Canonical hours in the context of "Fixed prayer times"

The Eastern Catholic Churches of the Catholic Church utilize liturgies originating in Eastern Christianity, distinguishing them from the majority of Catholic liturgies which are celebrated according to the Latin liturgical rites of the Latin Church. While some of these sui iuris churches use the same liturgical ritual families as other Eastern Catholic churches and Eastern churches not in full communion with Rome, each church retains the right to institute its own canonical norms, liturgical books, and practices for the ritual celebration of the Eucharist, other sacraments, and canonical hours.

Historically, tension between Latin Catholics and those worshipping with Eastern liturgies resulted in the latinization, restriction, or prohibition of Eastern liturgies within the Catholic Church. Since the early 20th century, popes have encouraged the usage of traditional liturgies among Eastern Catholics and delatinization. Further emphasis on Eastern Catholic liturgical practice was made during the Second Vatican Council with the publication of the 1964 Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, is a liturgical rite that is identified with the wide range of cultural, devotional, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.

The canonical hours are extended and complex, lasting about eight hours (longer during Great Lent) but are abridged outside of large monasteries. An iconostasis, a partition covered with icons, separates the area around the altar from the nave. The sign of the cross, accompanied by bowing, is made very frequently, e.g., more than a hundred times during the divine liturgy, and there is prominent veneration of icons, a general acceptance of the congregants freely moving within the church and interacting with each other, and distinctive traditions of liturgical chanting.

Pontifical vestments, also referred to as episcopal vestments or pontificals, are the liturgical vestments worn by bishops (and by concession some other prelates) in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, some Anglican, and some Lutheran churches, in addition to the usual priestly vestments, for the celebration of the Holy Mass, other sacraments, sacramentals, and canonical hours. The pontifical vestments are worn only when celebrating or presiding over liturgical functions. As such, the garments should not be confused with choir dress, which is worn when attending liturgical functions but not celebrating or presiding.

The Liturgy of the Hours (Latin: Liturgia Horarum), Divine Office (Latin: Divinum Officium), or Opus Dei ("Work of God") is a set of Catholic prayers comprising the canonical hours, often also referred to as the breviary, of the Latin Church. The Liturgy of the Hours forms the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer." The term "Liturgy of the Hours" has been retroactively applied to the practices of saying the canonical hours in both the Christian East and West–particularly within the Latin liturgical rites–prior to the Second Vatican Council, and is the official term for the canonical hours promulgated for usage by the Latin Church in 1971. Before 1971, the official form for the Latin Church was the Breviarium Romanum, first published in 1568 with major editions through 1962.

The Liturgy of the Hours, like many other forms of the canonical hours, consists primarily of psalms supplemented by hymns, readings, and other prayers and antiphons prayed at fixed prayer times. Together with the Mass, it constitutes the public prayer of the church. Christians of both Western and Eastern traditions (including the Latin Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian, Lutheran, Anglican, and some other Protestant churches) celebrate the canonical hours in various forms and under various names. The chant or recitation of the Divine Office therefore forms the basis of prayer within the consecrated life, with some of the monastic or mendicant orders producing their own permutations of the Liturgy of the Hours and older Roman Breviary.

A breviary (Latin: breviarium) is a liturgical book used in Christianity for praying the canonical hours, usually recited at seven fixed prayer times.

Historically, different breviaries were used in the various parts of Christendom, such as Aberdeen Breviary, Belleville Breviary, Stowe Breviary and Isabella Breviary, although eventually the Roman Breviary became the standard within the Roman Catholic Church (though it was later supplanted with the Liturgy of the Hours); in other Christian denominations such as the Lutheran Churches, different breviaries continue to be used, such as The Brotherhood Prayer Book.

The Roman Breviary (Latin: Breviarium Romanum) is a breviary of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. A liturgical book, it contains public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office (i.e., at the canonical hours, the Christians' daily prayer).

The volume containing the daily hours of Catholic prayer was published as the Breviarium Romanum (Roman Breviary) from its editio princeps in 1568 under Pope Pius V until the reforms of Paul VI (1974), when replaced by the Liturgy of the Hours.

Catholic liturgy means the whole complex of official liturgical worship, including all the rites, ceremonies, prayers, and sacraments of the Church, as opposed to private or collective devotions. In this sense the arrangement of all these services in certain set forms (including the canonical hours, administration of sacraments, etc.) is meant. Liturgy encompasses the entire service: prayer, reading and proclamation of the scriptures, singing, gestures, movement and vestments, liturgical colours, symbols and symbolic actions, the administration of sacraments and sacramentals.

Kanasubigi (Greek: ΚΑΝΑΣΥΒΙΓΙ), possibly read as Kanas Ubigi or Kanas U Bigi, was a title of the early Bulgar rulers of the First Bulgarian Empire. Omurtag (814–831) and his son Malamir (831–836) are mentioned in inscriptions as Kanasubigi.

The title khan for early Bulgarian rulers is an assumed one, as only the form kanasubigi or "kanasybigi" is attested in stone inscriptions. Historians presume that it includes the title khan in its archaic form kana, and there is a presumptive evidence suggesting that the latter title was indeed used in Bulgaria, e.g. the name of one of the Bulgars' ruler Pagan occurs in Patriarch Nicephorus's so-called breviarium as Καμπαγάνος (Kampaganos), likely an erroneous rendition of the phrase "Khan Pagan". Among the proposed translations for the phrase kanasubigi as a whole are lord of the army, from the reconstructed Turkic phrase *sü begi, paralleling the attested Old Turkic sü baši, and, more recently, "(ruler) from God", from the Indo-European *su- and baga-, i.e. *su-baga (an equivalent of the Greek phrase ὁ ἐκ Θεοῦ ἄρχων, ho ek Theou archon, which is common in Bulgar inscriptions). Another presumption is that the title means the great khan. This titulature presumably persisted until the Bulgars adopted Christianity. Some Bulgar inscriptions written in Greek and later in Slavonic refer to the Bulgarian ruler respectively with the Greek title archon or the Slavic title knyaz.