The calendar that told New Orleans priests what to pray, day by day
Each year an Ordo set out the daily prayers and Mass observances for the clergy of the New Orleans province. This one is for 1908.
The story
The Catholic Church’s calendar shifts from one year to the next, so every year a priest needed a fresh guide telling him which office to pray and which feast or celebration to keep on each day. That guide was the Ordo Divini Officii. This one covers 1908, a leap year in which Easter fell on 19 April, and was issued under church authority for the clergy of the New Orleans province.
Although it was meant for Louisiana, it was printed across the Atlantic, at Tournai in Belgium, by Desclée, and it is written in Latin. Read now, it shows the daily routine of Catholic worship in Louisiana at the start of the twentieth century, and the church organisation that set it.
This copy is bound in red leather tooled in gilt, with the IHS emblem and patterned endpapers. The spine bands and board edges are worn, the front inner hinge has split, and one leaf has a small hole near the gutter. The text has not been collated.
Details
- Date
- 1908
- Publisher
- Desclée et Soc., Tournai
- Binding
- full_leather: period red gilt decorated leather with IHS emblem and patterned endpapers
- Condition
- Red gilt leather with wear to spine bands and board edges, a front inner-hinge/endpaper split, and a small hole/loss in an internal leaf near the gutter. Text not collated; see actual photos.
