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.
