Anonymous: Commune

This part of the Mozarabic Breviary, printed by Migne in his volumes of the old Spanish liturgy, contains offices for common use rather than for particular feasts. It begins with an office for one sick person or several, said on Fridays when no feast is to be kept, with versicles, responses and antiphons asking Christ the healer to give the sick the help of heavenly medicine, and continues with the office of the dead in its nocturns and lauds. Among the later sections are canticles drawn from the Old Testament, such as the Song of Deborah praising Jael, who killed Sisera.

The Mozarabic, or Old Spanish, rite was the liturgy of the Iberian churches before the adoption of the Roman rite in the eleventh century, and it survived in a few churches of Toledo. Its offices preserve distinctive texts and forms of prayer, including many antiphons and canticles not found in the Roman books. This section is a source for the history of prayer for the sick and the dead in the Latin West, though the printed text reflects the edition of the rite made in the early sixteenth century.