Psalm 147 and the design of Vespers, Pt 1

By way of conclusion to my notes on Psalm 147, and before we move onto consideration of Psalm 141,  I thought I would say a little more about the place of Psalm 147 in the design of Benedictine Vespers.

St Benedict's Office and the Roman

First, a bit of a recapitulation of some of my previous posts on this topic.

It is often claimed that St Benedict's Office is just a fairly mechanistic adaptation of a pre-existing Roman monastic Office, which already had the psalms said over the course of a week, and a division of the psalms between the night and morning offices (Ps 1 - 108)  and Vespers (Psalm 109 - 147).

There is however no hard evidence for this proposition at all, and quite a lot that contradicts it.

First, the earliest actual evidence for the Roman Office's psalm cursus as we know it dates from the eighth century, and sources from that period generally credit the authorship of the Roman Office to the great monasticizing Pope and champion of St Benedict, St Gregory the Great.

Secondly, the proposition that the Roman Office already had a fixed weekly cursus by the early sixth century is directly contradicted by the description of the Roman secular office in the Liber Diurnus, as well as the only Roman-region monastic office of that period for which we have details, viz that set out in the Rule of the Master. 

Thirdly, St Benedict himself acknowledged his debt to the Roman Office specifically in relation to the hour of Lauds, not the other hours, and while the liturgists, as is their wont, reject this (as they do any that contradicts their theories), there seems no obvious reason to doubt his statements on the subject.

The Office as Scriptural interpretation and spiritual instruction

The most important evidence for St Benedict's intentionality in the design of his Office though, is, I think, internal.

Medieval liturgical writers such as Amalarius, Smaragdus, Honorius Augustodunensis, Durandus and many others provide extensive analysis, in their various works, as to the intentionality behind decisions about the design of the Office: on things like the importance of the number of psalms said; the particular elements in an hour; and above all, the reasons why particular psalms are said on particular days and at particular hours.

There has, in academia of late, been a resurgence of interest in this mode of thinking, and acknowledgement that it is a valid method of analysis, with recent studies covering things such as the interpretation of the chants and texts of the Office and Mass, and use of the liturgy for various social and community binding purposes.

Benedictine Vespers

In the context of  the Benedictine hour of Vespers, I've previously pointed out that, even if we accept the proposition that St Benedict started from the Roman Office as his template, he went to considerable effort to ensure that particular psalms were said on particular days.

The Benedictine Office has four psalms at Vespers instead of the Roman five, for example.

St Benedict divided psalms instead of insisting on saying them in full, as the pre-1911 Roman Office did.

Rather dividing the two longest psalms, he divided the third, fourth and seventh longest psalms of the hour instead.   

And he combined two psalms, Psalms 115 and 116, treating them as one.

I have previously drawn attention to some of the possible reasons for these choices, in the form of particular themes I think St Benedict has built into the hour, including:

• the days of creation;
  
• the life of Christ encapsulated in a symbolic seven days; and
• humility, keying off references each day echoing the introduction to chapter 7 of the Rule to the effect that the proud will ultimately be humbled, and the humble exalted;

Saturday Vespers

When it comes to Saturday Vespers, it is notable that the hymn of the hour, unlike those of the rest of the week, does not actually allude to the days of creation, but instead focuses on the praise of the Trinity.

Consistent with this, the most obvious interpretation of the hour as a whole, including Psalm 147, is as first Vespers of the Resurrection and the Kingship of Christ over the whole world.

Indeed, the fact that the antiphon of psalms used at Vespers in the early Jerusalem Office's weekly Resurrection Vigil seems to have started at the same point as the Benedictine hour suggests that Saturday Vespers as a whole, rather than 'falling out' from the use of pre-existing sequence of Vespers psalms, may have been the driving force for it.

All the same, there are, I think, at least some references in Psalm 147 to the creation theme: the coming peace described in the first verses can certainly be seen as a reference to the day God rested after creation, foreshadowing the eternal rest to come of rest.  

The hard winter and the sending out of the word could be interpreted, perhaps, as allusions to the descent of Christ into Hades.   

And the overall theme of God's revelation both through nature and Christ certainly fits with this.

Psalm 147, though, unlike the other three psalms of the hour, contains few overt references to humility.

Coming up next

Where it does particularly fit though, I think, is into a theme running through the last psalms of each day at Vespers, on the nature of the monastic vocation, and in this case, flagging its pursuit of the peace essential for contemplation.

But I plan to come back to this point later in Lent, after we look at the first psalm of Friday Vespers, Psalm 141, which we will start on after the Feast of the Annunciation.