Archive
Thank you all!!
The response from the renewal appeal has been very good. Together we raised enough funds to secure the domains and hosting for the next three years! Thank you very much to all who gave.
While the breviary started as my hobby, I experience it now as a community project. It continues and improves through your suggestions, ideas, and—of course—corrections. Thank you for being part of it with me!
Back-end Migration
I just talked to my hosting folks. They were checking in to see how things were going; I noted that sometimes performance in the morning is sluggish. After looking into it they agreed and said that migrating me to a different box, a Linux box, would increase the speeds quite a bit. So–they’re doing that. It shouldn’t break anything, but if the breviary becomes unaccountably unavailable that will be why.
It’s set to happen within the next 24 hours or so—we’ll see what happens…
Renewal Appeal
The birthday of the Breviary is coming up soon.
For people, this means cake, ice cream, embarrassing stories, and photos of your hair from the ’80’s. For websites, it means renewing domain registrations and hosting plans and such.
Currently the breviary is limping along on a month-to-month hosting plan. My hope is to do a long-term set of renewals to kick the can as far down the road as possible. Thus, I’m launching a modest appeal for donations to keep things running smoothly.
If the breviary is of value to you, please consider making a donation to help defray its expenses.
(Of course, if you’ve already donated recently, please disregard!)
Ember Days
You may be wondering why the breviary isn’t identifying today, September 19th, the first Wednesday after the Feast of the Holy Cross as an Ember Day.
I am too…
Hopefully we’ll get this sorted out shortly.
Update: Ok—things seem to be sorted out now and the next few days should run as properly scheduled.
More Tweaking
While I was in there today, I put in some additional fixes and additions.
First, I noticed that the evening canticles following the BCP table—didn’t follow it very well. Too, they often duplicated what wa going on in the morning which doesn’t make much sense. Those have been changed back to reflect what the BCP says for the first reading; the second canticle remains the Magnificat.
Second, I added a new reading pattern which allows for an OT reading at Morning Prayer, followed by the NT reading and Gospel at Evening Prayer.
All of these changes worked out fine in my test environment, but do let me know if you see any oddities in or around these options!
On the Transference of the Annunciation
I know I’m going to hear about it on this one so I thought I’d put up a preemptive post…
The ’79 BCP states that when prayer book Holy Days fall on privileged Sundays, they: “are normally transferred to the first convenient open day within the week” (BCP, 16). What I ponder is the precise meaning of “convenient” and “open”. While having a broad appeal across the range of Anglican spiritualities, the breviary was set up with a particular eye towards traditional Anglo-Catholic practice and one of the key features here is the inclusion of Eves/First Vespers.
If we’re celebrating the First Vespers of a prayer book Holy Day then it can’t be put on Monday because the First Vespers will interfere with the Second Vespers of the Sunday. As a result, the first “open” day is the Monday for the First Vespers and Tuesday for the rest of the feast.
In making this decision, I’m following the official practice of the English Book of Common Prayer which spells this out. In the late 19th century folks like Vernon Staley and Walter Frere raised this question of transference and, eventually, a rubric to this effect was placed in the book: “…it shall be permissible to transfer a greater Holy Day falling on a Sunday to the following Tuesday, except that St. Stephen’s Day, Epiphany, and All Saints’ Day may not be so transferred.”
This is why, in the breviary, you’ll find the First Vespers of the Annunciation on Monday evening and the full feast celebrated on Tuesday.
Early March Updates
Things have been hectic and events in my life have been conspiring to keep me away from the breviary. However, work continues if only at a snail’s pace. Here’s some recent progress:
- The Great Litany is now up as a separate office.
- The full Offices of the Dead are up:
- The Little Hours of the BVM are in progress. As with the Offices of the Dead, I’m using classic Sarum sources; there are some minor differences between these offices and the modern Roman ones. (And the old York ones when it comes to that…) So far I’ve started with traditional language: Matins
- I’ve implemented some fixes on the mobile version of the site which should solve the problems that people have been experiencing with Android tablets and the Kindle Fire. I haven’t had a chance to test these as thoroughly as I’d like, though, as I cleverly left my Blackberry at M’s office on Sunday…
Year 2 Flip-Flop Added
After much delay, the awaited flip-flop in Year 2 has occurred.
In conformity to the suggestion on page 934 of the prayer book, the default standard is for the gospel to be in the morning and the epistle in the evening for Office Year 2. I know a number of people pray the offices in their church and at home and that it can be jarring when the church observes the flip-flop yet the breviary does not… Hopefully, this is no now longer an issue.
One note, though—the flip-flop will not occur on any Holy Days or major feasts days. Often these a time-of-day reason that the lectionary assigns these, so they will not occur at that point.
This being the St Bede’s Breviary, there is a new option added to the Preferences page that will allow you to opt out of this if that is your desire (it’s at the bottom of the “Lectionary” section within the core options…).
Morning Gospels for Year 2
I’ve received a number of comments about this one…
On page 934 of the BCP it states: “When the Office is read twice in the day, it is suggested that the Gospel Reading be used in the evening of Year One, and in the morning in Year Two.” Currently the breviary does not allow for this. I am working to correct it and will make it default once it’s done. Thus, during Year Two, the Gospel will be the second reading in the morning, meaning that the (second) reading in the evening will be the Epistle Reading.
This will change the way that I put my lectionary tables together so it will take me a little bit to accomplish. I’m hoping to get it done within the next week or two.
Big Breviary Announcement!
I’m happy to announce a collaboration between the St Bede’s Breviary and Forward Movement! Fr. Scott Gunn, the new Executive Director of Forward Movement, has a vision to bring Forward Movement further into the digital age; using a cut-down version of the breviary’s code base, we’re working on both a new web site and a mobile app that will incorporate both the Daily Office and Forward Day-by-Day among other things.
I’ve consistently received two questions since the launch of the breviary—1) when will there be an iPhone/iPad app and 2) when will there be a printed version. I can now answer the first! There are a number of moving parts here, so we’re currently projecting a ship date in the 1st quarter of 2012.
Needless to say—I’ll keep you updated!
For those of you with mobile devices who enjoy the breviary, you might like to try this out as an intermediary step as development continues: a mobile-optimized version of the breviary. (Due to spotty implementation of the xhtml+mp, I don’t recommend trying to use it with a desktop browser…)
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