Night Hours

The Night Hour or Night Office is what English translations of the Rule of Saint Benedict call the canonical hour whose celebration, particularly in monasteries, began between 2 and 3 a.m.[1][2] The plural form, Night Hours or Night Offices, is used with reference to the different psalmodies assigned to the seven days of the week.[3]

The original text in Latin uses the terms Officia divina in noctibus (Divine offices in the nights) and Vigiliae (Vigils),[4] Vigiliae nocturnae,[5] Nocturna laus (Night Praise),[6]Nocturni (Nocturns, used in reference not, as later, to a section of the service but to the service as a whole),[7]

As part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Night Hour was distinguished from the seven Day Hours: Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. The seven Day Hours were seen as fulfilling Psalm 118/119:164, "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules",[8] and the Night Office as fulfilling Psalm 118/119:62, "At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules".[9][10]

Structure

The Night Office began with the versicles, "O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me" and "O Lord, Thou wilt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise" (the latter said three times) followed by Psalm 3 and Psalm 94/95 (the Invitatory). The Invitatory was to be recited slowly out of consideration for any late-coming monk, since anyone arriving after its conclusion was punished by having to stand in a place apart.[11] After this a hymn was sung.

Next came two sets of six psalms followed by readings. (Such sets would later be called nocturns.) The first set was of six psalms followed by readings from the Old and New Testaments and the Church Fathers. Each reading was followed by a responsory. The second set of six psalms was followed by a short reading from the Apostle Paul recited by heart. The Night Office then concluded with a versicle and a litany that began with Kyrie eleison.[12][13]

Since summer nights are shorter, from Easter to October a single reading from the Old Testament, recited by heart, took the place of the three readings used during the rest of the year.[14]

On Sundays the Night Office was longer. Accordingly, it began a little earlier. Each set of six psalms was followed by four readings instead of three. Then three canticles taken from Old Testament books other than the Psalms were recited, followed by four readings from the New Testament, the singing of the Te Deum, and a Gospel reading, after which another hymn was sung.[15]

In the Rule of Saint Benedict the canonical hour said at dawn (incipiente luce) and later known as Lauds was called in Latin Matutini (Matins), but is usually translated as "Lauds".[16][17]

On days other than Sundays there was a considerable interval in the long winter nights between the Night Office and the celebration of Lauds at daybreak. In that interval the monks did not go back to bed but devoted themselves to study. In the shorter nights between Easter and October, the interval was brief. According to the Rule, Lauds immediately followed the Night Office on Sundays in any season.[18] Paul Delatte calculates that, in view of the addition to Lauds of an extra opening psalm and the direction that the regular opening psalm at Lauds should be prolonged, even on Sundays monks could leave the oratory for a moment between these two canonical hours.[19]

Subsequent adaptations

While the Monastic Breviary continued to speak of the two canonical hours as Vigiliae (Vigils) and Matutinae (Matins),[20] they appear as "Matins" and "Lauds" in the Roman Breviary of Pope Pius V in 1569.

They were regularly joined together outside of monasteries, particularly in cathedrals, and were generally celebrated on the previous evening, as in the Holy Week office of Tenebrae, thus losing the connection with the tradition of celebrating the one after rising at night and the other at dawn.

The 1911 Reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X reduced from 12 to 9 the number of Psalms recited at Matins and abolished the custom of reciting every day at Lauds, after the other Psalms, Psalms 148–150 joined together as if a single Psalm.

Pope John XXIII reduced the readings at Matins.

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council a revised Liturgy of the Hours was issued, which renamed Matins as Office of Readings, reduced the number of its Psalms to three and assigned to it two readings, more substantial than those used before, one from Scripture, the other from the Church Fathers.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The eighth hour of the night" (Rule of Saint Benedict, 8)
  2. ↑ Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Wipf and Stock 1922), p. 141
  3. ↑ "The order of the psalms for the day Hours being now arranged, let all the remaining psalms be equally distributed in the seven Night Offices" (Rule of Saint Benedict, 18)
  4. ↑ Regula Sancti Benedicti, 6
  5. ↑ Regula Sancti Benedicti, 9, 10, 16, 43
  6. ↑ Regula Sancti Benedicti, 10
  7. ↑ Regula Sancti Benedicti, 15, 17
  8. ↑ Psalm 119:164
  9. ↑ Psalm 119:62
  10. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 16
  11. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 43
  12. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 9
  13. ↑ Paul Delatte, Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Wipf and Stock 1922), p. 152
  14. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 10
  15. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 11
  16. ↑ Regula Sancti Benedicti, 8
  17. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 8
  18. ↑ Rule of Saint Benedict, 8
  19. ↑ Paul Delatte, Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Wipf and Stock 1922), p. 157
  20. ↑ Breviarium Monasticum iuxta regulam S. Patris Benedicti (Nancy 1777)
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