A few days ago, Kevin Di Camillo posted “Why the Devil Hates Latin” at the Register. It’s essentially a brief narrative of his journey from the English Liturgy of the Hours to the Roman Breviary of 1960. The thing that surprises us, however, is that Di Camillo seems not to have considered the Liturgia Horarum in Latin. Certainly the paucity of editions cannot help—there’s only the cheaply made Vatican edition and the sturdy and expensive Midwest Theological Forum edition, as far as we know—but it is not as though there are options upon options upon options for the 1960 Breviary. Furthermore, the MTF Liturgia Horarum, while expensive, is not leaps and bounds more expensive than either the Baronius or Nova et Vetera editions of the 1960 Breviary. However, Di Camillo does not seem to write from the perspective of one who found it easier or cheaper to obtain a 1960 Breviary than a Liturgia Horarum. He seems to write from the perspective of one who never considered the Latin Liturgia Horarum.

We note that the Holy Father is a priest who has apparently long prayed the Liturgia Horarum in Latin. We recall especially this passage from the long 2013 interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro in America:

At this point the pope stands up and takes the breviary from his desk. It is in Latin, and is worn down by continued use. He opens it to the Office of the Readings of the Feria Sexta, that is Friday, of the 27th week. He reads a passage to me taken from the Commonitórium Primum of St. Vincent of Lerins: “ita étiam christiánae religiónis dogma sequátur has decet proféctuum leges, ut annis scílect consolidétur, dilatétur témpore, sublimétur aetáte” (“Thus even the dogma of the Christian religion must proceed from these laws. It progresses, solidifying with years, growing over time, deepening with age.”)

(Emphasis supplied.) Others have noted that the interview with Spadaro took place in August 2013, but the 27th Week of Ordinary Time in 2013 didn’t begin until October 6. In other words, the Holy Father knows the Liturgia Horarum well enough to remember a particular passage from the Office of Readings without having just read it. One would think, as folks respond so favorably to the Holy Father’s example, that the Latin Liturgia Horarum would be experiencing a revival. However, we suspect that the Holy Father remains one of only a small minority of clerics and laity so intimately familiar with the Liturgia Horarum.

The Liturgy of the Hours was intended, more or less, to lighten the burden of the Office for priests engaged in active work. Now, whether or not the Office was actually a great burden on the majority of priests is an open question. (We have been told that Archbishop Lefebvre, a tireless missionary in his day, argued for some modifications, since some missionaries found it burdensome in the context of their work.) That aside, it makes some degree of sense that most priests say their Offices in the vernacular. Certainly, vernacular recitation is in keeping with the spirit that motivated the design of the Liturgy of the Hours, if not the intent of the fathers who voted for Sacrosanctum Concilium.

However, as Di Camillo noted, there is something to be said for praying the public prayer of the Church in the Church’s own language. More than that, there is something to be said for praying the public prayer of the Church using, by and large, language that would be as familiar to Pope St. Gregory the Great and Pope St. Pius V as it would be to us. (The Nova Vulgata resembles fairly strongly the Gallican Psalter, though it follows the Bea psalter into some Hebraisms.) Yet, when Di Camillo went to pray in Latin, he went, first, to the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and then, after Summorum Pontificum and Universae Ecclesiae, to the 1960 Breviary. And he is far from alone: many people turn to the 1960 Breviary and the traditional Benedictine Office when they want pray an Office in Latin. In other words, Di Camillo’s perspective—one who seems not to have considered the Liturgia Horarum—is not unique.

As we discussed a little while back, we—the Church, that is—seem to have lost a sense that the Divine Office ought to be sung or recited publicly. And it seems that we seem to have forgotten that the Liturgia Horarum is out there as an option even for private recitation.

At Opus Publicum, Gabriel Sanchez makes this point,

What the Byzantine Rite has not lost, and the Roman Rite surely needs, is the central importance of public prayer to the life of the Church. For most Catholics, that prayer is the Mass and only the Mass. If there is ever anything “more” it is typically a para-liturgical devotion such as the Rosary or a novena. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but for most of Church history reciting the Divine Office in choir was as natural as serving Mass. Today, unfortunately, that is simply not possible for most parishes to carry out all of the time, but why can’t more Latin churches strive to serve hours like Vespers and Compline at least some of the time? The easy answer is, “Because there’s no demand for it.” But the chances are there will never be a demand unless the clergy, in concert with dedicated members of the laity, create one.

(Emphasis supplied.)

The Divine Office has always occupied a tricky place in the Latin Church. Everyone agrees that the Church has to pray the Office as its public prayer, though precisely how has, as nearly as we can tell, always been a matter open to discussion. Callewaert, in his De Brevarii Romani Liturgia, outlines admirably the Apostolic origins of the Divine Office and traces its development from the days of the persecution of the Church through the reforms of Pius X. It makes for interesting reading. Of course, you know the rest of the story: the reforms continued apace through Pius XII and John XXIII’s pontificates with the help of Annibale Bugnini and his clique of liturgists, and culminated in Paul VI’s Liturgia Horarum, which bears little resemblance even to John XXIII’s Breviary, which itself was a revision of Pius X’s Breviary, which was in its turn a revision of Pius V’s Breviary. (It is passing strange that people who get incensed about the implications of Quo primum for the Mass almost never get incensed about the implications of Quod a nobis for the Office.) However, throughout this development, the laity participated regularly in the Divine Office, as Sanchez notes.

In fact, if there was one constant in the Church’s liturgy between Pius V’s Quod a nobis in 1568 and Paul VI’s Laudis canticum in 1970—a time of almost 400 years—it was that the breviary was constantly tinkered with. (Think of Urban VIII’s hymns, for example.) Benedict XVI in Summorum pontificum and its instruction Universae Ecclesiae reinstated the Breviary of John XXIII, apparently because Archbishop Lefebvre decided for some reason to stick with the books in force in 1962 (even though the Bugnini-driven reforms really started in 1955 with the revised Holy Week rites and Cum hac nostra aetate and continued with the 1960 Breviary and 1962 Missal). The upshot of all of this is that, notwithstanding the Church’s centuries of tinkering with the Breviary, the faithful have at least two Church-approved options: the 1960 Roman Breviary and the 1970 Liturgia Horarum, as updated, which is its own thing. (We will omit discussion of the traditional Benedictine Office.)

But with two Church-approved options, it should be easy as pie for any parish to provide congenial celebrations of the canonical hours regularly. Got a parish where the high altar was never jackhammered out, where the hymnals smell of incense, and where the choir calls itself a schola? Great. Offer sung second vespers of Sunday according to the 1960 books. Got a parish where Paul VI’s Mass is celebrated ad orientem in Latin and where “the reform of the reform” has appeared more than never in the bulletin? Super. Offer sung vespers according to the Liturgia Horarum on Wednesday nights. Got a parish full of felt banners and the rushing sounds of the spirit of Vatican II? Recite Morning Prayer according to the English Liturgy of the Hours on Fridays before Mass. Right? Something for everybody.

Also, the Office would be little but lay participation in most parishes. While a priest or deacon ought to lead celebrations of the Office, the laity still have significant roles in the Office—especially if the Office is sung. For example, unless one is at a monastery or a seminary, it is unlikely that the antiphons, psalms, and canticles could be chanted without substantial help from the laity. Furthermore, the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours provides rubrics for celebrations in the absence of a cleric, if it comes down to that. In other words, the Office provides, really, more opportunities for lay involvement in the liturgy, if that sort of thing is important to you.

But, as Sanchez notes, nothing doing. Laity still prefer para-liturgical—or quasi-liturgical, we suppose—devotions like the Rosary and the clergy does not appear to want to push the Divine Office in either of its forms. There are, in essence, two forms of the Office, which, between them, appeal to almost every sensibility, and neither of which are especially widely used. Why? We think there are essentially three reasons. One, the Liturgia Horarum, which most clerics use these days, practically begs to be recited either privately or in common with other clerics and all at once. Two, most parishes simply don’t have a deep enough bench, musically, to support a sung Office, even one or two days a week. And three, the Mass, having been reconceptualized as a communal celebration ordered toward the reception of the Eucharist, has sucked all the air out of the room as far as the laity are concerned. But these are just guesses.

One of our favorite television shows was James Burke’s Connections. It was—and is—a great program, essentially a Wikipedia rabbit hole avant la lettre. Essentially, Burke would trace the often labyrinthine developments that led some some simple, everyday object or concept. The stories were often fascinating, helped along by Burke’s engaging persona. We want to remember that the Discovery Channel presented Connections, back in the days before Discovery discovered that there was money to be made in compelling real-life dramas.

Earlier this weekend, we read, at New Liturgical Movement, Gregory DiPippo’s longish, interesting piece about the Greek Mass said at the Abbey of St. Denys outside Paris. The story behind the Mass is interesting: Dionysius the Areopagite was a judge of the Areopagus of Athens converted to Christ by St. Paul (Acts 17:34). According to tradition, Dionysius then became the first bishop of Athens. He later went to Rome, where Pope Clement sent him north to convert the Gauls. He became, then, the first bishop of Paris. (Where Dionysius became Denys.) His evangelization did not go down so hot with the pagan priests, who managed to convince the Roman authorities to kill Dionysius and his companions. One explanation for the name of Montmartre is that it is where Dionysius and his companions were martyred. His feast day is October 9. There were likely three Dionysii—the Areopagite, the bishop of Athens, and the bishop of Paris—over a couple hundred years.

Fast forward several hundred years. DiPippo notes that the Byzantine emperor Michael sent the Holy Roman Emperor Louis a collection of writings purportedly by Dionysius. Few—if any—people today think that the author of these works was Denys or even the Areopagite. Instead, the view is that he was an anonymous Neoplatonist using the Areopagite’s name. So there were really something closer to four Dionysii. This being the ninth century, there were not a lot of Frenchmen running around with great Greek. So, Dionysius’s works were translated, and they caught on. DiPippo notes that St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, who cites Dionysius throughout the Summa, knew him in a Latin translation. We note that, as late as 1490–92, Marsilio Ficino translated the Mystical Theology and the Divine Names into Latin, together with his not-always-hugely-helpful Neoplatonic commentary. (Harvard brought out a nice, two-volume set earlier this year.) Michael Allen explains in his introduction to Ficino’s translations that Dionysius was important to the Neoplatonists because, if Dionysius was who he was supposed to be, then there was among the Apostles—remember Paul converted Dionysius—an advanced Platonism, and the Neoplatonic tradition gets rescued from its evident paganism by a secret Christian origin. Or something like that; Renaissance thinkers did not have Dan Brown, so they couldn’t call something “a Dan Brown story.” To make this long story short, after the introduction of these works, Dionysius became even more strongly associated with Greek learning and culture.

So, DiPippo tells us, the monks of St. Denys’s Abbey honored their founder by translating the Roman Mass for the octave day of Denys’s feast—that is: October 16—into Greek. That’s right: the Roman Mass, not an eastern Liturgy, but in Greek. This was, therefore, the very opposite of a vernacular translation. But their hearts were in the right place. What better way to honor one of the preeminent Greek thinkers of all time—so they thought—than by saying Mass in his memory in his tongue? DiPippo tells us that the tradition developed in the 12th century. We would be interested to know how that dating is derived. Apparently, the monks continued to say the Greek Mass for Denys’s octave until the Revolution. The date on the printed edition, brought out in Paris by De Hansy, is 1777, which would have been at the very tail end of the tradition. There must be something in the air about this Mass. Father John Hunwicke hosted earlier this summer posts by a friend of his, who addressed the Greek Mass of St. Denys at considerable length, presenting a transcription not only of the propers but also of the ordinary of the Mass.

The Mass makes for fascinating reading (even with our rudimentary Greek), as translations often do. It really does appear that the monks began with Latin and translated it into Greek, resisting the schoolboy’s (novice’s?) impulse simply to crib extant Greek texts where available. For example, some of the commenters at Father Hunwicke’s place point out that the Greek Credo (Pisteuo?) contains a Filioque translation. Fascinating stuff like that. Not being any judge of Greek composition, we wonder how the translation of the Mass sounds in Greek. We suspect that the great eastern Liturgies are probably more elegant, but we would expect native Greek speakers to produce more elegant Greek than a bunch of French monks. (We have long coveted a copy of the Pléiade edition of Shakespeare, not because our French is so good that we work more naturally in it, but because we want to see how the quintessential English author sounds in French.)

How would James Burke sum it up? St. Paul converted an Athenian judge named Dionysius, who later went to Rome. When in Rome, St. Clement sent him to Paris to convert the Gauls. He became known as Denys, the first bishop of Paris, and he did such a good job that pagan priests got the Romans to martyr him. Later, a Neoplatonist used his name to write a series of theological books in Greek. In the ninth century, the Byzantine emperor made a gift of these books to the Holy Roman emperor, and Dionysius became associated with Greek Neoplatonic thought. But no one could read Greek. In order to understand Denys, his works were translated into Latin often for the next few centuries. But, to commemorate Denys, some Parisian monks in the 12th century translated the Roman Mass, which was in Latin, into Greek. And so they celebrated it in Greek on his octave day for five hundred years, until the Revolution. Just before the Revolution, in 1777, a Parisian printer brought out an edition of the Mass. And, in the Year of Our Lord 2015, two separate blogs on the Internet posted two lengthy articles about it.

Probably not as compelling as some of Burke’s summaries. It is sort of amazing to us, however, that this one setting of one Mass that was said one day a year, which probably was not hugely well known outside Paris, received serious attention in the summer of 2015. What is even more amazing is that the story of this one Mass encompasses almost the whole of Christian history—and, by extension, the history of the West. You can begin this story at New Liturgical Movement or Father Hunwicke’s blog and travel back to St. Paul preaching in Athens, taking any number of detours along the way.

We think that’s pretty neat, James Burke or not.