Responsory Excursus: The Ordines Romani and the Benedictines in Rome

Continuing today, my series on the psalm-based responsories, one of the intriguing, and potentially illuminating, dimensions of the psalm-based responsories is their use in other contexts than Epiphanytide.

To explore these other uses of the psalm responsories, and to put the Epiphanytide set in their proper context, it is helpful to look at the evidence around responsories and the Matins reading cycle more generally for seventh to eighth centuries, that is, before the emergence of the earliest surviving antiphoners.

It turns out, though, that this value of this evidence is highly contested, so today, a little excursus, looking at some of the questions around the Ordines Romani, a collection of instructions and descriptions of Roman preserved in various Frankish manuscripts dating from the eighth century, focusing particularly on Ordos XIV and XVI.

Septuagesimatide and the psalm-based responsories.

Amalarius of Metz, who visited Rome in the first part of the ninth century reported that psalm-responsories - though not necessarily exactly the same set as those used after Epiphany - were also used for feasts without their own propers (a use also noted in Ordo XVI); in Passion and Eastertide; and four times a year before the start of key reading blocks.

There are others as well: some of our Epiphanytide set turn up in Septuagesimatide and Lent in some medieval uses.  

Domine ne in ira tua, the first of the set, for example, was also used in both in Lent and Passiontide at Matins.  

In some uses, Adjutor meus esto, used on Mondays in Epiphanytide, also turns up on Septuagesima Sunday at Lauds or Vespers presumably both because it is unusually short (easily the single shortest responsory of the set), and because of the obvious appropriateness of the text to the season:

R. Adiútor / meus esto, Deus: * Ne derelínquas me. V. Neque despícias me, Deus, salutáris meus. R. Ne derelínquas me.

R. O God, be to me a helper. * Do not abandon me. V. Nor despise me, O God of my salvation. R. Do not abandon me.

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.

The responspories in their historical context

In my last post on the responsories, I highlighted their monastic context.  

Today I want to dig a little into what we know of the early history of the genre. 

Three revolutions?

The liturgists' theory essentially goes like this: the Great Responsories originally developed in Rome when responsorial chant switched to antiphonal in the second part of the fifth century. (1)

Much of the case for this depends on the fact that the same term was used for them as for the refrains sung by the people (and/or monastic choir) while the psalm verses themselves were sung by a soloist.

These refrains were then moved to the Office where, rather curiously, they became chants sung by a soloist (with the verses sung by the choir), thus reversing their original performance method.

And in this context, they were intended to serve as meditations on the psalms of the day, yet not placed not after the relevant psalm, but after the readings of the day.

This invariable set, then, it is claimed, was gradually displaced by the 'historia' (sets associated with books of the Bible), seasonal and festal sets of responsories, but continued to be used at some times of the year in their ancient order, and were finally adopted by the Benedictines in the eighth or ninth centuries.

Roman origins?

The problem is, firstly, that it is not at all clear that responsories originated in Rome.

Although the first references to responsories appear in the fifth and sixth centuries, as with all of the chant repertoire, they were transmitted orally for several centuries: while earlier texts identifying incipits, or occasionally full texts,  notation was not developed in the West until the ninth century, and the earliest surviving manuscripts with neumes date from the end of the tenth century.

Within this surviving repertoire though, musicologists have been able to identify several distinct 'dialects' - such as Ambrosian Chant, Beneventan, old Hispanic and Gallic - all of which seem at least as old as the Roman repertoire.  

Consider, for example one of the responsories for Fridays, Misericordia tua Domine.  The words of the text are set out below, and you can listen to a polyphonic setting of it above.

R. Misericórdia / tua, Dómine, magna est super me: * Et liberásti ánimam meam ex inférno inferióri. V. In die tribulatiónis meæ clamávi ad te, † quia exaudísti me. R. Et liberásti ánimam meam ex inférno inferióri.

R. Great, O Lord, is thy mercy toward me. * And Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. V. In the day of my trouble I called upon thee, for Thou hast heard me. R. And Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell.

The text is from Psalm 85, and has some particular appropriateness to Fridays, when we recall Christ's Passion.  

It is notable, though, that the verse it uses in the breviary has clearly been adapted from the Gallican, not the Romanum one would expect if this was ancient (the respond text is identical in both versions).

In fact the verse used in the post-Trent breviaries was not the one most commonly associated with in earlier manuscripts, but the more common verse too, most often (though not invariably) appears in the Gallican version:  Deus iniqui insurrexerunt in me et fortes quaesierunt animam meam (O God, the wicked are risen up against me, and the mighty have sought my soul).

Thus, the question arises, did this chant originate in Gaul rather than Rome, but move into the Roman repertoire at some point, or was it a case of the reverse, since verse chants in particular are reasonably adaptable (since they are sung to more elaborate than usual, or or less fixed-by-mode, psalm tones)?

The weekday set as an eighth century addition?

Dom Le Roux's 1963 study of the psalm based responsories actually proposed that only (some of) the Sunday set were part of the original psalm based responsories, largely on the basis of the use of Gallican texts in places in the set, with the weekday set added to it in the eighth century.  

His suggestion that the week day set were selected and arranged in the eighth century has a lot to recommend itself: it helps explain the alignment of the chants with the Roman psalm cursus as we know it, as well, I think, of pointing towards an explanation for one of the more problematic aspects of the de psalmiis responsories, namely the sheer number of them.

As I noted in the last post, though, recent studies suggest the story is more complex, and text alone cannot be used to assign responsories to a particular chronological layer.

Instead of existing entirely independently of each other, or developing after the Roman, these studies suggest that there was quite a lot of exchange between the 'dialects' of chant.

Several individual responsories were clearly adapted into other 'dialects', with minor changes to texts and/or chants, generally to fill gaps created by the adoption of new feasts or the development of seasons.  

And while it is difficult in most cases to know which direction the exchanges took, there is some evidence that suggests exchanges into Rome happened as early as the sixth century. (2)

The evolution of the responsories

Indeed, although Isidore of Seville ascribed their invention to 'the Italians', the earliest (probable) reference to the responsories is not from Rome, but in the form of a report that a mid-fifth century bishop of Marseille commissioned the compilation of fixed responsories texts not for ferial use, but appropriate to feasts and seasons.  

Gennadius of Mareilles' description of this Office and Mass compilation also suggests that the actual evolution of responsories occurred in a far more logical manner.

Rather than being transferred from one genre to another, he implies that the first stage of their development was that at first the selection of suitable texts from the books of the Bible being read (and creation of chants for them) was left up to individual monasteries and churches, possibly with some improvision involved:

Musaeus, presbyter of the church at Marseilles, a man learned in Divine Scriptures and most accurate in their interpretation, as well as master of an excellent scholastic style, on the request of Saint Venerius the bishop, selected from Holy Scriptures passages suited to the various feast days of the year, also passages from the Psalms for responses suited to the season, and the passages for reading. 

The readers in the church found this work of the greatest value, in that it saved them trouble and anxiety in the selection of passages, and was useful for the instruction of the people as well as for the dignity of the service.

He also addressed to Saint Eustathius the bishop, successor to the above mentioned man of God, an excellent and sizable volume, a Sacramentary, divided into various sections, according to the various offices and seasons, readings and psalms, both for reading and chanting, but also filled throughout with petitions to the Lord, and thanksgiving for his benefits. (3)

This storyline fits rather better with Isidore of Seville's discussion of them, which similarly makes no connection at all to responsorial psalmody:

Responsories were discovered by the Italians a long time ago.  They are called by this name because the choir responds to the one singing in the manner of an echo.  Formerly, however, there was only one singer.  Now sometimes one, sometimes two or three sing together, the choir responding in many voices." (4)

Expansion of the repertory

Gennadius' account suggests that outside of Rome at least, by the mid-fifth century what was being developed was not a fixed set of ferial responsories, but a much wider repertory of responses suitable for feasts and seasons.

The existence of such an extended set fits well with the various references St Benedict's time makes to the readings and 'their' responsories in his Rule.

Moreover, although attempts have been made to downplay the importance of this wording, not long after St Benedict, the Italian 'Rule of Paul and Stephen' firmly instructed the monks to stick to the prescribed texts and chants of the responsories without any improvising.  This same sixth century Rule, moreover, actually quotes from the text of one of the Kings responsories.

And Maloy et al have argued that one of the earliest identifiable responsory exchanges into Rome may have occurred towards the end of the sixth century, when Rome rather belatedly adopted Advent as a season and needed responsories to reflect the new themes of it.

Notes

(1) Versions of this storyline can be found in the work of Callaewaert and others, but the most comprehsnive statement of the claims is in R. Le Roux: ‘Etude de l’office dominical et férial: les répons “de psalmis” pour les matines de l’Epiphanie à la Septuagésime selon les cursus romain et monastique’, EG, vi (1963), 39–148.

(2) Rebecca Maloy, Mason Brown, Benjamin Pongtep Cefkin, Ruth Opara, Megan Quilliam and Melanie Shaffer, Revisiting ‘Toledo, Rome, and the Legacy of Gaul’: new evidence from the Divine Office, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 31, 1, 2022, 1-35.

(3) Gennadius, Lives of Illustrious Men, chapter 80.

(4) Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticus Officiis, Thomas Knoebel (trans), The Newman Press, NY, 2008, I: 8.

Monks, Matins and the responsories

Apologies for my slowness in continuing this series on the responsories, but my hopes my health was improving proved unfounded!

Nevertheless, here is the next post in the series, though I should flag that it is mostly by way of context for the debate, and somewhat controversial in content.

In order to re-examine what the de psalmiis responsories represent, we need I think, to also reassess some of the standard assumptions about the early Roman Office, and about the responsories themselves.

And the question I want to examine first is, can we really be sure that the psalm based responsories represent the oldest layer of them?

A starting point for this question goes to the monastic nature of Matins (aka Vigils or Nocturns).

Monks and the Office

One of the earliest descriptions we have of Matins we have comes from the fourth century pilgrim Egeria’s visit to Jerusalem, where she observed the weekly Sunday vigil where the bishop, clergy and people appeared for the public offices of Vespers and Lauds, but left the monks and nuns to kept Vigil through the night.  

This seems to have been the common pattern: monks prayed through the night so that the clergy and laity could sleep, protected from the attacks of the demons of the night by their prayers.(1)

That is not to say that the people didn't attend Matins at least some of the time.  

We know from St Jerome that Vigils (that presumably included the Office in some form) for the feasts of saints, held at the site of their relics, were popular with the people.  

Similarly, the early stational liturgies for major feasts such as Christmas, Easter, and Lent almost certainly included Vigils with psalms).  But we have little if any information on the content of these liturgies until the seventh century.

It is likely, too, that some form of prayer in the night may have been said privately at home by the clergy and devout laity, but we have no evidence that there was any obligation to do so, and no information at all about the content of any such prayers.

Instead, virtually all of the information we have about early forms of Matins relates to monastic versions of it, such as Cassian's description of the twelve psalm Sunday Matins said by the hermits of Northern Egypt in the early fifth century; the 12 to 18 psalm Night Office used by the monastery associated with St Augustine from around the same time; and the very much longer Vigils employed in Gaul, Burgundy and Provence in the early sixth century.

Clerical obligation to celebrate the Night Office

Around St Benedict's time though, in the early sixth century, a new trend started, broadening the obligation to attend Vigils.

For the clergy, records have survived of two monk-bishops, Ss Fulgentius (North Africa) and Caesarius (Provence) requiring their clergy to attend (monastic) Matins.  

And in the Eastern Empire, Justinian passed legislation in 528 mandating that priests say the 'nocturnal, morning and vespers prayers'.

The same trend also seems to have penetrated Rome, as the mid-sixth century Liber Diurnis includes a promise formula for bishops, the Cautio Episcopi, requiring them and their clergy to celebrate Matins in Church.  Indeed, there is a typically oblique reference that may be to this new obligation in the Liber Pontificalis: Pope Hormisdas (514 - 523) is said to have 'taught the clergy the psalms'. 

Just how successful these attempts to impose the Night Office on priests was is another matter: there is evidence from the sixth century of priests refusing to do it.

Moreover the Liber Pontificalis for the seventh and eighth centuries repeatedly makes it clear that the Office, and most especially Vigils, continued to be regarded as the domain of monks, not clerics.  There are several entries detailing agreements that monks would say the Office in various basilicas. There are numerous records of monasteries attached to the basilicas and tituli churches of Rome being established or restored for exactly this purpose. There is a complaint from the people that 'the monks' were singing twelve psalms at Matins rather than the customary three during the Easter and Pentecost octaves. When new feasts or chapels were established, vigils for their feasts were specifically entrusted to monks, while priests were to say Mass for the relevant feast.  

And when, in the eighth century, Pope Stephen II (752 - 757) attempted to stamp out the practice of anticipating Matins the afternoon or evening before, part of his solution to the problem was to add an extra monastery to St Peter's in order to have a sufficient number of monks to manage the task.

It is not until the Carolingian regulations in the ninth century (and probably not by coincidence, the invention of notation for chant, so that performance of it did not rely entirely on memory), that evidence for a broader practice can be found.

A secular Office?

All the same, if we assume an attempt was made to impose the Night Office on clerics, and at least some did it, did they simply say the monastic Office of Rome (assuming there was such as thing), or some newly devised secular form? 

Learning and chanting the monastic Night Office, though, would surely have been a mammoth task, especially if, as the liturgists claim, the day hours were largely fixed already by this time).

One possibility is that the clergy were only required to say a fairly abbreviated version of the hour, and the description of what was required in the Cautio Episcopi can be read as consistent with this (but see the appendix below), but that then begs the question of how the Roman secular Office as we know it, with its eighteen psalm Sunday Vigil and twelve psalms a day norm, emerged (presumably the reason the liturgists have generally ignored it).

Either way, it is reasonable to assume, I think, that abbreviated or otherwise, clerics drew on the existing Office chant repertoire rather than inventing their own.

Implications for the responsories

And this is important because when the liturgists first focused on this de psalmiis set of responsories, their assumption was that the psalms would represent the oldest chronological layer of the Office.  

It is a plausible enough assumption on the face of it: in the Mass, psalm based propers (introits, communios etc) certainly do appear to be the oldest layer of the liturgy.

The Office chants, though, most particularly for the Night Office, almost certainly developed primarily in a monastic environment, while Mass chants developed in a clerical one, and that means that although they share some characteristics, they also have some differences.

In particular, monks seem to have been rather more adventurous in the texts they drew on: where Roman clerics, probably in the early sixth century, drew up lists of non-Scriptural materials that was absolutely not to be read in Church; St Benedict, by contrast, included Patristic commentaries in the readings for Matins.

And where the Roman (and some other regions) church resisted the use of hymns, monks employed them in the Office (indeed the current Vespers hymns have long been attributed to the great monasticizing pope, St Gregory I).  

Unsurprisingly, then, musicological analysis, has found that when it comes to the Office, neither text alone or analysis of the music alone is sufficient to decide the relative age of a responsory. (2)

In particular, whether the text is psalm-based, other Scriptural or non-Scriptural cannot be used to allocate responsories to particular chronological layers of the Office.

And when it comes to the chants themselves, the de psalmiis responsories are musically indistinguishable from the other early sets of responsories, such as those for the Book of Kings.

More on this here.

But first, enjoy the recording of Afflicti Pro Peccatis (above), one of the non-Scriptural responsories sung between Epiphany and Septuagesima, since Trent preserved only in the monastic Office.

Notes

(1) See Laurent Ripart, La veille monastique dans l’Antiquité tardive: de l’ascétisme à la pratique liturgique, in Bernard Andenmatten, Karine Crousaz and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (eds), Le sommeil Théories, représentations et pratiques (Moyen Âge et époque moderne), Edizione Del Galluzzo, 2024, pp 27 -50, for a useful recent survey of the monasticisation of the night Office, and the forms of it.

(2) See in particular Katherine Eve Helson, The Great Responsories of the Divine Office: aspects of structure and transmission. PhD, Universität Regensburg, 2008 and Brad Maiani, Readings and Responsories: The Eighth-Century Night Office Lectionary and the Responsoria Prolixa, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 254-282.

Appendix: The Cautio Episcopi Office

The version of Matins described in the Liber Diurnis has generally been either ignored by the liturgists, or  explained away as a purely hypothetical text.

That is possible, but, as others have pointed out, unlikely given that the introduction of a requirement for the clergy to attend Matins around this time can be found in other sources as well, not least in references to priests resisting it! 

Another possibility worth considering though, is that the text itself has been misinterpreted.

The text essentially prescribes that during summer, matins has 'three readings, three antiphons and three responsories' on weekdays, in winter four of each, and on Sundays 'nine readings with antiphons and responsories'.

It is generally assumed that antiphon here means psalms sung antiphonally, while responsories either means responsorial psalms or (more likely) the Great Responsories.

But there is another option, since the term 'antiphon' in other early forms of the Office could also mean a group of, usually three, psalms.

If interpreted this way, the Cautio Office prescribed looks rather more like the Roman Office as we know it, with either 9 or 12 psalms on weekdays depending on the season, and 18 on Sundays.