Dominican Rite
They maintained that the safety of a basic principle of community life—unity of prayer and worship—was endangered by this conformity with different local diocesan conditions.
This belief was impressed upon them more forcibly by the confusion that these liturgical diversities occasioned at the general chapters of the order, where brothers from every province were assembled.
To bring some kind of order out of chaos a commission was appointed consisting of four members, one each from the Provinces of France, England, Lombardy, and Germany, to carry out the revision at Angers.
Though this work was done under the direction of John the Teuton, the brunt of the revision fell to the lot of Humbert of Romains, then provincial of the Paris Province.
Humbert was elected Master General of the Chapter of Buda (1254) and was asked to direct his attention to the question of the order's liturgical books.
This and several subsequent chapters endorsed the work, effected legislation guarding against corruption, constitutionally recognized the authorship of Humbert, and thus once and for all settled a common rite for the Order of Preachers throughout the world.
[3] Pope Clement IV, through the Dominican general, John of Vercelli, issued a Papal Bull in 1267 in which he lauded the ability and zeal of Humbert and forbade the making of any changes without the proper authorization.
Changes in the text, when made, were always effected with the idea of eliminating arbitrary mutilations and restoring the books to a perfect conformity with the old exemplars at Paris and Bologna.
The General Chapter of River Forest (1968) made this decision, which was applied first to the Mass and later to the Divine Office, in conformity to the spirit and letter of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium.
[3] While the basis of the usages of north-western Europe was a Gallicanized-Gregorian Sacramentary sent by Pope Adrian I to Charlemagne, each little locality had its own peculiar distinctions.
Blessed Jordan of Saxony, the pioneer in liturgical reform within the order, greatly admired the Rite of the Church in Paris and frequently assisted at the recitations of the Office at Notre-Dame.
When Pope Pius V made his reform, the Dominican Rite had been fixed and stable for over three hundred years, while a constant liturgical change had been taking place in other communities.
Furthermore, the comparative simplicity of the Dominican Rite, as manifested in the different liturgical books, gives evidence of its antiquity.
[3] The rote was originally in Church Latin, but some vernaculars were allowed: The rite compiled by Humbert contained fourteen books: (1) the Ordinary, a sort of an index to the Divine Office, the Psalms, Lessons, Antiphons and Chapters being indicated by their first words.
The new ones were: (1) the Horæ Diurnæ (2) the Vesperal (with notes), adaptations from the Breviary and the Antiphonary respectively (3) the Collectarium, a compilation from all the rubrics scattered throughout the other books.
The celebrant in the Dominican Rite wears the amice over his head until the beginning of Mass, and prepares the chalice as soon as he reaches the altar.
[3] The Dominican celebrant also says the "Agnus Dei" immediately after the "Pax Domini" and then recites the prayers "Hæc sacrosancta commixtio", "Domine Iesu Christe" and "Corpus et sanguis", after which follows the Communion, the priest receiving the Host from his left hand.
[3] In a solemn Mass the chalice is brought in procession to the altar during the Gloria, and the corporal is unfolded by the deacon during the singing of the Epistle.
[3] During important feasts, a procession occurs to offer the gifts to the deacon during the offertory—a gesture not found in the Tridentine Missal, but was done by early liturgies, and was restored in the most recent reforms of the Roman Rite by Pope Paul VI.
Other minor points of difference are the manner of making the commemorations, the text of the hymns, the Antiphons, the lessons of the common Offices and the insertions of special feasts of the order.
[3] There are some differences between the musical notation of the Dominican Gradual, Vesperal and Antiphonary and the corresponding books of the Roman Rite as reformed by Pope Pius X.
