Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend

Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend

Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 125–144 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Medieval History journal homepage: www.elsevier.c...

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Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011) 125–144

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Medieval History journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ jmedhist

Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend Constant J. Mews* School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Gregory the Great Monasticism Benedictine Rule Liturgy Relics Anglo-Saxon church Early middle ages

This paper relates the evolution of Gregory the Great’s reputation as creator of the Roman liturgy to the slow process by which the Rule of Benedict acquired authority within monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. It argues that Gregory composed the Dialogues to promote ascetic values within the Church, but that this work did not begin to circulate in Spain and then Gaul until the 630s, precisely when Gregory’s known interest in liturgical reform is first attested in Rome. The letters of Pope Vitalian (657–72) provide hitherto unnoticed testimony to the theft of Benedict’s relics by monks of Fleury c.660, marking a new stage in the evolution of monastic culture in Gaul. The paper also argues that the Ordo Romanus XIX is not a Frankish composition from the second half of the eighth century (as Andrieu claimed), but provides important evidence for the Rule being observed at St Peter’s, Rome, in the late seventh century. While Gregory was interested in liturgical reform, he never enforced any particular observance on the broader church, just as he never imposed any particular rule. By the time of Charlemagne, however, Gregory had been transformed into an ideal figure imposing uniformity of liturgical observance, as well as mandating the Rule of Benedict within monasticism. Yet the church of the Lateran, mother church of the city of Rome, continued to maintain its own liturgy and ancient form of chant, which it claimed had been composed by Pope Vitalian, even in the thirteenth century. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Tel.: þ61 39852 3356; fax: þ61 39905 2210. E-mail address: [email protected] 0304-4181/$ – see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2011.03.001

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Gregory I (c.540–604), the first monk to become pope, was widely credited in the medieval period with having created not just the plainchant, but the liturgy of the Roman church d thus authorising an ideal of uniformity of practice throughout the Latin west.1 This at least was the claim put forward by John the Deacon, who compiled a Life of Gregory c.873–6: But he brought together the Gelasian codex about the solemnities of masses, taking out many things, adapting some things, adding several things for the sake of expounding Gospel readings into the space of a single book. In the canon he added ‘Dispose our days in your peace, and free us from damnation and ordain that we be counted among the flock of your elect.’ . Then, in the house of the Lord, in the manner of the most wise Solomon, this studious man very usefully compiled a patchwork antiphonary of chants; he established a school of singers which to this day modulates on those observances in the holy Roman church; he constructed two dwellings for it, with several estates, one under the steps of the basilica of blessed Peter the apostle, the other under the houses of the patriarch of the Lateran, where his bed (on which he modulated, lying down) and his rod with which he chastised boys, are reserved for fitting veneration with the authentic antiphonary; these places he divided for the daily service of ministry in each place through a flow of instruction under threat of anathema.2 Because Gregory the Great never mentions either this antiphonary or a schola cantorum in his surviving writings, scholars have often assumed that John is transmitting an idealised legend fabricated in the time of Charlemagne. One suggestion has been that any such antiphonary is more likely to have been composed a century later, by Gregory II (715–31), and that his name was simply confused with that of Gregory the Great.3 Yet could such an important legend about Gregory as a liturgist derive simply from a case of mistaken identity? There is similar uncertainty about whether Gregory promoted the Rule of Benedict in the church. While he devotes the second of his Four books of dialogues about the saints of Italy to stories he had heard about Benedict of Nursia (c.480–547), he makes only a brief reference to his Rule as ‘distinguished in discernment, polished in speech’ and never quotes from it in his writings.4 In

1 The following abbreviations are used throughout this article: CCCM: Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis; CCSL: Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina; LP: Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum, vol. I. Libri Pontificalis pars prior, ed. T. Mommsen (MGH, Berlin, 1898); MGH: Monumenta Germaniae Historica; SC: Sources chrétiennes; PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. J-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64). 2 John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, PL 75, 84A, 90CD: ‘Sed, et Gelasianum codicem de missarum solemniis, multa subtrahens, pauca convertens, nonnulla vero superadjiciens pro exponendis evangelicis lectionibus in unius libri volumine coarctavit. In canone apposuit: “Diesque nostros in tua pace dispone, atque ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi, et in electorum tuorum jubeas grege numerari.” . Deinde in domo Domini, more sapientissimi Salomonis, propter musicae compunctionem dulcedinis, antiphonarium centonem cantorum studiosissimus nimis utiliter compilavit; scholam quoque cantorum, quae hactenus eisdem institutionibus in sancta Romana ecclesia modulatur, constituit; eique cum nonnullis praediis duo habitacula, scilicet alterum sub gradibus basilicae beati Petri apostoli, alterum vero sub Lateranensis patriarchii domibus fabricavit, ubi usque hodie lectus ejus, in quo recubans modulabatur, et flagellum ipsius, quo pueris minabatur, veneratione congrua cum authentico antiphonario reservatur, quae videlicet loca per praecepti seriem sub interpositione anathematis ob ministerii quotidiam utrobique gratiam subdivisit.’ 3 Originally propounded by F.A. Gevaert, Les Origines du chant liturgique de l’église latine: etude d’histoire musicale (Gand, 1890), this was suggested by H. Hucke, ‘Die Entstehung der Überlieferung von einer musikalischen Tätigkeit Gregors des Grossen’, Die Musikforschung, 8 (1955), 259–64, repeated in his overview article, ‘Toward a new historical view of Gregorian chant’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33 (1980), 437–67, and repeated by other scholars, such as B. Stäblein, ‘Gregorius Praesul, der Prolog zum römischen Antiphonale’ in: Musik und Verlag. Karl Vötterle zum 65. Geburstag, ed. R. Baum and W. Rehm (Kassel, 1968), 537–61. 4 Gregory the Great, Dialogues 2.36, ed. A. de Vogüé and trans. P. Antin, 3 vols (SC 251, 260, 265, Paris, 1973–80), vol. 2, 242: ‘Nam scripsit monachorum regulam discretione praecipuam, sermone luculentam. Cuius si quis velit subtilius mores vitamque cognoscere, potest in eadem institutione regulae omnes magisterii illius actus invenire, quia sanctus vir nullo modo potui aliter docere quam vixit.’ The Rule is mentioned in a commentary on I Kings once attributed to Gregory, now identified as a twelfthcentury text inspired by his teaching; see A. de Vogüé, ‘L’Auteur du commentaire des Rois attribué à S. Grégoire: un moine de Cava?’ Revue Bénédictine, 106 (1996), 319–31, and F.W. Clark, ‘The authorship of the I Regum commentary. Implications of De Vogüé’s discovery’, Revue Bénédictine, 108 (1998), 61–79.

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1957, Hallinger argued that even if Gregory knew the Rule, there is no evidence that he ever followed its precepts.5 In the same year, Ferrari put forward the more radical claim that Benedict’s Rule was not known at all in Rome prior to the early tenth century, when Odo of Cluny (879–942) sought to reform monastic life in certain of its abbeys.6 Even more extreme has been Clark’s argument that the Dialogues were composed c.670–80 by someone extending otherwise unknown texts of Gregory with invented dialogue in a ‘popularising’ vein, to promote the cause of Benedict.7 While many scholars have rejected Clark’s hypothesis, it is still uncertain whether Gregory actually promoted the Rule. Clark’s arguments about the slow diffusion of the Dialogues deserve scrutiny, even if his distinction about the work as more ‘populist’ than Gregory’s exegetical writing is fallacious. As Fried has warned, Gregory’s account of Benedict needs to be read through the filter of memory rather than historical fact.8 This paper argues that while Gregory did write the Dialogues, the work first circulated outside Rome during the papacy of Honorius I (625–38), within a monastic milieu that only gradually came to know about the Rule of Benedict as well as to implement Gregory’s vision of the liturgy. Not all Roman clerics were equally enthusiastic about Gregory’s support for monks, particularly at the church of the Holy Saviour, built by Constantine at the Lateran as mother church of the city of Rome, before any of its dependent basilicas. There had been monasteries located around St Peter’s, just outside the city of Rome, since the time of Leo the Great, creating an enduring tension in its relationship to the Lateran. John the Deacon saw Gregory as believing that training in a common liturgy could transcend these divisions within the church of Rome.9 The ascetic context of Gregory’s Dialogues and Roman politics Born into a privileged Christian family that held significant properties in both Rome and Sicily, Gregory resigned his position as prefect of Rome c.573/4, so as to withdraw to a monastery that he built on his family estate on the Caelian Hill, near the Lateran. His administrative skills led to Pope Benedict I (575–9) appointing him deacon (one of the elite group of senior clerics who governed the church in Rome, from whom popes tended to be chosen). He was then sent by Pelagius II to be for several years apocrisarius or official representative to the Emperor in Constantinople. Even after his election as Pope in 590, Gregory insisted on maintaining an ascetic lifestyle. He promoted other monks to senior clerical positionsdsuch as the sub-deacon, entrusted with supervision of the church in Sicilydwhile berating

5 K. Hallinger, ‘Papst Gregor der Grosse und der heiliger Benedikt’, in: Commentationes in Regulam S. Benedicti, ed. B. Steidle (Studia Anselmiana, 42, Rome, 1957), 231–319. 6 G. Ferrari, Early Roman monasteries. Notes for the history of the monasteries and convents at Rome from the V through the X century (Vatican City, 1957). On Odo, see n. 112 below. 7 F.W. Clark, The pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, 2 vols (Leiden, 1987), and The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues and the origins of Benedictine monasticism (Leiden, 2003). See also Clark, ‘The renewed controversy about the authorship of the Dialogues’, in: Gregorio magno e il suo tempo, 2 vols (Rome, 1991), vol. 2, 5–25. See the critiques of Clark’s 1987 volume by: R. Godding, ‘Les “Dialogues” de Grégoire le Grand. À propos d’un livre récent’, Analecta Bollandiana, 106 (1988), 201–29; P. Engelbert, ‘Neue Forschungen zu den “Dialogen” Gregors des Großen. Antworten auf Clarks These’, Erbe und Auftrag, 65 (1989), 376–93; P. Meyvaert, ‘The enigma of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues: a response to Francis Clark’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 39 (1988), 335–81; A. de Vogüé, ‘Grégoire le Grand et ses “Dialogues” d’après deux ouvrages récents’, Revue d’Histoire Écclesiastique, 83 (1988), 281–348 and ‘Les Dialogues: œuvre authentique et publiée par Grégoire lui-même’, in: Gregorio magno e il suo tempo, vol. 2, 27–40, and a review of Clark’s 2003 publication in Revue d’Histoire Écclésiastique, 99 (2004), 158–61; J. Moorhead, ‘Taking Gregory the Great’s Dialogues seriously’, Downside Review, 121 (2003), 197–210. T. Kardong is more sympathetic to Clark’s arguments. ‘Who wrote the Dialogues of Saint Gregory? A report on a controversy’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 39 (2004), 31–9. 8 J. Fried, Der Schleier der Erinnerung. Grundzüge einer historischen Memorik (Munich, 2004), 344–57. 9 Although sometimes known through its dedication to St John, the Lateran was officially known as the church of the Holy Saviour; see Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, in: Codice topografico della città di Roma, ed. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, 3 vols (Rome, 1940–6), vol. 3, 326–73. On the Lateran and its sometimes difficult relationship to St Peter’s and its various monasteries, see R. Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a city, 312–1308 (Princeton, 2000), 54–8. Leo’s installation of monks at St Peter’s is reported in LP 47, ed. Mommsen, 105; trans. R. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs (Liber pontificalis). The ancient biographies of the first ninety Roman bishops to AD 715 (Liverpool, 2000), 40. Mommsen’s edition, used here, supersedes that of L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, 2 vols (1886–92), reissued with a third volume, L’Histoire du Liber pontificalis depuis l’édition de L. Duchesne (Paris, 1957).

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clerics for usurping monastic churches.10 In July 593, he wrote to Maximian, bishop of Syracuse (July 593) that he was being urged ‘by my brethren, who live with me on friendly terms, to record the wonderful stories about the miracles of Fathers which we have heard took place in Italy’.11 The passage implies that as pope, he was living as part of an ascetic community. Gregory’s letter to Maximian confirms the authenticity of the Dialogues as an edited record of conversations with Peter (now a deacon) about the saints of Italy.12 Far from being ‘popular’, they transmit Gregory’s considered conviction that such saints demonstrated both great virtue and the capacity to mediate divine power after their death d something of which Augustine had been uncertain. Dal Santo has argued that Gregory was here influenced by his debates in Constantinople (579–86) with Patriarch Eutychius, who had maintained a more ‘spiritual’ interpretation of the resurrected body, defended in a treatise by his biographer, Eustratius c.582.13 Whereas Cassian had recorded the teaching of the fathers of the Egyptian desert, Gregory was collecting stories about the lives and enduring power of recent saints in Italy d in particular Benedict and his sister Scholastica d even though many monastic communities had been devastated by marauding Lombard armies. Gregory welcomed such refugees to Rome, contrasting their asceticism to clerical worldliness.14 Gregory sought to overcome suspicion about monks exerting influence by emphasising an ascetic ideal that transcended clerical-monastic divisions. He was, however, not without his critics. Immediately after his death in 604, Peter the Deacon reportedly asserted that although critics wished to burn his writings, such moves were useless as they were already circulating widely, and that he had himself seen Gregory being inspired by the Holy Spirit d an image often included in subsequent iconography of the saint.15 This detail was mentioned by John the Deacon, who had access to writings still preserved in Rome in his own day (c.873–6), perhaps with the help of his friend, Anastasius the Librarian, himself active in promoting the example of another persecuted pope, Martin I (649–53).16 By reporting the funeral oration given for Gregory, John the Deacon presented him in very different terms from the relatively brief entry about Gregory in the Liber pontificalis. Unlike many of the popes singled out for praise in that work, Gregory was not a great builder of churches in Rome.17 It says simply that he provided an expensive canopy for the altar of St Peter, added a prayer to the eucharistic canon, and instructed that mass should be celebrated above the bodies of both of St Peter and St Paul in their two basilicas.18 Its brevity suggests muted criticism from an author, very likely a cleric of the Lateran.

10 Gregory’s foundation of monasteries in Sicily is mentioned by Paul the Deacon, PL 75, 43B (see n. 27 below). On his career, see R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his world (Cambridge, 1997); the introduction to J.R.C. Martyn’s translation, The letters of Gregory the Great, 3 vols (Toronto, 2004), vol. 1, 1–101; the introduction to a collection of Gregory’s writings in translation by J. Moorhead, Gregory the Great (London, 2005); and most fully, B. Müller, Führung im Denken und Handeln Gregors des Grossen (Tübingen, 2009). On his sense of a sharp division between clerical and monastic roles, see Registrum epistularum, 5.1, ed. D. Norberg, 2 vols (CCSL, 140, 140A, Turnhout, 1982), vol. 1, 266; trans. Martyn, Letters, vol. 2, 323. 11 Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, III.50, ed. Norberg, 195–6; trans. Martyn, vol. 1, 268–9, discussed by Clark, The pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, 65–93, and The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues, 179–89. 12 M. Dal Santo ‘The shadow of a doubt? A note on the Dialogues and Registrum Epistularum of Gregory the Great (590–604)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 61 (2010), 3–17. See also J.M. McCulloh, ‘The cult of relics in the letters and Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great: a lexicographical study’, Traditio, 32 (1976), 50–2. 13 M. Dal Santo, ‘Gregory the Great and Eustratius of Constantinople: the Dialogues on the miracles of the Italian Fathers as an apology for the cult of saints’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 17 (2009), 421–57. 14 On the eschatalogical context of Gregory’s Dialogues, see for example: J.M. Petersen, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in their late antique cultural background (Toronto, 1984); J.N. Hillgarth, ‘Eschatological and political concepts in the seventh century’, in: Le Septième Siècle. Changements et continuités. The seventh century. Change and continuity, ed. J. Fontaine and J.M. Hillgarth (London, 1992), 212–25; C. Leyser, Authority and asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), 131–59. 15 John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, PL 75, 221D–222A. 16 John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii, PL 75, 75C and 223A. Not all of Gregory’s letters were preserved at the Lateran (see n. 71 below). B. Neil discusses the role of its librarian within her study and edition of Anastasius’ translation of the autobiographical Narrationes of Pope Martin I, dedicated to John the Deacon, Seventh-century popes and martyrs. The political hagiography of Anastasius Bibliothecarius (Turnhout, 2006), 22–4. 17 LP 66, ed. Mommsen, 161–2; trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 63; see C. Leyser, ‘Charisma in the archive: Roman monasteries and the memory of Gregory the Great, c.870–c.940’, in: Le scritture dai monasteri. Atti del IIo seminario internazionale di studio ‘Il Monasteri nell’alto medioevo’; Roma 9–10 maggio 2002, ed. F. De Rubeis and W. Pohl (Rome, 2003), 207–26. 18 Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a city, 87.

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The entries in the Liber pontificalis for the early seventh century hint at enduring tension between monks and clergy in Rome in the two decades immediately after Gregory’s death.19 His immediate successor, Sabinian (604–6), who sold wheat to its citizens (rather than giving it out free), ‘filled the church from the clergy’, implying that he did not follow Gregory in promoting monks.20 While Boniface III (607) and Boniface IV (608–15) seem to have been sympathetic to monks, Deusdedit (615–18) is praised for returning priests and clergy to their churches, as if they had been displaced by monks.21 Honorius I (625–38), accorded a much longer entry than Gregory, seems to have been particularly skilled in combining commitment to educate clerics with building many new churches, each dedicated to a local saint. In a clever move, he established a weekly liturgical procession from a new oratory of St Apollinaris (first bishop of Ravenna) to St Peter’s ‘with hymns and chants, and the whole people should join in it.’ The Liber pontificalis implies continuing political problems in Rome, however, with an 18-month delay before the appointment in 640 of his short-lived successor, Severinus (640), last of the old Roman aristocrats to govern the papacy following the looting of the Lateran by the imperial army.22 The election of Theodore (642–9), a Greek speaking refugee from Jerusalem, and then Martin I (649–53), marked new confidence within the papacy, increasingly at odds with the emperor. In 649 Martin I called the first General Council of the Church to be held at the Lateran, inviting exiled Greek monks, such as Maximus the Confessor, to condemn the monothelete views (that Christ only had one will) of Constans II d leading to his being arrested by imperial edict and his dying in exile two years later.23 A key figure in strengthening the papacy after this crisis was Vitalian (657–72), who welcomed Constans II to Rome, but still asserted Roman privileges against Byzantine ambition.24 His policies were continued by Agatho I (678–81), a Sicilian fluent in both Greek and Latin, who persuaded Constantine IV to renounce monothelitism after convening a synod in Rome in March 680.25 While Gregory the Great had difficulty creating structures to enforce his vision of the church, a series of mainly Greek speaking popes was able to consolidate his ambitions. Perhaps none were more effective than Gregory II (715–31), who supported c.720 the reconstruction of Benedict’s abandoned abbey at Monte Cassino. In England, Gregory’s reputation was assured by a monk of Whitby writing the first Life of the saint c.704/14.26 The first Life of Gregory to be written in Rome was that of Paul the Deacon, who became a monk at Monte Cassino sometime around 770.27

19 R. Grégoire, ‘Monaci e monasteri in Roma nei secoli VI–VII’, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria, 104 (1981), 5–24; A. Thacker, ‘Memorializing Gregory the Great: the origin and transmission of a papal cult in the seventh and early eighth centuries’, Early Medieval Europe, 7 (1998), 59–84, repeats (71) the misleading claim that Adeodatus was the first pro-monastic Pope after Gregory, taken from P.A.B. Llewelyn, ‘The Roman church in the seventh century: the legacy of Gregory I’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 25 (1974), 363–80 (367), and Ferrari, Early Roman monasteries, 390. On the decline of noble control of the papacy, see T.F.X. Noble, ‘Rome in the seventh century’, in: Archbishop Theodore. Commemorative studies on his life and influence, ed. M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1995), 68–87. 20 LP 76, ed. Mommsen, 163; Llewellyn, ‘The Roman church in the seventh century’, 365–6. 21 LP 70, ed. Mommsen, 166: ‘sacerdotes et clerum ad loca pristina revocavit’; trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 65. For an invaluable summary, see J.N.D. Kelly, Oxford dictionary of popes (Oxford, 1986), 71–2. 22 LP 72, ed. Mommsen, 170–4: ‘Hic erudivit clerum . et decrevit ut omnem ebdomadam sabbato die exeat laetania a beato Apollinare ad beatum Petrum apostolum, cum ymnis et canticis populus omnis occurri debeat.’ 23 See the translation of Martin’s narrative of his exile, by Anastasius the Librarian, Seventh-century popes and martyrs, ed. Neil, 148–265. 24 LP 69, 72, ed. Mommsen, 165, 173; trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 64, 66; M. Humphries notes the longevity of this perspective in commenting on Vitalian’s welcome to Constans II on his visit to Rome in 663, ‘From emperor to pope? Constantine to Gregory’, in: Religion, dynasty and patronage in early Christian Rome, 300–900, ed. K. Cooper and J. Hillner (Cambridge, 2007), 21–58 (56). On Vitalian, see P. Llewellyn, Rome in the dark ages, 2nd edn (London, 1990), 123, and U. Longo, ‘Vitaliano, santo’ in: Enciclopedia dei papi, 3 vols (Rome, 2000), vol. 1, 606–9. 25 A.J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek popes (Lanham, 2007), 164–6, and 199–301 on later popes, including Zacharias I (741–52), who translated Gregory’s Dialogues into Greek. 26 The earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an anonymous monk of Whitby, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1985). 27 Paul, Vita Gregorii, PL 75, 49B; the version printed in PL 75, 42–60, was interpolated in the tenth century with passages from the Whitby Life, not known to Paul; the original text is edited by H. Grisar, ‘Die Gregorbiographie des Paulus Diakonus in ihrer ursprünglichen Gestalt, nach italienischen Handschriften’, Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, 11 (1887), 158–73, and S. Tuzzo, Vita sancti Gregorii magni (Pisa, 2002).

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The early diffusion of the Dialogues and the Rule of Benedict Some time after Gregory’s death, his notary, Paterius, made a compilation of his writings, including stories recorded in the Dialogues d strong evidence, as Meyvaert noted, for its authenticity.28 Although the Dialogues are not mentioned in the initial recension of the Liber pontificalis or by Isidore of Seville (560–c.636) in his De viris illustribus, this means only that they did not circulate as quickly as other writings.29 Leander, Isidore’s brother and a personal friend of Gregory, gives no hint that he knew the Dialogues.30 Soon after 631, Isidore’s disciple, Braulio of Saragossa, asked abbot Taio for those writings of Gregory, not available in Spain, that Taio had found when visiting Rome. These texts, including stories that also appear in the Dialogues, had been discovered by Taio only after seeing Gregory in a vision.31 The opening statement of the Lives of the Fathers of Merida (dated by its editor to 633–8), declares that it was written in imitation of the Dialogues about the Fathers in Italy to counter uncertainty about the veracity of the miracles reported in it by Gregory.32 These and a few other early allusions d in the continuation by Ildefonsus of Toledo to Isidore’s De virorum illustrium scriptis (c.657–67), the Life of Fursey (c.650) and the Chronicle of Fredegar (616–60)dimply that the Dialogues first started to become known outside Rome only in the 630s, initially in Spain and then in Gaul.33 This awakening of interest in the Dialogues coincides with the efforts of Honorius to educate the clergy. The Rule of Benedict similarly took time to acquire prominence within a monastic milieu. While Paul the Deacon reported in his History of the Lombards that monks fleeing Benedict’s abbey at Monte Cassino in 581 had brought a copy of the Rule with them to Rome, Gregory was not shaped by its discipline.34 He was more interested in recalling how he had learned from Valentiano, the abbot he had installed at his monastery on the Caelian Hill, that monks had used psalmody to pacify Lombard aggressors after members of their community had been killed.35 As both Engelbert and Wollasch have observed, the slow process by which the Rule was recognised in the seventh century was connected to increasing reverence for Rome.36 The Rule is first attested in a letter from Venerandus, patron of an unknown monastic house, to Constantius, bishop of Albi, in 627, urging his monks to follow the Rule of Benedict, ‘abbot of Rome’, rather than any other rule.37 In 660, the Rule was being quoted without explicit acknowledgement by bishop Donatus of Besançon, a disciple of Columbanus, within his own Rule for nuns in Burgundy.38 Also about this time, bishop Leudegar of Autun (663–80) reportedly urged abbots and monks to follow the Rule of Benedict, but it is not known if his instruction had any effect.39

28

Clark, The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues’, 320–30, responding to the arguments of Meyvaert (n. 7 above). Isidore, De viris illustribus, PL 83, 1102A–1103A. 30 Isidore, Regula monachorum, PL 83, 867–93; Leander, Regula, sive Liber de institutione virginum et contemptu mundi, PL 72, 873D–894A; St Leander, Archbishop of Seville, A Book on the Teaching of Nuns and a Homily in Praise of the Church, trans. R.A.C. Martyn (Lanham, MD, 2009), 62–132. 31 Eugenii Toletani episcopi, epistulae, ed. F. Vollmer (MGH Auctores Antiquissimi 14, Berlin, 1905), 287–90; on Taio’s visit to Rome, see Llewellyn, Rome in the dark ages, 182. Clark argues that Paterius and Taio quoted the lost authentic texts of Gregory on which the Dialogues were based, rather than the work itself: The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues, 319–30. 32 Vitae sanctorum patrum Emmeratensium, ed. A. Maya-Sanchez (CCSL, 116, Turnhout, 1992), 3–4. 33 Clark unconvincingly argues that these are all later additions or interpolations, The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues, 209–17, 331–61. 34 Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum 4.17 (MGH Scriptores rerum Langobardorum, Hannover,1878),152: ‘Fugientes quoque ex eodem loco monachi Romam petierunt, secum codicem sanctae regulae, quam praefatus pater conposuerat, et quaedam alia scripta.’ 35 Valentiano is referred to as having died in Dialogues 4.22.1, ed. de Vogüé, vol. 3, 78, but is previously mentioned as Gregory’s abbot in Dialogues 1.4.20 (vol. 2, 56), and 3.22.1 (vol. 2, 356). Valentinian, perhaps a different figure, is mentioned as for many years abbot at the Lateran, Dialogues II, Prol. 2 (vol. 2, 128). 36 P. Engelbert, ‘Regeltext und Romverehrung. Zur Frage der Verbreitung der Regula Benedicti in Frühmittelalter’, in: Montecassino. Dalla prima alla seconda distruzione. Momenti e aspetti di storia cassinese (Secc. VI–IX), ed. F. Avagliano (Miscellanea Cassinese 55, Montecassino, 1987), 133–67. 37 Venerandus, Epistula ad Constantium episcopum Albigensem, ed. L. Traube (CCSL, 117, Turnhout, 1957), 502–3: ‘Regulam sancti Benedicti Romensis, quem praesens continet liber, eatenus vestram beatitudini in arce ecclesiae Albanensis recondendam pariterque habendam direximus .’ See Clark, The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues, 227–32. 38 M. Zelzer, ‘Die Regula Donati als frühestes Zeugnis des ‘monastichen Gebrauchstextes’ der Regula Benedicti’, Regula Benedicti Studien, 16 (1989), 23–5, and K. Zelzer, ‘Von Benedikt zu Hildemar. Zu Textgestalt und Textgeschichte der Regula Benedicti auf ihrem Weg zur Alleingeltung’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 23 (1989), 112–30; Clark, The ‘Gregorian’ Dialogues, 231–2. 39 Concilium Leudegarii, a. 663–680, ed. C. de Clercq (CCSL, 148A, Turnhout, 1963), 319: ‘De abbatibus vero vel monachis ita observare convenit, ut quicquid ordo vel regula sancti Benedicti edocet, et implere et custodire in omnibus debeant.’ 29

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Yet the specific prescriptions of Benedict’s Rule were not necessarily followed in detail. It had to compete with the more prolix Regula Magistri (from which it may have been adapted), or that of Eugippius (d. c.536).40 Above all, the Rule of Columbanus (c.543–615), who left Ireland for Gaul after 590, commanded respect at Luxeuil, Bobbio and other daughter houses. Columbanus belonged to an older tradition of monks as wandering preachers. Although he asked Gregory for copies of his writings and professed respect for the see of Peter, he insisted on preserving the liturgical and monastic practices he had inherited from the saints in Ireland.41 No answer from Gregory is preserved. Paradoxically, a hermitage established near Lake Constance by his companion, Gall (c.550–c.646), would be re-established in the mid-eighth century as a foundation closely committed to the Rule of Benedict, of which it acquired the best surviving copy (now St Gall MS 914) from an exemplar obtained by Charlemagne, perhaps deriving from a copy reportedly given to Monte Cassino by Pope Zacharias.42 It is uncertain whether the earliest surviving copy of the Rule, an ‘interpolated’ version produced near Worcester c.700, came to England through Gaul or directly from Rome itself.43 Not yet explored in any detail is a homiliary of Agimundus, that reflects the Roman liturgy in the second half of the seventh century, but includes chapter four of the Rule, implying that it was known in Rome at this time.44 Gregory the Great, Vitalian and the memory of Benedict in Rome and Gaul A turning point in reverence for Benedict in Gaul came with the theft of his relics and those of Scholastica from Monte Cassino. While the account by Hadrevald of Fleury (d. 852/3) is well known, letters by Pope Vitalian (657–72) condemning the theft have been surprisingly ignored in discussion of this event.45 A letter from Vitalian to monks of Sicily urges them to restore monastic houses entrusted to ‘blessed Benedict’ (presumably those established by Gregory the Great), but laid waste by pagan incursions.46 Even more significant are three letters by Vitalian lamenting the theft of Benedict’s relics.47 In one, he urges the monks of Fleury to return the relics stolen from an abandoned Monte Cassino by a certain ‘wandering’ monk,

40 M. Dunn argues that both Rules may have been written about the same time in ‘Mastering Benedict: monastic rules and their authors in the early medieval west’, English Historical Review, 105 (1990), 567–94, against de Vogüé, who argues that Benedict was improving on the earlier text, ‘The Master and St Benedict: a reply to Marilyn Dunn’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), 95–103, and Dunn, ‘The Master and St Benedict: a rejoinder’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), 104–11. Leyser discusses the circle in which all these Rules were studied, Authority and asceticism, 108–16. 41 Columbanus’s letters are in Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. G.S.M. Walker (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, 2, Dublin, 1957), 2–56; on his Rule, see J. Stevenson, ‘The monastic rules of Columbanus’, in: Columbanus. Studies on the Latin writings, ed. M. Lapidge (Woodbridge, 1997), 203–16. 42 On St Gall MS 914, see the reproduction and literature at , accessed 19 February 2011. 43 The Rule of St Benedict. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 48, ed. D.H. Farmer (Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 15, Copenhagen, 1968), 23; see Zelzer, ‘Von Benedikt zu Hildemar’, 120–3. On the view that it came to England through Gaul, see S. Foot, Monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England c.600–900 (Cambridge 2006), 54–5, following P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, in: Famulus Christi. Essays in commemoration of the thirteenth centenary of the birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), 141–69, and H.M.R.E. Mayr-Harting, The Venerable Bede, the Rule of St Benedict and social class (Jarrow Lecture 1976; Jarrow, 1977), 6, rptd in Bede and his world, 1: the Jarrow Lectures 1958–1978, ed. M. Lapidge (Aldershot, 1994), 405–34. 44 Grégoire, ‘Monaci e monasteri’, 16 (n. 19 above); the homilary, not mentioned by Wollasch n. 28 or Zelzer, n. 38 above, occurs within Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3836, copied in the early eighth century, and Monte Cassino MS 12. Earlier, Grégoire (13–14) claims that the Rule was not observed in Rome prior to the early eighth century, the date he assigns to an image of Benedict in the catacomb of S. Ermete. 45 Vitalian, Ep. 6–9, PL 187, 1005D–1008A, Vitalian, Ep. 6-9, PL 187, 1005D-1008A, reprinted by way of J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 31 vols (Florence, 1759–98), vol. 11, 21–2, from Epitome chronicarum Casinensium (attributed to Anastasius the Librarian), ed. L.A. Muratori (Rerum Italicarum scriptores, 2/1, Milan, 1723), 355–6, from an unknown manuscript. P. Jaffé and W. Wattenbach, Regesta pontificum Romanorum, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885), vol. 1, 236–7, nos. 2099–2103. By contrast, four other letters of Vitalian were copied into canonical collections: see R. Schieffer, ‘Kreta, Rom und Laon’, in: Papsttum, Kirche und Recht im Mittelalter. Festschrift für Horst Fuhrmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. H. Mordek (Tübingen, 1991), 15–30. 46 Vitalian, Ep. 6, PL 87, 1006AB: ‘et his nostris filiis, quos de Cassinensi congregatione ad monasteria restauranda . dirigere studuimus . ex parte beati Benedicti et nostra praecipientes, ut in restauratione monasterii et possessionum illos adjuvare studeatis.’ On the Sicilian monasteries founded by Gregory, see n. 10 above. 47 The letters of Vitalian are not mentioned by P. Meyvaert, ‘Peter the Deacon and the tomb of Saint Benedict’, Revue Bénédictine, 65 (1955), 3–70, or J. Hourlier, ‘La Translation d’après les sources narratives’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 213–39 (a special issue, entitled Le Culte et les reliques de saint Benoît et de Sainte Scholastique, entirely devoted to the translation to Fleury). Y. Hen, Culture and religion in Merovingian Gaul A.D. 481–751 (Leiden, 1995), 152, mistakenly dates the foundation of Fleury to 703.

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named Aiulf.48 Fleury, initially dedicated to St Peter, had been founded by Leudebodus, abbot of SaintAignan, c.631, as a place where monks could live ‘according to the Rule of the most holy Benedict and lord Columbanus’.49 Vitalian is equally irate in writing to the Frankish king Clothar III (657–73), excommunicating Aiulf and Mommulus, his ‘false’ abbot (632–63). A third broadcasts this excommunication to all the bishops of Spain and Gaul. Chronicles vary in dating the translation to between 650 to 703. Monks from Le Mans would subsequently take the remains of Scholastica, as if those from Fleury were not fully comfortable with brother and sister sharing a common tomb. Vitalian’s letters corroborate Hadrevald’s testimony that the theft happened between 657 and 663.50 While Aiulf, subsequently abbot of Lérins, played an important role in promoting awareness of Benedict in Gaul, his cult tended to be combined with that of Columbanus, thus avoiding priority being given to one Rule in particular. Vitalian is the first known pope after Gregory demonstrating explicit concern for the memory of Benedict. Pope Zacharias later repeated Vitalian’s request c.747–52, urging (unsuccessfully) that the monks of Fleury return Benedict’s remains to Monte Cassino.51 By the late eighth century, Paul the Deacon was insisting that although they had taken certain relics, they had not taken the true remains of Benedict and Scholastica.52 Yet the presence at Fleury of many sixth- and seventh-century uncial manuscripts of Italian origin suggests that the monks obtained books as well as relics on that visit.53 Vitalian’s letter to Chlothar III implies that they had political support from the Frankish ruler to appropriate the relics of Benedict, while maintaining their own traditions. In 1950, the monks of Monte Cassino thought they had rediscovered the joint tomb of Benedict and Scholastica, and produced a publication (including rudimentary tests on the bones found, apparently male and female) to support their claim.54 It seems more likely, however, that they had discovered a tomb restored in the fifteenth century from an earlier ossuary, itself constructed in the eleventh century to promote the abbey’s claim. In 1978, the monks of Fleury engaged in fresh scientific analysis of the relics in their possession, determining them to be those of a sixth-century man, mixed in with bones of a woman of the same age, anatomically complementary to those preserved at Le Mans, and believed to be those of Scholastica. The letters of Vitalian were never widely known because they challenged the legitimacy of the behaviour of the monks of Fleury, while also countering the claim made at Monte Cassino in the later eighth century that the true relics had never been taken. The memory of Gregory and Benedict in England Although Gregory sent Augustine and a small group of monks from his own monastery in Rome to England, there is no evidence that they introduced the Rule of Benedict or imposed Roman liturgical

48 Vitalian, Ep. 7, PL 87, 1006C: ‘Audivimus, quod sine gravi dolore loqui non possumus, quemdam vestri coenobii gyrovagum, Aygulfum nomine, suggestine diabolica Casinum venisse, et effracto beati Benedicti sepulcro, ejus reliquias diminuisse. . et sanctis apostolis Petro et Paulo et beato Benedicto satisfacientes, ad nos cum jam dictis sacrosanctis reliquiis venitis.’ 49 T. Head, Hagiography and the cult of the saints. The diocese of Orléans, 800–1200 (Cambridge, 1990), 22–3; J. Laporte, ‘Vues sur l’histoire de Fleury’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 109–42, esp. 132, citing Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, ed. M. Prou and A. Vidier, 2 vols (Paris, 1900–37), vol. 1, 5: ‘in quo monachi iuxta regulam sanctissimi Benedicti et domni Columbani consistere debeant’. 50 In ‘Conclusion générale’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 423–8, Davril concludes that the translation took place sometime in the third quarter of the seventh century, prior to 663. P.J. Geary, Furta sacra. Thefts of relics in the central middle ages (Princeton, 1978), 120–1, assigns the translation to between 690 and 707 (although it is assigned to the early seventh century in an appendix, 150), following the date proposed by H. Leclercq, again without reference to the letters of Vitalian, in his entry ‘Fleury-sur-Loire’, Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, 15 vols in 30 (Paris, 1907–53), 5 [1923], 1725–6. 51 J. Hourlier, ‘La Lettre de Zacharie’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 241–52. 52 F. Davril, ‘La Tradition cassinienne’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 377–408; Chronica monasterii Casinensis 2, 44 and 4, 29, ed. H. Hoffman (MGH 34, Hannover, 1980), 252, 494. 53 D.B. Grémont and J. Hourlier, ‘La plus ancienne bibliothèque de Fleury’, Studia monastica, 21 (1979), 253–64. 54 The 1950 discovery was reported in Il sepolcro di S. Benedetto, ed. T. Leccisotti (Miscellanea Cassinese, 27, Montecassino, 1951), but studied further in a second volume of the same title (Miscellanea Cassinese, 45, Montecassino, 1982), with comments by the editor on the Studia monastica (1979) volume: vol. 2, 293–310.

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customs.55 According to instructions reported by Bede, Gregory had decreed that Augustine should simply choose what was most appropriate: ‘For things are not to be loved for the sake of a place, but places are to be loved for the sake of their good things. Therefore choose from every individual church whatever things are devout, religious, and right. And when you have collected these as it were into one bundle, see that the minds of the English grow accustomed to it.’56 As Goffart has demonstrated, Bede deliberately plays down the pro-Roman attitude to authority Roman authority evident in the Life of Wilfrid (633–709) by Stephen of Ripon (also known as Eddi). Stephen emphasises Wilfrid’s achievement in bringing back the Rule of Benedict, after visiting Rome and Gaul between 654 and 658, even though he was deprived of his ambition to become bishop of York by the appointment of Chad, an Irishman. ‘Exercising episcopal duties on returning to his own region he improved the ordinances of the churches of God with the Rule of holy Benedict with two singers, Aedde and Aeona, and masons and artisans of almost every art.’57 Stephen reaffirms Wilfrid’s responsibility for introducing Roman ways in a speech, given after he had been exiled to Mercia in 703: ‘And did I not instruct them in accordance with the rite of the primitive church to make use of a double choir singing in harmony, with reciprocal responsions and antiphons? And did I not arrange the life of the monks in accordance with the Rule of the holy father Benedict which none had previously introduced there?’58 By contrast, Bede reports only that Stephen (Eddi) had introduced sonos cantandi in ecclesias from Kent to Northumbria, but leaving out any detail and any reference to Wilfrid’s claim that he had introduced the Rule of Benedict.59 Bede was more sympathetic to Benedict Biscop (628–89), who had initially set out for Rome with Wilfrid in 654 and certainly knew the Rule (as evident from the name he took, perhaps at Lérins), but reports that while respecting the Rule of Benedict, he preferred to create his own, from the practice of a range of different monasteries.60 Ceolfrith (d. 716), Bede’s own abbot at Jarrow had certainly been raised with awareness of the Rule of Benedict and insisted his successor be chosen according to its instructions.61 Bede’s disinclination to single out the Benedictine Rule reflects his preference for the attitudes of Gregory the Great to those of Wilfrid on monastic life. In 667 Pope Vitalian took advice from abbot Hadrian, a refugee monk from North Africa, to appoint a Greek speaking monk, Theodore of Tarsus, as archbishop of Canterbury. Theodore, who had first to grow a Roman style tonsure, left with Benedict Biscop as his interpreter in 668, arriving in England in 669 (Hadrian coming a year later).62 Vitalian reinforced their mission by sending a relic of Gregory the Great to King Oswiu along with relics of other Roman saints, clear evidence of his desire to promote Gregory’s memory and the monastic cause.63 Many of the stories about Gregory reported both by Bede

55 On the continuing diversity of monastic observance in practice prior to the tenth-century, see S. Foot, Monastic life in AngloSaxon England, and J. Billett, ‘The divine office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597–c.1000’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008) d to whom I am grateful for making it available to me. 56 Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people 1.27, ed. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), 80–2: ‘Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt. Ex singulis ergo quibusque ecclesiis quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta sunt elige, et haec quasi in fasciculum collecta apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone.’ 57 Eddius Stephanus, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, c. 14, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), 30: ‘cum cantoribus Aedde et Eonan et caementariis omnisque paene artis institutoribus regionem suam rediens, cum regula sancti Benedicti instituta ecclesiarum Dei bene meliorat.’ 58 Eddius Stephanus, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, c. 47, ed. and trans. Colgrave , 98: ‘Aut quomodo iuxta ritum primitivae ecclesiae assono vocis modulamine, bis adstantibus choris, persultare responsoriis antiphonisque reciprocis instruerem? Vel quomodo vitam monachorum secundum regulam sancti Benedicti patris, quam nuillus prior ibi invexit, constitueram?’ Wilfrid was educated at Lindisfarne, where the Rule was strictly followed by the early eighth century, Vita sancti Cuthberti, 3, ed. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1940), 94. 59 Bede, Ecclesiastical history 4. 2, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 334. 60 Bede, Historia abbatum 11, ed. C. Plummer, Opera historica, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), 1: 374–5; Homiliarum Evangelii I. 13, ed. D. Hurst (CCSL, 122, Turnhout, 1955), 92; P.H. Blair, The world of Bede (London, 1970), 198–200. 61 Bede, Historia abbatum 16, ed. Plummer, 1: 381. Mayr-Harting argues for its importance on Bede, ‘Bede, the Rule of St Benedict, and social class’, 412–14, following P. Wormald, ‘Bede and Benedict Biscop’, 143–4. Such views are challenged by W. Goffart The narrators of barbarian history (AD 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), 314–15. 62 The detail is added as a marginal note to a copy of LP 78, trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 74. On Theodore’s significance in transforming the English church, see M. Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’, in: Archbishop Theodore, ed. Lapidge, 1–29. 63 Bede, Ecclesiastical history, 3.29, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 320.

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and the Whitby author of the earliest surviving Life of Gregory may have originated from the circle around Theodore and Hadrian.64 Thacker has observed that very similar stories about Gregory are also told by John Moschus (c.550–619), a Greek speaking monk who fled from Alexandria at the time of the Persian invasions and who died in Rome.65 Although Thacker focused on the role of Theodore and Hadrian in promoting support for Gregory, they were echoing the attitude of Vitalian. The unusual practice in pre-conquest England of celebrating Gregory’s ordination as a priest on 29 March, as distinct from his feast (12 March), attests to the vitality of Gregory’s cult in England.66 Hadrian and Theodore, two monks not raised under the Rule of Benedict and newly arrived in England, had to contend with Wilfrid’s insistance that he had been promoting Roman reforms in England for over a decade. Their most distinguished student at Canterbury was Aldhelm (639–709), who subsequently became the first abbot of Malmesbury by 680. Aldhelm singled out Benedict for praise in his major Prosa on virginity, addressed to the nuns of Barking, sharing the values of Wilfrid.67 His respect for the Rule of Benedict was subsequently echoed by Boniface of Devon (c.675–754), who insisted on its observance in Germany after being invested with this task in Rome in 718/19 by Pope Gregory II.68 Gregory and foundation myths of liturgical chant While Gregory never imposed uniform liturgical observance on the Latin church as a whole, he used liturgy to bring together different parts of the community within the city of Rome. Gregory of Tours and Paul the Deacon both report that at his installation as pope in 590, he organised a procession with choirs representing every group in the city d clergy, monks, nuns, children, lay-people, widows and married people d to sing psalms, including the Kyrie eleison, for three days.69 His liturgical concern is also demonstrated by his Homilies on the Gospels, our earliest evidence for a fixed annual cycle of readings.70 He was troubled by a tendency for cantors to become increasingly prominent as soloists. In July 595, he included in a long, highly personal letter to Leander of Seville (not preserved in the Lateran archive of Gregory’s letters and thus omitted from the modern critical edition) about the inadequacy of having a skilled, but unspiritual cantor by comparing such a person to an organ whose pipes were cracked and sound was too shrill d alluding to an instrument both would have known from their time in Constantinople.71 That month, Gregory also issued a decree at St Peter’s (again, not preserved in the Lateran archive), criticising deacons for being too concerned with demonstrating their skills in singing, and not enough with preaching and charity. He ruled that a deacon should sing only the Gospel, so as to

64 Thacker, ‘Memorializing Gregory the Great’, 59–84; K. Rambridge, ‘Doctor Noster Sanctus: the Northumbrians and Pope Gregory’, in: Rome and the north. The early reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe, ed. R.H. Bremmer Jr., D.K. Dekker and D.F. Johnson (Paris, 2001), 1–26. 65 Moschus tells stories about Gregory in his Pratum spirituale, in: Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 161 vols (Paris, 1857–66), vol. 87, 3011A, 3015D, 3071AB. Thacker, ‘Memorializing Gregory the Great’, 65–7, suggests that the priest Peter, may be Peter the Deacon; A. Louth defends the view that Moschus died in Rome, ‘Did John Moschus really die in Constantinople?’, Journal of Theological Studies, 49 (1998), 149–54. 66 English kalendars before A.D. 1100, ed. F. Wormald (Henry Bradshaw Society, 72, Woodbridge, 1934), 18, 88, 186, 228; see Baimbridge, ‘Doctor noster sanctus: the Northumbrians and Pope Gregory’, in: Rome and the north, ed. Bremmer, Dekker and Johnson, 1–26. 67 Aldhelm, Prosa de virginitate 30, ed. R. Ehwald-S. Gwara (CCSL, 124A, Turnhout, 2001), 379; Aldhelm, The prose works, trans. M. Lapidge and M. Herren (Ipswich, 1979), 89–90; Aldhelm, The poetic works, trans. M. Lapidge and J.L. Rosier (Woodbridge, 1985), 121–2. 68 See the praise for Gregory’s Dialogues and for Benedict reported by Willibald, Boniface’s disciple and biographer, Vitae sancti Bonifatii, ed. W. Levison (Hannover, 1905), 3, 7, 10. 69 Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 10.1, PL 71, 529; Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum 5.11, PL 75, 59B, repeated in his Historia Romana 17.20, ed. A. Crivellucci (Rome, 1914), 252. 70 On the significance of his homilies, see E. Palazzo, A history of liturgical books from the beginning to the thirteenth century, trans. M. Beaumont (Collegeville, Minn., c.1998), 86–7. 71 Gregory, Registrum epistolarum 5.53a, ed. P. Ewald and L. Hartmann, 2 vols (MGH Epistolae, 1–2, Berlin, 1891–9), vol. 1, 353 (but excluded from Norberg’s more restricted edition in CCSL, 140, based on letters preserved in the official register at the Lateran); trans. Martyn, vol. 2, 384–5, with arguments in favour of its authenticity in Martyn, ‘Gregory the Great: on organ lessons and on equipping monasteries’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 30 (2004), 107–13, and ‘Gregorian chant in Spain’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 32 (2006), 1–5. Gregory refers to a tambourine’s dry skin and a harmonious choir in comments on Psalm 150 in Registrum 7.29, ed. Norberg, CCSL, 140, 489; trans. Martyn, 485.

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be free to preach and take up the collection; subdeacons and those in minor orders were to sing psalms and other parts of the Mass.72 Gregory was certainly seeking to improve the quality of the diaconate, from whom popes were normally elected, but wanted to avoid operatic display by creating a choir from minor clerics.73 He sought to break away from the increasing tendency in the fifth and sixth centuries to privilege the cantor or psalmista, and instead establish a quasi-monastic choir, made up of subdeacons and other clerics in minor orders. Gregory’s concern to create a purified liturgy is also evident in a letter from October 598, justifying certain innovations he had introduced against someone who charged him with being insufficiently critical of Greek practice. He defended singing Alleluia outside of the Easter-Pentecost season, by explaining that while going beyond the practice of the church of Jerusalem in Jerome’s day, he was not going as far as the Greeks. He defended his policy of insisting that subdeacons not be robed by observing that he could not understand why a certain pontiff had departed from primitive tradition by ordaining that they should wear linen. He similarly defended his practice of clergy and people singing antiphonally Kyrie eleison, unlike the Greeks. Even more radical is his comment that the apostles preferred to say the Lord’s Prayer when consecrating the eucharist rather than a prayer that he says had been composed by a certain scolasticus.74 Gregory nonetheless retained the Lord’s Prayer with the eucharistic prayer. He concluded that it was important to be flexible in liturgical matters: ‘For foolish is the man who thinks himself better than others, but refuses to learn from the good qualities that he sees in others.’75 Completely unnoticed in discussion of Gregory’s reputation as a liturgist is an additional note made to a copy of the entry about Honorius preserved in an abbreviation of LP made by Adhemar of Chabannes at St-Martial, Limoges, from a copy likely brought back from St Peter’s by Odo of Cluny in the early tenth century. It adds a monastic slant to the achievement of Honorius: He built many basilicas and monasteries for monks; he strengthened the decree of St Gregory on the Antiphonal and Order of offices and psalms in Septuagesima, and that the monks should leave off the Alleluia in Septuagesima; and at Easter and Pentecost, as the people were displeased, they should recite three lessons and three psalms like the Roman church, and should perform their office in the Roman manner during all of those two weeks.76 Its reference to Honorius confirming an Antiphonarium and Ordo officiorum et psalmorum of Gregory provides hitherto unnoticed testimony about texts alluded to by John the Deacon in the late ninth century. Its comment about monks not singing Alleluia in Lent corresponds precisely with Gregory’s

72 Gregory, Registrum epistolarum 5. 57a, ed. Ewald and Hartmann, vol. 1, 363; trans. Martyn, 388–9. R. Crocker, An introduction to Gregorian chant (New Haven, 2000), 19, argues that the passage manifests lack of interest in music, as does McKinnon, ‘Gregorius presul composuit hunc libellum musicae artis’, in: The liturgy of the medieval church, ed. T.H. Heffernan and E.A. Matter (Kalamazoo, 2001), 675–93 (685). On the development of the cantor in the sixth century, see C. Page, Singers in the Christian west. The first thousand years (New Haven, 2010), 209–42. 73 S. Van Dijk claimed Gregory was its founder, ‘Gregory the Great: founder of the schola cantorum’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 77 (1963), 345–56, and ‘Papal schola versus Charlemagne’, in: Organicae voces. Festschrift Joseph Smits van Waesberghe angeboten anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstages 18. April 1961 (Amsterdam, 1963), 21–30. J. Dyer opposes this view in ‘The schola cantorum and its milieu in the early middle ages’, in: De musica et cantu. Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und der Oper: Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Cahm and A.-K. Heimer (Hildesheim, 1993), 19–40, and ‘Boy singers of the Roman schola cantorum’, in: Young Choristers 650–1700, ed. S. Boynton and E. Rice (Woodbridge, 2008), 19–36 (35). 74 Registrum 9.26, ed. Norberg, CCSL, 140A, 586–7; trans. Martyn, vol. 2, 561–2. 75 Registrum 9.26, ed. Norberg, CCSL, 140A, 587; trans. Martyn, vol. 2, 562. 76 LP 72 reports in the critical apparatus (ed. Mommsen, 173): ‘epitome codd. Paris 2268 et 2240 habet ante ordinationes: “fecit multas basilicas et monasteria monacorum et constitutiones sancti Gregorii in antiphonario et ordine officiorum et et psalmorum corroborauit ut a monachis all dimitteretur in LXXa, in Pasca et in Pentecostem sicut Romana ecclesia fac tres lectiones et tres psalmi propter populi displicenciam reciterantur et totas illas duas ebdomadas Romano more in officio agerent.”’ The translation follows that of Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 67, who comments on these two manuscripts (containing an unusually complete version of LP) in notes to its unusual version of the Life of Hadrian II (867–72), perhaps written by John the Deacon, describing how he asked for liturgical chants to be preserved in a troparium alongside the antiphonarium, in: R. Davis, The lives of the ninth-century popes (Liber pontificalis): the ancient biographies of ten popes from A.D. 817–891 (Liverpool, 1995), xiv and 293–4. Their link with Odo of Cluny is made by B. Judic, ‘Lire Saint-Grégoire à SaintMartial’, in: Papers presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999, ed. M.F. Wiles and E.J. Yarnold, 5 vols (Studia Patristica, 34–8, Leuven, 2001), vol. 3, 126–31.

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ruling in his letter of 598. Of particular interest is the comment that monks were required to follow Roman liturgical practice in having only three readings and psalms on feast days, because of the displeasure of the population, who presumably did not care for the excessive length of a monastic office. If Gregory gave such instructions to monks at St Peter’s, they were not preserved in any letters kept at the Lateran. The report implies a deliberate attempt by Honorius to use the authority of Gregory to bring together monastic practice in a major basilica (most likely St Peter’s) with Roman practice. The comment in LP about Honorius ‘educating’ the clergy suggests he may have created such an institution to implement the reforms Gregory wished to establish in Rome. The comment of Eddius Stephanus that Wilfrid sought to introduce into England ‘a double choir singing in harmony, with reciprocal responsions and antiphons, according to the rite of the primitive church’ (according to his disciple, Eddius Stephanus, himself a singer) implies he had been impressed by the monastic liturgy at St Peter’s in the mid seventh century. Only by the late seventh century, however, do entries in LP indicate that some popes had particular gifts in singing. It recalls that Leo II (682–3) was ‘proficient in Greek and Latin, and distinguished both for his chanting and psalmody, which he interpreted elegantly, and with the most sensitive and subtle touches’.77 It also reports that Sergius I (687–701) had been educated by a precentor (prior cantorum) in the time of Adeodatus (672–6).78 Among his many achievements, it recalled that Sergius was responsible for insisting that clergy and people should sing together the Agnus Dei at the breaking of the bread, reinforcing their collective identity.79 The report that Honorius wished to shorten the monastic liturgy of St Peter’s on certain feast days to make it confirm to Roman usage illustrates the problem of having monks serve a large public basilica. By establishing Gregory’s bed as an object of veneration at St Peter’s, and quite possibly the antiphonarium referred to in this rubric, Honorius sought to enforce the liturgical reforms of Gregory on the Roman church. The antiphonarium may not be Gregory’s composition, but a liturgical text that he inherited, and perhaps added to, indicating the antiphons that were to be sung at the end of each Psalm in reciting the day and night office, relating Psalms to the Christian liturgy. Gregory’s bed (and perhaps the antiphonarium) was subsequently moved to the monastery of Gregory the Great on the Caelian Hill, near the Lateran, built on his family estate, a subtle way of declaring that he was more than just a friend of St Peter’s.80 This report challenges McKinnon’s claim that the Roman liturgy of the Mass was effectively ‘invented’ de novo in the later seventh century.81 While Deshusses has argued that a reformed missal (sacramentary) emerged c.650–80, Palazzo has more plausibly suggested that it was initiated in the time of Honorius.82 Yet Honorius was simply codifying reforms that Gregory had hinted at in his edicts. By the late seventh century, Gregory was perceived within a monastic milieu as having created the liturgy. This at least was the view of Aldhelm (writing perhaps after his visit to Rome c.687), who claims that Gregory, ‘our teacher and guide’, had composed the canon of the Mass.83 It was also the perspective of Egbert, bishop of York (732–66), who reported that he had inspected Gregory’s authentic

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LP 82, ed. Mommsen, 200; trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 80. LP 86, ed. Mommsen, 210; trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 85. 79 LP 86, ed. Mommsen, 210–16 (215); trans. Davis, The Book of the Pontiffs . to AD 715, 85–8. 80 Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae, in: Itineraria et alia geographica, ed. P. Geyer (CCSL, 175, Turnhout, 1965), 311. The bed was at S. Gregorio Magno on the Caelian Hill in the twelfth century, according to the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae 12, in Codice topografico, ed. Valentini and Zucchetti, vol. 3, 355. See Page, Singers in the Christian west, 243–59, esp. 257 and 259, n. 21. On the building of S. Gregorio Magno, see Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a city, 59, and on the orphanotrophium, Dyer, ‘Boy singers’, in: Young choristers, ed. Boynton and Rice, 30–4. 81 J. McKinnon, The Advent project. The later seventh-century creation of the Roman Mass proper (Berkeley, 2000), 82–4; see for example the reviews by P. Jeffreys in: Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56 (2003), 169–81, and J. Dyer in: Early Music History, 20, (2001), 279–309; M.E. Fassler, ‘Sermons, sacramentaries, and early sources for the office in the Latin west: the example of Advent’, in: The divine office in the Latin middle ages: methodology and source studies, regional developments, hagiography, ed. M.E. Fassler and R.A. Baltzer (Oxford, 2000), 15–47. 82 J. Deshusses (without noting the testimony of Aldhelm), ‘Grégoire et le sacramentaire grégorien’ in: Grégoire le Grand, ed. Fontaine, 637–44. Palazzo proposes it was first made under Honorius I (625–38), Liturgical Books, 51. 83 Aldhelm, Prosa de virginitate, c. 42, ed. Ehwald-Gwara, 597 ‘[rumores] quas praeceptor et pedagogus noster Gregorius in canone cotidiano, quando missarum sollemnia celebrantur’; see the introduction by Ehwald-Gwara, 47*, on its date as after 685. 78

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missal and antiphonary in Rome, and had found them to be identical to books he claimed had been brought to England by Augustine of Canterbury.84 The claim of Gregory’s authorship of the liturgy would be repeated in a verse preface, Gregorius praesul, written in Aldhelm’s style, and possibly by him, although it is first attested only in the late eighth century: ‘praesul Gregory, worthy in name and merits of being pope, whence he takes his name, ascended to the supreme honour, and renewed the achievements of the earlier Fathers; . then he composed this book of the art of music for the cycle of the year for the school of singers.’85 While there would have been no musical notation in this antiphonarium, melodies would have been passed on orally. Gregorius praesul cannot have originally referred to Gregory II as once suggested.86 In claiming that Gregory had renewed the achievements of the Fathers, it reaffirms Isidore’s claim that Gregory the Great had equalled Augustine.87 Gregorius praesul also echoes the preface to the so-called ‘Gregorian’ sacramentary, sent by Pope Hadrian I to Charlemagne between 781 and 791 (the so-called Hadrianum), itself extended by Alcuin shortly after he had left York for Tours. It asserts that this sacramentary had been published by Pope Gregory and had been written ‘in the cubiculum (resting room) of the library from the authentic book’.88 A briefer and perhaps earlier version introduces a pre-Hadrianic version of the sacramentary preserved in a ninth-century manuscript from Mainz that claims to record the liturgy of Boniface, its first archbishop.89 The Mainz sacramentary may be a copy of that received by Boniface from Gregory II, and seen by Egbert in 735. Bede was more circumspect than Aldhelm or Egbert in explaining that Gregory had added various petitions to the canon of the mass, not that he was its author.90 Yet he frequently speaks about the influence of ‘disciples of Gregory’ in providing a model of good liturgy, identifying in particular the contribution of John, precentor of St Peter’s and abbot of St Martin’s (one of its adjacent abbeys), sent by Pope Agatho to England c.680 in the company of Benedict Biscop. Bede reports that John did not just teach viva voce, but left strict written instructions about the performance of liturgy, thus codifying Roman practice.91 Bede glosses over the fact that Agatho sent John to the north of England after

84 Egbert, De institutione catholica dialogus 15, PL 89, 441BC: ‘ut noster didascalus beatus Gregorius, in suo antiphonario et missali libro, per paedagogum nostrum beatum Augustinum transmisit ordinatum et rescriptum. . hoc autem jejunium idem beatus Gregorius per praefatum legatum, in antiphonario suo et missali, in plena hebdomoada post Pentecosten, Anglorum ecclesiae celebrandum destinavit. Quod non solum nostra testantur antiphonaria; sed et ipsa quae cum missalibus suis conspeximus apud apostolorum Petri et Pauli limina.’ See Alcuin’s account of Egbert, Alcuin, The bishops, kings and saints of York, ed. P. Godman (Oxford, 1982), 99–101. 85 Aldhelm’s influence is noted by K. Strecker in the notes to his edition of the poem (MGH Poetae Latini Medii Aevi 4, Hannover, 1923), 1069–72: ‘Gregorius presul pape meritis et nomine dignus unde genus ducit summum conscendit honorem, renovavit munimenta patrum priorum. Tunc composuit hunc libellum musice artis scole cantorum anni circulo.’ 86 See Hucke and Stäblein (n. 3 above) and S. Van Dijk, ‘The urban and papal rites in seventh- and eighth-century Rome’, Sacris Erudiri, 12 (1961), 411–87, esp. 477–85, and McKinnon, The Advent project, 96–8 . On the diffusion of these earliest exemplars, see M. Huglo, ‘L’Antiphonaire: archétype ou répertoire originel?’ in: Grégoire le Grand, ed. Fontaine, 661–9, reprinted in Huglo, Les Sources du plain-chant et de la musique médiévale (London, 2004). 87 Isidore, Versus 13:1 ed. J.M. Sánchez Martín (CCSL, 113A, Turnhout, 2000), 225: ‘Quantum Augustino clares tu Hippone magistro / Tantum Roma suo praesule Gregorio.’ 88 ‘Hic sacramentorum de circulo anni exposito a sancto Gregorio papa Romano editum. Ex authentico libro bibliothecae cubiculo scriptum’, quoted by Palazzo, History of liturgical books, 50. 89 There is no reference to where Gregory composed it the prefatory statement in Mainz, Martinusbibliothek-Wissenschaftliche Diözesanbibliothek im Mainzer Priesterseminar Hs. 1, f. 1v: ‘In nomine Domini incipit liber sacramentorum de circulo anni sancto Gregorio papa Romano editus qualiter missa Romana celebratur.’ On its ‘pre-Hadrianic’ character, see R. Amiet, ‘Trois manuscrits carolingiens de Saint-Alban de Mayence. Témoins inédits du Grégorien préhadrianique’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 71 (1957), 91–113, and C. Winterer, Das Fuldaer Sakramentar in Göttingen. Benediktinisch Obervanz und römische Liturgie (Petersberg, 2009), 116–18, 294–6; see Hadrian, Ep. 99, PL 98, 435A–436B. 90 Bede, Ecclesiastical history 2.1, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 130; J. Wallace-Hadrill observes that this detail was not taken from the Liber pontificalis, as claimed by Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people. A historical commentary (Oxford, 1988), 50. 91 Historia abbatum 6, in: Venerabilis Bedae Opera historica, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), vol. 1, 369: ‘Tertio quod ordinem cantandi psallendi atque in aecclesia ministrandi iuxta morem Romanae institutionis suo monasterio contradidit, postulato videlicet atque accepto ab Agathone papa archicantore aecclesiae beati apostoli Petri et abbate monasterii beati Martini Iohanne, quem sui futurum magistrum monasterii Brittanias, Romanum Anglis adduceret. Qui illo perveniens, non solum viva voce quae Romae didicit aecclesiastica discentibus tradidit; sed et non pauca etiam litteris mandata reliquit, quae hactenus in eiusdem monasterii bibliotheca memoriae gratia servantur.’ Also Bede, Ecclesiastical history 4.18, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 388.

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reinstating Wilfrid as bishop of York. He explains that James the Deacon, appointed to York by Paulinus in the mid-seventh century, but still alive in his own day, had taught chant, ‘according to the custom of the Roman and Kentish people’, and that Maban had come north to Hexham after 709 from Kent, having learned the sonos cantandi by ‘the successors of the disciples of blessed Gregory.’92 While Bede avoided Aldhelm’s more extreme claims about Gregory as author of the liturgy, he agreed that teachers from Rome inherited his example. Gregory’s Ordo on the office, reportedly confirmed by Honorius, is referred to in the twelfth century by Peter Malleus in his description of the liturgy at St Peter’s. He reports that this Ordo established a primicerius and schola cantorum at an orphanotrophium at the church of St Stephen (on the Caelian Hill), as well as a xenodochium near St Peter’s, where the primicerius and three cantors were based, and four cantors at each of the three other major basilicas of Rome (St Paul, Maria Maggiore and St Laurence outside the walls).93 While Gregory’s edict of 595 implies that he did want to reform Roman liturgy according to a monastic style, Honorius’ edict suggests desire for a compromise between a monastic and non-monastic office in Rome. The omission of any reference to the Lateran in the report by Peter Malleus suggests that Honorius’ attempt to create a unified Roman liturgy, attributed by John the Deacon to Gregory the Great, never succeeded. Our most detailed report of Gregory’s liturgical achievements is supplied by Bonizo of Sutri (d. 1098) in a brief papal history, unnoticed in scholarly literature, that provides many more liturgical details than are given in LP.94 Bonizo, one of a generation of reform minded canonists eager to explore the older traditions of the church, mentions that Gregory published a liber sacramentorum and an antiphonarium that covered both the day and night office. He identifies various chants of the Mass that Gregory reportedly introduced, such as the Introit, and his ruling that the Alleluia was not to be sung during Lent (as Gregory ruled in 598). While Bonizo’s source is unknown, the fact that he explicitly identifies Gregory as a monk suggests that his source came from St Peter’s or one of its adjoining monasteries.

The testimony of the Ordo Romanus XIX A number of descriptions, mostly in manuscripts from the second half of the eighth century, present liturgical practice at St Peter’s as the ‘true’ Roman liturgy. One series of these Ordines Romani, preserved alongside extracts from a seventh-century so-called ‘Gelasian’ sacramentary (which itself deserves further study) in St Gall MS 349, pp. 39–120, from the second half of the eighth century, is of particular interest because it concludes with an account of liturgical history.95 While Andrieu dated its opening section (XIV: readings for the night office at St Peter’s, the only section also preserved in other manuscripts) to the second half of the seventh century, the rest he attributed to a Frankish monk writing at St Gall in the third quarter of the eighth century. These comprise: XVI, an account of the divine office followed in monasteries ‘faithfully serving the lord as much according to the authority of the catholic and apostolic Roman church as according to the Rule; XV, the Roman form of the liturgical year; XVIII, the day and night office according to the Roman church and established monasteries; and XIX, the custom at mealtimes in monasteries of the Roman church, followed by a concluding survey of all those popes and then three abbots who had contributed to its liturgy and an extended polemic

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Bede, Ecclesiastical history 2. 20, 5.50, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, 206, 430. Petrus Malleus, Descriptio basilicae Vaticanae, in: Codice topografico, ed. Valentini and Zucchetti, vol. 3, 403–4: ‘Hic fecit Romanum cantum, et ordinavit primicerium et scholam cantorum, et docuit. . Et fecit Sanctum Stephanum, orphanotrophium, ubi primicerius et cantores manerent; . Hic scripsit ordinem, qualiter ecclesia regeretur; . Et fecit sinodochium sancti Gregorii iuxta gradus beati Petri, et constituit ibi .iii. cantores cum primecerio . .’ 94 Bonizo of Sutri, Historiae pontificae fragmentum, PL 150, 866B–867A. 95 The manuscript is reproduced at , accessed 19 February 2011; the prayers preceding the Ordines are edited by C. Mohlberg, ‘De ignoto quodam sacramentarii “gelasiani” Sancti Galli fragmento’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 42 (1928), 65–73. Its contents are listed in Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, ed. M. Andrieu, 4 vols (Louvain, 1931–61), vol. 1, 330–3, and the Ordines XIV, XVI, XV, XVIII–XIX are edited in vol. 3, 39–41,147–54, 95–125, 205–8, 217–27. The specifically monastic Ordines (XVI– XIX) are re-edited by J. Semmler in: Initia consuetudinis Benedictinae. Consuetudines saeculi octavi et noni, ed. K. Hallinger (Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum,1, Siegburg,1963),15–63, repeating the date of 750–800 for their composition. 93

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against those who did not follow the practices of the Roman church.96 Andrieu questioned an earlier interpretation of these Ordines as the record of monastic practice (c.680) provided by John, precentor of St Peter’s and abbot of St Martin’s in Rome, referred to by Bede as surviving at Jarrow, but on dubious grounds. Asserting them to be the work of a Frankish monk, inventing his text from the testimony of various other Ordines, he implicitly denied that they could be trusted as giving an accurate account of the liturgy at St Peter’s in the seventh century.97 Many of the Ordines (not just those in the St Gall MS 349) published by Andrieu in 1961 effectively refute Ferrari’s claim, put forward in 1957, that the Rule of Benedict was not observed in Rome before the tenth century.98 Those in the St Gall collection combine the authority of Benedict with liturgical practices, such as frequent signs of the cross, more characteristic of Columbanus (d. 615), making it much more likely to reflect a seventh-century situation when Benedict’s Rule was not yet widely authoritative.99 It concludes by identifying various popes from between the mid-fourth and midseventh centuries, who ‘nobly produced chant for the cycle of the year’: Damasus (366–84), Leo (440–61), Gelasius (492–6), Simachus (498–518), John (523–6), Boniface (530–2), Gregory (590–604) and Martin I (649–53). Gregory is singled out as composing through divine inspiration ‘his Moralia on Job, the commentaries on Ezekiel, homilies on the Gospels and many other books’, as well as producing chant, like other popes before him.100 It also names three abbots after Martin I who composed or proclaimed chant for the cycle of the year: abbots Catolenus and Maurianus who both served St Peter’s, and abbot Virbonus. The author invokes their authority to challenge those who justified following their own local practice by referring back to the authority of established saints of the church. He identifies such people as appealing to the authority of ‘Hilary [of Poitiers], Martin [of Tours], Germain [d. 562, bishop of Paris] and Ambrose, or several saints of God whom we know were sent from the Roman church by the blessed apostle Peter and his successors to this western land and shone in the miracles of virtue, who did not deviate in anything from the holy Roman see or the synod of 318 catholic fathers dwelling with the Holy Spirit at Nicaea, or the three other main synods .’.101 While Andrieu insisted that in terra ista occidentali referred to France rather than Britain, the phrase is geographically vague. The criticism of those who appealed to Gallican saints makes little sense if formulated by a Frankish monk in the later eighth century, when Charlemagne was enforcing his authority. It is more likely to reflect anxiety in Rome in the late seventh century about the liturgical independence of the church in Gaul. The author’s allusion to six heresies in the east successfully confronted by Rome (although pending an apocalyptic final conflagration) implies inclusion of the condemnation of monotheletism in Rome by Agatho I in March 680, and again at Constantinople later that year, in the shadow of the Saracen invasions. One potentially significant detail in Ordo XV is its mention of the Agnus Dei, a prayer that the Liber pontificalis says was mandated by Sergius I (687–701) to be sung by clergy and people. The

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Ordo XIX.33–49, Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 222–7. Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 6–21. Andrieu’s date is repeated by Page, Singers and the Christian west, 300–1. 98 See the references to the Rule of Benedict in Ordo XIX.29, Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 222: ‘Illud autem septemanarius, qui ingreditur quoquina, in die dominica ingreditur vel egreditur, iuxta quod in regola sancti Benedicti continetur scriptum.’ See also the opening rubric of Ordo XVI, Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 147: ‘In nomine sancte domini nostri Iesu Christi incipit instruccio ecclesiastici ordinis, qualiter in coenobiis fideliter domino servientes tam iuxta auctoritatem catholice atque apostolice Romane ecclesie quam iuxta dispositione et regulam sancti Benedicti missarum solemniis vel nataliciis sanctorum seu et officiis divinis anni circoli die noctuque, auxiliante domino, debeant celebrare, sicut in sancta ac Romana ecclesia a sapientibus ac venerabilibus patribus nobis traditum.’ 99 Andrieu observes a discrepancy between the claim of Ordo XVI, 15–16 (Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 148–9) about the Rule of Benedict and what should be sung after the Gospel on Sundays (the Te deum and verse with Kyrie eleison, not mentioned in the Rule). See also J. Stevenson, ‘The monastic rules of Columbanus’, in: Columbanus. Studies on the Latin writings, ed. Lapidge, 203–16, and P. Jeffrey, ‘Eastern and western elements in the Irish Monastic Prayer of the Hours’, in: The divine office in the Latin middle ages, ed. Fassler and Baltzer, 99–143, esp. 128–9. 100 Ordo XIX, Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 223–4: ‘Post hos quoque beatus Gregorius papa, qui, afflatu sancto spiritu, magnam atque altissimam gratiam ei dominus contulit . et cantum anni circoli nobili ededit.’ 101 Ordo XIX, Les Ordines Romani, ed. Andrieu, vol. 3, 225: ‘Nescio qua fronte vel temeritate presumptuoso spirituausi sunt beatum Hilarium atque Martinum sive Germano et Ambrosio, seu plures sanctos Dei, quos scimus de sede Romana a beato Petro apostolum [et] successoribus suis directus in terra ista occidentale et virtutis atque miracolis coruscare .’ 97

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reference could refer to a chant Sergius already knew before becoming pope, but had not yet introduced into the Roman church. While it could be a text commissioned by John before he left for England c.680, it is more likely to have been written soon after 687. The night office of Ordo XIV in this manuscript (assigned to the mid-seventh century by Andrieu) may elaborate the Ordo officiorum et psalmorum at St Peter’s and attributed to Gregory the Great in the time of Honorius; the preceding sacramentary may also be from the same period. The Rule of Benedict (especially chapters 8–18) itself followed earlier Roman liturgical practice, as a disciple of Columbanus observes in a treatise that defends Irish liturgical prayer as deriving directly from the authority of St Mark, and widespread in both eastern and western churches.102 He was referring to the fact that the Benedictine Rule mandated a practice established in Rome in the late fifth century, of reciting the psalter in its entirety over the course of a week, punctuated by antiphons and readings appropriate to the season. Older ascetic tradition, such as that followed by Columbanus and his disciples in the seventh century, relied on continuous recitation of the Psalter from beginning to end and did not rely on written texts in the same way. Bede reports that at Wearmouth, Coelfrid followed this practice, even if he also recited the canonical hours, relying on books to pray.103 It took a long time for Benedict’s Roman assumptions about the value of antiphons preserved in books to take over from these older traditions.

The Frankish transformation A uniform liturgy was not officially imposed on the English Church until 747, with an edict of the Council of Clovesho, called by the archbishop of Canterbury, insisting that the Mass be sung ‘according to the written exemplar of the church of Rome’ (by which was meant St Peter’s).104 A similar process was taking place on the Continent, mandating liturgical uniformity not just for the church as a whole, but for monastic communities, initially through legislation introduced by Pepin III in 742. Such rulings, reaffirmed by Charlemagne in 792, took a long time to impose in practice.105 Benedict of Aniane (750– 821) would play a key role in transforming monasticism in Charlemagne’s empire into a clericalised institution, whose primary focus was the celebration of the liturgy, guided by the Rule of Benedict. In the process, Benedict and Gregory the Great were transformed from being critics of clerical privilege into authorities for both the monastic and clerical orders. Ascetic commitment to chastity was turned into an ideal that ecclesiastical authorities always found difficult to impose unless they could ordain monks as deacons and priests. In the same way as the advisers of Pepin III sought to impose the Rule of Benedict, so they wanted to enforce a unified practice of chant on the entire clerical order. It became evident, following a visit from Pope Stephen II in 754, that there was serious discord between Roman and Gallican practice in their chant.106 Chant books were sent by Stephen’s successor, Paul I (757–67), to Chrodegang of Metz

102 Ratio de cursus eius auctores in: Initia consuetudinis Benedictinae, ed. Hallinger, 83–91, esp. 91: ‘Est et alius cursus beati Benedicti qui ipsum singulariter pauco discordante a curso Romano quem in sua regula repperis scriptum.’ 103 J. Semmler, ‘Benedict II d una regula, una consuetudo’, in: Benedictine culture 750–1050, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Louvain, 1983), 1–49, esp. 11; Dunn, ‘Mastering Benedict’, 580, n. 4, citing earlier literature. See also M. dell’Omo, ‘A proposito dell’esilio Romano dei monaci cassinesi dopo la distruzione Longobarda di Montecassino’, in: Montecassino. Dalla prima alla seconda distruzione, ed. Avagliano, 485–512, esp. 488–9. Bede describes Coelfrid as reciting ex ordine the entire psalter twice each day, Historia abbatum 14 and 22, ed. Plummer, vol. 1, 378 and 386. 104 Councils and ecclesiastical documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols (Oxford, 1869–71), vol. 3, 366–7; McKinnon, The Advent project, 94. 105 Karlmanni principis capitulare a. 742 in: Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause, 2 vols (MGH, Legum Sectio, 2, Hannover, 1883–97), vol. 1, 26: ‘Et ut monachi et ancillae Dei monasteriales iuxta regulam sancti Benedicti ordinare et vivere, vitam propriam gubernare studeant.’ Cf. Karoli Magni capitularia, in: Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, vol. 1, 67: ‘Clerici qui monachorum nomine non pleniter conversam videntur et ubi regula sancti Benedicti secundum ordinem tenent, ipsi in verbum tantum et in veritate promittant.’ See Engelbert, ‘Regeltext und Romverehrung’, 154. 106 Karoli magni capitularia, in: Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, vol. 1, 61: ‘Ut cantum Romanum pleniter discant, et ordinabiliter per nocturnale vel gradale officium peragatur, secundum quod beatae memoriae genitor noster Pippinus rex decertavit ut fieret, quando Gallicanum tulit ob unitatem apostolicae sedis, et sanctae Dei ecclesiae pacificam concordiam.’ See K. Levy, Gregorian chant and the Carolingians (Princeton, c.1998), 31–2.

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(c.712–66), to establish authoritative practice.107 Chrodegang was also involved in imposing norms for clergy heavily influenced by that of the Rule of Benedict.108 In 789, Charlemagne insisted that all priests and monks correct not just psalms and chant, but also notas d a term that Levy construes as neumes (not found in manuscripts prior to the late ninth century, with just a few exceptions).109 Corrected books, copied in a uniform script, were needed to ensure uniformity of practice. The friction between Gallic and Roman ways of singing would be long remembered. In the early eleventh century Adhemar of Chabannes repeated the story in this way: ‘The Gauls said they sang better and more beautifully than the Romans, the Romans said that they proclaimed ecclesiastical song most learnedly, as they had been taught by holy Pope Gregory, while the Gauls sang corruptly and lacerated healthy song by destroying it. They all replied with one voice, that the fount was like the head and the purer origin, but its tributaries, the further they departed from the source, the more turbulent and polluted with dirt and impurity they became. And Charlemagne then said: “Go back to the source of holy Gregory, because you have clearly corrupted ecclesiastical song.”’110 This musical friction echoed a broader cultural clash between the local values of Gallican monasticism and the Roman norms. By the ninth-century, the clash had become complicated by Frankish musical theorists developing a system of classifying all chant according to eight modes, in a way that was completely foreign to older chant traditions such as would have been known to Gregory the Great. A few written records survive from the late eleventh century of chants written in an older, non-modal chant, sometimes called Old Roman. Levy has argued that what is now called Gregorian chant was shaped by Gallican models, but only after a process of interaction with Old Roman tradition.111 The name of Gregory was then attached to that repertoire to give it the authority of antiquity. In the early tenth century, Odo of Cluny was inspired by his reading of the Rule of Benedict to reform monastic life not just at his own abbey at Cluny, dedicated to St Peter, but at Fleury and many other ancient monasteries both in France and in Rome itself, as well as at Farfa and Monte Cassino.112 Through his influence, the Rule of Benedict and ‘Gregorian’ chant d as interpreted at Cluny d enjoyed a degree of authority not previously seen in the Latin west. It was impossible, however, for increasingly prosperous abbeys to maintain strict observance of those traditions, as the founders of Cîteaux in 1098 came to realise.

Pope Vitalian and later liturgical traditions of the Lateran The efforts of Charlemagne and his immediate successors to impose liturgical uniformity on the Latin church, modelled on the example of St Peter’s, did not succeed everywhere. In particular, he could not impose its practices on the church of the Lateran, where there was continuing resistance to a Gallican influenced form of chant and a liturgy based on that of St Peter’s. The distinctivenenss of the Lateran office (as also that of Milan and Lyons) was commented on in the twelfth century by Peter Abelard in a letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, defending the right of the Paraclete to maintain its own liturgical

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Levy, Gregorian chant and the Carolingians, 214–15. M.A. Claussen, The reform of the Frankish church. Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula canonicorum in the eighth century (Cambridge, 2004). 109 Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Boretius and Krause, vol. 1, 65: ‘Psalmos, notas, cantus, compotum, grammaticam per singula monasteria vel episcopia et libros catholicos bene emendate; quia saepe dum bene aliqui Deum rogare cupiunt, sed per inemendatos libros male rogant.’ Levy, Gregorian chant and the Carolingians, 243–4. 110 Adhemar, Chronicon 2. 8, ed. P. Bourgain (CCCM, 129, Turnhout, 1999), 89: ‘Dicebant se Galli melius cantare et pulchrius quam Romani, dicebant se Romani doctissime cantilenas ecclesiasticas proferre, sicut docti fuerant a sancto Gregorio papa, Gallos corrupte cantare et cantilenam sanam destruendo dilacerare. Responderunt omnes una voce, fontem velut caput et originem puriorem esse, rivulos autem ejus, quanto longius a fonte recesserint, tanto turbulentos et sordibus et inmundiciis corruptos. Et ait domnus rex Karolus: “Revertimini vos ad fontem sancti Gregorii, quia manifeste corrupistis cantilenam ecclesiasticam.”’ J. Grier has suggested that Adhemar is referring to explicit musical notation (notas), ‘Ademar de Chabannes, Carolingian musical practices, and nota Romana’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56 (2003), 43–99. 111 K. Levy, ‘A new look at Old Roman chant’, Early Music History, 19 (2000), 81–104, and ‘A new look at Old Roman chant II’, Early Music History, 20 (2001), 173–97. 112 John of Salerno, Vita Odonis, PL 133, 55A; see B.H. Rosenwein, Rhinoceros bound. Cluny in the tenth century (Philadelphia, 1982), 44–50. 108

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practices: ‘The city itself does not keep the ancient custom of the Roman see, but only the church of the Lateran, which is the mother of all, keeps to the ancient office, with none of its daughters following in this, not even the basilica of the Roman palace [St Peter’s].’113 Abelard’s observation was pointed because the Cistercians claimed to follow the original liturgy as known to Benedict, and had sought (unsuccessfully) for it in the ancient manuscripts of Metz. Abelard could have learned about the Lateran liturgy from his supporter, Cardinal Guido di Castello (subsequently Pope Celestine II, 1143–4), then papal legate in France.114 The unusual traditions of the Lateran are also confirmed by a twelfth-century account of its practice of not including the Dona nobis pacem as part of the Agnus Dei in its liturgy, as if preserving a more ancient form of the chant.115 Bonizo of Sutri reported not only great detail about chants composed by Gregory the Great, but mentioned that Pope Vitalian ‘composed the chant that the Romans use today’, a comment that would be repeated by numerous authors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.116 Romani here meant the church of the Lateran, perhaps reflecting a perspective from St Peter’s. In his Rationale divinorum officiorum (c.1280), William Durandus repeated a comment of Ptolemy of Lucca (1236–1327) in adding a further detail of unknown origin: ‘Vitalian instituted Roman chant and harmonised it with the organum.’ Given that several Byzantine emperors gave organs to the west in the eighth and ninth centuries, there might have been such an instrument at the Lateran: the ninthcentury use of organum to refer to polyphony could have been inspired to imitate this example when no such instrument was to hand. A continuator of Ekkehard of Aura in the thirteenth century describes the choir of the Lateran as Vitaliani, implying that it preserved an alternative tradition to the dominant style of chant, known as ‘Gregorian’.117 While the claim that Vitalian ‘harmonised chant with organum’ is unlikely to have much historical weight, the legend records an alternative authority figure to that of Gregory as its founding figure. The Roman liturgy diffused in England and Germany in the early eighth century was transmitted by the Benedictine monks of St Peter’s and attributed by them to Gregory the Great, not by the schola cantorum of the Lateran. Conclusion The tension between monks and established clergy in early medieval Rome helps explain the relative slowness with which Gregory emerged as a ‘great’ pope. Gregory himself certainly admired Benedict and recorded many stories about him in the Dialogues and encouraged monks to take positions of

113 Letter 10, in: Peter Abelard, Letters IX–XIV, ed. E.R. Smits (Groningen, 1983), 246–7: ‘Antiquam certe Romanae sedis consuetudinem nec ipsa civitas tenet, sed sola ecclesia Lateranensis quae mater est omnium, antiquum tendet officium, nulla filiarum suarum in hoc sequente, nec ipsa Romani palatii basilica.’ On the meaning of this phrase, see Pietro Zerbi, ‘Ancora sulla romani palatii basilica. Rifflessioni intorni a una ipotesi’, Aevum 56 (1982), 217–20. 114 Guido di Castello owned a heavily annotated copy of Abelard’s Theologia Christiana (known through a copy preserved in a manuscript of Monte Cassino), that he is likely to have acquired in the early 1130s, about the same time as Abelard wrote the letter to Bernard; see the introduction to the Theologia ‘Scholarium’ in: Petri Abaelardi Opera theologica, 3, ed. E.M. Buytaert and C.J. Mews (CCCM, 13, Turnhout, 1987), 268. Guy was pope only for five months, succumbing to poisoning, according to one report; see Mews, The lost love letters of Heloise and Abelard. Perceptions of dialogue in twelfth-century France (New York, 1999), 174. 115 Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae, in: Codice topografico, ed. Valentini and Zucchetti, 343. 116 Bonizo of Sutri, Fragmentum historiae pontificiae, PL 150, 867. Later testimonies (not Bonizo) are collected by B. Stäblein, Die Gesänge des altrömischen Graduale: Vat. Lat. 5319 (Monumenta monodica medii aevi, 2, Kassel and London, 1970), 140*–150*; Romuald of Salerno, Chronicon, ed. C.A. Garufi (Rerum Italicarum scriptores, 7, part 1, Città di Castello, 1914), 127: ‘Hic composuit cantum, quo hodie Romani utuntur’; Sicard of Cremona, Chronicon, ed. O. Holder-Egger (MGH Scriptores, 31, Hannover, 1903), 146: ‘Et post hunc (Martinum) Vitalianus, qui cantum composuit, quo hodie Romani utuntur’; Martin of Troppau, Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, ed. L. Wieland (MGH Scriptores 22, Hannover, 1872), 423; Ptolemy of Lucca, Historia ecclesiastica nova 12.19, ed. Otavio Clavuot (MGH Scriptores 39, Hannover, 2009), 261: ‘Hic cantum Romanum composuit, ut scribunt Martinus et Cusentinus, et organo concordavit.’ Stäblein did not mention William Durand, Rationale divinorum officiorum 6. 1. 26, ed. A. Davril and T.M. Thibodeau (CCCM, 140A, Turnhout, 1998), 129. Stäblein notes that Riccobaldus Gervasius from Ferrara (d. 1312) adds the phrase: ‘et dulcisono organo concordavit.’ On its different meanings, see P. Williams, ‘The meaning of organum: some case studies’, Plainsong and Early Medieval Music, 10 (2001), 103–20. 117 Stäblein, Die Gesänge des altrömischen Graduale, 142* referring to Ekkehard V, in Acta Sanctorum April I (Brussels, 1675), 582a: ‘Hic est ille Vitalianus presul, cujus adhuc cantum quando Apostolicus celebrat, quidam qui dicuntur Vitaliani, solent edere in presentia ejus.’

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influence within the church at Rome. Although he knew that Benedict had composed a Rule, he did not emphasise its observance, as there were many different rules in circulation, each developed by a particular spiritual master. In the seventh century that of Columbanus commanded particular influence. By the same token, Gregory never claimed the authority to impose any particular liturgical observance on the wider Latin church. He was certainly interested, however, in the importance of reforming liturgy so that it reflected the spirit of the early apostles, and felt no compunction about departing from the practices of the Greek church where he thought certain abuses had crept in. While we know very little about the particular chant practices with which he was familiar, and how they compared to those developed by Ambrose in Milan, it is evident that Gregory was in no position to impose any particular chant on churches outside Rome. A hitherto unnoticed addition to the Liber pontificalis, probably made at a monastery associated with St Peter’s, implies that it started with efforts by Pope Honorius I (625–38) to educate the clergy and impose some degree of cohesion between the monks who serviced the basilica of St Peter’s and the Lateran, the mother church of the city on which all other Roman churches were technically dependent. Growing political tension with Byzantium meant that there was an increasing desire to distance Roman liturgy from that of Constantinople. At the same time, there were many Syrian, African and Greek speaking monks in Rome, each of whom would have had their own liturgical traditions. There was pressure to impose a certain degree of uniformity in the city, at least in those public churches served by monks. The establishment of the schola cantorum, perceived by John the Deacon as established by Gregory at both St Peter’s and the Lateran, may well go back to the efforts of Honorius to use the monks of St Peter’s to assert the authority of Gregory in matters of chant. The role of Honorius in promoting the reforms of Gregory is also hinted at in a comment made in a letter to Charlemagne by Theodomar, abbot of Monte Cassino, explaining why there were three Old Testament readings in the summer season rather than one (as prescribed by Benedict): this was a practice initiated ‘either by Pope Gregory or, as claimed by others, by ’Honorius’, and that Benedict would have wanted conformity to Roman practice.118 The Ordines Romani XIV–XIX, datable to the late seventh rather than the late eighth century (as Andrieu claimed), imply that the monasteries around St Peter’s were already following Rule of Benedict by this date, countering Ferrari’s claim that the Rule was only introduced into Rome by Odo of Cluny. Gregory was not himself particularly concerned with imposing any specific monastic rule. It may have been only with the papacy of Honorius that respect was given to both Gregory and Benedict, perhaps in consequence of growing awareness of Gregory’s Dialogues. Honorius appealed to Gregory’s authority so as to re-assert the authority of the papacy and to acknowledge (while also constraining) the liturgical activity of the monks who served St Peter’s. The monastic liturgy at St Peter’s was sufficiently developed by 654 for Wilfrid to bring back to England not just the Rule of Benedict, but antiphonal liturgical practices that he believed to go back to the primitive church. Bede’s tendency to downplay Wilfrid’s achievement in such matters has clouded awareness of his attempts to Romanise the English church in the second half of the seventh century. It may be no coincidence that after spending three years in Gaul prior to Wilfrid’s return to England in 658, we see the Rule of Benedict first surfacing in Gaul, notably in the writing of Donatus of Besançon. More dramatic testimony to the growing authority of Benedict in Gaul was the theft of his relics and that of his sister, Scholastica, from the abandoned site of Monte Cassino by monks of Fleury, perhaps with the support of Chlothar III. Yet the monks of Fleury did not give as much emphasis as Wilfrid to the sole authority of the Rule of Benedict. It was a particularity of Gallican monastic tradition to combine reverence for Benedict with that of Columbanus and other local saints, each with their own cult centre. Although we have no written records of liturgical chant from this period, it is clear that Gallican chant was quite unlike that of Rome when Pope Stephen II (752–7) made his historic encounter with the Gallican liturgists of Pepin III. By contrast, English monks claimed that their chant was closer to that of Rome d or more specifically that of St Peter’s.

118 ‘Theodomari epistula ad Karolum regem’, in: Initia consuetudinis Benedictinae, ed. Hallinger, 160–1: ‘Sive a beato papa Gregorio sive, ut ab aliis adfirmatur, ab Honorio.’

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The style of chant now called ‘Gregorian’ evolved from a slow process of fusion of Gallican and Roman chant traditions in the late eighth and ninth centuries. Yet for all the advantage Charlemagne gave to monks who followed the Rule of Benedict, he was unable to impose complete unity on the Roman church. The Lateran, mother church of the city of Rome, claimed to preserve its own traditions. The fact that liturgists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries would recall that its choir preserved its own form of chant, attributed to Pope Vitalian in the mid-seventh century, serves as a reminder that not everybody in the medieval period came to accept that Gregory had composed the liturgical chant of the Latin church. For most monks, however, as indeed for most churchmen, the legend of Gregory as author of liturgical chant helped nurture belief in their imagined fidelity with the usage of Rome. Acknowledgments This paper was initially presented to the annual conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association at Monash University in September 2009. I am also grateful for conversations with many people, including J. Billett, T. Immonen, J. Keskiaho, J. R. C. Martyn, and S. Rankin, who kindly invited me to share its ideas at her postgraduate seminar in early music, at the University of Cambridge.

Constant J. Mews is Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, and Professor of Medieval History within the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University. He is author of, among other works, The lost love letters of Heloise and Abelard. Perceptions of dialogue in twelfth-century France, 2nd edn (New York, 2008).