Dissertation on The Prymer. CHAPTER I. LTHOUGH I do not propose to give in my present work any portion of the Breviaries, of the Church of England, yet the Prymer which I am now about to lay before the reader is so connected with them, in matter and arrangement (in one sense, indeed, a part of them), that it would seem I think an unpardonable omission to pass them by unnoticed. And, moreover, these volumes being intended to illustrate, so far as their limits will allow, the early and later Ritual and Offices of our Church, I feel for that reason bound to take this opportunity of giving a short account of the ancient divisions and offices of the ecclesiastical day, from which our modern Matins and Evensong have been derived. The remarks which I have made in the preface to the Ancient Liturgies, upon the variety of Uses as regarded the missal, which formerly to a much greater extent than now, prevailed through the whole Western Church, are equally applicable to the breviary. That power which, as I have there said, was vested in each Bishop to provide as he himself, under certain conditions, thought best for the public worship of the churches of his diocese, would not have failed to have been exercised over the less solemn offices, as well as over the most important of them all, which concerned the Eucharist. Hence there were the Breviaries of York and Sarum, which have been printed; and doubtless an accurate examination into the manuscript stores of our great libraries, would give us examples still extant of the Breviaries of the other great English Uses, the Hereford, the Lincoln, and the Bangor. The observations which follow, will not be affected by the differences, whether great or small, which unquestionably existed between the Service Books of those Churches. By the word Breviary we are to understand an arrangement of certain Divine Offices, constructed out of Prayers, and Psalms, and Hymns, and Canticles, and Lessons taken from the sacred Scriptures or writings of the holy Fathers; which was authorized and ordained to be continually performed before God, at certain hours of the day and night throughout the year, by and for the Church.1 Other terms to signify the same arrangement are frequently to be met with: such as, Officium divinum, or ecclesiasticum, or canonicum; or Orarium, or Horæ canonica, and sometimes Cursus.2 |