Liturgical books of the Roman Rite
These liturgical books have been classified as seven: the Missal, the Pontifical, the Liturgy of the Hours (in earlier editions called the Breviary), the Ritual, the Martyrology, the Gradual, and the Antiphonary.
Some names, such as the Ritual and the Pontifical, refer not to a single volume but to a collection of books that fit within the same category.
Other liturgical books that no longer exist today, were in use in the past, such as the Epistolary and the Sacramentary (in the proper sense of this word).
The catalogue of the illuminated manuscripts of the British Library indicates how varied were the classes of liturgical books for the celebration of Mass[5] and the Liturgy of the Hours.
The prayers and rubrics are modified, new rites are added to the books, others are dropped, sometimes long after they have fallen into disuse.
For instance the Roman Pontifical continued to have until the Second Vatican Council a ceremony for the first shaving of a cleric's beard.
[2] In early Christianity (until perhaps the fourth century) there were no books except the Bible, from which lessons were read and psalms were sung.
Habit and memory made the celebrant repeat more or less the same forms each Sunday; the people answered his prayers with the accustomed acclamations and responses – all without books.
At that time he did not repeat at the altar the parts that were chanted by the ministers or choir, as became the custom in the period of the Tridentine Mass Thus Sacramentaries contain no Readings, Introits, Graduals, Communion Antiphons and the like, but only the Collects, the Eucharistic Prayer with its Prefaces, all that is strictly the priest's part at Mass.
But there were also separate collections of hymns, called Hymnaria, and Libri Sequentiales or Troponarii containing the sequences and additions (farcing) to the Kyrie and Gloria, etc.
Other services, the Sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction), the Visitation of the Sick, the Burial Service, all manner of blessings, were written in a very loose collection of little books, predecessors of the Roman Ritual, called by such names as Liber Agendorum, Agenda, Manuale, Benedictionale, Pastorale, Sacerdotale, Rituale.
For instance the Gregorian Sacramentary tells priests (as distinct from bishops) not to say the Gloria except on Easter Day; the celebrant chants the preface excelsa voce (in a loud voice), and so on.
In time, however, the growing elaborateness of the papal functions, the more complicated ceremonial of the Roman Court, made it necessary to draw up rules of what custom and etiquette demanded.
At Low Mass the celebrant had to supplement personally what was normally chanted by the deacon and subdeacon or sung by the choir.
But there were isolated priests, small country churches without a choir, that could not afford the library of books required for saying it.
Such little books are called by various names – Epitomata, Portiforia, and then especially Breviaria divini officii (Abbreviations of the Divine Office).
It is curious that the word Breviary, which originally meant only a handy epitome for use on journeys and such occasions, came to be the usual name for the Divine Office itself.
[citation needed] The Council of Trent (1545–1563) considered the question of uniformity in the liturgical books and appointed a commission to examine the question, but the commission found the work of unifying so many and so varied books impossible at the time, and so left it to be done gradually by the popes.
