Book review: 1963 Monastic Breviary

Now that we have looked at all of the essential elements of Matins, I thought it would be appropriate to look at the official (1962-3) sources for them, viz the 1963 breviary.

Breviarium Monasticum summorum pontificum cura recognitum per omnibus sub regula militatntibus iussu abbatis primatis editum, 2 vols, Marietti, 1963

This Latin only set of books remains the official breviary for Benedictines, although most monasteries have subsequently constructed their own versions of the Office in accordance with the instructions set out in the 1977 Thesauris and subsequent documents.

Introduced in 1963, it was (in theory at least) used by all monasteries up until around about 1969 (though some did start experimenting earlier).

What it contains

Volume 1 (Tomus Prior) starts at Advent and ends with Saturday Nones in the Octave of Pentecocst (ie the official end of Eastertide); Volume 2 covers the rest of the year, as well as the rubrics for the Office.

For those familiar with the Monastic Diurnal, the structure of the Breviary is very similar, although the order of some sections is not the same.  The key difference is that whereas the Diurnal only includes the texts in each section that relate to the day hours, the breviary also includes Matins.

The two books contain the text only; it does not contain the chants.

Pros and cons

The breviary contains all of the texts you need to say the Office and accordingly is the ideal reference book if you want to say Matins liturgically.

If your Latin is shaky, or a work in progress, you could use it in combination with a bilingual psalter (such as the Clear Creek booklet) and the Liturgical Readings book for example.

If you want to sing some or all of the Office, you will need other books or resources to do that, but the breviary will remain an essential reference document.

The problem, though, is that 1963 monastic breviaries are hard to find and fairly expensive when you do.   Accordingly, the other option is to use an earlier breviary, and adapt it to the 1963 calendar (for example, using the Ordo on Saints Will Arise, or one from the monastery you an oblate of), and I'll say more about this in the next few posts.

1962isms

The other issue around this breviary is that although it remains the official book, still in force, in practice not even the traditional monasteries really follow its rubrics exactly, as far as I can gather, and for very good reasons!  Most of the issues with the 1962-3 calendar and rubrics don't really relate to Matins though, so I'll save my rant on this subject for another time...