PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

The Sacramentary, Liber Sacramentorum, is by far the most common liturgical book from the early medieval West. Its principal content was texts for the Mass, words said in every church, and the extant books thus vary hugely in their codicology and presentation. In the Carolingian era, the Sacramentary underwent some very consequential transformations, as new forms entered the Frankish realms and were adapted and assimilated by their busy scribes and compilers. Scholars have overwhelmingly focused on the Roman origins of the Sacramentary, excavating pure and uniform origins behind a hugely diverse and complex manuscript tradition. But it was the Frankish remaking of these Roman texts, somewhat less well categorised or understood, that would ultimately shape the course of the Christian liturgy through the Middle Ages and beyond. I argue that this remaking cannot be understood in any single “reform” directed by imperial diktat or by the canonising and editing of definitive and “official” versions of the Sacramentary. Instead, the manuscripts show that what we perceive as a smooth evolution in the genre blooms only out of a vast collective effort on the ground of many monasteries, churches and scriptoria, and that the Sacramentary was constantly being queried, tinkered with and supplemented in Francia in various ways and according to varying needs and ends. If we see each of these adjustments as equally valuable in their own right, we are brought closer to an understanding of what individual compilers each might have wanted and expected from the Sacramentary. This broader rethinking of the period’s liturgical effects will introduce my project as a model in how to accomplish this kind of analysis, dealing with three important individual examples of Sacramentaries of this era from Tours.