ard to guide the recital,
and the wars of liturgists, made chaos and turmoil.
Liturgical reform became an urgent need. Everyone reciting the canonical
hours longed for a great and drastic change. The Humanists, Cardinal
Bembo (1470-1549), Ferreri, Bessarion, and Pope Leo X. (1513-1521)
considered the big faults of the Breviary to lie in its barbarous
Latinity. They wished the Lessons to be written In Ciceronian style and
the hymns to be modelled on the Odes of Horace. Ferreri's attempt at
reforming the Breviary dealt with the hymns, some of which he re-wrote
in very noble language, but he was so steeped in pagan mythology that he
even introduced heathen expressions and allusions, His work was a
failure. The traditional school represented by Raoul of Tongres,
Burchard, Caraffa, and John De Arze loved the past with so great a love
that they refused to countenance any notable reforms, A third school,
the moderate school, was represented by Cardinal Pole, Contarini,
Sadolet and Quignonez, a Spanish cardinal who had been General of the
Franciscans. The work of reform of the Breviary was undertaken by
Cardinal Quignonez (1482-1540). He was a man of great personal piety and
possessed a love for liturgy and an accurate knowledge of its history,
its essentials, and its acquired defects. After seven years' labour at
the matter and form of the Breviary, his work, Quignonez's Breviary
(_Brevarium Romanum a Francisco Cardinali Quignonio_) appeared in
1535. It was for private use only, and was not intended as a choir
manual. Yet so popular was his work that, in 1536, six editions had
appeared, and in thirty-three years (until its suppression by St. Pius
V,) it went through no less than a hundred editions. Its immense success
shows how much the need of Breviary change and reform was felt by the
clergy. The book, too, had an important influence on shaping the
Breviary produced by Pius V. (1566-1572). Quignonez's book was
reproduced with the variations of the four earliest editions, by the
Cambridge University Press in 1888. It is an interesting study in itself
and in comparison with later breviaries.
But it was felt by scholars that Quignonez's reforms were too drastic.
Tradition was ignored. The labour for brevity, simplicity and uniformity
led to the removal from this Breviary of antiphons, responses, little
chapters and versicles, and to the reduction of lessons at matins to
three, and the number of psalms in each hour was usuall
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