If you sing or recite the Divine Office according to the Roman Breviary of 1960, as we do, then you may have noticed something strange today. November 11 is the feast of St. Martin of Tours, Bishop and Confessor, a third-class feast. But St. Martin’s office is nothing like the usual third-class feast. Martin’s office is different—and has been since the earliest days of the Roman Rite as it has existed since Trent.

The third-class feast in the 1960 Breviary is, in some way, a compromise between celebrating the saints’ feasts and preserving the order of the psalter. That is, the third-class feast, as you probably already know, uses the antiphons and psalms from the occurring feria. The rest of the third-class office is supplied by the common of the saints, more or less. This represents not only the longstanding objective of preserving the order of the psalter as closely as possible but also the horror of repetition, which will find fuller expression ten years later. It also is but one of the reasons why some folks, devoted to older forms of the Roman Breviary view the 1960 Breviary as transitional and, to be blunt, part and parcel of the reforms that led to Paul VI’s Mass and the Liturgia Horarum. But St. Martin’s office is different.

To begin with, it has proper antiphons for the psalms of matins, lauds, and vespers. It also has elaborate proper antiphons for the Benedictus and the Magnificat. But it doesn’t stop there. Not to get too technical, but: the psalms for matins are taken from the common of one martyr, though the hymn is Isti confessor Domini, not Deus tuorum militum; there are proper responsories; the psalms for lauds are the psalms from lauds of Sunday in the first place, not the occurring feria; the psalms and antiphons for the little hours are taken from the occurring feria, but the little chapters, short responsories, and verses are taken from the common of a confessor bishop, not the common of one martyr; and the psalms for vespers are the psalms of second vespers of Sunday (with a substitution for the fifth psalm), but compline is of the feria. While one can trace the individual components of St. Martin’s office to their original sources, their combination means, essentially, that St. Martin’s feast has a proper office. (Which resembles a second-class feast much more closely than a third-class feast.) This is no ordinary third-class feast.

So we did a little digging, and found that Gregory DiPippo anticipated our curiosity today with a fascinating article at New Liturgical Movement on St. Martin’s office. In short, St. Martin’s feast has always, for our purposes, had special treatment in the Roman Rite. Discussing William Durandus‘s commentary, DiPippo observes,

only Martin’s was considered important enough to be kept with an octave, as was the general custom in the Middle Ages, and in many places well beyond that. It was also the only feast of a Confessor kept with a proper Office in the medieval use of the Papal chapel at Rome, which formed the basis of the Tridentine liturgical books; not even the four great Doctors or Saint Benedict have their own Offices in the Roman Use.

(Emphasis supplied.) DiPippo tells us the astonishing fact that Isti confessor Domini—the great hymn for confessors—was originally composed for St. Martin. Dom Prosper Gueranger fleshes this bit of information out and tells us that St. Odo of Cluny, a canon of Tours before going to Cluny, composed Isti confessor Domini for Martin, to whom he had no small devotion—no doubt as he was imploring Martin’s help in converting the monks and canons of Tours from their laxity. (As you might expect, Urban VIII improved Odo’s composition in Papa Barberini’s inimitable, impeccable Latin. Immeasurably, no doubt.) DiPippo and Gueranger tell us also that there were other compositions dedicated to Martin, particularly Adam of St. Victor’s sequence Gaude Sion, which DiPippo discusses at some length. At any rate, the office of St. Martin was (essentially) a proper office well before 1568/1570, when the Tridentine books were established. As we said, St. Martin’s feast has always received special treatment in the Roman Rite as we know it today.

And it still does. In the Liturgia Horarum, St. Martin’s feast is an obligatory commemoration, with proper antiphons and psalms at morning prayer and evening prayer, proper antiphons for the Benedictus and the Magnificat, and Isti confessor Domini as the proper hymn for the office of readings and evening prayer, instead of the hymns set forth in the common of pastors with the verses for bishops (another point in favor of the contention that Isti confessor Domini was Martin’s hymn before it was most confessors’). We find this point really extraordinary, given the fact that the Liturgia Horarum generally minimizes the saints’ offices in favor of the occurring offices. (As we noted above the revisions to the office beginning with Pius X have favored preserving the integrity of the psalter over the saints’ offices; the Liturgia Horarum just carries that idea forward a little bit.) But not Martin’s office. Acknowledging the major differences between the 1960 Breviary and the Liturgia Horarum, Martin’s office still looks like Martin’s office.

And it is easy to understand why with a little digging. The excellent Veneremur Cernui (A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics) this time last year had a post recounting Gueranger’s entry for St. Martin’s feast. From Gueranger:

Has that history of the brightest days of the Church, of the reign of Christ as King, come to an end, O Martin? Let the enemy imagine he has already sealed our tomb: but the story of thy miracles tells us that thou canst raise up even the dead. Was not the catechumen of Ligugé snatched from the land of the living, when thou didst call him back to life and baptism? Supposing that, like him, we were already among those whom the Lord remembereth no more, the man or the country that has Martin for protector and father need never yield to despair. If thou deign to bear us in mind, the angels will come and say again to the supreme Judge: “This is the man, this is the nation, for whom Martin prays,” and they will be commanded to draw us out of the dark regions where dwell the people without glory, and to restore us to Martin, and to our noble destinies.

Thy zeal, however, for the advancement of God’s kingdom knew no limits. Inspire, then, strengthen, and multiply the apostles all over the world, who, like thee, are driving out the forces of infidelity. Restore Christian Europe, which still honors thy name, to the unity so unhappily dissolved by schism and heresy. In spite of the many efforts to the contrary, maintain thy noble fatherland in its post of honor, and in its traditions of brave fidelity, even though it now be so sadly fallen. May thy devout clients in all lands experience that thy right arm still suffices to protect those who implore thee.

(Emphasis and a few alterations supplied.) Gueranger’s full prayer to St. Martin may be found through Google Books, too.  With that in mind, it seems entirely appropriate that St. Martin is entitled to his privileged place in the Roman Rite. And with that in mind, it seems entirely appropriate at this moment to beseech Martin’s intercession for both Church and state.

O beatum Pontificem qui totis visceribus diligebat Christum Regem, et non formidabat imperii principatum: o sanctissima anima, quam etsi gladius persecutoris non abstulit, palmam tamen martyrii non amisit!

There is something special, we think, about celebrating—as both the Forma Ordinaria and the  Forma Extraordinaria do today—the Dedication of the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, known, more commonly, as “St. John Lateran.” (We’ll call it the “Archbasilica” here, though we acknowledge that “St. John Lateran” is what everyone calls it.)

As most folks know, the Archbasilica is the cathedral church of the bishop of Rome and, therefore, the “mother church and head of all the churches of Rome and the world.” And the Lateran basilica traces its foundation back to Constantine’s gratitude to Pope Silvester for his baptism and miraculous cure. The feast of its dedication therefore points to the unity of the Church throughout the world and to the history of the Church, as the persecutions ended (for the most part) and the Church began its progress in the light of day.

It seems to us that the feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica is exactly the sort of salubrious ultramontanism that we ought to celebrate more. Not the sort of super-dogmatic ultramontanism that devolves quickly into what Elliot Milco has called Mottramism—after the hapless convert Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited. You know the sort. “Everything the Pope says must be absolutely true and correct no matter what.” “This Pope is the best exponent of such-and-such doctrine.” So on and so forth. Such Mottramism does a real disservice to the Church, which is forced to depend on one man’s off-the-cuff statement, to the pope, who may not have signed up for the job if he knew his every thought was going to be treated as dogma, and to the faithful, who ought not to be deprived of the teachings of so many good and holy popes over the centuries. This is not a good ultramontanism. But the feast we celebrate today is good ultramontanism.

The feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica reminds us first that we are members of one Church. We can look at the Archbasilica and see the church of the bishop of Rome, who is, ultimately, our bishop, too. This is a key point from Milco’s exposition of Pastor aeternus: the pope is everyone’s bishop—that’s what universal, immediate, and ordinary jurisdiction means—he is not merely the bishops’ bishop or some higher, appellate instance of the Church. He’s our bishop and your bishop and our bishops’ bishop, too. Thus, when we look at our bishop’s church, we see a building that represents in some way the unity of the Church.

The Archbasilica reminds us also that there is an unbroken—if a little bruised, frankly—cultural trajectory from ancient Rome through the Church to the present day. We can look at the Archbasilica and see an unbroken path leading all the way back to Constantine’s baptism by Silvester all those years ago. The Archbasilica represents, to put it another way, continuity between ancient Rome, those parts of it worth saving, at any rate, and the Church of today.

This is a sort of ultramontanism that we need more of. Not the pope as some sort of magical figure, but the pope, and his cathedral church, as a sign of unity and continuity.

Postscript:

We were in the process of writing this post when we were called away from our desk on some business. When we got back to our desk, we found that Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., had reposted his 2011 piece, “The Dedication of the Lateran as the Feast of the Church Militant,” from his blog, Sancrucensis. A brief selection:

The Apostles shed their blood in Rome, but their blood became the seed of the conversion of the whole city and all that was great in it. And the symbol of all this is the dedication of the Lateran Basilica to ‘Christ the Savior’.

While we hope for the final peace of the heavenly Jerusalem we are at war. The Church on earth is Roman, She is militant. The daily combat combat waged in our souls against the false gods of this world is more than a merely individual struggle; it is one battlefield of a great war that is to spread the new pax romana throughout the world. It is sweet and noble to fight and suffer for such a City!

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

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.