Newadvent states that the canonical hours have changed over the centuries. NOW they include just the Psalms and prose Scripture reading. At other times throughout history they contained much more.
It is unclear what Luther was force to recite. It appears from newadvent that although there are guidelines on the canonical hours, interpretations can be made. I would suspect this order that Luther was involved in required much more than others.
This is all speculation on yours and my part. They were consider obligatory and failure to do them could result in excommunication. We can only take Luther at his word that he had a lot of reciting and memorizing to do.
It is unclear what Luther was force to recite. It appears from newadvent that although there are guidelines on the canonical hours, interpretations can be made. I would suspect this order that Luther was involved in required much more than others.
This is all speculation on yours and my part. They were consider obligatory and failure to do them could result in excommunication. We can only take Luther at his word that he had a lot of reciting and memorizing to do.
Speculation on your part only. The post to which you replied was accurate. You don't know what you are talking about, so you speculate. But you are a fool to speculate that your interlocutor is speculating just because you are speculating. I'm fed up with the way you and your Calvinist companions feel free just to make it up as you go.
The changes in the canonical hours over the centuries are variations on the constant pattern: the entire Psalter once a week plus readings from other parts of Scripture and homilies on Scripture (during one of the seven hours only) from the great Fathers: Leo, Augustine, Chrysostom etc.
Never was the mere reciting of hundreds of Paternosters part of the canonical office. It was a common devotional practice for lay people and lay brothers who did not know Latin (they recited in Latin but only what they could memorize, such as the Paternoster). That's why some people could not become "choir monks"--they did not know Latin and could not chant the canonical hours.
Luther loved to exaggerate and make stuff up to make a point. This is one instance of it. He knew Latin in and out. The mendicants, including the Augustinian Eremites to which Luther belonged, chanted the canonical hours but not always in convent because of their pastoral ministries. But they were obligated at least to read the Psalter hours in their Breviaries. They undoubtedly encouraged the reciting of Paternosters among the laity and in the course of that, may have led the reciting of Paternosters. But they were not "forced" to do this, they were not obligated to this. They were obligated to other things. Luther is angry at his own religious order, has come to doubt his vows and so he accuses them of mindlessness. He's exaggerating, using perfectly legitimate practices for the laity as a club with which to beat his order of friars over the head.
You can't just lift lines from the Catholic Encyclopedia and decide what they mean, apply them to this or that event or figure in history without knowing more about the history of the Church. I give you credit for acknowledging that you were speculating. You speculated badly. But you have no license to assume that just because you don't know what you are talking about, your opponent is equally ill-informed.
I didn't say that they included only those things. The monastic hours in pre-Reformation Germany would have been substantially similar to the revised, post-Tridentine breviary. We know all about what that said, there's not a hint of speculation about it; with minor modifications, it was what every priest and nun said prior to Vatican II.
And it's not that different from the breviary today, except that the post VC2 breviary is in the vernacular.
This is all speculation on yours and my part.
Well, no, not really, Harley. It's pretty well attested what the canonical hours contained, and 175 Our Fathers a day wasn't part of it.
They were consider obligatory and failure to do them could result in excommunication.
Yes, they still are. All of that Bible reading, under pain of sin. How awful! Some of it's even from St. Paul. Some of it's even from Romans and Galatians.
Stop by my house some night when I say Vespers together with my wife and kids, and you'll see what I mean.