We are grateful to Polish philosopher Paweł Milcarek, founder and editor-in-chief of the important Polish journal Christianitas, for submitting this article to NLM for publication. It will appear in two parts. – PAK
From very early times, the Church regarded the Psalms as privileged and irreplaceable way of fulfilling the command to “pray ceaselessly”, obeyed either almost literally e.g. by the Desert Fathers, or at least through appointment of fixed, recurring times of day and night prayer. For many centuries the Psalms – ordered in the books of the Divine Service and recited in times that determined the daily rhythm of the whole Christian world – constituted the main point of reference for prayer of all the faithful, both the clergy and the laymen. In the popular piety, however, they were obscured in the course of time by the “equivalents” of saying the Ave Maria and Pater Noster, or substituted with a variety of private devotions and spiritual exercises, remaining – as the breviary – the daily bread only of clergy and monks.
Hence in the modern age, the breviary became “the priests’ prayer” and the picture of a clergyman saying his breviary – in Latin, of course, but more and more often privately, somewhere in the outside, e.g. in the garden – entered the collective imagination of Christian societies as one of the attributes of this specific vocation. Moreover, though the laymen were rather reluctant to make use of the breviary, they were nevertheless aware of the fact that in a way it provided the clergymen with spiritual vigour. No wonder that the misbehaving priests were mockingly described as those “who deny themselves neither the cognac, nor the breviary”. Hence, the breviary was regarded both as the clergymen’s privilege and as their duty.
If we are to trace out here the modern reforms of the Roman Breviary – or, strictly speaking, of its core, that is the Psalter – let us begin by posing the question: what kind of breviary was used by the Catholic priests of the Roman rite at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries? This question is easy to answer: it must have been the Roman Breviary, codified in 1568 by St. Pius V, compatible with the last typical edition issued in 1631 by Urban VIII and renewed by Leo XIII. [i]
In fact, this “Tridentine” breviary was much older than this general description seems to suggest. For as in the case of the Roman Missal of 1570, the post-Tridentine reform extended on the whole Roman Rite the rules of the prayer that for centuries had been established within the local Church of the papal Rome. The backbone of the breviary of St. Pius V – that is, its psalmody – was hardly any different from the oldest forms of the Roman Office we know from the 5th and the 6th centuries.
The priest reciting the Roman Breviary in the end of the 19th or in the very beginning of the 20th century used precisely such a “Tridentine” liturgical book, based on the Psalter of two saint popes: Gregory the Great and Pius V. However, paradoxically, it is not so easy to determine how his breviary prayer actually looked like. For in the course of the centuries that elapsed from 1568 to the end of the belle époque a number of factors appeared which made the practice of saying the breviary highly complicated.
In the first place, these was the considerable increase in the number of feasts of saints on the liturgical calendar, which impeded most of the Office of the various seasons. For the psalmody, this meant substituting the complete Psalter with much narrower choice of festive Psalms.
By the end of the 19th century, this uncontrolled domination of the Sanctoral cycle – related to the constant accumulation of new feasts – was accompanied by yet another move which deeply changed the very logic of the Office. To avoid overburdening the clergy with the recitation of breviary prayer, in 1883 Leo XIII granted a general indult, according to which throughout the whole liturgical year, it was allowed to substitute the Office of almost any feria or feast of the lowest rank with votive offices appointed to the various ferias (Monday: of the Holy Angels, Tuesday: of the Holy Apostles, Wednesday: of St. Joseph, Thursday: of the Blessed Sacrament, Friday: of the Lord’s Passion, Saturday: of the Immaculate Conception) [ii].
Taking into consideration the complexity of the system of feasts of that time, it is understandable that the possibility of saying throughout the week simply subsequent votive offices, characterized by clear devotional “motives”, was a tempting solution due to its simplicity or rememberable ordering. But in the same time both these factors (i.e. domination of the Sanctorale and substitution of the current office with the votive offices) led to continuous repetition of the Sunday psalmody in Lauds and to very frequent repetition of various Sunday Psalms in Vespers. Hence, only a little portion of the Psalter was actually used and, most of the Psalms appeared very rarely.
And yet the breviary Psalter as such had not been so far narrowed down – in theory it still comprised 150 Psalms, distributed over the course of one week.
Most unusual reorganization: “a new arrangement of the Psalter” of 1911
Such were the challenges faced by St. Pius X, who became pope in 1903. Convinced of the necessity to arouse and shape piety through the liturgy of the Church, he attempted to bring out basic structures of the liturgical heritage, sometimes completely obscured by later additions. Two motives were closely intertwined in this work: a desire to restore the primacy of the liturgical seasons and Sundays within the liturgical year, and and to restore the practice of saying the complete Psalter within a week. Here we will discuss this second issue.
In the apostolic constitution Divino afflatu [iii] of 1st November 1911, St. Pius X remind us of the ancient law that obliges the clergy to recite the whole Psalter within a week. The pope states that it is his intention to restore this practice in such a way that, on the one hand, the change would not cause any diminution of the cultus of saints, and on the other hand, would make the burden of the Office not more oppressive, but actually lighter for the clergy. Having both these issues in mind, the pope had appointed the commission consisting “of learned and active men”, who prepared “a new arrangement of the Psalter”.
As a consequence, the Holy Father decided to “abolish the order of the Psalter as it is at present in the Roman Breviary” and to “absolutely forbid the use of it” after 1st January 1913. Commanding the use the “new arrangement of the Psalter” from now on, the Pope proclaims that those who disobey this order will be punished. He concludes:
all such are to know that they will not be satisfying this grave duty [of reciting the canonical hours everyday] unless they use this our disposition of the psalmody.
In practice the severity of this regulation was eased by the indults, which allowed to use “the old arrangement of the Psalter” in private recitation.
Obviously, this “new arrangement of the Psalter” radically broke off with the ordering of the psalmody as it had been within the Roman Breviary of St. Pius V. Although continuity was preserved, for example, in case of Sunday Vespers, the order of this breviary Psalter was actually new. Moreover, it was a novelty also in comparison to the older, pre-Tridentine offices of the Roman rite. Nowhere in the history of the Roman psalmody – even reaching to its oldest versions we know, coming from the 5th and the 6th centuries – can we find the basis and the antecedents for the Psalter of 1911; in the same time, there exists a clear continuity between those ancient forms and the Breviary of 1568.
Hence we are safe to say that the number of Psalms in Matins of Sundays or ferial days had never been lower than 12; that usually the morning office had comprised 8 Psalms, including three Laudate Psalms [iv] and Psalm 50 (the latter from the 6th century had been recited almost daily); that parts of Psalm 118 had dominated Prime and other Minor Hours throughout the whole week; that from the very beginning Compline had included three defined Psalms (4, 90 and 133), used throughout the whole week. All these points have been truly modified by the Psalter of 1911 – the solutions it proposed more or less radically abandoned own tradition of the Roman office.
This fairly controversial move was made because the clergy of that time felt somewhat “overburdened” by the Office. The attempt was therefore made to reduce this burden by proposing a well-balanced Psalter, based on the principle that each Psalm should be recited no more than once a week. [v] Hence, the reform of the breviary introduced by St. Pius X can be regarded as an adjustment of the Office to the longing for change, a result of the struggle with the weariness.
It is worth to recall the words by a distinguished expert in history of the Divine Service, Fr. Robert Taft S.J., who summarized these changes in a following way: “For anyone with a sense of the history of the Office, this was a shocking departure from almost universal Christian Tradition.” [vi]
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| Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed |
The Psalter of the professors: “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” of 1945
Over thirty years after the introduction of “a new arrangement of the Psalter” by St. Pius X, another pope, Pius XII, introduced a new Latin translation of Psalms into liturgical usage.
In his motu proprio In cotidianis precibus of 25th March 1945 [vii], the pope firstly speaks (rather guardedly) of inaccuracies and deficiencies in the Vulgate translations of the Psalms. Reading between the lines of the document, we may say that the pope considers them increasingly annoying, especially when compared to the new translations which are based on original texts, and take advantage of progress in the knowledge of ancient languages, as well as of modern methods of textual criticism. The pope is aware that the Vulgate Psalter is deeply rooted within Christian tradition and that it had affected the way the Holy Fathers and Doctors had commented the Psalms. Nevertheless, expectations of the priests (“a good many” of them), as well as demands of the learned men, bishops and cardinals convinced the Holy Father to give an order that “a new Latin translation of the Psalms” is prepared. On the one hand, it was to follow the original text precisely and faithfully; on the other, as far as it was possible, it had to take into account “the venerable Vulgate”, as well as other ancient translations, referring to “sound critical norms” whenever there would be differences between them.
The document then states that the new version has already been completed “with the diligence befitting such a task” by the professors of the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Hence the pope offers it “to all who have the obligation to recite the canonical Hours daily” and permits them “to use it, should they wish to do so, in either private or public recitation”.
As it is indicated a few times in the document, the main aim of the whole undertaking was to enable those praying with the new Psalter to grasp more fully what is said in the Holy Book. The pope emphasizes that he is driven by pastoral concerns: he wishes the Psalms to be recited “not only with sincere devotion but with fuller understanding as well”.
Still, in the document itself there is a supposition that “there are times when, even after every help that text criticism and a knowledge of languages can offer has been exhausted, the meaning of the words is still not perfectly clear”. In such cases “their more definite clarification will have to be left to future study.”
This papal regulation led to an unheard-of situation: from now on, the translation recommended by Pius XII was to coexist in the liturgy of the Church together with the Vulgate version – unless everybody “should wish to” accept this new translation.
For the question arises whether it was really impossible to correct the Vulgate version instead of creating a brand new translation. Since the times of St. Pius X, the Benedictines from the Roman abbey of St. Jerome had been preparing a revision of Vulgate. Despite this, Pius XII decided to promote for liturgical usage a new translation, prepared at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.
However, the Jesuits from this Institute did not restrict themselves to capturing correctly “the Hebrew truth”; in preparing this new version, they shaped its language after a distinctly classical style, distancing themselves from the specific qualities of Christian Latin. Their Psalter sounded like the works by Cicero, whose Latin was certainly more classical than that of St. Jerome. Moreover, their translation did not take into account the requirements of singing the Psalms in choir and in accordance with the principles of Gregorian chant. [viii]
Immediately after the release of In cotidianis precibus and in later Church publications ,there appeared, of course, loud voices of gratitude to the pope for his approval of the new version of the Psalter, deemed as “the sovereign gesture” made “when supreme good of Christian life demands it”. However, it is hard to prove that prior to this reform a conviction that the Vulgate posed a major threat to Christian life had really been widespread. [ix]
Regardless of the opinion one may have in the debate whether the version prepared at the Biblical Institute was indeed such a progress in translation, there is also another problematic issue: in the light of the principle of the organic development, the will to improve some aspect of the liturgy is not a sufficient reason to question the existing tradition – what is needed is the moral certainty that such an undertaking is indispensable for the benefit of spiritual life.
Part 2 will continue with “The Psalter according to the Second Vatican Council.”
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NOTES
[i] Breviarium Romanum ex decreti S.sancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, s. Pii V P.M. iussu editum, Clementis VIII, Urbani VIII et Leonis XIII auctoritate recognitum.
[ii] See ASS 16 (1883-1884), pp. 47-48 (for the decree) and pp. 145-180 (for the texts of the offices).
[iii] Hereinafter cited as in: AAS 3 (1911), pp. 633-650.
[iv] Anton Baumstark remarked: “Down to the year 1911 there was nothing in the Christian Liturgy of such absolute universality as this practice in the morning office [i.e. daily recitation of Laudate Psalms], and no doubt its universality was inherited from the worship of the Synagogue... Hence to the reformers of the Psalterium Romanum belongs the distinction of having brought to an end the universal observance of a liturgical practice which was followed, one can say, by the Divine Redeemer Himself during His life on earth” (as cited in: Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, San Francisco 2005, pp. 75n; hereinafter referred to as: Reid, 2005).
[v] In practice it was often considered necessary to divide particular Psalms – hence, instead of a few Psalms, subsequent “parts” of even one and the same Psalm were to be recited within one office.
[vi] As cited in Reid, 2005, p. 76
[vii] AAS 37 (1945), pp. 65-67.
[viii] Cf. Carlo Braga, La Liturgia delle Ore al Vaticano II, Rome 2008, p. 38; hereinafter referred to as: Braga, 2008.
[ix] Cf. Reid, 2005, p. 157.
