QUIÑONES,
FRANCISCO de. — Cardinal, born in 1475 in León, died on 27 October 1540 in Veroli. He studied at the University of Salamanca.
At the age of sixteen he entered the Franciscan Order, taking the name Francisco de los Angeles from the convent of S. Maria de los Angeles in the Sierra Morena. In the
QUINHON, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE of — Mother House of the Brothers of S. Giuseppe.
General chapter, held in Rome in 1517, he was elected general definitor and six years later, at that of Burgos, general of the Friars Minor Observant. In 1525 he came to Rome to advocate before Clement VII the reform of the Order based on a rigorous and careful observance of the Franciscan Rule. After the alliance between Francesco I of France and Clement VII against Carlo V, followed by immediate imperial victories, the Pope decided to entrust Q., a person highly regarded by the Emperor, with a diplomatic mission. Q. departed from Rome on 12 December 1526 to go to Lannoy, commander of the imperial fleet, who had landed at Gaeta. Q.’s mission succeeded, but the uncertainty of Clement VII, who wanted and did not want to abandon the alliance with France, led to the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of the Pontiff himself. In May 1527 Q. was charged by the Pope with working with the Emperor for his liberation; when he appeared before Carlo V, he stated clearly that the devastation inflicted upon the Eternal City had to cease: otherwise Carlo would not deserve to be called emperor but rather captain of Luther. Thanks to Q.’s vigorous protests and activity, Carlo V decided to release Clement VII. Created cardinal with the title of S. Croce in Gerusalemme on 7 December 1527 and proclaimed on 25 September 1528, Q. continued to serve as mediator between Pope and Emperor until the conclusion of the Peace of Barcelona (1529). From 1530 until his death he was also bishop of Coria, and from 1534 cardinal protector of the Franciscan Order. An imperial partisan, he safeguarded Spain’s interests in the Sacred College and opposed the creation of cardinals openly favorable to Carlo V’s rival; at times, however, he also opposed the appointment of new cardinals for moral reasons, as, during the pontificate of Paul III, in the case of Pietro Bembo.
Q., having in mind only private recitation, had suppressed all the parts relating to recitation in choro, namely the antiphons (restored in the 2nd ed., 1536), the versicles, the responsories, the short lessons, the chapters, and part of the hymns. Structurally, the new Breviary had the following characteristics: 1) the psalms were distributed so that the entire Psalter would be recited each week. Three psalms were assigned to each canonical hour, to be recited even on feasts of the 1st class; 2) the scriptural lessons, reduced to three in the single Nocturn, were taken as follows: the 1st from the Old Testament, the 2nd from the New Testament, and the 3rd from the lives of the saints or from a patristic homily. The arrangement provided for the reading of all the sacred books, or of their principal sections, over the course of the year; 3) the duration of the Office was uniform each day.
The Breviarium S. Crucis, so called from the cardinalatial title of its author, was favorably received. In about twenty years (1535–56), more than one hundred editions were produced. Q. took account in the second edition (1536), which was definitive, of certain criticisms formulated by the doctors of the Sorbonne after the 1st ed. Thanks to Q., the recitation of the Divine Office among secular priests became more frequent. But, as a good humanist, he was at fault for failing to take due account of the tradition of liturgical prayer and for creating a separation between private and public recitation, undermining ob imis the official character of the Church’s prayer. For this reason, Q.’s reform remained at the stage of an experiment. The opposition gradually intensified until Paul IV, an avowed traditionalist, prohibited any further reprinting of the Breviarium S. Crucis in 1538.