To bring about this unity, Charlemagne “undertook to make liturgical practices uniform by imposing the same liturgical books on all the churches.” Prior to this endeavour, the churches followed the practices and traditions of their metropolises. There were some liturgical books in circulation at this time, some had Roman origin, some Gelasian, some Gallican, or a combination of several. The main sacramentary used in Francia was the Gallicanized Gelasian; this sacramentary took its roots from a version of the Gregorian Sacramentary revised for use in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, which was widely diffused and made its way to Gaul, where it “was used in conjunction with the Old Gelasian to form the Frankish or Galicanized Gelasian of the eighth century.” The Gallicanized Gelasian was “a clumsy book” which did not foster unity, nor was it purely Roman. …show more content…
As luck would have it, Paul the deacon, a monk of Monte Cassino, was returning to Italy and would be visiting Rome on his journey. So in 783, Charlemagne had Paul the Deacon deliver a request to Pope Hadrian for a copy of Gregory the Great’s Sacramentary. Unfortunately, there was no such sacramentary available which went back to the time of Pope Gregory’s pontificate, but Pope Hadrian did eventually send the most authentic copy he had of the Gregorian Sacramentary and sent it with Abbot John of Ravenna to Charlemagne around the year 786. The sacramentary reached the courts in Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) and it became known as the