8: Exultet: playing liturgy, its context and their changes. A proposal

Arturo Mariano Iannace, @ArturoIannace, School of Advanced Studies, Lucca

The Exultet scrolls are a unique form of medieval liturgical manuscript originating in southern Italy. Containing the homonymous prayer to be chanted during Easter Vigil, what makes them such unique objects is the combination of text, images, and musical notation. The visual commemorations of authorities are wildly different between each other, ranging from symbolically charged representations of rulership, to simpler ‘vignettes’ showing rulers in the exercise of justice or some other of their governmental prerogatives.

Fig. 8.1: Image from the Exultet Scrolls

The proposal to be forwarded here concerns the attempt to translate into a tabletop game mechanic the intersection of political, liturgical, and cultural landscapes at which such unique liturgical and artistic objects emerged. The goal would be three-pronged: to make this intersection understandable to the players; to look at emerging mechanics between players that may help shed some light on the history of the scrolls; and to raise awareness towards such objects. Each player would take the role of an ‘abstract’ actor: the ecclesiastical authorities, the secular rulers, the urban aristocracy. Each of them would receive a starting number of two resources: Legitimacy (L, to be summed as Total Legitimacy or TL), and Power (P).

Cards would represent iconographical elements or scenes: ‘The Ruler Enthroned’; ‘The Bishop with Saints Peter and Paul’; etc… Each iconographical element or scene would be taken from existing cycles. Cards will have L and P values, and a Symbolic Meaning/Ritual Efficacy (SM/RE) value, indicating, when

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combined, if and how much the cycle being created by the players is still liturgically viable and effective. Too low a score, and the game would be lost.

Fig. 8.1: Proposed Gameplay

While still in need of proper design, this proposal shows how the three goals set at the beginning may be achieved by a tabletop boardgame design. However, some issues immediately rise to attention, and are in need of being addressed. First, how exactly to represent the iconographical elements or scenes on the cards is an issue that cannot be underestimated. Iconography is a matter of nuances, subtle meanings, where also minor modifications can have correspondingly higher impacts. Second, to represent liturgy and liturgical objects solely as tools for increasing/decreasing legitimacy, and for political statements, would mean opting for a reductionist approach, unable to render the true value of liturgy and ritual in pre-modern societies.

It may be necessary for the case under analysis here, as the point is to show how a liturgical object was influenced in its history by competing interests and needs, and evolving contexts and circumstances for a given community. SM/RE attempts at addressing this issue. However, this last issue also opens the way for one consideration: could boardgames (instead of, for example, RPGs) be used to model and replicate rituals and liturgies, with their nuances, competing interpretations, varying performative role in pre-modern societies?

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