guest post by James I. McCauley
The First A Short Breviary, 1941
At the time of his death in 1938, one
of the projects Dom Virgil Michel was working on was a condensed
version of the roman breviary in the Vernacular. Dom Godfrey
Diekmann O.S.B. (1908-2002) pushed the work along and the work
received the support of the then Abbot of St. John’s Alcuin
Deutsch, O.S.B. (Abbot of St. John’s 1921-1950). A key factor was
that the Breviary would only be in the vernacular, and not in Latin.
The Breviary was a simplified Roman Breviary, not the Monastic
Breviary, though Monastic Compline was provided. The Vulgate Psalms
were used in this first edition. Receiving its imprimatur in November
of 1940, the first printing of the first edition came out in 1941 and
quickly sold out. Further printings were done in 1942, 1943, 1944,
1945 and 1951. The volume was titled A Short Breviary For The
Religious and For The Laity. Amazing, every copy of the first
edition (in its various printings, confusing called “editions”)
that have come into my possession were once owned by lay folks, men
and women! Anyone who was associated with the League of the
Divine Office in this era more likely than not used this
Breviary. It was phenomenally successful, and I have found used
copies from all over the Midwest and the northeast. Only one of the
thirty plus copies I have seen over the years has been associated
with a religious. All seem to be laymen, and, at most, possibly
tertiaries. Please note that this was all before Vatican II, when
the layperson was supposedly sitting dumbly in his pew, clutching his
rosary, and not understanding a thing as to what was going on. In
plain English, active participation in the liturgy by the laity was
taking place well before the liturgical changes inaugurated by
Vatican II.
Just how successful was this book? My
grandfather, a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy,
received a copy in 1944 and brought his copy out into the Pacific
with him in 1944-1945. He used it faithfully. Many years later, in
1981 after his death, I inherited it, and I began to use it in
September 1986. I used this regularly, on and off, had it rebound,
until I finally replaced it with the Monastic Diurnal in the
fall of 2009.
We have two images of the Short
Breviary, one showing the Beuronese style front plate as it was
in the 1941 through 1945. The 1951 shows the first piece of Brother
Placid Stuckenschneider OSB (1926-2007) art associated with the Short
Breviary.
The Breviary set in motion the great
work of St. John’s Abbey and the Liturgical Press in regards to the
Breviary, a work that should not be forgotten.
