Dominican Rite

The Rite of the Order of Preachers, or Dominican Rite, is unique to the Order, and has been part of its tradition since the late Middle Ages. Prior to the Council of Trent (1545–1563), including the time of St. Dominic, every region had developed its own rite or usage of the Mass and Divine Office. The establishment of priories of friars and convents of nuns throughout an enormous geographical area (at least by the standards of the Middle Ages) meant that each community was following a different version of the Mass and Divine Office. While some of these forms of the liturgy differed by a few words, others used entirely different texts and musical settings in the Propers (prayers that change according to the day) and incorporated a tremendous diversity of postures and actions for those at the altar. The fifth Master General of the Order of Preachers, Bl. Humbert de Romanis, O.P. (c. 1190–1277), sought to unify the prayers of all Dominicans, and established a new liturgy unique to the Order of Preachers in 1256, which combined elements of the Gallican Rite, Roman usage, and the Parisian Rite. About a decade later, the sixth Master General, Giovanni da Vercelli, O.P. (c. 1205–1283), successfully petitioned Pope Clement IV to issue a Papal Bull which forbade any further changes to the Dominican Rite. While new feasts have been added since the Rite’s establishment, the form of the liturgy remains largely unchanged over the last 768 years.