Die Sakramentare aus Saint-Amand als Fallstudie in den Prozessen des liturgischen Wandels im 9. Jahrhundert
Mittelalterliche Geschichte
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
A singular series of manuscripts created at the monastery of Saint-Amand in the second half of the ninth century give us a unique access to the early medieval scriptorium at work. These books all belong to a genre of liturgical manuscript, called the sacramentary. This kind of book specifically provided the prayers to be said by a priest during the celebration of the Mass. Such ceremonies went on continually in early medieval monasteries and every Mass has a particular theme or subject, encompassing a vast range of devotions and differing traditions. Over the Carolingian period (c.750-900), sacramentaries were the subject of intensive and continual reworking and re-composition. The books made at Saint-Amand in this genre are singularly complex, and rich in their provision of texts. It is also only at Saint- Amand that we possess so many manuscripts in the same genre, that were produced in a relatively restricted period of just over a decade. I was able to reconstruct that the surviving six surviving books, three fragments and a smaller booklet were made during a period of around the years 871 to 884. I was also able to prove the existence of even more original books by finding traces of the influence of the Saint-Amand tradition across Europe. The study of this series of books thus offered a unique opportunity to understand how monks compared, combined and rethought venerable traditions, to make new use of them. The monograph resulting from the project proves the sophistication and creativity with which a single monastery handled liturgical texts. It shows how liturgical sources have particular potential to demonstrate the sharing of texts in networks, and a uniquely medieval creativity. An ancient monastery in today’s North-Eastern France, Saint-Amand was a foundation particularly favoured by the Carolingian kings, especially by Charles the Bald (823-877). The abbots were magnates and aristocrats, including the kingdom’s chancellor, Gauzlin of Paris, who was abbot from 871 to his death in 884. It was also an intellectual centre of great importance. The librarian and schoolmaster at the time the sacramentaries was written was Hucbald of Saint-Amand (c.840-930), a prodigious philosopher, composer and poet. The sacramentaries are eloquent witness to the production of deluxe manuscripts at Saint- Amand. These books are decorated in a singular style, which modern scholars call „Franco- Saxon“. I undertook a new examination of the manuscripts in this style, assessing both script and decoration which enabled me to fix a new dating and ordering. I was able to show that the books were written and decorated in a sophisticated collaboration between the monastery’s scribes and a distinctive artistic atelier. I argued that Abbot Gauzlin was the patron who enabled this. This offered a dynamic vision of manuscript production in the Early Middle Ages, and reconstructed an important instance of aristocratic patronage. My project was founded on the first in-depth examination of the content of the sacramentaries of Saint-Amand. Uniquely, these books show the gradual reorganisation of this genre, each one building on the one before. What was most unexpected was the intricacy of the interventions by the compilers and scribes. I was able to show that the monks were intervening on the textual level of individual prayers, comparing varied traditions and purposefully increasing the variety and variability of the texts available to them. The common assumption of medieval liturgy saw the imposition of authoritative models on communities, with little space for an active role for individual compilers. Saint-Amand’s manuscripts challenge this. They show that a monastery could fundamentally transform an authoritative model and remake it for their own use. Rather than holding to the purest, traditional texts, the monks of Saint-Amand were keen for the broadest possible representation of traditions. I also uncovered a large proportion of prayers for masses that were unique to Saint-Amand, and do not appear in contemporary manuscripts from elsewhere. These texts showed a shared, sophisticated Latin vocabulary, and elegant composition. I was able to compare them to the poetry and writings of Hucbald of Saint-Amand, and argue that he was behind this flourishing of liturgical creativity. These compositions used the forms and phrases of old tradition to address changing devotional fashion. The project offered proof of the potential of liturgical manuscripts to reflect the innovation of medieval transmission, and suggested directions for future work on these sources.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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The Carolingian Sacramentary in Kroměříž, Arcidiecézní muzeum inv. RKP 21134, sign O / c V 1. Scriptorium, 76(1), 61-89.
Westwell, Arthur
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The lost Missal of Alcuin and the Carolingian sacramentaries of Tours. Early Medieval Europe, 30(3), 350-383.
Westwell, Arthur
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8 Standards and Variance in the Early Medieval Mass Liturgy: Re-Making the Gregorian Sacramentary. Standardization in the Middle Ages, 203-234. De Gruyter.
Westwell, Arthur
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The Carolingian Sacramentaries of Saint-Amand. De Gruyter.
Westwell, Arthur
