The student must turn once more to the great monastic centers of the Germanic world for processional hymns honoring royalty. Visits of kings and emperors to St. Gall and other noted monasteries were by no means uncommon; that colorful processions and demonstrations of loyalty were a part of their reception cannot be doubted. Walafrid Strabo celebrates the visit of Lothair to Reichenau with the hymn,
R. Imperator magne, vivas
semper et feliciter. (A. H. 50. 176)
Live, O mighty emperor
ever in felicity.
Walafrid Strabo praised Charles, son of Louis the Pious, and Radbert, the Empress Richgard. Other processionals could be used on the occasion of the coming of any royal visitor.
Vatican manuscripts offer evidence of contemporary processions in Italy and Rome, the city of their origin. From this source is derived the processional hymn Sancta Maria, quid est? (A. H. 23. 74), “Sancta Maria, what meaneth this?” written for the procession which marked the eve of the Feast of the Assumption, about the year 1000. Specific directions for the route, the order of precedence and every detail of the ceremonial are available, while the hymn itself depicts the devotion and human appeal attending this night time scene in Rome.[26]
III. Evolution in the Later Middle Ages
For the evolution of the processional hymn from this point to the close of the Middle Ages, we have in addition to hymnic manuscripts, the service books and manuals devoted to, or including, processional practice. The Ritual or Roman Pontifical was the earliest to include directions for processions, an illustration of which has been presented above in the case of Sancta Maria, quid est? In the course of time, since so many medieval processions were not thus provided for, the Processional came into existence, containing the order of processions for a particular diocese or monastery.[27] The St. Gall Processionals, for instance, are informative as to customs already described above. The specific name versus gave rise to the title Versarius for a book of processional hymns.[28]
In addition to the collections, liturgical writers discussed the procession. Of these, none was more influential than Durandus, Bishop of Mende, who, about 1286, produced his Rationale divinorum officiorum which among many other liturgical subjects, included processional rites.[29] Durandus was a leading authority upon ecclesiastical symbolism. Accordingly, he dwells upon every minute detail of the great processions for Easter, Ascension, Palm Sunday and the Purification as well as the Sunday procession and others of lesser importance, ascribing to each act a wealth of symbolic meaning. Much of this figurative interpretation is obvious and inherent in the feast to be celebrated but in other cases he gives full play to his sense of the symbolic, a phase of contemporary thought already so characteristic of Adam of St. Victor and other writers on religious themes. Finally he declares that whatever else is suggested, “the true procession is a progress to the celestial country.” (Ipsa vero processio, est via ad coelestem patriam.)[30] If the fundamental concepts which entered into their origins be reviewed, medieval processions apparently carried with them the familiar ideas of supplication, of dramatic representation or of pilgrimage to sacred places. Durandus reiterates and sublimates these concepts, giving them an added significance.