Nox ut dies inluminabitur. The Sacramental Meaning of Easter Night – and Its Illumination –in the Ancient and Early Medieval Latin Liturgies of Western Europe.

The human experience of the night has been of immense importance in the history of religions. Symbolic associations came to be connected with darkness and light, with the natural transition between day and night and with the turn of the seasons at the nights of the solstices and equinoxes. Because of this, one moonlit night just after the vernal equinox came to be associated in the Christian tradition with the victory of the light of Christ over the darkness of death, sin and suffering: the night of Easter, culmination point of the Christian liturgical year. The purpose of this research project is to investigate for a variety of ancient and early medieval Latin liturgies (principally the liturgical traditions represented by the Milanese, Gallican, Spanish, Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries) how symbolism associated with nighttime relates to this special night of Easter as time of transition and initiation. To this end liturgical texts and rubrics will be analysed as they are transmitted in early medieval manuscripts.