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with the text, "Give a portion to seven, and also to eight." Accordingly it is sometimes called by the name of Matins, instead of the Nocturns; and sometimes both together are so called.

This subdivision of the night service has the effect of dividing the course of worship into two distinct parts, of similar structure with each other; the three Nocturns, Lauds, and Prime, corresponding respectively to the three day hours (of the 3d, 6th, and 9th) Vespers and Compline. Of these the three day hours are made up of Psalms, Hymns, and Sentences. These are the simplest of the Services, and differ very little from each other through the year. Lauds answer to Vespers, the sun being about to rise or about to set in the one or the other respectively. Each contains five Psalms, a Text, Hymn, Evangelical Canticle, Collect, and Commemoration of Saints. These hours are the most ornate of the Services, and are considered to answer to the morning and evening sacrifices of the Jews.

Prime and Compline were introduced at the same time (the fifth century,) and are placed respectively at the beginning of day and the beginning of night. In each there is a Confession, four Psalms, a Hymn, Text, and Sentences.

The ecclesiastical day is considered to begin with the evening or Vesper Service; according to the Jewish reckoning, as alluded to in the text, "In the evening, and morning, and at noon-day, will I pray, and that instantly." The ancient Vespers are regarded by some to be the most solemn hour of the day. They were sometimes called the Officium Lucernarum.* Prayers were in some places offered while the lamps were lighting; and this rite was called lumen offerre.t The Mozarabic service supplies an instance of this, in which the Office ran as follows:

"Kyrie eleyson, Christe eleyson, Kyrie eleyson. Pater noster, &c. In nomine Domini Jesu Christi, lumen cum pace. R. Amen. Hoc est lumen oblatum. R. Deo gratias."

On Festivals, the appropriate Services, beginning on the evening of the preceding day, are continued over the evening of the day itself; so that there are in such cases two Vespers, called the First and the Second, of which the First are the more solemn.

This is the stated succession of the sacred offices through the day, but the observance of the precise hours has not been generally insisted on at any time, but has varied with local usages or individual convenience. Thus the Matin and Laud Services may be celebrated on the preceding evening, as is done (for instance) in the Sestine Chapel at Rome during Passion week,

Vid. Socr Hist. 22. Vide also Lyra Apostolica, xv.

+ This ceremony must not be confused with the Lucernarium, or prayers at lighting the lamps; which took place before the evening.

the celebrated Miserere being one of the Psalms in Lauds. Prime may be used just before or after sunrise; the Third, soon after; and soon after, the Sixth; the Ninth, near dinner; Vespers and Compline, after dinner. Or Prime, the Third, Sixth, and Ninth may come together two or three hours after sunrise. Noon, which in most ages has been the hour for the meal of the day, is made to divide the Services; there is a rule, for instance, against Compline coming before dinner.

Such is the present order and use of the Breviary Services, as derived more or less directly from Apostolic practice. Impressed with their antiquity, our Reformers did not venture to write a Prayer-Book of their own, but availed themselves of what was ready to their hands: in consequence, our Daily Service is a compound of portions of this primitive ritual, Matins being made up of the Catholic Matins, Lauds, and Prime, and Even-song of Vespers and Compline. The reason why these changes were brought about will be seen in the following sketch of the history of the Breviary from the time of Gregory VII.

The word has been already explained to mean something between a directory and an harmony of offices; but it is to be feared there was another, and not so satisfactory reason for the use of it. It implied an abridgment or curtailment of Services, and so in particular of the Scripture readings, whether Psalms, or Lessons, at least in practice. Of course there is no reason why the Church might not, in the use of her discretion, limit, as well as select, the portions of the inspired volume, which were to be introduced into her devotions; but there were serious reasons why she should not defraud her children of "their portion of meat in due season ;" and it would seem as if the eleventh, or at least the twelfth century, a time fertile in other false steps in religion, must be charged also, as far as concerns Rome and its more intimate dependencies, with a partial removal of the light of the written Word from the Sanctuary. Whatsoever benefit attended the adjustment of the offices in other respects, so far as the reading of Scripture was omitted, it was productive of evil, at least in prospect. An impulse was given, however slight in itself, which was followed up in the centuries which succeeded, and in all those churches which either then, or in the course of time, adopted the usage of Rome.

Even now that usage is not universally received in the Latin Communion, and it was in no sense enjoined on the whole Communion till after the Council of Trent; but from the influence of the Papal see and of the monastic orders, it seems to have affected other countries from a much earlier date. This influence would naturally be increased by the circumstance that the old Roman Breviary had long before Gregory's time been received in various parts of Europe: in England, since the time of Gregory the

Breviary of Gregory VII. and of the Franciscans.

181

Great, who, after the pattern of Leo, and Gelasius before him, had been a Reformer of it; in Basle, since the ninth century; in France and Germany, by means of Pepin and Charlemagne ; while Gregory VII. himself effected its reception in Spain. Other Breviaries, however, still were in use, as they are at this day. The Ambrosian Breviary used in the Church of Milan, derives its name from the great St. Ambrose; and in the ninth century, Charles the Bald, while sanctioning the use of the Roman, speaks also of the usage of Jerusalem, of Constantinople, of Gaul, of Italy, and of Toledo.

In Gregory's Breviary there are no symptoms of a neglect of Scripture. It contains the offices for festival-days, Sundays, and week-days; Matins on festivals having nine Psalms and nine Lessons, and on Sundays eighteen Psalms and nine Lessons, as at present. The course of the Scripture Lessons was the same as it had been before his time; as it is preserved in a manuscript of the thirteenth century. It will be found to agree in great measure both with the order of the present Breviary and with our own. From Advent to Christmas were read portions of the prophet Isaiah; from the Octave of the Epiphany to Septuagesima, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans; from Septuagesima to the third Sunday in Lent, the book of Genesis, the i. xii. and xxvii. on the Sundays to which they are allotted in our own offices; on the fourth in Lent to Wednesday in Passion Week, Jeremiah; from Easter to the third Sunday after, the Apocalypse; from the third to the fifth, St. James; from the Octave of the Ascension to Pentecost, the Acts; after the Octave of Trinity to the last Sunday in July, the books of Kings; in August, Proverbs; in September, Job, Tobit, Judith, and Esther; in Oc tober, Maccabees; and in November, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophets.

Well would it have been if this laudable usage, received from the first ages, and confirmed by Pope Gregory VII., had been observed, according to his design, in the Roman Church; but his own successors were the first to depart from it. The example was set in the Pope's chapel of curtailing the sacred Services, and by the end of the twelfth century it had been followed in all the churches in Rome, except that of St. John Lateran. The Fratres Minores (Minorists or Franciscans) adopted the new usage, and their Breviaries were in consequence remarkable for the title "secundum consuetudinem Romanæ Curiæ," contrary to the usage of such countries as conformed to the Roman Ritual, which were guided by the custom of the churches in the city. Haymo, the chief of this order, had the sanction of Gregory X. in the middle of the thirteenth century, to correct and complete a change, which, as having begun in irregularity, was little likely to have fallen of itself into an orderly system; and his arrangements,

which were conducted on the pattern of the Franciscan Devotions, nearly correspond to the Breviary, as it at present stands.

Haymo's edition, which was introduced into the Roman Church by Nicholas III. A. D. 1278, is memorable for another and still more serious fault. Graver and sounder matter being excluded, apocryphal legends of Saints were used to stimulate and occupy the popular mind; and a way was made for the use of those Invocations to the Virgin and other Saints, which heretofore were unknown in public worship. The addresses to the Blessed Mary in the Breviary, as it is at present constituted, are such as the following: the Ave Mary, before commencing every office through the day and at the end of Compline; at the end of Lauds and Vespers, an Antiphon invocatory of the Virgin; the Officium B. Mariæ, on the Sabbath or Saturday, and sundry other offices, containing Hymns and Antiphons in her honour. These portions of the Breviary carry with them their own plain condemnation, in the judgment of an English Christian; no commendation of the general structure and matter of the Breviary itself will have any tendency to reconcile him to them; and it has been the strong feeling that this is really the case, that has led the writer of these pages fearlessly and securely to admit the real excellences, and to dwell upon the antiquity, of the Roman Ritual. He has felt that, since the Romanists required an unqualified assent to the whole of the Breviary, and that there were passages which no Anglican ever could admit, praise the true Catholic portion of it as much as he might, he did not in the slightest degree approximate to a recommendation of Romanism. But to return; these Invocations and Services to the Blessed Virgin have been above enumerated, with a view of observing that, on the very face of them, they do not enter into the structure of the Breviary; they are really, as they are placed, additions, and might easily have been added at some tate period, as (e. g.) was the case with our own Thanksgiving, or the Prayer for the Parliament. This remark seems to apply to all the intrinsically exceptionable Addresses in the Breviary; for as to the Confession at Prime and Compline, in which is introduced the name of the Blessed Virgin and other Saints, this practice stands on a different ground. It is not a simple gratuitous Invocation made to them, but it is an address to Almighty GoD in His heavenly court, as surrounded by His Saints and Angels, answering to St. Paul's charge to Timothy, "before GOD and the LORD JESUS CHRIST and the elect Angels," and to Daniel and St. John's address to the Angels who were sent to them. The same may even be said of the Invocation "Holy Mary and all Saints,"* &c. in the Prime

*It is observable that the words " Holy Mary" do not occur in the ancient Mo nastic Breviaries. The Confession at Prime and Compline does not occur in the Paris Breviary, 1735.

Service, which Gavanti describes as being of very great antiquity. These usages certainly now do but sanction and encourage that direct worship of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, which is the great practical offence of the Latin Church, and so are a serious evil; but it is worth pointing out, that, as on the one hand they have more claim to be considered an integral part of the service, so on the other, more can be said towards their justification than for those addresses which are now especially under our consideration.

This is what occurs to observe on the first sight of these Invocations; but we are not left to draw a conjectural judgment about them. Their history is actually known, and their recent introduction into the Church Services is distinctly confessed by Roman ritualists.

The Ave Mary, for instance, is made up of the Angel's salutation, "Hail, thou," &c. Elizabeth's "Blessed art thou among women," &c. and the words, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death." The last clause "now and," &c. was confessedly added by the Franciscans in the beginning of the sixteenth century; and the words preceding it, "Holy Mary," &c. which Gavanti, after Baronius, wishes to attribute to the Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431), are acknowledged by the later critics, Grancolas and Merari, to have had no place in any form of prayer till the year 1508. Even the Scripture portion of the Ave Mary, which, as Merari observes, is an Antiphon rather than Prayer, and which occurs as such in the lesser office of the Blessed Virgin, and in St. Gregory's Sacramentary in the Mass Service for the fourth Sunday in Advent, is not mentioned by any devotional writer, nor by Councils, nor Fathers, up to the eleventh century, though they do enjoin the universal and daily use of the Creed and Lord's Prayer, which are in the present Breviary used with it. It first occurs among forms of prayer prescribed for the people in the statutes of Otho, Bishop of Paris, A. D. 1195, who was followed after the interval of a hundred years, by the regulations of Councils at Oxford and elsewhere. Another space of at least fifty years intervenes before the introduction of rosaries and crowns in honour of the Virgin. As to the Roman Breviary, it did not contain any part of the Ave Mary, till the promulgation of it by Pope Pius V., after the Tridentine Council, A. D. 1550.

The four Antiphons to the Blessed Virgin, used at the termination of the offices, are known respectively by their first words; the Alma Redemptoris, the Ave Regina, the Regina cæli, and the Salve Regina. Gavanti and Merari plainly tell us that they are not to be found in ancient authors. The Alma Redemptoris is the composition of Hermannus Contractus, who died A. D. 1054. The author of the Ave Regina is unknown, as is that of the Re

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