Directorium - Early History

Early History

For example, in the early part of the fifteenth century one Clement Maydeston, probably following earlier foreign precedents, adopted the title "Directorium Sacerdotum" for his reorganized Sarum Ordinal. In this way the words "Directorium Sacerdotum" came to stand at the head of a number of books, some of them among the earliest products of the printing press in England, which were issued to instruct the clergy as to the form of Mass and Office to be followed from day to day throughout the year.

This employment of the word directorium was by no means peculiar to England. To take one example, not the earliest that might be chosen, a very similar work was published at Augsburg in 1501, which bears the title: "Index sive Directorium Missarum Horarumque secundum ritum chori Constanciensis diocesis dicendarumn". As this title suffices to show, a directorium or guide for the recitation of Office and Mass had to be constructed according to the needs of a particular diocese or group of dioceses, for as a rule each diocese has certain saints' days and feasts peculiar to itself, and these have all to be taken account of in regulating the Office, a single change often occasioning much disturbance by the necessity it creates of transferring coincident celebrations to other days. Out of the "Directorium Sacerdotum" which in England was often called the "Pye", and which seems to have come into almost general use about the time of the invention of printing, the later Directory, the "Ordo divini Officii recitandi Sacrique peragendi" gradually developed.