(fol. 39.) “The author of our office, who is none other than Gregory....”
He is referring to a portion of the Antiphoner of the Mass.
In the following passage Amalarius distinguishes the work of the two first Gregories as to the Thursdays in Lent.
(fol. 102.) “The Holy Pope Gregory in arranging the offices of the year had left vacant the Thursdays of Lent.... A long time after him another Pope, Gregory the younger, ordained that these days should also be celebrated by Masses and Prayers, but with less solemnity, and he borrowed wherever he could material to form the offices of these Thursdays.”
VIII.—Pope Adrian I. (772-795). A MS. from Saint Martial de Limoges contains this passage (Paris, Bibl. Nat., No. 2400.) “Adrian II., after the example of his predecessor of the same name, completed the Gregorian Antiphoner in several places. He also arranged a second prologue in hexameter verse to be chanted at High Mass on the first day of Advent. This prologue begins in the same way as another very short one composed by the first Adrian to be sung at all the Masses of this first Sunday in Advent, but that of Adrian II. is composed of a greater number of verses.”
We have seen the passage in which Walafrid Strabo speaks of the inscription at the beginning of the Antiphoner, ascribing its origin to Gregory I., and again that in which Agobard of Lyons tells us that the inscription contained the words “Gregorius Præsul.” There are five forms extant of the prologue in hexameter verse. The shortest, and therefore the one probably composed by Adrian I., is as follows:—
“Gregorius Præsul meritis et nomine dignus
Unde genus ducit, summum ascendit honorem.
Renovavit monumenta patrum priorum: tunc
Composuit hunc libellum musicæ artis