Sacramentarium Leonianum

Sacramentarium Leonianum

Most students of early church history are unaware of how much they owe to the discovery of a manuscript in 1713 by Francesco Scipione, Marchese di Maffei (1675–1755). Containing texts from the 5th and 6th centuries, it is counted among the oldest surviving liturgical books in the Latin West and is a precious resource for theologians, paleographers, and historians alike. It is known alternately as the Sacramentarium Leonianum because some of the texts are historically attributed to Pope Leo I (ca. 400–461) albeit without proof, or the Sacramentarium Veronense after the city of Verona where it was rediscovered and still resides today. Whatever you call it, the collection of religious texts, although not a sacramentary in the strict sense of the word, offers a rare and precious view into Late Antiquity and the liturgical foundations of the Catholic Church.

Tumulutuous Origins

Although it was originally thought that the manuscript dated from the 5th century reign of Leo the Great, later generations of researchers discovered an allusion in the manuscript to the unsuccessful attempt to besiege Rome by the Ostrogoths in 537–538, The manuscript thus likely originated in Rome during the mid-6th century and possibly as late as the early 7th century. This was a terrible time in the history of Italy, which was devasted and depopulated in the course of the 19-year-long Gothic War of 535–554 and the concurrent Plague of Justinian. Rome itself changed hands between the Goths and Byzantines numerous times and the great Italian cities shrank dramatically.
Lombards soon came to occupy most of the interior lands while many coastal cities and parts of the south remained in the Byzantine sphere of influence until the late-11th century and the Italian Peninsula would stay politically divided until the 19th century. Nevertheless, classical culture continued to thrive within the cloistered life of the clergy and in the Byzantine cities. This was also the period of the Byzantine Papacy, when popes were appointed by or required the approval of the emperor in Constantinople. The art and liturgy produced under various popes of Greek, Sicilian, and Syrian origins exhibit a true blending of Eastern and Western Christian traditions.

Contents of the “Sacramentary”

This is not considered to be a sacramentary because it does not include either the Canon or Ordinary of the Mass, only the Proper consisting of Collections, Secrets, Prefaces, Post-communions, and Orationes Super Populum. The fact that the manuscript contains the pure and unadulterated Roman rite without Gallican additions indicates that it originated at the beginning of the Byzantine Papacy, and it has been theorized that the text may have been originally intended for the use of a missionary in Gaul. It also contains many references to local Roman festivals, especially those dedicated to Peter and Paul, the Patron Saints of Rome, which number no less than twenty-eight. There are also twenty-three masses for celebrating the consecration of a bishop and many more for similar occasions.
The form of the manuscript does not lend itself for liturgical use and thus most have been designed for private use as a referential text almost as though it were a liturgical encyclopedia. Furthermore, the text is not arranged according to the liturgical calendar but to the Romans’ civil calendar. Unfortunately, the pages concerning the first four months of the year are lost and as such, there is no information concerning the Easter Vigil, the highpoint of the liturgical year. Mistakes made in the manuscript appear to be from the scribes being rushed in its creation. Nonetheless, this is a precious and authoritative artifact of ancient liturgy.

Fortuitous Rediscovery

Francesco Scipione Maffei was a Venetian bibliophile, antiquarian, author, and art critic who had an exciting youth including serving as an officer in the Bavarian Army during the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14) before he returned to Italy in 1705. After beginning a successful career as an author on Roman history and expert on Etruscan antiquities in Padua, he came to Verona where he contributed to the discovery of numerous important manuscripts in the cathedral’s library, the crown jewel of which was the Sacramentarium Leonianum in 1713. It was first published by the Verona-born liturgical scholar Giuseppe Bianchini (1704–64) as part of his four-volume Anastasii bibliothecarii vitae Romanorum Pontificum in 1735 and has been intensely studied ever since. The manuscript remains the highlight of the prestigious collections of the Chapter Library of Verona Cathedral where it is stored under the shelf mark Codex Veronensis LXXXV (80).