Aberdeen Breviary

A page from the psalter of the Aberdeen breviary of 1509

The Aberdeen Breviary (Latin: Breviarium Aberdonense) is a 16th-century Scottish Catholic breviary. It was the first full-length book to be printed in Edinburgh, and in Scotland.

Origin

The creation of the Aberdeen Breviary can be seen as one of the features of the growing Scottish nationalism and identity of the early sixteenth century. In 1507, King James IV, realizing that the existing Sarum Breviary, or Rite, was English in origin, desired the printing of a Scottish version. Since Scotland had no printing press at that time, booksellers Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar of Edinburgh were commissioned to “bring home a printing press” primarily for that purpose.

To create the breviary itself, James sought out William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, who had received the king's permission to establish the University of Aberdeen twelve years before. To help him with the undertaking, Elphinstone, in turn, tapped the man who had helped him found the university, Scottish philosopher and historian Hector Boece. The two began their work in 1509, and the first copy, produced as a small octavo, came off the press in 1510.

Contents

Like the Sarum Rite, which had been in use since the twelfth century, the Aberdeen Breviary contained brief lives, or biographies, of the saints as well as the liturgy and canonical hours which were to conform to Roman practice and serve as the standard of Christian worship throughout the country. The saints’ lives, or biographies, in the breviary were all written by either Elphinstone or Boece.

Boece once noted that Elphinstone collected legends of saints from every diocese in Scotland, including both national heroes and local saints. He also noted that Elphinstone devoted time to the study of ancient Scottish histories, especially in the Western Isles, where “tombs of the ancient kings” lie. In addition, some material, such as Lessons for St Cuthbert, came from the writings of Bede. Some of the collected materials were included verbatim in the breviary, and some were re-written.

However, unlike the Sarum Rite, the Aberdeen work also contained lives of the nation's saints—Scottish saints such as Kentigern, Machar, and Margaret of Scotland. Indeed, historian Jane Geddes has gone so far as to call the Aberdeen Breviary a work of “religious patriotism,” pointing out Scotland's sixteenth-century efforts to establish its own identity. She writes that both Elphinstone and the king “were attempting to direct the apparently growing interest in local cults... toward a range of saints that they identified as Scottish.”

Along with focusing on Scottish saints, Elphinstone sometimes “Scotticized” Irish and continental saints, one of the most interesting being the office of an Irish missionary in France named Fiacre. Historian Steve Boardman speculates Fiacre appealed to the Scots because of their traditional military alliance with France and long history of wars against the English Crown. Furthermore, the Irish-born French saint is associated with the death of England's invading King Henry V. After the Battle of Agincourt, Henry had allowed his army to pillage Fiacre's monastery and Christian pilgrimage shrine in the town bearing his name, but Fiacre supernaturally prevented the English soldiers from carrying their loot beyond the boundaries of his monastery. Henry V died of haemorrhoids on 30 August, St Fiacre's feast day.

Boardman points out, however, that there are a few cases in which Elphinstone and Boece included saints associated with Scotland, but introduced as otherwise. One example is St Constantine the Great, for whom there were dedicated places of worship in Scotland—at Kilchousland in Kintyre and at Govan—and whom Glasgow even claimed as a native son.

The breviary, which was composed in Latin, includes at the back a small, 16-page book entitled Compassio Beate Marie, which has readings about the relics of St Andrew, Scotland's patron saint. In addition, at the end of each volume were the Propria Sanctorum, containing prayers and readings to be used only on the feast day of the particular saint. Hymns, responsories, and antiphons were composed for most of the saints in various metres and styles. There are poems as well, although, except for the poem for the office of St Fiacre, they are not high in quality. All these were to be used as acts of worship.

Extant copies

Only four copies of the Aberdeen Breviary are extant: one in the University of Edinburgh; one in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh; one in the library of King's College, Aberdeen; and one recently purchased by the National Library of Scotland from the private collection of the Earl of Strathmore in Glamis, Angus.

A facsimile of one copy was published in two parts (Pars estiva and Pars hyemalis) in 1854 & 1855, edited by William Blew; this facsimile was issued to members of the Bannatyne, Maitland and Spalding Clubs. The copy held by the University of Edinburgh has been entirely digitised, and is available for viewing online.

See also

• Chepman and Myllar Press

Further reading

• Galbraith, James D. The Sources of the Aberdeen Breviary. M.Litt. thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1970
• Macquarrie, Alan, et al. Legends of Scottish Saints: readings, hymns and prayers for the commemorations of Scottish saints from the Aberdeen Breviary. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Aberdeen Breviary, The.—This breviary may be described as the Sarum Office in a Scottish form. The use of the ancient Church of Salisbury was generally adopted in Scotland and Ireland during the Middle Ages, both for the Liturgy (or Mass) and for the canonical hours. Its introduction into Scotland has been sometimes incorrectly attributed to Edward I, King of England, and assigned to the year 1292; but there is evidence to show that the date of its introduction was considerably earlier. For example, Herbert, Bishop of Glasgow from 1147 to 1164, certainly adopted the Sarum Use for his church, and received the papal sanction for so doing. Father Innes, who died in Paris in 1744, asserts that "all the Scots missals or breviaries I ever saw are secundum usum Sarum, local saints being written in". According to the "Registrum Moraviense", the bishop, dean and chapter of Moray received and duly approved the Ordo of the Church of Salisbury in the year 1242. The Diocese of Moray was contiguous with that of Aberdeen. The preference shown by the Scots for the Sarum Rite was evidently the outcome of the strong feeling, of which we find constant evidence in the history of the Scottish Church, against anything which seemed like admitting the claim to jurisdiction over her so often put forward by the Church of York. There might, it was no doubt thought, have been some apparent justification for this claim, had the Scottish Church adopted and maintained the Use of York in her liturgy and office.

The Breviary of Aberdeen was mainly the work of the learned and pious William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen from 1483 to his death in 1514. Not only did he bring together the materials, but in some instances, notably in that of the Scottish saints, he himself composed the lessons. A peculiar feature of this breviary, and one in which it differs from nearly every other, is that in some of the festivals of saints the whole of the nine lessons at Matins are concerned with their lives. These legends of the saints of Scotland are of singular interest and considerable historical value, and they have been extensively drawn upon by the Bollandists and the later Scottish martyrologists. The accuracy of the quotations and references occurring in the book have been tested and admitted by many modern historians. Although the breviary is in its structure and essentials entirely in uniformity with that of Sarum, it is nevertheless exclusively proper to Scotland, and it was, as we know, intended to supersede all service-books issued in connection with the famous Church of Salisbury. This fact is quite clear from the royal mandate dated 15 September, 1501, wherein the Aberdeen book is set forth as the "Breviary for general use within the realm of Scotland".

The work was produced from the printing-press which Walter Chapman and Andrew Myllar had set up in Edinburgh, in the year 1507. Four copies of the original breviary (in black-letter) are known to exist; one in Edinburgh University library; a second in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh; a third in the private library of the Earl of Strathmore; and a fourth (an imperfect copy) in the library of King's College, Aberdeen. The reprinting of the volume was undertaken in 1854, under the supervision of the Rev. William Blew, M.A., and it was subsequently published by Mr. G.J. Toovey, for private circulation among the members of the Bannatyne Club. The originally printed copies are of small octavo size, and bear the dates of 1509 and 1510. As a printed Office-book its actual use was but of short duration, only about half a century elapsing between its issue and the overthrow of the ancient Church of Scotland (1560). There is no positive proof that it was ever generally adopted throughout the dioceses of Scotland; indeed the probabilities are against its ever having become anything like universal at the time of the Reformation. It must be remembered, in connection with this, that the injunction for its adoption was civil rather than ecclesiastical, and there is some reason to suppose that on this account it was not considered strictly binding by the church authorities of the kingdom. It is interesting to note that in the new Scottish Proprium, which in 1903 was formally sanctioned and adopted for use in the Scottish dioceses forming the Province of St. Andrews (the cultus of the ancient Scottish saints having been approved by the Holy See several years previously), many collects, antiphons, etc. are found which have been borrowed from the offices in the Aberdeen Breviary.

Miscellany of the Spalding Club, II, 364-366, and Preface, p. cxx (Aberdeen, 1842); Kalendars of Scottish Saints (ed. FORBES, Edinburgh, 1862); Registrum Episcopatus Moaviensis (ed. Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1837); Breviarium Aberdonense (London, 1854), Pref. By LAING; VIAN in Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. Elphinstone, William.

External links

• Digital text