FRANCISCO DE QUINONES — Cardinal, born in 1475 at León, died 27 Oct. 1540 at 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 del s. Maria de los Angeles in the Sierra Morena. At the General Chapter held in Rome in 1517 he was elected definitor general, and six years later, at that of Burgos, he became minister general of the Observant Friars Minor. In 1525 he came to Rome to plead before Clement VII for a reform of the Order based on a strict and careful observance of the Franciscan Rule. After the alliance between Francis I of France and Clement VII against Charles V, followed by immediate imperial victories, the Pope decided to entrust Q., a man very pleasing to the Emperor, with a diplomatic mission. Q. left Rome on 12 Dec. 1526 to go to Lannoy, commander of the imperial fleet, who had disembarked at Gaeta. The mission succeeded, but Clement VII’s indecision—he both wanted and did not want to abandon the French alliance—led to the sack of Rome and the Pope’s imprisonment. In May 1527 Q. was charged by the Pope to intercede with the Emperor for his release; upon being received by Charles V he declared plainly that the devastation of the Eternal City must cease, otherwise Charles would not deserve to be called emperor but rather captain of Luther. Thanks to the energetic remonstrances and the activity of Q., Charles V decided to release Clement VII. Created cardinal with the title of S. Croce in Gerusalemme on 7 Dec. 1527 and published on 25 Sept. 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. Of imperial allegiance, he safeguarded Spanish interests in the Sacred College and opposed the creation of cardinals openly favourable to Charles V’s rival, though at times he also opposed new appointments for moral reasons, as during the pontificate of Paul III, when he opposed that of Pietro Bembo.
HIS LITURGICAL ACTIVITY. — The name of Q. remains linked to one of the boldest attempts to reform the Breviary. The sorry state to which canonical prayer had fallen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made such a reform keenly desired. Clement VII entrusted the task to Q., who worked on it with Diego Meyla and Gaspare De Castro from 1529 to 1534. The following year, preceded by a brief of Paul III, the Breviarium Romanum ex sacra potissimum Scriptura et probatis sanctorum historiis collectum et concinnatum was printed as a draft or public deliberation.
Q., aiming solely at private recitation, had suppressed all parts intended for choral recitation—that is, 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 features: 1) the psalms were arranged so that the entire Psalter was recited each week. Three psalms were assigned to each canonical hour, to be said even on first-class feasts; 2) the scriptural readings, reduced to three in the single nocturn, were taken: the first from the Old Testament, the second from the New Testament, the third from the lives of the saints or from patristic homilies. The selection ensured that all the sacred books, or their principal parts, were read over the course of the year; 3) the length of the Office was uniform each day.
The Breviarium S. Crucis, so called from the cardinal’s titular church, met with a favourable reception. Within about twenty years (1535–56) more than a hundred editions were produced. Of some criticisms formulated by the doctors of the Sorbonne after the first edition, Q. took account in the second (1536), which was the definitive one. Thanks to Q., the recitation of the Office became more frequent. Yet, as a good humanist, he erred in not giving due weight to the tradition of liturgical prayer and in creating a division between private and public recitation, thereby undermining from the foundations the official character of the Church’s prayer. For this reason Q.’s reform remained at the stage of an attempt. The current of opposition grew stronger with time until Paul IV, a declared traditionalist, in 1558 forbade any further reprinting of the Breviarium S. Crucis.