Dominican Rite - Sources of The Rite

Sources of The Rite

To determine the sources of the Dominican Rite is to come face to face with the haze and uncertainty that seems to shroud most liturgical history. The thirteenth century knew no unified Roman Rite. While the basis of the usages of north-western Europe was a Gallicanized-Gregorian Sacramentary sent by pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, each little locality had its own peculiar distinctions. At the time of the unification of the Dominican Rite most of the convents of the order were embraced within the territory in which the old Gallican Rite had once obtained and in which the Gallico-Roman Rite then prevailed. Blessed Jordan of Saxony, the pioneer in liturgical reform within the order, greatly admired the Rite of the Church Paris and frequently assisted at the recitations of the Office at Notre-Dame. Humbert of Romains, who played so important a part in the unification, was the provincial superior of the French Province. These facts justify the opinion that the basis of the Dominican Rite was the typical Gallican Rite of the thirteenth century, but documentary evidence that the rite was adapted from any one locality is lacking. The chronicles of the order state merely that the rite is neither the pure Roman nor the pure Gallican, but based on the Roman usage of the thirteenth century, with additions from the Rites of Paris and other places where the order existed. Just from where these additions were obtained and exactly what they were cannot be determined, except in a general way, from an examination of each distinctive feature.

The Dominican Rite is not an arbitrary elaboration of the Roman Rite made against the spirit of the Church or to give the order an air of exclusiveness, nor can it be said to be more gallicanized then any use of the Gallico-Roman Rite of that period. It was an honest and sincere attempt to harmonize and simplify the widely divergent usages of the early half of the thirteenth century.

The Dominican Rite, formulated by Humbert, saw no radical development after its confirmation by Pope Clement IV. When Pope Pius V made his reform, the Dominican Rite had been fixed and stable for over three hundred years, while a constant liturgical change had been taking place in other communities. Furthermore the comparative simplicity of the Dominican Rite, as manifested in the different liturgical books, gives evidence of its antiquity.