Liturgical Rotolo

LITURGICAL ROTOLO. - The liturgical ceremonies of Holy Saturday gave rise in southern Italy to a particular custom: the texts for the blessings of the candle and of the font and for Holy Ordination were written separately on distinct rolls, richly decorated and illustrated with pictures interspersed in the text. Only the most recent (Vat. lat. 3784 A) is without miniatures. There survive, between complete and fragmentary ones, 31 liturgical rolls dating from the 10th to the 14th century; of these 28 contain the Exultet (v.) with the prayers that follow it, two the Benedictio fontis, and one the ceremonial of Ordinations (Pontifical). Their dimensions are unequal: the width varies from 20 to 50 cm., the length reaches beyond 5 meters.

These liturgical rolls - defined as "one of the most precious collections of graphic documents left by the Middle Ages" (Bertaux) - are of singular importance for the liturgy, for the history of the text, for the musical notes that accompany it (often modified to introduce a new system), for the decoration, but above all for the nature and variety of the illustrative scenes. Especially those of the Exultet, in which the figures are arranged in the opposite direction 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 hanging on the outside - could contemplate the pictures one after another as they offered themselves to their gaze. It cannot be established when and where this custom arose, but it must be considered common to the whole region (at least for the Exultet) and indeed exclusive to it. Of the surviving liturgical rolls, only two are 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 sovereigns added in the Orenus of an Exultet of Naples demonstrate its use in the 16th century; a roll was used in the cathedral of Salerno down to our own days. As for the text, it is interesting to observe that in the only Exultet of the 10th century, in 9 of the 11th century and in one of the beginning of the 12th (at Troia) the Vetus latina appears; in 3 of these 11 rolls the primitive text was later replaced with the Vulgate. All the other 17 (of the 11th [mid]-14th centuries) have the Vulgate, sometimes preserving from the Vetus latina the biblical texts contained in the praise of the bees. The figures are the commentary and illustration of the text. In the benedictionals there is the representation of the ceremony in various phases, and then Moses striking water from the rock, the marriage at Cana, the Baptism of the Lord, the Crucifixion, the Baptism administered by St. Peter and St. Andrew, the Baptism of children. In the pontifical, which belonged to Bishop Landolfo I of Benevento (957-84), twelve pictures illustrate the ceremonies of the conferral of Orders.

The figures of the Exultet are quite varied. Here too some scenes of the Old Testament appear (the sin of Adam and the crossing of the Red Sea), but those drawn from the Gospel dominate: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the presentations at the Temple, the Samaritan woman, the healing of the blind man, the resurrection 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 of Emmaus, the Transfiguration. In almost all the rolls there are depicted, in different forms, the symbols of Tellus and of Mater Ecclesia, nor is the "angelic host" lacking; the praise of the bees, a poetic composition attributed to St. Augustine, offers occasion for the lively and ingenuous representation of rustic scenes. Other pictures illustrate the ceremony itself of the blessing of the candle. Particularly important for customs and for historical references are the figures of the pope, of the emperor or king, of the bishop, of the people and of the exercitus. Sometimes the patron saint of the church or of the monastery is represented at the end, with the author of the roll in the act of offering. Only some scenes, however, are found in almost all the rolls; some are rare, others even unique. One cannot therefore speak of a true and proper iconographic cycle; this demonstrates the variety of the sources from which the artists drew. They fused together local motifs with elements of Carolingian and Ottonian, Byzantine and Eastern art, now following the simple forms of local painting, now taking the more advanced forms brought by Byzantine artists, giving rise in every case to an original whole that finds no example elsewhere.

della Cattedrale, Exultet I, of local provenance (ca. a. 1000); 3. ibid., Exultet II, of local provenance (late 11th cent., rewritten in the 13th cent.); 4. ibid., Exultet III, of local provenance (late 12th cent.); 5. Capua, Arch. della Cattedrale, perhaps from Montecassino (early 11th cent.); 6. Città del Vaticano, Bibl. Ap. Vaticana, cod. Vat. lat. 3784, from Montecassino (ca. a. 1060); 7. ibid., cod. Vat. lat. 3784 A, from Naples (sa. 1334-42); 8. ibid., cod. Vat. lat. 9820, from the Msn. of S. Vincenzo al Volturno (sa. 981-87, rewritten in the 12th cent.); 9. ibid., cod. Barb. lat. 592, from Montecassino (late 11th cent.); 10. Gaeta, Tesoro della Cattedrale, Exultet I, of local provenance (early 11th cent., rewritten in the 14th cent.); 11. ibid., Exultet II, of local provenance (11th-12th cent.); 12. ibid., Exultet III, of local provenance (12th cent.); 13. London, British Museum, Add. ms. 30337, from Montecassino, where it was still to be found at the beginning of this century (late 11th cent.); 14. Manchester, John Rylands Library, Ms. 2, from an unknown locality of southern Italy (10th-11th cent.); 15. Mirabella Eclano (Avellino), Arch. della Collegiata, Exultet I, of local provenance (early 11th cent.); 16. ibid., Exultet II, of local provenance (11th-12th cent.); 17. Montecassino, Arch. della Badia, Exultet I, from an uncertain locality of southern Italy (11th cent.); 18. ibid., Exultet II, from Sorrento (12th cent.); 19. Paris, Bibl. nationale, Nav. Aeg. lat. 710, from the ancient cathedral of Fondi, whence it was removed in the early years of this century (early 12th cent.); 20. Pisa, Arch. del Duomo, from a monastery of central Italy (mid-11th cent.); 21. Pisa, Museo civico, Exultet I, from a monastery of southern Italy (11th cent.); 22. ibid., Exultet II, of the Tuscan school (late 13th cent.); 23. Rome, Bibl. Casanatense, cod. 724 B I 13, from Benevento (12th cent.); 24. Salerno, Arch. capitolare, from an uncertain locality of southern Italy (13th cent.); 25. Troia, Arch. della Cattedrale, Exultet I, of local provenance (mid-11th cent.); 26. ibid., Exultet II, of local provenance (early 12th cent.); 27. ibid., Exultet III, of local provenance (12th cent.); 28. Velletri, Museo della Cattedrale, from Montecassino (late 11th cent.). II. Reproductions: A. M. Latil, Le miniature nei r. dell'Exultet, Montecassino 1889 (reproduces eight rolls in color); E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie méridionale, I, Paris 1904, pp. 213-40 (examines and describes 16 of them); M. Avery, The Exultet rolls of south Italy, II: Plates, Princeton-Oxford 1936 (in this 2nd part of the work, the only one so far published, all the known rolls are published in 189 plates). III. Studies: E. M. Bannister, The Vetus Italia text of the Exultet, in Journal of Theological Studies,

11 (1909), Oct., pp. 43-54; P. Toesca, Storia dell'arte italiana, I, Turin 1927, p. 1050 and passim; E. Moneti, Considerazioni e ricerche sui r. liturgici miniati dell'Italia meridionale, in Scritti in onore di V. Federici, Florence 1946, pp. 241-53.

Giulio Battelli