Gregorian Elements in Some Early Gallican Service Books

The late Edmund Bishop's suggestion that Merovingian liturgical circles had possibly been influenced by a ‘Gregorian’ type of Service Book seems to have remained unnoticed and unappreciated. Yet it has appeared to me to be important for the early history of the Gregorianum. Scholars have always had a sense of frustration about this Sacramentary since no manuscript earlier than that of Cambrai 164, written about 811 or 812, for Bishop Hildoard of that see, has come down to us. To get behind this text has always been their goal, and it has often been assumed that the ninth-century Sacramentary of the Chapter Library of Padua did in fact contain such a text. Whether this is so or not (and Rev. Klaus Gamber has recently shown there are grounds for rejecting it), the series of documents here examined would seem to point to the years circa 680, as marking the terminus ad quem of the Gregorianum.