Benedictional

BENEDICTIONAL. - A book that contained the formulas to be used for the various blessings. A first 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, p. 163 ff.), then in the Euchologion of the Greeks. In the West the oldest is probably that of Cod. 6430, used in the church of Freising and compiled at Autun in the 7th century (G. Morin, in Revue Bénédictine, 29 (1912), pp. 168-94). Alcuin's appendix to the Gregorian gives other formulas, and in many ancient sacramentaries a collection of blessings is found after the preface (L. Delisle, Anciens Sacramentaires, p. 87). Among the best-known collections are the B. of St. Gregory the Great (F. A. Zaccaria, Bibliotheca Ritualis, I, Rome 1776, p. 158), the B. Aethelwoldi of the 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 contains other sacred functions to be celebrated by the bishop, that of Canterbury (11th century), already joined to the pontifical (ed. R. M. Wooley, London 1917), the B. iuxta ritum Ecclesiae Aurelianensis (Orléans 1696), the Obsequiale sive B. Pragense (Prague 1585); likewise the extract from the pontifical of the church of Reims which contains the Benedictiones Episcopales (U. Chevalier, Sacramentaire et Martyrologe de l'Abbaye de St-Remy, Paris 1900, pp. 306-15). The b. were often adorned with precious miniatures representing the respective rite of blessing. Today the b. are contained in the ritual, pontifical and missal and are no longer printed separately.

Filippo Oppenheim