History of the Roman Breviary (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... CONCLUSION We have never had that 'onesta correzione del nostra breviario, ' which the firm and loyal genius of Benedict XIV. would have given us, and which only his death prevented him from giving. Shall we have it some day, and will the world see those materials once more taken in hand which the great Pope collected for the correction of the blemishes of the Breviary, and the restoring of the equilibrium between the office of the Season and that of Saints, which is so greatly to be desired? It does not belong to us to answer this question, any more than to indicate here the corrections which are necessary, or to investigate the best means for re-establishing that equilibrium: this would be beyond the province of the historian. It is nevertheless of consequence, at the end of this History of the Eoman Breviary, in which so many questions bearing on a possible reform of the Breviary, both in its text and in its rubrics, have been incidentally touched upon, to express as clearly as possible the only conclusions to which this study of liturgical archaeology and literary history unmistakeably lead us.1 1 We leave on one side two developments. (1) Any account of the proposals made under Pius IX. for a reform of the Breviary. They did not amount to anything more than mere expressions of desire, and are not, it must be confessed, secundum scientiam. They will be found summed up by Schober, op. cit. pp. 78-80, and We must reject the French liturgical Utopia of the eighteenth century, even as we rejected the Eoman Utopia of the sixteenth. The liturgy of De Vintimille and that of Quignonez, of Coffin or of Ferreri, have to our mind, as archaeologians, no claim to take the place of the existing traditional liturgy. For us, that traditional liturgy...