Burchard, Diarium, III, p. 424. In Thuasne's biography at p. xlvi, the office is said to have been that of Abbreviator de Parco Minore. A Society of Gentlemen (1763). A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. Vol. I (second ed.). London: W. Owen. p. 4.: "Abbreviators, in the chancery of Rome, are officers whose business, according to Champini, is to draw up the pope's briefs, and reduce the petitions granted by the pontiff into proper form. The abbreviators constitute a college of seventy-two persons, divided into two parks, or ranks ; the one called abbreviatores de parco majore, who are twelve in number, and all prelates; the other, abbreviatores de parco minore, called also examinatores, who may be all lay-men."
"How awful was Catholic life under those immoral Renaissance Popes!". Rorate Caeli. Retrieved 31 March 2014.[better source needed] Quote: "At the beginning of the sixteenth century, John Burckard (+ 1506), a famous papal master of ceremonies, drew up -- using the Ordines of the Papal Court and the Vatican MSS. of Sacramentaries and Missals -- and published in 1502, by order of Alexander VI, an Ordo Missae. It is from this that some of the general rubrics of our present Missal are drawn, and the Ritus servandus of our Missal embodies the greater part of Burckard's Ordo."
