BENEDIZIONALE

BLESSINGALIA. — A book containing the formulary for the various blessings. An early collection of these is found in the East in the Sacramentary of St. Serapion of Thmuis (F.X. Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, II, Paderborn 1905, pp. 163 ff.), and later in the Euchologia of the Greeks. In the West, the oldest is probably that of Cod. 6430, used in the church of Freising, compiled at Autun in the 7th century (G. Morin, in Revue Bénédictine, 29 (1912), pp. 168–94). The appendix of Alcunno to the Gregorian provides further formulas, and in many ancient sacramentaries a collection of blessings is found after the preface (L. Delisle, Anciens Sacramentaires, p. 87). Among the most notable collections are the Blessingale of St. Gregory the Great (F. A. Zaccaria, Bibliotheca Ritualis, I, Rome 1776, p. 158), the Blessingale of Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (983–984), which contains formulas for 116 feasts (ed. G. F. Warner and H. Wilson, Oxford 1911), that of Archbishop Robert (10th century; ed. H. A. Wilson, London 1903), which also includes other sacred functions to be celebrated by the bishop, that of Canterbury (11th century), already united with the pontifical (ed. R. M. Wooley, London 1917), the Blessingale according to the rite of the Church of Orléans (Orléans 1966), the Obsequiale sive Blessingale Pragense (Prague 1585), as well as the excerpt from the pontifical of the church of Reims containing the Benedictiones Episcopales (U. Chevalier, Sacramentaire et Martyrologie de l'Abbaye de St-Remy, Paris 1900, pp. 306–15). Often, blessingales were adorned with precious miniatures depicting the respective rite of blessing. Today, blessingales are included in the Ritual, Pontifical, and Missal and are no longer printed separately.