I'm going to tackle this issue in two parts, today some general context; and in the next part on the specific psalms of Thursday Vespers.
The life of Christ in a week
The idea that the seven days of creation - and the eighth of the new creation instituted by the Resurrection - constitute a template that is used over and over again in the unfolding of history appears very early in Christian thought. Many early Christian writers saw connections between the events ascribed to the days of creation, and the stages of salvation history, for example, as well as the physical life cycle of a person, the stages of development in the spiritual life, and much more.
This idea also extended, quite early on, to connections between the seven days of creation and the life of Christ: just as the seventh day is a day of rest for example, so too, Christ rested in the tomb. An early example of such connections can be found in the commentary on the days of creation by Victorinus (d 303/4), who found parallels between each of the 'days' and key events in the life of Christ, such as between the creation of light on the first day, and both the Resurrection and the Immaculate Conception.
The idea of the life of Christ in a week in the liturgy
The carryover of this concept into the liturgy each week similarly has very ancient roots, reflected in the weekly celebration of the Resurrection on Sunday as the 'eighth day'.
The extension of that repeating pattern to other events in Christ's life, may have been slower to develop, but by the early fifth century seems to have been well intrenched in Rome at least, as witnessed in a letter of Pope Innocent I to Decentius, bishop of Gubbio (in Umbria, Italy). The celebration of the Resurrection is not just a once a year event, celebrated at Easter, he argued, but rather a weekly event celebrated each Sunday, because 'Those who rejoiced in the Lord's day wanted not only that it be very festive, but it be observed more frequently, which is every week'. So too, the Pope argued, should other key events in the Life of Christ be remembered each week.
Pope Innocent's letter is primarily devoted to defending and advocating for the Roman practice of fasting on Saturdays as well as Wednesdays and Fridays, but the letter articulates a general principle that has a wider application:
Reason clearly indicates that Saturday should indeed be a day of fasting. For if we celebrate the Lord's Day because of the sacred resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we do so not only at Easter but also on the image of that day in the weekly cycle. Then surely we should frequently observe that other day throughout the cycle of each week also, for if we fast on Friday because of the passion of the Lord, we should not overlook Saturday...This shape is to be observed every week so that the memory of this day will be forever celebrated....
The Life of Christ in the Office
The earliest evidence for this idea being carried over, at least to some degree, into the Office, comes, I would suggest, in the form of the (ferial) canticles said at Lauds, which St Benedict in his Rule attests were already customary by his time.
Several early medieval commentaries mention one of other of these canticles in relation to their relevance to the particular day on which they were said, and the Carolingian commentator Rabanus Maurus provided a short summary of the typologies of the Old Testament canticles as they relate to the Life of Christ in the introduction his commentary on the Office canticles. On Monday, for example, he says, 'truly the second day, the canticle of Isaiah, in which the coming of the Saviour and the sacrament of baptism is preached, is prescribed to be said, because these are the beginning of our salvation.'
Rabanus' summation was not simply a late invention, it should be noted, but rather drew on the much earlier typological interpretations of the canticles by the Fathers. In the case of Isaiah 12 on Monday, for example, the interpretation of it as applying to the coming of Christ and our salvation can be traced back as far as Irenaeus of Lyon (d c200).
In the case of Thursday, the canticle comes from Exodus 15, the song of victory sung after the crossing the Red Seas, and so interpreted as connected to the first paschal sacrifice, before the Israelites fled Egypt, and thus connected to the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper and the New Covenant which replaced the Old.
The psalm cursus?
I've previously argued that the variable psalms of Benedictine Lauds, which St Benedict attests were those of the Roman office, are connected to this theme of the life of Christ, and were selected in part for their resonances with the canticles set for each day of the week. On Thursdays, for example, the first of the variable psalms at Lauds is Psalm 87, generally agreed to be the darkest psalm of the psalter, and which both St Jerome and St Augustine interpreted as a prayer of the agony in the garden.
In the next post in this sub-series, I will set out the case for similar connections in the case of Vespers, but as the case rests on the foundation of verse 2 of Psalm 140, I want to look at that verse in depth first, before returning to the connections between the events of Maundy Thursday and the psalms of Thursday Vespers.
And You can find the next part in this series on the design of Benedictine Vespers on Thursday here.
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