Since the 1955 revision of the Holy Week rites, the Roman Missal explicitly gives the title "Praeconium" (proclamation or praise) to the "Exsultet", as it already did implicitly in the formula it provided for blessing the deacon before the chant: "ut digne et competenter annunties suum Paschale praeconium". Outside Rome, use of the paschal candle appears to have been a very ancient tradition in Italy, Gaul, Spain and perhaps, from the reference by St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, XV, xxii), in Africa. The "Liber Pontificalis" attributes to Pope Zosimus its introduction in the local church in Rome. The formula used for the "Praeconium" was not always the "Exsultet", though it is perhaps true to say that this formula has survived, where other contemporary formulae have disappeared. In the "Liber Ordinum", for instance, the formula is of the nature of a benediction, and the Gelasian Sacramentary has the prayer "Deus mundi conditor", not found elsewhere, but containing the remarkable "praise of the bee"—possibly a Vergilian reminiscence—which is found with more or less modification in all the texts of the "Praeconium" down to the present. The regularity of the metrical cursus of the "Exsultet" would lead us to place the date of its composition perhaps as early as the fifth century, and not later than the seventh. The earliest manuscripts in which it appears are those of the three Gallican Sacramentaries: the Bobbio Missal (7th century), the Missale Gothicum and the Missale Gallicanum Vetus (both of the 8th century). The earliest manuscript of the Gregorian Sacramentary (Vat. Reg. 337) does not contain the "Exsultet", but it was added in the supplement to what has been loosely called the Sacramentary of Adrian, and probably drawn up under the direction of Alcuin.