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CHAPTER II.
SHORT HISTORY OF DIVINE PRAISE IN GENERAL AND OF THE BREVIARY IN PARTICULAR.
From all eternity the Godhead was praised with ineffable praise by the
Trinity—the three divine Persons. The angels from the first moment of
the creation sang God's praises. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus, Sabaoth. Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus (Isaias vi. 3).
Cardinal Bona writes that Adam and Eve blessed and praised God, their
Creator. For God created the first human beings, and "created in them
the knowledge of the Spirit of God that they might praise the name
which He has sanctified and glory in His wondrous acts" (Ecclesiasticus
xvii. 6-8), Every page of the Old Testament tells how the chosen race
worshipped God. We read of the sacrifices of Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noe; of
the familiar intercourse which the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob had with God. Recorded, too, are the solemn songs and prayers of
Moses thanking God for His guidance in the freedom from the slavery of
Egypt (Exodus xv.). David, under God's inspiration, composed those
noble songs of praise, the Psalms, and organised choirs for their
rendering. He sings "Evening and morning and at noon I will speak and
declare and He shall hear my voice" (Psalm 54, v. 18); "I rose at
midnight to give praise to Thee" (Psalm 118, v. 162); "Seven times a
day I have given praise to Thee" (Psalm 118, v. 164).
The Prophet Daniel, a captive in Babylon, prayed thrice daily, his face
turned to Jerusalem. The Israelites, captives in Babylon with Nehemias,
"rose up and read in the book of the Law of the Lord their God, four
times in the day, and four times they confessed and adored the Lord
their God" (II. Esdras ix. 3). Hence, the Jewish day, made up as it was
with sacrifices, libations, oblations, purifications, and public and
private prayer, was a day of prayer. In these public meetings they sang
God's praises, sang of His glory and of His mercy. Sometimes they spoke
with loving familiarity, sometimes they prayed on bended knee,
sometimes they stood and pleaded with outstretched hands, pouring out
the prayers inspired by God Himself.
In the New Law our
Saviour is the model of prayer, the true adorer of His Father. He alone
can worthily adore and praise because He alone has the necessary
perfection. Night and day He set example to His followers. He warned
them to watch and pray; He taught them how to pray; He gave them a form
of prayer; He prayed in life and at death. His apostles, trained in the
practices of the synagogue, were perfected by the example and the
exhortations of Christ. This teaching and example are shown in effect
when the assembled apostles were "at the third hour of the day" praying
(Acts ii. 15); when about the sixth hour Peter went to pray (Acts x.
9). In the Acts of Apostles we see how Peter and John went at the ninth
hour to the temple to pray. St. Paul in prison sang God's praises at
midnight, and he insists on his converts singing in their assembly
psalms and hymns (Ephes. v. 19; Col. Iii. 16; I. Cor. xiv. 26).
What form did the public prayers, which we may call the divine office,
take in the time of the Apostles? It is impossible to say. But it is
certain 10 that there were public prayers, 20 that they were offered up
daily in certain determined places and at fixed hours, 30 that these
public prayers consisted principally of the Psalms, hymns, canticles,
extracts from Sacred Scripture, the Lord's Prayer, and probably the
Creed, 40 that these public prayers varied in duration according to the
will of the bishop or master who presided.
"The weekly
commemoration of Christ's resurrection, the yearly recurrence of the
memory of the great facts of Christ's life, the daily sanctification of
the hours of the day, each led the Christian to draw upon the hours of
the Psalter, and when, gradually, fixed hours for daily prayer passed
beyond the home circle and with groups of ascetics entered the public
churches, it was from the Psalter that the songs of praise were drawn,
and from the Psalms were added a series of canticles, taken from the
books of the Old and the New Testaments, and thus, long ages before any
stereotyped arrangement of the Psalms existed, assigning particular
Psalms to particular days or hours, the Psalms were feeding the piety
of the faithful and teaching men to pray" (The New Psalter–Burton
and Myers). In this matter of public prayer, it is hard for us to
realize the "bookless" condition of the early Christians and their
difficulties. It was twenty-five years after the Ascension before the
first books of the New Testament were written, and many years must have
elapsed before their wide diffusion; hence, in their bookless and
guideless condition the early Christians were advised to use the Psalms
in their new devotional life (Ephes. v. 19; Col. iii. 16; St. James, v.
13).
The first clear evidence of a division of the
Psalter for use in the Western Church is found in the work of St.
Benedict (480-543). He had spent his youth near Rome, and keeping his
eye on the Roman usage he assigned the Psalms to the various canonical
hours and to different days of the week. The antiphons he drew from
existing sources, and of course the canonical hours were already in
existence. In his arrangement, the whole Psalter was read weekly, and
the whole Bible, with suitable patristic selections, was read every
year. He also arranged the Sunday, Festal and Ferial offices. For the
recitation of the offices of a saint's day, St. Benedict arranged that
the Matins shall have the same form as a Sunday office–i.e., three
nocturns, twelve lessons and responsories, but the psalms, antiphons
and lessons are proper to each saint. This arrangement interrupted the
weekly recitation of the whole psalter, and caused great difficulty in
later times; for when the feasts increased in number the ferial psalter
fell almost into complete disuse.
St. Benedict's
arrangement of the psalms and his other liturgical regulations spread
rapidly, but the Roman secular office never adopted his arrangement of
the psalms, nor his inclusion of hymns, until about the year 1145. In
some details each office shows its independent history. It is a matter
of dispute among liturgists whether Prime and Compline were added to
the Roman secular office through the influence of the Benedictines
(Baudot, The Roman Breviary, pp. 19-26).
The
period following the death of St. Benedict in 543 is a period of which
little is known. "We repeat with Dom Baumer (vol. i., pp. 299-300) that
the fifth century, at Rome as elsewhere, was a period of great
liturgical activity, while the seventh and eighth centuries were,
viewed from this point of view, a period of decline" (Baudot, op. cit.,
p. 53). The labours of St. Benedict probably were continued and
perfected by St. Gregory the Great (590-604). His labours are summed up
by Dom Baumer (Histoire du Breviare, vol. i., pp. 289,
301-303): "It is he who collected together the prayers and liturgical
usages of his predecessors and assigned to each its proper place, and
thus the liturgy owes its present form to him. The liturgical chant
also bears his name, because through his means it reached its highest
state of development. The canonical hours and the formulary of the Mass
now in use were also carefully arranged by him." "The whole history of
the Western liturgy supports us in maintaining that these books
received from the great Pope or from one of his contemporaries a form
which never afterwards underwent any radical or essential alteration."
The Roman office spread quickly through Europe. The enthusiasm of
Gregory became rooted in the monasteries, where the monks learned and
taught, with knowledge and with zeal, his liturgical reforms. Two
important reforms of monastic practice are interesting as showing
further progress in the evolution of the Roman Breviary. St. Benedict
of Aniane (751-821), the friend and adviser of Louis the Pious, became
a reformer of Benedictine rule and practice. His rule aimed at a rigid
uniformity, even in detail. And the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (817)
helped him to establish his reforms. As a result of the saint's
exertions the Penitential Psalms and Office of the Dead were made part
of the daily monastic office. The Abbey of Cluny, founded in 910,
supplied a further reform tending to guard the office from further
accretions.
Did Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII.
(1073-1086), labour for liturgical reform? Liturgical writers give very
different replies. Monsignor Battifol (History of the Roman Breviary,
English edition, p. 158) maintains that Gregory made no reform, and
that "the Roman office such as we have seen it to be in the times of
Charlemagne held its ground at Rome itself, in the customs of the
basilicas, without any sensible modification, throughout the tenth and
eleventh centuries and even down to the close of the twelfth." Dom
Gueranger holds that Gregory abridged the order of prayers and
simplified the liturgy for the use of the Roman curia. It would be
difficult at the present time to ascertain accurately the complete form
of the office before this revision, but since then it has remained
almost identical with what it was at the end of the eleventh century.
Dom Baumer agrees with his Benedictine brother that Gregory wrought for
liturgical reform. Probably Pope Gregory VII., knowing the decadence
which was manifest in liturgical exercises in Rome during the tenth and
eleventh centuries, decided to revise the old Roman office which,
although it had decayed in Rome, flourished in Germany, France, and
other countries. Hence, in his Lenten Synod, 1074, he promulgated the
rules he had already drawn up for the Regular Canons of Rome, ordering
them to return to the old Roman rite. Thus he may be counted as a
reformer, but not as an innovater nor an abridger. But his reform fell
on evil days. The great struggle between Church and State about lay
investitures had a baneful influence on liturgy, even in Rome itself.
The times seemed to call for a modernised (i.e., a shortened) office.
The "modernisers" respected the psalter, the curtailment was in the
Lectionary. The modernising spirit showed itself in the arrangement and
bulk of the office books. The Psalter, Antiphonary, Responsorial, Bible
and Book of Homilies were gradually codified. Even then, a very large
volume was the result. After a time the chant, which absorbed much
space, was removed from the volume, but the resulting volume,
noticeably smaller, was not yet small enough. In time, only the opening
words of the antiphons, responsories and versicles were printed, and to
the volume thus turned out was given the name Breviary. The
Curial Breviary was drawn up in this way to make it suitable for
persons engaged in outdoor pursuits and journeys. It gradually
displaced the choir office in Rome, and Rome's example was universally
followed.
This Curial Breviary was adopted by the Franciscans in their active lives. They changed the text of the Psalter only, Psalterium Romanum, to the more approved text, the Psalterium Gallicanum.
The improved Curial Breviary was imposed on the churches of Rome by the
Franciscan Pope, Nicholas III. (1277-1280), and henceforth it is called
the Roman Breviary. Thus we see that the book used daily by priests got
its name in the thirteenth century, although the divine office is
almost from Apostolic times.
But liturgy is a
progressive study, a progressive practice capable and worthy of
perfecting. And the friars strove for the greater perfection and beauty
of the new Breviary. They added variety to the unity already achieved
and yet did not reach liturgical perfection nor liturgical beauty. They
loaded the Breviary by introducing saints' days with nine lessons, thus
avoiding offices of three lessons. And by keeping octave days and days
within the octave as feasts of nine lessons, they almost entirely
destroyed the weekly recitation of the psalter; and a large portion of
the Breviary ceased to be used at all. The Franciscan book became very
popular owing to its handy form. Indeed its use was almost universal in
the Western Church. But the multiplication of saints' offices,
universal and local, no fixed standard to guide the recital, and the
wars of liturgists, made chaos and turmoil.
Liturgical
reform became an urgent need. Everyone reciting the canonical hours
longed for a great and drastic change. The Humanists, Cardinal Bembo
(1470-1549), Ferreri, Bessarion, and Pope Leo X. (1513-1521) considered
the big faults of the Breviary to lie in its barbarous Latinity. They
wished the Lessons to be written In Ciceronian style and the hymns to
be modelled on the Odes of Horace. Ferreri's attempt at reforming the
Breviary dealt with the hymns, some of which he re-wrote in very noble
language, but he was so steeped in pagan mythology that he even
introduced heathen expressions and allusions, His work was a failure.
The traditional school represented by Raoul of Tongres, Burchard,
Caraffa, and John De Arze loved the past with so great a love that they
refused to countenance any notable reforms, A third school, the
moderate school, was represented by Cardinal Pole, Contarini, Sadolet
and Quignonez, a Spanish cardinal who had been General of the
Franciscans. The work of reform of the Breviary was undertaken by
Cardinal Quignonez (1482-1540). He was a man of great personal piety
and possessed a love for liturgy and an accurate knowledge of its
history, its essentials, and its acquired defects. After seven years'
labour at the matter and form of the Breviary, his work, Quignonez's
Breviary (Brevarium Romanum a Francisco Cardinali Quignonio)
appeared in 1535. It was for private use only, and was not intended as
a choir manual. Yet so popular was his work that, in 1536, six editions
had appeared, and in thirty-three years (until its suppression by St.
Pius V,) it went through no less than a hundred editions. Its immense
success shows how much the need of Breviary change and reform was felt
by the clergy. The book, too, had an important influence on shaping the
Breviary produced by Pius V. (1566-1572). Quignonez's book was
reproduced with the variations of the four earliest editions, by the
Cambridge University Press in 1888. It is an interesting study in
itself and in comparison with later breviaries.
But it
was felt by scholars that Quignonez's reforms were too drastic.
Tradition was ignored. The labour for brevity, simplicity and
uniformity led to the removal from this Breviary of antiphons,
responses, little chapters and versicles, and to the reduction of
lessons at matins to three, and the number of psalms in each hour was
usually only three. His work had as a set principle the grand old
liturgical idea of the weekly recitation of the whole psalter. The
quick and almost universal demand for Quignonez's Breviary indicated
the need of a reform and the outline of such a reform. The Pope, who
commissioned Quignonez to take up breviary reform, requested the
Theatines to take up similar work. The Council of Trent (1545-1563)
took up the work of reform. But the Council rose before the work had
made headway, and the matter of reform was finally effected by St. Pius
V. (1566-1572), by his Constitution, Quod a nobis (1568).
The Reformed Breviary of 1568 is, in outline, the Breviary in our hands
to-day. The great idea in the reform was to restore the weekly
recitation of the whole psalter. Theoretically, the Breviary made such
provision, but practically the great number of saints' offices
introduced into the Breviary made the weekly recitation of the psalter
an impossibility. The clergy were constantly reading only a few psalms
out of the 150 in the psalter. The rubrics, too, were in a confused
state. Changes were made in the calendar by suppression of feasts, by
restoring to simple feasts the ferial office psalms, and by reducing
the number of double and semi-double feasts. But in the body of the
Breviary the changes were few and slight. The lives of some saints
drawn from Quignonez's work were used, St. Gregory's canon of scripture
lessons was adopted and the antiphons, verses, responses, collects and
prayers were taken from the old Roman liturgy. The antiphons and
responses were given in the older translation of St. Jerome owing to
their suitability for musical settings. And the text of the psalms was
the Psalterium Gallicanum, which had been in use in the Roman Curial Breviary,
But the Pian reform was soon to be followed by a reform of the Breviary
text, in accordance with the Sixtine Vulgate, the Clementine Vulgate,
and the Vatican text. Clement VIII. (1592-1605) published his edition
of the revised Breviary in 1602; and thirty years afterwards Urban
VIII, (1623-1644) issued a new and further revised edition, which is
substantially the Breviary we read to-day. He caused careful correction
of errors which had crept in through careless printing; he printed the
psalms and canticles with the Vulgate punctuation, and he revised the
lessons and made additions. He established uniformity in texts of
Missal and Breviary. But the greatest change made in this new edition
was in the Breviary hymns, which were corrected on classical lines by
Urban himself aided by four learned Jesuits (see Note, Hymns, p. 259).
"The result (of their labours) has always given rise to very different
judgments and for the most part unfavourable. It seemed to be
exceedingly rash to regard as barbarous the hymns of men like
Prudentius, Sedulius, Sidonius, Apollinaris, Venantius, St. Ambrose,
St. Paulinus of Aquileia and Rabanus Maurus and to desire to remodel
them after the pattern of Horace's Odes.... It is only fair to give
them the credit, that out of respect for the wishes of Urban VIII. they
treated these compositions with extreme reserve, and while they made
some expressions clearer they maintained the primitive unction in a
large number of passages" (Baudot, The Roman Breviary, part iii., chap.
ii.).
The commission appointed by Clement VIII. in his
work of revision and reform included Baronius, Bellarmine and Gavantus.
The commission of Urban VIII. included, amongst other famous men, the
famous Irish friar minor, Luke Wadding (1588-1657).
The
need of revision, rearrangement and reform of the Breviary was in the
mind of every Pope, and nearly every one of them took some step to
perfect the historic book. In the eighteenth century Benedict XIV.
(1740-1758) contemplated Breviary reform in some details, particularly
in improving the composition of some legends and of replacing some
homilies of the Fathers. He entrusted this work to Father Danzetta,
S.J., but when the learned Jesuit's labour was presented to the Pope,
so grave and so contrary were the reasons there put forth, that the
Pope thought it well to abandon the thought of reform. Father
Danzetta's notes are marvels of research and learning. They are to be
seen in Ruskovany's Coelibatus et Breviarium, vol. v. They
show to the ignorant and the sceptical, the dangers and difficulties
which all Breviary reformers have to contend with.
Pope
Pius VI. (1775-1799) returned to the project of Breviary reform. Dom
Gueranger tells us that the plan of reform was drawn up and presented
to the Congregation of Rites, but the actual reform was not entered on.
Pope Pius IX. (1846-1878), at the request of Monsignor Sibour,
Archbishop of Paris, appointed a commission to revise the Breviary, but
their report caused the work to be abandoned. Petitions for reform were
sent to the Vatican Council, but very little resulted. Leo XIII.
(1878-1903) enriched the calendar by adding the names of many saints;
he added votive offices, corrected the Breviary lessons for the feasts
of a number of Popes, and, in 1902, he appointed a commission to deal
with the hagiography of the Breviary and with its liturgy; but his
death in the following year ended the work of the commission,
The unsatisfactory condition of the rules for the recitation of the
Divine Office were apparent to everyone. Scholars feared to face
Breviary reform, the difficulties were so innumerable and so immense.
However, with wonderful courage and prudence, Pope Pius X. (1903-1914)
tackled the work. He resolved not to adopt a series of minor changes in
the Breviary, but to appoint an active commission of reform, whose
first work should be a rearrangement of the psalter which must bring
back the recitation of the Divine Office to its early ideal—the weekly
recitation of the whole psalter. The problem which faced Pope Pius X.
in 1906 was the very same problem which faced his predecessor St, Pius
V. (1566-1572), more than three hundred years ago. St. Pius tried to
solve the problem by a reform of the calendar, but the solution
produced no permanent effect. Pius X. and his commission went to the
root of the difficulty, and by a redistribution of the psalms have made
the ferial and the festive offices almost equal in length, and have so
arranged matters that the frequent recitation of every psalm, and the
possible and probable recitation of every psalm, once every week, is
now an accomplished fact; and the old and much-sought-after ideal—the
weekly recitation of the whole Psalter—is of world-wide practice.
On the publication of the new Psalter, Pope Pius announced that a
commission would undertake a complete revision of the Breviary, a
matter of great importance and one which must demand long years of care
and study to accomplish. A member of the committee which re-arranged
the Psalter, Monsignor Piacenza, tells us that such revision must
embrace:–
1. A reform of the calendar and the drafting of rules for the admission of feasts into the calendar of the universal Church;
2. The critical revision and correction of the historic and patristic texts;
3. The removal of spurious patristic texts;
4. The remodelling of the rubrics;
5. The institution of a new form of common office for confessors and
for virgins to facilitate the lessening of the number of feasts of
saints, without diminishing the honour due to them (Burton and Myers, op. cit., p. 144).
We may sum up, then, all that has been said in this long section by
stating that from Apostolic times there was public prayer, thrice
daily. The Jewish converts, having the psalms committed to memory
needed not, nor could they have in those bookless days, a psalter
script. In the third century, morning, evening, and night offices are
mentioned. Compline was in existence in the time of St. Benedict. "From
the seventh century onwards, ecclesiastical writers, papal decrees and
conciliar decrees recognise the eight parts of the office, which we
have seen took shape during the sixth century, and regard their
recitation by priests and monks as enjoined by positive law. During
this period, or at least at its commencement, Lauds and Vespers alone
had a clearly defined structure and followed a definite arrangement. As
far as we can see, St. Gregory arranged the little hours for Sunday
only, and their arrangement for week days was left to the care of the
bishops and metropolitans, or even of abbots. This was also the case,
in many instances, with regard to Matins, for the number of psalms to
be recited thereat was not definitely fixed. As regards the little
hours—Prime, Terce, Sext, None and Compline—the freedom of the
competent ecclesiastical authorities was as yet unconfined by canonical
restrictions. Chrodegang (766) was first to follow the usages of the
Benedictines of the Roman Basilica, in prescribing for secular clergy
the celebration at Prime of the officium Capituli (i.e.,
the reunion in the chapter for reading the rule or, on certain days,
the writings and homilies of the Fathers). The rest of the
chapter–i.e., all that follows the confiteor in Prime as a
preparation for the work of the day, seems to have been composed in the
ninth century.... Under Charlemagne and his successors variations in
the canonical hours completely disappeared" (Baudot, op. cit., pp. 63-65).
On this foundation was built up the Office, to which additions were
made, and of which reforms were effected, up to our own time.
"For us, traditional liturgy is represented by the Roman Breviary of
Urban VIII., a book which constitutes for us a Vulgate of the Roman
Office.... The thing which renders this Vulgate of 1632 precious to us
is that, thanks to the wisdom of Paul IV., Pius V., and Clement VIII.,
the differences between it and the Breviary of the Roman Curia of the
thirteenth century are mere differences of detail: the substantial
identity of the two is beyond dispute. The Breviary of Urban VIII. is
the lineal descendant of the Breviary of Innocent III. And the latter
in its turn is the legitimate descendant of the Roman canonical Office,
as it was celebrated in the basilica of St. Peter at the end of the
eighth century, such as it had gradually come to be in the course of
the seventh and eighth centuries, a genuinely Roman combination of
various elements, some of them Roman and some not, but of which some,
at all events, go back to the very beginnings of the Catholic religion"
(Battifol, op. cit., p. 353).
NEXT
SECTION: Chapter III. Excellence of The Rom… 
Chapter I. Idea of the Breviary.
Index
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