AQUILEIAN RITE

Little is known about the primitive liturgical rite of Aquileia that emerged in the 7th century, but it was used in such distant places as Verona, Trent, and Pola. Much of the manuscript evidence is of a late date. Very few manuscripts have preserved the state of the liturgical rite before the introduction of the Roman Rite by the Aquileian Patriarch Paulinus II (787–802). The oldest extant document pertaining to the rite is a fragmentary 7th-or 8th-century Lectionary (Capitulare evangeliorum ), added by a Lombard hand to the earlier Codex Richdigeranus; its characteristics resemble the Ambrosian Rite more than the Roman Rite. In evidence of this, Advent has five Sundays, with the Gospel for the fifth Sunday commemorating the Annunciation, and there are three baptismal scrutinies and the Traditio Symboli on the Sunday before Easter. The feast of St. Stephen is kept on the Antiochene date, December 27. Ambrosian usages are found in the marginal notes of the Codex Forojuliensis of the Gospels, in which the rubric "In triduanas" precedes the Rogation Days (P. Borella, "L'anno liturgico Ambrosiano," M. Righetti, Manuale di storia liturgica 2:288). The treatise of the Aquileian Patriarch Massentius (811–33) and the Ordo scrutinii by Lupus I (c. 870) both mentioned the Aquileian baptismal rites.

Whatever form this primitive rite may have taken, it was slowly superseded in the Carolingian period by the Roman Rite that Patriarch Paulinus II had introduced in the 9th century. Although the Roman Rite became the norm for liturgical celebrations, the later manuscript tradition suggests that the Aquileian Church retained some of its distinctive features: "secundum morem et consuetudinem aquilegensis ecclesiae" ("following the practice and custom of the church of Aquileia"), "iuxta consuetudinem aquilegensis ecclesiae" ("according to the custom of the Church of Aquileia"), "in hoc non observamus romanum ordinem"("in this [practice] we do not observe the Roman ordo"), "sed aquilegiensis ecclesia hoc non utitur"("but the Church of Aquileia does not use this [practice]").

The last Aquileian Missal (1519) had retained few distinctive characteristics. The liturgical rite, such as it was, is now extinct, having been suppressed at Trieste (1586), Monza (1578), Aquileia (1596), and Como (1596 or 1597).

Bibliography: a. a. king, Liturgies of the Past (Milwaukee 1959). g. vale, "La liturgia nella chiesa patriarcale di Aquileia," La Basilica di Aquileia, ed. n. zanichelli (Bologna 1933) 367–81. m. huglo, "Liturgia e musica sacra aquileiese," Storia della cultura veneta, i: Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. a. girolamo, m. pastore stocchi and g. folena (Vicenza 1976) 312–25. m. huglo, "Les manuscrits notés du diocèse d'Aquilée," Scriptorium 38 (1984) 313–17. g. pressacco, "La tradizione liturgico-musicale di Aquileia," International Musicological Society: Congress Report 14 (1987) 119–29. g. pressacco, Tropi, prosule e sequenze del messale Aquileiese: un primo censimento (Udine 1995). r. camilot-oswald, Die liturgischen Musikhandschriften aus dem mittelalterlichen Patriarchat Aquileia (Kassel 1997).

[a. a. king/eds.]