Most of these variations persist in one branch or another of the hybrid Romano-Germanic rite that can be traced from 5th-century Rome through the western Middle Ages to the Council of Trent, and beyond that into modern (Tridentine) Roman Catholicism. As the 'national' rites such as the Ambrosian tradition in northern Italy and the Spanish Mozarabic rite faded away or were absorbed into international practice, it was this hybrid Roman-Gallican standard that came to dominate western Christendom, including Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, from the time of Charlemagne, and partly through his doing, through the high and late Middle Ages and into the modern period. Roman practice around the year 500 is reflected in a letter by a somewhat mysterious John the Deacon to a correspondent named Senarius. The letter discusses the exsufflation of catechumens at length.John the Deacon, Epistola ad Senarium, ed. A. Wilmart, "Analecta Reginensia (Vat. Reg. Lat. 69)," Studi e testi 59 (1933), 172; trans. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 155. The Stowe Missal, Irish in origin but largely Gallican in form, contains a prebaptismal sufflation of unclear significance.F. E. Warren, Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (Oxford, 1881; rpt. with introduction by Jane Stevenson, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987), 209; The Stowe Missal, ed. George F. Warner, Henry Bradshaw Society 32 (London, 1915), 25. The other Gallican rites are largely devoid of sufflation, though the so-called Missale Gothicum contains a triple exsufflation of baptismal water,Neale, Gallican Liturgies, 97; or L. C. Mohlberg, ed., Missale Gothicum, Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta, Series Maior, Fontes 5 (Rome, 1961), 67. and a prebaptismal insufflation of catechumens is found in the hybrid Bobbio MissalNeale, Gallican Liturgies, 266 and the 10th-century Fulda sacramentary, alongside the more common baptismal exsufflation.Fulda Sacramentary, 332 (§2631) and 343 (§2679-80). The 11th-century North-Italian baptismal ritual in the Ambrosian Library MS. T.27.Sup. makes heavy use of the practice, requiring both insufflation and triple exsufflation of the baptismal candidates in modum crucis, and insufflation of the font as well.Lambot, North Italian Services, 5, 11, 16, 33. The "Hadrianum" version of the Gregorian Sacramentary, sent to Charlemagne from Rome and augmented probably by Benedict of Aniane, contains an insufflation of the baptismal font,Jean Deshusses, Le Sacramentaire Grégorien, vol. 1, Spicilegium Friburgense 16 (Fribourg, 1971), 188; the rubric here is reconstructed by Deshusses from a wide variety of variants. On the attribution of the Hadrianum supplement to Benedict, see Deshusses, 1:63-7 and vol. 3, Spicilegium Friburgense 28 (Fribourg, 1982), 66-75, as well as his earlier article "Le 'Supplément' au sacramentaire grégorien: Alcuin ou S. Benoît d'Aniane?" Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 9.1 (1965): 48-71. as does the mid-10th-century Ordo Romanus L,Ordo L, xxxix.50; Michel Andrieu, ed., Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, vol. 5, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Études et Documents, fasc. 29 (Louvain, 1961), 281. the basis of the later Roman pontifical. Ordo Romanus L also contains a triple exsufflation of the candidates for baptism, immediately preceding the baptism itself.Ordo L, xx.5; Andrieu, 5:131. This section was probably also originally found in Ordo XI according to Andrieu (2:376).
