HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

LOCAL AND INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY (300‒1000) 95that those people inscribed in the diptychs were saints, hence theuse of the words to canonize to designate the process through whichthey are recognized as saints. These diptychs would have been keptin most cathedrals, but, as is the case with the local martyrologiescalled ‘primitive’, none remain today. 14It appears to have been a longstanding practice in Gaul to reciteduring the offertory of solemn masses the names of bishops, the faithful,and the saints: this practice was forbidden by Pope Innocent I(d. 417), but Venantius Fortunatus and Saint Germanus of Paris witnessedit in the fifth century. In 789, in order to conform to Romanpractice, Charlemagne ordered “that the names not be recited publiclybefore the canon” (ordinatio imperii, ca. 54), and in the Gesta ofthe abbots of Lobbes around 980, Folcuin indicated that, during mass,Archbishop Adalbero of Reims had the under-deacon read the namesof his predecessors, the archbishops, in “a commemoration of thedead named on the diptychs”. 15Léopold Delisle developed the hypothesis that the diptychs at firstconsisted of simple nomenclatures, meant to be read quickly duringthe canon of the mass, and that in these lists of names were includedthe durations of pontificate, then the date of the death of the prelate,his place of burial, and other historical details. In that way the practicesallegedly moved from the catalogue to the Gesta episcoporum, as,we shall see, they moved from the Roman catalogues to the Liberpontificalis. Dom Jacques Dubois established the fragility of this hypothesisby showing that Folcuin’s mention of a recitation ‘on the diptychs’was unique.Nevertheless, it is certain that, very early on, local churches establishedcatalogues of city bishops, perhaps in order to read them duringthe liturgy of the mass, or in order to remember them silently,or simply in order to place them on the altar. They were sometimeswritten in verse, and metric catalogues existed in Metz in the ninthcentury and Strasbourg in the tenth century, for example. Many ofthese lists can be found in various types of manuscripts, not only inliturgical manuscripts. As early as the middle of the ninth century,we have even found collections like the one from Angers (Vat. Lat.14Delisle (1885); Duchesne (1907–15); Dubois (1967) and (1976).15Folcuin, Gesta abbatum Lobiensium, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 4 (Hanover, 1841),58–59.