FOUR BREVIARIES OVER 500 + YEARS

    In the 20th Century, the Divine Office, or as it is currently called, The Liturgy of the Hours, was "reformed" twice:  the first was in 1911, intended by Pius X as a first step of breviary reform, and the second was in 1971 (as a result of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council).  Of course, during that period, there were several adjustments to the 1911 breviary, and as of January, 2001, the Liturgy of the Hours is still incomplete. 

 

    Until 1911, the breviary which issued by Pius V in 1568 (as a result of directives of the Fathers of the Council of Trent) was in use for more than 300 years, changed in minor ways at several different times during those years.  The Pius V breviary was not a great reform, but essentially a pruning of the divine office in use by most of the Roman Rite for centuries prior to 1568.

 

    It was also a formal end to a breviary reform which had been entrusted by an earlier Pope to Cardinal Francisco Quiñonez,  and which was published in 1535, slightly modified and republished in 1536.    This was intended by its compiler as a private breviary for the use of priests not obliged to pray the office in choir with others.  It, too, was a major break with any known Divine Office  tradition, but its popularity is evidenced by the more than 100 editions over a very few years, until its suppression and the advent of the breviary of Pius V.

 

    Alongside the Roman breviary, there were office books of other western traditions, such as the Ambrosian Rite of the Archdiocese of Milan, or the Mozarabic Rite in Toledo, Spain.  There was also the Monastic breviary, which had a major influence on the development of the Roman Breviary.  Then, there were local "uses" or "rites", such as Lyons, Sarum, Braga, etc.  Finally, there were several religious orders which maintained their own uses for their liturgical life, such as Dominicans, Carmelites, the Bridgettine Nuns, and the Premonstratensian Canons.  

 

    Very few of these uses or rites still exist as living examples of liturgical identity: Milan, Toledo (in a small way), the Monastic Rite (among the Carthusians, Benedictines, Cistercians, etc.), and the Bridgettine Office.  All of these were approved.  Others were very popular but not approved, for example, the Gallican breviaries, an example of which is the Paris Breviary of 1736, issued by Charles de Vintimille, Archbishop of Paris.  For a number of reasons, most of these "uses" are no longer in existence, The current Liturgy of the Hours remains the "official" (approved) text for most of the members of the Roman Rite today.

 

    Until 1971, the first rule for any official breviary in the Roman Rite was that the entire 150 psalms be prayed weekly.  The Ambrosian Rite, however, had a different arrangement, i.e., Matins psalms were distributed over weekdays of 2 weeks.   It appears that the larger Church inherited this practice from the early Monks; over time, it became the law for the Roman Rite.

 

    Until 1911, the second rule for the Roman Rite was that the psalms be prayed in their entirety.  This was maintained in the Ambrosian Rite, as well.  The exception in this case was the Monastic Office, compiled by St. Benedict in the 6th Century.  He uses divisi (divided psalms) in his psalter, which is distributed over a week's time. 

 

    Another tradition of the Western church was that Psalms 1 through 108 were reserved for the "night" office (Matins) and Psalms 109 through 147 were set aside for Vespers. 

 

    Few complained of the basic idea of the weekly psalter.  Few, however, were able to pray the 150 psalms in the course of a week.   Centuries of devotional accretions, feasts and other types of addenda had made the office, called the Opus Dei, the "work of God, into the Onus Dei ("onus" means much the same in English: burden).  The psalm schemas given here are the major various attempts to correct the problems.  

 

Some things to remember:

            a)  Quiñonez kept the weekly psalter, and kept the undivided psalms, but ignored the principle of the "night office" and "Vesper" psalms.  He proposed that there be only 3 psalms for each hour of the Divine Office.  The longer psalms were kept for Matins.  Psalm 118 was divided into 11 sections for the Sunday "Little Hours".  

            His work was condemned immediately:  he had changed a public celebration (i.e. , a liturgy) into a private (i.e., personal)  prayer.  He did this for the convenience of ordinary priests.  In his first edition, all elements of communal celebration were removed (antiphons, versicles, etc.).  Some of these were restored in the second edition.   But that the office was a private prayer was the principal reason for his breviary's suppression by the Church (which had, at first, approved the book's use for several years).

 

                b)  The Paris breviary of 1736 keeps the weekly psalter, but makes use of divisi.   Its compilers also included new hymns, stressed scripture in the Matins readings, removed many of the other "extras".  However, they were also considered anti-Roman and the Paris breviary was only one of several editions of what are called "neo Gallican" breviaries.  The wider church also believed that  Jansenist thinking had influenced the breviary texts.    By the mid 19th century, most of these neo-Gallican books had been either suppressed or no longer published. 

 

                c)  The 1911 breviary was a major rupture in the psalter schema as it had been known by the Roman Rite for centuries.  In order to provide for an actual complete psalter, the schema was changed and divisi were used for the first time.  The emphasis was placed on the week and its days and taken off the celebrations of saints.  When saints' feasts were celebrated, adjustments were made so that the weekly psalter could be used, and not a particular set of festal psalms, which, by then, had become overused and abused. 

 

    The most interesting point of all these "reforms", whether approved or not, is that each contributed to what is today the Roman Rite's Liturgy of the Hours.  Quiñonez, Paris, Pius X, and even Pius V stressed ideas, some of which were, in the end, found very worthy of attention by those who prepared the current Divine Office texts.  There is still a great deal to learn from all these schemas.

 

 

Added January 25, 2001

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