QUARANTORE (Forty Hours). - To honor Jesus Christ during the 40 hours in which he lay dead in the tomb, at a time not precisely determined, the liturgical practice arose of placing the consecrated Host, hidden, on a special altar in the form of a sepulcher.
This devotion, under the precise title of Oratio quadraginta horarum, was practiced by the Battuti of Zara already before 1214 in the church of St. Sylvester during the last three days of Holy Week; it was then inherited by the Franciscans of the Third Order Regular in that city from 1439 onward, where the Confraternity in Coena Domini of the Forty Hours also arose. The transition from this form to the present form of exposing the Most Holy Sacrament for 40 continuous hours for the adoration of the faithful, to propitiate the Lord's clemency, especially in calamitous times of contagion and war, took place in 1527 in the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Milan, at the initiative of the Augustinian Antonio Bellotto of Ravenna (d. 1528), who established for this purpose the School of the Holy Sepulcher and had the adoration repeated there even outside of Holy Week. The Spanish Dominican Tommaso Nieto brought the same practice to the cathedral of Milan and had it repeated several times in 1529 in the form of a three-day eucharistic procession.
The more solemn form, introduced in 1537, of exposing the Most Holy on a special altar in the cathedral of Milan and in turn for the churches of the city, came from the simultaneous initiative of St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria (v.) with his Clerics Regular (Barnabites), of his spiritual son, the independent hermit Fra Buono of Cremona (d. 1547), and of the Capuchin friend Giuseppe Piantanida of Fermo, who promoted it during his preaching in the Cathedral in the same year. Paul III approved the practice with an apostolic brief of 28 Aug. 1537, implored by the vicar general of Milan, also on behalf of the governor and the people of Milan. In 1567 St. Charles Borromeo regularized its conduct and in 1577 prescribed it for all the churches of the diocese.
The Capuchins, enthusiastic about the new practice of the Forty Hours, were its propagators in other cities of Italy. The aforementioned Giuseppe of Fermo (d. 1556) in 1537 brought it to Pavia and subsequently to Gubbio, Borgo San Sepolcro, Arezzo, Bologna, Faenza, etc., and in 1571 published in Milan the Metodo ossia istruzioni sul modo da tenersi per celebrare divotamente e con frutto l'orazione delle Q. In 1564 they were begun in Udine. Francesco of Suriano (d. 1567) spread them to Spoleto, Perugia and other places in Umbria; Giacinto Natta of Casale Monferrato (d. 1626), to Brescia and Piacenza; Mattia Bellintani of Salò (v.) also published a Trattato della santa orazione delle Q. (Brescia 1588). To the Capuchins were joined their confreres the Minorites; it is known in fact that in Lucca the Forty Hours were introduced in 1562 by Fr. Giovanni Antonio of Busseto, an Observant Minorite. Not second to these were the Jesuits: Girolamo Otello began them in Messina in 1553; Fulvio Androsio in Mendola in 1556; Giovanni Guerra in Amelia in 1559, Niccolò Bobavilla in Amatrice in 1566, Carlo Mastrilli in Palermo in 1591. From the respective colleges of the Society they were likewise begun in Macerata (1556), in Siena (1563) and in Manfredonia (1574). There arose in Verona in 1571 the Collegio dei 300 confratelli per le Q., and in Venice at the beginning of 1584 the Compagnia degli Emeronitti, that is, of the daytime and nighttime adorers of the Forty Hours. In Padua they were held for the first time in the Cathedral during the last three days of the carnival of 1600, promoted by the patriarch Marco Corner.
The introduction of the Forty Hours in Rome in 1548 in the church of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims, the well-known cenacle of his congregants, is owed to St. Philip Neri. From there in 1551 it passed to the church of St. Lawrence in Damaso, whose Compagnia della Morte added to its title: and of the Oration, undertaking to repeat the Forty Hours every third Sunday of the month: a practice approved by brief by Paul IV on 5 Nov. 1560. Foreseeing imminent disasters for the homeland and for the Church,
Clement VIII on 25 Nov. 1592, with the bull Graves et diuturnae, prescribed the continuous daily and nightly rotation of the Forty Hours in the principal churches of Rome, including those of the Regulars and of the confraternities, and he himself began it with his court in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican on the 29th following. The bull was accompanied by the list of churches and by the Instruction for making the continuous Oration of the XXXX Hours; quite distinct from the analogous Instruction of Clement XI of 20 Jan. 1705.
Urban VIII, with the encyclical Aeternus rerum Conditor of 6 Aug. 1623, imposed the celebration of the Forty Hours on all the churches of the world.
In Paris they had been introduced by the Jesuit Edmond Auger from 1574 onward; at Annemasse and Thonon in 1597-1598 by St. Francis de Sales; in Brussels in 1624 they were introduced by the Capuchin Giacinto Natta of Casale, who had for the purpose the Congregazione della Croce oro e fiamma; in Spain by the Friars Minor, charged by Urban VIII with a brief of 8 March 1624.
With the passage of time the rite of the Forty Hours continued even during the night has remained only in Rome, during which the members of the nocturnal Adoration, instituted by the canon Giacomo Simibaldi in 1809, divide into two shifts and still recite the prayers proposed by Giulio Natalini (d. 1678), canon of St. Lawrence in Damaso: in other places, for various reasons, the custom arose of exposing the Most Holy from morning to evening for three continuous days. The Holy See granted the ability to gain the attached indulgences in this manner as well. These are also gained where the "day of adoration" is instituted, which takes place in turn in all the parishes of a diocese.