Library › St Benedict of Nursia › Rule

Rule

St Benedict of Nursia, tr. Hunter Blair, 1907

Chapter 17

WE have now disposed the order of the psalmody for the Night-Office and for Lauds: let us proceed to arrange for the remaining Hours. At Prime, let three Psalms be said, separately and not under one Gloria. The hymn at this Hour is to follow the verse, Deus in adjutorium, before the Psalms be begun. Then, at the end of the three Psalms, let one lesson be said, with a versicle, the Kyrie eleison, and the Collect.¹ Tierce, Sext, and None are to be recited in the same way, that is, the Verse, the hymn proper to each hour, three Psalms, the lesson and versicle, Kyrie eleison, with the Collect. If the community be large, let the Psalms be sung with antiphons; but if small, let them be sung straight forward.² Let the Vesper Office consist of four Psalms with antiphons: after the Psalms a lesson is to be recited; then a responsory, a hymn and versicle, the canticle from the Gospel, the Litany and Lord’s Prayer, and finally the Collect. Let Compline consist of the recitation of three Psalms, to be said straight on without antiphons; then the hymn for that Hour, one lesson, the versicle, Kyrie eleison, the blessing and the Collect.

Notes

Note I (p. 70).—Missæ sint. The word missa is used by ecclesiastical writers in various significations: 1, The sacrifice of the Mass; 2, the lessons sung at the Night-office; 3, a canonical hour itself (cf. Cassian, lib. II., c. 13—“Post missam nocturnam dormire non oportet”)*; 4, a collect or prayer said at the end of the Office (Concil. Milevitanum, can. 12. “Orationes seu missæ quæ prohibitæ fuerint in Concilio”); 5, instead of missio, as at the end of Mass: “Ite, missa est”—“Go, you are dismissed.” (So St. Cyprian uses remissa for remissio.) The word can only be used here in one of the two latter senses; and though both interpretations have found advocates, the former, namely, that referring it to the final prayer or collect, is supported by the principal commentators, as Bernard of M. Cassino, Turrecremata, Caramuel, Boherius, Martene, &c. It is certain, from the Holy Rule itself, that a prayer was prescribed at the end of the Office (see chap. lxvii.); and it would therefore be natural to find it ordered here, where directions for the Divine Office are being minutely laid down by St. Benedict.
* So Shakespere, in the well-known passage (Romeo and Juliet, Act iv. Sc. 1),
“Or shall I come to you at evening mass?”
evidently alludes to the hour of vespers.
Note K (p. 70).—Si vero minor, in directum psallantur. Calmet well points out here that what is prescribed, in the case of a small community, cannot be the mere omission of the antiphon before and after the Psalms, which would make no appreciable difference in the length of the Office. The learned F. Tomasi (In Responsoria et Antiphonaria Eccl. Roman., 1686) has shewn that it was anciently the custom to interpolate an antiphon, often after every verse of the psalm, as is still the case at the Venite of matins, and as we find in Ps. cxxxv., where the words “For His mercy endureth for ever” are added as an antiphon to each verse. It was no doubt this frequent repetition of the antiphon which St. Benedict allowed to be omitted. (See Note G.)
Congregatio minor is usually interpreted to mean one consisting of less than twelve members, which was the primitive number of a Benedictine Community. St. Gregory (Dialogues, B. ii., c. 3) tells us that St. Benedict “built [at Subiaco] twelve Abbeys, and in each of them he placed twelve monks.”