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CHAPTER ONE
Liturgy and Community
Souls in the Commedia begin their journey into God with liturgical song. In Danteās first encounter with the saved, he listens to the souls sing Psalm 113, In exitu Israel de Aegypto. The importance of this psalm as an Exodus text and of Exodus as an archetype for the shadesā journeys and for the narrative of the Commedia itself is well known.1 But what about the soulsā In exitu Israel as liturgical song? What if we consider the In exitu Israel as it would have been experienced in the liturgy of Danteās time, that is, not primarily as written text, but as a lived experience of worship and prayer?2
In this chapter, I examine the singing of In exitu Israel that marks the soulsā arrival in Purgatorio and the rendition of the Gloria in excelsis Deo that marks each soulās departure, and I argue that liturgical singing helps shape the communal dynamics of Purgatorio. Establishing a sense of community is a fundamental part of the work that is done in Purgatorio and anticipates the radically communal indwelling of the souls in Paradiso. The opening performance of In exitu Israel and the closing performance of the Gloria create multiple communities that stretch across time and space to encompass the purgatorial souls, the angelic hosts, and even the readers of the Commedia. The first section of the chapter centers on Purgatorio 2. Using evidence from thirteenth-century ordinal books, and from the most influential liturgical treatise of the Middle Ages, William Durandās Rationale, I reconstruct the liturgical context in which Dante and medieval readers would have known and lived the In exitu Israel. Dante refashions this liturgical practice, and casts liturgical singing as a means of creating and expressing the communal relationships in and through which the souls journey toward God. The Commedia both depicts and seeks to enact a penitential community, and the liturgical performance of Purgatorio 2 provides an opening for the reader herself to join that community. The second section of the chapter focuses on the performance of the Gloria that concludes each soulās purgation. I analyze long-standing medieval conceptionsāas evidenced in liturgical treatises, in liturgical chants, and in manuscript illuminationsāof liturgy as uniting past and present in a here and now outside the flow of linear time. The performance of the Gloria in excelsis Deo in Purgatorio 20 likewise enacts an āeternal presentā that anticipates paradisiacal modes of community.
IN EXITU ISRAEL DE AEGYPTO: AN EASTER PROCESSION
At the opening of Purgatorio 2, a multitude of souls speed toward purgatory, chanting a psalm in unison and filling the boat in which they travel with song:
e quei sen venne a riva
con un vasello snelletto e leggero,
tanto che lāacqua nulla ne ānghiottiva.
Da poppa stava il celestial nocchiero,
tal che parea beato per iscripto;
e piĆ¹ di cento spirti entro sediero.
āIn exitu IsrƤel de Aegyptoā
cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce
con quanto di quel salmo ĆØ poscia scripto.
Poi fece il segno lor di santa croce;
ondā ei si gittar tutti in su la piaggia:
ed el sen gƬ, come venne, veloce.
(Purg. 2.40ā51)
āāā
He reached the shoreāhis boat / so swift, so quick, so light, so elegant, / no wave could swallow any part of it. / Celestial, at the stern, the pilot stoodā / beatitude, it seemed, inscribed on himā / and, ranged within, a hundred spirits more. / āIn exitu Israel de Aegyptoā: / they sang this all together, in one voice, / with all the psalm thatās written after this. / Then, over them, he made the holy cross, / at which they flung themselves upon the shore. / And he, as fast as he had come, went off.
Dunstan Tucker has demonstrated that the use of the Exodus in the Easter liturgy was a key model for Danteās use of the Exodus, both in Purgatorio 2 and in the Commedia as a whole, and Albert Wingell has observed that Psalm 113, In exitu Israel de Aegypto, was sung at Vespers every Sunday, including Easter Day.3 I would like to build on this insight into Psalm 113 as part of the liturgy of Vespers to suggest that the soulsā arrival in purgatory evokes a procession, specifically, the procession performed at Vespers on Easter Sunday.
Sung at evening, the office of Vespers began with a versicle and then a series of five psalms and continued with a short reading, a responsory, a hymn, and a dialogue or set of preces, and finished with the Magnificat and a prayer. At secular (nonmonastic) Sunday Vespers, Psalms 109 to 113 were sung, the final one being, therefore, In exitu Israel de Aegypto. On Easter Sunday, however, there were several changes: various prayers from Mass (the Kyrie eleison and the Hec dies gradual) were incorporated into Vespers, only three psalms were sung at the start of the service, and a procession was added near the end.4
For more specific details on the performance of Vespers we can turn to ordinals, texts that give minutely detailed instructions on how to perform the Mass and Office throughout the year in a particular church or cathedral. As I discussed more fully in the introduction, two ordinals survive from thirteenth-century Florence, both written for use in the Cathedral of Santa Reparata: the more extensive of the two, known as the Ritus in ecclesia servandi, was written between 1173 and 1205; the second, known as the Mores et consuetudines canonice Florentine, was compiled around 1230. Marginal additions in both manuscripts suggest that they were used throughout the thirteenth century. Together they give a vivid picture of liturgical practices in Danteās Florence. A number of musicologists and art historians have demonstrated the richness of these ordinals as windows onto the civic and liturgical life of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Florence, but they are as yet all but untapped in Dante studies.5
In the Ritus, we find instructions for the performance of Easter Sunday Vespers. The crucial detail for our purposes is that Psalm 113āIn exitu Israelāis moved to the end of the service to be sung in a procession from the cathedral to the baptistery. Under the rubric āDe vesperis et processione ad crucem et ad fontesā (On Vespers and the procession to the cross and to the font), the Ritus outlines the first part of the Easter Sunday Vespers service, and then specifies:
Finita oratione, facimus processionem cum cruce et cereo benedicto et incenso ante crucifixum, imposita a cantore ant[iphona] Crucifixum in carne, que dum cantatur, incensantur crux et altare. . . . Qua finita, procedimus in ecclesiam sancti Johannis ad fontem cum ant[iphona] Stetit angelus et cereo et cruce tantum. Finita ant[iphona] Stetit angelus, imponatur ant[iphona] Venite et videte locum super psalmos Laudate pueri dominum et In exitu Israel, quibus dictis, repetitur ant[iphona].
āāā
After the prayer we form a procession, with the cross, Paschal candle, and incense, in front of the crucifix. The antiphon Crucifixum in carne is begun by the cantor and while it is sung the altar and crucifix are censed. . . . After this we process to the church of St. John, to the font, with candle and cross only, while the antiphon Stetit angelus is sung. After the antiphon Stetit angelus, let the antiphon Venite et videte locum be begun for the psalms Laudate pueri dominum and In exitu Israel, and once these psalms have been sung the antiphon is repeated.6
The altar and crucifix are censed, and then the procession, with the Paschal candle and cross, sets out for the baptistery, to the accompaniment of the Easter chant Stetit angelus, the antiphon that precedes Psalms 112 and 113, and then the psalms themselves. The ordinal continues with instructions for the conclusion of the service: a salutation, prayer, and dismissal.7 In Danteās Florence, every Easter Sundayāfor all participating in or witnessing the services of the cathedralāPsalm 113 became a processional psalm, closely linked to the journey from cathedral to baptistery.
The Ritus does not specify whether Psalm 113 was begun during the procession or after the procession had arrived at the baptistery. This would presumably have depended on the speed of the procession, which would determine how much of the processional music could be sung before arriving at the font.8 Even if In exitu Israel was begun after arriving at the baptistery, the psalm and procession still remain closely linked, for the psalmās antiphon was sung during the procession and the psalm in the part of the ceremony that concluded the processionāthe station at the font.
Danteās contemporaries would have had several opportunities to participate in the procession, because it was repeatedāit seems with the same psalmsāat Vespers every day in Easter Week (the processions held on Wednesday to Friday being less ritually elaborate than those held on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday).9 As instructed in the Ritus: āIstas processiones facimus usque ad sabbatum, sed his tribus diebus sollemniter, aliis non ita festiveā (We carry out this procession [every day] until Saturday; on the first three days the procession is performed in the solemn manner, but on the other days it is not performed in a festal manner).10 The Mores likewise notes: āHodie namque in vesperis et deinceps per totam edopmadam usque ad vesperum sexte ferie, processionem facimus ad fontes, cruce et cereo benedicto precedentibusā (Today at Vespers and subsequently for the whole week until Vespers on Saturday, we process to the font, led by the cross and Paschal candle).11
Similar practices are described in other contemporary ordinal books. The early thirteenth-century ordinal from the Duomo in Siena notes the participation of the people in the service: āsacerdos cum pluuiali turificat altaria super et infra, et datur clero et populo, et idem sacerdos cum pluuiali uadit ad fontes cum aliisā (The priest, wearing a cope, censes the altar and the clergy and people, and the same priest, wearing a cope, goes to the font with the others).12 The Sienese ordinal prescribes different antiphons and prayers from those specified in the Florentine Ritus, but the overall structure of Easter Sunday Vespers is the same. As regards Psalm 113 and the procession, the practice is like that of Santa Reparata: after the Magnificat and prayers before the cross, a processionāwith cross and candlesāgoes to the baptistery, accompanied by an antiphon, and on arrival at the font Psalms 112 and 113 are sung.13 In contrast to the Easter Vespers in the Florentine Ritus, the Sienese service has a return procession to the cathedral where the Vespers end. The procession was repeated, with the same psalms, each day in Easter Week.14
At Easter Sunday Vespers at the cathedral in Pistoia, it is clear that In exitu Israel was sung during the procession itself. Four psalms were sung at the start of the service (rather than three, as in Florence and Siena), and then, toward the end of the service, after the Magnificat had been chanted, the cantor would begin the antiphon for Psalm 113:
Cantor incipit antiphonam Et respicientes et incipitur psalmus In exitu Israel. Et ita processionali...
