enriched the calendar by adding the names of many
saints; he added votive offices, corrected the Breviary lessons for the
feasts of a number of Popes, and, in 1902, he appointed a commission to
deal with the hagiography of the Breviary and with its liturgy; but his
death in the following year ended the work of the commission,

The unsatisfactory condition of the rules for the recitation of the
Divine Office were apparent to everyone. Scholars feared to face
Breviary reform, the difficulties were so innumerable and so immense.
However, with wonderful courage and prudence, Pope Pius X. (1903-1914)
tackled the work. He resolved not to adopt a series of minor changes in
the Breviary, but to appoint an active commission of reform, whose first
work should be a rearrangement of the psalter which must bring back the
recitation of the Divine Office to its early ideal--the weekly
recitation of the whole psalter. The problem which faced Pope Pius X. in
1906 was the very same problem which faced his predecessor St, Pius V.
(1566-1572), more than three hundred years ago. St. Pius tried to solve
the problem by a reform of the calendar, but the solution produced no
permanent effect. Pius X. and his commission went to the root of the
difficulty, and by a redistribution of the psalms have made the ferial
and the festive offices almost equal in length, and have so arranged
matters that the frequent recitation of every psalm, and the possible
and probable recitation of every psalm, once every week, is now an
accomplished fact; and the old and much-sought-after ideal--the weekly
recitation of the whole Psalter--is of world-wide practice.

On the publication of the new Psalter, Pope Pius announced that a
commission would undertake a complete revision of the Breviary, a matter
of great importance and one which must demand long years of care and
study to accomplish. A member of the committee which re-arranged the
Psalter, Monsignor Piacenza, tells us that such revision must embrace:--

1. A reform of the calendar and the drafting of rules for the admission
of feasts into the calendar of the universal Church;

2. The critical revision and correction of the historic and patristic
texts;

3. The removal of spurious patristic texts;

4. The remodelling of the rubrics;

5. The institution of a new form of common office for confessors and for
virgins to facilitate the lessening of the number of feasts of saints,
without diminishing the honou