A Newly Typeset Dominican Breviary from the Humbert Codex

Yes. It contains the complete Matins lessons of the 13th-century Dominican Office, made possible by generous internal rubrics that dictate that lessons be read from the common, or repeated from the previous Sunday.

Yes, this Breviary contains all the canonical hours for every day of the year in a single volume.

Medieval Latin. This is the Latin of the Catholic Church. Considering the international audience, and for fidelity to the medieval source, Latin will be the only option. Latin ensures that anyone with Dominican Chant Books can sing them in their proper melodies. Those looking for English may find the Ordo companion helpful with English rubrics.

For authenticity and fidelity to the text, the Latin orthography is based directly on the source manuscript, with modern distinction between u's and v's. This style of Latin was the norm for nearly 1,000 years, before the Humanists of the Renaissance standardized Latin orthography. Because historical accuracy is of the utmost priority, future projects will use the original spelling as found in the source manuscript.

This Breviary uses the Kalendar as given in the Humbertian prototype, that is, the Dominican Rite Kalendar of the 13th century. The Kalendar is balanced between Temporal and Sanctoral feasts, and is simple to learn. There will be an Ordo available to purchase and download, complete with English Rubrics and an how-to guide.

LaTeX, «Lah-tech» or «Lay-tech», is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing. LaTeX is also open-source software; consequently, it is freely available, yet it provides for powerful macros and offers a deep package ecosystem. It is widely regarded as the industry standard for academic and scientific publishing due to its superior ability to render complex mathematical formulas and its robust system for managing large-scale documents, cross-references, and citations. This allows for the creation of professional documents that can be compiled and inspected by anyone, ensuring transparency, without reliance on proprietary licensing.

Yes. The complete LaTeX repository is open-source and hosted on GitHub. Anyone can inspect the code, compile their own PDF, or fork the repository to compile their own Breviary or Liturgical Book. The source is available at AlanL399/BreviaryTypesetting

By utilizing free software, such as LaTeX and GitHub, and modern technologies, namely, print-on-demand (POD) publishing, the immense overhead, boardrooms, and marketing budgets of corporate publishing houses can be easily bypassed. Under an economical mindset, gold-gilt and fine leather options were skipped, costs have been kept low, leaving the focus on the publishing alone.

Compared to competing offerings, this Breviary is a class of its own, being a full, one-volume Breviary with no excised content. Other Breviary options are either expensive, multi-volume sets, or are one-volume truncated editions with omitted material, e.g. diurnals or beginner editions.

Compared to publishers offering a monthly subscription for a selection of the Divine Office, this Breviary is more economical as a one-time purchase than a whole year's subscription for a reduced selection of disposable, landfill-bound monthly prayer booklets. This volume has zero recurring fees, zero corporate subscriptions, and zero waste.

The layout of this Breviary follows the source Codex of Santa Sabina XIV L1, which is slightly more convoluted than pre-/post-conciliar Breviaries, but is more or less in line with the 1894 Dominican Breviary as found online.

If there is demand, other publishers will be considered for hardcover, as KDP is limited in options when it comes to hardcover publishing. A KDP hardcover printing is not conducive to the flipping of pages in daily use.

To keep pagecount low, chant notation is not included in this Breviary. While LaTeX supports chant notation, music is outside the scope of this project. That being said, this is a Dominican Breviary, so anyone with Dominican Chant Books can sing them in their proper melodies.

This Breviary follows the Dominic tradition as codified by Bl. Humbert of Romans, the fifth master-general of the Dominican Order. As Fr. William Bonniwell, O.P. writes in his A History of the Dominican Liturgy, St. Dominic was "an ardent lover of the liturgy" and believed that for "preaching to be fruitful it must needs be sustained and vivified by prayer (sic)." The Dominican Rite, more properly, the Dominican Use, is a variant of the Roman Rite with medieval variations, and is but one example of the colorful and manifold varieties of liturgy during the Age of Faith.

This Breviary contains the medieval Divine Office, which differs from the Liturgy of the Hours in several aspects, from seven canonical hours (vs. five), a weekly Psalter (instead of a four-week Psalter), and different rubrical logic concerning the structure of feasts, for example, ranks and rules regarding First Vespers and Octaves.

This Breviary preserves the ancient Roman Psalter distribution and cursus, from twelve Psalms at ferial Matins, to eighteen Psalms and three nocturns at Sunday Matins, to the daily use of Psalm 118 at the minor hours, and fixed Psalms at Compline. The antiphons, feasts, and Kalendar also differ by many respects, being proper to the Dominican Rite, and thus cannot be easily adapted to the 1962 Roman Breviary without causing great violence to both traditions.

For laypersons, private prayer does not require any ecclesiastical approval. As Pope Benedict XVI once said, "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place." Clerics or those living under a rule should consult their competent religious superiors about use of this volume to fulfill their canonical obligation.

Accordingly, this book makes no claim to have ecclesiastical approbation for public liturgy.

Yes. A companion Daily Ordo is currently in development and will be available separately. It will provide instructions on the which Office is said for each day, and will provide an English translation of the rubrics.