An edition of Egerton ms.3511: A twelfth century missal of S. Peter's in Benevento

Abstract

The manuscript Eg.3511 which contains a missal and kalendar written in the early twelfth century for the nunnery of S. Pietro in Benevento was bought by the British Museum in 1947. Until c. 1940 the missal had almost certainly been in the Biblioteca Capitolare at Benevento (ms.no.VI 29). The contents of the kalendar, which is rich in cults of local significance, reveal the intentions of the Beneventan princes to direct the religious sentiments of their subjects towards the capital, and thus to give some unity to their state. They underline also the importance of the city of Benevento as the link between the east and west of the Italian peninsula - between Byzantium and Rome. Comparison with other documents written in the principality of Benevento between the eighth and thirteenth centuries shows that the missal belongs to a definite liturgical type. A type which was derived from documents received from Rome in the mid-eighth century, before the Carolingian rulers adopted the policy of liturgical conformity with Rome. The Roman documents were altered slightly and adapted to the needs of the Beneventan Church. This new Romano-Beneventan use began its career at Montecassino and gradually ousted a more ancient liturgy, spreading as far east as Bari - and even to Dubrovnik on the coast of Yugoslavia. The conquest of the principality by the Normans in the eleventh century opened the Beneventan church to the liturgical developments which had taken place in north-west France, Norman priests brought to the south their own ordines for the celebration of mass, and added a large number of saints to the Sanctoral, but appear to have made few other changes to the books which they found in the former principality of Benevento. Thus the Romano-Beneventan use, which from the middle of the eighth century had developed in isolation from the liturgy of the rest of western Europe, continued to be the use of this region down to the thirteenth century.