Note 29 — THE CLOISTER
Reading edition
Durandus, Bishop of Mende (Mimatensis) in Languedoc—born A.D. 1230 and died A.D. 1296—was a most distinguished Canonist. He filled various ecclesiastical dignities, amongst them the Deanery of Chartres, and was largely consulted by the popes of his time. In later life he declined the archbishopric of Ravenna. He was the author of various works which had an enduring success. Amongst these the Rationale above quoted, a vast and exhaustive compilation, is the best. During the early years of printing, this, the greatest of mediæval liturgical treatises, was printed and reprinted more often than any book (excepting, of course, the Holy Scriptures). It is computed that more than ninety printed editions in different languages of the Rationale appeared between the second half of the fifteenth century and the close of the seventeenth.
Viollet le Duc, in his Dict. de l’Architecture (“Architecture”), thus sums up his estimate of the Rationale: “Que l’on ne saurait trop lire et méditer, lorseque qu’on veut connaitre le moyen age catholique.”
Dom Guéranger of Solesmes calls it “le dernier mot du age sur le mystique du culte divin.”