TH

CHAPTER III

THE VARIOUS BOOKS

THE BREVIARY OR PORTIFORIUM

HE Breviary, or Portos (like the "Manual"), fails to bear a description of its use in the name which is attached to it. Any compendium might claim to be called a "breviarius" or "breviarium"; any vade mecum might deserve to be styled in Latin "portiforium," in English-French "porthors," or in English "porthos" or "portos."

Of printed editions the earliest complete Sarum Breviary that we know (1483) calls itself simply "Breviarium secundum morem et consuetudinem Ecclesie Sarum: Anglicane." Then the folio of 1496 adopts a sort of apologetic style: "Divini officii . . . ne dicam breviarium: sed vt verius et ita loquar, ordinarium Sarum." In 1509 (if not earlier) the term portiforium—which had been already current for the portable manuscript Breviaries-was adopted as a name for those which were printed in quarto form, or smaller, as distinct from the ledger-like "couchers," or great Breviaries, which lay upon the desk, but were too

1 Though of French origin, the word seems to have been in use in England only, to describe a Breviary; and Du Cange seems to find the Latin "portiforium" only in English documents.

unwieldy to carry under the arm.1 It is practically impossible to say when the term "breviarium" was first applied to the compendium of books of the Divine Office, and it is not very easy to decide when the choir service (as distinct from the Mass, or altar service) itself began. Mgr. L. Duchesne points out that it took its rise from the private prayers of devout persons who began with the practice of private devotion twice a day, morning and evening, and then went on to emulate the psalmist, "Evening, and morning, and at noonday will I make my complaint" to God (Ps. lv. 17), and "Seven times a day do I praise Thee" (Ps. cxix. 164). The services of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, in the time of St. Jerome and the lady pilgrim whom we call Silvia, were at cock-crow, at Sext, None, and Evensong (the lucernarium), to which in Lent was added Terce. Lauds, at dawn, was a service separate both from the nocturnal office and from Prime, which was a subsequent institution, and at a later period Christians under monastic rule added the Compline (dormitory) prayers at bedtime, thus completing the number of "seven times a day "-the "Day Hours" properly so called-without counting the midnight nocturns commonly styled "Mattins," which continued to be a night service well on into medieval times.2 How far these daily services were derived from those of the synagogue, and how far they owe their origin to the custom

1 Cf. "Duo portiphoria de usu Sarum, alias nuncupata lyggars." Bequest of Roger Yve, 1444. Dugdale, Monast., vi. p. 1388. See also p. 64, above. 2 See Mgr. L. Duchesne, Origines du culte chrétien, chap. xvi.; Mgr. P. Batiffol, Hist. du Bréviaire rom., chap. i. § iii.

3 Duchesne, Origines, chap. ii. § i. Cf. Batiffol, Hist., I. i. p. 14, in Mr. A. M. Y. Baylay's translation (Longmans). Mgr. Duchesne's Origines has also been translated into English (S.P.C.K.) under the title of Christian

among early Christians of keeping a night watch (1) on Easter Even, when they commonly expected the Lord's final advent, and subsequently (2) for other Sundays and "stationary days," which were the Christian's substitute for the Sabbaths and two other synagogue days of the Jews, and (3) for the anniversaries of the martyrs, it is not our business to discuss here. It is enough to say that from the custom of monastic and ascetic persons reciting their private devotions in community was developed the Roman office, under the influence of the Benedictine rule and in connexion with the great monasteries attached to the basilicas in Rome. This Use may have come into our own country with Archbishop Theodore (A.D. 668), but it seems probable that the old Roman service was displaced or modified considerably in the thirteenth century. We must await the patient researches of such students as Mr. Edmund Bishop and others to bring out from obscurity the history of private devotion and common prayer in the Celtic and the Norman Church of England.

The title "Portos" implies that the recitation of the hours of prayer partook (if we may so say) of a nomadic character, while the eucharistic service had its local centre, being restricted to the mensa, or consecrated Table of the Lord. This characteristic of the Breviary is emphasised on the first page of even the less portable folios of Sarum Use. It is "Horarium domesticum, sive choro ecclesiastico deserviens." Its contents may be recited by the priest, or clerk, or layman, in his own chamber, with Daniel (vi. 10),

Worship. So long ago as 1855, Archdeacon P. Freeman, in his Principles of Divine Service, pointed out the connexion between the Divine Office and the synagogue service, and cited also the Eastern "Hymn of the Bridegroom's Coming," part i. chap. i. §§ 3, 5, etc.

no less than when "keeping the choir" in church,1 as the psalmist would not only "pour out his heart by himself," but would "go with the multitude, and bring them forth into the house of God... with them that keep holy day." (Ps. xlii. 4.)

At first perhaps his Bible and Psalter, with a few pages of private prayers and canticles, would suffice for the recitation of the daily office of the clergy. Hymns were introduced in some places by the middle of the twelfth century among the secular clergy in divine service, long after they had been in use under monastic rules. Many metrical Latin hymns had been composed by St. Hilary of Poitiers (who died in 367), and with greater success by St. Ambrose (d. 397). We find that they had been introduced among the monks by the first quarter of the sixth century; but the Church at large looked upon the innovation with some suspicion. Fifty years later the Council of Braga (A.D. 563) forbade the public use of any hymn beside the psalms. Amalarius, in the days of Charlemagne and Alcuin, revised the Use of Lyons; and the Breviarium S. Lugdunensis ecclesiæ, primæ Galliarium sedis, printed in 1737, is still guiltless of any such innovation as a hymn. Nescit enim novitates. Some of us are old enough to remember the time when Anglican churches were innocent of Hymnals, and in fact recognised nothing but Veni Creator and the seven or more hymns for Christmas, for Holy Communion, etc., appended to their "Tate and Brady."

1 A chantry priest was often directed in the ordinance of his foundation "to be present in the quyer in his habyte of a parson in principall and double feestes, the tyme of mattens, processyons, and evensong, and to rede lessons, begynne anthems,” etc. (see Yorkshire Chantry Surveys, Surtees Soc., vol. xci. pp. 10, 12, 15, 86, 307).

By the beginning of the twelfth century even the secular clergy required something more than a Psalter and Antiphoner for singing the Divine Office, as they had also for the reading required something more than a Bible for the Mattins lessons. Hymnal, Homiliarius, Passional, Sermologus, formed a considerable library in themselves, practically precluding the clergy from saying their orderly service even in the plainest manner in any place except a church or a study, where one could have a series of books about him. But the active curate or mission-priest needed a compact volume which he could sling from his girdle, or wear in his wallet, as he trotted or trudged about his cure or district. And the devout statesman also needed his compendium, epitomised from the scattered volumes. Thus in 804 Alcuin dedicates to Charlemagne what he calls a Breviarium, commatico sermone, a short prayerbook for lay use.1

We come across the word again in 861, when Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, draws up a Breviarium Psalterii (Migne, Patr. Latin, t. cxv.). Although these are devotional books, it is not perhaps until two centuries later that we come upon the mention of a Breviary, in the now common acceptation, in a treatise known as Micrologus, ascribed to Bernoldus de Constantiis, cir. 1080 (Patr. Lat.

1 See Migne, Patr. Latin, t. ci. p. 509. Lincoln Statutes, iii. p. 826 n. Cf. Batiffol, Hist. Brev., ed. Barclay, p. 204.

2 Wyclif appears to have used the word at a later period in that less technical sense : "Breuyaries, that is smale Sauteres or abbregid" (Engl. Works, ed. F. D. Matthew, p. 41).

3 Examples of the term breviarius, -um, in a non-liturgical sense are "Breviarius Constantini, qui dicitur viaticus" (MS. Coll. Pet. 1. 1. 1; “Breviarium Fidei adv. Arianos, per fac. Sirmondum"; "Breviarium Equestre," J. Bircherodi, folio 1704. Mgr. Batiffol gives instances of “breviarium" = catalogus librorum in the ninth and tenth centuries, and of "Breviarium Computi" in the eleventh.