Editing Roman Breviary (section)

==History==
[[File:Stuartbreviary.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Mary, Queen of Scots|Mary Stuart's]] personal breviary, which she took with her to the scaffold, is preserved in the [[National Library of Russia]] of [[St. Petersburg]]]]

===Early history===
The canonical hours of the Breviary owe their remote origin to the [[Old Covenant]] when God commanded the Aaronic priests to offer morning and evening sacrifices. Other inspiration may have come from David's words in the Psalms "Seven times a day I praise you" (Ps. 119:164), as well as, "the just man meditates on the law day and night" (Ps. 1:2). Regarding Daniel "Three times daily he was kneeling and offering prayers and thanks to his God" (Dan. 6:10).

In the early days of Christian worship the [[Bible|Sacred Scriptures]] furnished all that was thought necessary, containing as it did the books from which the lessons were read and the psalms that were recited. The first step in the evolution of the Breviary was the separation of the Psalter into a choir-book. At first the president of the local church (bishop) or the leader of the choir chose a particular psalm as he thought appropriate. From about the 4th century certain psalms began to be grouped together, a process that was furthered by the monastic practice of daily reciting the 150 psalms. This took so much time that the monks began to spread it over a week, dividing each day into hours, and allotting to each hour its portion of the Psalter. St Benedict in the 6th century drew up such an arrangement, probably, though not certainly, on the basis of an older Roman division which, though not so skilful, is the one in general use. Gradually there were added to these psalter choir-books additions in the form of antiphons, responses, collects or short prayers, for the use of those not skilful at improvisation and metrical compositions. [[Jean Beleth]], a 12th-century liturgical author, gives the following list of books necessary for the right conduct of the canonical office: the Antiphonarium, the Old and New Testaments, the ''Passionarius (liber)'' and the ''Legendarius'' (dealing respectively with martyrs and saints), the ''Homiliarius'' (homilies on the Gospels), the ''Sermologus'' (collection of sermons) and the works of the Fathers, besides  the ''Psalterium'' and the ''Collectarium''. To overcome the inconvenience of using such a library the Breviary came into existence and use. Already in the 9th century [[Prudentius, bishop of Troyes]], had in a ''Breviarium Psalterii'' made an abridgment of the Psalter for the laity, giving a few psalms for each day, and Alcuin had rendered a similar service by including a prayer for each day and some other prayers, but no lessons or homilies.<ref name=EB1911/>

===Medieval breviaries===
The Breviary proper only dates from the 11th century; the earliest manuscript containing the whole canonical office is of the year 1099, and is in the Mazarin library. Gregory VII (pope 1073–1085), too, simplified the liturgy as performed at the Roman court, and gave his abridgment the name of Breviary, which thus came to denote a work which from another point of view might be called a Plenary, involving as it did the collection of several works into one. There are several extant specimens of 12th-century Breviaries, all Benedictine, but under Innocent III (pope 1198–1216) their use was extended, especially by the newly founded and active Franciscan order. These preaching friars, with the authorization of Gregory IX, adopted (with some modifications, e.g. the substitution of the "Gallican" for the "Roman" version of the Psalter) the Breviary hitherto used exclusively by the Roman court, and with it gradually swept out of Europe all the earlier partial books (Legendaries, Responsories), etc., and to some extent the local Breviaries, like that of Sarum. Finally, [[Pope Nicholas III|Nicholas III]] (pope 1277–1280) adopted this version both for the curia and for the basilicas of Rome, and thus made its position secure.<ref name=EB1911/>

Before the rise of the [[Mendicant Orders|mendicant orders]] (wandering [[friar]]s) in the 13th century, the daily services were usually contained in a number of large volumes. The first occurrence of a single manuscript of the [[Canonical hours|daily office]] was written by the [[Benedictine]] order at [[Monte Cassino]] in [[Italy]] in 1099. The Benedictines were not a mendicant order, but a stable, [[monastery]]-based order, and single-volume breviaries are rare from this early period.

The arrangement of the [[Psalms]] in the [[Rule of St. Benedict]] had a profound impact upon the breviaries used by secular and monastic clergy alike, until 1911 when Pope [[Pius X]] introduced his reform of the Roman Breviary. In many places, every diocese, order or ecclesiastical province maintained its own edition of the breviary.

However, mendicant friars travelled frequently and needed a shortened, or abbreviated, daily office contained in one portable book, and single-volume breviaries flourished from the thirteenth century onwards. These abbreviated volumes soon became very popular and eventually supplanted the [[Catholic Church]]'s [[Curia]] office, previously said by non-monastic [[clergy]].

===Early printed editions===
[[File:Aberdeen Breviary, Opening Page.jpg|thumb|Title page of the Aberdeen Breviary (1509)]]
Before the advent of [[printing]], breviaries were written by hand and were often richly decorated with initials and miniature illustrations telling stories in the lives of [[Christ]] or the [[saint]]s, or stories from the [[Bible]]. Later printed breviaries usually have [[woodcut]] illustrations, interesting in their own right but with poor relation to the beautifully [[illuminated manuscript|illuminated]] breviaries.

The beauty and value of many of the Latin Breviaries were brought to the notice of English churchmen by one of the numbers of the Oxford ''[[Tracts for the Times]]'', since which time they have been much more studied, both for their own sake and for the light they throw upon the English Prayer-Book.<ref name=EB1911/>

Early printed Breviaries were locally distributed and quickly worn out by daily use. As a result, surviving copies are rare; of those editions which survive at all, many are known only by a single copy.

In Scotland the only one which has survived the convulsions of the 16th century is ''[[Aberdeen Breviary]]'', a Scottish form of the Sarum Office (the [[Sarum Rite]] was much favoured in Scotland as a kind of protest against the jurisdiction claimed by the diocese of York), revised by [[William Elphinstone]] (bishop 1483–1514), and printed at Edinburgh by [[Walter Chepman|Walter Chapman]] and [[Androw Myllar]] in 1509–1510. Four copies have been preserved of it, of which only one is complete; but it was reprinted in facsimile in 1854 for the Bannatyne Club by the munificence of the [[Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch|Duke of Buccleuch]]. It is particularly valuable for the trustworthy notices of the early history of Scotland which are embedded in the lives of the national saints. Though enjoined by royal mandate in 1501 for general use within the realm of Scotland, it was probably never widely adopted. The new Scottish ''Proprium'' sanctioned for the Catholic province of St Andrews in 1903 contains many of the old Aberdeen collects and antiphons.<ref name=EB1911/>

The Sarum or Salisbury Breviary itself was very widely used. The first edition was printed at Venice in 1483 by Raynald de Novimagio in folio; the latest at Paris, 1556, 1557. While modern Breviaries are nearly always printed in four volumes, one for each season of the year, the editions of the Sarum never exceeded two parts.<ref name=EB1911/>

===Early modern reforms===
Until the [[Council of Trent]] (1545&ndash;1563) and the Catholic [[Counter-Reformation]], every bishop had full power to regulate the Breviary of his own diocese; and this was acted upon almost everywhere. Each monastic community, also, had one of its own. [[Pope Pius V]] (r. 1566–1572), however, while sanctioning those which could show at least 200 years of existence, made the Roman obligatory in all other places. But the influence of the [[Roman rite]] has gradually gone much beyond this, and has superseded almost all the local uses. The Roman has thus become nearly universal, with the allowance only of additional offices for saints specially venerated in each particular diocese. The Roman Breviary has undergone several revisions: The most remarkable of these is that by [[Francisco de Quiñones|Francis Quignonez]], cardinal of [[Santa Croce in Gerusalemme]] (1536), which, though not accepted by Rome (it was approved by Clement VII and Paul III, and permitted as a substitute for the unrevised Breviary, until Pius V in 1568 excluded it as too short and too modern, and issued a reformed edition of the old Breviary, the ''Breviarium Pianum'' or "Pian Breviary"), formed the model for the still more thorough reform made in 1549 by the [[Church of England]], whose daily morning and evening services are but a condensation and simplification of the Breviary offices. Some parts of the prefaces at the beginning of the English Prayer-Book are free translations of those of Quignonez. The Pian Breviary was again altered by [[Sixtus V]] in 1588, who introduced the revised [[Vulgate]], in 1602 by Clement VIII (through [[Baronius]] and Bellarmine), especially as concerns the rubrics, and by [[Urban VIII]] (1623–1644), a purist who altered the text of certain hymns.<ref name=EB1911/>

In the 17th and 18th centuries a movement of revision took place in France, and succeeded in modifying about half the Breviaries of that country. Historically, this proceeded from the labours of [[Jean de Launoy]] (1603–1678), "le dénicheur des saints", and [[Louis Sébastien le Nain de Tillemont]], who had shown the falsity of numerous lives of the saints; theologically it was produced by the Port Royal school, which led men to dwell more on communion with God as contrasted with the invocation of the saints. This was mainly carried out by the adoption of a rule that all antiphons and responses should be in the exact words of Scripture, which cut out the whole class of appeals to created beings. The services were at the same time simplified and shortened, and the use of the whole Psalter every week (which had become a mere theory in the Roman Breviary, owing to its frequent supersession by saints' day services) was made a reality. These reformed French Breviaries—e.g. the Paris Breviary of 1680 by Archbishop [[François de Harlay]] (1625–1695) and that of 1736 by Archbishop [[Charles-Gaspard-Guillaume de Vintimille du Luc]] (1655–1746)—show a deep knowledge of Holy Scripture, and much careful adaptation of different texts.<ref name=EB1911/>

===Later modern reforms===
During the pontificate of [[Pius IX]], a strong Ultramontane movement arose against the French breviaries of 1680 and 1736. This was inaugurated by [[Charles Forbes René de Montalembert|Montalembert]], but its literary advocates were chiefly [[Prosper Guéranger]], abbot of the Benedictine monastery [[Solesmes, Sarthe|Solesmes]], and [[Louis Veuillot]] (1813–1883) of the ''Univers''. The movement succeeded in suppressing the breviaries, the last diocese to surrender being Orleans in 1875. The Jansenist and Gallican influence was also strongly felt in Italy and in Germany, where breviaries based on the French models were published at Cologne, Münster, Mainz and other towns. Meanwhile, under the direction of Benedict XIV (pope 1740–1758), a special congregation collected much material for an official revision, but nothing was published. In 1902, under Leo XIII, a commission under the presidency of [[Louis Duchesne]] was appointed to consider the breviary, the missal, the [[Roman Pontifical]] and the [[Roman Ritual]].<ref name=EB1911/>

Significant changes came in 1910 with the [[reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X]]. This revision modified the traditional psalm scheme so that, while all 150 psalms were used in the course of the week, these were said without repetition. Those assigned to the Sunday office underwent the least revision, although noticeably fewer psalms are recited at Matins, and both Lauds and Compline are slightly shorter due to psalms (or in the case of Compline the first few verses of a psalm) being removed. Pius X was probably influenced by earlier attempts to eliminate repetition in the psalter, most notably the liturgy of the Benedictine congregation of St. Maur. However, since Cardinal Quignonez's attempt to reform the Breviary employed this principle—albeit with no regard to the traditional scheme—such notions had floated around in the western Church, and can particularly be seen in the Paris Breviary.

[[Pope Pius XII]] introduced optional use of a new translation of the Psalms from the [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] to a more classical [[Latin]]. Most breviaries published in the late 1950s and early 1960s used this "Pian Psalter".

[[Pope John XXIII]] also revised the Breviary in 1960, introducing changes drawn up by his predecessor Pope Pius XII. The most notable alteration is the shortening of most feasts from nine to three lessons at Matins, keeping only the Scripture readings (the former lesson i, then lessons ii and iii together), followed by either the first part of the patristic reading (lesson vii) or, for most feasts, a condensed version of the former second Nocturn, which was formerly used when a feast was reduced in rank and commemorated.

=== Abrogation and subsequent reauthorization ===
The [[Second Vatican Council]], in his Constitution ''[[Sacrosanctum Concilium]]'', asked the Pope for a comprehensive reform of the Hours. As a result, in 1970 the Breviary was replaced by the ''[[Liturgy of the Hours]]'', which is divided into six different volumes: [[Advent]], [[Christmas]], [[Lent]] and [[Easter]] and two for the [[Ordinary Time]]; the new Hours were promulgated by [[Pope Paul VI]] in his apostolic constitution ''Laudis canticum''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Laudis canticum, 1° novembre 1970 {{!}} Paulus PP. VI |url=https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19701101_laudis-canticum.html |access-date=2024-07-20 |website=www.vatican.va}}</ref>

In his apostolic letter ''[[Summorum Pontificum]]'', [[Pope Benedict XVI]] allowed [[Clergy in the Catholic Church|clerics]] to fulfill their obligation of prayer using the 1962 edition of the Roman Breviary in lieu of the Liturgy of the Hours.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum sulla "Liturgia romana anteriore alla riforma del 1970" (7 luglio 2007) {{!}} Benedetto XVI |url=https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/it/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20070707_summorum-pontificum.html |access-date=2024-07-20 |website=www.vatican.va}}</ref>