JOHN ARCHICANTOR. - Abbot of the small monastery of St Martin, adjacent to the basilica of St Peter in the Vatican, and primicerius of the Schola cantorum of St Peter, when in 678, with the consent of Pope Agatho, he was taken to England by Benedict Biscop (q.v.) to teach chant and the Roman liturgy in the new great abbey of Wearmouth.
His teaching covered both the Divine Office and the ceremonies of the Mass: *ordinem cantandi, psallendi, atque in Ecclesia ministrandi* (Life of the Abbot, ch. 6) and extended throughout the ecclesiastical year: *cursum canendi annum, sicut ad S. Petrum agebatur, et quae totius anni circulus in celebratione dierum festorum poscebat* (Ecclesiastical History, IV, 18). G. thus held a true complete course in liturgy, of which he left not a few things also committed to writing (Life of the Abbot, ch. 6). And the Venerable Bede further informs us that such writings were preserved in the library of his monastery, while copies circulated everywhere, *a multis circumquaque transcripta*.
This fact is of the greatest importance for the history of the Roman liturgy. At the end of the 7th and in the 8th century the liturgy in the Anglo-Saxon regions had to be in some way adapted to that of St Peter; and through the continuous influx of English monks into northern France, the Rhine countries and other places on the continent, it exercised a notable influence also outside England, in many centres of the European West.
Fr. Carlo Silva-Tarouca has identified in the Anonymous of St Gall (ms. 349) the surviving writings of G., especially that precious *Ordo Romanus* of his, which is the oldest known today bearing the author’s name.
These writings are: 1) *Ordo ecclesiasticus anni circuli*, divided into two parts, the *Capitulare* and the *Instructio*. Of this *Ordo* there is a more or less faithful copy in the *Breviarium ecclesiastici ordinis* contained in the two codices of Lorsch (now in the Vatican, Pal. 574) and of Murbach (now in Gotha, membr. I, no. 85), both from the end of the 8th century. 2) *De Curius diurno vel nocturno*, instruction for monks on the distribution of the canonical Hours for the various times of the day. 3) *De Convivio*, i.e. the ritual customs of a Roman monastic refectory. 4) An *Apologia of the Roman rite*, appended to the pamphlet *De Convivio* (both these writings in PL 138, 1345-50, according to the edition of Gerbertus). The codex 349 of St Gall, in the part that has preserved these liturgical documents (ff. [39] 54-118), is in a minuscule script that already approaches the so-called Carolingian, with archaic elements that allow it to be assigned to the last decades of the 8th century rather than the first of the 9th; but it is a copy of another, older codex, *scilicet scriptus*, i.e. coming from England.
Moreover, G., according to Bede (who perhaps had him as his teacher), went to England not only as a teacher of the monks of Wearmouth, but also as a legate of the Pope, charged with ascertaining the orthodoxy of the English: *ut cuius esset fidei Anglorum Ecclesia, diligenter edisceret, Romamque rediens referret*. To this end he took part in the Synod of Hatfield, convened by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury in 680, and subscribed, together with the bishops, to its decrees (cf. Ecclesiastical History, IV, 17 sqq.). In that same year, on his return to Rome, as soon as he arrived in France he was struck by illness «and died».
His body was taken to Tours and buried in that famous monastery of St Martin, where he had already stayed on his way to England. In a catalogue of the saints depicted on an altar of Durham cathedral, a catalogue composed in the first half of the 15th century by Prior Wessington, this name is also found: *Sanctus Iohannes, archicantor Ecclesiae Sancti Petri Romae, abbas* (Rites of Durham, ed. Fowler, in Publications of the Streets Society, 107 [1902], p. 134).
For the various (partial) editions and the various codices of the writings of G. cf. M. Andrieu, *Les Ordines Romani, du haut moyen âge*, I, Louvain 1931, pp. 10-13 (Ord. XIV-XIX), 330-33, 491-92.