SACRAMENTARIO

SACRAMENTARY. — The term in the early Middle Ages denoted the book containing the formulas used by the bishop or priest in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the administration of the Sacraments: the collect, the oratio super oblata (secret), the preface, the canon, the oratio ad complendum (postcommunion), and the oratio super populum.

SACRAMENTARY — The so-called Leonian Sacramentary; the “explicit” of the “potestatium” of the third Mass of Pentecost and the first two orations of the Temporale for Pentecost (ed. C. L. Felice, Cambridge 1896, pp. 27-28) — Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, cod. LXXXIV, f. 21r (second half of the 6th century).

OUTLINE:

I. Origins

II. The so-called Leonian Sacramentary

III. The Gelasian Sacramentary

IV. The Gregorian Sacramentary.

I. ORIGINS

1. Nomenclature

The term derives from sacramentum, which in early Christian Latin had several meanings but directly designates the Sacrament par excellence, the Eucharist. Sometimes mysterium is used with the same meaning as sacramentum, which explains why one sometimes finds liber mysteriorum used for liber sacramentum. From sacramentum came sacramentarium and liber sacramentorum. The first title is the most common; the second is used by Pope Adrian in his letter to Charlemagne (Jaffé-Wattenbach, I, p. 303). These terms, though generic in themselves, perfectly correspond to the content of the volume.

2. The first liturgical collections

In the earliest Christian assemblies there were no books except the Old Testament, that is, the Psalms, the Law, and the Prophets. Later, the Letters of St. Paul, the Gospels, the Acts, and the other books of the New Testament were added. The assemblies were accompanied by a reading, first continuous and then selected according to circumstances or recurring feasts. At a certain point, the reading was interrupted by the presider, who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, would formulate a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God, gathering the intentions of the faithful (1 Cor 14:16; Justin, 1 Apol., ch. 67). The initial structure of this oratio must have been very simple. It derived directly from apostolic tradition, which in turn had drawn its essential elements from the Jewish milieu. These elements, enriched with Christian thought, gradually developed according to the talent, sensitivity, and temperament of the celebrant.

Alongside Sacred Scripture, the most frequent and beautiful liturgical formulas began to be fixed, especially the doxologies: the letter of St. Clement (d. ca. 101 [?]; S. Colombo, SS. Patrum Apostolicorum opera, Rome 1938, pp. 135-41) certainly has an Eucharistic inspiration; the prayer of St. Polycarp (d. 156; ibid., pp. 452-53) probably reflects the liturgical improvisation of the time. The works of the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the early centuries (Origen [d. 255], Novatian [d. 258], St. Cyril of Jerusalem [d. 386], St. John Chrysostom [d. 407], St. Augustine [d. 430]), the Gnostic writings, the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, and even funerary epigraphy contain numerous liturgical Eucharistic formulas, most likely used or composed for ordinary assemblies (cf. LITURGICAL BOOKS).

The principle of a single formulary, drawn up for all Churches according to a common and traditional scheme, had been an unbreakable law in the first three centuries. In the 4th century, a singular phenomenon occurred throughout the West: almost suddenly, the principle of unity was abandoned, and each Mass of the Temporale and the Sanctorale was given its own formulary.

Some scholars see in this movement a natural evolution. Around the unchanging anaphora, a certain number of variable parts of an imprecise character would gradually have crystallized. Over time, some would have fallen into disuse, others shifted, and the structure of the Roman Mass of the 5th century would have taken shape (cf. A. Paredi, I Prefasi ambrosiani, Milan 1937, pp. 7-8). Other authors, however, believe this to be a true liturgical revolution that took place in Rome between 380 and 420, presumably under Pope Damasus (366-384; Bourque, op. cit. in bibliography, p. 37), who, by assigning variable formulas to the Masses, completed the work of restoration and embellishment of Christian cemeteries and the cult of the martyrs. Later generations would have retained a vague memory of the Damasian reform, forgetting its precise object. This would be the context for the liturgical activity attributed to him by 6th-7th century sources (MGH, Gesta Pontificum Romanorum, I, pp. 83-84).

3. The libelli missarum

The Sacramentary is a book composed of various libelli missarum, each providing the necessary texts for the normal conduct of worship. A characteristic episode is that of Sidonius Apollinaris, who, invited to celebrate on the occasion of a great feast and having had his own libellus taken away from him, improvised with such eloquence that the faithful believed they were hearing an angel (St. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, II, 22).

The episode shows that the libellus was commonly used even for solemn Masses, not only for private celebrations, as some scholars have maintained (A. Ebner, Iter Italicum, Freiburg in Br. 1896, p. 359). Initially, the libellus served as a substitute for all other liturgical books, containing the necessary formulas for a given Church. Later, during the full period of the Sacramentary, the libelli replaced the Sacramentaries for missionary or itinerant priests, containing the Ordinary, a certain number of votive and common Masses, and the ritual for some Sacraments.

The first type of libelli must have flourished particularly in Rome. The liturgical history of the Eternal City until the second half of the 4th century shows that in the tituli only what we would today call the Temporale was celebrated, though in a very reduced form. The cult of the saints was exclusively local and centered around the tombs of the martyrs. For this reason, the depositio martyrum and the depositio episcoporum add a topographical indication to each feast. Apart from these feasts, the two documents mention only the Nativity of the Lord, a feast common to all tituli, and the Nativity of Peter’s Chair, which for contemporaries needed no further specification. Finally, each titulus celebrated the Dedication. From this, one can easily reconstruct what the libellus missarum of a titulus might have contained: an embryonic Temporale, one or two Sanctorale Masses, and some blessings. The libellus of a cemetery church included the Masses of the martyrs venerated there.

This exception became the rule during the 5th century. The sermons of St. Leo show a strong development in liturgical worship with the increasingly frequent participation of the pope. The custom arose of celebrating the same saint simultaneously in all the tituli. A book with identical Mass formularies for all became necessary. Thus, by the end of the 5th century, the first great collections known under the name of Sacramentary appeared, supplanting the libelli.

II. THE SO-CALLED LEONIAN SACRAMENTARY

1. The manuscript. The manuscript is still preserved in the Capitular Library of Ve

It is written in uncial letters and consists of 138 folios. Most scholars (Delisle, Thompson, Duchesne, Feltoc) consider it to date from the beginning of the 7th century. E. A. Lowe specifies: the second half of the 6th century (cf. *Codices latini antiquiores*, IV. Italy: Perugia-Verona, Oxford 1947, p. 32). Only the latter author states that it was produced in the school of Verona; others (Beer, Traube, Bishop, Cabrol) incline toward Spain, Africa, Bobbio, and Luxeuil.

4. Contents

The Leonianum is a collection of about a thousand eucological formulas composed for the various needs of liturgical worship. Some are most elegant in concept and form, others are mediocre and lacking in thought. All are characterized by technical cursus. Out of 1030 endings, 927 metrical cadences have been detected. This artistic peculiarity tends to disappear in later centuries. Leonian formulas are found in other sacramentaries: thus the Gelasianum has 107, the Gregorianum 118, and the Missale Romanum 35.

The formulas are grouped according to the various liturgical occasions, though not without confusion. Each group (section) consists of collects, secrets, postcommunions, orations over the people; also one or two prefaces; a characteristic feature of the Leonianum, which contains 167 of them. The sections are preceded by a title that seems to refer to the liturgical circumstance; or else they are introduced by the simple words *item alia* (another mass?). They are arranged according to the order of the civil year, i.e., by months, a feature quite original, since the other sacramentaries follow the traditional arrangement of the ecclesiastical year.

In the months poorer in liturgical recurrences, it would seem that the compiler filled the gaps by inserting groups of masses for various circumstances, but in an arbitrary manner. Thus it is explained why in April there are formulas for the common of martyrs, for Easter time, and for the dedication of churches; in July, orations and daily, morning, and evening prayers; in September, prayers for the consecration of bishops, deacons, priests, and virgins. There are also orations and prefaces of a distinctly polemical character, e.g., against false confessors mingled with the true, against adversaries (subtle workers) from whom one must guard as from wolves.

**SACRAMENTARY — St. Gregorian Adrian with the Alexinian collection of *Frasfationes* — Vatican Library, cod. Ottob. lat. 313, f. 167 (12th century).**

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**SACRAMENTARY — St. Gregorian, Codex of Padua (mid-9th century).** Mass in honor of St. Clement, later borrowed by the prototype (9th century) of the Kievan Glagolitic Missal (11th century) — Padua, Capitular Library, cod. D. 47.

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**SACRAMENTARY — S.**

The question arises whether it is one of those compilations made by pilgrims, of whom other works remain, such as epigraphic collections? 6) The Leonianum is neither a sacramentary nor a presacramentary, since it was composed after 560, when a sacramentary already existed in Rome. Yet with all its defects it has immense value because it has preserved true gems of ancient Roman liturgy and constitutes the transitional link between the *libelli* and the sacramentaries.

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**SACRAMENTARY — St. Prague.** The Gelasian and Gregorian sources are combined in a system different from that followed by the compiler of the 8th-century Gelasianum. The marginal numbers were added from a photograph by Dom A. Dold — Prague, Capitular Library, cod. O. 83 (8th–9th century).

they have transcribed separate libelli. e) B. Capelle and C. Coebergh (cf. Bibl.) see in several places the hand of Pope Gelasius. f) R. Buckwald considers St Gregory of Tours (6th c.) its author and believes the Leonian to be the framework of the Gelasian. g) A. Chavasse (cf. Bibl.) assigns a good number of formularies to Pope Vigilius. h) L. Duchesne places it between 537 and 590, basing himself chiefly on certain political events of that period. i) C. L. Felice, and after him E. Bourque, with probability, hold that the Verona manuscript is the archetype and the only surviving exemplar. The conclusions of Bourque, now generally accepted, are: 1) the Leonian collection contains formularies dating from 440 to 560, with perhaps a few even older. 2) The Verona manuscript is the archetype: the disorder of the collection, its false divisions, transpositions, marginal and textual notes betray a first draft; a copy would certainly have eliminated the grossest errors. 3) The Leonian appears to be a unicum, though some isolated formulas (never a whole series) are found elsewhere. Identical formulas are explained by the fact that the libelli used in Rome were not unknown to foreigners (pilgrims) and ended by being inserted into their liturgical books. 4) The compiler’s first aim was to make a reduced, selective collection, choosing from among the saints venerated at Rome only the most representative. Something intermediate, therefore, between the libelli and the proper saints’ masses. A second aim was to make the collection a source to draw on later. Evidence of this is found in the use of sigla and the Tironian notes in the manuscript. 5) The materials used are of purely Roman origin (the conjecture that the Leonian is of Ravenna origin, already advanced by some scholars and recently revived with wealth of detail by G. Lucchesi, Nuove note agiografiche ravennati, Ravenna 1943, pp. 71 ff., has not met with favor). The anonymous compiler who put them together had a great

III. THE GELASIAN SACRAMENTARY

I. Contents

The Gelasian is an official book, the first Roman sacramentary; Reg. 316 is its most important manuscript (cf. illus. under CORBIE and MEROVINGIAN SCRIPT). It is divided into 3 books. Book I contains the Temporal, i.e., the Masses from the vigil of Christmas to the octave of Pentecost, the rites of Ordinations, of the catechumenate, of the blessing of the oils, of the font, and of the consecration of virgins. Book II collects the Masses of the Sanctorale from St Felix the Confessor (15 Jan.) to St Thomas (21 Dec.), eight schemas for Masses in commemoration of several martyrs, and 5 for the Advent of the Lord. Book III contains 16 orations and prayers with a Canon for Sundays, the Canon itself, a collection of benedictions *super populum* after Communion, votive Masses, various blessings (of water to be sprinkled in the house, of water exorcised against lightning, of fruits, of trees) and several schemas of prayers for the dead.

5. Author and Date

Stripped of the mostly Gallican accretions of the 6th–8th centuries in Reg. 316, the substantially original sacramentary composed at the end of the 5th century is recovered. This is clear from historical data, from lexical peculiarities, and from the content. Certain expressions such as *consignatio* to denote Confirmation, the special formula for Communion, the *Hanc igitur* without *diesque nostros*, the lack of a fixed number of Sundays after Epiphany and Pentecost, parallel expressions and analogies between the Gelasian and the Rule of St Benedict (probably written between 535 and 547) are indications of a pre-Gregorian liturgy. Moreover, the liturgy of the ancient Gelasian corresponds perfectly to the organization, discipline, and institutions in force at Rome in the 6th century. Thus the Masses of the scrutinies of Lent, the three Masses of Holy Thursday, the Mass of reconciliation of penitents, the *missae chrismatis* and the *missa ad vesperum* (reduced to one at the time of St Gregory), the two orations before the Secret (the first suppressed in the 6th century), the five Advent Masses introduced in the second half of the 6th century.

The additions or alterations made to the ancient Gelasian

Sacramentary — Prague S. The Gelasian and Gregorian sources are fused in a system different from that followed by the compiler of the 8th-century Gelasian. The marginal numbers were added on fol. 4v by A. Dold — Prague, Chapter Library.

are: in Book I, the Pre-Lent, some touches to the penitential rites, the *denuntiatio pro scrutinio* on Monday of the third week of Lent, some adjustments to the *ordo baptismi* on the vigil of Pentecost, in the rite of Ordinations, where there is a whole series of Gallican rubrics, and finally touches to the *missa chrismalis* of Holy Thursday, the *Ordo* for the blessing of the Paschal candle, and the rite of the dedication of a church. In Book II, which remains the purest part, the sanctorale is almost intact: only the four feasts of the Virgin and the two feasts of the Holy Cross have been added. In Book III the Canon has been inserted, namely the one reformed by St Gregory, together with a few benediction formulas.

These interpolations are all of Gallican character and were made at different times. A first revision can be placed around 550, i.e., after the arrival in Gaul of the sacramentary. The Advent Masses and the rites of the minor Orders date from this period. A second revision must have taken place after St Gregory (590–604) and before Pope Sergius (687–701), when the Canon and the Marian and Cross feasts were introduced. A third revision around 700, barely half a century before Reg. 316 was written.

The Gelasian is a papal sacramentary. Careful examination of its content and sources places its composition at the end of the 6th century. From the Liber Pontificalis (written c. 530) we know that Gelasius (492–96) *fecit... sacramentorum praefationes et orationes cauto sermone* (Lib. Pont., I, p. 255). This is very probably the systematic collection of liturgical formulas which Pope Gelasius compiled on the basis of the numerous *libelli missarum* of the Roman shrines and the Lateran collections, to which tradition and liturgical history have preserved, without error, the name of its author.

3. The “8th-Century Gelasians.” — Having entered Gaul shortly before the middle of the 6th century (Bourque, cf. Bibl. p. 199), the Gelasian sacramentary enjoyed great diffusion there, supplanting the books of the old Gallican rite. Yet the genuine Roman text had to undergo adaptations for the French churches. Around 750, probably at the instigation of King Pippin, a syncretistic sacramentary was compiled which took the Gelasian as its base but added elements drawn from the Gregorian, already penetrating into France, and from other local sacramentaries. Liturgists usually call this composite type, following Bishop, the “8th-Century Gelasians”; others prefer the designation “old Gelasians” for the ancient ones and “late Gelasians” for this new type, which continued to be produced and reproduced even after the 8th century.

To the Gelasian type is related the Missale Francorum (cod. Reg. Vat. 257), written near Liège at the end of the 7th century, edited by Tomasi (Opera, VI, pp. 341–68) and by Muratori (Lit. Rom. vet., II, pp. 661–758). Wilmart considers it to be from the beginning of the 8th century. Initially (6th c.) it was a pontifical with the rite of Ordinations; later some Mass formularies and the pre-Gregorian Canon were added. Gallican elements were not lacking either.

2. Manuscripts and some editions of the 8th-century Gelasian.
1) Gellone, Paris, Bibliothèque.