320 BuoniCattolici
illuminating the arctic darkness. The choir sang, the bishop preached, and
the procession returned to the cathedral.^66 Deacon Rolando, in his treatise
on the particular rituals of the Church at Pisa, lovingly described Palm Sun-
day there. The Pisan ceremony focused on that city’s magnificent cathedral
complex, the Piazza dei Miracoli. The archbishop blessed the branches in
the middle of the piazza, and the procession passed through the monumental
cemetery, around the baptistery, and from there through the great west door
of the duomo.^67 At Modena, out of respect for Saint Giminiano, the branches
were blessed in the cathedral itself. The procession then circumambulated
the duomo, with the people singing the litanies as on the rogations.^68
One of the most touching additions to the usual ceremonies occurred at
Verona. The cathedral canons left the cathedral and went in procession up
a little hill to the church of San Pietro in Monte. There they chanted Mass,
the bishop preached, a deacon declaimed the Gospel of Christ’s entry, and
priests distributed blessed branches. Meanwhile the clergy of the city waited
at the duomo, singing Matins. The procession left San Pietro and crossed
the Adige by a bridge near the point where the Ponte Nuovo now stands, at
the foot of Via Stella. The triumphal procession reentered the city by a
bridge upstream over the Adige at Castello (fig. 51 ). On this bridge, the Pons
Fractus, so called because it had been constructed from a fallen Roman one,
they were met by the children of the city singing ‘‘Gloria, Laus, et Honor.’’
Verona’s was a marvelous reenactment of the Gospel narrative, complete
with a Mount of Olives, an entry into Jerusalem, a greeting by the Hebrew
children, and so forth. Did the bishop ride a donkey? Perhaps. A figure of
Christ riding a donkey followed the procession in the Baroque period.^69 Al-
though liturgical books and clerical sensibilities dictated much of the Palm
Sunday rite, we hear the voice of the whole city, not just its clergy, in matters
like the processional routes, visits to relics, and other local practices. After
the city of Vicenza received the relic of the Crown of Thorns in 1264 , the
city fathers petitioned for a rerouting of the Palm Sunday procession past its
new shrine in the Dominican church of Santa Corona. The bishop obligingly
changed the route, and the city pledged an offering of £ 20 each year at the
shrine during the procession.^70
ThePaschalTriduum
While the whole week from Palm Sunday to Easter was known as Holy
Week, the three days leading up to Holy Thursday were of far lesser religious
66 .Ordo Senensis, 1. 132 – 34 , pp. 116 – 18.
67. Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria,ms 1785, Rolando the Deacon,Liber de Ordine Officiorum,fols.
20 v– 21 r.
68. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina,msPar. 996 (latexiicent.), fols. 37 v– 40 r.
69 .Carpsum, 254 (Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare,ms xciv, fols. 39 r– 40 r). The VeronaOrazionale, L’ora-
zionale dell’archidiacono Pacifico e il Carpsum del cantore Stefano,ed. Meersseman, Adda, and Deshusses, 114 ,
suggests the donkey. I am obliged to thebibliotecario capitolareof Verona, Don Giuseppe Zivelonghi, for
information on the ancient rites of Verona.
70. Vicenza Stat., 200 – 203.