli from a manuscript of Chieti cathedral, now lost (Werminghoff, Reference Werminghoff1908: 788–91; taken from Ughelli, Reference Ughelli1720: 669–70). Led by their magister, Giselperto, the canonici would perform liturgical functions such as singing at service, but they were also scribes at the scribal school.Footnote 9 Theodorich explicitly presents the initiative as his response to the edicts of the Carolingian Emperor, then Louis the Pious (813–June 840):
ibi inter caetera cum consensu omnium praedictorum canonicam instuere certauimus, habentes normam firmitatis, eo quod a domino imperatore Augusto per diuersa episcopia iam diu ea fieri praeceptum est.Footnote 10
These canonici would have obeyed at least a version of the authorized rule for secular canons which Louis promulgated at Aachen in 816 (Werminghoff, Reference Werminghoff1906: 421–56; De Jong, Reference De Jong and McKitterick1995: 632–3; Rosso, Reference Rosso, Rosso and Tiboni2003: 591). Almost 30 years had elapsed before Chieti attempted to obey the edicts of this council, a reminder that organizing the affairs of the church did not happen at the same pace everywhere, and adjusted itself to local circumstance. Theodorich's organization of a clerical community with a rule from Aachen would have been entirely new in Chieti, as it was in other areas of Italy to which the Franks brought it (Miller, Reference Miller2000: 80–2; Witt, Reference Witt2011: 38–9). It stemmed from the Frankish vision of an ordered church and society. This is important in the examination of Vat. Lat. 7701, the only known surviving liturgical book from the ninth-century scribal school housed in that canonica. There are only two manuscripts assigned to Chieti by Bischoff's Katalog (Bischoff, Reference Bischoff1998–2014, vol. I, Reference Bischoff1998: 485; vol. III, Reference Bischoff2014: 619): Vatican Reg. Lat. 1997 (second half of the ninth century), a canon law collection, and Karlsruhe Badische Landesbibliothek Aug. Perg. 229 (after 821), which is a miscellany.Footnote 11 Both contain some liturgical material and can thus form part of this investigation, but, most importantly, this article brings that meagre count up to three.
THE STRUCTURE AND PURPOSE OF VAT. LAT. 7701
Rasmussen provided a detailed list of the contents of Vat. Lat. 7701. His policy was to link each individual prayer and ordo text back to the closest edited version, but he did not underline the consequences of some of these identifications. Furthermore, Rasmussen's own understanding of what a pontifical was conditioned his analysis. He presented Vat. Lat. 7701 as a union of three originally separate liturgical booklets, or what are called libelli (Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen1976: 393–410; Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 396–8; Vogel, Reference Vogel, Storey and Rasmussen1986: 227; Palazzo, Reference Palazzo1990). Rasmussen had attempted to argue that the fusion of libelli created the earliest ‘pontificals’, but his analysis applies better to some manuscripts than others, and is less helpful for Vat. Lat. 7701. Table 1 is a condensed version of what Rasmussen determined was the structure and content (Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 396–7).
Table 1. Rasmussen's reconstruction of Vat. Lat. 7701.
1 ‘Then the blessing over those who are consecrated to sacred orders’.
2 Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1999: 12–19, edited from this manuscript and related texts.
3 ‘Then the Chrism Mass’.
4 Related to Heiming, Reference Heiming1984: 56–8.
5 ‘But first of all before the pontiff …’
6 A version of that which is edited by Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 339–47.
7 ‘Then the ordo for the dedication of a church’. The title seems to have been misplaced from the above text.
8 Analogue to Dumas, Reference Dumas1981: 360–4.
9 ‘For the consecration of a paten’.
10 Analogue to Dumas, Reference Dumas1981: 364–71.
11 ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, here begin the blessings said by the bishop over the people at masses.’
12 Version of that edited at Deshusses, Reference Deshusses1971: 576–98.
13 ‘The litany begins’.
14 ‘And I will love him and I will show …’
15 Discussed and edited from this manuscript by Schneider, Reference Schneider1996: 55–7, 331–42.
16 ‘Emendation and Admonition. Concerning the mandate of the lord emperor’.
17 Edited from this manuscript by Schneider, Reference Schneider2007: 469–96.
18 ‘Maundy Thursday, on the Lord's Supper’.
19 ‘The Roman ordo for how a council is to be done’.
What Rasmussen termed sections 1 and 2 of the manuscript do not, on my examination, seem to have been originally separate. Their initials are almost identical and their layout is not sufficiently different to warrant Rasmussen's conclusions. The same set of rituals they contain (ordination, the Chrism Mass, the consecration of churches and the episcopal blessings) are found in a number of complete manuscripts contemporary with Vat. Lat. 7701. While these manuscripts are pontificals, they cannot be seen as fusions of libelli but are wholesale accomplishments. Notable are two later ninth-century pontificals from the Rhine, Freiburg Universitätsbibliothek 368 and the one-time Donaueschingen Fürstliche Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek 192, of Basel and Constance respectively.Footnote 12 Neither can be presented as fusions of libelli. Vat. Lat. 7701 was more likely conceived in the same way, with the first two sections intact. The third section may originally have been separate. It has much more distinctive layout and ornamentation. Nevertheless, the decision to bind this third section to the ‘pontifical’ of Chieti was made in the ninth century (Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 376). An ordo of Holy Week was written on the final folios at the same time, and a litany was added to blank folio 57v. Bischoff dated the litany to the end of the ninth century. Both additions unite the book by referring to texts in previous sections. Therefore, the composition of the manuscript can be seen as a phenomenon not too distinct from the original writing of the liturgical elements, and very close to the Carolingian period.
Later repairs created some difficulties. In the third section, the ordo Romanus for a council was divided in half and put back in an incorrect order. In the same process, the latter part of the ordo Romanus for Holy Week was also lost, leaving it a partial record of Maundy Thursday, and only half of Good Friday. A first folio is missing as well, since the ordinations are only entitled ITEM BENEDICTIO but it is possible to reconstruct what was there.
To help understand our manuscript, Hen (Reference Hen2001: 13) recommended a ‘double axis of classification’ for liturgical manuscripts: according to type, and according to functional destination. It has been stated that our manuscript is a pontifical. In practice, this means it offers the suite of rites which only a bishop would require: he alone could ordain, consecrate a church or say the episcopal blessings. Yet a pontifical is not a single, simple thing (Hamilton, Reference Hamilton, Rollason, Leyser and Williams2011; Parkes, Reference Parkes2015: 135–82). These rites were storehouses of spiritual power, and the book containing them a symbol of episcopal authority. The Carolingians, for example, repeatedly legislated about the proper consecration on Maundy Thursday of the chrism, sacred oils used in anointing.Footnote 13 The right to consecrate and distribute chrism belonged to the bishop alone, they said, and thereby made every priest in his diocese directly dependent on him, useful for a measure of oversight. By placing the ceremony of consecration, the Chrism Mass, among other exclusively episcopal rites, our manuscript implicitly argues the same.Footnote 14 However, monasteries also produced pontificals, as did communities of clerics for their own purposes. Pontificals were not solely liturgical either: most contain educational material explaining the accompanying rites, whilst some, like our own, are vehicles also for legal texts, all nuances one cannot find in the traditional definitions. The functional destination for our pontifical, Vat. Lat. 7701, however, was the hand of the bishop of Chieti, and it actually aided him in the performance of the rituals it described. This can be demonstrated by a survey of its ordines.
MAKING MINISTERS
The first section of the manuscript, that of consecration of persons and objects, is a sustained extract from the Gelasian Sacramentary of the eighth century (Vogel, Reference Vogel, Storey and Rasmussen1986: 70–8). The Gelasian of the eighth century (henceforth, GVIII) was the main sacramentary form that rivalled the Gregorian Sacramentary, the papal text sent by Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne between 781 and 791, and regarded as the ‘purer’ Roman source (Vogel, Reference Vogel, Storey and Rasmussen1986: 79–102). But no effort was actually made to impose the Gregorian, and the GVIII, ‘basically Frankish prayer-books for the use of the Frankish Church’ (Hen, Reference Hen2001: 60), flourished as a viable alternative (Hen, Reference Hen, Bolgia, McKitterick and Osborne2011: 58–61, 79). One might ask if the GVIII's fluidity and demonstrable responsiveness to local traditions, which make it a difficult tradition to firmly pin down, contributed to this popularity. The variety present in the GVIII traditions means that what they looked like in Italy may have been very different from our extant versions, exclusively from modern-day France. No complete GVIII Sacramentary survives from ninth-century Italy, though there exist some important fragments, but our manuscript can help to reconstruct the influence of this tradition in one Italian centre, Chieti (Vogel, Reference Vogel, Storey and Rasmussen1986: 72–3).
Vat. Lat. 7701 opens with ordination. Here, it carries rituals for ordaining seven grades of the church, from porter (ostiarius) to priest (presbyter), all involving the bishop.Footnote 15 This is a particular version of the composite text often entitled the ordo de sacris ordinibus.Footnote 16 The text has three elements: first, each grade has a simple rubric detailing the most important ritual action for the ordination; second, they are each given a set of prayers to be said; and thirdly, there is the distinctive interpolation in the middle, an ordo detailing what claims to be Roman practice of ordination in Saint Peter's. In Table 2 our pontifical is compared with the parallel text in a GVIII, the Phillipps Sacramentary of Autun and c. 800. The prayer texts are generally variations on the terms Prefatio for prayer and Benedictio for blessing.
Table 2. Ordination rituals of Vat. Lat. 7701 and the Phillipps Sacramentary (GVIII).
1 Heiming, Reference Heiming1984: 181–90.
2 ‘Then the blessings over those who are to be blessed to the sacred orders’
3 ‘Here begins the ordo for how the sacred are to be blessed’.
4 ‘Ordo how in the apostolic Roman church deacons, subdeacons and priests are to be ordained. On the first, fourth, seventh and tenth months, on Wednesday and Friday they are to be examined to see if they should be worthy to perform this labour. The Saturdays at Saint Peter's in twelve readings …’
5 ‘Ordo how in the apostolic Roman church, priests, deacons and subdeacons are chosen. The first, fourth, seventh and tenth months, the Saturdays at Saint Peter's in twelve readings …’
There are four major instances of what we might call ‘correction’. First, there are interventions to ensure that every one of the minor orders received two prayers, whereas, in the original GVIII, lector and acolyte only have one each. For the lector, the Chieti compiler simply extracts a speech which was originally undifferentiated from the rubric: this is the text Elegunt te fratres and he gives it its own title as PREFATIO.Footnote 17 In the acolyte, however, a completely new prayer, attested in no copy of the GVIII, was inserted under the title BENEDICTIO. The original GVIII benediction is shifted to be second, under the new title ITEM COLLECTIO UT SUPRA.Footnote 18 This original text underlined the New Testament roots of the acolyte by Christ's associations with light and water:
Domine sancte pater omnipotens eterne deus qui per Iesum Christum filium tuum in hunc mundum lumen claritatis misisti et in cruce passionis suae triumphum sanguine et aqua ex latere …Footnote 19
The new benediction added here gives the Old Testament roots:
Domine sancte pater omnipotens eterne deus qui Moysen et Aaron locutus es ut accerendentur lucerna in tabernaculo testimonii …Footnote 20
One other recension of the ordo de sacris ordinibus does the same thing, with the exact same blessing text added. This is Donaueschingen 192, from late ninth-century Constance (Metzger, Reference Metzger1914: 7*). We are offered here a glimpse into liturgical relations across the Alps, a shared solution to a shared anxiety about the acolyte's rite. Furthermore, making reference to the grade's Old and New Testament roots, pleasing in its symmetry, recalls several of the multiplicity of Carolingian tracts circulating on the origins and purposes of the church's hierarchy (e.g. Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1975: 323).
A second matter of interest comes in the central interpolation concerning the ‘Ember Days’, the text entitled in our manuscript ORDO QUALITER IN ROMANA SEDIS APOSTOLICE ECCLESIE DIACONI SUBDIACONI UEL PRESBITERI HORDINANDI SUNT.Footnote 21 In each of the four seasons, three days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) were devoted to a special fast, and ordination of higher clergy came to attach itself firmly to the Saturday, as this ordo describes (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 213–32). The Ember Days were one of the key points of Carolingian engagement with Roman liturgical custom.Footnote 22 The most widespread liturgical directory for what happened on these days, and how they related to ordination, was the text found in the GVIII, ORDO QUALITER. But it was deficient in dealing only with the Saturday. Only a single sacramentary of this type, the Sacramentary of Angoulême, added a special reference to the Wednesday and Friday.Footnote 23 This same reference is to be found in our manuscript:
Feria IIII et VI scrutandi sunt ipsi electi secundum canones, si sint digni hoc onus fungiFootnote 24
There were many direct imperial orders from the Frankish centre that the clergy, particularly priests, should be properly examined prior to ordination (Vyoukal, Reference Vyoukal1913; Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1975: 324; De Jong, Reference De Jong and Story2005: 122). So, in clarifying the Ember Days, and in allowing space for examination, these interpolations tie into the general Carolingian project. They link our manuscript to the peculiar GVIII tradition of Angoulême.
Thirdly, the rubric for the deacon is erased in Vat. Lat. 7701. In most copies of the text, this rubric runs:
Diaconus cum ordinatur. Solus episcopus qui eum benedicit, manum super caput illius ponat, quia non ad sacerdotium sed ad ministerium consecratur.Footnote 25
Amalarius of Metz, a widely published Carolingian scholar of liturgy, found this text highly questionable. As he tells it, in his Liber Officialis, first written in 822:
With us there is a certain book on the sacred orders (de sacris ordinibus), I do not know who wrote it … that says that the bishop alone should lay his hand on the deacon ‘because he is not consecrated to the priesthood but to ministry’ … Is the writer of this book more learned and holier than the apostles, who laid many hands upon the deacons when they were ordained? And should the bishop alone therefore lay his hand on the deacon, as if he alone could invoke the virtue of the graces that the many apostles invoked?Footnote 26
Ughelli (Reference Ughelli1720: 673) recorded that a copy of Amalarius's Liber Officialis was transcribed in Chieti by the scribe Sicardus, in the late ninth century, though the manuscript is now lost. The erasure of the deacon, inexplicable otherwise, could therefore be a response to discussion among elites in the Carolingian centre, in which Italians on the periphery were interested.
Finally, Vat. Lat. 7701 has no ordination for a bishop. For this, Rasmussen (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 398) posited extraordinary influence. This bishop in central Italy, he said, did not dare to intrude on the pope's prerogative to ordain bishops. However, Rome's influence was not unduly felt elsewhere in the manuscript. For example, Rome did not practise the unction of a priest's hands, visible here in the prayer CONSECRATIO MANUUM.Footnote 27 Rasmussen, who was here labouring under his own strict understanding of what a pontifical ought to be, was misled. The absence of a bishop's ordination is far from unique. A manuscript Rasmussen examined (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 136–66), Leiden Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Codices Bibliothecae Publicae 111.2, which offers two sets of ordinations of the later ninth century, one from Paris and one from northern France, lacks the bishop's rite in both. Freiburg 368, from Basel, is also missing it (Metzger, Reference Metzger1914: 15*–17*). In another Italian version of the ordo de sacris ordinibus, from eleventh-century Lucca Biblioteca Capitolare MS 606, the bishop has also been removed.Footnote 28 One cannot posit papal prerogative for these. Far simpler, and more easily understandable, is that pontifical manuscripts responded to the needs of the bishops themselves, representing what was most useful to them. Each of these manuscripts already represents a selective reduction from the full sacramentary; reducing them further by cutting out the ritual that a bishop of lower rank would rarely attend seems reasonable. Offering seven grades was also theologically desirable (Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1972; Reference Reynolds and McKitterick1995: 602–3).
Thus, the interventions in the ordination ritual seem to be concurrent with influences also visible across the Alps. Similarities with the version of the ordo de sacris ordinibus from a lost Sacramentary of Rheims, such as the use of the archaic word planeta for chasuble in the priestly ordination, may also preserve an otherwise obscure link (Morin, Reference Morin1695: 236–9). The importance of this ordination ritual in Chieti is attested because the same version of the text is copied into another of the city's manuscripts, Reg. Lat. 1997, as Reynolds (Reference Reynolds, Clerck and Palazzo1990: 440–2) demonstrated. This manuscript is notably the subject of an article by Supino-Martini (Reference Supino-Martini1977). It primarily contains a canonical collection, the Teatine Collection (Kéry, Reference Kéry1999: 24), in a developing pre-Caroline minuscule, dated to the decade after the establishment of a scriptorium in Chieti, c. 850. Perhaps a decade later, c. 860, the blank last pages were filled in by a new hand writing in a fully developed Caroline minuscule (Supino-Martini, Reference Supino-Martini1977: 142–3). This hand presents a striking resemblance to the scribes of Vat. Lat. 7701, particularly those in the second section. On folios 156r–160r, this hand added the ordination rite, with the same otherwise unique title ITEM BENEDICTIONES, and it has almost all the peculiarities of the Chieti version. Reg. Lat. 1997 reveals what was written on the missing first folio of our manuscript, Vat. Lat. 7701 (and that only one folio was missing):
INCIPIT ORDO DE SACRIS ORDINIBUS. Haec autem in singulis gradibus obseruanda sunt tempora si ab infantia ecclesiasticis nomen dederit …Footnote 29
The text explains how long one should spend in each ecclesiastical grade, an obvious accompaniment to the ordination rites. The Phillipps GVIII Sacramentary offered this text, an extract from a decretal of Pope Zosimus (417–18) (Migne, Reference Migne1845: cols 672–3). Placing such writings around liturgical texts of uncertain provenance integrated them into a Carolingian understanding of authority, for which Amalarius of Metz's confusion over who wrote the libellus de sacris ordinibus is instructive. In Reg. Lat. 1997 itself, the whole complex of the ordo de sacris benedicendis is inserted into a canonical context, where it would surely be read with weight (writings of Gregory the Great and Isidore in the same hand precede it).
CONSECRATING CHURCHES
The description of the Chrism Mass for Maundy Thursday follows ordination, showing particular affinity with the Phillipps Sacramentary (Heiming, Reference Heiming1984: 56–8). Since the GVIII was structured according to the liturgical year, this text was purposefully extracted from its original place by the compiler. Another ordo comes thereafter, at fol. 14v. This is the text known as ordo Romanus XLI, henceforth OR XLI. That designation originates in Andrieu's editions (Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 311–47), though he was not aware that Vat. Lat. 7701 contained an example. It presents a Frankish rite for the dedication of a church, an ornate ritual involving several aspersions of the space with holy water, and tracing of the alphabet.Footnote 30
This ceremony too came to be incorporated into the GVIII Sacramentary and, there, was accompanied by an announcement and by the eight prayers that would be said during the ceremony. The same structure follows in our manuscript, with nine prayers (see Table 3). Thereafter follow GVIII blessings for liturgical objects which would be used in the new church: paten, chalice, altars, bell and cross. There are one or two peculiarities in Vat. Lat. 7701's version of OR XLI (Ramussen, 1985: 383). One is found on folio 17r, concerning the bishop's blessing of the vessels and linens for the new church:
DEINDE PONTIFEX BENEDICIT SICUT IN SACRAMENTORUM CONTINETUR Domine deus omnipotens.Footnote 31
Table 3. The church dedication ordo in Vat. Lat. 7701.
1 ‘First of all the pontiff …’
2 ‘Announcement when the relics are to be placed’.
3 ‘Ordo for the dedication of a church: Magnify, O lord …’ The title seems misplaced here from OR XLI, which lacks a title.
4 ‘Blessing of salt and water: Oh God, who for the salvation …’
5 ‘Another: I exorcize thee …’
6 ‘Prayer for the consecration of water and wine: Creator and conservator …’
7 ‘Prayer for the dedication of a new basilica: God, who this place to your name …’
8 Title effaced: ‘Almighty God of sanctifications …’
9 ‘Blessing of the altar: God, father almighty …’
10 ‘Blessing of the same altar: Almighty God in whose honour …’
11 ‘Say this oration like a prayer: Holy God merciful father …’
12 ‘When relics are lifted: Take away from us …’
13 Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 397.
14 ‘Before the door: Your house, oh Lord …’
15 ‘Prayer within the building: God who by consecrating to you …’
16 ‘Another: God whom we have exalted …’
17 ‘Another: God who from the living and elect …’
18 ‘Prayer of the linens: Oh Lord almighty God …’
That prayer incipit Domine deus omnipotens is not specified in almost every other example of OR XLI (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 346). There, the reference to the sacramentary had to suffice, and one had to track down the required prayer inside it, making performance more difficult. Yet, in our manuscript, this very prayer Domine deus omnipotens is to be found only a few folios later, at fol. 24r, entitled PREFATIO LINTEAMINUM.Footnote 32 Thus, the addition unites the manuscript and allows a greater accessibility of both word and actions of the ceremony. Of the full prayers which follow OR XLI, each one has its place in the narrative, and is signalled with an incipit. Like the ordination rituals, this framework allowed the ordo to be actively performed without the weight of the sacramentary, which also contained masses for the whole liturgical year. The oddity is the prayer Deus sancte pater clemens, not present in the GVIII tradition. It is found, however, in an eleventh-century church dedication ritual in Lucca Biblioteca Capitolare 605 which is described as ‘Ambrosian’, meaning of the traditions particular to Milan (Mercati, Reference Mercarti1902: 23–4). Gros (Reference Gros1969: 373) suggested that the prayer was still, in origin, a Frankish one, because it is also found in an English pontifical of the tenth century which likely took it from the Continent.Footnote 33 In Vat. Lat. 7701 the prayer is presented in a particularly early witness, but it was most likely part of a common Frankish inheritance of church dedication texts in Italy that also affected Milan.
More evidence of completion, even personalization, of the church dedication ceremony is found between folios 23v and 24r with the material labelled in Table 3 as ‘addition’. Here, the original compilers had left a significant gap between Deus sancte pater clemens and before the opening of the next prayer under the title PREFATIO LINTEAMINUM. Another hand took advantage of this to add five new prayers, also pertaining to the church dedication, but none from the original GVIII ritual.Footnote 34 Three are given specific titles relating to their place in ceremonial: QUANDO RELIQUIAE LEVANTUR, ANTE IANUA and ORATIO INTRA DOMUM.Footnote 35 These first three prayers were taken from another sacramentary tradition, the Gregorian Sacramentary. They are all part of the original Roman nucleus of this tradition, in the form Pope Hadrian sent it to Charlemagne, which is known as the Hadrianum. The prayer QUANDO LEVANTUR RELIQUIAE Aufer a nobis appears in the Hadrianum under the same title, and is presented together with the prayer Domus tua domine, which is entitled ANTE IANUA in Vat. Lat. 7701 (Deshusses, Reference Deshusses1971: 303). The prayer which is given in Vat. Lat. 7701 under the title ORATIO INTRA DOMUM appears in the Hadrianum a little later, in the Mass for the dedication of a church (Deshusses, Reference Deshusses1971: 304). This implies that this compiler had a Gregorian Sacramentary at his disposal and used it to supplement the GVIII text. He saw no absolute distinction between sacramentary traditions, but took from each what was useful to him. Following this extract from the Gregorian traditions, there are two prayers given under the title ALIA; thus they are alternatives to the ORATIO INTRA DOMUM. The second ALIA prayer, Deus qui de uiuis et electis, is found in some examples of the GVIII, but there is actually a prayer for the anniversary of the dedication of a church (Dumas, Reference Dumas1981: 378). It was put to new use here as part of the consecration. The first ALIA prayer, Deus qui hedificamini ecclesiam, is attested in no other liturgical book, so may be peculiar to Chieti.
Examining their titles, it becomes clear that these five prayers were added by the scribe to fill gaps in the GVIII narrative of church dedication. At OR XLI nn. 3–4, it is instructed that the bishop, priests and deacons pray while the clergy sing Agnus Dei. Footnote 36 Yet no prayer was provided in the GVIII for the bishop to say. The title of the three prayers under INTRA DOMUM suggests the moment just after the bishop had entered the church, and three alternatives would allow for chant to continue at length. The prayer coming before them, ANTE IANUA, would be said previously at OR XLI n. 2, while the bishop waited before the doors of the church (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 340). The first, QUANDO RELIQUIAE LEVANTUR, fills an implied need. At OR XLI, n. 28, relics were lifted and taken into the church (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 346). The burial of relics under the altar was a precondition for proper consecration, but they had to be treated with care (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. IV, 1956: 326–44; Smith, Reference Smith, Hahn and Klein2015). OR XLI n. 28 tells us that the relics were prepared beforehand, for which our prayer would suit, as would the announcement, DENUNTIATIO CUM RELIQUIĘ PONENDAE SUNT.Footnote 37 These five prayers seem to have been added to fill needs arising from the performance of OR XLI, needs the bishop felt himself. The prayers might have been his choice from an additional sacramentary he had on hand, to better reflect the entire unfolding of the church dedication ceremony.
Given this, the litany on fol. 57v, which puzzled Rasmussen, reveals itself to be another accompaniment to this ordo for church dedication. At OR XLI n. 3, it is specified that the clergy sing a litany before the doors of the church.Footnote 38 This is exactly where the litany in our manuscript would be sung, according to the slightly damaged opening:
INCIPIT LETANIA. […] cantor ante ianuam ecclesiae dicitur …Footnote 39
This litany was sung alternating between the cantor, who was head of chant at the cathedral, and the scola, the canons of San Giustino. It was obviously added onto a spare folio to allow for the ceremonial performance of the litany in the ceremony of church dedication. This particular litany goes through all the twelve apostles, with Thomas, as patron of Chieti, in first place. Devotion to individual apostles, particularly liturgical commemoration of them, proliferated first in Carolingian Francia, and spread via the GVIII (Borella, Reference Borella1948: 87–93). Therefore, while the litany is itself quite singular, it was probably the outworking in Italy of devotion to the apostolic saints put to use as a dedication litany.
CALLING A COUNCIL, CONSULTING A CAPITULARY AND HOLDING HOLY WEEK
Most of Rasmussen's third section encompasses the ORDO ROMANUS AD CONCILIUM AGATUR, for the performance of a church synod over three days (Schneider, Reference Schneider1996: 331–42). Schneider (Reference Schneider1996: 55–7) believed this text came from Bavaria, perhaps composed by Arn of Salzburg. As such, it is evidence that the lively liturgical exchange between Carolingian Italy and Bavaria reached as far south as Chieti (Schmid, Reference Schmid, Beumann and Schröder1987: 51–92; Diesenberger, Meens and Rose, Reference Diesenberger, Meens and Rose2016: 39–40, 67, 211–12). Rasmussen (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 398) was troubled that the text presents itself as an ordo for a council overseen by a metropolitan archbishop. This does not, however, mean that the text was only of interest to a metropolitan, as he assumed. Parkes (Reference Parkes2015: 182) reminds us that ‘liturgy emphatically did not need to be used to be of value to a tenth- or eleventh-century audience’, and this is certainly true also of the ninth century. There are any number of reasons why a bishop of Chieti might want a copy of a metropolitan ordo: as record of a council he had attended, as a model for his own smaller synod, or for intellectual interest. In this version, for example, there are many long speeches, comprising citations of Alcuin and Isidore.
The Capitulary, unique to this manuscript and perhaps also gathered by Arn of Salzburg (Schneider Reference Schneider2007: 480–5), was an obvious accompaniment to a council ordo, since it extracts two chapters from a previous authoritative ruling: Charlemagne's Capitulare Ecclesiasticarum (of between 805 and 813), addressed directly to his bishops instructing them to teach the faith correctly and keep the peace.Footnote 40 But this capitulary also has a unique prologue, with an admonition from the emperor, depicting him sending out his missi (overseers) and demanding emendatio (emendation) and corrigere (correction) from all of society in some of the most characteristic vocabulary of the Carolingian project.Footnote 41 It focuses particularly on the bishop's role, to oversee through the authoritative canons:
the whole people, first of all over his secular canons, then similarly over abbots and monks and abbesses and consecrated virgins, over the counts and judges, admonishing (ammonendo) each one justly.Footnote 42
Hence, our pontifical also contains a guidebook for the bishop to the Carolingian project, and his duties in that, now going beyond the liturgical. Given that our manuscript offers a narrative of a bishop's liturgical roles and, therefore, his most distinctive responsibilities and rights, it is telling that the pontifical, once completed, also contained this admonition to the bishops from Charlemagne. With Theodorich's appeal to Louis the Pious as he built a canonica, this text shows that the bishops of Chieti were aware of their responsibilities as Carolingian bishops, seeing their activities as linked to the emperor's will, and as part of a broader empire-wide programme that was led by bishops.
What now accompanies these texts is the ordo Romanus for Holy Week, whose title is simply FERIA V IN CENA DOMINI.Footnote 43 Originally it fell at the very end, but it now comes in the middle of two disordered halves of section three. Fols. 64v and 65r are in one hand, but on 65v a new hand intervenes, in a darker and less genteel script, to continue the text until it ends halfway through the ceremony of Good Friday, itself entitled In Parasceven (Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 396; ‘On Good Friday’). One assumes that originally the text continued with Holy Saturday. Rasmussen (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 396) again offered the closest edition. For Maundy Thursday: ‘Pontifical Romano-Germanique 99, 222, 252–6, 267, 270–83, Ordo Romanus L, 25;21, 60–8, 83–104’. For Good Friday: ‘Pontifical Romano-Germanique 99:304–7, Ordo Romanus L:27:1–12’. He identified the text with pieces from the Holy Week section of Ordo Romanus L, a part of the so-called Pontifical Romano-Germanique (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. V, 1961). OR L is a combination of many different sources, ordines and prayers, into a narrative of the liturgical year, appearing only in manuscripts after 950. Vat. Lat. 7701 thus offers an early version of what must have been a source text. Since we now know that the Pontifical Romano-Germanique never existed in a single manuscript as Andrieu imagined, but its coherence must arise from movements going back to the ninth century, such possible source texts have become of great importance (Parkes, Reference Parkes2015: 75–101). Elaborated versions of it are also found in two twelfth-century Italian pontificals: one in Macerata, and one from Chieti itself, Vat. Lat. 7818, also examined by Andrieu (Andrieu, Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. II, Reference Andrieu1948: 52–61, 92–3; Gyug, Reference Gyug1981: 394; Reynolds, Reference Reynolds1985: 438–44.).
This ordo seems designed for use in a small, urban cathedral like Chieti. For example, it suggests that the bishop would reserve some of Maundy Thursday's Host for Good Friday, to communicate then as well.Footnote 44 Again, this was a Frankish norm in contradiction with Roman practice (Liber Officialis, I.15.1, Hanssens, Reference Hanssens1948: 107). Furthermore, it seems liturgically coherent with the whole of Vat. Lat. 7701, and, as such, suited to accompany a GVIII. The minor orders who take part in the ceremony of Maundy Thursday are those listed in the ordo de sacris ordinibus.Footnote 45 The Chrism Mass is appropriately situated in the ceremony of Maundy Thursday, and textual parallels link it back to Missale Chrismale in our manuscript. Et intrat in consecratione emitte (Vat. Lat. 7701, fol. 65r) would refer to the prayer Emitte, quaesumus, domine spiritum sanctum paraclitum (Vat. Lat. 7701, fols 10–11).Footnote 46 Again, the scola (representing the canons of San Giustino) is involved.Footnote 47
CORRECTIO IN CHIETI AND LITURGY IN ITALY
This survey makes it plain that Vat. Lat. 7701 passed through the hands of one who performed its rituals, the bishop of Chieti. This would also explain the manuscript's relatively plain aspect. Yet, some significant features give it resonance with more general priorities visible in the liturgical discourse beyond the Alps. Such texts not only described how to perform liturgy, they also prescribed a certain way of thinking about it. To which bishop exactly we owe Vat. Lat. 7701 remains unclear. Perhaps it was either Petrus, active at the time of a council in 853, or Theodorich II, to whom Pope John VIII wrote a letter in 880 (Ughelli, Reference Ughelli1720: 670–3; Pelligrini, Reference Pellegrini1990: 247). But that bishop and his canonica certainly were working with Frankish texts, seeing themselves within a Carolingian programme.
The other two manuscripts from Chieti round out the picture of the diocese. In Reg. Lat. 1997, the Gelasian ordinations attach themselves quite naturally to a canonical collection which has numerous Frankish elements, including the colophon of Sigipert, amanuensis of Angilram of Metz (Supino-Martini, Reference Supino-Martini1977: 136). Amidst their other additions, later scribes added extracts from the 860 synodical letter of a Frankish bishop and arch-chaplain to the court, Remigius of Lyons (d.875), implying full and sustained access in Chieti to the broader European episcopal dialogue.Footnote 48 This episcopal dialogue, as Patzold (Reference Patzold2008) has shown, helped bishops to constitute and define themselves as an ordo at the same time as the first pontifical manuscripts in the style of Vat. Lat. 7701 constituted and defined their liturgical duties. These distinctive interpolations reveal that the bishops of central Italy were as much a part of this dialogue as those across the Alps, with whom Patzold dealt more extensively. The contents of the miscellany, Karlsruhe Aug. Perg. 229, are a typical sweep of authorities found in other examples of Carolingian miscellany manuscripts: Isidore's De Officiis and other writings, Bede's De Tempora Rationum, and anonymous texts on the Creed which have an obvious teaching function (Supino-Martini, Reference Supino-Martini1977: 149).Footnote 49 One of these is entitled TRACTATIO SYMBOLI AD CONPETENTES, i.e. it is for laypeople around baptism.Footnote 50 Such tracts are attested across the Frankish world, and were tools for education (Keefe, Reference Keefe2002: vol. I: 143–57). This miscellany also encloses a set of prayers of that Carolingian genre called libellus precum, personal devotional guides (Wilmart, Reference Wilmart1940; Salmon, Reference Salmon1974: 123–94).Footnote 51 The content of these prayers certainly deserves a study of its own; here they serve to confirm that the scriptorium of Chieti was copying Frankish types of texts. With these manuscripts considered, some of the interventions in the ordination ritual are better contextualized.
Thus, the evidence appears to suggest that we see Chieti's scriptorium as a centre for the dissemination of the Carolingian programme in the heart of Italy. It was incorporated by Theodorich within a canonica whose founding manifesto was openly imperial Frankish. Given the destruction of Chieti in 801, mentioned in the Annales Regni Francorum, it is unlikely that many books survived, or that the liturgy had continued uninterrupted in the cathedral of Saint Thomas. Undoubtedly, entirely new Carolingian books and texts were brought into Chieti for copying. Given certain indications above, it seems that these books came largely from the Rhine Valley and Bavaria, both areas also having liturgically fertile links with the north of Italy. That the Chieti miscellany, Karlsruhe Aug. Perg. 229, later came to the monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance is suggestive. In fact, parts of the manuscript cohere so well with certain texts in Reichenau's book lists that it is quite probable that exemplars for it originated there as well (Supino-Martini, Reference Supino-Martini1977: 149–50).
A way into the broader Italian context is furnished by another piece of liturgy in Reg. Lat. 1997. On the final folio (160v) a set of laudes were written by another supplementing hand (Gaudenzi, Reference Gaudenzi1916: 376, n. 1). Laudes were ritual invocations of Christ and the saints, asking their intercession, here presented to be sung on Christmas and saint's days.Footnote 52 These laudes give us a Carolingian vision of hierarchy, with each level of society prayed for in turn: Pope, Bishop, Emperor, Empress, princes, judges, armies of Christians and the clerics (Kantorowicz, Reference Kantorowicz1946: 59–62). For the last, invocations are offered in the first person, indicating that these laudes were written for the canons of San Giustino to sing themselves into place in the ideal Carolingian society. The Emperor and Empress are named Louis II of Italy (d.875) and his wife Engelberga, giving an obvious terminus ante quem.Footnote 53 Among the saints invoked is Giustino, the first bishop of Chieti, but before him come several Merovingian Frankish patrons: Medardus of Soissons, Eligius of Noyons, Remigius of Rheims and Vedastus of Cambrai (Pelligrini, Reference Pellegrini1990: 269, n. 167). The church dedication litany in Vat. Lat. 7701, in a somewhat similar format, invoked the aid of God for the ‘emperors’.Footnote 54 It does not seem likely, as Rasmussen pondered (Reference Rasmussen and Haverals1998: 394), that the plural implied parallel intercession for the Emperor in Constantinople. More likely it was simply copied blindly, an anachronism from an era when there were two emperors in the West.
The potency of the laudes in the Italian context is attested by their presence in a number of pontifical manuscripts from the north. Verona Biblioteca Capitolare 92 (Verona, 814–17) and Cologne Dombibliothek 138 (north Italy, first quarter of the ninth century) offer them, and the eleventh-century manuscript Rome Biblioteca Nazionale Sessorianus 52 (Nonantola) copied from a ninth-century exemplar with laudes also praising Louis II.Footnote 55 All three are ordo Romanus manuscripts treated by Andrieu (Reference Andrieu1931–61, vol. 1, reprinted 1965: 471–6), representing his so-called ‘Collection B’. These manuscripts gathered a set of ordines narrating episcopal responsibilities: church dedication (OR XLI), baptism, Holy Week, ordination on the Ember Days (ordo de sacris ordinibus). In this, they are entirely parallel to Vat. Lat. 7701. They extracted from the Gelasian Sacramentary just as Vat. Lat. 7701 did, taking from it the same ordination rite and the consecrations of vessels. It is significant that Collection B also gathered laudes. Laudes passed into Italian pontificals from their original setting in Psalters once they became a feature of the episcopal Mass exclusively, that is, when they became another particular liturgical signifier of a bishop (Kantorowicz, Reference Kantorowicz1946: 87). Verona, home of Verona 92, presents a particularly striking history. The bishop to whom we owe that pontifical was Ratold (770–840/58), a Frank educated at the abbey of Reichenau, as was his predecessor, Egino, and successor, Noting (Meersemann, Adda and Deshusser, Reference Meersemann, Adda and Deshusses1974: 3). During this tripartite Frankish episcopacy, Caroline minuscule script was brought to Verona, and to Ratold himself is attributed the foundation of a scola sacerdotium at Verona. This was a canonical community like Theodorich's at Chieti (Meersemann, Adda and Deshusser, Reference Meersemann, Adda and Deshusses1974: 3–15; Ferrari, Reference Ferrari1979: 270–1). Taking Verona 92 as representative of the episcopal liturgy Ratold performed, his Frankish upbringing could have conditioned him to use certain texts like the GVIII. Milan also incorporated certain key Frankish liturgical practices (some recognizably from the GVIII) and formed a canonical community under a Frankish bishop, Angilbert II (824–59).Footnote 56 These examples show that Theodorich's activity in Chieti was part of a broader pattern. Undoubtedly, these appointments were intended to bring the bishoprics and their resources under the control of those loyal to the imperial crown, rather than those dreaming of the old Lombard hegemony. But the cultural and specifically liturgical effects of this policy are less well known. The Frankish bishops who came to Italian sees were educated with a Frankish understanding of episcopal duty, assuming that their responsibility was to enact ‘correctio’, and they undoubtedly communicated with other Frankish bishops across the Alps about how to do that. What resulted from their efforts would vary depending on the bishop himself and what was peculiar to the see. Yet, judging by Chieti, Verona and Milan, it included the formation of canonical communities and certain interventions in the liturgy, perhaps even inaugurated by the production of a pontifical.
Even if just nominally, Carolingian emperors certainly saw it as their duty to patronize ‘correct’ liturgy (Hen, Reference Hen2001: 87–94). Therefore, it is interesting that Louis II himself may be linked more directly to our manuscript. Regarding the laudes in Reg. Lat. 1997, Gaudenzi (Reference Gaudenzi1916: 376–7) suggested a connection with Louis II's expedition against the Saracens in the south of Italy, 865 or 866. Perhaps, he supposed, clerics from Chieti had attended the Emperor and his wife at Pescaria and laudes were composed for the occasion.Footnote 57 It is certainly possible. Yet Vat. Lat. 7701 offers a more direct link to that campaign. The final blessing in the Benedictional of Vat. Lat. 7701, unique to this manuscript, is entitled BENEDICTIO SUPER EXERCITUM ITURUM AD PROELIUM.Footnote 58 It runs:
Omnipotens pater deus deorum rex regum et dominus dominorum translator in inelius communatorque regnorum benedicat uos atque custodiat preueniendo comitando et subsequendo proficiscendis in eius nomine contra gentes paganorum. Amen.Footnote 59
Surely the gentes paganorum cannot be other than the Saracens against whom Louis II sallied in 865/6? If so, this may more clearly date our pontifical to those years. Vat. Lat. 7701 was certainly not a dedicatory or presentation copy for the Emperor himself to see. Yet the presence of Louis II might have spurred the bishop of Chieti to the production of a new ritual book, representing the Frankish ideals of correctio he and his canonica were inculcating in the heart of Italy, a book which also defined his own authority in Frankish terms. This is certainly a fascinating ‘human story’ hidden in Vat. Lat. 7701's unassuming pages. The prayers added in eleventh-century Beneventan Script to the manuscript's last folios, signs of continued use and opportunity for further study, suggest that this Carolingian story continued to speak in Italy for generations to come.Footnote 60
