The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages

of 15 The Origins of the Western Office

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The Divine Office in the Latin Middle AgesRebecca A. Baltzer and Margot E. Fassler

Print publication date: 2000Print ISBN-13: 9780195124538Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May-08DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195124538.001.0001

The Origins of the Western Office

James W. Mckinnon

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195124538.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter traces the change from private to public prayer hours from theemancipation of the Church under Constantine in 312; the Eastern monasticand cathedral Offices are surveyed and contrasted with the Western Office.Fundamental to the early monastic Office was the primary device adoptedby the Egyptian monks of chanting the psalms continuously, in numericalorder for extended periods of time. The psalmody of urban monasticism hada profound, indeed overwhelming, influence on the cathedral Office — ittransformed the morning and evening Offices, and it filled the interveninghours of the day with additional Offices. The monastic concern with theprecise apportionment of the Psalter is a peculiar phase of the broadliturgical movement towards fixity.

Keywords: monasteries, public prayer, monastic Office, cathedral Office, psalmody, Egeria,Jerusalem, Western Office

James W. Mckinnon

Keywords: monasteries, public prayer, monastic Office, cathedral Office,psalmody, Egeria, Jerusalem, Western Office

The origins of the Divine Office, the Church's system of corporate worshipoutside of the Mass, is a story that has become well known in recent times,thanks especially to the work of Paul Bradshaw (1981) and Robert Taft ( 1986). 1 Still it is worth recounting—from its beginnings to its classic Westernmanifestation in the Rule of St. Benedict—from the peculiar point of view of

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the music historian. Such retelling, moreover, provides the opportunity tooffer some slight qualification, again, from the viewpoint of a music historian,to the conventional wisdom on the subject.

The Office is a creation of the fourth century; it came about by a mergerof the morning and evening services of the urban cathedral with the dailyround of monastic offices to create a horarium roughly commensurate withthe medieval Western Office. It has a prehistory, however, of considerableinterest, even if one of the most interesting questions of that prehistory—the question of synagogue origins—must be answered in the negative.In 1944 the Anglican scholar Clifford Dugmore made the claim that themorning and evening offices of the early church were directly derived frommorning and evening synagogue services, which were, in turn, derived fromthe morning and evening sacrificial services of the Temple in Jerusalem(Dugmore 1944 ). This is an idea of considerable appeal and plausibility,but it has been abandoned in recent decades. 2 There is no need here torehearse the numerous points of detail that speak against it, but two broadconsiderations are worthy of mention. The first is that the very existence offormalized morning and evening prayer services in the synagogue, beforethe destruction of the Temple by the Romans in a.d. 70, is doubtful, while itis all but certain that public morning and evening Christian prayer serviceswere not a practice of the primitive church. The Christian debt to Judaism inthis respect is more general than the inheritance of specific services; it is thebroad tendency to single out certain hours of the day as times set aside forprayer.

° Deceased 1999.

The central point to be borne in mind is that during the first three centuriesof (p. 64 ) Christianity, before its emancipation by Constantine in 312, suchhours of prayer were observed privately rather than publicly. The hours sodesignated were: morning and evening; the third, sixth, and ninth hoursof the day; and the middle of the night. It is perfectly legitimate to see inthese times six of the eight that would come to make up the medieval Office,with nighttime prayer corresponding to Matins (referred to hereafter asVigils); morning prayer to Lauds; prayer at the third, sixth, and ninth hoursto Terce, Sext, and None; and evening prayer to Vespers. Only Prime andCompline are not accounted for. Still one must not assume that most earlyChristians observed all six of these hours every day, let alone that a sort ofprivate breviary existed at the time. For one thing, different patristic authorscite different combinations of hours: most notably the earlier third‐century





Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, appear to favor morning, noon, andevening, while their Carthaginian contemporaries, Tertullian and Cyprian,recommend the third, sixth, and ninth hours (in addition, needless to say,to morning and evening). 3 In the view of the present author the patristicevidence is too sparse and scattered to establish the actual practice ofChristians in any particular region, but it is agreed that it is sufficient todemonstrate that the six Office hours that would come to be observedpublicly in the course of the fourth century were already sanctified, at leastin conception, by the third century.

To be distinguished from these times of private prayer are a number ofpublic gatherings that are mentioned in the pre‐fourth‐century sources. Inaddition to descriptions of the Eucharist, there are references to instructionalmeetings in the morning, instructional meetings on Wednesday and Fridayat the ninth hour, when the fast for these days comes to an end, 4 and theevening agape (or love feast). 5 These meetings, however, are not the directancestors of the Office. A service of the Office is not a catechetical meeting,but rather a liturgical gathering for prayer and worship (noteworthy in thisrespect is the almost total exclusion of scriptural readings from the fourth‐century Office). Nor does any Office hour take the form of a community meallike the agape, although it must be said that the description of the third‐century Roman agape given in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus includesthe lucernarium, the ceremony of lamp‐lighting that is the hallmark of fourth‐century cathedral Vespers.

The Change from Private to Public Prayer Hours

Liturgical historians are unanimous in associating the change from privateto public observation of prayer hours with the emancipation of the Churchunder Constantine in 312. As a formerly persecuted minority grew in numberand status, and as great stone basilicas were erected in virtually every townof the Mediterranean basin, it became the custom to celebrate morning andevening prayer (referred to hereafter as Lauds and Vespers) in the presenceof the local bishop. The earlier fourth‐century evidence is distressinglysparse, but Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 340) assures us that “throughoutthe whole world in the churches of God at the morning rising of the sun andat the evening hours, hymns, praises, and truly divine delights are offeredto God” (Taft 1986 , 33). It seems fair enough to take the (p. 65 ) words ofEusebius as a reference to what has come to be known as the “cathedralOffice,” so called because in the centuries before the development of the





parochial system the bishop's church was the center of each Christiancommunity.

The cathedral Offices of Lauds and Vespers, as reconstructed from laterfourth‐century sources, 6 were characterized by ceremony and symbol thatreflected the time of day, and by a choice of hymns, psalms, and prayersthat were particularly appropriate to the occasion. A typical cathedral Laudswould begin at sunrise and include Ps. 62, 7 “O God, my God, to thee do Iwatch at break of day,” as well as Pss. 148–50, the three psalms of praisefrom which Lauds eventually derives its name. The ceremony might alsoinclude the hymn Gloria in excelsis, and would generally include a seriesof intercessory prayers, possibly in the form of a litany, and a concludingblessing by the bishop. Vespers would open with the ceremony of lamp‐lighting, which might be accompanied by Phos hilarion, the ancient hymnthat celebrates Jesus as the Light, and by Ps. 140, which includes the verse“Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight, and the lifting up ofmy hands as an evening sacrifice.” Like Lauds, Vespers would also includeintercessory prayers and a concluding blessing by the bishop. The symbolismof light was present in both ceremonies, and while the mood of Lauds wascharacteristically one of praise, the idea of contrition for one's failings duringthe day generally figured prominently among the vesperal themes.

It is best, perhaps, to leave the description of the fourth‐century cathedralOffice at that, that is, as a composite of the elements and tendencies thatappear most often in the later fourth‐century sources. Robert Taft, however,has gone much further, attempting to reconstruct the probable sequenceof events in the individual offices of the principal Eastern and Westernecclesiastical centers. No other scholar in the field could have come soclose to succeeding in such an attempt; no one else combines the samebreadth of learning, sure judgment in interpreting sources, and ability toconstruct a compelling larger historical view. But there is an inherent dangerin creating the sorts of reconstructions that are involved here: one cantoo easily grant them a greater concreteness, specificity, and fixity thanthe available evidence warrants. For one thing, there are no sources forindividual churches from the first two‐thirds of the fourth century, onlyEusebius' general remark about the widespread custom of morning andevening hymns and prayers in the churches. We do not know, for example,which churches led the way in establishing the daily observance of Laudsand Vespers. We do not know the process by which one church might haveinfluenced another in this respect, which churches might have been moresuccessful than others at it, and which less inclined to participate. As for the




content of the earlier fourth‐century cathedral Offices, we must settle forthe assumption that they used by and large the same sort of material thatappears in the later fourth‐century documents.

But the later fourth‐century evidence is itself not so full as one might wish.For St. Basil's Caesarea Taft had little more to go on than Basil's frequentlyquoted Epistle 207 of A.D. 375, which describes a nighttime vigil of psalmodyand prayer:

Among us the people arise at night and go to the house ofprayer; in pain, distress and anguished tears they makeconfession to God, and finally (p. 66 ) The Pre‐CarolingianOffice getting up from prayer they commence the singingof psalms… After thus spending the night in a variety ofpsalmody with interspersed prayer, now that the light of dayhas appeared, all in common as if from one mouth and oneheart offer the psalm of confession [Ps. 50?] to the Lord, whileeach fashions his personal words of repentance. (MECL, no.139)

Taft ( 1986 , 32–41) attempts to reconstruct the cathedral Vigils and Laudsof Cappadocia (the region of Asia Minor that includes Caesarea) from thispassage, even though it appears to describe a single service, not two, andto cite only one specific item in the service, the “psalm of confession.” He isat pains, moreover, to argue against monastic involvement in the service,whereas it seems unlikely that Basil's quasi‐monastic communities of menand women, who were described in the previous paragraph of the letter as“persevering in prayer night and day” and “continuously chanting hymns toour God,” would be excluded from such a vigil. Everything we know aboutthe later fourth‐century urban Office, as Taft would be the first to agree,speaks for a celebration of the Office in common between urban ascetics andthe more typical laity.

Taft's reconstruction of the Cappadocian cathedral Office may be the mosttenuous that he attempts; the evidence for Antioch, for example, is muchmore substantial, with the material from the Apostolic Constitutions anda number of references from the works of St. John Chrysostom. I raise thecase of Cappadocia to illustrate that even the most historically responsibleof contemporary liturgiologists can appear to grant a greater stature,universality, and stability to the fourth‐century cathedral Office than canbe supported by the sources. It is presented, moreover, as something thatachieved maturity free from monastic contamination, even if overwhelmed





by the monastic Office in the final decades of the fourth century. Themonastic Office is, as we shall see, something of an embarrassment tomodern liturgical scholars.

The Monastic Office

The monastic Office originated in the early fourth century among the firstChristian monks, earnest souls who fled the temptations of the city forthe harsh solitude of the deserts, most notably those of Egypt. 8 The twooutstanding figures of the Egyptian movement were St. Antony (d. 356),who settled in Lower Egypt, north of Cairo, and St. Pachomius (d. 346),who worked far to the south in the region of the Upper Nile, near Thebes.The monasticism of Lower Egypt is generally characterized as eremitic,that is, a form of monasticism in which the monks live as hermits, evenif in close proximity to a charismatic leader like Antony. The monasticismof Upper Egypt tended more toward the cenobitic variety, that is, a livingtogether in community, again, under the guidance of a charismatic leaderlike Pachomius.

And what sort of office did the Egyptian monks pursue? 9 Fundamental tothe early monastic Office, indeed fundamental to the entire early monasticlife, was the attempt to take as literally as possible the scriptural counsel “topray without (p. 67 ) ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). Of considerable interest to themusic historian is that the primary device adopted by the Egyptian monks torealize this attempt was the chanting of the psalms continuously, that is, notoccasionally and selectively as in the cathedral Office, but in numerical orderfor extended periods of time. 10 This chanting, moreover, was not so much aform of praise to God as a vehicle for meditation, and as such it was usuallyinterspersed with prayer, as often as not with a pause for prayer after eachpsalm.

While there is abundant testimony to the chanting of psalms by individualmonks in a variety of circumstances—including the recitation of the entirePsalter in a single night (MECL, nos. 126 and 127)—liturgical historianshave tended to ignore such practices and to concentrate instead upon themonastic Office in the narrow sense. In doing so, perhaps, they have tended,just as in the case of the cathedral Office, to reify and to fix what musthave been subject to considerable variation from time to time and placeto place. It can be said, however, that two services a day was the norm,roughly similar to the cathedral Office in this respect, with one in the morningand one in the evening, although the first of the two might often take place




before daybreak and the second in the later afternoon. The eremites of LowerEgypt are said to have observed these hours in their private cells during theweek and to have assembled together only on weekends. Palladius, whovisited Lower Egypt in about 388, described his impression of the afternoonoffice: “Indeed one who stands there at about the ninth hour can hear thepsalmody issuing forth from each cell, so that he imagines himself to be highabove in paradise” (MECL, no. 117).

In the cenobitic colonies of Upper Egypt the monks met in common for theirtwo daily offices. Armand Veilleux has sifted through the various layersof the Pachomian documents in an effort to establish the original form ofthe Office as prescribed by the master before his death in 346 (Veilleux1968 ,117–58, 276–323). The basic structure of the Office, both morningand evening, appears to have been that of the so‐called “six prayers.”Each of these six “prayers” consisted of a scriptural reading recited byan individual monk while the others sat in silence, after which they stood,crossed themselves, and said the Lord's Prayer with arms extended, and thenprostrated themselves for silent penitential prayer, finally to rise again, crossthemselves, and to pray once more in silence. Veilleux and those who havetreated the subject after him emphasize how a careful reading of the mostprimitive Pachomian documents has refuted the long‐standing interpretationof the “six prayers” as “six psalms,” an interpretation that can be found asearly as St. Jerome: in his Latin translation of the Precepta of Pachomius, headded psalmosque after the phrase sex orationes (Veilleux 1968 , 296).

Modern liturgical historians have seized upon this paraphrase of Jerome asevidence that the authentic Pachomian weekday Office was not necessarilypsalmic, 11 but surely this is focusing upon a single tree at the expense ofthe forest. Aside from the circumstance that the scriptural recitations ofthe six prayers might very well have included psalms, and aside from thefurther circumstance that the Sunday morning Pachomian Office was mostdefinitely a service of psalmody, the evidence that psalmody was a pervasivepractice of fourth‐century Egyptian monkswhether during nighttime Vigils(MECL, nos. 118, 120, 127), while on journeys (p. 68 ) (MECL, no. 119), whenvisiting fellow monks (MECL, nos. 127, 128), or while at funerals (MECL,nos. 111, 113)—is so overwhelming as to make any attempt to downplay itsimportance quite futile. 12 And one must ask why Jerome, himself a monkin Palestine, would have thought it advisable to add the phrase psalmosqueif he did not assume from his own experience, rightly or wrongly, that thePachomian Office was psalmodic. The point has been brought out here toillustrate what was referred to above as an embarrassment on the part of






contemporary liturgical historians with regard to the monastic Office. Thespecific point of embarrassment is the practice of continuous psalmodyas opposed to the carefully selective psalmody of the cathedral Office. W.Jardine Grisbrooke represents the modern viewpoint well when he writes:“Long habituation to forms of the office including this recitatio continuaof the psalms has until very recently prevented recognition of its intrinsicabsurdity; it would hardly be sillier to use a modern hymnbook in the sameway” (Grisbrooke 1992 , 415, n. 4).

Be that as it may, the music historian must simply observe that continuouspsalmody did not seem an absurdity to fourth‐century desert monks. Nordid it seem an absurdity to contemporary urban monks and nuns. Little isknown about urban monasticism in the earlier fourth century; one tends toassume that it originated as desert monasticism that spread in the course ofthe century from its remote solitudes to the principal ecclesiastical centers.It is true, certainly, that many of the outstanding ecclesiastical leaders of thetime visited Egypt to learn the ways of the desert monks, and true also thaturban monastic groups found an inspiring example in these fabled ascetics.But it is arguable also that the impetus for idealistic men and women livingin the cities to come together into communities devoted to prayer and self‐deprivation was a natural outgrowth of tendencies already manifested inearlier Christian centuries.

But whatever its origins, urban monasticism showed itself as devoted topsalmody as its desert counterpart; it is scarcely an exaggeration to saythat psalmody was its defining characteristic. Chrysostom writes of hismonastic brothers in Antioch: “As soon as they are up, they stand and singthe prophetic hymns… Neither cithara, nor syrinx, nor any other musicalinstrument emits such sound as is to be heard in the deep silence andsolitude of those holy men as they sing” (MECL, no. 187). And similarly thePseudo‐Chrysostom: “In the monasteries there is a holy chorus of angelichosts, and David is first, middle and last; in the convents there are bands ofvirgins who imitate Mary, and David is first, middle and last” (MECL, no. 195).13

The Cathedral Office

The psalmody of urban monasticism had a profound, indeed overwhelming,influence on the cathedral Office; it transformed the morning and eveningoffices, and it filled the intervening hours of the day with additional offices.The city where this is best observed is Jerusalem, the one location for





which we have a full and detailed description of the daily Office, thanks tothe narrative of Egeria, the Spanish nun who visited the Holy Land in thelate fourth century. The morning monastic (p. 69 ) and cathedral Officeswere combined at Jerusalem by the simple expedient of retaining both andperforming them successively, the monastic psalmodic Vigil followed by thecathedral service of praise, a pattern still recognizable in Western medievalVigils and Lauds. Egeria describes the monastic Vigil in these words:

Each day before cockcrow, all the doors of the Anastasis areopened, and all the monazontes and parthenae, as they arecalled here, come down, and not only they, but also those laypeople, men and women, who wish to keep vigil at so earlyan hour. From that hour until it is light, hymns are sung andpsalms responded to, and likewise antiphons; and with everyhymn there is a prayer. For two or three priests, and likewisedeacons who say these prayers with every hymn and antiphon,take turns to be there each day with the monazontes. (MECL,no. 242)

The service is one of extended psalmody sung exclusively by the monksand nuns, even if in the presence of the admiring laity. After each psalmthere is a prayer, according to the time‐honored monastic practice; theprayers, however, are said by members of the local clergy, assigned ona daily basis, and apparently bringing a sort of diocesan sanction to themonastic service. The bishop himself is not present, for this is an essentiallymonastic service. He made his appearance only at the beginning of Lauds:“As soon as it begins to grow light, they start to sing the morning hymns,and behold the bishop arrives with the clergy” (MECL, no. 243). Egeriacontinues by describing prayers led by the bishop, who eventually leavesthe sanctuary and goes among the faithful, allowing them to kiss his handbefore his concluding blessing. Lauds, then, unlike Vigils, appears to be anessentially cathedral service, even if it is the monks and nuns who sing “themorning hymns,” which include in all probability those chants specific toLauds, such as Ps. 62, Pss. 148–50, and perhaps Gloria in excelsis. IndeedLauds is the service that manages best to retain some semblance of itscathedral character, even in the medieval West, where the absorption of thecathedral Office by the monastic Office was near total.

Sext and None are sung during the course of the day (with Terce reserved forLent at Jerusalem). Egeria's description reveals these services to be madeup exclusively of monastic psalmody, brought to a close when the bishopenters to recite a concluding prayer and to bless the faithful: “Again at the




sixth hour all come down to the Anastasis in the same way, and sing psalmsand antiphons until the bishop is called in. He likewise comes down … andagain he first says a prayer, then blesses the faithful… And at the ninth hourthey do the same as at the sixth” (MECL, no. 244).

With Vespers, the monastic and cathedral elements, although remainingdistinct, combine in one service. The service begins in the absence of thebishop: the lamps are lit—the traditional rite of the lucernarium—amid themonastic singing of the specific evening psalms, followed by extendedpsalmody; when the bishop arrives, finally, the psalmody is continued. InEgeria's words:

But at the tenth hour—what they call here licinicon, and whatwe call lucernare—the entire throng gathers again at theAnastasis, and all the lamps and candles are lit, producinga boundless light… And the psalmi lucernares, as well asantiphons, are sung for a long time. And behold the (p. 70 )bishop is called and comes down and takes the high seat, whilethe priests also sit in their places, and hymns and antiphonsare sung. And when these have been finished according tocustom, the bishop arises. (MECL, no. 245)

A series of prayers, including a litany, follows, and the service concludeswith the bishop administering separate blessings to the catechumens andthe faithful. What is striking about the service from the perspective of themedieval Western Office is that the overall shape of Vespers appears alreadypresent, that is, a period of continuous psalmody followed by a series ofdisparate events.

The six Offices at Jerusalem—Vigils, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers—comprised the typical daily pattern of the time; Prime and Compline werethe only members of the medieval horarium not regularly present. The lattermade its appearance first. There was a period of time between Vespers andbedtime, so that it was only natural that the end of the day would come tobe observed within some monastic circles by a short service of psalmody andprayer in common. Basil, for example, describes a sort of proto‐Compline inhis so‐called Longer Rules when he writes: “And again as night begins, wemust ask that our rest will be free from sin and evil phantasy; Ps. 90 mustbe recited at this hour” (MECL, no. 137). Ps. 90, with its verses 5 and 6,“thou shalt not fear the terror of the night … nor that which walks about indarkness,” will find its way into St. Benedict's Compline. Prime was the last of




the Office hours to make its appearance, and it was, as we shall see present,in Western sources that it did so.

The Western Office

The documents cited up to now were exclusively Eastern for the goodreason that virtually nothing of the sort exists for the contemporary West.This is true especially for the cathedral Office and most especially true forthe cathedral Office of Rome. In the view of the present author the lack ofsources describing the late fourth‐century cathedral Office of Western citiesmay simply reflect the circumstance that it was very little developed at thetime. 14 And the fact that the Western medieval Office has so little trace ofthe cathedral Office may simply reflect the fact that the original developmentof the Western Office took place primarily under monastic auspices. It is truethat Western Lauds, with its use of selected psalms like Ps. 62 and Pss. 148–50, appears to be utilizing cathedral material. But while the monastic earlymorning Vigil was certainly characterized by continuous psalmody, there isno reason why monastic groups, independent of cathedral example, couldnot have chosen to greet the new day with appropriate psalms of praise. Itis not historically plausible to deny to monks completely the ability to useappropriate psalms at key points in the Office. So when Cassian (d. 435) tellsus that his monastery near Marseilles, as well as the monastery in Bethlehemwhere he spent his youth, closes Vigils with Pss. 148–50, we need not insistthat this is a borrowing from the cathedral Office (MECL, no. 348).

Cassian's rule, the De institutis coenobiorum, written sometime after 415,purports to be a description of the Egyptian monastic Office, while it isclearly an (p. 71 ) adaptation of Eastern practices to the circumstances of hisown Gallican communities of monks and nuns. It is only the first in a seriesof full descriptions of Western monastic Offices—including the Gallican rulesof Caesarius of Aries (d. 542) and Aurelian of Aries (d. 551), and the centralItalian Rule of the Master—that precede the classic formulation of Benedict,written for his monks at Monte Cassino in about 530. There is obviously notthe space here to survey the provisions of these rules. Rather three pointswill be treated, the first two very briefly, the third at slightly more length.

The first concerns the origins of Prime. Traditionally it was attributed toCassian, who spoke of a new office of “three psalms and prayers, accordingto the custom established long ago at the offices of Terce and Sext” (MECL,no. 347); the office was instituted, as Cassian explains, to prevent theslothful from returning to bed before Terce, and to bring the number of day




offices to seven, in accord with the precept of the psalms: “Seven times aday I have given praise to thee” (Ps. 118:164). Taft has argued forcefully thatCassian was speaking not of Prime but of Lauds, a view that has persuadedmany, but not all. 15 In any event Prime appears in the rule of Caesarius ofArles and in all subsequent Western rules.

A second point worthy of mention is the inclusion in the Western Office ofhymns—hymns, that is, in the new metrical manner of St. Ambrose. Cassiandoes not mention them, but Caesarius, Aurelian, the Master, and Benedictdo, with Benedict, in fact, referring to them as ambrosiana. It comes assomething of a surprise that these worthy ascetics would welcome suchcreations after the fourth‐century church appeared to have adopted sorestrictive a position on the so‐called psalmi idiotici.

The final point involves the preoccupation of Western monastic Offices with astrictly symmetrical and numerical apportionment of the Psalter. One detectsin the development of Christian liturgies a gradual movement from ad hocarrangement (dare one use the word improvisation?) to permanently fixedones. This is observable first, perhaps, in overall liturgical structures; thepermanent shape of the Eucharist, for example, including the pre‐eucharisticservice of the word, is clearly visible already in Justin Martyr's (d. ca. 165)frequently quoted description of Sunday morning Eucharist at Rome (seeMECL, no. 25). Secondly, it would appear, Ordinary prayers and chantsbecome fixed; thus we have in the later fourth century the widespread useof the Sanctus at the Eucharist, Pss. 148–50 at Lauds, and the appearanceof the medieval text of the Latin eucharistic prayer in St. Ambrose's Desacramentis. And finally there follows the larger project of fitting out theentire church year with permanently assigned Proper prayers, readings, andchants. 16

I believe that the monastic concern with the precise apportionment of thePsalter is a peculiar phase of this broad liturgical movement toward fixity.Thus, while the fourth‐century Cappadocian De virginitate prescribes forVigils: “Say as many psalms as you can while standing” (MECL, no. 153),a few decades later Cassian insists upon exactly twelve psalms for Vigils(the standard medieval number, one should note) (MECL, no. 338). Modulesof three also figure prominently in early monastic rules: one recalls that inEgeria's description of Sext and None the monks and nuns “sing psalms andantiphons until the bishop is called in,” whereas Cassian specifies preciselythree psalms for the same offices.




(p. 72 ) Such examples can be multiplied indefinitely, but particularly worthyof mention are the intriguing speculations of Joseph Pascher ( 1957b ,255–67) about the makeup of Roman Vespers before the time of Benedict.Pascher, followed by Adalbert de Vogüé ( 1967c , 195–99), argues fromcertain Holy Week Vespers that retain six psalms, and from the fact thatSunday Vespers begins with Ps. 109 in all early medieval arrangements,that the fifth‐century monastic Vespers of the Roman basilicas used sixpsalms each day. The 42 psalms from Ps. 109 to Ps. 150 were simplyapportioned in numerical order over the seven days of the week. At somepoint, the medieval Roman number of five psalms each day was achievedby eliminating the seven psalms that were sung at other hours; these werePs. 117 for Sunday Lauds, 118 for the Little Hours, 133 for Compline, 142for Friday Lauds, and 148–50 for daily Lauds. This reform must have takenplace, Pascher argues, sometime before Benedict's stay in Rome in the earlysixth century, thus paving the way for his own reform, which further refinedthe process already underway. Benedict reduced the number of psalms atVespers to four, doing so not only to avoid singing the same psalm morethan once each week, but to provide some variety at the Little Hours, whichhitherto had only portions of Ps. 118 assigned to them. He called for thepsalms of Vespers to be taken in order from Ps. 109 to Ps. 147, omittingthose set aside for other hours, namely, Ps. 117 to 127 for the Little Hours,133 for Compline, and 142 for Saturday Lauds. This left him three psalmsshort of the required 28 (only two short, had he not combined the shortPs. 115 and 116 into one). He made up the deficit by dividing three longerpsalms (138, 142, and 144) into two psalms each. 17

The process was clearly not one motivated by selecting thematicallyappropriate psalms. There was a measure of that only at Lauds andCompline. Rather the process was, in Vogüé's words, a “mechanical” one,“a matter of a very modest task of arithmetic.” 18 Surely this is preciselythe sort of thing that so disturbs contemporary liturgical historians. It is notfor the music historian, however, to pass any such judgments, but simply torecord the monastic commitment to the weekly recitation of the Psalter thatso decisively shaped the character of the Western Office.

Notes:

(1.) A particularly cogent summary of the subject is Grisbrooke ( 1992 ).

(2.) See especially P. Bradshaw (1981), 1–71; McKinnon ( 1986 ); Taft ( 1986), 11; P. Bradshaw (1992a), and (1992b), 186–87.









(3.) The relevant sources are cited in P. Bradshaw (1981), 47–71, and Taft (1986 ), 13–30.

(4.) For these instructional meetings, see P. Bradshaw (1981), 66–68.

(5.) On the agape, see P. Bradshaw (1981), 55–57.

(6.) On the fourth‐century cathedral office, see P. Bradshaw (1981), 71–92;Taft ( 1986 ),31–56; and Grisbrooke ( 1992 ), 407–9.

(7.) The Greek and Latin numbering of the psalms is used here throughout.

(8.) For a highly readable account of early Christian monasticism, see Chitty (1966 ).

(9.) On the fourth‐century Egyptian monastic office, see P. Bradshaw (1981),93–110, and Taft ( 1986 ), 57–74. More specifically on the office of UpperEgypt, see Veilleux ( 1968 ).

(10.) On the psalmody of desert monasticism, see Dyer ( 1989 ), 44–47, andMcKinnon ( 1994 ), 505–10.

(11.) See especially Taft ( 1986 ), 64–65.

(12.) For other passages associating desert monasticism with psalmody, seeMECL105, 106, 110, 112, 114, 115, 124, 125.

(13.) For other passages associating psalmody with monks and nuns, otherthan those of Egypt, see MECL 138, 146, 152, 180, 196, 197, 199, 242–49,289, 294, 295, 300, 327, 336–50, 375, 379, 387.

(14.) I have, for example, assembled more than two hundred referencesto liturgical psalmody from the sermons of St. Augustine without findingany material unambiguously descriptive of cathedral Lauds or Vespers; seeMcKinnon (forthcoming).

(15.) See Taft ( 1986 ), 206–9. Grisbrooke ( 1992 ) upholds the traditionalview, p. 416, n. 17.

(16.) On the process of achieving liturgical fixity, see McKinnon ( 1995 ).

(17.) Benedict of Nursia, Regula, chap. 18 .














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(18.) “un process mécanique”; “il s'agit d'un très modeste travaild'arithmétique”: Vogué ( 1967c ), 197.



The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages

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