450 Mele
Nonetheless, the codicological panorama of Sardinia is still poor and these
collections of liturgical books are a unicum in the medieval culture on the
island.69 The manuscripts of Oristano are both repertoires of the office hours
(such as hymns, antiphons with psalms and differentiae, and responsories) and
the chants of the Mass, with the pieces of Proprium missae (Introit, Gradual,
Alleluia, or the Tractus, Offertory, Communio) (Fig. 17.2). Although they belong
to a later period, there are also chants from Ordinarium missae (Kyrie, Gloria,
Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). Of special interest is a group of six antiphonaries,
“P. III–VIII,” dating from around 1280–1290.70 These manuscripts originated in
a large Tuscan-Emilian milieu and represent, on a universal level, a significant,
compact corpus of the Roman-Franciscan rites, which were established at the
time of Aimon of Faversham (1241–1244) and imposed upon all Christendom
by Pope Nicholas III (1277–1280).71 Amongst the same wealth of Oristano is a
conspicuous series of Franciscan historiae, which begin with the office pro-
totype, Franciscus vir catholicus (for Saint Francis; 4 October), by Julian of
Speyer (1230).72
Additionally, amongst fragments of the historia, preserved in the convent of
Saint Francis, there are some of the oldest testimonia of the rhythmic Clarean
69 Mele, “Note storiche, paleografiche, codicologiche e liturgico-musicali”; Giampaolo Mele,
“Catalogo analitico,” in Mele,“Die ac nocte”, pp. 213–366.
70 Mele, “Catalogo analitico,” pp. 237–285.
71 Pierre Battifol, Histoire du Bréviaire Romain (Paris, 1911 [1893]), pp. 202–203; Giampaolo
Mele, “Archeologia liturgico-musicale. Appunti su un monumento romano-francescano
(ACO, P. III–VIII, Italia centro-settentrionale, sec. XIII4/4),” in Atti del congresso inter-
nazionale per il centenario di fondazione del Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra (Roma,
May 26–June 1, 2011), ed. Antonio Addamiano and Francesco Luisi (Rome, 2013), pp. 203–
207, nn. 79–83.
72 Giampaolo Mele, «Franciscus vir catholicus». e il rito romano-francescano in Sardegna (sec.
XIII). Note storiche e tradizione manoscritta, in Civiltà del Mediterraneo: interazioni gra-
fiche e culturali attraverso libri, documenti, epigrafi, Congresso Associazione Italiana dei
Paleografi e Diplomatisti, Cagliari, 28–30 settembre 2015, Deputazione di Storia Patria per
la Sardegna (Cagliari, 2017, in press); Filippo Sedda, Franciscus liturgicus. Editio fontium,
with the collaboration of J. Dalarum (Padova, 2015), passim. Thomas de Celano, Legendae
S. Francisci Assisiensis saeculis XIII et XIV conscriptae (Florence, 1926), pp. 372–374, which
includes an ample repertoire of manuscripts and printed sources that is still useful today.
For bibliography on the historia of Saint Francis, see Mele,“Die ac nocte”, pp. 68–69,
n. 115. See also, Giacomo Baroffio and Eun Ju Kim, “Liturgia e musica nei manoscritti di
Oristano,” in“Die ac nocte”, pp. 89–91, tab. 6. On the historiae of Saint Antony (Gaudeat
ecclesia) and Saint Louis of Toulouse (Tecum fuit principium), see Mele, “Archeologia li-
turgico-musicale,” p. 199; Giampaolo Mele, “L’historia di S. Ludovico D’Angiò Tecum fuit
principium” in Un codice sardo (Antifonario, sec. XIV/XV),” Biblioteca Francescana Sarda
4 (1990), pp. 5–46.