An Exultet roll is a long and wide illuminated scroll containing the text and music of the Exultet, the liturgical chant for the Paschal vigil.[1][2] The material was usually parchment, the layout that of a rotulus (text parallel to the rod), the text in Beneventan script and the music notated in neumes.[1][2][3] The illustrations were often upside down relative to the text. As the text was read by the officiant and the scroll unrolled over the pulpit (ambo), the images would appear right-side up to the congregation. The form was peculiar to southern Italy, mainly the area around Benevento and Montecassino, and the surviving examples date from between the 10th and 13th centuries.[3][4]
The Exultet roll takes its name from the opening words of the chant in Latin: Exultet iam angelica turba coelorum ('Let the angelic host of heaven exult').[2][3] These words were sung by the deacon during the blessing and lighting of the Paschal candle at the Easter Vigil.[2][3][5] The chant included prayers, canticles and lections.[5] Although based on the Pontifical liturgy, the form of the ceremony and the Exultet as practised in southern Italy is attributed to Archbishop Landulf I of Benevento (r.957–982). It spread throughout southern Italy largely through the influence of the abbey of Montecassino.[2]
Outside of their one annual liturgical function, Exultet rolls were objects of display. They featured initials decorated with interlace in a distinct Beneventan style and miniatures in a "Byzantinizing" style.[2] They were large, consisting of parchment membranes up to 30 by 80 centimetres (12in ×31in) bound end to end to a total length of up to 9 metres (30ft). The luxurious miniatures are among the largest found in European manuscripts up to that time.[6]
Gallery
Decorated initial E (text is right-side up)
Prayer for the pope and emperor (text is upside down)
Devonshire Jones, Tom; Murray, Linda; Murray, Peter, eds. (2013). "Exsultet (Exultet) rolls". The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture (2nded.). Oxford University Press.
Hourihane, Colum P., ed. (2012). "Exultet rolls". The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. Vol.1. Oxford University Press. pp.488–489.
Kelly, Thomas Forrest (1996). The Exultet in Southern Italy. Oxford University Press.
Reynolds, Roger E. (2010). "Exultet roll". In Robert E. Bjork (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press.
The codex was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term codex is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex, much like the modern book, is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges by a variety of methods over the centuries, yet in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. In Japan, concertina-style codices called orihon developed during the Heian period (794–1185) were made of paper.
The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
A Paschal candle is a large, white candle used in liturgies in Western Christianity. A new Paschal candle is blessed and lit every year at Easter, and is used throughout the Paschal season which is during Easter and then throughout the year on special occasions, such as baptisms and funerals.
A scroll, also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.
The Beneventan script was a medieval script which originated in the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. In the past it has also been called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca, or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer E. A. Lowe.
The Duchy of Benevento was the southernmost Lombard duchy in the Italian Peninsula that was centred on Benevento, a city in Southern Italy. Lombard dukes ruled Benevento from 571 to 1077, when it was conquered by the Normans for four years before it was given to the Pope. Being cut off from the rest of the Lombard possessions by the papal Duchy of Rome, Benevento was practically independent from the start. Only during the reigns of Grimoald and the kings from Liutprand on was the duchy closely tied to the Kingdom of the Lombards. After the fall of the kingdom in 774, the duchy became the sole Lombard territory which continued to exist as a rump state, maintaining its de facto independence for nearly 300 years, although it was divided after 849. Benevento dwindled in size in the early 11th century, and was completely captured by the Norman Robert Guiscard in 1053.
The Easter Vigil, also called the Paschal Vigil or the Great Vigil of Easter, is a liturgy held in traditional Christian churches as the first official celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Historically, it is during this liturgy that people are baptized and that adult catechumens are received into full communion with the Church. It is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day – most commonly in the evening of Holy Saturday or midnight – and is the first celebration of Easter, days traditionally being considered to begin at sunset.
Arechis II was a Duke of Benevento, in Southern Italy. He sought to expand the Beneventos' influence into areas of Italy that were still under Byzantine control, but he also had to defend against Charlemagne, who had conquered northern Italy.
Saint Alfanus I or Alfano I was the archbishop of Salerno from 1058 until his death. He was famed as a translator, writer, theologian, and medical doctor.
Bruno di Segni was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate and professed member from the Order of Saint Benedict who served as Bishop of Segni and Abbot of Montecassino. He studied under the Benedictines in Bologna before being appointed a canon of the cathedral chapter of Siena. He was invited to Rome where he became a bishop and counselled four consecutive popes. He served as Abbot of Montecassino but when he criticised Pope Paschal II regarding the Concordat of Ponte Mammolo in 1111 the pope relieved him of his duties as abbot and ordered Bruno to return to his diocese, where he died just over a decade later. Bruno's canonization was celebrated on 5 September 1181 under Pope Lucius III who presided over the celebration in the late bishop's diocese.
Beneventan chant is a liturgical plainchant repertory of the Roman Catholic Church, used primarily in the orbit of the southern Italian ecclesiastical centers of Benevento and Monte Cassino distinct from Gregorian chant and related to Ambrosian chant. It was officially supplanted by the Gregorian chant of the Roman rite in the 11th century, although a few Beneventan chants of local interest remained in use.
A tonary is a liturgical book in the Western Christian Church which lists by incipit various items of Gregorian chant according to the Gregorian mode (tonus) of their melodies within the eight-mode system. Tonaries often include Office antiphons, the mode of which determines the recitation formula for the accompanying text, but a tonary may also or instead list responsories or Mass chants not associated with formulaic recitation. Although some tonaries are stand-alone works, they were frequently used as an appendix to other liturgical books such as antiphonaries, graduals, tropers, and prosers, and are often included in collections of musical treatises.
The Pentecostarion is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches during the Paschal Season which extends from Pascha (Easter) to the Sunday following All Saints Sunday.
San Vincenzo al Volturno is a historic Benedictine monastery located in the territories of the Comunes of Castel San Vincenzo and Rocchetta a Volturno, in the Province of Isernia, near the source of the river Volturno in Italy. The current monastery, housing a group of eight Benedictine nuns, is located to the east of the river, while the archaeological monastery of the early Middle Ages was located on the west.
A rotulus or rotula, often referred to as a "vertical roll," is a long and narrow strip of writing material, historically papyrus or parchment, that is wound around a wooden axle or rod. Rotuli are unwound vertically so that the writing runs parallel to the rod, unlike the other kind of roll, called a scroll, whose writing runs perpendicular to the rod in multiple columns.
A scroll is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. The history of scrolls dates back to ancient Egypt. In most ancient literate cultures scrolls were the earliest format for longer documents written in ink or paint on a flexible background, preceding bound books; rigid media such as clay tablets were also used but had many disadvantages in comparison. For most purposes scrolls have long been superseded by the codex book format, but they are still produced for some ceremonial or religious purposes, notably for the Jewish Torah scroll for use in synagogues.
Thomas Forrest Kelly is an American musicologist, musician, and scholar. He is the Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard University. His most recent books include: The Role of the Scroll (2019), Capturing Music: The Story of Notation (2014), and Music Then and Now (2012).
The Annales Beneventani, also called the Breve chronicon monasterii Sanctae Sophiae Beneventi or Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae for short, is a series of Latin annals from the monastery of Santa Sofia in Benevento, southern Italy. The annal entries were originally annotations written in the margins of Paschal tables, a practice that probably dates to the foundation of the monastery in the second half of the eighth century. The annotations were gathered together and copied into manuscripts in the early twelfth century. Three such manuscripts exist, each copied at Santa Sofia and each presenting a different redaction of the annals. The Annales is of interest primarily because its entries are roughly contemporaneous with the events they describe.
Landulf I was the bishop of Benevento from 956 and the first archbishop of Benevento from 969.
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Decorated initial E (text is right-side up)
Prayer for the pope and emperor (text is upside down)
Beekeeping scene (text is upside down)
