Directorium - Tradition

Tradition

How long a separate and annual "Ordo recitandi" has been printed for the use of the English clergy it seems impossible to discover. Possibly Bishop Challoner, Vicar Apostolic from 1741 to 1781, had something to do with its introduction. But in 1759 a Catholic London printer conceived the idea of translating the official "Directorium", or Ordo, issued for the clergy, and accordingly published in that year: "A Lay Directory or a help to find out and assist at Vespers . . . . on Sundays and Holy Days".Strange to say, another Catholic printer, seemingly the publisher of the official Ordo, shortly afterwards, conceiving his privileges invaded, produced a rival publication: "The Laity's Directory or the Order of the (Catholic) Church Service for the year 1764". This "Laity's Directory" was issued year by year for three-quarters of a century, gradually growing in size, but in 1837 it was supplanted by "The Catholic Directory" which since 1855 has been published in London by Messrs. Burns & Lambert, now Burns and Oates. The earliest numbers of the "Laity's Directory" contained nothing save an abbreviated translation of the clerical "Ordo recitandi", but towards the end of the eighteenth century a list of the Catholic chapels in London, advertisements of schools, obituary notices, important ecclesiastical announcements, and other miscellaneous matters began to be added, and at a still later date we find an index of the names and addresses of the Catholic clergy serving the missions in England and Scotland. This feature has been imitated in the "Irish Catholic Director" and in the Catholic Directories of the United States. Hence the widespread idea that Catholic directories are so called because they commonly form an address book for the churches and clergy of a particular country, but an examination of the early numbers of the "Laity's Directory" conclusively shows that it was only to the calendar with its indication of the daily Mass and Office that the name originally applied.

In the Middle Ages, and indeed almost down to the invention of printing, the books used in the service of the Church were much more divided up than they are at present. Instead of one book, our modern Breviary for example, containing the whole Office, we find at least four books — the Psalterium, the Hymnarium, the Antiphonarium, and the Legendarium, or book of lessons, all in separate volumes.

Rubrics or ritual directions were rarely written down in connexion with the text to which they belonged (we are speaking here of the Mass and Office, not of the services of rarer occurrence such as those in the Pontifical), but they were probably at first communicated by oral tradition only, and when they began to be recorded they took only such summary form as we find in the Ordines Romani of Hittorp and Mabillon. However, about the eleventh century there grew up a tendency towards greater elaboration and precision in rubrical directions for the services, and at the same time we notice the beginning of a more or less strongly marked division of these directions into two classes, which in the case of the Sarum Use are conveniently distinguished as the Customary and the Ordinal. Speaking generally, we may say that the former of these rubrical books contains the principles and the latter their application; the former determines those matters that are constant and primarily the duties of persons, the latter deals with the arrangements which vary from day to day and from year to year.

It is out of the latter of these books, i.e. the Ordinal (often called Ordinarium and Liber Ordinarius), that the "Directorium", or "Pye", and eventually also our own modern "Ordo recitandi" were in due time evolved. These distinctions are not clear-cut. The process was a gradual one. But we may distinguish in the English and also in the Continental Ordinals two different stages. We have, first, the type of book in common use from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and represented by the "Sarum Ordinal" edited by W. H. Frere, or the "Ordinaria of Laon" edited by Chevalier. Here we have a great deal of miscellaneous information respecting feasts, the Office and Mass to be said upon them according to the changes necessitated by the occurrence of Easter and the shifting of the Sundays, as well as the "Incipits" of the details of the service, e.g. of the lessons to be read and the commemorations to be made. The second stage took the form of an adaptation of this Ordinal for ready use, an adaptation with which, in the case of Sarum, the name of Clement Maydeston is prominent connected. This was the "Directorium Sacerdotum" the complete "Pye" (known in Latin as Pica Sarum), abbreviated editions of which were afterwards published in a form which allowed it to be bound up with the respective portions of the Breviary. The idea of this great "Pye" was to give all the thirty-five possible combinations, five to each Dominical litter (q.v.), which the fixed and movable elements of the ecclesiastical year admitted of, assigning a separate calendar to each, more or less corresponding to our present "Ordo recitandi". This arrangement was not peculiar to England.

One of the earliest printed books of the kind was that issued about 1475 for the Diocese of Constance, of which a rubricated copy is to be found in the British Museum. It is a small folio in size, of one hundred and twelve leaves, and after the ordinary calendar it supplies summary rules, under thirty-five heads, for drawing up the special calendar for each year according to the Golden Number and the Dominical Letter. Then the Ordo for each of the thirty-five possible combinations is set out in detail. The name most commonly given to these "Pyes" on the Continent was "Ordinarius", more rarely "Directorium Missæ". For example, the title of such a book printed for the Diocese of Liège in 1492 runs: "In nomine Domini Amen . . . Incipit liber Ordinarius ostendens qualiter legatur et cantetur per totum anni circulum in ecclesia leodiensi tam de tempore quam de festis sanctorum in nocturnis officiis divinis." Such books were also provided for the religious orders. An "Ordinarius Ordinis Præmonstratensis" exists in manuscript at Jesus College, Cambridge, and an early printed one in the British Museum. When the use of printing became universal, the step from these rather copious directories, which served for all possible years, to a shorter guide of the type of our modern "Ordo recitandi", and intended only for one particular year, was a short and easy one. Since, however, such publications are useless after their purpose is once served, they are very liable to destruction, and it seems impossible to say how early we may date the first attempt at producing an Ordo after our modern fashion. The fact that at the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIII, De Reform., cap. xviii) it was thought necessary to urge that ecclesiastical students should be trained in the understanding of the computus, by which they could determine the ordo recitandi in each year for themselves, seems to imply that such Ordos as we now possess were not in familiar use in the middle of the sixteenth century.