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on her clergy the obligation of adherence to that practice, the English church could not have been expected to attempt a work so beset with difficulties; more especially, when it is recollected that the regular celebration of the offices for the various canonical hours of prayer at their stated intervals, would have been impracticable for the great body of the clergy and laity, and could only have been insisted on in colleges and cathedrals.

And this, therefore, being impossible, under the circumstances of that time, it seemed most advisable to effect such alterations as were really feasible, with a view to obviate the great irregularities which had arisen, to release the clergy from a burdensome obligation, and to facilitate the attendance of the laity; and such objects seemed to have been attained, by continuing the practice of prayer in the morning and evening, into which the canonical hours had gradually resolved themselves, and by diminishing the length of the offices which the clergy were to celebrate.

SECONDLY, I proceed to consider the service which was originally appointed for the hours of prayer, or canonical hours, as they were sometimes called.

As the nocturnal assemblies were first held for the purpose of administering the eucharist, so when that sacrament was celebrated at another time, the Nocturnal service still retained the psalmody and reading of Scripture, which was always the commencement of the liturgy or eucharist. In different churches different customs of reading and singing prevailed. In one place the psalms were read, in another they were sung, in another they were ex

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pounded; here they were very numerous, there very few; sometimes they were separated by lessons, sometimes by prayers: in different places they were read or sung without intermission, and were followed by one or by many lessons. Psalmody, generally without lessons, formed the substance of the services for the other hours of prayer. In the English and many other western churches, these services generally terminated with prayers, which were longest at Prime and Vespers.

The office of Matins, or Morning Prayer, according to the church of England, is a judicious abridgment of her ancient services for Matins, Lauds, and Prime; and the office of Evensong, or Evening Prayer, in like manner, is an abridgment of the ancient service for Vespers and Compline. Both these offices have however received several improvements, in imitation of the ancient discipline of the churches of Egypt, Gaul, and Spain, as will appear in the sequel.

The offices for the hours of prayer, as well as the number of the hours themselves, varied greatly in the western churches before the eleventh century. We have traces of six different rites at least in the West, viz. the Roman, the Benedictine, the Ambrosian, the Gallican, the Spanish, and the Irish rite of Columbanus. Besides this, the Oriental church had several peculiar rites, as the Greek or Oriental, the Egyptian, the Armenian, and others.

I. The origin of the Roman offices is involved in obscurity: they have, however, preserved a substantial identity in their distinctive features from the

g On the various modes of billon, De Liturgia Gallicana. performing Divine service in (Disquisitio de Cursu Gallicano, the hours of prayer, see Ma- § 1.)

eighth century at least, when, in the reign of king Pepin, they were introduced into France, where they superseded the Gallican offices, as they afterwards replaced those of the Spanish churches". Their identity is ascertained by the writings of Amalarius, Walafridus Strabo, and other ritualists of the ninth and tenth centuries. There seems no reason, indeed, to doubt, that the Roman offices for the canonical hours had been in existence from the time of Gregory the Great, A.D. 590; for the Anglo-Saxon church appears to have derived its rites from that period; and there was certainly a substantial agreement in after-times between those rites and the offices of the Roman church. The rule of St. Benedict (composed about A.D. 530) also prescribes a mode of celebrating the offices for the canonical hours, which agrees in all essentials with the Roman rite, and may therefore be considered as another proof of its antiquity. But whether the Roman offices were taken from the Benedictine, or the Benedictine from the Roman, is a question of considerable difficulty, on which we can only form conjectures more or less probable.

It is clear that they agree in all the most important respects. Thus, the Psalter is, in both, read through in the course of each week, which is different from the customs of the Ambrosian, Irish, Mosarabic, Oriental, and other offices. Again, twelve psalms are in both appointed for the nocturnal office. Several lessons read in succession, alternate with several psalms read in succession. Both rites include hymns in verse, which are not found in va

See above, p. 145. 166, 167.

i Vide Bona, De Divina Psalmodia, cap. xviii. § 2, 3.

rious other offices'. It would seem evident, on the whole, that the Roman and the Benedictine rite, as prescribed in the rule of St. Benedict, accord in all their principal features.

What may have been the source from which St. Benedict derived his rite, it is not easy to conjecture. It cannot, however, be older than the time of Cassian, who in the fifth century introduced into the West the tradition of the miraculous origin of the number of twelve psalms in the nocturnal Vigils*, which is the number prescribed by St. Benedict. It seems also that neither the Roman nor the Benedictine rite resembles the ancient offices of the Italian churches in the time of Cassian, when the psalm Miserere was sung at the end of Matin lauds or of Prime'. Connecting these circumstances, I am inclined to think that the Benedictine rite owes its origin to St. Benedict himself, and that it formed the model of the Roman rites: nor does there seem to be any thing incredible in this supposition, when we remember the extreme veneration of Gregory the Great for the abbot Benedict; and also, that the Roman offices certainly received Compline from the Benedictine m (which is attested by so many writers); and that it is stated by the abbot Theodemar, in an epistle to the emperor Charlemagne, that the Roman office in the time of St. Benedict did not include lessons from Scripture (which were introduced, according to him, by Gregory the Great, or

j Ibid.

psalmus in universis ecclesiis

k Cassiani Institut. Coenobit. canitur." Cassian. Inst. Cœnob. 1. iii. c. vi.

lib. ii. c. 5, 6.

1 66

Denique per Italiam hodieque consummatis matutinalibus hymnis quinquagesimus

m Bona proves that Compline was instituted by St. Benedict. Divina Psal. c. xi. § 1.

by Honorius), while it is certain that the Benedictine offices did include such lessons"; that in later ages the Breviary of the Franciscan order was adopted by the Roman see°; and in fine, that, in the sixteenth century, various prayers and offices were incorporated in the Roman Breviary, which had been devised by the monastic orders in the middle ages. All this would seem to furnish presumptive evidence in favour of the notion, that the Benedictine offices for the canonical hours were the original model whence the Roman were derived.

II. Of these Benedictine offices and their antiquity, I have spoken sufficiently in connexion with the Roman. I shall therefore pass on to the Ambrosian.

III. The Ambrosian office, or the rite of the church of Milan, differs from the Roman and the Benedictine, in not adopting the number of twelve psalms in the Nocturns, and in its mode of dividing the psalter, by which the whole is not read through each week as in the Roman and Benedictine, but only in each fortnight. The offices for the third, sixth, and ninth hours in the Ambrosian rite, are evidently borrowed from the Roman; and give rise to the conjecture, that offices for those hours did not formerly exist in the church of Milan'. The Ambrosian, as well as the other rites which we have been considering, includes lessons from the writings of the Fathers, and the lives and martyrdoms of

n Mabillon, De Liturgia Gallicana, p. 385.

• This will be shown towards the conclusion of the Introduction.

P Tracts for the Times, No.

75. (On the Roman Breviary.)

9 Compare Bona, c. xviii. § 2 and 3, with § 10, " De Ritu Ambrosiano." r Ibid.

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