Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/50

 DIRECTORIES

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DIRECTORIES

an index of the names and addresses of the Catholic clergy sen'ing the missions in England and Scotland. This feature has been imitated in the " Irish Catholic Directory" and in the Catholic Directories of the United States. Hence the widespread idea that Catholic directories are so called because they com- monly form an address book for the churches and clergy of a particular country, but an examination of the early numbers of the "Laity's Directory" con- clusively shows that it was only to the calendar with its indication of the daily Mass and Office that the name originally applied.

Former Us.\ge. — In the Middle Ages, and indeed almost down to the invention of printing, the books u.sed in the service of the Church were much more divided up than they are at pre.sent. Instead of one book, our motlern Breviary for example, containing the whole Office, we find at least four books — the Psalterium, the HjTnnariimi, the Antiphonarium, and the Legendarium, or book of lessons, all in separate volumes. Rubrics or ritual directions were rarely written down in connexion with the text to which they belonged (we are speaking here of the Mass and Office, not of the services of rarer occurrence such as those in the Pontifical), but they were probably at first com- municated by oral tradition only, and when they be- gan to be recorded they took only such summary form as we find in the "Ordines Romani" of Hittorp and Mabillon. However, about the eleventh century there grew up a tendency towards greater elaboration and precision in rubrical directions for the services, and at the same time we notice the beginning of a more or less strongly marked division of these directions into two classes, which in the case of the Sarum Use are con- veniently distinguished as the Customary and the Ordinal. Speaking generally, we may say that the for- mer of these rubrical books contains the principles and the latter their application; the former determines those matters that are constant and primarily the duties of persons, the latter deals with the arrange- ments which vary from day to day and from year to year. It is out of the latter of these books, i. e. the Ordinal ( often called Ordinarium and Liber Ordinarius), that the " Directorium", or "Pye", and eventually also our own modern "Ordo recitandi" were in due time evolved. These distinctions are not clear-cut. The process was a gradual one. But we may distin- guish in the English and also in the Continental Or- dinals two different stages. We have, first, the type of book in common use from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and represented by the "Sarum Ordinal" edited by W. H. Frere, or the "Ordinaria of Laon" edited by Chevalier. Here we have a gi-eat deal of miscellaneous information respecting feasts, the Office and Mass to be said upon them according to the changes necessitated by the occurrence of Easter and the .shifting of the Svmdays, as well as the " Incipits " of the details of the .service, e. g. of the le.ssons to be read anil the commemorations to be made. The second stage took the form of an adaptation of this Ordinal for ready use, an adaptation with which, in the case of Sarum, the name of Clement Maydeston is prominently connected. This was the " Directorium Sacertlotum ' ', the complete "Pye" (known in Latin as Pica Sarum), abbreviated editions of which were afterwards pub- lished in a form which allowed it to be bound up with the respective portions of the Breviary. The idea of this great "Pye" was to give all the thirty-five possi- ble combinations, five to each Dominical Letter (q. v.), which the fixed and movable elements of the ecclesias- tical year admitted of, assigning a separate calendar to each, more or less corresponding to our present "Ordo recitandi". This arrangement was not pecu- liar to England.

One of the earliest printed books of the kind was that issued about 1475 for the Diocese of Constance, of which a rubricated copy is to be found in the British

Museum. It is a small folio in size, of one hundred and twelve leaves, and after the ordinary calendar it sup- plies summary rules, under thirty-five heads, for draw- ing up the special calendar for each year according to the Golden Number and the Dominical Letter. Then the Ordo for each of the thirty-five possible combinations is set out in detail. The name most commonly given to these "Pyes" on the Continent was "Ordinarius", more rarely " Directorium Missie". For example, the title of such a book printed for the Diocese of Liege in 1492 runs: "In nomine Domini Amen . . . Incipit liber Ordinarius ostendens qualiter legatur et cantetur per totum anni circulum in ecclesia leodiensi tam de tempore quam de festis sanctorum in noctumis ofiiciis divinis." Such books were also provided for the re- ligious orders. An "Ordinarius Ordinis Prsmonstra- tensis" exi.sts in manuscript at Jesus College, Cam- bridge, and an early printed one in the British Museum. When the use of printing became universal, the step from these rather copious directories, which served for all possible years, to a shorter.guide of the type of our modern "Ordo recitandi", and intended only for one particular year, was a short and easy one. Since, how- ever, such publications are useless after their purpose is once served, they are very liable to destruction, and it seems impossible to say how early we may date the first attempt at producing an Ordo after our modern fashion. The fact that at the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIII, De Reform., cap. xviii) it was thought neces- sary to urge that ecclesiastical students should be trained in the understanding of the computus, by which they could determine the ordo recitandi in each year for themselves, seems to imply that such Ordos as we now possess were not m familiar use in the middle of the sLxteenth centurj'.

Modern Directories. — At the present day it may be said that in every part of the world not only is a printed Ordo provided for the clergy of every diocese and religious institute, but that almost everywhere some adaptation of this is available for the use of the laity. The earliest English attempt at anj'thing of the sort seems to have been a little "Catholic Almanac", which appeared for three or four years in the reign of James II (see The Month, vol. CXI, 1908). But this was a mere calendar of feasts without any directions for the Office and Mass. In Ireland the work which at present appears under the title "The Irish Catholic Directory and Almanac for 1909, with a complete Directory in English" seems to have existed under various names since 1S37 or earlier. It was first called "A Complete Catholic Directorj-", and then, in 1846, "Battersby's Registry", from the name of the pub- lisher. For Scotland", though the Scottish missions are included in the "Catholic Directory" published in London, there is also a separate "Catholic Directory for the Clergy and Laity of Scotland" which began imder a slightly different name in 1808. Catholic Directories also exist for the Australian and Canadian provinces, and occasionally for separate dioceses, e. g. the Diocese of Birmingham, Englanil, possesses an "Official Directory" of its own. Attention may briefly be called, also, to two Roman handbooks of a character somewfiat analogous to our Directories, which supply names and tletails regarding the Catholic hierarchy throughout the world and especially regard- ing the cardinals, the Roman Congregations and their personnel, the prelates and camerieri, etc., in attend- ance upon the papal court. The first of these, called since 1872 "La Gerarchia Cattolica e la Famiglia Pontificia", was first published in 1716 and was long familiarly known as "Cracas" from the name of the publisher. Officially, the early numbers were simply called "Notizie per'l'.-Vnno 1716, etc." (see Moroni, Dizionario, XX, 26 sqq.). The other work, which is very similar in character, but somewhat more ample in its "information, has appeared since 1898 under the title " .\nnuario Ecclesiastico ". Finally we notice the