ASPERGES ME. - Formula with which the ritual sprinklings of holy water are performed (v. ASPERSIONE). It is not easy to decide whether the use of the formula always coincided with that of the water. In the 9th century it was certainly used for the sprinkling of the sick (Theodulf of Orléans [d. 815], Capitulare alterum, 105, 220; Synod of Nantes, can. 4, in Mansi, XI, 658, falsely attributed to 658). It was probably also used in the Sunday sprinkling of the people (in which perhaps each person sprinkled himself without being sprinkled by others), which Hincmar of Reims (Capitula Synod., I, 5: PL 125, 774) prescribes in 852, whereas it seems that at first the sprinkling of places and things was done to the singing of psalms (S. Baluze, Capit. Regum Francor., I, Paris 1677, p. 903) or perhaps only with the recitation of collects. The use of the A. in the 11th century in the Sunday sprinkling is known with certainty from the Cassinese Consuetudines of Abbot Oderisius (E. Martène, De ant. Eccl. ritibus, ed. of Antwerp 1738, book IV, p. 134).
In Paschal time, in its place, Vidi aquam is sung, a composition inspired by Ez. 47, 1, with an evident allusion to Baptism, the remembrance of which Easter celebrates. In the evening Paschal procession of the neophytes, in fact, this same antiphon was sung at Rome (Ordo Roman., I, ch. 13: PL 78, 966). The baptismal sense, which in the Middle Ages succeeded the primitive lustral and exorcistic sense of the rite and of the formula of sprinkling, as well as the traditional use of not singing psalm 50 during the Paschal period, perhaps gave reason, more than the Roman historical reminiscence, for the introduction of the Vidi aquam in the same liturgical period.
Bibliography
Salvatore Marsili