Two Roman reading cycles?
The earliest evidence for these other uses of psalm-based responsories though, occur in a number of the Ordines Romani, which also provide potentially key information on their place in the Matins reading cycle. (1)
The Ordines Romani (generally labelled as Ordo + number) provide us with two different Matins reading cycles, whose essentials are set out in Ordos XIV and XVI on the one hand, and that given in Ordo XIIIa (evidence for which starts in the eighth century).
There are a number of key questions around them. First, do any of these Ordines genuinely attest to Roman practice in the seventh and eighth centuries at all, or, as one author has suggested, are they all just much later attempts by the Franks to resolve problems and develop a coherent approach to the liturgy based on the limited information they had of Roman practice? (2)
And if they do attest to Roman practice, does the pattern set out in Ordo XIV/XVI represent the earliest pattern of readings employed in Rome which was then superseded by a reform of the reading cycle in the eighth century, or did the two co-exist for some period until the Benedictines adopted the Roman pattern at some point (and if so, when and why)?
The Benedictine flavour of Ordo XIV?
The first of the two reading plans is set out in Ordo XIV, deals only with the ferial cycle, and differs significantly from that found in all of the surviving antiphoners: feasts (such as Pentecost) are only mentioned when they are the change points for the books to be read.
The books it specifies are to be read each month are mostly from the Old Testament, save for during Eastertide when Acts, the Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse are read.
There is a reasonably strong consensus that Ordo XIV probably dates from the seventh century and genuinely represents Roman - or at least the practice of St Peter's - for the later part of the sixth century. (3)
In particular, it starts from Quinquagesima Sunday, thus probably dating it from after (at least) 530 or so, and starts Advent at the beginning of December. (4) Its cycle has been argued to be consistent with an early homiliary collection for St Peter's thought to have originated in the late sixth century, though this claim, at least as far as the ferial cycle goes, looks to me to be fairly tenuous. (5)
Ordo XIV does not explicitly mention the Benedictine Rule: instead it is described as being for St Peter's. But it is consistent with it.
The Rule doesn't mention a pre-Lent period, perhaps pointing to an earlier dating for it than currently fashionable, but it doesn't lay out a Matins reading schema either.
It does, however specify that the Third Nocturn of Sundays is to be devoted to the new Testament, and in Ordo XIV, instead of being read after Epiphany, the Pauline Epistles were read throughout the year (the slightly later Ordo XVI confirms that the third nocturn was used for this purpose).
Ordo XIV prescribes the reading of the Gospel throughout the year, as the Rule does.
And where most early Western monastic rules (such as the mid-sixth century Roman region Rule of the Master) varied the number of psalms said at Matins depending on the length of the night (usually according to four seasons), St Benedict instead varies the number of readings, with only short invariable readings on summer weekdays.
Ordo XIV is perfectly adapted to the ebbs and flows of the Benedictine Night Office. First, Kings and Chronicles are spread over the entire 'summer' (from Pentecost to mid-October), when the Benedictine Office has no weekday readings. The number of books to be read increases in 'winter' when there are three weekday readings each day, but the number of verses that needed to be said each day in each reading slot (assuming a 'lectio continua' approach) remained (Lent aside) roughly the same over the entire year.
It is possible of course, that a fixed reading pattern was already in place before St Benedict, and he then adopted and adapted it, with Ordo XIV simply representing the next stage of its development. Given that fixed reading schemas seem only to have started to develop in the West in the sixth century though, it seems more likely though, that St Peter's simply adopted and adapted the Benedictine schema, along with the Rule itself.
The festal cycle and Ordo XVI
Ordo XIV, though, is, in the end, simply a list of the books to be read at Matins, with indications on when they are to be read: it doesn't mention responsories to go along with these at all, leading some to suggest that they are a much later addition, particularly when it comes to the festal cycle.
And on this issue, Ordo XVI is important firstly because it provides an identical ferial reading cycle but also explicitly refers to various sets of responsories to go with them, as well as for seasons and major feasts. Even more importantly, it contains what is probably the first reference to the psalm-based responsories for Rome.
Unfortunately its dating is highly contested, with two alternative dates proposed: second half of the seventh century, or late eighth century.
It is, of course, more than plausible that St Peter's - and Rome generally - already had a worked out festal reading and responsory cycle of some kind for Matins in the sixth century. We've previously seen that a collection of this kind was compiled in Gaul in the mid-fifth century, and St Benedict's description of festal Matins for his monks (in RB 14) also implies the use of special antiphons, readings, and so presumably responsories, for saints feasts.
Ordo XVI's festal overlay is also consistent with an early homily collection for St Peter's that provides readings for the major feasts of the year, and is thought to have been compiled in the sixth century (though it only survives in much later versions, and has to be reconstructed from them).
Ordo XVI and the Benedictines in Rome
Although he acknowledged that Ordo XVI's liturgical provisions are generally consistent with other Roman sources for the second half of the seventh century, the original editor of the Ordines, Andrieu, dated it much later, to the second half of the eighth century, largely on the basis of its explicit references to the Benedictine Rule.
In essence, he assumed these references were interpolations from their Frankish compilers since a 1957 study of early Roman monasteries by Guy Ferrari claimed that there were no Benedictine monasteries in Rome until the tenth century. (6)
Andrieu's dating though, was challenged almost immediately, with the most popular alternative theory being that it is part of a set of notes referred to by Bede (and preserved in a related set of Ordines) written by 'John the Archcantor', abbot of one of the monasteries attached to St Peter's, who conducted a series of chant workshops in England around 680. (7)
There are good reasons for accepting this earlier dating of Ordo XVI.
As Costamboys and Leyser have pointed out, we are almost entirely reliant on indirect evidence for Roman monasticism in this period, in part due to the use of papyrus that deteriorated quickly, and a rather haphazard (and highly selective) recopying effort, as well as the wholesale destruction of the records drawn on by an earlier generation, during the time of the French occupation of Rome. (8)
Fortunately, as Constant Mews has pointed out, there is an abundance of such indirect evidence for the presence of the Rule in Rome. (9)
This ranges from the many other Ordines which refer to it; to the stream of Romanophiles (such as St Wilfrid of Northumbria) who claimed its adoption as a sign of their romanitas; and the activities of a series of Popes (most notably Pope Vitalian, who excommunicated the relic raiders of Fleury for their theft of the relics of SS Benedict and Scholastica; Gregory II, who ordered the re-establishment of Subiaco, sponsored the reestablishment of Monte Cassino, and appointed St Boniface as a missionary to German regions; and St Zacharius, who sent a copy of the Rule to Monte Cassino, as well as translating the Dialogues into Greek).
One can debate how 'strictly Benedictine' these Roman monasteries actually were, and how many followed the Rule in some sense - but it is impossible to deny that the Rule was well known in Rome at this time (not least because chapter four of the Rule appears in an early eighth century Roman homily collection) and closely associated with it.
Mews has also clearly demonstrated that the associated set of Ordines of which XVI forms a part were clearly written with an English audience in mind, and with an eye to John the Archcantor's wider diplomatic mission (which included gaining support for Rome's position on the Eastern heresy of the day, monothelitism). (10)
Psalm-based responsories as a 'common' for feasts
I will come back to the Ordines in due course, including those containing the schema that replaced that in Ordos XIV and XVI, but for now I want to bring this little excursus back to our main focus by noting that Brad Maiani has pointed out that Ordo XVI contains a sentence that seems to confirm Amalarius' comment that psalm based responsories were used for feasts without propers, or without a sufficient number of propers, in the period before the emergence of the 'Commons' is documented. (11)
This is important because it suggests that rather than constituting a default ferial set, some or all of them may have been part of a default festal set.
And it also suggests that to understand the psalm-based responsories, we need to look beyond the numbers of the psalms they are selected from and there order, to their actual content.
More soon.
Notes
(1) The Ordines are a series of short descriptions of the liturgy that survive only in non-Roman manuscripts. The critical edition of them is Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 23, 24, 28, 39. Louvain, 1931 – 1961.
(2) Arthur Westwall, Roman Liturgy and Frankish Creativity: The Early Medieval Manuscripts of the Ordines Romani, Cambridge University Press, 2024.
(3) Though some claim to detect Gallican elements even in this - one claim, for example is that the reason the list begins before Lent because this aligns with the Gallican new year; the more obvious explanation is surely that a list of books of the Bible to be read most naturally starts with Genesis! Moreover, the Matins reading cycle in both its versions has always had something of a history-chronological dimension to it, something accentuated in the later version of it, which (loosely speaking) starts at Genesis, proceeds through several great Empires, and concludes with the time after the coming of Christ in Epiphanytide.
(4) The introduction of a one week pre-Lent period to Rome (it seems to have been in place in the East rather earlier) probably dates from the early sixth century, as it doesn't seem to have been known under Pope Leo the Great, but was claimed by a version of the Liber Pontificalis dating from around 520 to have been put in place since time immemorial. The cycle was pushed back a further week to Sexagesima around the mid-sixth century, and Septuagesima was probably put in place by Pope Gregory I. That is not to say that the current practice of starting Genesis on Septuagesima Sunday was necessarily in place until rather later though, as the meaning and practices associated with the pre-Lent period (such as the ban on the use of the alleluia, abstinence and fasting customs and so forth) clearly developed over time.
(5) On the homily collection, Chavasse argues that the homily collection aligns with Ordo XIV largely on the (fairly tenuous in my view) basis of similar descriptions of the pre-Lent period in both: Antoine Chevasse, ‘Le SermonnaireVatican du VII siècle’, Sacris Erudiri xxiii, 1978-9, pp 225-89. Réginald Grégoire, Les Homelaires Du Moyen Age: Inventaire et Analyse Des Manuscrits. Editor Herder, 264 pp. 1966 follows Grégoire on this, but adds that some manuscripts include indications of ferial readings consistent with Ordo XIV. Given that his catalogue is a reconstruction of the collection from a version of it copied in the eighth century manuscript though (whose validity is contested) it is more plausible that the reading plan is actually guided by Ordo XVI given its festal overlay.
(6) Guy Ferrari, Early Roman Monasteries Notes for the history of the monasteries and convents at Rome from the V through the X century, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, Vatican, 1957.
(7) C Silva-Tarouca, Giovanni 'archicantor' di S Piero a Roma e 'l's Ordo' romanus da lui composto (anno 680), Alli della Pontificio Academia rom. di archeologica, Memorie, vol 1, Parte 1, Rome, 1923, pp150-219. The most recent statement of the case for their seventh century Roman credentials, and review of the earlier debate, is by Constant J. Mews (2011) Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend, Journal of Medieval History, 37:2, 125-144,
(8) Mario Costamboys and Conrad Leyser, To be the neighbour of St Stephen: patronage, martyr cult, and Roman monasteries, c. 600-900, in Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner (eds) ,Religion, dynasty and patronage in early Christian Rome, 300-900, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp262-287.
(9) Constant J. Mews, Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend, Journal of Medieval History, 37:2, 2011, 125-144.
(10) One of the other main claims relating to Ordo XVI (and the other related Ordos) is that in places it reflects Gallic or Celtic customs rather than Roman, and doesn't always strictly follow the Rule. But the question of just which liturgical practices were and weren't used in Italy has repeatedly proved difficult to establish given the scarcity of evidence one way or another, as the exchanges between Dom Adalbert de Vogue and Marilyn Dunn on the Rule of the Master long ago proved. And it is also clear that the Rule was not (probably ever) followed exactly to the letter: liturgy develops, even with a clear referent point.
(11) Brad Maiani, ‘Readings and Responsories: the Eighth Century Night Office Lectionary and the Responsoria Prolixa’, JM, xvi (1998), 253–82. The sentence in question is 'Reliquo tempore in anni circoli praeter quod memoravimus ipsis psalmis responsuria nende' (53). It can only refer to feasts since all other periods of the year are covered by other specifications.
