Why is the breviary expensive?

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When I look online to see Breviary books for sale they are around $300-$400.
 
Basically because the costs are spread across a very small number of sales compared to, say, a comparably-sized “best seller”.
 
You can find them in app form for free. Just do a search here on the forum and you will find several threads with links.

There is an Anglican Breviary which uses the Roman Calendar (they spell it kalendar) in use 1955. Except for a few Anglican Saint days and options for a few Anglican collects (though the Catholic ones are there as well) it is thoroughly Catholic. Oh, and it uses old English. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Breviary

They cost $90.00 and can be found online.
 
johnnyt3000 said:
When I look online to see Breviary books for sale they are around $300-$400.
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I don’t think you’re looking in the right places. Catholic Book Publishing Corp has the 4-volume set in vinyl for $155., and in leather with gilded edges for $175. for the full 4-volume set.
 
 
For a more traditional breviary, check out the Angelus Press divine office. It has prime, sext, and compline for every day and then lauds, prime, sext, vespers, and compline for Sundays. It is the pre-V2 office.

And there is nothing wrong with it just because its the SSPX publishing house. Just wanted to throw that out there.
 
landon13 said:
For a more traditional breviary, check out the Angelus Press divine office. It has prime, sext, and compline for every day and then lauds, prime, sext, vespers, and compline for Sundays. It is the pre-V2 office.

And there is nothing wrong with it just because its the SSPX publishing house. Just wanted to throw that out there.
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Apart from the general structure, the presence of Prime and the fact that theoretically the entire psalter is prayed in one week, the pre-Vatican II Roman Breviary is hardly traditional. It was promulgated in 1910. The Liturgy of the Hours, in 1970. The 1960 breviary, which uses the 1910 psalter, has been the “ordinary” breviary for 60 years; the Liturgy of the Hours, for 45 years. The 1960 Breviary, based on the 1910, was in itself an enormous departure from the breviary of Trent: it reduced the psalmody by about 100 psalms per week, it broke up the Laudate psalms at Lauds (and even places one of them, ps. 148 before the Old Testament Canticle rather than after as tradition has always held, something the LOTH does not do).

I say that the psalter was “theoretically” said entirely in one week but the fact is that pre-Vatican II there were so many feasts, and one spent so much time in the festival psalter, it was frequently not recited entirely in one week.

There are many elements in the LOTH, especially when specific options are exercised, that have a lot in common with the breviary of St. Benedict, which is 1500 years old, which is the true traditional breviary still valid and licit to use in the Church.

Also, in the 1970 LOTH it is most certainly possible to pray Terce, Sext and None using the complementary psalter for two of those hours, and mid-day prayer for the remaining one. The complementary psalter is made up of the Gradual Psalms; in the monastic tradition these have always been used at the minor hours, but not in the Roman Breviary, so again this usage traces its way back 1500 years to St. Benedict. These short psalms were consigned to memory so that monks could recite the minor Offices while working in the fields.

I want to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong in using the 1960 breviary, it is both licit and valid to do so. I just take exception with the words “more traditional” when juxtaposing it against the LOTH. In some ways it is, in many ways, it most certainly is not. The Roman Breviary has undergone many, many reforms from its inception in about the 6th century, in particularly in the Carolingian era and at Trent, in addition to 1910, 1955, 1960 and 1970. Through that entire time the Monastic Breviary has been stable with respect to the psalmody (if the option to retain Prime is used), for all of its 1500 year existence.

The bottom line is that in my opinion (and I’m not alone on this), the LOTH is very much in keeping with the liturgical traditions of the Church; it can even be sung in Latin Gregorian chant, all the books needed to do so exist.

(as an aside, this has been a research project of mine and I just presented the outcome of this research at our annual Oblate’s Retreat this past weekend; the work has been vetted by the oblate master who is also choir master and chief liturgist of the abbey).
 
The OP is not looking at the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours, but rather the 1961 ed. of the Roman Breviary (thus, the posting in the sub-forum “Traditional Catholicism”).

I have the Baronius Breviary. It’s nice, but a little pricey and I find that I don’t really use it much. If I had to do it all over again, I’d start by using the www.divinumofficium.com website to see if I actually liked praying the older Office. It can be a real time commitment that the average layman cannot handle. If I couldn’t handle the whole Office, then I’d cut out Matins and whatever else I couldn’t do, and I’d just focus on praying those hours I can do. Once I got used to praying the Office on the website and I was familiar with the Psalms, I’d switch to a real book, the Roman Diurnal. It has everything but Matins and is less than a third of the price. The catch is, it’s all Latin. Not a bit of English in it. I have the Diurnal and really like it.

If you really need Latin with an English translation, then I’d get the Monastic Diurnal. It’s not the same arrangement of Psalms as the Roman Breviary, and the saints’ feasts follow the Benedictine calendar, but it is still the same flavor.

If you don’t have time for any of this, then I’d probably just get a nice prayerbook like Blessed Be God.
 
Windmill said:
The OP is not looking at the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours, but rather the 1961 ed. of the Roman Breviary (thus, the posting in the sub-forum “Traditional Catholicism”).
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Not that there’s anything un-traditional about praying the Divine Office in it’s current form. 🙂
 
Windmill said:
The OP is not looking at the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours, but rather the 1961 ed. of the Roman Breviary (thus, the posting in the sub-forum “Traditional Catholicism”).

I have the Baronius Breviary. It’s nice, but a little pricey and I find that I don’t really use it much. If I had to do it all over again, I’d start by using the www.divinumofficium.com website to see if I actually liked praying the older Office. It can be a real time commitment that the average layman cannot handle. If I couldn’t handle the whole Office, then I’d cut out Matins and whatever else I couldn’t do, and I’d just focus on praying those hours I can do. Once I got used to praying the Office on the website and I was familiar with the Psalms, I’d switch to a real book, the Roman Diurnal. It has everything but Matins and is less than a third of the price. The catch is, it’s all Latin. Not a bit of English in it. I have the Diurnal and really like it.

If you really need Latin with an English translation, then I’d get the Monastic Diurnal. It’s not the same arrangement of Psalms as the Roman Breviary, and the saints’ feasts follow the Benedictine calendar, but it is still the same flavor.

If you don’t have time for any of this, then I’d probably just get a nice prayerbook like Blessed Be God.
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The Monastic Diurnal is “traditional”; it has had a stable layout for 1500 years. It’s a misnomer to call the 1960 breviary “traditional”. It is pre-conciliar, but not traditional, as it’s layout is only 105 years old, and that layout is a major rupture from the breviary of Trent, which itself only existed for less than 400 years. There’s a reason for that, secular life has always changed more rapidly than life behind the cloister walls (though even that changes and monks have different breviary formulae they can now chose from even though the original remains licit and in use).

The problem with “traditional” Catholicism is that they Church has continually moved the (liturgical) goalposts for millennia, so it’s hard to pin down what is a durable “tradition”! The Roman Breviary didn’t even have hymns until about the 13th century, while the Monastic Breviary had them from the outset (called the “Ambrosian” in the Rule of Saint Benedict). The Roman Breviary was first defined in approx. the 6th Century, and was overhauled in the 10th, 13th, 16th and 20th centuries. The 4-week Liturgy of the Hours will overtake it in 15 years as the “ordinary” (vs. “extraordinary”) Divine Office of the Church.

Through that time, the Monastic Office, of which the Monastic Diurnal is a portion, has remained stable and continues in a post-conciliar form since the early 6th Century.

As for the Roman Office, the only thing that I think we can safely call “tradition” is the basic psalmody structure, the psalms themselves, the reservation of certain psalms for certain hours, and the notion of praying the Psalms at defined Canonical hours throughout the day. The rest has been subject to major changes at least 4 times in the past, the most recent time being 1910.

Therefore, as Agnes Therese says, praying the current Liturgy of the Hours most certainly is “traditional” Catholicism.
 
As I’ve mentioned in many posts previous, the loss of the Collects, the radical restructuring of the hours (both in number and individual arrangement of Psalms), the addition of “bidding prayers”, and the excision of the imprecatory psalms and “problematic” verses leave one with a distinctly “untraditional” flavor when praying the LOTH. I’m not saying that’s inherently wrong. The Holy See has the authority to change its liturgies since they are not written by the hand of God Himself. That having been said, if a priest from 1500AD was catapulted to present day and presented a 1961 Brevairium Romanum and 1970 LOTH, he would find a stronger consonance between his1500 breviary and the 1961 breviary than he would find between his 1500 breviary and the 1970 LOTH. That is why I call it traditional. Not because it is exactly the same. It is because there is an obvious attempt in the LOTH to change both the structure and tone of the prayers.
 
Windmill said:
As I’ve mentioned in many posts previous, the loss of the Collects, the radical restructuring of the hours (both in number and individual arrangement of Psalms), the addition of “bidding prayers”, and the excision of the imprecatory psalms and “problematic” verses leave one with a distinctly “untraditional” flavor when praying the LOTH. I’m not saying that’s inherently wrong. The Holy See has the authority to change its liturgies since they are not written by the hand of God Himself. That having been said, if a priest from 1500AD was catapulted to present day and presented a 1961 Brevairium Romanum and 1970 LOTH, he would find a stronger consonance between his1500 breviary and the 1961 breviary than he would find between his 1500 breviary and the 1970 LOTH. That is why I call it traditional. Not because it is exactly the same. It is because there is an obvious attempt in the LOTH to change both the structure and tone of the prayers.
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The 1960 breviary, is of course a new edition of the 1910. The 1910 was nearly as radical as the LOTH. About 100 psalms were chopped from the week, and an average of 263 psalm verses a day were omitted. Moreover, the 1400 year old (at that time) structure of Lauds was radically altered by the splitting and redistribution of the 3 “Laudate” psalms (148-150), Compline introduced a new variable schema (the LOTH restored, at least optionally, the invariable schema).

I daresay that your time-traveling priest would have been nearly as shocked in 1910-1970 as in post-1970! Also by 1960, Holy Week had been radically reformed; the classes of feasts greatly reduced, and the number of octaves significantly reduced. All prior to Vatican II.

There is of course much that is traditional in the 1970 LOTH which is why I call it “traditional”, as it is part of a living tradition. Moreover, read in light of Lumen Gentium, it makes perfect sense as the prayer of the entire Church with full participation of the laity, who were neither able (for the most part) nor encouraged to participate in the Divine Office prior to the LOTH except when it was prayed in Parishes, usually on Sundays.

While the LOTH has innovation and newness it also has tradition as part of a living tradition and for that reason, IMHO is no more, nor no less “traditional” than the 1960 Breviary. The Divine Office has undergone restructuring many times and with those years the correlation between monastic and secular practice widened (though sometimes the reverse happened, as the secular Divine Office did not have hymns until about the 13th century whereas the monastic did from the beginning 1500 years ago). The pace of change really accelerated in the 20th century, but that’s true of everything.

My understanding is that the 1910 Office caused just about as much whingeing as the 1970 LOTH as well; it really played havoc with the antiphonaries (remember that when prayed in community or on Sundays in parishes, the Office was often chanted) due to the new divisions of the psalms. I guess you can never please everyone 😉

I know many people including learned scholars disagree with me but I do know at least one who does, our oblate director who is also choirmaster and liturgist at our abbey; where I presented a detailed analysis of the LOTH compared to the historic Benedictine Divine Office. In fact the LOTH has more in common with the Monastic Office than the 1910 breviary, at least when a few options are exercised (hence the point of the presentation to Benedictine Oblates who want to unite their prayer with that of the monks). In that sense one can say the LOTH reaches further back into time than the 1910 breviary. The big departure is in the number of psalms, but again the 1910 breviary also reduced that greatly though the whole psalter was said in a week, at least on those few weeks when there wasn’t a feast putting you into the festival psalter.
 
OraLabora said:
The 1960 breviary, is of course a new edition of the 1910. The 1910 was nearly as radical as the LOTH. About 100 psalms were chopped from the week, and an average of 263 psalm verses a day were omitted. Moreover, the 1400 year old (at that time) structure of Lauds was radically altered by the splitting and redistribution of the 3 “Laudate” psalms (148-150), Compline introduced a new variable schema (the LOTH restored, at least optionally, the invariable schema).

I daresay that your time-traveling priest would have been nearly as shocked in 1910-1970 as in post-1970! Also by 1960, Holy Week had been radically reformed; the classes of feasts greatly reduced, and the number of octaves significantly reduced. All prior to Vatican II.

There is of course much that is traditional in the 1970 LOTH which is why I call it “traditional”, as it is part of a living tradition. Moreover, read in light of Lumen Gentium, it makes perfect sense as the prayer of the entire Church with full participation of the laity, who were neither able (for the most part) nor encouraged to participate in the Divine Office prior to the LOTH except when it was prayed in Parishes, usually on Sundays.

While the LOTH has innovation and newness it also has tradition as part of a living tradition and for that reason, IMHO is no more, nor no less “traditional” than the 1960 Breviary. The Divine Office has undergone restructuring many times and with those years the correlation between monastic and secular practice widened (though sometimes the reverse happened, as the secular Divine Office did not have hymns until about the 13th century whereas the monastic did from the beginning 1500 years ago). The pace of change really accelerated in the 20th century, but that’s true of everything.

My understanding is that the 1910 Office caused just about as much whingeing as the 1970 LOTH as well; it really played havoc with the antiphonaries (remember that when prayed in community or on Sundays in parishes, the Office was often chanted) due to the new divisions of the psalms. I guess you can never please everyone 😉

I know many people including learned scholars disagree with me but I do know at least one who does, our oblate director who is also choirmaster and liturgist at our abbey; where I presented a detailed analysis of the LOTH compared to the historic Benedictine Divine Office. In fact the LOTH has more in common with the Monastic Office than the 1910 breviary, at least when a few options are exercised (hence the point of the presentation to Benedictine Oblates who want to unite their prayer with that of the monks). In that sense one can say the LOTH reaches further back into time than the 1910 breviary. The big departure is in the number of psalms, but again the 1910 breviary also reduced that greatly though the whole psalter was said in a week, at least on those few weeks when there wasn’t a feast putting you into the festival psalter.
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I also would think that that time-travelling priest would pass out from the butchery of the hymns put in by Pope Urban VIII.
 
johnnyt3000 said:
When I look online to see Breviary books for sale they are around $300-$400.
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You sure that’s the right breviary? I know that the traditional breviary from Baronius Press is $350, but the modern LOTH is around $120.

As for the reason, it’s because it’s 4 volumes of over 1,000 pages - so pretty standard, actually. Try the Eastern Breviary out for size - 30-something volumes for over $2,000 :eek:
 
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