Feasts and Saints of October

Solimena, The Martyrdom of Sts Placidus and Flavia,
1697-1708

This post provides a list of this month's feasts for the Benedictine calendar, as well as the 1962 Roman, 1953 Benedictine and modern Roman calendars.  I have given all feasts their 1962 equivalent rankings, but note that these do not always exactly translate!

Note that the Matins texts for feasts ranked as Class II (three nocturn) equivalents in 1953 and earlier, but reduced to Class III in 1962, such as Holy Guardian Angels,  as well as feasts omitted in the later calendar, such as the Maternity of the BVM, can be found in the appendix of the new reprint of the 1963 Benedictine Breviary).  Any missing texts for the day hours can be found in the Antiphonale Monasticum.

Three particular feasts worth noting are St John Henry Newman, on October 9, who is set to be declared a doctor of the Church on 1 November; St Wilfrid OSB, responsible for bringing the Rule to the Kingdom of Northumbria (Northern England) circa 660; and SS Maurus and Placid, disciples of St Benedict, on October 5.

SS Maurus and Placid

The feast of the SS Maurus and Placid is of course of particular importance to Benedictines, but has gone through several evolutions.

Originally, there were two separate feasts for these saints: St Maurus, focusing particularly on his mission to France, on January 15; and St Placid and Companions, martyred in Sicily around 541, on October 5.

The historicity of the stories around both saints has been strongly challenged over the last few centuries, and in response the readings that appear in nineteenth century and earlier breviaries for St Placid and his Companions were replaced, in the twentieth century to generic patristic readings relating to martyrs.  And then in 1960 the two feasts were combined and the readings taken from the accounts of the early life of the two saints that appear in St Gregory's Dialogues.

In essence the argument (in both cases) was that their legends as they have been preserved contain some dubious elements, therefore the whole story must be a fabrication.  And in the case of St Placid, it was claimed that the sixth century figure had been conflated with a earlier St Placid. 

These days, however, historians are becoming more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to hagiography: while accounts written down long after their time often reflect contemporary agendas and assumptions, get a few facts mixed up and engage in a little creative 'filling in of the gaps', they are often thought, nonetheless, to preserve a core of truth.

Accordingly, it is entirely plausible, in my view, that St Placid and his companions, sent to found a monastery in Messalina, were eventually martyred by pagan pirates in Sicily. 

Date	1960 Benedictine	1962 Roman	1953 Benedictine	Benedictine Confederation/2025 Roman (where extra/different)	Other
1		St Remigius, Memorial		St Teresa of the Child Jesus (see Oct 3), Class III
2	Holy Guardian Angels, Class III	Holy Guardian Angels, Class III	Holy Guardian Angels, Class II	Holy Guardian Angels, Class III
3	St Teresa of the Child Jesus, Memorial [Class I in some places]	St Teresa of the Child Jesus, Class III
4	St Francis, Class III	St Francis, Class III	St Francis, Class II	St Francis, Class III
5	St Maurus and Placid, Class III	St Placid and companions, Memorial	St Placid and companions, Class	St Faustina Kowalska, (Virgin) Optional Class III
6	St Bruno, Memorial	St Bruno, Memorial	St Bruno, Class III	St Bruno, Optional Class III
7	BVM of the Rosary, Class III	BVM of the Rosary, Class II	BVM of the Rosary, Class II; SS Mark; Sergius, Baccius, Marcellus and Apuleius, memorials	BVM of the Rosary, Class III
8		St Bridget of Sweden, Class III
9		St John Leonardi, Class III		St Denis and Companions or St John Leonard, Optional Class III	St John Henry Newman, Doctor,  (England and Wales)
10		St Francis Borgia, Class III
11		Motherhood of the BVM, Class II	Motherhood of the BVM, Class II	St John XXIII, Optional Class III
12		St Edwards, Class III			St Wilfrid, Class III
13					St Edwards, Class II
14	St Callistus, Memorial	St Callistus, Class III	St Callistus, Class III	St Callistus, Optional Class III
15	St Teresa of Avila, Class III	St Teresa of Avila, Class III	St Teresa of Avila, Class III	St Teresa of Avila, Class III
16		St Hedwig, Class III		St Hedwig or St Margaret Mary Alacoque, Optional Class III	St Gall, Class I
17		St Margaret Mary Alacoque, Class III		St Ignatius of Antioch,  Class III [(MD [46], Feb 1]
18	St Luke, Class II	St Luke, Class II	St Luke, Class II	St Luke, Class II
19		St Peter of Alacantara, Class III		SS Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Joques and companions or St Paul of the Cross, Optional Class III
20		St John Cantius, Class III
21	St Hilarion, Memorial	St Hilarion, Memorial	St Hilarion, Memorial
22				St John Paul II, Optional Class III
23		St Antony Mary Claret, Class III		St John Capistran, Optional Memorial
24		St Raphael, Class III		St Antony Mary Claret, Optional Class III	St Raphael, Class I
25	SS Chrysanthus and Daria, Memorial	SS Chrysanthus and Daria, Memorial	St Chrysanthus and Daria, Memorial
26		St Evaristus, Memorial
27			Vigil of SS Simon and Jude
28	SS Simon and Jude, Class II	SS Simon and Jude, Class II	SS Simon and Jude, Class II	SS Simon and Jude, Class II
29
30
31			Vigil of All Saints
Last Sunday of October	Christ the King, Class I	Christ the King, Class I	Christ the King, Class I

 

Guide to the appendices in the Brignoles breviary

I've now received my lovely new reprint of the 1963 breviary from Editions Pax inter spinas (Monastery of St Benedict at Brignoles), and it is wonderful to have the breviary finally back in print, packed with lots of bonus extras, and in a very nice edition at that!

As I've previously provided a guide to the contents of the 1963 breviary (ie the reprint section), I thought it might be useful now to highlight the contents of the new material included in its two volumes, which take the form of two appendices in each volume, essentially providing extracts from the 1953 breviary.

Overview of the supplement

The appendices are placed at the end of each volume of the book, starting at page 375* in Volume 1, and 348* in Volume II (the one you should be using currently).

The key contents are:

• the traditional prayers said before and after the Office (Aperi Domine, and Sacrosanctae), pg 375* in vol I, 348* in Vol II;
• additions to the Ordinary, essentially capturing changes made to it in the 1963 breviary, starting at pg 376* in Vol I, and pg 349* in Vol II;
• the propers of time, starting at pg 383* in Vol I, and pg 356* in Vol II; and 
• propers for feasts, starting from pg 426* in Vol I, and pg 386* in Vol II.

The Ordinary

The section on the Ordinary essentially covers the differences between the 1963 and all earlier breviaries, and they basically fall into a couple of different categories: some verses of psalms and canticles removed from the psalter in 1963 for no good reason in my view; some changes made in the name of 'simplification' that many traditional monasteries have restored; and other sections removed in 1963.

First, as those who follow my blogs know, I'm generally an advocate of sticking to the 1963 rubrics.  There are however a few key exceptions that I would urge you to consider, in particular:

• in the 1963 breviary, Psalm 13 (said at Prime on Thursday) had several verses verses removed from it, for reasons I've explained here.  The supplement gives you the full version;
• even more egregious in my view, is the utter butchering of the Saturday ferial canticle.  Again, the supplement gives you the full version.

I would note that the 1963 breviary also changed the divisio points in some psalms, but its easy enough to mark these in your psalter: if you want to read up on what they are and my speculations on why they were done, have a  look at my posts on Psallam Domino blog on 1962isms!

The second category of changes included in the supplement were made in the name of simplification, but are largely (though not universally) ignored by the traditional monasteries these days, partly because they add some richness to the Office, and partly for purely practical reasons, since they are included in the Antiphonale which most monks and nuns sing from, viz:

• seasonal doxologies for hymns; 
• the ferial chapter for Prime; and 
• 1 Vespers of the Office of Our Lady.

The third category is, I suspect things that were deemed to be unnecessary accretions to the Office, and to be honest, I tend to agree with that judgment, but everyone can make their own judgment.  These include the Preces at Prime and Compline (mostly consisting of the Creed, and still used by some monasteries), and Patristic readings for (mostly abolished) Vigils of Apostles (a Romanisation of the Monastic Office added post-Trent). 

The temporale 

This section includes the texts for things like the Octaves of Epiphany, Corpus Christi and Ascension.  There has been some support from Rome in times past (albeit informally, the form of the Vatican Ordo) for the restoration of the Corpus Christi Octave at least, and Epiphany is one of the earliest in the calendar, so worth having a look through.  

That said, my view of Octaves in general is that wherever possible the normal Scriptural reading cycle should have priority over purely patristic readings (however interesting they may be!).

Feasts of saints

The supplement starts from the 1953 breviary, the last printed before 1963, and this means it:

• picks up several feasts omitted from, or whose rubrics or texts changed significantly from the 1930 breviary.  This means that it aligns with the 1934 Antiphonale; and
• includes the one reading or several readings where feasts were downgraded to Class III or memorials in 1963; and
• provides the texts for feasts and octaves removed from the calendar in 1963.

The decree Cum Sanctissima provides a mandate for celebrating such feasts as Class III as desired.  If you want to go further on a devotional basis, these books give you the tools to do so!

Happy praying!

The spirituality and history of Matins Part I - Perspectives on Matins and the Office

In my last few posts I've focused on the mechanics of the Benedictine Office - finding your way around the breviary, and how to say Matins.

I now want to turn to its theological and spiritual underpinnings in order to help you absorb its deeper meanings. 

Matins as a generic, monastic and Benedictine hour

And on this, I want to suggest that there are three key dimensions of the hour that we need to consider.

First, the hour has long traditions, dating both before and after St Benedict's time, that encompass a variety of forms of it, and types of participants in it.  

The second perspective is as a particularly monastic hour: Matins seems early on to have been regarded as the pre-eminently monastic hour: monks, someone recently suggested, 'prayed Matins so the rest of us don't have to'!

And the third perspective, is a focus on the particular form and meanings of the Benedictine version of the hour.

Taft and the liturgists

Before we go into any further though, it is worthwhile, I think, very briefly revisiting the origins and early history of the Office as a whole, and three key propositions around it, not least because many of the claims made in the standard accounts (such as Taft's The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West) are now, in my view at least, either discredited, well and truly out of date, or both.

Most modern accounts of the history of the Divine Office such as Taft's, effectively view the Office as largely a fourth century invention, a product of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity.  They tend to dismiss later references to Scriptural models to explain particular hours and practices associated with it as mere 'proof-texting', and view the pace of the psalms in it as a result of the rise of monasticism.  A number of recent discoveries and studies, however, have challenged these propositions.

Roots in Jewish prayer and the New Testament?

Although it is true that earlier attempts to link the Office to Jewish daily prayer as it developed after the destruction of the Temple largely failed, for example, there is now reasonably strong evidence for its roots in the diverse regular daily Jewish prayer regimes - Temple-based and otherwise - as practiced at the time of Our Lord.  

Sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah have shone a new light on both early Jewish and early Christian prayer, and the implications of this are still being worked through.  

One of them though, is that we should take seriously the idea that 'the prayers' referred to in Acts, as among the activities practiced by the newly converted Jerusalem crowds, are a reference to a proto-form of the Office.  The text says:

And they were persevering in the doctrine of the apostles, and in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:42)

St Benedict's famous insistence on the absolute priority of the 'Work of God', I would suggest, may well flow in part from his emphasis in the Rule on that early Jerusalem community as the model for his monks.

 The Office as an ecclesial tradition

Following on from this, some historians and liturgists tended to dismiss as nonsense eighth century (and earlier) claims that the diverse forms of the Office found in different places had apostolic origins.  

But while the earliest sources don't provide much detail of what the earliest forms of the Office consisted of, there are actually quite a few early references to prayer at fixed, particular times that go some way to making the case for a degree of continuity.

 One of the most important, I think, is from Clement I's letter to the Corinthians (composed circa AD 70-96), which seems to imply that the Office was a Divinely-instituted tradition:  

These things therefore being manifest to us, and since we look into the depths of the divine knowledge, it behooves us to do all things in [their proper] order, which the Lord has commanded us to perform at stated times. He has enjoined offerings [to be presented] and service to be performed [to Him], and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things, being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him....

The idea that the Office was an established ecclesial tradition from its very beginnings, that needed to be safeguarded by the Church seems actually to have been well established by St Benedict's time, as from the fifth century onwards we have records of bishops commissioning books for it; holding synods treating on it; and issuing decrees around its form, content and obligation to say it.  

Indeed, in the early sixth century, the influential Abbot John of Gaza noted that the liturgically minimalist approach of the hermits of Skete that St John Cassian had lauded a century earlier  as the ideal model for monks (their Office involved saying only Vespers and Matins as a Vigil for the Sunday only), was suitable for hermits only, not laypeople or cenobites.  He said: 

THE [fixed canonical] hours and odes are ecclesiastical traditions, and they are good from the perspective of the unity of the whole people.  Similarly in communities for the sake of unity among many wills....With regard to Vespers, those of Skete say twelve psalms; then at the end of each they say the “Alleluia” doxology and offer one prayer. It is the same at night: twelve psalms, then after the psalms they sit down to manual labor.

St Benedict clearly agreed with Abbot John's view of the liturgy as a force for creating community and maintaining unity within it, insisting, for example, that everyone attend it, even those otherwise temporarily excommunicated; insisting the abbot recite the Our Father aloud at Lauds and Vespers as a way of addressing internal scandals, disputes and slights; and, inter alia, inserting some communal rituals (such as the blessing of the weekly kitchen servers) into it.   

The place of the psalms in the early Office

A third key issue relating to the early Office relates to the psalms.  The Office as we know it has the psalms at its core.  But was this always the case?

There have been some very curious theories put forward about the use of the psalms in the Office over the last fifty years or so.

The early liturgists, for example, conflated the meditative recitation of the psalms in their Scriptural order through the day with the Office, and drew from this the conclusion that the monastic Office was about 'praying without ceasing' and individual sanctification, without it having any broader ecclesial dimension (while a smaller selection of psalms was used in the ecclesially oriented 'cathedral' Office).  In reality its now clear that the Office and meditatio on the psalms were two quite distinct monastic practices.

Another theory particularly popular in the 1970s and 80s (particularly among those arguing for saying fewer psalms in the Office each week!) was that originally, the psalms were treated as readings rather than prayers, and had to be 'turned into prayer' as it were, by long spaces for meditation after saying each one, and use of 'psalm collects'.  But in fact, several of the earliest commentaries on the psalms directly contradict these claims: while they may have been treated as both readings and prayers in some places and times, St Basil the Great, for example, argued that although the psalms effectively encompass all of Scripture, we absorb its messages unconsciously as we sing them.

A third theory was that the psalms only became the core of the Office as a result of monastic adoption and promotion of them in the fourth century. But we know the psalms were sung liturgically in Our Lord's time - aside from assorted New Testament references to them, Josephus even records the particular psalm numbers used at the sacrifice each day in the Temple for example.  And now, fortunately, some newly discovered sources, most notably that of some of the long lost commentaries on the psalms by Origen, have confirmed their importance in the liturgy in the first few centuries of the Church's life.

No wonder then, that St Benedict prescribes that the readings can be shortened or cut altogether if necessary, but all 150 psalms must be said each week.

But more on all this in the next part of this series!