By order of my most reverend master
Salvator Argone, apostolic notary and secretary.
[1] See the bull for the erection of the Manila cathedral in VOL. IV, pp. 119–124. [↑]
[2] The citations from Isaias represent passages from three distinct places, viz.: xli, 5; lx, 4–5; and liv, 2.—T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. [↑]
[3] The terms “portiones” and “dimidiæ portiones” (farther on) correspond to the “raciones” and “medios raciones” of Spanish church language.—T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. [↑]
[4] Feasts in the Catholic Church are divided according to their rank into doubles, semi-doubles, simples, etc. It was the custom till late in the middle ages to recite the office of the feria in spite of any feast which might occur on it. Hence on greater solemnities, clerics were obliged to recite a double office—one of the feria, another of the feast. These double offices were few in number; even the office for the feast of the Apostles was not double. On lesser feasts the office was simple—i.e., the feast was merely commemorated—and in a third class of feasts the office of the feria and feast were welded into one. These last offices were called semi-doubles. Later on the ferial gave way more and more to the festal offices, and before the end of the thirteenth century the classification is used in a new sense. The word “double” is applied, not to the two offices recited in one day, but to the single office of a feast on which the antiphons were doubled—i.e., repeated fully at the beginning and end of a psalm. On semi-doubles, half of the antiphon was repeated before, the whole after the psalm: in other words it was half doubled. The office for simple feasts differed little from that of the feria. In modern office-books the doubles are further subdivided into doubles of the first class, of the second class, and greater and ordinary. The object of this division is to determine which of the two feasts must give way to the other, should both fall on the same day. See Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary, p. 344. [↑]
[5] A reference to the history of the passion of Jesus Christ as read in the four gospels.—T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. [↑]
[6] A reference to I Corinthians, ix, 13.—T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. [↑]