Translated into English for the first time, Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Institutions sets forth an erudite and impassioned history of the Roman Rite and of the depredations it has suffered over the centuries.
Softcover, 210 pages, 6 x 9 inches.
Originally published over the course of eleven years (1840–1851) in three ample volumes that span nearly two thousand pages, Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Institutions sets forth an erudite and impassioned history of the Roman Rite and of the depredations it has suffered over the centuries at the hands of “anti-liturgical heretics” whose lineage is by no means exhausted. A vast narrative of astonishing breadth and penetration, the Institutions remains a masterpiece of analysis and synthesis, with striking relevance to our times. In this first-ever English translation of the Institutions, based on Jean Vaquié’s deftly-condensed one-volume French edition from 1977, the reader will find a comprehensive vision of Catholic worship, incomparably defining and defending the rites—and rights—of sacred tradition.
About the Author:
Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger (1805-1875), in founding the Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, reestablished within its walls the observation of the Rule of Saint Benedict, half a century after its previous community, the Congregation of Saint Maur, had been destroyed in the French Revolution. Dom Guéranger was soon to be hailed as the restorer of the Order of Saint Benedict, not only in France, but in the British Isles as well. The remoteness of his abbatial retreat did not prevent him from making his voice heard “on the housetops”. Combining the scholarly tradition of the Maurists with a renewed sense of the liturgical life, which has had a profound influence far beyond the walls of the cloister, Dom Guéranger wrote prolifically across the disciplines of history and philosophy in defense of the Church and her traditions.
