Reframing the Feudal Revolution (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series, 90) by West Charles

Author:West, Charles [West, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

The Liber de divinis officiis

We begin with a text which used – erroneously – to be attributed to Alcuin and that survives in a number of tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts, often as the main or only content. Several of these manuscripts come from around Metz and the earliest, now forming folios 2–27 of Paris BnF lat. 9421, from tenth-century Echternach.67 A succinct guide to various liturgical matters, generally thought to have been compiled in or around Metz or perhaps Trier in the early tenth century, the Liber de divinis officiis explains key dates in the church’s calendar, and provides summaries of ecclesiastical hierarchies and duties, and short expositions on the mass and creed. What work has been done on the treatise has focused on identifying its sources, from which it becomes clear that the work is largely a compilation of a wide range of material, put together in a new way.68 This kind of work is, of course, important, but the discussion of hypothetical stemmata and lost common sources should not distract us from the value of the actual surviving manuscripts.

The De divinis officiis is of interest from several points of view, providing evidence for excessively enthusiastic godparents, apocalyptic anxieties and a recurrent fascination with Rome. With its neat explanations for basic questions – why Christmas is celebrated, why Christ was crucified rather than stoned, why priests’ sandals do not have laces – one can imagine it would have proven useful to those engaged in pastoral care, or those teaching them. Two elements are, however, particularly relevant here. The first is its extended description of the liturgy of penance. The De divinis officiis contains a penitential ordo that, amongst many other things, provides a great wealth of orchestration. It describes, or rather enjoins, with loving detail a whole range of gestures to be undertaken by both priest and penitent, including weeping and sighing, prostration, standing up and sitting down, as well as giving a short pre-scripted confession, before instructing both to enter church and continue with further prayers.69 The second is the insistence that during the mass, the consecratory prayers to be said over the bread and wine, beginning with the Te igitur, must be recited by the priest silently, so that those attending the mass are unable to hear the words being said. The stated rationale is a double one. Were these words to be said aloud, they would be learned and then used inappropriately: this would not only cheapen them, it could call down God’s vengeance, as was reported once to have happened to some shepherds.70

Both of these developments sit squarely in Carolingian traditions, yet modified them, too, in telling ways. An adapted version of the penitential ordo can also be found in later tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts in the group collectively labelled as the Romano-German Pontifical. There, the interview between priest and penitent is followed by an elaborate (and implicitly episcopal) mass, involving the public imposition of a hairshirt upon, and ceremonial exclusion of, the penitent, drawing on a text for public penance used by Regino of Prüm in his handbook.

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