The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

194
HISTORY OF THE POPES.
The year 1568 saw the printing of the revised breviary, that
is to say the book of prayers used in the recitation of the
canonical hours.
The custom of the recitation by the clergy, at certain fixed
hours, of prayers in the name of the whole Church, could be
traced back to the first centuries of the Christian era, and in
its original form consisted of certain passages from the Holy
Scriptures.! In course of time these hours of prayer had
become seven, one for the night and six for the day, and the
breviary was for the greater part made up of the psalms,
arranged in such a way that the whole Psalter was recited
from beginning to end once in a week, the psalms being
interrupted, especially in the night hour, by lections from
the Holy Scriptures, or, on the festivals of saints, by lections
drawn from their lives. ^
Ever since the beginning of the XVlth. century more and
more complaints had been heard of the departure of the
breviary from its traditional form.^ It was objected that,
as a result of the multipHcation of the feasts of the saints,
which had proper psalms of their own, these few psalms were
constantly being said, and that the recitation of the complete
Psalter had become almost impossible ; it was also objected
that not enough time was devoted to the lections from the
Holy Scriptures, while those drawn from the lives of the saints
contained many incredible things, and were, moreover, written
in very barbarous Latin. ^ Moreover, so many secondary, but
obhgatory prayers had been added to the breviary properly
1 The prayer for example at the ninth hour in the Acts of the
Apostles III., I.
' Cf. S. Baumer, Geschichte des Breviers, Freiburg, 1895.
Battifol, Hist, du breviare romain, Paris, 1911.
3 Jos. ScHMiD in Theol. Quartalschr., LXVl, (1884), 467 seq.,
452 seq. 478 seq. ; Baumer 364 seqq.
* A Papal permission attributed to Juhus II. allowed the use of
special offices when they were not expressly prohibited by the
Church or incompatible with the Roman rite. Such a permission
opened the way to aU manner of vagaries. Cf. Mercati in
.Rassenga Gregoriana, II. (1903), 419.