I think I would describe the island of Great Britain as in a state of self-inflicted harm and isolation rather than beleaguered. Of course, the people of Scotland are, generally, more sensible than their southern neighbour and did not want this but, sadly, a significant proportion of my compatriots are instilled with a Judaeo-Protestant ethos of thinking themselves superior to other nations when they are not. Oh, for another, successful, Spanish Armada...
Returning to liturgical matters I share your discomfort about the insertion of the feast of the Holy Name in the Christmas-Epiphany cycle. The feast seems a duplication of the naming element of the Circumcision. One thing the reformers got right, IMHO, was the recovering of the second Sunday after Christmas. In the Tridentine rite it was displaced by the Octave-Days of the Comites Christi, they being of double rite, and exiled to January 5th and named the Vigil of the Epiphany. However, an examination of sources easily reveal that it was not the texts of the Vigil - in the Roman rite - but of the Sunday. The Vigil texts were preserved in uses such as the Dominican etc.
I did once read in a Spanish source from the 16th century whose name I can't remember that in its earliest days Protestantism was called 'crypto Judaism'.
Thank you very much for those observations, although given the state of contemporary Spain... Regarding the Second Sunday, I am trying to do the math on that. So this year it would be on January 4? I have been trying to figure out exactly how old the Octave Days of the Comites are and I am coming up empty. I read in a footnote in the martyrology that Amalarius mentions them. I wonder if they would have transferred one of the Octave Days to make up for the extra day? That is an interesting question. Thank you.
I think I remember from Dom Alcuin Reid's book on the development of liturgy that Mr. Anti-Modernism re-wrote the Breviary in 1911 in exactly the same non-organic way that the Consilium re-wrote the calendar and the Missal. But the Breviary had been tuckered with many times between Jesus and Pius X, I'm sure
The psalter had stayed consistent going deep back into the first millennium. Pius V made an alteration to the hour of Prime in 1568 but he never banned anyone from praying the older version. And that is the rub about the modern popes. It is not that they are prudentially trying to create alternatives that see better meet the conditions of the times. It is that they are continuously trying to FORBID what was time tested and approved by their predecessors for age upon age. Because you really have to wonder about what someone's motivation would be for doing something like that...
Thank you for this post, Eric. Very helpful. Less than a year ago, I purchased a set of breviaries printed in 1884 and have been enjoying them since. I was very much looking forward to the Christmas season knowing these rolling octaves would occur.
I believe there's a mistake in the ranking of St. Sylvester's feast. My 1568 Breviary shows him to be a Duplex.
Also, the Feast of the Holy Name, before Divino Afflatu, was placed on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.
Lastly, I observe that indeed the traditional way of doing Christmas to the Epiphany Octave as it was in 1568, is best (the immediate pre-1911 one was still good in this instance, although St. Thomas was raised to a Double).
However I have a couple of physical breviaries from the early nineteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, printed in Austria and in Venice, and neither of them make any reference to any Feast of the Holy Name being celebrated on that day. And in all honesty that would be a weird day to do it since the Second Sunday after the Epiphany is dedicated to the last of Our Lord's Divine manifestations at the wedding at Cana, thus completing the entire Christmas/Advent cycle.
In any case here is the text of the Catholic encyclopedia article from 1910 on the subject: "This feast is celebrated on the second Sunday after Epiphany (double of the second class). It is the central feast of all the mysteries of Christ the Redeemer; it unites all the other feasts of the Lord, as a burning glass focuses the rays of the sun in one point, to show what Jesus is to us, what He has done, is doing, and will do for mankind. It originated towards the end of the fifteenth century, and was instituted by the private authority of some bishops in Germany, Scotland, England, Spain, and Belgium. The Office and the Mass composed by Bernardine dei Busti (d. 1500) were approved by Sixtus IV. The feast was officially granted to the Franciscans 25 February, 1530, and spread over a great part of the Church. The Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians kept it on 14 Jan.; the Dominicans 15 Jan. At Salisbury, York, and Durham in England, and at Aberdeen in Scotland it was celebrated 7 Aug., at Liège, 31 Jan., at Compostela and Cambrai, 8 Jan. (Grotefend, "Zeitrechnung", II, 2. 89). The Carthusians obtained it for the second Sunday after Epiphany about 1643; for that Sunday it was also extended to Spain, and later, 20 Dec., 1721, to the Universal Church. The Office used at present is nearly identical with the Office of Bernardine dei Busti. The hymns "Jesu dulcis memoria", "Jesu Rex admirabilis", "Jesu decus angelicum", usually ascribed to St. Bernard, are fragments of a very extensive "jubilus" or "cursus de aeterna sapientia" of some unknown author in the thirteenth century. For the beautiful sequence "Dulcis Jesus Nazarenus" (Morel, "Hymnen des Mittelalters", 67) of Bernardine dei Busti the Franciscans substituted a prose sequence of modern origin: "Lauda Sion Salvatoris"; they still celebrate the feast on 14 January."
Yup. You're right. It's in the Sanctoral here too. Very odd that no mention gets made of it in the temporal cycle. Thank you for the update.
My issue with the feast is that the Office of 1 January i.e. the Circumcision/Octave of the Nativity (the day He was given his name) is replete with references to the Incarnation. These can be interpreted as references to his prophesied Name of Emmanuel, God is with us, from Isaiah 7:14.
Therefore the subtle reference to the Name is there and while I do not wish to cast any aspersion on celebrating the holy Name of Jesus I think we were already doing that, just in a more subtle and poetic fashion. Therefore there was no need to duplicate.
You are absolutely correct about Sylvester. Mea culpa! I'll fix that right now. I have never been able to get any real solid info on where the Holy Name Feast came from. I don't see it on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany. Was it a local feast?
Thank you Father. I'm glad it helped. It is a really challenging time of year and beyond that there were a lot of changes made later on so the whole thing really gets very confusing.
In fact, since some time spend this summer in a traditional Benedictine Abbey I am praying with the Monastic Breviary. It helps me since I have the cursus psalmorum on the physical breviary and at least is as traditional as pre-Pius X. As for the Ordo I follow the 1617 edition with the help of Divinum Officium. It has not been easy to have a proper traditional BR not online
Thank you for this comment, Father. It's very inspiring for me to read. It's hard to find priests around here who take the extra time and effort (i.e. who are willing to make the very real sacrifice) required to pray a more traditional and complex form of the breviary. Unfortunately, due to man's fallen nature, we tend to gravitate towards what is easy and requires the least effort. And that's not good for our priestly sanctification or for the Church as a whole.
Wishing you many blessings during these Octaves of the Nativity, St. Stephen, St. John the Apostle, and the Holy Innocents.
You're correct. The lack of access to good printed volumes is one of the major roadblocks. It is one of my hopes that this substack may one day attract the attention of someone who has either connections in or knowledge of the publishing industry. I have a candidate for a breviary that could possible be typeset but it is not an area that I have any expertise in.
I'm in the Chesterton camp that Tradition is democracy for the dead. There something prideful about the currently living members of the Church Militant making major changes to the life of the Church. I don't believe I called you a dithering romantic but your choice to find a better version of the Breviary than the one currently promulgated is at least adjacent to a search for purity. You did answer my question, and I appreciate that.
Did you hear what you just said? The "current living members of the Church Militant making major changes to the life of the Church"? What was Pius X in 1911 but a 'current living member' making what 115 years of history has shown to be an absolutely disastrous change? Likewise Pius XII in 1945 and '55? Likewise John XXIII in 1960? Likewise Paul VI in 1969 and '70?
I'm curious if those of us who look to practices prior to the SVC are self-aware enough to acknowledge we differ with the ressourcement crowd in degree but not in kind. Some will go back to the pre-1911 Office for purity, but there are even older (more pure?) versions. The Liturgical Movement guys hopped all the way back to the super-pure Church of Hippolytus for an alternative canon. I believe the truly humble posture is to take what is given, and I say that while I privately pray the Breviary of 1960. But I do acknowledge my inconsistency.
This is not about 'purity'. I am not a dithering romantic looking to find a lost Eden. I have never suggested to anyone that you have to pick a certain calendar date and adopt all of its liturgical practices blindly.
This is about what is right and what is wrong and this is about best practices. These liturgical rites were part of the Church's patrimony for century upon century upon century and they served her well.
And then they were taken away... and for what reason? We never have been given a real reason, but we have seen the result. This project is about returning the Church to her best liturgical practices.
And these liturgical practices have all been employed recently enough that they are all extremely well documented. This isn't like saying: you know back in the fourth century everybody was receiving Communion in the hand (based on almost no actual documented evidence) so now we have to do that to
I don't use the I and II because, from my experience at least, they are used irregularly. They become more common by the 19th century although you see them in their earlier form, maius and minus, even going back to the 15th century in some places. But I just keep it at duplex. I think the I and II became more common because they started to make every feast a duplex and needed to come up with a way to differentiate them to determine when a feast should be transferred.
That is correct. Duplex majus in the schema of Divino Afflatu meant exactly the opposite of what it had meant a few hundred years before. And you're right: it all had to do with when the Sunday would get precedence. You're also correct that the choice of which feasts would be a maius and not get precedence and which would be a numbered duplex and get precedence did seem in some cases to be rather random. Like they were throwing darts at a board.
What they did to the Christmas/Epiphany between 1911 and 1955, and especially in 1955, was a crime against humanity and there was NO REASON to do it. It was just pure clerical laziness and a total lack of regard for actual tradition. If anyone wants proof that the liturgical rot started long before Vatican II this issue is right at the top of the list.
As to that particular organization you mentioned, the SSPX, it just shows the absolute hypocrisy of so many Catholic groups who run around claiming to be opponents of all of the disasters that afflicted the Church post V2, yet wholeheartedly accept everything that went in to making those disasters possible.
In English dioceses, in better days, St Thomas's feast had an octave too. Within the octaves his took precedence after that of the the Nativity.
I had not heard that but it doesn't surprise me in the least. May his intercession help that beleaguered island 🙏
I think I would describe the island of Great Britain as in a state of self-inflicted harm and isolation rather than beleaguered. Of course, the people of Scotland are, generally, more sensible than their southern neighbour and did not want this but, sadly, a significant proportion of my compatriots are instilled with a Judaeo-Protestant ethos of thinking themselves superior to other nations when they are not. Oh, for another, successful, Spanish Armada...
Returning to liturgical matters I share your discomfort about the insertion of the feast of the Holy Name in the Christmas-Epiphany cycle. The feast seems a duplication of the naming element of the Circumcision. One thing the reformers got right, IMHO, was the recovering of the second Sunday after Christmas. In the Tridentine rite it was displaced by the Octave-Days of the Comites Christi, they being of double rite, and exiled to January 5th and named the Vigil of the Epiphany. However, an examination of sources easily reveal that it was not the texts of the Vigil - in the Roman rite - but of the Sunday. The Vigil texts were preserved in uses such as the Dominican etc.
I did once read in a Spanish source from the 16th century whose name I can't remember that in its earliest days Protestantism was called 'crypto Judaism'.
Thank you very much for those observations, although given the state of contemporary Spain... Regarding the Second Sunday, I am trying to do the math on that. So this year it would be on January 4? I have been trying to figure out exactly how old the Octave Days of the Comites are and I am coming up empty. I read in a footnote in the martyrology that Amalarius mentions them. I wonder if they would have transferred one of the Octave Days to make up for the extra day? That is an interesting question. Thank you.
I think I remember from Dom Alcuin Reid's book on the development of liturgy that Mr. Anti-Modernism re-wrote the Breviary in 1911 in exactly the same non-organic way that the Consilium re-wrote the calendar and the Missal. But the Breviary had been tuckered with many times between Jesus and Pius X, I'm sure
The psalter had stayed consistent going deep back into the first millennium. Pius V made an alteration to the hour of Prime in 1568 but he never banned anyone from praying the older version. And that is the rub about the modern popes. It is not that they are prudentially trying to create alternatives that see better meet the conditions of the times. It is that they are continuously trying to FORBID what was time tested and approved by their predecessors for age upon age. Because you really have to wonder about what someone's motivation would be for doing something like that...
Thank you for this post, Eric. Very helpful. Less than a year ago, I purchased a set of breviaries printed in 1884 and have been enjoying them since. I was very much looking forward to the Christmas season knowing these rolling octaves would occur.
You're welcome. And thank you for reading and for praying the ancient Office. Congratulations on your purchase.
I believe there's a mistake in the ranking of St. Sylvester's feast. My 1568 Breviary shows him to be a Duplex.
Also, the Feast of the Holy Name, before Divino Afflatu, was placed on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.
Lastly, I observe that indeed the traditional way of doing Christmas to the Epiphany Octave as it was in 1568, is best (the immediate pre-1911 one was still good in this instance, although St. Thomas was raised to a Double).
Ok. So I see a couple of internet articles about how the Holy Name was the Second Sunday after Epiphany including this one which quotes an extensive passage from Dom Gueranger: https://sensusfidelium.com/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/christmas/second-sunday-after-the-epiphany/
However I have a couple of physical breviaries from the early nineteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, printed in Austria and in Venice, and neither of them make any reference to any Feast of the Holy Name being celebrated on that day. And in all honesty that would be a weird day to do it since the Second Sunday after the Epiphany is dedicated to the last of Our Lord's Divine manifestations at the wedding at Cana, thus completing the entire Christmas/Advent cycle.
In any case here is the text of the Catholic encyclopedia article from 1910 on the subject: "This feast is celebrated on the second Sunday after Epiphany (double of the second class). It is the central feast of all the mysteries of Christ the Redeemer; it unites all the other feasts of the Lord, as a burning glass focuses the rays of the sun in one point, to show what Jesus is to us, what He has done, is doing, and will do for mankind. It originated towards the end of the fifteenth century, and was instituted by the private authority of some bishops in Germany, Scotland, England, Spain, and Belgium. The Office and the Mass composed by Bernardine dei Busti (d. 1500) were approved by Sixtus IV. The feast was officially granted to the Franciscans 25 February, 1530, and spread over a great part of the Church. The Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians kept it on 14 Jan.; the Dominicans 15 Jan. At Salisbury, York, and Durham in England, and at Aberdeen in Scotland it was celebrated 7 Aug., at Liège, 31 Jan., at Compostela and Cambrai, 8 Jan. (Grotefend, "Zeitrechnung", II, 2. 89). The Carthusians obtained it for the second Sunday after Epiphany about 1643; for that Sunday it was also extended to Spain, and later, 20 Dec., 1721, to the Universal Church. The Office used at present is nearly identical with the Office of Bernardine dei Busti. The hymns "Jesu dulcis memoria", "Jesu Rex admirabilis", "Jesu decus angelicum", usually ascribed to St. Bernard, are fragments of a very extensive "jubilus" or "cursus de aeterna sapientia" of some unknown author in the thirteenth century. For the beautiful sequence "Dulcis Jesus Nazarenus" (Morel, "Hymnen des Mittelalters", 67) of Bernardine dei Busti the Franciscans substituted a prose sequence of modern origin: "Lauda Sion Salvatoris"; they still celebrate the feast on 14 January."
The feast, before Divino Afflatu changed its occurrence to the Sunday between the Circumcision and Epiphany (Jan. 2, if Jan. 1 or 6 was on a Sunday), was included in the Sanctoral cycle: in my 1893 breviary, immediately after the commemoration of St. Hyginus (January 11). Here's an 1757 Breviarium Romanum, with the feast: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Breviarium_Romanum/jg9cAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Breviarium%20Romanum%22&pg=PA659&printsec=frontcover
Yup. You're right. It's in the Sanctoral here too. Very odd that no mention gets made of it in the temporal cycle. Thank you for the update.
My issue with the feast is that the Office of 1 January i.e. the Circumcision/Octave of the Nativity (the day He was given his name) is replete with references to the Incarnation. These can be interpreted as references to his prophesied Name of Emmanuel, God is with us, from Isaiah 7:14.
Therefore the subtle reference to the Name is there and while I do not wish to cast any aspersion on celebrating the holy Name of Jesus I think we were already doing that, just in a more subtle and poetic fashion. Therefore there was no need to duplicate.
My friend said the same thing, and observed that the Sarum feast was better in picking the Gospel in which Gabriel announces the name to Mary: https://theradtrad.blogspot.com/2016/01/non-nobis-domine-sed-nomine-tuo.html
That was a fascinating article. Thanks for sharing it
You are absolutely correct about Sylvester. Mea culpa! I'll fix that right now. I have never been able to get any real solid info on where the Holy Name Feast came from. I don't see it on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany. Was it a local feast?
Thank you Eric. I have been omiting these days the commemoration of the octaves 🤦♂️. It all makes sense.
Thank you Father. I'm glad it helped. It is a really challenging time of year and beyond that there were a lot of changes made later on so the whole thing really gets very confusing.
In fact, since some time spend this summer in a traditional Benedictine Abbey I am praying with the Monastic Breviary. It helps me since I have the cursus psalmorum on the physical breviary and at least is as traditional as pre-Pius X. As for the Ordo I follow the 1617 edition with the help of Divinum Officium. It has not been easy to have a proper traditional BR not online
Thank you for this comment, Father. It's very inspiring for me to read. It's hard to find priests around here who take the extra time and effort (i.e. who are willing to make the very real sacrifice) required to pray a more traditional and complex form of the breviary. Unfortunately, due to man's fallen nature, we tend to gravitate towards what is easy and requires the least effort. And that's not good for our priestly sanctification or for the Church as a whole.
Wishing you many blessings during these Octaves of the Nativity, St. Stephen, St. John the Apostle, and the Holy Innocents.
And thanks for another great post, Eric!
Thank you Father for all that you do and for taking the time to read. Merry Christmas
You're correct. The lack of access to good printed volumes is one of the major roadblocks. It is one of my hopes that this substack may one day attract the attention of someone who has either connections in or knowledge of the publishing industry. I have a candidate for a breviary that could possible be typeset but it is not an area that I have any expertise in.
Is this the reprint of the 1568 version you're referring to, that has a small font? https://www.vaticanum.com/en/breviarium-romanum-editio-princeps-1568-monumenta-liturgica-concilii-tridentini-reimpressio-2012
I'm in the Chesterton camp that Tradition is democracy for the dead. There something prideful about the currently living members of the Church Militant making major changes to the life of the Church. I don't believe I called you a dithering romantic but your choice to find a better version of the Breviary than the one currently promulgated is at least adjacent to a search for purity. You did answer my question, and I appreciate that.
Did you hear what you just said? The "current living members of the Church Militant making major changes to the life of the Church"? What was Pius X in 1911 but a 'current living member' making what 115 years of history has shown to be an absolutely disastrous change? Likewise Pius XII in 1945 and '55? Likewise John XXIII in 1960? Likewise Paul VI in 1969 and '70?
I'm curious if those of us who look to practices prior to the SVC are self-aware enough to acknowledge we differ with the ressourcement crowd in degree but not in kind. Some will go back to the pre-1911 Office for purity, but there are even older (more pure?) versions. The Liturgical Movement guys hopped all the way back to the super-pure Church of Hippolytus for an alternative canon. I believe the truly humble posture is to take what is given, and I say that while I privately pray the Breviary of 1960. But I do acknowledge my inconsistency.
This is not about 'purity'. I am not a dithering romantic looking to find a lost Eden. I have never suggested to anyone that you have to pick a certain calendar date and adopt all of its liturgical practices blindly.
This is about what is right and what is wrong and this is about best practices. These liturgical rites were part of the Church's patrimony for century upon century upon century and they served her well.
And then they were taken away... and for what reason? We never have been given a real reason, but we have seen the result. This project is about returning the Church to her best liturgical practices.
And these liturgical practices have all been employed recently enough that they are all extremely well documented. This isn't like saying: you know back in the fourth century everybody was receiving Communion in the hand (based on almost no actual documented evidence) so now we have to do that to
I don't use the I and II because, from my experience at least, they are used irregularly. They become more common by the 19th century although you see them in their earlier form, maius and minus, even going back to the 15th century in some places. But I just keep it at duplex. I think the I and II became more common because they started to make every feast a duplex and needed to come up with a way to differentiate them to determine when a feast should be transferred.
That is correct. Duplex majus in the schema of Divino Afflatu meant exactly the opposite of what it had meant a few hundred years before. And you're right: it all had to do with when the Sunday would get precedence. You're also correct that the choice of which feasts would be a maius and not get precedence and which would be a numbered duplex and get precedence did seem in some cases to be rather random. Like they were throwing darts at a board.
What they did to the Christmas/Epiphany between 1911 and 1955, and especially in 1955, was a crime against humanity and there was NO REASON to do it. It was just pure clerical laziness and a total lack of regard for actual tradition. If anyone wants proof that the liturgical rot started long before Vatican II this issue is right at the top of the list.
As to that particular organization you mentioned, the SSPX, it just shows the absolute hypocrisy of so many Catholic groups who run around claiming to be opponents of all of the disasters that afflicted the Church post V2, yet wholeheartedly accept everything that went in to making those disasters possible.
Exactly 💯💯💯