Review: Monastic Diurnal at One Year

Although I’ve prayed some form of the Divine Office since before my baptism, just over a year ago I began using the Farnborough Monastic Diurnal. It is only at this point that I feel confident enough to review it.

Physical Considerations

Physically, it is a handsome book. It is bound in stitched Moroccan leather that is a joy to hold. The pages are fairly opaque and allow little bleed. The edges are gilt, and it has six sewn ribbons.

Yet, somehow, it remains extremely light and durable. I will be taking it on our next Camino.

The typography and design of the page is pleasing and easy to read, with columns of text in Latin with parallel English translation.

So after a year, how has it held up? I took some comparative photos to help you see.

Here’s a comparison shot of the spine. As you can see, the leather is creased and worn in a bit, which is to be expected with a book that sees daily use. The pages, however, remain tight, and there is no fatigue in the binding that I can see.

The gilt has come off the edging in a number of places. To me, this is not a big deal – I kind of like the “lived-in” look – but if you’re somebody who wants your books to remain pristine, this could be a problem.

The ribbons began to unravel within just a few months, and I tied them off to prevent further damage.

If you click the image to the larger version and look at the yellow ribbon, you can pretty clearly see what was going on.

I’ll get to those tabs I added in a bit.

Content

This book was published by Saint Michael’s Abbey Press of Farnborough Abbey, and it bears a 2011 copyright date. They describe it as

A republication of the 1963 edition of the Benedictine hours of Prime, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, in Latin and English in parallel columns for all the feasts and seasons in the traditional Benedictine calendar, with an updated table of movable feasts and a Benedictus/Magnificat card. The Latin text is the traditional Vulgate psalter.

The English translation is an utter joy. I find that I’ve added more and more of the Latin to my prayers through the year.

(I don’t want to oversell my use of the Latin, however. At the rate I’m going, I should be praying the Hours entirely in Latin by, say, 2046 or so.)

Unlike many of the other breviaries I’ve used, I found this one relatively easy to work. There is still some ramp-up time, of course. And for the first week or so of a new major season, there was some fumbling as I got re-used to the expanded use of the propers.

If you are considering using this breviary, I strongly suggest you take a look at the website Saints Will Arise. The site provides an Ordo (in English!) and some great instructional notes on learning how to pray the traditional Benedictine Hours. It was an invaluable resource when I was starting out.

Ribbons and Cards and Tabs (Oh My!)

As with every breviary I’ve ever used, there are either not enough or too many ribbons, depending on how you use them.

If you intend to pray all of the little hours, including Prime and Compline, and you want to mark your place in the Proper of the Season and the Proper of the Saints, there are not nearly enough ribbons.

If you intend to only pray Lauds and Vespers (which is my usual routine these days, with the irregular additions of Prime and Compline), then there will be some extra ribbons.

My solution was to use ribbons for the following:

• The Proper of the Season (red)
• Prime (green)
• Lauds (yellow for the sunrise)
• Vespers (purple for the evening)
• The Proper of the Saints (white, obviously)

I use the black ribbon at the end for the various Commons as needed.

Now in order to not make a long book even longer, you will occasionally see rubrics like this:

The rest as on Monday, p. 73.

For the places that get referred to a lot, I use tabs. So I have the beginning and conclusion of Sunday Prime, Lauds, and Vespers tabbed with the tabs colour-coded to the ribbon used.

(There’s actually not really any point in tabbing the beginning of Vespers, but I like symmetry. It’s a failing, I know.)

I also have a small black tab for the beginning of Compline, since it’s the same every day.

Even with the ribbons and tabs, I still need to use a number Holy Cards as page markers.

Currently, I have Holy Cards stuffed in for:

• the conclusions to the Collects,
• I Vespers in the Proper of Seasons,
• the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday, and
• the supplement to the Proper of Saints.

Quibbles

This book is so close to perfect for me, that I feel almost churlish setting out any complaints. So let’s call them quibbles.

There are a couple of typos that I’ve hand-corrected. In a book of this size and complexity, you’d expect to find one or two, so that’s really more of an observation than a quibble.

However, there are a couple of organizational flaws that I think ought to be corrected in future editions.

First, as you might have noted in the section above on where I put Holy Cards, I Vespers for any given Sunday in the Proper is orphaned from Lauds and II Vespers from the same Sunday. This means that I’ve got a card stuffed about a dozen pages away from a ribbon location, and this is just plain awkward.

Now in part I understand why this was done – towards the end of the calendar year there’s a weird hiccup where you start talking about Sundays of a specific month rather than Sundays after Pentecost. Why? I don’t know. How to fix it? I’m not entirely certain.

And then there’s the Proper of the Saints. When the fifth edition of this book was published in 1963, a supplement was added to the Proper of Saints for “Feasts kept in various places which are not in the universal calendar”. Surely after fifty years there is some better way of doing this?

Were it up to me, I would survey those monasteries that still use this version of the Divine Office and determine which (if any) of these supplemental Feasts are actually in use and where. Then integrate them into the general Calendar with a note, something like “observed in the Congregation of Saint Ipsydipsy and at Treeshade Abbey”. Or even “observed in some places” which is already done in some of the feasts in the general calendar.

And for the love of all that is holy, please move the index to the end.

The introduction of the book refers several times to Sacrificium Laudis. It might be useful to put it in the book. It’s foundational, and it’s short.

Finally, I think it would be a very useful thing indeed if a revised edition were to obtain a new imprimatur. The note found in the introduction that the book is “covered under the imprimatur” of the fifth edition creates a doubt where perhaps none should exist.

Summary

If you are at all interested in praying the Divine Office according to the traditional Monastic use, go get this book. While there is nothing perfect this side of heaven, this book is fantastic and gets my highest possible rating.

You can purchase it in the United States from Clear Creek Abbey.