Verona Sacramentary

Verona Sacramentarium ( Latin: Sacramentarium Veronense ) is the oldest of the currently known sacramentarians , supposedly dated to the first quarter of the 7th century. Another well-known name - the sacramentary of Pope Leo ( Sacramentarium Leonianum ) - is associated with erroneous attribution during the first publication of the manuscript in 1735, when the time of the creation of the manuscript was erroneously attributed to the time of the papacy of Leo the Great (440-461). Although already in the publication prepared by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in 1748, the name was changed to Verona sacramentium.

The manuscript was accidentally discovered in one of the cabinets in the repository of the Capitul library of the Verona Cathedral in 1713. Probably, the Verona sacramentary is an original compilation of various liturgical texts known at that time, and not a copy of an earlier manuscript. According to most researchers, the Verona sacramentium is not a complete liturgical book, but only a collection of small notes containing variable parts of services. They are considered an intermediate link in the evolution of early Christian worship from the oral transmission of prayers to medieval liturgical books. In this, the Verona Sacramentary differs significantly from the nearest later examples of this kind of books - the Sacramentalist Gelasius and the Sacramentalist Gregory . In this regard, the Verona Sacramentary belongs to the same type of historical monuments as the Kiev Glagolic leaflets .

The Verona sacramentium consists of 139 parchment sheets (25.2 × 18 cm). The text was written by an ozial , known from other monuments from Verona and dating from the first quarter of the 7th century. The last three pages are written with a different hand than the rest of the text. In sacramentation there are practically no illustrations and page decorations, except for capital letters. The fields contain later records, most likely dating back to the 8th century; in particular, the bishop of Verona Aeginon (772–802) is mentioned in the text of additional records.