Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome

John F. Romano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317104070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The liturgy, the public worship of the Catholic Church, was a crucial factor in forging the society of early medieval Rome. As the Roman Empire dissolved, a new world emerged as Christian bishops stepped into the power vacuum left by the dismantling of the Empire. Among these potentates, none was more important than the bishop of Rome, the pope. The documents, archaeology, and architecture that issued forth from papal Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries preserve a precious glimpse into novel societal patterns. The underexploited liturgical sources in particular enrich and complicate our historical understanding of this period. They show how liturgy was the 'social glue' that held together the Christian society of early medieval Rome - and excluded those who did not belong to it. This study places the liturgy center stage, filling a gap in research on early medieval Rome and demonstrating the utility of investigating how the liturgy functioned in medieval Europe. It includes a detailed analysis of the papal Mass, the central act of liturgy and the most obvious example of the close interaction of liturgy, social relations and power. The first extant Mass liturgy, the First Roman Ordo, is also given a new presentation in Latin here with an English translation and commentary. Other grand liturgical events such as penitential processions are also examined, as well as more mundane acts of worship. Far from a pious business with limited influence, the liturgy established an exchange between humans and the divine that oriented Roman society to God and fostered the dominance of the clergy.

Chapter 1
Mass in Early Medieval Rome

Introduction

The liturgy that illustrates the most about Roman society, and that which will form the basis of the discussion in this chapter, is the Mass.¹ The Mass was a complex Christian worship service led by the clergy, which combined chanting, readings, prayers, and ritual action – above all, the blessing of bread and wine. The name “Mass” (Latin missa) derives from missio, a term meaning “dismissal” that originally had juridical and military connotations.² The Mass at Rome, as in several prominent cities in Late Antiquity like Jerusalem and Constantinople, was incorporated into what is known as a stational liturgy. Stational liturgies were led by the bishop or his representative, moved throughout the city, were performed in different churches depending on the feast celebrated, and represented the primary feast of the city.³ The bishop of the city of Rome, the pope, was the presiding minister in the performance of the Mass, but he was accompanied by an extensive entourage. The series of Masses celebrated around the city constituted a busy calendar for the pope and his representatives. The papal sacramentary, or prayer book, has 189 formulae for independent Masses.⁴ Even if another bishop would at times substitute for the pope⁵ (or if, unusually, a Mass was cancelled), this was still a considerable number of Masses in the course of the year and would have been crucial for the papacy’s public presentation.

Since the late-seventeenth century, scholars have been producing critical editions of the papal Mass contained in the first extant Mass liturgy, the First Roman Ordo (OR I), and reconstructing its form. This task has proved difficult, with no definitive critical edition until that of Michel Andrieu.⁶ Even after Andrieu’s labors, not all of the questions about OR I have been answered.⁷ I have addressed these issues elsewhere,⁸ but as an aid to the reader, I have included in Appendix 2 a presentation of OR I that I find as close to the Roman original as possible alongside an English translation. Although I will discuss aspects of the papal Mass as relevant to my argument, it is not my intention to reconstruct it in detail.⁹

While more work is needed to understand the form of the Mass, few have ventured into the implications of the Mass beyond the experience of worship. In this chapter I will begin to examine the relationship between liturgy and the functioning of the rest of Roman society, whether clerical or lay. The majority of evidence will come from OR I, but I will supplement it with contemporary sources. I argue that the worship that took place inside churches was inextricably linked to the world outside them. To prove this, I provide an analytical description of the Mass, focusing on its visual and aural aspects. Next, I will demonstrate the part of the laity in them, a role that is modest but nevertheless more extensive than is often supposed. Finally, I suggest how the papal Mass was received by the Roman populace.

One considerable conceptual difficulty occurs at the outset of this inquiry. Can one even refer to the Mass celebrated in the city of Rome as being authentically Roman at all? A long line of historiography characterizes the city of Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries as an imitator of or captive to influences from the Byzantine world.¹⁰ This trend supposedly pervaded Roman society, but perhaps found its greatest manifestation in the liturgy. Many scholars have spoken about OR I as a “Byzantine,” Greek, or Eastern liturgy.¹¹ The logical inference is that the papal Mass may belong more naturally in a discussion of the broader Byzantine world or the imperial city Constantinople rather than considered in the context of Roman society.

Scholars have been dismantling piece by piece the idea that Rome was merely an imitator of Constantinople or a pseudo-Byzantine backwater. Roman popes, even those who came from the Eastern world or were native Greek speakers, were thoroughly Romanized and pursued policies that were advantageous to the papacy and the city, not the Byzantine emperor.¹² Scholars today tend to doubt that there was a period of Byzantine domination in Roman architecture, where Richard Krautheimer claimed to find telling examples of pervasive Eastern influence in Rome.¹³ The artwork that was produced in Rome in this period, especially Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum, cannot be seen as borrowed uncritically from Byzantine models but instead are better interpreted as local Roman productions.¹⁴ Saying this is not to deny the legitimate and strong ties between Rome or Italy and the Byzantine world, politically and culturally.¹⁵ Nor is it to ignore the significant population of Greek speakers in Rome in the seventh century. But seeing Roman society as an epigone of Byzantine culture or controlled by the Byzantine emperor does not do justice to its independent existence.

One must use special care when speaking about the origin of Roman liturgical practices. In the late-sixth century, certain contemporaries thought that the Roman Church had copied the practices of Constantinople, a charge that Gregory I (590–604) was anxious to refute – not because he refused to imitate another church’s meritorious liturgical practices, but so as not to give anyone reason to suspect that the see of Constantinople had precedence over Rome.¹⁶ The assumption of modern critics seems to be no different: that the Roman Church consciously copied the practices of the East, perhaps even to rival the imperial court.¹⁷ One scholar even suggested that the emperor granted the pope permission to perform certain aspects of the liturgy.¹⁸ While individual liturgical practices may find their roots in the imperial court in Constantinople, it seems to me questionable to claim that the liturgy as a whole is Byzantine or Eastern. Both Rome and Constantinople were joint inheritors of the ceremonial practices of the later Roman Empire.¹⁹ Some of the customs in papal liturgy are demonstrably earlier than the foundation of the imperial court in Constantinople: carrying lights in front of Roman magistrates and using incense as part of cultic practices were long-standing in Roman Antiquity, especially in emperor worship.²⁰ Rather than copying from Constantinople, it is possible that both Rome and Constantinople drew inspiration from similar sources. Owing to the lack of sources, one can only hypothesize about the possible origins of liturgical practices. Labeling any liturgy as Byzantine or Western verges on essentializing in the absence of concrete sources upon which to base claims of origin. As a result, I will consider the Roman Mass to be indigenous to the city.

Visual Appearance of the Mass

The Roman Mass was a multimedia event that was calibrated to impress contemporaries. It combined a sumptuous visual presentation of impressive actions, vestments, architecture, artwork, and liturgical furnishings with readings and music to appeal to the ear. This vibrant combination would have been important to capture and keep people’s attention during this three-hour Mass,²¹ and this may be the reason for the continuous flow of motion and gesture.²² The main action of the M...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Mass in Early Medieval Rome
• 2 Shaping the Papal Court by Liturgy
• 3 Unifying the City through Liturgy
• 4 Defining a Society through Worship
• 5 Prayer in Roman Society
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Rereading Michel Andrieu’s Edition of the First Roman Ordo
• Appendix 2: A New Presentation and Translation of the First Roman Ordo
• Appendix 3: Commentary on the Translation of the First Roman Ordo
• Appendix 4: Overview of the Papal Mass of the First Roman Ordo
• Select Bibliography
• Index