QUIÑONES, FRANCISCO de. - Cardinal, b. in 1475 at León, d. on 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 from the convent of St. Mary de los Angeles in the Sierra Morena. In the
QUINHON, APOSTOLIC VICARIATE of - Mother House of the Brothers of St. Joseph.
General Chapter, held in Rome in 1517, he was elected definitor general and six years later, at the one in Burgos, general of the Observant Friars Minor. In 1525 he came to Rome to plead before Clement VII for the reform of the Order based on a rigorous 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 to Q., a person most agreeable to the Emperor, a diplomatic mission. Q. set out on 12 Dec. 1526 from Rome to go to Lannoy, commander of the imperial fleet, who had landed at Gaeta. Q.'s mission succeeded, but the irresolution of Clement VII, who wanted and yet did not want to abandon the alliance with France, led to the sack of Rome and to the imprisonment of the Pontiff himself. In May 1527 Q. was charged by the Pope to work with the Emperor for his liberation; having come into the presence of Charles V he said clearly that the devastation wrought upon the eternal city had to cease: otherwise Charles would not have been worthy to be called emperor but rather captain of Luther. Thanks to the vigorous remonstrances and the activity carried out by Q., Charles V decided to liberate Clement VII. Created cardinal with the title of St. Croce in Gerusalemme on 7 Dec. 1527 and published on 25 Sept. 1528, Q. continued to act 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. Belonging to the imperial party, he safeguarded in the Sacred College the interests of Spain and opposed the creation of cardinals openly favorable to the rival of Charles V, but at times he also opposed, for moral reasons as well, the appointment of new princes of the church, as, during the pontificate of Paul III, that of Pietro Bembo.
Bibliography4 works
Silvio Furlani
HIS LITURGICAL ACTIVITY
The name of Q. remains linked to one of the most daring attempts at reforming the Breviary. The sad conditions to which the canonical prayer had been reduced in the 14th-15th 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 historii collectum et concinnatum was sent to press as a project or publica deliberatio.
Q., having in view only private recitation, had suppressed all the parts relating to 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 characteristics: 1) the psalms were distributed in such a way that the entire Psalter was recited each week. To each canonical hour three psalms were assigned, to be said even on feasts of the first class; 2) the scriptural lessons, reduced to three in the single Nocturn, were taken: the 1st from the Old Testament, the 2nd from the New Testament, the 3rd from the lives of the saints or from the patristic homily. The selection provided for the reading of all the sacred books, or of their principal parts, in the course of the year; 3) the length of the Office each day was uniform.
The Breviarium S. Crucis, so called from the cardinalitial title of its author, met with a favorable reception. In about twenty years (1535-56) more than a hundred editions of it were made. Of certain criticisms formulated by the doctors of the Sorbonne after the 1st ed., Q. took account in the second (1536), which was the definitive one. 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 not having given due consideration to the tradition of liturgical prayer and for having created the split between private and public recitation, undermining from its 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 more pronounced with time until Paul IV, a declared traditionalist, in 1538 prohibited any further reprinting of the Breviarium S. Crucis.