The invention of liturgical tradition

On January 6, 1439, the Ambrosian people came to the rescue of the liturgical books: the lecture begins with an analysis of the "Branda Castiglioni affair", which defines one of the specific features of the Mysterium ambrosianum : Milan's liturgical identity is always represented as a basilica under siege. We go in search of the legendary justifications for this social representation, looking for the mysterious bishop Eugene, who resisted the Carolingian aggression. An episode from Landulf the Elder'sHistoria Mediolanensis (c. 1085) recounts this Milanese struggle against liturgical standardization at the time of Charlemagne. From Beroldus to Beroldus novus and from Giovanni Arcimboldi to Pietro Casola, the gradual invention of liturgical order through books remains faithful to this political tradition. The survey then returns to the "conflict of the basilicas", during Holy Week in 386: the Ambrosian invention of hymns must be understood as a song of vigilance: "They say that the people are seduced by the charm of my hymns. I don't deny it. There is a great charm there: nothing is more powerful." (Ambrose, Sermo Contra Auxentium). The aim of this session is to understand the emotional, communal and memorial effectiveness of this carmen .

Contents

• Kilt Stories: The Invention of Tradition (Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1983)
• "A set of practices of a ritual and symbolic nature which are normally governed by openly or tacitly accepted rules and seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior through repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past."
• On the programmed failure of regressive history
• Another point of repulsion from the 15th^century onwards: the Branda Castiglioni affair (January 6, 1439)
• When the Ambrosian people came to the rescue of liturgical books
• An apparition (Ambrose as a cavalier hero), a revenant (the Basilica of Santa Tecla destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, never forgotten)
• The specificity of the Mysterium ambrosianum : a basilica under siege
• The presence of the dead among the living: medievalists' memoria , anthropologists' ritual and sociologists' religious memory ("the retrospective invention of what has been", Danièle Hervieu-Léger)
• Reform to preserve: liturgy as an object of history
• Calendar, universal prayers, Ambrosian prefaces and accentuated Christocentrism: the original features of the Ambrosian ritual
• "As is evident, the order and model of the Ambrosian office are of the highest antiquity..." (Charles Borromeo, August 4, 1568)
• In search of the mysterious Bishop Eugene, resisting Carolingian aggression
• An episode from Landulf the Elder'sHistoria Mediolanensis (c. 1085): stolen books that free themselves, a missal hidden in a cave, an Ambrosian manual scattered in the folds of individual memories
• Political and codicological realities of liturgical standardization in Charlemagne's time
• Ordo et caeremoniae ecclesiae Ambrosianae Mediolanensis and Sermo b. Thomae : lessons from a composite manuscript (Ambr. I 152 inf.)
• From Beroldus to Beroldus novus and from Giovanni Arcimboldi to Pietro Casola: liturgical order through books
• A narrative threshold in the 11th^century , a codicological threshold in the 9th^century : the arrow of time again
• Is there, if not an origin, at least an Ambrosian matrix for the motif of the besieged basilica? A look back at Holy Week 386
• The invention of hymns as songs of vigilance: "They say that the people are seduced by the charm of my hymns. I don't deny it. Nothing is more powerful" (Ambrose, Sermo Contra Auxentium)
• The emotional, communal and memorial effectiveness of carmen
• The "soundtrack" of Milanese history: the memorial imprint of Hymn 10 Victor, Nabor, Felix pii and its rejuvenation in communal times
• Gervais and Protais, two bodies "hidden and kept intact for so many years in the treasure of its mystery to reveal them in due course..." (Augustine)
• Tradition in the theological sense: old age and eternal youth
• How to believe in what you've invented: the invention of relics according to Pierre Michon ("Neuf passages du Causse", Mythologies d'hiver)
• To salute Daniel Fabre: "we can't decide where this ambiguous charm comes from: the personal memories attached to these moments, or the virtue of these stories and these tunes, the one that each transmission renews, the one that each audience recognizes" ("Proverbes, contes et chansons", Les lieux de mémoire)