Doubt VIII: Whether one who says the Office with a notable clipping or truncating of syllables satisfies

Clerics are gravely reproved in clement. 1. de celebr. Missarum, because by running through and syncopating they finished the Canonical Hours; So Innocent III also took notice of them in the Lateran Council cap. Dolentes; as Azorius has it, ubi supra, cap. 7. num. 1., citing the manner which the Council of Basel, cited above, prescribes to those reciting the office outside the Choir in these words: This Holy Synod admonishes all Beneficiaries elsewhere also, or those constituted in sacred orders, since they are bound to the Canonical Hours, that if they wish their prayers to be acceptable to God, they perform the Divine and nocturnal office reverently with distinct words, whether alone or joined with others — not in the throat or between the teeth, or by swallowing, or by syncopating syllables or words.

¶ WHEREFORE the Holy Doctor gravely upbraids this manner of reciting the office, in the places alleged, dubit. 1. et 4.; yet Filliucius tom. 2. tract. 23. cap. 7. num. 242., Azor. cit., Villalobos summa tom. 1. tract. 24. disp. 10. num. 7., Diana resol. 32. hold that the precept is nevertheless satisfied, provided the whole office is not so cut through with syncopations that its substance seems to perish.

Azorius proves this by a similar case; for the obligation to pronounce the form of baptism distinctly and integrally is greater than that for the Canonical Hours; yet if one so syncopated that form, he would neither sin gravely nor be bound to rebaptize; as is clear ex cap. retulerunt, de consecr. dist. 4., where the Pontiff answers that a man thus baptizing, from a slip of the tongue or ignorance of the Latin language, acted validly; moreover in leg. debet, ff. de manumiss. it is said that he who by testament gave liberty to his slave, naming him Crarinus who was however called Crastistus, validly made his testament, though he did so with syllables cut off.

For my part, however, I would rather bring forward arguments of this kind for Nuns, or for those ignorant of the Latin tongue; and if truly the parity stands, it is supposed for them, as is clear from the alleged examples, where that ignorance intervened; wherefore, since very many clerics bound to the divine services and offices are held to learn the Latin tongue as far as is fitting, I would not say that they are immune from fault, or from the obligation of repeating the hours, unless the smallness of the matter, or a natural stammering of the tongue, or a precipitous stuttering, presented them as excused. So Sylvius thinks quaestio 83. num. 13., Caramuel 1583, Bassaeus num. 7.