In the early fifteenth century Clement Maydeston, likely following foreign precedents, titled his reorganized Sarum Ordinal the "Directorium Sacerdotum".
In this way, the words "Directorium Sacerdotum" came to be included in the beginning of many books instructing clergy on the form of Divine Office and Mass to be prayed each day of the year.
A very similar work was published at Augsburg in 1501 with the title Index sive Directorium Missarum Horarumque secundum ritum chori Constanciensis diocesis dicendarumn, though it is not the earliest example.
From the Directorium Sacerdotum, which in England was often called the "Pye" and which seems to have come into almost general use about the time of the invention of printing, the later Directory, i. e. the Ordo Divini Officii recitandi Sacrique peragendi gradually developed.
But in 1759 a Catholic printer in London conceived the idea of translating the official Directorium, i. e. Ordo, issued for the clergy, and accordingly published in that year A Lay Directory or a help to find out and assist at Vespers .
The earliest numbers of The Laity's Directory contained nothing save an abbreviated translation of the clerical Ordo recitandi, but toward the end of the eighteenth century a list of the Catholic chapels in London, advertisements of schools, obituary notices, important ecclesiastical announcements, and other miscellaneous matters began to be added, and at a still later date an index of the names and addresses of the Catholic clergy serving the missions in England and Scotland was added.
Rubrics or ritual directions for the Mass and Divine Office were rarely written in connection with the text to which they belonged (this is not to treat of the services of rarer occurrence such as those in the Pontifical), but they were probably at first communicated only by oral tradition, and when they began to be recorded they took only such summary form as is seen in the Ordines Romani of Hittorp and Mabillon.
In them was much miscellaneous information respecting feasts, the Divine Office and Mass to be prayed thereon according to the changes necessitated by the occurrence of Easter and the shifting of the Sundays, as well as the "Incipits" of the details of the liturgy, e. g. of the lessons to be read and the commemorations to be made.
This was the Directorium Sacerdotum or the complete Pye, titled Pica Sarum in Latin, abbreviated editions of which were afterwards published in a form which allowed it to be bound up with the respective portions of the Breviary.
The idea of this great Pye was to give all the 35 possible combinations, 5 to each dominical letter, of which the immovable and movable feasts of the ecclesiastical year admitted, assigning a separate calendar to each, more or less corresponding to the later Ordo recitandi.
An Ordinarius Ordinis Praemonstratensis exists in manuscript in Jesus College, Cambridge, England, and an early printed one in the British Library.
Since, however, such publications are useless after their purpose is once served, they are very liable to destruction, and it seems impossible to date the first attempt to produce an ordo after this later fashion.