Year: 1973
Type: article
Abstract: I N a recent number of this journal I raised a question to which I knew no answer.1The question was how should one explain the format of Greek liturgy rolls.As rolls they may be thought of as survivals of the ancient book roll, but this easy explanation will not stand up to critical consideration, since liturgy rolls are written transversa charta (i.e., with their lines of writing at right angles to the long axis of the roll) in direct contrast to the practice for book rolls, and they are frequently opisthographic.Meanwhile this question has also been raised and studied by G. Cavallo, whose concern is primarily focused on the Exultet rolls.2He reviews the possible references to rotuli and rightly stresses (p.218f) the importance of a letter of Pope Zacharias (741-52) to Saint Boniface wherein, in response to a request for guidance on the question of the number of places in the mass at which the sign of the cross should be made, the pope says, Hin rotulo ... per signa sanctae crucis quantae fieri debeant, infiximus."He concludes, after examining the evidence for Greek usage, that the Italian rolls, including that of Ravenna, are modelled on Greek prototypes, that the illustrated Exultet rolls are of Beneventan origin, and that the tenth century is a hypothetically plausible time for the development of these latter.My approach to the problem is a somewhat different one.Regardless of the earliest date at which we can find satisfactory evidence of the use of the rotulus form for the liturgy, what could have suggested this apparent departure from the familiar form of the book roll or from that of the codex?The answer is, I now think, a simple one.The model taken for the format of liturgy rolls was not literary but documentary.If one considers the question in the abstract, the prayers
Author: Lloyd W. Daly
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1573279345