LITURGICAL ROLL — Blessing (early 11th century). Deesis, (photo Sansani) subscription “Primicerus opus Silvester hoc fero premus” at the feet of Christ — Bari, Archivio della Cattedrale.
The title of the work was marked on a label, usually of parchment, which projected outward so that the text could be identified without unrolling the roll; sometimes it also bore the number of columns and lines of writing. Egyptian books on papyrus were generally in roll form. The oldest known example dates to 2400 BC, but it is proven that the roll was already used for writing in the period of hieroglyphs, from the fact that one of the hieroglyphs actually represents a papyrus roll.
Some rare liturgical texts of the Church are still preserved in roll form on beautifully illuminated parchment (v. LITURGICAL ROLL). Numerous examples survive for Hebrew texts, since the parchment roll long remained in use in the Synagogue.
LITURGICAL ROLL. — The liturgical ceremonies of Holy Saturday gave rise in southern Italy to a particular custom: the texts for the blessings of the choir and the font and for Holy Orders were written separately on distinct rolls, richly decorated and illustrated with pictures interspersed in the text. Only the most recent (Vat. lat. 3784 A) lacks illumination. Thirty-one liturgical rolls survive, whole or fragmentary, dating from the 10th to the 14th century; of these, 28 Exultet (v.) with the prayers that follow it, two the Benedictio fontis and one the ceremonial for Ordinations (Pontifical). Their dimensions vary: the width ranges from 20 to 50 cm, the length reaches over 5 meters.
These liturgical rolls — described as “one of the most precious collections of graphic documents left by the Middle Ages” (Bertaux) — are of singular importance for liturgy, for textual history, for the musical notation that accompanies the text (often altered to introduce a new system), for their decoration, but above all for the nature and variety of their illustrative scenes. Especially those of the Exultet, in which the figures are arranged in reverse order to the writing, so that the people — while the deacon performed the ceremony and the roll was slowly unrolled from the top of the ambo, remaining suspended outside — could contemplate the pictures one after another as they came into view. It cannot be established when or where this custom originated, but it must be considered common to the whole region (at least for the Exultets) and indeed exclusive to II. Of the surviving liturgical rolls, only two were written outside southern Italy and even these are closely connected to it: one, preserved in the cathedral of Pisa, comes from a Benedictine monastery of central Italy dependent on Montecassino, and the other, now in the Museo civico of Pisa, was executed in the 13th century by Tuscan artists on the model of an older monastic roll in Beneventan script, preserved in the same museum. The names of popes and rulers added in the Oremus of an Exultet from Naples demonstrate its use in the 16th century; a roll was used in the cathedral of Salerno until recent times. As for the text, it is interesting to note that in the only 10th-century Exultet, in nine of the 11th and in one from the early 12th century (at Troia) the Vetus Latina appears; in three of these eleven rolls the primitive text was later replaced by the Vulgate. All the other seventeen (from the mid-11th to the 14th century) have the Vulgate, sometimes retaining biblical texts from the Vetus Latina in the praise of bees. The pictures are the commentary and illustration of the text. In the benedictionals we find representations of the ceremony in various stages, and then Moses making water gush forth, the wedding at Cana, the Baptism of the Lord, the Crucifixion, baptism administered by St Peter and St Andrew, and the baptism of children. In the pontifical belonging to Bishop Landulf I of Benevento (957-84), twelve scenes illustrate the ceremonies of conferring Orders.
The figures in the Exultets are extremely varied. Here too some scenes from the Old Testament appear (the sin of Adam and the crossing of the Red Sea), but those drawn from the Gospel predominate: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Samaritan Woman, the healing of the blind man, the raising of Lazarus, the temptations of the Lord, the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the kiss of Judas, the Crucifixion, the descent into Limbo, the Resurrection, the appearance of the Risen One, the disciples at Emmaus, the Transfiguration. In almost all the rolls the symbols of Tellus and of the Mater Ecclesia are depicted in various forms, and angels are not lacking. This gives occasion for the lively and naive representation of rural scenes. Other pictures illustrate the blessing ceremony itself. Particularly important for costume and historical references are the figures of the pope, emperor or king, the bishop, the people and the army. Sometimes at the end the patron saint of the church or monastery is shown, with the author of the roll in the act of offering. Only a few scenes, however, are found in almost all the rolls; some are rare, others are unique. Thus no true iconographic cycle can be said to exist; this demonstrates the variety of sources from which the artists drew. They combined local motifs with elements of Carolingian and Ottonian, Byzantine and Eastern art, now following the simple forms of local painting, now adopting the more advanced styles brought by Byzantine artists, always producing in any case an original whole without parallel elsewhere.