The Tropology of Mediaeval Dedication Rites

Abstract

THE consecration of a church was considered a very important occasion by any mediaeval community. It is but necessary to read contemporary accounts of the ceremonies to see what elaborate affairs they were. For instance, Leo Marsicanus, writing in the eleventh century, lists forty bishops attending a dedication,1 and St Peter Damian included the rite among the 'twelve' sacraments.2 Obviously he was speaking of sacraments with pre-scholastic freedom, but he nevertheless meant to attach a high spiritual significance to the ritual, and in this he was certainly no innovator. St Augustine, six hundred years before, had said that whatever is done in a church at its dedication signifies an analogous operation in the soul.3 The explanation of the dedication rite lies in its analogy to the mystical life, to the soul's transformation through love into an image of that which it loves.4 The ceremony was the ritualistic expression of a spiritual epic, a journey from darkness to light. St Bonaventure, in his sublime treatise, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, has seen a symbolic relationship between the three degrees of illumination and the Genesis definition of day as evening and morning. Faith, hope, and charity purify, illuminate, and make perfect the soul; the first is as evening, the second as dawn, and the third as noon. The symbolism was repeated in the three