Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 183

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established in liturgical use; the eleventh-century Liber monachorum
Sancti Ambrosii and the Ambrosian ritual provide for the recitation of
the psalter per decadas at the vigils of the dead, with an antiphon after
each group of ten psalms.25
Among the ordines romani, the eleventh-century ordo defunctorum,
edited by Andrieu as Ordo XLIX, gives the following directions for the
service at the bier of the deceased in church: Et cum in ecclesia
positum fuerit, orent omnes pro ipsa anima sine intermissione, usque
dum corpus sepeliunt. Psallant psalmos vel responsoria, missam vel
lectiones de iob.26 This text, according to Andrieu, was in circulation
from the eighth century onwards. A group of five Italian manuscripts
are more detailed upon the service at this point. The oldest witness is
MS Vat. Pal. lat. 550, from the second half of the ninth century, with
the rubric (f. 6v): Item qualiter canantur antiphonae vel responsoria
per decadas psalmorum cum orationibus.21
Among the other witnesses is the eleventh-century Bibi. Vallicellan.
MS B 141, a missal, which in the twelfth century belonged to the
Church of Hamburg. The rubric (f. lOr) is Incipiunt decade psalmo-
rum; after the seventh decada the manuscript is deficient.28 The most
recent witnesses are the twelfth-century rituals of Sienna and of Saint-
Lanfranc of Pavia. The above-cited Ambrosian books are also associa-
ted with this group.
We come a bit doser to the organization of our Psalter by drawing
upon the researches of J. B. Molin, by whose kind permission I quote
his letter of 21 July, 1970:29
Il s’agit du ms 512 de la Bibi. Mazarine å Paris, sur lequel je prépare depuis
25 Op. cit., p. 40.
26 M. Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen åge, 4 = Spicilegium sacrum
Lovaniense. Études et documents, 28 (Louvain 1956), p. 530; Sicard (see the next
note), p. 4.
27 See D. Sicard, La Liturgie de la Mort dans l’Eglise latine des Origines å la
Reforme Carolingienne = LQ 63 (1978), p. 150; for the responses of the psalter per
decadas, see pp. 164-74.
28 MSS Pal. lat. 550 and Vallicellan. B 141 were previously examined by H. Frank,
Der ålteste erhaltene Ordo defunctorum der romischen Liturgie und sein Fortleben in
Totenagenden des fruhen Mittelalters: Archiv fur Liturgiewissenschaft, 7/2 (Regensburg
1962), pp. 360-415.
29 See J.-B. Molin, Les Manuscrits de la « Deprecatio Gelasii ». Usage privé des
psaumes et dévotion aux litanies: EL 90 (1976), p. 140.