Abstract

The recensio of the biblical, patristic, and hagiographic pericopes contained in the 1957 edition of the Breviarium Ambrosianum – the last one before the reforms promoted by the Second Vatican Council – highlights several aspects of the Ambrosian tradition that merit further study. On the biblical side, one notes the substantial preservation of the ordo set out by Beroldus in the twelfth century; the selection of patristic texts is marked by a prevalence of Ambrosian and Augustinian writings, though other authors are not absent; the lives of the saints, on the other hand, have undergone continual processes of updating in periods following the Council of Trent. The composite form of this document is a valuable historical witness to a multifaceted stratification, whose study may open the way to further investigations.