From "The Pilot", 1967, comes this, an interesting historical ramble.
Some Church Customs Explained
By S.G. Thicknesse
Was Matins Always a Service?
SAILORS still divide the day and the night into watches of three hours each, as did imperial Rome. At least by the third century after Christ, hermits and others of ascetic life were marking these watches with vigils of prayer.
In the small hours of the morning, the Matutina Nora, close upon the heels of midnight, they said matins.'
Only when the Latin was abbreviated did it become matt, through the custom of doubling the last consonant of an abbreviated word.
In the first days of the Church it had probably been customary for Christians to meet together for morning and evening prayer, as it had been for the Jews. For a long time these Christians, who, like Christ and the Apostles, had been brought up in the synagogue, continued indeed to attend these prayers with the Jews. In the first chapter of Acts it is recorded that `Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour'.
This certainly remained the custom of the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem, who clung for long to the strict letter of the Jewish Law. Gradually Christian congregations generally formed the practice of meeting for morning and evening prayer together, as they had always done for the breaking of bread.
It was when the Christian community became more complex, and to think of itself as being bound to various tasks, that the duty of continual prayer on behalf of all began to be ascribed quite particularly to priests and monks.
As early as the fourth century it was said that `a cleric who without being sick fails in the vigils should be deprived of his benefice'. When in the sixth century St. Benedict made his great rule for prayer and work, he made obligatory upon its followers the saying of the offices of day and night. His rule tended to become the pattern of observance both for other monastic orders and for the clergy.
In the high middle ages king and peasant alike remembered the constant vigils of priest and monk on his behalf. When the twelfth century French king, Philip Augustus, was in danger of shipwreck, he is said to have cried out to his companions at midnight, `You cannot perish, for at this moment thousands of monks are rising from their beds and will soon be praying for us; after whom the parish priests also will soon arise and give us their prayers'. Some declared that even `the angel host, being acquainted with the hours, took that time to join their prayers and praises with those of the Church'.
Later, popular fancy attached a symbolic significance to the seven offices, equating them with the timing of Christ's passion, as seen in Dr. Neale's words:
At matins bound, at prime reviled,
Condemned to death at tierce,
Nailed to the cross at sext, at none
His blessed side they pierce.
They take him down at vespertide,
In grave at compline lay,
Who thenceforth bids his Church observe
The sevenfold hours always.
Compline, the late nightfall office, was added a little later to the old cycle; in this verse it takes the place of the early morning office of lauds.
By the later middle ages, however, changes were noticeable in the religious observance of clergy and laymen. Too many of the former, in particular secular priests and members of the less strict monastic communities, had grown very slack, hurrying through jumbled versions of the hours. Often all the morning offices were said `by accumulation' together (or in two conglomerations with the second one squeezed in on each side of the Mass), and the evening offices were similarly treated.
As for laymen, the tendency was more and more to segregate them in the nave, away from the priests and monks saying or chanting the offices in Latin in the screened choir, so that they increasingly became merely passive spectators in Church worship.
It is true that devotional books of the hours, or breviaries, were sometimes produced for laymen, and were often beautifully illuminated.
Sometimes these carried English translations of the psalms and prayers, as does a fine fourteenth-century breviary still existing. But all the same the increasing complication of the offices, their length, and the fact that they were in Latin, tended to leave people out.
It can therefore be seen as a double success for the English reformers when in the sixteenth century they made an order for Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer in English, and included them for daily use in the new Book of Common Prayer. They restored to Christian people the ancient tradition of intelligible and common prayer, and preserved the finest of the old prayers accumulated through many centuries.
It was the English people in general, however, not the reformers, who finally attached to the new order for Morning Prayer the name of the old office of Matins. In the same way they have attached to the order for Evening Prayer the old Saxon office name of Evensong.
Some Church Customs Explained
By S.G. Thicknesse
Was Matins Always a Service?
SAILORS still divide the day and the night into watches of three hours each, as did imperial Rome. At least by the third century after Christ, hermits and others of ascetic life were marking these watches with vigils of prayer.
In the small hours of the morning, the Matutina Nora, close upon the heels of midnight, they said matins.'
Only when the Latin was abbreviated did it become matt, through the custom of doubling the last consonant of an abbreviated word.
In the first days of the Church it had probably been customary for Christians to meet together for morning and evening prayer, as it had been for the Jews. For a long time these Christians, who, like Christ and the Apostles, had been brought up in the synagogue, continued indeed to attend these prayers with the Jews. In the first chapter of Acts it is recorded that `Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour'.
This certainly remained the custom of the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem, who clung for long to the strict letter of the Jewish Law. Gradually Christian congregations generally formed the practice of meeting for morning and evening prayer together, as they had always done for the breaking of bread.
It was when the Christian community became more complex, and to think of itself as being bound to various tasks, that the duty of continual prayer on behalf of all began to be ascribed quite particularly to priests and monks.
As early as the fourth century it was said that `a cleric who without being sick fails in the vigils should be deprived of his benefice'. When in the sixth century St. Benedict made his great rule for prayer and work, he made obligatory upon its followers the saying of the offices of day and night. His rule tended to become the pattern of observance both for other monastic orders and for the clergy.
In the high middle ages king and peasant alike remembered the constant vigils of priest and monk on his behalf. When the twelfth century French king, Philip Augustus, was in danger of shipwreck, he is said to have cried out to his companions at midnight, `You cannot perish, for at this moment thousands of monks are rising from their beds and will soon be praying for us; after whom the parish priests also will soon arise and give us their prayers'. Some declared that even `the angel host, being acquainted with the hours, took that time to join their prayers and praises with those of the Church'.
Later, popular fancy attached a symbolic significance to the seven offices, equating them with the timing of Christ's passion, as seen in Dr. Neale's words:
At matins bound, at prime reviled,
Condemned to death at tierce,
Nailed to the cross at sext, at none
His blessed side they pierce.
They take him down at vespertide,
In grave at compline lay,
Who thenceforth bids his Church observe
The sevenfold hours always.
Compline, the late nightfall office, was added a little later to the old cycle; in this verse it takes the place of the early morning office of lauds.
By the later middle ages, however, changes were noticeable in the religious observance of clergy and laymen. Too many of the former, in particular secular priests and members of the less strict monastic communities, had grown very slack, hurrying through jumbled versions of the hours. Often all the morning offices were said `by accumulation' together (or in two conglomerations with the second one squeezed in on each side of the Mass), and the evening offices were similarly treated.
As for laymen, the tendency was more and more to segregate them in the nave, away from the priests and monks saying or chanting the offices in Latin in the screened choir, so that they increasingly became merely passive spectators in Church worship.
It is true that devotional books of the hours, or breviaries, were sometimes produced for laymen, and were often beautifully illuminated.
Sometimes these carried English translations of the psalms and prayers, as does a fine fourteenth-century breviary still existing. But all the same the increasing complication of the offices, their length, and the fact that they were in Latin, tended to leave people out.
It can therefore be seen as a double success for the English reformers when in the sixteenth century they made an order for Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer in English, and included them for daily use in the new Book of Common Prayer. They restored to Christian people the ancient tradition of intelligible and common prayer, and preserved the finest of the old prayers accumulated through many centuries.
It was the English people in general, however, not the reformers, who finally attached to the new order for Morning Prayer the name of the old office of Matins. In the same way they have attached to the order for Evening Prayer the old Saxon office name of Evensong.
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