13th centuries that the ordines and the Sacramentary were fully merged into a single
volume, the Pontifical.
The history of the Sacramentary from the 7th century to the 11th provides witness to
the attempts to base liturgical practice throughout Europe on the Roman model, a step
encouraged by the Carolingian kings. Yet the shape that the liturgy assumed was from the
beginning influenced by local “uses,” or variants of the Roman Rite. For example, the
Gregorian Sacramentary, which Pope Hadrian I sent Charlemagne in 785–86, contained
services for the papal feasts only; Alcuin took on the task of completing and
supplementing it by incorporating local uses. One must speak, therefore, of a Romano-
Frankish and even a Romano-Germanic liturgy.
Following the period of Pope Gregory VII, the northern influence on Roman liturgy
diminished significantly, though by no means entirely. Gallican and Germanic influences
are to be found in the most significant and authoritative texts of the time, including the
Pontifical of Guillaume Durand (ca. 1293–95), which became the basis for the printed
edition of the Pontifical of 1485. The official books that emerged out of the rigid
unification of liturgical practices in the Council of Trent were also direct offspring of
these Romano-Frankish and Romano-Germanic sources.
Edmund J.Goehring
[See also: CANONICAL HOURS; DIVINE OFFICE; GUILLAUME DURAND;
MASS, CHANTS AND TEXTS]
Pfaff, Richard W. Medieval Latin Liturgy: A Select Bibliography. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1982.
LITURGICAL COMMENTATORS
. Throughout much of the Latin Middle Ages, exegetes wrote interpretations of the
liturgy, most frequently either to instruct the clergy in the meanings of the texts and
music of the Mass and Office or to defend particular theological positions, especially
regarding the sacraments. One of the only surviving witnesses to the liturgy of the
Gallican church is the commentary of the Pseudo-Germanus, now known to have been
written in the 7th century, after the time of Isidore of Seville (d. 636), whose writings are
one of its sources. A significant body of early Carolingian commentaries was written
apparently for didactic purposes, including works by Leidradus of Lyon (d. 813),
Angilbert of Saint-Riquier (d. 814), Magnus of Sens (d. 818), Theodulf of Orléans (d.
821), and Jesse of Amiens (d. 836). Contemporaries of Amalarius of Metz (d. ca. 850),
the most important liturgical commentator of the early period, and the following
generation constitute a second wave of Carolingian commentators: Agobard of Lyon (d.
840), Rabanus Maurus (d. 842), Walafrid Strabo (d. 849), Florus of Lyon (d. 860), and
Remigius of Auxerre (d. 908).
Although the 10th century did not produce significant numbers of commentators—the
Pseudo-Alcuin’s De divinis officiis (before 950) is an important exception—the numbers
swelled once again in the wake of the Gregorian reform movement of the later 11th
century, with Humbert of Silva Candida (d. ca. 1064), Peter Damian (d. 1072), John of
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