been used by the Franciscans after Compline from the thirteenth century; but are found in no Breviary before a.d. 1520.
The Saturday or Sabbath office of the Blessed Virgin was introduced, according to Baronius, by the monks of the Western Church, about a.d. 1056.
The Officium Parvum B. V. M. was instituted by the celebrated Peter Damiani at the same date. It is said indeed to have been the restoration of a practice three hundred years old, and observed by John Damascene; which it may well have been: but there is nothing to show the identity of the Service itself with the ancient one, and that is the only point on which evidence would be important. Thirty years after its introduction by Damiani, it was made part of the daily worship by decree of Urban II.
The Breviary then, as it is now received, is pretty nearly what the Services became in practice in Rome, and among the Franciscans, by the middle of the thirteenth century; the two chief points of difference between it and the ancient Catholic Devotions, being on the one hand its diminished allowance of Scripture reading, on the other its adoption of uncertain legends, and of Hymns and Prayers to the Virgin. However, the more grievous of these changes were not formally made in the Breviary itself, till the Pontificate of Pius V. after the Tridentine Council; at which time also it was imposed in its new form upon all the Churches in communion with Rome, except such as had used some other Ritual for above two hundred years. Not even at the present day, however, is this Roman novelty, as it may be called, in universal reception; the Paris Breviary, as corrected by the Archbishop of that city a.d. 1735, differs from it considerably in detail, though still disfigured by the Invocations.
Before concluding this account of the Roman Breviary, it is necessary to notice one attempt which was made in the first part of the sixteenth century to restore it to a more primitive form. In the year 1536, Quignonius, Cardinal of Santa Crux, compiled a Breviary under the sanction of Clement VII., and published it under his successor, Paul III. This Ritual, the use of which was permitted, but not formally enjoined by the Holy See, was extensively adopted for forty years, when it was superseded by
