ABSTRACT

This book takes its title from a Carolingian hymn, still sung in the Latin liturgy on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June). The hymn encapsulates the ambiguity with which the city of Rome was viewed by medieval Christians. Rome is ‘happy’, it ‘excels all the beauty of the world’ neither because of its long-lost military conquests nor because of the remains of its ancient monuments, but from the virtues of the saints who were martyred in the days of Rome’s imperial greatness. Once Rome was ruled by a princeps, the emperor, and purple was the colour particularly associated with emperors. However, what matters to the Carolingian hymnist is not the imperial purple, but the royal purple of the blood spilt by Peter and Paul, ‘such great princes’, ‘the triumphant soldiers of the hall of heaven’ (‘cælestis aulæ triumphales milites’), whom Christ has appointed to be princes to the Churches (‘Ecclesiarum deputavit principes’).2 It is to Saints Peter and Paul, as the greatest of the martyrs, that Christians may now look for that fruitful prosperity, enlightenment, freedom and eternal security that the old Empire promised in vain. After an emperor had died, the Senate used to proclaim him a god; but now, ‘in the presence of the Lord’, Peter and Paul can bring to all Christians the assurance of an ascent to Olympus:

1 Stanza 7 of the Carolingian hymn ‘Felix per omnes’, tentatively attributed to Paulinus II of Aquileia (d. 802 CE). The hymn is sung in the modern Roman liturgy; the opening stanzas during the vigil-Office of Readings, and later stanzas (starting with ‘O Roma felix [...]’) during second vespers, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June): Liber Hymnarius (Solesmes, 1983), 390-93; for dating and possible author, see A. Lentini (ed.), Te Decet Hymnus: L’Innario della ‘Liturgia Horarum’ (vatican, 1984), nos. 173 (p. 178) and 175 (p. 180).