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The Byzantine Emperor in Medieval Dalmatian Exultets

After the Peace of Aachen, which was concluded between Byzantium and the Franks in the year 812, the Byzantine emperor remained the supreme political institution of the eight maritime Dalmatian cities (Osor, Krk, Rab, Zadar, Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik and Kotor), retaining authority over some of these urban communities until 1204. During that period, various forms of ritual worship of the Byzantine basileus were practised in Dalmatia within the Latin liturgy, notably missa pro imperatore or laudes imperiales. However, the largest number of the preserved sources was related to the liturgical commemoration of the Byzantine emperor in the Exultet as the hymn of praise chanted before the paschal candle during the Easter Vigil. More precisely, there are three Dalmatian sources from the 11th through the 12th centuries, all written in Beneventan script, which testify to that practice: the evangelistary of Osor, the evangelistary of Zadar and the missal of Kotor. The Exultets from these manuscripts followed the patterns of their southern Italian counterparts, which were transferred to Dalmatia by the Benedictine order. Still, there is an important difference between southern Italian and Dalmatian Exultets: there are no illuminated Exultet rolls in medieval Dalmatia as it was the frequent case in southern Italy, but the Dalmatian Exultets were integral parts of standard liturgical books, evangelistaries and missals. From the point of view of the local urban community, it is hard to overestimate the fundamental institutional and religious value of the prayers in Exultets for the Byzantine basileus in Dalmatia. These liturgical commemorations did not have a mere symbolic significance. In the premodern world, where the constitution was also made of “key symbols and rituals of the Empire, ” which existed at every level of the political system, starting “from church prayers for the emperor, ” Dalmatian Exultet prayers for the Byzantine Emperors represent a small but valuable piece of Byzantine constitutional history. Moreover, in the eyes of common medieval people, these liturgical commemorations in Exultets undoubtedly also served as a source of knowledge of the most important institutional realities, the highest civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the current incumbents of those positions, and the various types of hierarchy that existed among them. All in all, Exultet prayers in the Dalmatian medieval liturgical manuscripts represent an extraordinary example of liturgical commemorations chanted in honour of the Eastern Roman Emperor within the realm of the Western liturgical tradition. They were also the last ones of the kind. The Memento of the Byzantine imperator noster echoed in Dalmatian churches half a century longer than on the other side of the Mare Hadriaticum.

Exultet, Dalmatia, Emperor, Byzantium, Liturgy, Law

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