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. 

The Epiphanytide responsories revisited: the de psalmiis responsories in the post-Trent books

Source: Gregobase/Dominique Crochu

In my post on the feast of the Conversion of St Paul a few days ago I flagged that I planned to provide a series of posts on the history of the Matins responsories, focusing the Epiphanytide set in particular, so herewith the next in that series.  

In the last post, I noted that there were possible connections to the Epistles of St Paul, read at Matins after Epiphany.   I will come back to this point in due course, but I also want to provide a bit of a taster for some possible connections to the season of Epiphanytide as a whole.

It is worth first, though, making some observations around the set of responsories as they appear in the post-Trent books and their earlier history, by way of a cautionary note on the value of the current make up of the set as claimed witness to the structure of the Roman Office.  

The evolution of the set

Although it is sometimes implied or claimed outright that this set was transmitted unchanged from late antiquity, there is no direct evidence for this, and the most detailed study of the set from a liturgical perspective, by Dom Le Roux, actually posits several stages in the evolution of the set.   

That is understandable since the earliest actual witness to their use in the period after Epiphany dates, as far as I am aware, from the ninth century (in the introduction to the otherwise lost antiphoner of Amalarius).  

And even then Amalarius actually only names the first of them, in a comment that the set starts with Psalm 6, Domine ne in ira tua.

Indeed, while Dom Le Roux pointed to the eighth century as a key date for the evolution of the set,  it also continued to evolve throughout the middle ages and after, as the number of responsories used on Sundays in the Roman Office has gradually decreased, and local variants excluded from the set.  

In particular, the number of variable responsories in the Roman Office on Sundays has progressively decreased.  In the tenth century one responsory was dropped in favour of the insertion of the Te Deum (hymns were not previously part of the Roman Office); another was displaced in the twelfth century, when Pope Innocent III prescribed that the responsory Duo Seraphim be used as the last responsory throughout the year.  And in  a complete wreckovation of the Roman Office, in 1960, the number was decreased to a mere two (the Benedictine Office, by contrast, even in its 1960 version, has twelve responsories, though it too, has adopted the practice of using Duo Seraphim as the last responsory on most Sundays of the year).

The manuscript evidence suggests, moreover, that different places made different selections as to which responsories to drop, and/or included one or more 'non-core' (but still possibly ancient) responsories, most of which presumably dropped out of use post-Trent.  

The net result is that although the responsories in the post-Trent books are mostly (with a few notable exceptions) selected from the most common responsories that appear in the manuscripts, few if any manuscripts reproduce the current standard set for Sundays without variations.

Moreover, both the Benedictine and Roman post-Trent sets omit some of the most common responsories that appear in both monastic and secular cursus manuscripts alike at the same frequency of those that have been included, most notably Audiam Domine vocem laudis (Psalm 25), and, in the case of the Roman, Afflicti pro peccatis nostris (a non-Scripturally based responsory).

Roman or non-Roman origins?

Secondly, while the liturgists generally assumed that responsories in general - and this set in particular - originated in Rome, musicologists seems generally rather less convinced of this, not least because the earliest reference to responsories actually appears in a source from Gaul, not Rome.

And in the case of the de psalmiis responsories, several have survived in versions based on psalters other than the Romanum.  

I drew attention, in my previous post, to Peccata mea Domine, which uses the Vetus version.  

Another example is Diligam te Domine (said in the second Nocturn on Sundays), based on Psalm 17, and which is preserved in considerable numbers in both Romanum and Gallican text versions.

Le Roux's study also noted that a number of the so-called 'core set' do not actually appear in the earliest Italian antiphoners, presenting another problem for the claims about their witness to the early Roman Office.

Responds and their verses

The main reason these responsories have captured the liturgist's attention is that they are generally said in the numerical order of the psalms in the 'respond' part of the text.  But while the verses of the responsory most commonly associated with them (and used in the post-Trent books) are mostly taken from the same psalm as the responds, that is not always the case.

Consider, for example, the first of the set, Domine ne in ira tua - the verse is actually from Psalm 54:6:

R. Dómine, / ne in ira tua árguas me, neque in furóre tuo corrípias me: * Miserére mei, Dómine, quóniam infírmus sum. V. Timor et tremor venérunt super me, et contexérunt me ténebræ. R. Miserére mei, Dómine, quóniam infírmus sum.

R. O Lord, rebuke me not in your indignation, nor chastise me in your wrath. * Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. V. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and darkness has overwhelmed me. R. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak.

     

In keeping with the penitential flavour of the set, these 'non-matching' verses include verses from two of the penitential psalms not otherwise covered in the set, namely Ps 129 and 142.

Non-psalm based responsories

It is worth noting, too that Afflicti pro peccatis (the second responsory in the Third Nocturn on Sundays in the Monastic Office), one of the three responsries mentioned in Mr diPippo's recent NLM post, is unusual in that its text is not Scriptural at all:

R. Afflícti / pro peccátis nostris, quotídie cum lácrimis, expectémus finem nostrum; † dolor cordis nostri ascéndat ad te, Dómine, * Ut éruas nos a malis, quae innovántur in nobis. V. Dómine, Deus Israel, exáudi preces nostras, † áuribus pércipe dolórem cordis nostri. R. Ut éruas nos a malis, quae innovántur in nobis.

R. You have afflicted us for our sins, every day we expect our end with tears; let the sorrows of our heart come before you O Lord. * That you may deliver us from the evils that have come upon us V. O Lord God of Israel, hear our prayers, hearken unto the sorrows of our heart. R. That you may deliver us from the ills that are come upon us.

But it is not the only not the only non-psalm based responsory used in this set.  

Consider, for example, Ne perdideris (sung on Wednesday in both the Roman and Benedictine Offices), and whose respond text comes from the apocryphal text the 'Song of Manasses', with a verse from Psalm 142:

R. Ne perdíderis / me cum iniquitátibus meis: * Neque in finem irátus resérves mala mea. V. Non intres in iudícium cum servo tuo, Dómine. R. Neque in finem irátus resérves mala mea.

R. Do not destroy me with my sins. * Do not be angry with me forever, or store up evil for me.  V. Enter not into judgment with your servant, O Lord. R. Do not be angry with me forever, or store up evil for me.

Supplication for healing and the time after Epiphany

Both these texts reinforce the strongly penitential and supplicatory focus of this responsory set that, I think, fits well with the themes of the time after Epiphany, reflected for example in this week's Gospel (the Third after Epiphany) and the story of the healing of the leper and the Centurion's servant, as well as in the collect for the week:

Omnípotens sempitérne Deus, infirmitatem nostram propítius réspice: atque, ad protegéndum nos, déxteram tuæ maiestátis exténde (Almighty and everlasting God, look with favor upon our weakness, and stretch forth the right hand of Your majesty to help and defend us).

This link is perhaps made even clearer in one of the responsories that didn't make it into the post Trent books, but which is included in both the important Old Roman and St Gall manuscripts for Thursday, and has a text based on Esther 13:17:

Domine deus propitius esto populo tuo et converte tribulationem nostram in gaudium, or O Lord God hear the supplications of your people and turn our mourning into joy.

You can find a transcription of the chant with the full text on the fabulous Gregofacsimil website, or on Gregobase.

And you can find the next part of this series here.

The conversion of St Paul and the de psalmiis responsories

Source: Gregobase/Dominique Crocu

Today is the feast of the conversion of St Paul, and it is part of a strong Pauline focus in the Office in January, as the Pauline Epistles are read at Matins each day in this period.

In honour of this, I want to provide a brief note today, by way of the first of a series of posts on the 'de psalmiis' Matins responsories, partly in response to two recent blog posts on this topic.

The Matins responsories

The Matins responsories are a huge, rich repertoire of chants (by the end of the middle ages there were more than 1500 of them, and there are also quite a few polyphonic settings of them), traditionally sung after each of the readings in the Night Office (and occasionally at Vespers).  The responsories provide both a space to meditate on the readings (or feast or season); and act as something of an aid to interpreting and assimilating them. 

In the centuries since Trent, though, a few special times of the year aside, they have generally been said rather than sung, and their texts and chants have been of more interest to liturgists than to those interested in the ways text and music interact to provide theological and spiritual content.

That is slowly changing though, and projects are currently underway, both to build on the pioneering work of Peter Sandhofe's 2002 Nocturnale Romanum, through the Nocturnale Romanum Project, and the work of the Monastery of Brignoles to develop an equivalent set of books for the monastic Office.

The history and spirituality of the responsories

Despite this, however, the primary focus on them, not least in the latest two posts on the subject, continues to be as indirect evidence for assorted historical claims regarding the development of the Office.

The first post, on the  Esprit de la Liturgie website, is by Matthias von Pikkendorff, entitled Les répons psalmiques du temps après l’Épiphanie. It includes some useful notes on the chant of the first of the set, Domine ne in ira tua, but its prime focus is on the responsories as evidence for the claimed shape of the early Roman Office.

The second post, by Gregory diPippo on the New Liturgical Movement Blog has a similar thrust, focusing on three of the set included in the monastic, but not the post-Trent Roman Office.  

The de psalmiis responsories and the early Roman Office

In essence, both build on and/or repeat past claims that it is 'self-evident' that the psalm based responsories used in the weeks after the Epiphany represent a proto-responsory set in place by the late fifth century, but gradually displaced by the 'historia' sets based on other books of the Bible, and preserved in their current order out of respect to their antiquity.  

I will come back, in this series, to the reasons for rejecting this hypothesis but it is worth noting upfront I think, that there is virtually no evidence to even suggest that there actually was such a thing as Roman secular Matins (or that there was a single monastic office universally used) in Rome prior to St Benedict's time.  Matins, after all, was predominantly a monastic domain, and seems only to have been imposed on the Roman clergy, at least as a daily obligation, in the mid-sixth century, after St Benedict's time. 

The 'monastic responsories'?

Mr diPippo's post effectively supplements that of Mr von Pikkendorff  by attempting to explain the reasons for the inclusion of a responsory in the Sunday set that clearly fits the monastic rather than the Roman ordering of Matins, as well as one that is not Scripturally based at all.  In particular it proposes that three responsories were added to the Benedictine Office to make up the necessary number of responsories (since the Roman Office used only nine responsories on Sundays whereas the Benedictine has twelve) when the Benedictines adopted the Roman Office's reading and responsory cycle.

There are, however, several problems with this theory. 

First, the three responsories in question appear just as often (indeed slightly more frequently) in medieval manuscripts based around the secular 'cathedral' cursus as they do in monastic ones.  

Secondly, these are only three of many variant sets of responsories used in the Office prior to the post-Trent breviaries.  Indeed the 'Old Roman' manuscripts contain several not used in the modern Office, while the key monastic Hartker manuscript contains no less than 14 for Sunday, and six to choose from for Monday.

Thirdly, musicological analysis of one of the chants cited by Mr diPippo, Peccata mea has found that it shares the musical features of the other 'core' responsories of the set.

An alternative theory

In the light of all this, I want to put forward an alternative, in my view more plausible explanation for this set of responsories, namely that while the responsories themselves may be relatively ancient, perhaps dating from the fifth century, the selection and ordering of them found in the surviving antiphoners from the ninth century onwards is not, but rather reflects a reform of the Matins reading cycle that occurred in the eighth century.

Originally, it should be noted, there was a much stronger Pauline focus in the monastic office (and almost certainly in the early Roman one as well)  Although the pre 1962 Roman Office (and 1960 Benedictine Office) uses homilies based on the Gospel of the day in the Third Nocturn of Matins on Sundays, St Benedict actually prescribed readings from the New Testament for this Nocturn.

And two of the earliest of the 'ordines Romani' (Ordos XIV and XVI), dating from the seventh century but almost certainly reflecting earlier practice, are consistent with this, saying that the Pauline Epistles were read throughout the year.  

Moreover the second of these Ordines explicitly says that the de psalmiis responsories were also used throughout the year.  

Could it be that they were actually used specifically in conjunction with the Pauline epistles?  There are good reasons for thinking so.

One of those reasons is that one of the versions of the oldest record of the Matins reading cycle we are familiar with, dating from the eighth century, actually specifies that St Augustine's Enarrations on the psalms were to be read in conjunction with the Epistles.

Now it might be thought that St Augustine's commentaries on the psalms were an obvious choice if the reason for the use of the psalm-based responsories was to reflect their dual character in the early Office as both readings and prayers.  But there is, I think another reason for this choice as well, in the heavy Pauline content of this set of commentaries.

St Augustine's Enarrations and the Pauline epistles  

Although St Augustine's Enerrations are based around particular psalm numbers, they were evidently given on occasions when the Epistles were also read, as St Augustine frequently makes reference to this.  

And independently of this, his explanations are rich in references to 'the Apostle'.  

When he explains the meaning of the psalms, quotations from the Epistles often far outnumber St Augustine's citations from other New or Old Testament books.

He also frequently uses incidents from St Paul's life to explain the meanings of the psalms.

And it turns out that these references to the life and works of St Paul are disproportionately concentrated in the commentaries on the particular psalms used in this responsory set.

The Peccata mea responsory and the conversion of St Paul

And as it happens, one of the responsories highlighted by Mr diPippo is something of a case in point. 

Here is the text of the responsory as it appears in the current Benedictine Office for reference purposes:

R. Peccáta / mea Dómine sicut sagíttae infíxa sunt in me, † sed ántequam vúlnera génerent in me * Sana me Dómine medicaménto poeniténtiae, Deus. V. Quóniam iniquitátem meam cognósco, † et delíctum meum contra me est semper, qui tibi soli peccávi. R. Sana me Dómine medicaménto poeniténtiae, Deus.

R. My sins, O Lord, are fixed in me, like arrows, but before they caused wounds in me, * Heal me, O God, with the medicine of repentance. V. For I know my iniquity, * and my sin is always before me. R. Heal me, O God, with the medicine of repentance.

The first point to note is that the the 'respond' section is mostly adapted from various verses of Psalm 37, the third penitential psalm (the whole set of Epiphanytide responsories has a strong penitential flavour, something I plan to come back to).  This kind of adaptation process is very common in responsories, including in this set.

The 'verse' (from Psalm 50) is actually not from the Gallican or Romanum, but the Vetus psalter, which might normally be taken as indicating either antiquity, rather than it being a late composition, or perhaps a non-Roman or Gallic origin (there are several distinct 'dialects' of responsories that have been identified, including Beneventan, Ambrosian, Old Hipanic and Gallican). 

In this case, though, I'd suggest that it has probably been taken straight from St Augustine's commentaries on the psalm, since the particular verses of Psalm 37 used in the respond very much echo the emphasis of St Augustine's commentary on both that psalm, as well as that on Psalm 50.

Both, moreover, contain explicit references to St Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus.  On Psalm 37, for example, he says:

Why should He not say, from the face of my sins, who said to Saul, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me, who, however, being in Heaven, now suffered from no persecutors? 

And on Psalm 50 he makes a major play on the identity between the names of David's persecutor (King Saul), and St Paul's name before his conversion, working up to a quote from the reading used for today's feast, Acts 9.  His commentary also links neatly to the second half of the respond text, with its references to the healing medicine of repentance:

...You shall be sprinkled with hyssop, the humility of Christ shall cleanse you. Despise not the herb, attend to the efficacy of the medicine. Something further I will say, which we are wont to hear from physicians, or to experience in sick persons. Hyssop, they say, is proper for purging the lungs. In the lung is wont to be noted pride: for there is inflation, there breathing. It was said of Saul the persecutor as of Saul the proud, that he was going to bind Christians, breathing slaughter: (Acts 9:1) he was breathing out slaughter, breathing out blood, his lung not yet cleansed. Hear also in this place one humbled, because with hyssop purged: You shall wash me, that is, shall cleanse me: and above snow I shall be whitened. Although, he says, your sins shall have been like scarlet, like snow I will whiten. Out of such men Christ does present to Himself a vesture without spot and wrinkle.  Further, His vesture on the mount, which shone forth like whitened snow, signified the Church cleansed from every spot of sin.

You can find three polyphonic settings of this responsory in Mr diPippo's post over at NLM, and you can find the next part in this series here..

Advent in the Office

This is my annual reminder that Advent is the most complicated season for the Office, so you need to keep your wits about you!

Advent falls into two parts - the days up to and including December 16, and the final week of the season.

For the first part of the season, remember to keep a ribbon on the relevant parts for each hour of the day of 'the Ordinary of Advent' (front of the Diurnal), since these displace the normal texts set out in the psalter section of the book.

Key things to remember:

• Sundays in Advent (from 1 Vespers on Saturday) have proper antiphons at all hours;
• the Sunday antiphons are then used throughout the week at Prime to None;
• there are special Benedictus and Magnificat antiphons for each day of the Advent week;
• the default collect is of the Sunday as usual; and
• on feast days (such as for St Ambrose), a commemoration of Advent, consisting of the canticle antiphon (of the Advent day), versicle (of the season) and collect of the Advent week (in that order), is normally made at both Lauds and Vespers.

The Immaculate Conception

Another key point to note is that this year the feast of the Immaculate Conception falls on a Sunday, and, due to a special rubric just for this feast, displaces the Second Sunday of Advent (which is marked only by a commemoration at Lauds and Vespers). 

The Ordo

And just a reminder that if you are struggling, consider buying a copy of the Ordo - the summary version is on the blog, but the full version provides much more detailed instructions.

Ordo for 2025

This to let you know that the Ordo for the 2024-25 liturgical year (ie starting from the First Sunday of Advent, which this year is 1 December) is now available from Lulu.

As usual, the Ordo is available in paperback and ebook (PDF) formats.

About the Ordo

The Ordo basically provides detailed notes and page references to enable you to say the Benedictine Office with confidence using the (St Michael's) Monastic Diurnal (MD), Antiphonale Monasticum (AM) and (Le Barroux) Nocturnale Monasticum (NM). 

It follows the 1960 rubrics and calendar (as published in the monastic breviary of 1963), but includes notes on earlier feasts and rubrics, particularly where these are employed by one or more of the monasteries still using the traditional Office and calendar.

The book includes quick reference guides giving the default pages in the Diurnal for each of the day hours; rubrical notes on the seasons; and notes for each day of the liturgical year.  It includes cross-references to the Roman Extraordinary Form calendar, as well as to feasts particular to selected countries and regions.

For the week of  12 October 2025, for example, the daily notes look like this: 

Sunday 12 October – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost/Second Sunday of October, Class II [Previously: Third Sunday of October]

 Matins: All as in the psalter with responsories and Nocturn I & II readings of the Second Sunday of October, NM 548 ff; Nocturn III readings, Gospel and collect of the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, NM 615-6.

 Lauds to Vespers: All as for Sunday in the psalter with canticle antiphons and collect, MD 477*/AM 609-10.

 Monday 13 October – Class IV [**In some places/EF: St Edward, Class III]

 All as in the psalter for throughout the year with collect, MD 477*/AM 610.

 Tuesday 14 October – Class IV; St Callistus, Memorial [EF: Class III]

 All as in the psalter with collect, MD 477*/AM 610; for the commemoration at Lauds, MD [314]/AM 1085.

 Wednesday 15 October – St Teresa, Class III

 Matins: Two nocturns with invitatory antiphon of a Virgin, LH 45; one reading of the feast; responsory, chapter, versicle and collect of the feast, NM 1144-5.

 Lauds: Chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle, Benedictus antiphon and collect for the feast, MD [315]/AM 1086 ff.

 Prime: Antiphon 1 of Lauds of the Common of a Virgin, MD (90)/AM, 678.

 Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter and versicle of the Common of a Virgin, MD (94)/AM 681 ff; collect of the feast, MD [316]/AM 1086.

 Vespers: Chapter, responsory, versicle and Magnificat antiphon of the Common of a Virgin, MD (96)/AM 682-3; hymn and collect of the feast, MD [315]/AM 1086 ff.

Thursday 16 October – Class IV [**In some places, St Gall. EF: St Hedwig, Class III. Canada: St Marguerite d’Youville, Class III]

 All as in the psalter with collect, MD 477*/AM 610. 

Friday 17 October – Class IV [EF: St Margaret Mary Alacoque, Class III; Le Barroux: Class II; Gower: Memorial]

 All as in the psalter with collect, MD 477*/AM 610.

 In some monasteries: 1 Vespers of St Luke: All as in the Common of Apostles, MD (2) ff with collect of the feast, MD [317-8].

 Saturday 18 October – St Luke, Evangelist, Class II

 Matins: Three nocturns, all of the Common of Apostles, LR 134 ff, except for the readings (Nocturn I, Common of an Evangelist; Nocturns II & III, of the feast), Gospel and collect, NM 1149-50.

 Lauds: Festal psalms with antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle and Benedictus antiphon of the Common of Apostles, MD (9)/AM 622 ff; collect of the feast, MD [317-8]/AM 1087.

 Prime: Antiphon 1 of Lauds of the Common, MD (9)/AM 622.

 Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter and versicle of the Common, MD (11)/AM 625 ff; collect of the feast, MD [317-8]/AM 1087.

 2 Vespers: Festal psalms with antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle and Magnificat antiphon of the Common of Apostles, MD (13)/AM 626 ff; collect of the feast, MD [317-8]/AM 1087; commemoration of the Fourth Sunday of October/Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Magnificat antiphon and versicle, MD 458-9*/AM 589; collect, MD 478*/AM 611.

Pocket summary edition

Some years ago someone asked if I could produce a pocket version of the Ordo, that would fit neatly with the size of the Diurnal.  Accordingly, this year I've produced a summary version of the Ordo as a trial to assess demand!

Note that it does not provide any rubrical notes, cross-references to other calendars or other support material: it essentially assumes that the reader is very familiar with the Benedictine Office, and can work things out from the basic references to pages in the Diurnal.

Here is what the same week in 2025 looks like in the pocket version:   

Eighteenth week after Pentecost/Second week of October. 

Ordinary of time throughout the year (in the psalter section), default collect, MD 477*.

Sunday 12 October – Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost/2nd Sunday of October, Class II, MD 477*. 

Monday 13 October – Class IV. 

Tuesday 14 October – Class IV; com of St Callistus at Lauds, MD [314]. 

Wednesday 15 October – St Teresa, Class III, MD [315] ff. 

Thursday 16 October – Class IV. 

Friday 17 October – Class IV. 

Saturday 18 October – St Luke, Class II, MD [317-8].  At 2 Vespers, com of the 4^th Sunday of October/19^th after Pentecost antiphon, MD 458-9* & 478*.

Blog calendar

As usual, I've posted a brief version of the ordo on the pages of the blog, accessible from the top bar.  Each month's entry is essentially identical to the summary (pocket) version of the Ordo, with the addition of rubrical notes for the liturgical seasons taken from the full version of the Ordo. 

Errors and omissions....

Please do let me know if you find any errors, so I can correct them, at the very least for future editions, or if you have suggestions on formatting and content.

And if you are a catholic religious or priest, please contact me by email if you would like a copy of the PDF version. 

New to the Benedictine Office?

I have had a few queries lately from people seeking help to learn the Benedictine Office, so I thought it might be timely to provide a few pointers for those who have just acquired the Monastic Diurnal, and are new to the Office.

Getting started

The first key message is - don't rush things.

There is a learning curve to saying the Office, and since this is the liturgy of the Church, getting it right matters.

So take the time needed to become familiar with the book and the way it works, and then the structure.

If you are new to the Office, or new to the Benedictine Office, start with this post about the Benedictine Office. 

Then you need to be able to find your way around the Monastic Diurnal.

Once you can find your way around the book, have a look at this post on what changes and what doesn't in the Office, so you can get a feel for when you will need the various sections of the book.

Take it slowly - start with Compline!

Secondly, don't try and say all of the 'hours' that make up the day Office immediately - start slowly and build up.

The best starting point is actually Compline, said in the evening, before bed.

The key advantage of Compline is that it is more or less the same every night, so easy to learn, and there are only a few choices of texts to make.

Even more importantly, for most hours of the Office, the Diurnal doesn't write out everything you have to say or sing in full, it just provides a few prompts.  

But for Compline, almost everything you need to say is written out in full (the main exception is that each psalm has a doxology, Glory be, or Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.  Sicut erat in principium et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen) added to it (you can find the doxology under Prime, for Psalm 1, at the beginning of the psalter section of the Diurnal).

Learning Compline also gives you a chance to learn the formulas used for laypeople saying the Office (such as saying Domine exaudi orationem meam/Et clamor meus ad te veniat, rather than 'Dominus vobiscum/Et cum spiritu tuo, Monastic Diurnal page 264).

Learn the components that make up the hours

Next, while you are learning Compline, take the time to learn about the various components that make up the hours - the opening prayers, antiphons, psalms, chapters and so forth - since knowing what these are will help you when you move on to the other hours.

As you go along, you might also find this list of Diurnal traps and shortcuts of use.

And in fact, the second hour you should add to your routine is Prime, said in the morning before work (even if you drop it in favour of Lauds later on), because it has the next fewest moving parts.

Use an Ordo

Fourthly, especially if you a beginner, don't try and puzzle out what feasts or season it is, and what parts of the Office change as a result of this for yourself - use an Ordo.

There are a few different Ordos for the monastic Office that are available publicly, and I provide a brief summary version on this blog, but especially if you are new to the Office, the one I publish each year via Lulu is the most comprehensive.

Use the summary tables for the hours

The posts for each hour on my Learn the Benedictine Office blog give you page numbers for the standard parts of each of the hours, as well as detailed instructions on how to say them.  Before you start trying to say each new hour, read them through, then use the summary tables to check you have the right pages until you are confident.

And if still aren't sure you've got it right, use the Divine Officium website (choose the monastic 1963 option) as a cross-check.

Listen to the Office being sung

Finally, it is worth keeping in mind as well that the Benedictine Office is meant to be sung - in choir if possible - but even singing it on one note alone is better than just saying it.  At a minimum, remember that you at least need to move your lips to say the words, you need to do more than just use your eyes.

If you can, visit a monastery and listen to them singing the Office.

If that isn't possible, a few monasteries have live streams for some or all of their hours, and there are a number of videos on youtube or elsewhere (the chant of Le Barroux has a great archive) that are worth listening to, and attempting to follow along with (though individual monasteries have their own calendars, so it won't always line up with what you are expecting!).

More anon.

Coming soon - Ordo 2024-25

Apologies for the long gap between updates - I've been extremely unwell for the last few years courtesy of Government mismanagement of the (still ongoing) Covid pandemic, and so my capacity to engage in things has been very low.

I do, however, finally seem to be recovering somewhat, albeit with ups and downs, and so will try and post a little more frequently in the future, if only to try and get out some of the things that have been running around my brain, and/or sitting in rough draft form on my computer for some considerable time.

The Ordo for the next liturgical year

First though, I want to assure readers that the Ordo for next year should be available towards the end of the month.

This year I've actually done two versions of the Ordo, essentially the standard version I've produced for the last few years, and a pocket book sized summary version - but more on this anon!

And in the meantime, just in case there any new starters to the Benedictine Office who are struggling to work out what texts to use each day, I've reduced the price of the Ordo for this year (which covers to the start of Advent) to make it more accessible.