GIOVANNI ARCICANTORE. — Abbot of the small monastery of S. Martino, adjacent to the basilica of S. Pietro in Vaticano, and primicerius of the Schola cantorum of S. Pietro, when, in 678, with the consent of Pope Agatho, he was Benedetto Biscop (v.) to teach chant and the Roman liturgy in the new great abbey of Wearmouth.
His teaching comprised both the Divine Office and the ceremonies of the Mass: ordinem cantandi, psallendi, atque in Ecclesia ministrandi (Vita abb., cap. 6), and extended throughout the entire ecclesiastical year: cursum canendi annuum, sicut ad S. Petrum agebatur... et quae totius anni circulus in celebratione dierum festorum poscebat (Hist. eccl., IV, 18). G. thus gave a genuinely complete course in the liturgy, of which non pauca etiam litteris mandata reliquit (Vita Abb., cap. 6). The ven. Bede further informs us that these writings were preserved in the library of his monastery, while copies circulated everywhere, a multis circumsquique transcripta.
The fact is of the greatest importance for the history of the Roman liturgy. At the end of the seventh century and in the eighth century, the liturgy in the Anglo-Saxon regions must in some way have been adapted to that of S. Pietro; and, through the continual influx of English monks into northern France, the Rhineland, and other places on the Continent, it also exerted a considerable influence outside England, in many centers of Western Europe.
Fr. Carlo Silva-Tarouca identified in the Anonymous of S. Gallo (cod. 349) the surviving writings of G., especially his valuable Ordo Romanus, 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 Instrutio. The Breviarium ecclesiastici ordinis contained in the two codices of Lorsch (now in the Vatican, Pal. 574) and Murbach (now at Gotha, memb. I, n. 85), both dating from the end of the eighth century, is a more or less faithful copy of this Ordo. 2) De Cursu diurno vel nocturno, an instruction for monks concerning the distribution of the Canonical Hours at the various times of day. 3) De Convicio, that is, the ritual customs of a Roman monastic refectory. 4) An Apologia of the Roman rite, appended to the tract De Convicio (both these writings in PL 138, 1345–50, according to the ed. of Gerbertus). Cod. 349 of S. Gallo, in the part preserving these liturgical documents (ff. [39] 54–118), is written in a minuscule script already approaching the so-called Carolingian script, with archaic elements that allow it to be assigned to the final decades of the eighth century rather than the beginning of the ninth; but it is a copy of another, more ancient codex, scattice scriptus, that is, one originating in England.
Moreover, according to Bede (who may have had him as a teacher), G. went to England not only as teacher of the monks of Wearmouth, but also as the Pope’s legate, charged with investigating the orthodoxy of the English: ut cuius esset fidei Anglorum Ecclesia, diligenter edisceret, Romanque rediens referret. For this purpose he took part in the Synod of Hatfield, convened by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury in 680, and subscribed its decrees together with the bishops (cf. Hist. eccl., IV, 17 ff.). Returning to Rome in that same year, he was struck by illness as soon as he arrived in France, « ac defunctus est ».
His body was taken to Tours and buried in that celebrated monastery of S. Martino, where he had already stayed on his journey to England. In a catalogue of the saints depicted on an altar of Durham Cathedral, compiled in the first half of the fifteenth century by Prior Wessington, this name is also found: Sanctus Johannes, archicantor Ecclesiae Sancti Petri Roman, tabus (Rites of Durham, ed. Fowler, in Publications of the Surtees Society, 107 [1902], p. 134).
For the various (partial) editions and the various codices of G.’s writings cf. M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romanes du haut moyen âge, I, Lovanio 1931, pp. 10–13 (Ord. XIV–XIX), 330–33, 491–92.