Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3

Brescia to Bulgaria, by Various, Public Domain

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BRESCIA (anc. Brixia), a city and episcopal see of Lombardy, Italy, the capital of the province of Brescia, finely situated at the foot of the Alps, 52 m. E. of Milan and 40 m. W. of Verona by rail. Pop. (1901) town, 42,495; commune, 72,731. The plan of the city is rectangular, and the streets intersect at right angles, a peculiarity handed down from Roman times, though the area enclosed by the medieval walls is larger than that of the Roman town, which occupied the eastern portion of the present one. The Piazza del Museo marks the site of the forum, and the museum on its north side is ensconced in a Corinthian temple with three cellae, by some attributed to Hercules, but more probably the Capitolium of the city, erected by Vespasian in a.d. 73 (if the inscription really belongs to the building; cf. Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. v. No. 4312, Berlin, 1872), and excavated in 1823. It contains a famous bronze statue of Victory, found in 1826. Scanty remains of a building on the south side of the forum, called the curia, but which may be a basilica, and of the theatre, on the east of the temple, still exist.

Brescia contains many interesting medieval buildings. The castle, at the north-east angle of the town, commands a fine view. It is now a military prison. The old cathedral is a round domed structure of the 10th (?) century erected over an early Christian basilica, which has forty-two ancient columns; and the Broletto, adjoining the new cathedral (a building of 1604) on the north, is a massive building of the 12th and 13th centuries (the original town hall, now the prefecture and law courts), with a lofty tower. There are also remains of the convent of S. Salvatore, founded by Desiderius, king of Lombardy, including three churches, two of which now contain the fine medieval museum, which possesses good ivories. The church of S. Francesco has a Gothic façade and cloisters. There are also some good Renaissance palaces and other buildings, including the Municipio, begun in 1492 and completed by Jacopo Sansovino in 1554-1574. This is a magnificent structure, with fine ornamentation. The church of S. Maria dei Miracoli (1488-1523) is also noteworthy for its general effect and for the richness of its details, especially of the reliefs on the façade. Many other churches, and the picture gallery (Galleria Martinengo), contain fine works of the painters of the Brescian school, Alessandro Bonvicino (generally known as Moretto), Girolamo Romanino and Moretto's pupil, Giovanni Battista Moroni. The Biblioteca Queriniana contains early MSS., a 14th-century MS. of Dante, &c., and some rare incunabula. The city is well supplied with water, and has no less than seventy-two public fountains. Brescia has considerable factories of iron ware, particularly fire-arms and weapons (one of the government small arms factories being situated here), also of woollens, linens and silks, matches, candles, &c. The stone quarries of Mazzano, 8 m. east of Brescia, supplied material for the monument to Victor Emmanuel II. and other buildings in Rome. Brescia is situated on the main railway line between Milan and Verona, and has branch railways to Iseo, Parma, Cremona and (via Rovato) to Bergamo, and steam tramways to Mantua, Soncino, Ponte Toscolano and Cardone Valtrompia.

The ancient Celtic Brixia, a town of the Cenomani, became Roman in 225 b.c., when the Cenomani submitted to Rome. Augustus founded a civil (not a military) colony here in 27 b.c., and he and Tiberius constructed an aqueduct to supply it. In 452 it was plundered by Attila, but was the seat of a duchy in the Lombard period. From 1167 it was one of the most active members of the Lombard League. In 1258 it fell into the hands of Eccelino of Verona, and belonged to the Scaligers (della Scala) until 1421, when it came under the Visconti of Milan, and in 1426 under Venice. Early in the 16th century it was one of the wealthiest cities of Lombardy, but has never recovered from its sack by the French under Gaston de Foix in 1512. It belonged to Venice until 1797, when it came under Austrian dominion; it revolted in 1848, and again in 1849, being the only Lombard town to rally to Charles Albert in the latter year, but was taken after ten days' obstinate street fighting by the Austrians under Haynau.

See Museo Bresciano Illustrato (Brescia, 1838).

(T. As.)

BRESLAU (Polish Wraclaw), a city of Germany, capital of the Prussian province of Silesia, and an episcopal see, situated in a wide and fertile plain on both banks of the navigable Oder, 350 m. from its mouth, at the influx of the Ohle, and 202 m. from Berlin on the railway to Vienna. Pop. (1867) 171,926; (1880) 272,912; (1885) 299,640; (1890) 335,186; (1905) 470,751, about 60% being Protestants, 35% Roman Catholics and nearly 5% Jews. The Oder, which here breaks into several arms, divides the city into two unequal halves, crossed by numerous bridges. The larger portion, on the left bank, includes the old or inner town, surrounded by beautiful promenades, on the site of the ramparts, dismantled after 1813, from an eminence within which, the Liebichs Höhe, a fine view is obtained of the surrounding country. Outside, as well as across the Oder, lies the new town with extensive suburbs, containing, especially in the Schweidnitz quarter in the south, and the Oder quarter in the north, many handsome streets and spacious squares. The inner town, in contrast to the suburbs, still retains with its narrow streets much of its ancient characters, and contains several medieval buildings, both religious and secular, of great beauty and interest. The cathedral, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was begun in 1148 and completed at the close of the 15th century, enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries, and restored between 1873 and 1875; it is rich in notable treasures, especially the high altar of beaten silver, and in beautiful paintings and sculptures. The Kreuzkirche (church of the Holy Cross), dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, is an interesting brick building, remarkable for its stained glass and its historical monuments, among which is the tomb of Henry IV., duke of Silesia. The Sandkirche, so called from its dedication to Our Lady on the Sand, dates from the 14th century, and was until 1810 the church of the Augustinian canons. The Dorotheenor Minoritenkirche, remarkable for its high-pitched roof, was founded by the emperor Charles IV. in 1351. These are the most notable of the Roman Catholic churches. Of the Evangelical churches the most important is that of St Elizabeth, founded about 1250, rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries, and restored in 1857. Its lofty tower contains the largest bell in Silesia, and the church possesses a celebrated organ, fine stained glass, a magnificent stone pyx (erected in 1455) over 52 ft. high, and portraits of Luther and Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach. The church of St Mary Magdalen, built in the 14th century on the model of the cathedral, has two lofty Gothic towers connected by a bridge, and is interesting as having been the church in which, in 1523, the reformation in Silesia was first proclaimed. Other noteworthy ecclesiastical buildings are the graceful Gothic church of St Michael built in 1871, the bishop's palace and the Jewish synagogue, the finest in Germany after that in Berlin.

The business streets of the city converge upon the Ring, the market square, in which is the town-hall, a fine Gothic building, begun in the middle of the 14th and completed in the 16th century. Within is the Fürstensaal, in which the diets of Silesia were formerly held, while beneath is the famous Schweidnitzer Keller, used continuously since 1355 as a beer and wine house. P

The university, a spacious Gothic building facing the Oder, is a striking edifice. It was built (1728-1736) as a college by the Jesuits, on the site of the former imperial castle presented to them by the emperor Leopold I., and contains a magnificent hall (Aula Leopoldina), richly ornamented with frescoes and capable of holding 1200 persons. Breslau possesses a large number of other important public buildings: the Stadthaus (civic hall), the royal palace, the government offices (a handsome pile erected in 1887), the provincial House of Assembly, the municipal archives, the courts of law, the Silesian museum of arts and crafts and antiquities, stored in the former assembly hall of the estates (Ständehaus), which was rebuilt for the purpose, the museum of fine arts, the exchange, the Stadt and Lobe theatres, the post office and central railway station. There are also numerous hospitals and schools. Breslau is exceedingly rich in fine monuments; the most noteworthy being the equestrian statues of Frederick the Great and Frederick William III., both by Kiss; the statue of Blücher by Rauch; a marble statue of General Tauentzien by Langhans and Schadow; a bronze statue of Karl Gottlieb Svarez (1746-1798), the Prussian jurist, a monument to Schleiermacher, born here in 1768, and statues of the emperor William I., Bismarck and Moltke. There are also several handsome fountains. Foremost among the educational establishments stands the university, founded in 1702 by the emperor Leopold I. as a Jesuit college, and greatly extended by the incorporation of the university of Frankfort-on-Oder in 1811. Its library contains 306,000 volumes and 4000 MSS., and has in the so-called Bibliotheca Habichtiana a valuable collection of oriental literature. Among its auxiliary establishments are botanical gardens, an observatory, and anatomical, physiological and kindred institutions. There are eight classical and four modern schools, two higher girls' schools, a Roman Catholic normal school, a Jewish theological seminary, a school of arts and crafts, and numerous literary and charitable foundations. It is, however, as a commercial and industrial city that Breslau is most widely known. Its situation, close to the extensive coal and iron fields of Upper Silesia, in proximity to the Austrian and Russian frontiers, at the centre of a network of railways directly communicating both with these countries and with the chief towns of northern and central Germany, and on a deep waterway connecting with the Elbe and the Vistula, facilitates its very considerable transit and export trade in the products of the province and of the neighbouring countries. These embrace coal, sugar, cereals, spirits, petroleum and timber. The local industries comprise machinery and tools, railway and tramway carriages, furniture, cast-iron goods, gold and silver work, carpets, furs, cloth and cottons, paper, musical instruments, glass and china. Breslau is the headquarters of the VI. German army corps and contains a large garrison of troops of all arms.

History. – Breslau (Lat. Vratislavia) is first mentioned by the chronicler Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, in a.d. 1000, and was probably founded some years before this date. Early in the 11th century it was made the seat of a bishop, and after having formed part of Poland, became the capital of an independent duchy in 1163. Destroyed by the Mongols in 1241, it soon recovered its former prosperity and received a large influx of German colonists. The bishop obtained the title of a prince of the Empire in 1290.[1]

[1] In 1195 Jaroslaw, son of Boleslaus I. of Lower Silesia, who became bishop of Breslau in 1198, inherited the duchy of Neisse, which at his death (1201) he bequeathed to his successors in the see. The Austrian part of Neisse still belongs to the bishop of Breslau, who also still bears the title of prince bishop.

When Henry VI., the last duke of Breslau, died in 1335, the city came by purchase to John, king of Bohemia, whose successors retained it until about 1460. The Bohemian kings bestowed various privileges on Breslau, which soon began to extend its commerce in all directions, while owing to increasing wealth the citizens took up a more independent attitude. Disliking the Hussites, Breslau placed itself under the protection of Pope Pius II. in 1463, and a few years afterwards came under the rule of the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus. After his death in 1490 it again became subject to Bohemia, passing with the rest of Silesia to the Habsburgs when in 1526 Ferdinand, afterwards emperor, was chosen king of Bohemia. Having passed almost undisturbed through the periods of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, Breslau was compelled to own the authority of Frederick the Great in 1741. It was, however, recovered by the Austrians in 1757, but was regained by Frederick after his victory at Leuthen in the same year, and has since belonged to Prussia, although it was held for a few days by the French in 1807 after the battle of Jena, and again in 1813 after the battle of Bautzen. The sites of the fortifications, dismantled by the French in 1807, were given to the civic authorities by King Frederick William III., and converted into promenades. In March 1813 this monarch issued from Breslau his stirring appeals to the Prussians, An mein Volk and An mein Kriegesheer, and the city was the centre of the Prussian preparations for the campaign which ended at Leipzig. After the Prussian victory at Sadowa in 1866, William I. made a triumphant and complimentary entry into the city, which since the days of Frederick the Great has been only less loyal to the royal house than Berlin itself.

See Bürkner and Stein, Geschichte der Stadt Breslau (Bresl. 1851-1853); J-Stein, Geschichte der Stadt Breslau im 19ten Jahrhundert (1884); O Frenzel, Breslauer Stadtbuch (Codex dipl. Silisiae, vol. ii. 1882); Luchs, Breslau, ein Führer durch die Stadt (12th ed., Bresl. 1904).

BRESSANT, JEAN BAPTISTE PROSPER (1815-1886), French actor, was born at Chalon-sur-Saône on the 23rd of October 1815, and began his stage career at the Variétés in Paris in 1833. In 1838 he went to the French theatre at St Petersburg, where for eight years he played important parts with ever-increasing reputation. His success was confirmed at the Gymnase when he returned to Paris in 1846, and he made his début at the Comédie Française as a full-fledged sociétaire in 1854. From playing the ardent young lover, he turned to leading rôles both in modern plays and in the classical répertoire. His Richelieu in Mlle de Belle-Isle, his Octave in Alfred de Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne, and his appearance in de Musset's Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée and Un caprice were followed by Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Don Juan. Bressant retired in 1875, and died on the 23rd of January 1886. During his professorship at the Conservatoire, Mounet-Sully was one of his pupils.

BRESSE, a district of eastern France embracing portions of the departments of Ain, Saône-et-Loire and Jura. The Bresse extends from the Dombes on the south to the river Doubs on the north, and from the Saône eastwards to the Jura, measuring some 60 m. in the former, and 20 m. in the latter direction. It is a plain varying from 600 to 800 ft. above the sea, with few eminences and a slight inclination westwards. Heaths and coppice alternate with pastures and arable land; pools and marshes are numerous, especially in the north. Its chief rivers are the Veyle, the Reyssouze and the Seille, all tributaries of the Saône. The soil is a gravelly clay but moderately fertile, and cattle-raising is largely carried on. The region is, however, more especially celebrated for its table poultry. The inhabitants preserve a distinctive but almost obsolete costume, with a curious head-dress. The Bresse proper, called the Bresse Bressane, comprises the northern portion of the department of Ain. The greater part of the district belonged in the middle ages to the lords of Bâgé, from whom it passed in 1272 to the house of Savoy. It was not till the first half of the 15th century that the province, with Bourg as its capital, was founded as such. In 1601 it was ceded to France by the treaty of Lyons, after which it formed (together with the province of Bugey) first a separate government and afterwards part of the government of Burgundy.

BRESSUIRE, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Deux-Sèvres, 48 m. N. of Niort by rail. Pop. (1906) 4561. The town is situated on an eminence overlooking the Dolo, a tributary of the Argenton. It is the centre of a cattle-rearing and agricultural region, and has important markets; the manufacture of wooden type and woollen goods is carried on. Bressuire has two buildings of interest: the church of Notre-Dame, which, dating chiefly from the 12th and 15th centuries, has an imposing tower of the Renaissance period; and the castle, built by the lords.

Beaumont, vassals of the viscount of Thouars. The latter is now in ruins, and a portion of the site is occupied by a modern château, but an inner and outer line of fortifications are still to be seen. The whole forms the finest assemblage of feudal ruins in Poitou. Bressuire is the seat of a sub-prefect and has a tribunal of first instance. Among the disasters suffered at various times by the town, its capture from the English and subsequent pillage by French troops under du Guesclin in 1370 is the most memorable.

BREST, a fortified seaport of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Finistère, 155 m. W.N.W. of Rennes by rail. Population (1906) town, 71,163; commune, 85,294. It is situated to the north of a magnificent landlocked bay, and occupies the slopes of two hills divided by the river Penfeld, – the part of the town on the left bank being regarded as Brest proper, while the part on the right is known as Recouvrance. There are also extensive suburbs to the east of the town. The hill-sides are in some places so steep that the ascent from the lower to the upper town has to be effected by flights of steps and the second or third storey of one house is often on a level with the ground storey of the next. The chief street of Brest bears the name of rue de Siam, in honour of the Siamese embassy sent to Louis XIV., and terminates at the remarkable swing-bridge, constructed in 1861, which crosses the mouth of the Penfeld. Running along the shore to the south of the town is the Cours d'Ajot, one of the finest promenades of its kind in France, named after the engineer who constructed it. It is planted with trees and adorned with marble statues of Neptune and Abundance by Antoine Coysevox. The castle with its donjon and seven towers (12th to the 16th centuries), commanding the entrance to the river, is the only interesting building in the town. Brest is the capital of one of the five naval arrondissements of France. The naval port, which is in great part excavated in the rock, extends along both banks of the Penfeld; it comprises gun-foundries and workshops, magazines, shipbuilding yards and repairing docks, and employs about 7000 workmen. There are also large naval barracks, training ships and naval schools of various kinds, and an important naval hospital. Brest is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, two naval tribunals, and a tribunal of maritime commerce. There are also lycées for boys and girls and a school of commerce and industry. The commercial port, which is separated from the town itself by the Cours d'Ajot, comprises a tidal port with docks and an outer harbour; it is protected by jetties to the east and west and by a breakwater on the south. In 1905 the number of vessels entered was 202 with a tonnage of 67,755, and cleared 160 with a tonnage of 61,012. The total value of the imports in 1905 was £244,000. The chief were wine, coal, timber, mineral tar, fertilizers and lobsters and crayfish. Exports, of which the chief were wheat-flour, fruit and superphosphates, were valued at £40,000. Besides its sardine and mackerel fishing industry, the town has flour-mills, breweries, foundries, forges, engineering works, and manufactures of blocks, candles, chemicals (from sea-weed), boots, shoes and linen. Brest communicates by submarine cable with America and French West Africa. The roadstead consists of a deep indentation with a maximum length of 14 m. and an average width of 4 m., the mouth being barred by the peninsula of Quélern, leaving a passage from 1 to 2 m. broad, known as the Goulet. The outline of the bay is broken by numerous smaller bays or arms, formed by the embouchures of streams, the most important being the Anse de Quélern, the Anse de Poulmie, and the mouths of the Châteaulin and the Landerneau. Brest is a fortress of the first class. The fortifications of the town and the harbour fall into four groups: (1) the very numerous forts and batteries guarding the approaches to and the channel of the Goulet; (2) the batteries and forts directed upon the roads; (3) a group of works preventing access to the peninsula of Quélern and commanding the ground to the south of the peninsula from which many of the works of group (2) could be taken in reverse; (4) the defences of Brest itself, consisting of an old-fashioned enceinte possessing little military value and a chain of detached forts to the west of the town.

Nothing definite is known of Brest till about 1240, when it was ceded by a count of Léon to John I., duke of Brittany. In 1342 John of Montfort gave it up to the English, and it did not finally leave their hands till 1397. Its medieval importance was great enough to give rise to the saying, He is not duke of Brittany who is not lord of Brest. By the marriage of Francis I. with Claude, daughter of Anne of Brittany, Brest with the rest of the duchy definitely passed to the French crown. The advantages of the situation for a seaport town were first recognized by Richelieu, who in 1631 constructed a harbour with wooden wharves, which soon became a station of the French navy. Colbert changed the wooden wharves for masonry and otherwise improved the post, and Vauban's fortifications followed in 1680-1688. During the 18th century the fortifications and the naval importance of the town continued to develop. In 1694 an English squadron under John, 3rd Lord Berkeley, was miserably defeated in attempting a landing; but in 1794, during the revolutionary war, the French fleet, under Villaret de Joyeuse, was as thoroughly beaten in the same place by the English admiral Howe.

BREST-LITOVSK (Polish Brzesc-Litevski; and in the Chron. Berestie and Berestov), a strongly fortified town of Russia, in the government of Grodno, 137 m. by rail S. from the city of Grodno, in 52° 5' N. lat. and 23° 39' E. long., at the junction of the navigable river Mukhovets with the Bug, and at the intersection of railways from Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow and East Prussia. Pop. (1867) 22,493; (1901) 42,812, of whom more than one-half were Jews. It contains a Jewish synagogue, which was regarded in the 16th century as the first in Europe, and is the seat of an Armenian and of a Greek Catholic bishop; the former has authority over the Armenians throughout the whole country. The town carries on an extensive trade in grain, flax, hemp, wood, tar and leather. First mentioned in the beginning of the 11th century, Brest-Litovsk was in 1241 laid waste by the Mongols and was not rebuilt till 1275; its suburbs were burned by the Teutonic Knights in 1379; and in the end of the 15th century the whole town met a similar fate at the hands of the khan of the Crimea. In the reign of the Polish king Sigismund III. diets were held there; and in 1594 and 1596 it was the meeting-place of two remarkable councils of the bishops of western Russia. In 1657, and again in 1706, the town was captured by the Swedes; in 1794 it was the scene of Suvarov's victory over the Polish general Sierakowski; in 1795 it was added to the Russian empire. The Brest-Litovsk or King's canal (50 m. long), utilizing the Mukhovets-Bug rivers, forms a link in the waterways that connect the Dnieper with the Vistula.

BRETEUIL, LOUIS CHARLES AUGUSTE LE TONNELIER, Baron de (1730-1807), French diplomatist, was born at the chateau of Azay-le-Féron (Indre) on the 7th of March 1730. He was only twenty-eight when he was appointed by Louis XV. ambassador to the elector of Cologne, and two years later he was sent to St Petersburg. He arranged to be temporarily absent from his post at the time of the palace revolution by which Catherine II. was placed on the throne. In 1769 he was sent to Stockholm, and subsequently represented his government at Vienna, Naples, and again at Vienna until 1783, when he was recalled to become minister of the king's household. In this capacity he introduced considerable reforms in prison administration. A close friend of Marie Antoinette, he presently came into collision with Calonne, who demanded his dismissal in 1787. His influence with the king and queen, especially with the latter, remained unshaken, and on Necker's dismissal on the 11th of July 1789, Breteuil succeeded him as chief minister. The fall of the Bastille three days later put an end to the new ministry, and Breteuil made his way to Switzerland with the first party of émigrés. At Soleure, in November 1790, he received from Louis XVI. exclusive powers to negotiate with the European courts, and in his efforts to check the ill-advised diplomacy of the émigré princes, he soon brought himself into opposition with his old rival Calonne, who held a chief place in their councils.

After the failure of the flight to Varennes, in the arrangement of which he had a share, Breteuil received instructions from Louis XVI., designed to restore amicable relations with the princes. His distrust of the king's brothers and his defence of Louis XVI.'s prerogative were to some extent justified, but his intransigeant attitude towards these princes emphasized the dissensions of the royal family in the eyes of foreign sovereigns, who looked on the comte de Provence as the natural representative of his brother and found a pretext for non-interference on Louis's behalf in the contradictory statements of the negotiators. Breteuil himself was the object of violent attacks from the party of the princes, who asserted that he persisted in exercising powers which had been revoked by Louis XVI. After the execution of Marie Antoinette he retired into private life near Hamburg, only returning to France in 1802. He died in Paris on the 2nd of November 1807.

See the memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville (2 vols., Paris, 1816) and of the marquis de Bouillé (2 vols., Paris, 1884); and E. Daudet, Coblentz, 1789-1793 (1889), forming part of his Hist. de l'émigration.

BRÉTIGNY, a French town (dept. Eure-et-Loir, arrondissement and canton of Chartres, commune of Sours), which gave its name to a celebrated treaty concluded there on the 8th of May 1360, between Edward III. of England and John II., surnamed the Good, of France. The exactions of the English, who wished to yield as few as possible of the advantages claimed by them in the treaty of London, made negotiations difficult, and the discussion of terms begun early in April lasted more than a month. By virtue of this treaty Edward III. obtained, besides Guienne and Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, Agenais, Périgord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, the countship of Gaure, Angoumois, Rouergue, Montreuil-sur-mer, Ponthieu, Calais, Sangatte, Ham and the countship of Guines. John II. had, moreover, to pay three millions of gold crowns for his ransom. On his side the king of England gave up the duchies of Normandy and Touraine, the countships of Anjou and Maine, and the suzerainty of Brittany and of Flanders. As a guarantee for the payment of his ransom, John the Good gave as hostages two of his sons, several princes and nobles, four inhabitants of Paris, and two citizens from each of the nineteen principal towns of France. This treaty was ratified and sworn to by the two kings and by their eldest sons on the 24th of October 1360, at Calais. At the same time were signed the special conditions relating to each important article of the treaty, and the renunciatory clauses in which the kings abandoned their rights over the territory they had yielded to one another.

See Rymer's Foedera, vol. iii; Dumont, Corps diplomatique, vol. ii.; Froissart, ed. Luce, vol. vi.; Les Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. P. Paris, vol. vi.; E. Cosneau, Les Grands Traités de la guerre de cent ans (1889).

BRETON, JULES ADOLPHE AIMÉ LOUIS (1827- ), French painter, was born on the 1st of May 1827, at Courrières, Pas de Calais, France. His artistic gifts being manifest at an early age, he was sent in 1843 to Ghent, to study under the historical painter de Vigne, and in 1846 to Baron Wappers at Antwerp. Finally he worked in Paris under Drolling. His first efforts were in historical subjects: Saint Piat preaching in Gaul; then, under the influence of the revolution of 1848, he represented Misery and Despair. But Breton soon discovered that he was not born to be a historical painter, and he returned to the memories of nature and of the country which were impressed on him in early youth. In 1853 he exhibited the Return of the Harvesters at the Paris Salon, and the Little Gleaner at Brussels. Thenceforward he was essentially a painter of rustic life, especially in the province of Artois, which he quitted only three times for short excursions: in 1864 to Provence, and in 1865 and 1873 to Brittany, whence he derived some of his happiest studies of religious scenes. His numerous subjects may be divided generally into four classes: labour, rest, rural festivals and religious festivals. Among his more important works may be named Women Gleaning, and The Day after St Sebastian's Day (1855), which gained him a third-class medal; Blessing the Fields (1857), a second-class medal; Erecting a Calvary (1859), now in the Lille gallery; The Return of the Gleaners (1859), now in the Luxembourg; Evening and Women Weeding (1861), a first-class medal; Grandfather's Birthday (1862); The Close of Day (1865); Harvest (1867); Potato Gatherers (1868); A Pardon, Brittany (1869); The Fountain (1872), medal of honour; The Bonfires of St John (1875); Women mending Nets (1876), in the Douai museum; A Gleaner (1877), Luxembourg; Evening, Finistère (1881); The Song of the Lark (1884); The Last Sunbeam (1885); The Shepherd's Star (1888); The Call Home (1889); The Last Gleanings (1895); Gathering Poppies (1897); The Alarm Cry (1899); Twilight Glory (1900). Breton was elected to the Institut in 1886 on the death of Baudry. In 1889 he was made commander of the Legion of Honour, and in 1899 foreign member of the Royal Academy of London. He also wrote several books, among them Les Champs et la mer (1876), Nos peintres du siècle (1900), Jeanne, a poem, Delphine Bernard (1902), and La Peinture (1904).

See Jules Breton, Vie d'un artiste, art et nature (autobiographical), (Paris, 1890); Marius Vachon, Jules Breton (1899).

BRETON, BRITTON or BRITTAINE, NICHOLAS (1545?-1626), English poet, belonged to an old family settled at Layer-Breton, Essex. His father, William Breton, who had made a considerable fortune by trade, died in 1559, and the widow (née Elizabeth Bacon) married the poet George Gascoigne before her sons had attained their majority. Nicholas Breton was probably born at the capitall mansion house in Red Cross Street, in the parish of St Giles without Cripplegate, mentioned in his father's will. There is no official record of his residence at the university, but the diary of the Rev. Richard Madox tells us that he was at Antwerp in 1583 and was once of Oriel College. He married Ann Sutton in 1593, and had a family. He is supposed to have died shortly after the publication of his last work, Fantastickes (1626). Breton found a patron in Mary, countess of Pembroke, and wrote much in her honour until 1601, when she seems to have withdrawn her favour. It is probably safe to supplement the meagre record of his life by accepting as autobiographical some of the letters signed N.B. in A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters (1603, enlarged 1637); the 19th letter of the second part contains a general complaint of many griefs, and proceeds as follows: hath another been wounded in the warres, fared hard, lain in a cold bed many a bitter storme, and beene at many a hard banquet? all these have I; another imprisoned? so have I; another long been sicke? so have I; another plagued with an unquiet life? so have I; another indebted to his hearts griefe, and fame would pay and cannot? so am I. Breton was a facile writer, popular with his contemporaries, and forgotten by the next generation. His work consists of religious and pastoral poems, satires, and a number of miscellaneous prose tracts. His religious poems are sometimes wearisome by their excess of fluency and sweetness, but they are evidently the expression of a devout and earnest mind. His praise of the Virgin and his references to Mary Magdalene have suggested that he was a Catholic, but his prose writings abundantly prove that he was an ardent Protestant. Breton had little gift for satire, and his best work is to be found in his pastoral poetry. His Passionate Shepheard (1604) is full of sunshine and fresh air, and of unaffected gaiety. The third pastoral in this book – Who can live in heart so glad As the merrie country lad – is well known; with some other of Breton's daintiest poems, among them the lullaby, Come little babe, come silly soule,[1] – it is incorporated in A.H. Bullen's Lyrics from Elizabethan Romances (1890).

[1] This poem, however, comes from The Arbor of Amorous Devises, which is only in part Breton's work.

His keen observation of country life appears also in his prose idyll, Wits Trenchmour, a conference betwixt a scholler and an angler, and in his Fantastickes, a series of short prose pictures of the months, the Christian festivals and the hours, which throw much light on the customs of the times. Most of Breton's books are very rare and have great bibliographical value. His works, with the exception of some belonging to private owners, were collected by Dr A.B. Grosart

Chertsey Worthies Library in 1879, with an elaborate introduction quoting the documents for the poet's history.

Breton's poetical works, the titles of which are here somewhat abbreviated, include The Workes of a Young Wit (1577); A Floorish upon Fancie (1577); The Pilgrimage to Paradise (1592); The Countess of Penbrook's Passion (MS.), first printed by J.O. Halliwell Phillipps in 1853; Pasquil's Fooles cappe, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1600; Pasquil's Mistresse (1600); Pasquil's Passe and Passeth Not (1600); Melancholike Humours (1600); Marie Magdalen's Love: a Solemne Passion of the Soules Love (1595), the first part of which, a prose treatise, is probably by another hand; the second part, a poem in six-lined stanza, is certainly by Breton; A Divine Poem, including The Ravisht Soul and The Blessed Weeper (1601); An Excellent Poem, upon the Longing of a Blessed Heart (1601); The Soules Heavenly Exercise (1601); The Soules Harmony (1602); Olde Madcappe newe Gaily mawfrey (1602); The Mother's Blessing (1602); A True Description of Unthankfulnesse (1602); The Passionate Shepheard (1604); The Soules Immortall Crowne (1605); The Honour of Valour (1605); An Invective against Treason; I would and I would not (1614); Bryton's Bowre of Delights (1591), edited by Dr Grosart in 1893, an unauthorized publication which contained some poems disclaimed by Breton; The Arbor of Amorous Devises (entered at Stationers' Hall, 1594), only in part Breton's; and contributions to England's Helicon and other miscellanies of verse. Of his twenty-two prose tracts may be mentioned Wit's Trenchmour (1597), The Wil of Wit (1599), A Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters (1603). Sir Philip Sidney's Ourania by N.B. (1606); Mary Magdalen's Lamentations (1604), and The Passion of a Discontented Mind (1601), are sometimes, but erroneously, ascribed to Breton.

BRETÓN DE LOS HERREROS, MANUEL (1796-1873), Spanish dramatist, was born at Quel (Logroño) on the 19th of December 1796 and was educated at Madrid. Enlisting on the 24th of May 1812, he served against the French in Valencia and Catalonia, and retired with the rank of corporal on the 8th of March 1822. He obtained a minor post in the civil service under the liberal government, and on his discharge determined to earn his living by writing for the stage. His first piece, Á la vejez viruelas, was produced on the 14th of October 1824, and proved the writer to be the legitimate successor of the younger Moratin. His industry was astonishing: between October 1824 and November 1828, he composed thirty-nine plays, six of them original, the rest being translations or recasts of classic masterpieces. In 1831 he published a translation of Tibullus, and acquired by it an unmerited reputation for scholarship which secured for him an appointment as sub-librarian at the national library. But the theatre claimed him for its own, and with the exception of Elena and a few other pieces in the fashionable romantic vein, his plays were a long series of successes. His only serious check occurred in 1840; the former liberal had grown conservative with age, and in La Ponchada he ridiculed the National Guard. He was dismissed from the national library, and for a short time was so unpopular that he seriously thought of emigrating to America; but the storm blew over, and within two years Bretón de los Herreros had regained his supremacy on the stage. He became secretary to the Spanish Academy, quarrelled with his fellow-members, and died at Madrid on the 8th of November 1873. He is the author of some three hundred and sixty original plays, twenty-three of which are in prose. No Spanish dramatist of the nineteenth century approaches him in comic power, in festive invention, and in the humorous presentation of character, while his metrical dexterity is unique. Marcela o a cual de los trés? (1831), Muérete; y verás! (1837) and La Escuela del matrimonio (1852) still hold the stage, and are likely to hold it so long as Spanish is spoken.

See Marqués de Molíns, Bretón de los Herreros, recuerdos de su vida y de sus obras (Madrid, 1883); Obras de Bretón de Herreros (5 vols., Madrid, 1883); E. Piñeyro, El Romanticismo en España (Paris, 1904).

(J. F.-K.)

BRETSCHNEIDER, KARL GOTTLIEB (1776-1848), German scholar and theologian, was born at Gersdorf in Saxony. In 1794 he entered the university of Leipzig, where he studied theology for four years. After some years of hesitation he resolved to be ordained, and in 1802 he passed with great distinction the examination for candidatus theologiae, and attracted the regard of F.V. Reinhard, author of the System der christlichen Moral (1788-1815), then court-preacher at Dresden, who became his warm friend and patron during the remainder of his life. In 1804-1806 Bretschneider was Privat-docent at the university of Wittenberg, where he lectured on philosophy and theology. During this time he wrote his work on the development of dogma, Systematische Entwickelung aller in der Dogmatik vorkommenden Begriffe nach den symbolischen Schriften der evangelisch-lutherischen und reformirten Kirche (1805, 4th ed. 1841), which was followed by others, including an edition of Ecclesiasticus with a Latin commentary. On the advance of the French army under Napoleon into Prussia, he determined to leave Wittenberg and abandon his university career. Through the good offices of Reinhard, he became pastor of Schneeberg in Saxony (1807). In 1808 he was promoted to the office of superintendent of the church of Annaberg, in which capacity he had to decide, in accordance with the canon law of Saxony, many matters belonging to the department of ecclesiastical law. But the climate did not agree with him, and his official duties interfered with his theological studies. With a view to a change he took the degree of doctor of theology in Wittenberg in August 1812. In 1816 he was appointed general superintendent at Gotha, where he remained until his death in 1848. This was the great period of his literary activity.

In 1820 was published his treatise on the gospel of St John, entitled Probabilia de Evangelii el Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et origine, which attracted much attention. In it he collected with great fulness and discussed with marked moderation the arguments against Johannine authorship. This called forth a number of replies. To the astonishment of every one, Bretschneider announced in the preface to the second edition of his Dogmatik in 1822, that he had never doubted the authenticity of the gospel, and had published his Probabilia only to draw attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its genuineness. Bretschneider remarks in his autobiography that the publication of this work had the effect of preventing his appointment as successor to Karl C. Tittmann in Dresden, the minister Detlev von Einsiedel (1773-1861) denouncing him as the slanderer of John (Johannisschänder). His greatest contribution to the science of exegesis was his Lexicon Manuale Graeco-Latinum in libros Novi Testamenti (1824, 3rd ed. 1840). This work was valuable for the use which its author made of the Greek of the Septuagint, of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha, of Josephus, and of the apostolic fathers, in illustration of the language of the New Testament. In 1826 he published Apologie der neuern Theologie des evangelischen Deutschlands. Hugh James Rose had published in England (1825) a volume of sermons on the rationalist movement (The State of the Protestant Religion in Germany), in which he classed Bretschneider with the rationalists; and Bretschneider contended that he himself was not a rationalist in the ordinary sense of the term, but a rational supernaturalist. Some of his numerous dogmatic writings passed through several editions. An English translation of his Manual of the Religion and History of the Christian Church appeared in 1857. His dogmatic position seems to be intermediate between the extreme school of naturalists, such as Heinrich Paulus, J.F. Röhr and Julius Wegscheider on the one hand, and D.F. Strauss and F.C. Baur on the other. Recognizing a supernatural element in the Bible, he nevertheless allowed to the full the critical exercise of reason in the interpretation of its dogmas (cp. Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, pp. 89 ff.).

See his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Selbstbiographie von K.G. Bretschneider (Gotha, 1851), of which a translation, with notes, by Professor George E. Day, appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra and American Biblical Repository, Nos. 36 and 38 (1852, 1853); Neudecker in Die allgemeine Kirchenzeitung (1848), No. 38; Wüstemann, Bretschneideri Memoria (1848); A.G. Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought (Bampton Lectures, 1862); Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 1897).

BRETTEN, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Baden, on the Saalbach, 9 m. S.E. of Bruchsal by rail. Pop. (1900) 4781. It has some manufactories of machinery and japanned goods, and a considerable trade in timber and livestock. Bretten was the birthplace of Melanchthon (1497), and statue of him by Drake, a memorial hall, containing a collection of his writings and busts and pictures of his famous contemporaries, has been erected.

BRETWALDA, a word used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the date 827, and also in a charter of Æthelstan, king of the English. It appears in several variant forms (brytenwalda, bretenanwealda, &c.), and means most probably lord of the Britons or lord of Britain; for although the derivation of the word is uncertain, its earlier syllable seems to be cognate with the words Briton and Britannia. In the Chronicle the title is given to Ecgbert, king of the English, the eighth king that was Bretwalda, and retrospectively to seven kings who ruled over one or other of the English kingdoms. The seven names are copied from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, and it is interesting to note that the last king named, Oswiu of Northumbria, lived 150 years before Ecgbert. It has been assumed that these seven kings exercised a certain superiority over a large part of England, but if such superiority existed it is certain that it was extremely vague and was unaccompanied by any unity of organization. Another theory is that Bretwalda refers to a war-leadership, or imperium, over the English south of the Humber, and has nothing to do with Britons or Britannia. In support of this explanation it is urged that the title is given in the Chronicle to Ecgbert in the year in which he conquered the kingdom of the Mercians and all that was south of the Humber. Less likely is the theory of Palgrave that the Bretwaldas were the successors of the pseudo-emperors, Maximus and Carausius, and claimed to share the imperial dignity of Rome; or that of Kemble, who derives Bretwalda from the British word breotan, to distribute, and translates it widely ruling. With regard to Ecgbert the word is doubtless given as a title in imitation of its earlier use, and the same remark applies to its use in Æthelstan's charter.

See E.A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, vol. i. (Oxford, 1877); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897); J.R. Green, The Making of England, vol. ii. (London, 1897); F. Palgrave, The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth (London, 1832); J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England (London, 1876); J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (London, 1884).

BREUGHEL (or Brueghel), PIETER, Flemish painter, was the son of a peasant residing in the village of Breughel near Breda. After receiving instruction in painting from Koek, whose daughter he married, he spent some time in France and Italy, and then went to Antwerp, where he was elected into the Academy in 1551. He finally settled at Brussels and died there. The subjects of his pictures are chiefly humorous figures, like those of D. Teniers; and if he wants the delicate touch and silvery clearness of that master, he has abundant spirit and comic power. He is said to have died about the year 1570 at the age of sixty; other accounts give 1590 as the date of his death.

His son Pieter, the younger (1564-1637), known as Hell Breughel, was born in Brussels and died at Antwerp, where his Christ bearing the Cross is in the museum.

Another son Jan (c. 1569-1642), known as Velvet Breughel, was born at Brussels. He first applied himself to painting flowers and fruits, and afterwards acquired considerable reputation by his landscapes and sea-pieces. After residing long at Cologne he travelled into Italy, where his landscapes, adorned with small figures, were greatly admired. He left a large number of pictures, chiefly landscapes, which are executed with great skill. Rubens made use of Breughel's hand in the landscape part of several of his small pictures – such as his Vertumnus and Pomona, the Satyr viewing the Sleeping Nymph, and the Terrestrial Paradise.

BREVET (a diminutive of the Fr. bref), a short writing, originally an official writing or letter, with the particular meaning of a papal indulgence. The use of the word is mainly confined to a commission, or official document, giving to an officer in the army a permanent, as opposed to a local and temporary, rank in the service higher than that he holds substantively in his corps. In the British army brevet rank exists only above the rank of captain, but in the United States army it is possible to obtain a brevet as first lieutenant. In France the term breveté is particularly used with respect to the General Staff, to express the equivalent of the English passed Staff College (p.s.c.).

BREVIARY (Lat. breviarium, abridgment, epitome), the book which contains the offices for the canonical hours, i.e. the daily service of the Roman Catholic Church. As compared with the Anglican Book of Common Prayer it is both more and less comprehensive; more, in that it includes lessons and hymns for every day in the year; less, because it excludes the Eucharistic office (contained in the Missal), and the special offices connected with baptism, marriage, burial, ordination, &c., which are found in the Ritual or the Pontifical. In the early days of Christian worship, when Jewish custom was followed, the Bible furnished all that was thought necessary, containing as it did the books from which the lessons were read and the psalms that were recited. The first step in the evolution of the Breviary was the separation of the Psalter into a choir-book. At first the president of the local church (bishop) or the leader of the choir chose a particular psalm as he thought appropriate. From about the 4th century certain psalms began to be grouped together, a process that was furthered by the monastic practice of daily reciting the 150 psalms. This took so much time that the monks began to spread it over a week, dividing each day into hours, and allotting to each hour its portion of the Psalter. St Benedict in the 6th century drew up such an arrangement, probably, though not certainly, on the basis of an older Roman division which, though not so skilful, is the one in general use. Gradually there were added to these psalter choir-books additions in the form of antiphons, responses, collects or short prayers, for the use of those not skilful at improvisation and metrical compositions. Jean Beleth, a 12th-century liturgical author, gives the following list of books necessary for the right conduct of the canonical office: – the Antiphonarium, the Old and New Testaments, the Passionarius (liber) and the Legendarius (dealing respectively with martyrs and saints), the Homiliarius (homilies on the Gospels), the Sermologus (collection of sermons) and the works of the Fathers, besides, of course, the Psalterium and the Collectarium. To overcome the inconvenience of using such a library the Breviary came into existence and use. Already in the 8th century Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, had in a Breviarium Psalterii made an abridgment of the Psalter for the laity, giving a few psalms for each day, and Alcuin had rendered a similar service by including a prayer for each day and some other prayers, but no lessons or homilies. The Breviary rightly so called, however, only dates from the 11th century; the earliest MS. containing the whole canonical office is of the year 1099 and is in the Mazarin library. Gregory VII. (pope 1073-1085), too, simplified the liturgy as performed at the Roman court, and gave his abridgment the name of Breviary, which thus came to denote a work which from another point of view might be called a Plenary, involving as it did the collection of several works into one. There are several extant specimens of 12th-century Breviaries, all Benedictine, but under Innocent III. (pope 1198-1216) their use was extended, especially by the newly founded and active Franciscan order. These preaching friars, with the authorization of Gregory IX., adopted (with some modifications, e.g. the substitution of the Gallican for the Roman version of the Psalter) the Breviary hitherto used exclusively by the Roman court, and with it gradually swept out of Europe all the earlier partial books (Legendaries, Responsories), &c., and to some extent the local Breviaries, like that of Sarum. Finally, Nicholas III. (pope 1277-1280) adopted this version both for the curia and for the basilicas of Rome, and thus made its position secure. The Benedictines and Dominicans have Breviaries of their own. The only other types that merit notice are: – (1) the Mozarabic Breviary, once in use throughout all Spain, but now confined to a single foundation at Toledo; it is remarkable for the number and length of its hymns, and for the fact that the majority of its collects are addressed to God the Son; (2) the Ambrosian, now confined to Milan, where it owes its retention to the attachment of the clergy and people to their traditionary rites, which they derive from St Ambrose (see Liturgy).

Till the council of Trent every bishop had full power to regulate the Breviary of his own diocese; and this was acted upon almost everywhere. Each monastic community, also, had one of its own. Pius V. (pope 1566-1572), however, while sanctioning those which could show at least 200 years of existence, made the Roman obligatory in all other places. But the influence of the court of Rome has gradually gone much beyond this, and has superseded almost all the local uses. The Roman has thus become nearly universal, with the allowance only of additional offices for saints specially venerated in each particular diocese. The Roman Breviary has undergone several revisions: The most remarkable of these is that by Francis Quignonez, cardinal of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (1536), which, though not accepted by Rome,[1] formed the model for the still more thorough reform made in 1549 by the Church of England, whose daily morning and evening services are but a condensation and simplification of the Breviary offices.

[1] It was approved by Clement VII. and Paul III., and permitted as a substitute for the unrevised Breviary, until Pius V. in 1568 excluded it as too short and too modern, and issued a reformed edition (Breviarium Pianum, Pian Breviary) of the old Breviary.

Some parts of the prefaces at the beginning of the English Prayer-Book are free translations of those of Quignonez. The Pian Breviary was again altered by Sixtus V. in 1588, who introduced the revised Vulgate text; by Clement VIII. in 1602 (through Baronius and Bellarmine), especially as concerns the rubrics; and by Urban VIII. (1623-1644), a purist who unfortunately tampered with the text of the hymns, injuring both their literary charm and their historic worth.

In the 17th and 18th centuries a movement of revision took place in France, and succeeded in modifying about half the Breviaries of that country. Historically, this proceeded from the labours of Jean de Launoy (1603-1678), le dénicheur des saints, and Louis Sébastien le Nain de Tillemont, who had shown the falsity of numerous lives of the saints; while theologically it was produced by the Port Royal school, which led men to dwell more on communion with God as contrasted with the invocation of the saints. This was mainly carried out by the adoption of a rule that all antiphons and responses should be in the exact words of Scripture, which, of course, cut out the whole class of appeals to created beings. The services were at the same time simplified and shortened, and the use of the whole Psalter every week (which had become a mere theory in the Roman Breviary, owing to its frequent supersession by saints' day services) was made a reality. These reformed French Breviaries – e.g. the Paris Breviary of 1680 by Archbishop François de Harlay (1625-1695) and that of 1736 by Archbishop Charles Gaspard Guillaume de Vintimille (1655-1746) – show a deep knowledge of Holy Scripture, and much careful adaptation of different texts; but during the pontificate of Pius IX. a strong Ultramontane movement arose against them. This was inaugurated by Montalembert, but its literary advocates were chiefly Dom Gueranger, a learned Benedictine monk, abbot of Solesmes, and Louis François Veuillot (1813-1883) of the Univers; and it succeeded in suppressing them everywhere, the last diocese to surrender being Orleans in 1875. The Jansenist and Gallican influence was also strongly felt in Italy and in Germany, where Breviaries based on the French models were published at Cologne, Münster, Mainz and other towns. Meanwhile, under the direction of Benedict XIV. (pope 1740-1758), a special congregation collected many materials for an official revision, but nothing was published. Subsequent changes have been very few and minute. In 1902, under Leo XIII., a commission under the presidency of Monsignor Louis Duchesne was appointed to consider the Breviary, the Missal, the Pontifical and the Ritual.

The beauty and value of many of the Latin Breviaries were brought to the notice of English churchmen by one of the numbers of the Oxford Tracts for the Times, since which time they have been much more studied, both for their own sake and for the light they throw upon the English Prayer-Book.

From a bibliographical point of view some of the early printed Breviaries are among the rarest of literary curiosities, being merely local. The copies were not spread far, and were soon worn out by the daily use made of them. Doubtless many editions have perished without leaving a trace of their existence, while others are known by unique copies. In Scotland the only one which has survived the convulsions of the 16th century is that of Aberdeen, a Scottish form of the Sarum Office,[2] revised by William Elphinstone (bishop 1483-1514), and printed at Edinburgh by Walter Chapman and Andrew Myllar in 1509-1510.

[2] The Sarum Rite was much favoured in Scotland as a kind of protest against the jurisdiction claimed by the church of York.

Four copies have been preserved of it, of which only one is complete; but it was reprinted in facsimile in 1854 for the Bannatyne Club by the munificence of the duke of Buccleuch. It is particularly valuable for the trustworthy notices of the early history of Scotland which are embedded in the lives of the national saints. Though enjoined by royal mandate in 1501 for general use within the realm of Scotland, it was probably never widely adopted. The new Scottish Proprium sanctioned for the Roman Catholic province of St Andrews in 1903 contains many of the old Aberdeen collects and antiphons.

The Sarum or Salisbury Breviary itself was very widely used. The first edition was printed at Venice in 1483 by Raynald de Novimagio in folio; the latest at Paris, 1556, 1557. While modern Breviaries are nearly always printed in four volumes, one for each season of the year, the editions of the Sarum never exceeded two parts.

Contents of the Roman Breviary. – At the beginning stands the usual introductory matter, such as the tables for determining the date of Easter, the calendar, and the general rubrics. The Breviary itself is divided into four seasonal parts – winter, spring, summer, autumn – and comprises under each part (1) the Psalter; (2) Proprium de Tempore (the special office of the season); (3) Proprium Sanctorum (special offices of saints); (4) Commune Sanctorum (general offices for saints); (5) Extra Services. These parts are often published separately.

1. The Psalter. – This is the very backbone of the Breviary, the groundwork of the Catholic prayer-book; out of it have grown the antiphons, responsories and versicles. In the Breviary the psalms are arranged according to a disposition dating from the 8th century, as follows. Psalms i.-cviii., with some omissions, are recited at Matins, twelve each day from Monday to Saturday, and eighteen on Sunday. The omissions are said at Lauds, Prime and Compline. Psalms cix.-cxlvii. (except cxvii., cxviii. and cxlii.) are said at Vespers, five each day. Psalms cxlviii.-cl. are always used at Lauds, and give that hour its name. The text of this Psalter is that commonly known as the Gallican. The name is misleading, for it is simply the second revision (a.d. 392) made by Jerome of the old Itala version originally used in Rome. Jerome's first revision of the Itala (a.d. 383), known as the Roman, is still used at St Peter's in Rome, but the Gallican, thanks especially to St Gregory of Tours, who introduced it into Gaul in the 6th century, has ousted it everywhere else. The Antiphonary of Bangor proves that Ireland accepted the Gallican version in the 7th century, and the English Church did so in the 10th.

2. The Proprium de Tempore contains the office of the seasons of the Christian year (Advent