The Benedictine Office in the Triduum and Easter Octave part 3: the Liber Pontificalis

 Responsory for Easter Sunday, Octave and Apostles and Evangelists during Eastertide

In my last post in this series I looked at what early evidence there is (or isn't) for the Benedictine use of the Roman Office during the Triduum.  

I want to turn now to the same question for the Easter Octave, whose practices (such as selective omissions of normal parts of the hour) seem closely linked to those of the Triduum (even more so in earlier forms than in the current Roman books). 

In this post I will look at an intriguing entry on the Octave in the Liber Pontificalis (LP), a collection of brief biographies of the early Popes; in the next I’ll look at evidence from some early antiphoners. 

The Office during the Octave 

Although we know that the Easter Octave itself is very ancient indeed, evidence for how the Roman Office was celebrated in it is scarce (as for everything about the Roman Office) before the ninth century.  

But there is one much earlier mention of it, which, if genuine, witnesses both to its existence in the first half of the seventh century, and to Benedictine resistance to its use: according to the Liber Pontificalis, Pope Honorius I (625 – 638) had to order ‘the monks’ to follow the Roman custom of saying only three psalms each day for Matins during the Octave rather than the usual twelve. 

The LP says of Honorius I: 

... he strengthened the decree of St Gregory on the Antiphonal and Order of offices and psalms in Septuagesima, and that the monks should leave off the Alleluia in Septuagesima; and at Easter and Pentecost, as the people were displeased, they should recite three lessons and three psalms like the Roman church, and should perform their office in the Roman manner during all of those two weeks...[1]. 

This entry, though, raises more than a few questions, the first of which is, is this passage actually genuine, and the second is, are the monks in question actually Benedictines? 

Is the entry genuine or a late interpolation? 

The reasons for questioning the entry’s authenticity are these.  First, the passage can be found in only two of the surviving manuscripts of the Liber Pontificalis, both of which date from the eleventh century.  Secondly, it seems to conflict with some later information given by Amalarius.  And thirdly, it appears to conflict with the claim made by some that the Benedictine Office was not actually used in Rome at all until the tenth century. 

Text variants and their history 

This passage has largely been overlooked by scholars, because, as the most recent translator of the LP notes, one earlier critical edition of the LP didn’t include this text variant at all, while another buried it deep in the footnotes [2].  Its appearance in only two manuscripts though, doesn’t necessarily mean it is a later addition: Davis identified and included a large number of omissions and variants from the earlier critical editions that do appear to be genuine (and indeed others have also identified important sections omitted from the earlier critical editions) [3].  

Contextual evidence 

Moreover, the contents of the decree itself arguably help establish its authenticity.    

The first clue goes to timing: the attribution to Honorius I of the decision to stop using the alleluia during Septuagesima aligns well with other evidence on when Septuagesima was introduced, namely between the time of Gregory I but before 650 (which is also roughly the time when the entry relating to Honorius I was finalised) [4].  

In addition, the reference to a decree of Gregory the Great on the Office fits with what we know from other, mostly sources, but without the hyper-inflation of his role found in some later Carolingian sources: here we hear that he issued a decree on the antiphoner relating to the Office, not that he personally composed all of its chants for the Mass and/or Office as was later thought. [5]. 

Finally, Davis suggests that the instruction on the shorter Office during the Octave seems to conflict with Amalarius’ claim that the shorter Office was Gallic in origin, and had not yet been adopted by the Roman Church. On this point though, Davis has, I think, misunderstood what Amalarius was saying [6].  

Davis doesn’t supply a specific reference to Amalarius for his comment, but the relevant source seems to be chapter 45 of his Liber de Ordine Antiphonarii [7].  In it, Amalarius lists the three antiphons for this Office he found in his local antiphoner (from Metz), viz Ego sum qui sum, Postulavi and Ego dormivi, but says he could not find them in the Roman books and so does not know where they came from. He then proceeds to defend their use nonetheless on the basis of their appropriateness.  

What Amalarius is saying, though, I would suggest, is not that the Roman books didn’t have a three psalm Office during the Octave, but rather that they didn’t have these three particular antiphons.  In fact there are actually two different liturgical traditions for antiphons for the Octave: the three antiphons Amalarius lists (which appear in the majority of surviving antiphoners); and one with three antiphons that consist entirely of alleluias, that seems to reflect the Old Roman tradition [8]. 

Moreover, it seems unlikely that the three psalm Matins of Easter week was Gallican in origin: it fits perfectly with the three or psalm weekday secular version of Matins known to be in use in Rome and surrounding regions in the sixth century [9]. 

The entry then, fits well then with what we know of the early development of the Office. 

Who were the bolshie monks? 

But if the passage is genuine, just who were those bolshie monks who had to be ordered to use the Roman Office rather than their own?  Were they in fact Benedictines? 

The Benedictines in Rome? 

One of those many conspiracy theory rabbit holes that has devoured academia at various points in the last century is the claim that neither the Benedictine Rule nor the Benedictine Office were used in Rome (or anywhere else) until very late indeed [10].  

Part of the problem is that for Rome more generally between the sixth and eighth centuries, very little documentary evidence for anything has survived from Rome itself.  Virtually everything we know about its liturgy for this period, for example, comes from non-Roman sources (although many of these seem to be copies of documents that were originally Roman in origin).   

This seems to be partly due to a problem with the material they wrote on (viz mostly papyrus, which has a very short shelf-life unless stored correctly); eclectic archive practices; and compounded by natural and man-made disasters [11].  The archives of St Gregory’s own monastery, for example, survived up until Bonaparte’s invasion of the city. 

In fact, though, there is quite a substantial body of both direct and indirect evidence for the use of the Benedictine Rule and Office in Rome after St Benedict’s time [12].  

In particular, a steady stream of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims and missionaries from the seventh century onwards (most notably SS Wilfred, Benedict Biscop, Boniface and Willibrord) claimed use of the Benedictine Rule as proof of their Romanist credentials, as the Carolingians did after them [13]. 

One of the second wave of missionaries St Gregory sent to England, the (secular) Bishop of London, St Mellitus, updated St Isidore’s chronicle around 615 to include references to St Benedict as ‘the father of monks’ whose monasteries had spread in Italy and Provence in the sixth century. 

An early eighth century secular homiliary (Agismund) included a chapter of the Rule.   

And a series of eight century popes were credited by the Liber Pontificalis with supporting the reestablishment of Subiaco and Monte Cassino respectively, and translating the Life of St Benedict into what had become the vernacular in Rome at the time, namely Greek. 

In respect of the liturgy, while some have attempted to dismiss the Roman Ordines descriptions as not being all that Benedictine in character, its explicit mentions of the Rule make that hard to sustain unless you insist that there can be no legitimate development (or experimentation along the way) of the Office at all.  

Moreover, as Michel Huglo long ago pointed out, it is hard to explain why an old Roman versions of Te Decet Laus, a hymn used uniquely in the Benedictine Office, was preserved if not for a continuing Benedictine tradition in the city [14]. 

Other monks? 

It is true of course, that there were of course, monks other than Benedictines in Rome at this time.  

And it is true that Taft and the liturgists have claimed that the twelve psalm Roman Office (rather than the three or four psalm version actually attested to for the sixth century in the Liber Diurnis and other sources) was already in place by this time.  These are, however, ‘reconstructions backwards’, with little or no hard evidence to support them [15]. 

Either way though, if the issue had simply been saying their normal Office rather than a shorter ‘festal’ version of it, then it might be possible to answer that the monks in question were not necessarily Benedictines.  

The decree, though, goes to not just one, but two explicit provisions of the Rule - chapter 15, which specifies that the alleluia is used throughout the year except in Lent, and chapters 9&10 that orders that Matins should have twelve psalms on weekdays.  

Moreover, if this were not a matter of the Rule, would a group of monks really have needed a formal ruling by the Pope to force them to follow the secular practice? 

The timing of the dispute 

Still, if the monks in question were Benedictines, why did their practice of saying the normal Office during the Octave come to a head at this particular point in time? 

The Benedictines had, after all, been in residence in Rome (and presumably were still at the Lateran) for over fifty years prior to Honorius’ reign as Pope (albeit supplemented perhaps with later waves of refugees from Subiaco and elsewhere), so what had changed?  

There seem to several possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive.  

The first is that use of the Rule in Rome had been growing in the decades immediately after St Gregory’s pontificate, as witnessed by the various Ordines. One particularly important dimension of this spread of influence seems to have been that by the mid-seventh century, the key centre of monastic influence seems to have shifted from the Lateran to St Peter’s [16].  

A second possible factor in this dispute may relate to tensions that seem to have arisen between monks and clerics in Rome around this time, perhaps partly in reaction to St Gregory the Great’s monasticizing tendencies, or perhaps the creation of the (secular) schola cantorum [17].   

A third possibility, perhaps, is that Honorius’ claim to be ‘strengthening’ the decree of St Gregory’ on the Office, actually meant reversing a decision of St Gregory and ‘restoring’ the use of the older shorter sixth century Roman secular office referred to the Liber Diurnis and other sources during the Octave.  

When did the Benedictine Office drop the Roman Octave?

 All this said, if the Pope ordered Benedictines to use the Roman Octave back in the seventh century, why are we saying the Benedictine version of it now?  Just when did it revert back?

 In the first post in this series I noted that both Monte Cassino in the late eighth century, and Hildemar of Corbie (c830) claimed to be using the ‘Roman’ Triduum but the Benedictine Octave.  As we shall see in the next post though, the surviving antiphoners suggest rather more diversity of practice in relation to the Octave.  And by tracing some of this diversity we can, I think, identify a likely earliest possible date for the development of the Roman practice, in the second half of the sixth century.

But more on that anon!

When the Office was not said? The Benedictine Office in the Triduum and Easter Octave Part 2

Responsory for the Easter Sunday, Octave and Sunday 2 after Easter

In my last post on the Triduum and Easter Octave, I noted that what evidence we have tends to suggest that the Benedictine adoption of the Roman Triduum occurred not in St Benedict’s own time, in the first half of the sixth century, but rather much later. 

But was this because the Triduum and Octave Offices did not exist in any recognisable form in his time, or was this a more deliberate choice? 

Was the Office originally said at all during the Triduum (or Biduum)? 

Indeed, one possibility seems to be that the Office was not said at all in Rome during this period. 

In particular, the Rule of the Master states that the Office was not to be said at all from Matins of Good Friday until the Easter Mass: 

“At dawn on the Friday before Holy Saturday only the nocturns are celebrated, since the nocturns are said before cockcrow and still belong to Thursday, and thereafter [no] Matins and other Hours and regular Divine Office [will be celebrated] until the Mass on Saturday when the new alleluia of the joyful resurrection will, in the mouth of the psalm-singers, break open the long silence clamped on the psalms.  So while they will sing no psalms from after the saying of the nocturns on Thursday until Mass on Saturday, let them nevertheless say in full the simple prayers of Lent…” [1]

The romanitas of The Rule of the Master?

The Master’s Rule is most famous, of course, for the claim made at the beginning of the twentieth century that rather than post-dating the Benedictine Rule as had long been thought, it was actually the key source St Benedict drew on in constructing it.  

The tide seems to have turned, of late, on its claim to being a key source for the Rule of St Benedict [2]. 

But while the question of which Rule depended on which has not yet quite been settled definitively, most of the evidence seems to point to it being a Roman region document, most likely written around the middle of the sixth-century [3]. 

And that dating is potentially important, because the liturgical provisions of the Master’s Rule have long been as providing a possible window into that of Rome in this period, since many of the Master’s liturgical practices - often in sharp contrast to those of St Benedict - clearly align with those of Rome.  

The Master, for example, followed the Roman practice of fasting on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, while St Benedict notably didn’t adopt the Saturday fast.  

Like the Roman Office, the Master’s didn’t include hymns; St Benedict’s did.  

Matins in his Office, like that of virtually all early Western Offices, including the secular Roman Office described in the sixth century Liber Diurnis, increased in length in winter (when the nights were longer) and had fewer psalms each day in summer [4]. 

And while this could simply go to the respective dates at which the two were composed, St Benedict does not include a pre-Lent period in his calendar while the Master did. 

There is one other key feature of the Master’s Office that long ago caught the eye of an earlier generation of liturgists, and that relates to Vespers.  In particular, both the fifth century Ordo Monasterium of Alypius of Thegaste (associated with St Augustine and thought to reflect a Roman liturgical milieu) and the Master’s Office specify that six (variable) psalms are said at Vespers.

 A number of early antiphoners, including that of Compiège (F-Pn : Lat. 17436), include a six (rather than the usual) five psalm Vespers for Maundy Thursday, leading Adalbert de Vögué and others to suggest that this is an example of an archaism preserved in the distinctive Office of the Triduum, and attesting to the existence of a ‘pre-classical’ version of Roman Vespers that likewise had six psalms [5]. 

One should, I think, be skeptical of the archaisms preserved in key feasts theory: it is equally possible that this was a special form of Vespers specific to the Triduum.  Still, a mid-sixth century (or later) dating for the Rule of the Master does perhaps fit with the evidence suggesting that far from having only one form of the Office in the sixth century, and it being monastic in character, as Taft famously claimed, there was in fact a secular Roman Office in use in Rome in this period that perhaps had a fixed set of psalms at Lauds (as St Benedict attests) and Compline, but otherwise rotated through the psalms in their Scriptural order. 

Roman traditions on the Biduum? 

Regardless of the other features of the Master’s Office though, his prescription that from dawn of Good Friday until the end of Holy Saturday, the Office is not said at all seems quite consonant both with earlier Roman traditions in relation to the treatment of Friday and Saturday, as well as later practice in relation to the Triduum.

 In particular, a letter of Pope Innocent I dating from 416 refers to the longstanding Roman practice of not celebrating the sacraments on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the year as a kind of recapitulation of Holy Week:

…If in fact we celebrate the Lord’s Day because of our Lord Jesus Christ’s resurrection – doing so not only at Easter but every week renewing the image of this feast – and if we fast on Friday because of the Lord’s suffering,, then we should not omit Saturday which appears t be enclosed between a time of sorrow and a time of joy.  In fact, it is evident that during these two days the apostles were in sorrow and hid themselves, doing so because of their feast of the Jews.  In any case, there can be no doubt that their fasting during these two days has been remembered to such an extent that, according to the Church’s tradition, the sacraments are not celebrated during these two days… [6].  

So an intensification of this idea during the actual Triduum is not implausible.  

The idea is also carried forward in one of the eighth century Roman Ordines, Ordo XII, which specifies that although Matins and Lauds were (by now) being said on the (by now three) days of the Triduum, the day hours were not sung at all during this period [7].   

In fact the idea of not saying the Office persisted in various forms.  As late as the tenth century, for example, English Benedictines were instructed to say the day hours audibly on Maundy Thursday, but silently on Good Friday and Holy Saturday [8]. 

The omissions from the Office in the Triduum 

The other noteworthy point about the Master’s description of the Office is that he does not suggest that there was anything special about the way Matins on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday were said.    

But is there evidence that contradicts this? Can it be demonstrated, or at least plausibly argued, for example, that both the contents and structure of the Triduum Office, and most particularly the ‘omissions’ from it, date from any earlier than the sixth century? 

It is questionable, of course, as to whether the ‘omissions’ (such as doxologies, the litany and so forth) are actually survivals from earlier versions of the Office or rather represent deliberate decisions made later for theological reasons: Christ is symbolically absent, so how can we use the usual Trinitarian formulas? 

Still, as far as I can find, these claimed archaisms offer no real help in demonstrating that a form of Tenebrae was in place before the mid-sixth century. 

Now in large part, of course, this is because we have so little evidence for the Roman Office in this period at all, making dating particular features of it is almost impossible.  

We cannot, for example, simply assume that if the Benedictine Office included doxologies, for example, the Roman did too: in fact a letter of pseudo-Jerome (actually probably written by a sixth century cleric effectively lobbying for assorted changes to the Office including the addition of doxologies) suggests quite otherwise [9]. 

The structure of Matins n the Triduum 

There is, however, at least a little more evidence when it comes to the structure and contents of Tenebrae Matins, but it doesn’t serve to make the case for an earlier date. 

The use of patristic readings at Matins is certainly attested to in the Rule of St Benedict, but a comment of St Gregory the Great endorsing this practice in the Dialogues has long been interpreted as suggesting that it was a Benedictine innovation.   

Similarly, the use of Lamentations in the first Nocturn and Pauline readings in the third, arguably dates to likely the second half of the sixth century, since they are consistent with Roman Ordo XIV (which dates from the seventh century but may reflect practice in the second half of the sixth century), but before the start of eighth century (since it is inconsistent however with the reading pattern set out in Ordo XIII and other documents, thought to date from perhaps the late seventh or mid eighth centuries) [10].  And I’ve seen one suggestion that its distinctive responsories are actually an Eastern import dating, most likely, from the seventh century. 

The development of the Triduum 

None of this is definitive, of course, but it does seem to suggest that the Roman Triduum Office did not exist in any recognisable form in St Benedict’s time, thus accounting for his failure to mention it; indeed perhaps he actively decided not to follow the custom of not saying the Office at all during some of this period.

Is there any surviving traces though, of a distinctively Benedictine Office being said through the Triduum?  I'll come back to that question in the final part of this series, but before doing that, I want to look first at the evidence around the Roman Easter Octave, for which it turns out, there is rather more early evidence than for the Triduum.  But more on that in the next post. 

Notes 

[1] Luke Eberle (trans), The Rule of the Master (Kalazazoo, 1977), pg 218.  

[2] See Steven Vanderputten, Medieval Monasticisms forms and Experiences of the Monastic Life in the Latin West (Berlin, 2020), p 156-7 for a recent summary of the state of the debate. 

[3] Key recent contributions to the debate on its date and location include Alexander O’Hara, Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus: Sanctity and Community in the Seventh Century (Oxford, 2018), esp pp 79 -83 and Albrecht Diem and Philip Rousseau, ‘Monastic Rules (Fourth to Ninth Century)’ in Beach and Cochelin (eds) The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, volume 1 (Cambridge, 2020), pp 162 – 194, es pg 179.  An overlooked article that lends further weight to a mid-sixth century post-RB date is Michael Paulin Blecker, Roman Law and "Consilium" in the Regula Magistri and the Rule of St. Benedict", Speculum, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 1-28. The most probable date ranges for it would appear to be between circa 538 (since it included as reference to Sexagesima, which most likely was introduced around that time) and 590 (since it, rather than Benedict’s Rule, was almost certainly a source for the Rule of Columbanus), but a mid-sixth century date or later seems most likely based on the terminology and canonical presumptions underlying in it.   

[4] For a recent discussion of the Office described in the Liber Diurnis (which is also attested to by complaints made about having to say it on the part of late sixth century Roman tituli priests) see Jean-Pierre Herman, 'The Roman Office from the sixth century to the Post Vatican II reform Continuity or rupture?',  academia.edu. The French original can be found at https://schola-sainte-cecile.com/2012/06/01/l%E2%80%99office-romain-du-vieme-siecle-a-nos-jours/ 

[5] Apart from the Compiège antiphoner (870), the six psalm version of second Vespers also appears in the contemporaneous (monastic) Prüm antiphoner, E-TC 44.1 (monastic, circa 1035); F-Pn Latin 1085 (monastic  c975-1000); I-CHV (secular, c11th; I-Far (secular, c11th) and while some manuscripts convert the sixth antiphon to a versicle or use it in other places, it continues to appear as a sixth antiphon for Triduum Vespers in some later Italian antiphoners.  For the discussion of whether this is a remantn of the earlier form of the Roman office see the discussion and references in Adalbert de Vögué, La Règle de Saint Benôit, Vol 5 (Paris, 1971), ppp 495-497. 

[6] Innocent I to Decentius bishop of Gubbio, 416, Lawrence J Johnson (trans) Worship in the Early Church An Anthology of Historical Sources, vol 3, (Collegeville, 2009), p101. 

[7] Michel Andrieu (ed), Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age vol 2 (Louvain, 1971, pp 463-4 (Ordo XII : 17…In duobus diebus [Friday and Saturday] nec prima, nec tercia, nec sexta, nec nona, nec vespera can[atur]. 

[8] Thomas Symons (trans), The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation Regularis Concordia, (Oxford, 1953), p 38. 

[9] James McKinnon, Preface to the Study of the Alleluia, Early Music History, Vol. 15 (1996), pp. 213-249. 

[10] It had been previously thought that the two reading cycles perhaps reflected the uses of St Peter’s and the Lateran respectively, however that view has been overturned by a more recent series of studies by Peter Jeffries and others, although there remain competing positions on the date of the reform of the cycle. For a recent discussion of the topic see Rosamond Mckitterick, The Homiliary of Agimund and its Implications for the Availability of Patristic Texts in Rome in the Early Middle Ages, Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 75, No. 4, October 2024. 

To go 'Roman' or not: the Benedictine Office in the Triduum and Easter Octave part I

 (Responsory 3 for Holy Saturday Matins)

This week the Benedictine Office more or less reverts (more or less) to its usual Benedictine Eastertide form, after a brief dip into the Roman for the Triduum. 

 But why does it do that? 

 Why, for example, isn’t there a Benedictine version of the Triduum? 

 And why doesn’t the Benedictine Office continue to follow the Roman for the Octave, which is, after all, just as distinctive as that for the Triduum?

 This year, I decided to do a little digging into some of these questions, and this post (and the couple that will hopefully quickly follow!) are a rather belated look at the issue. 

The Roman Office in the Octave 

If you’ve been saying the Benedictine Office this week you will know, of course, that isn’t quite a return to normal business as yet – the Octave has its own distinctive features, such as lots of extra alleluias and the use of Lauds and Vespers of Easter Sunday throughout the week.  

Still, it is pretty much recognizably Benedictine again. 

That isn’t the case with the Roman Office, which most definitely does not conform to its normal pattern this week. 

Roman Matins in the Octave is particularly short – the opening prayer and invitatory returns, but the hour consists of only one Nocturn with three psalms (Psalms 1, 2 and 3 repeated each day), three readings and three responsories. 

And while the day hours restore some of the things dropped during the Triduum, such as the opening prayers for each hour and the use of doxologies, it doesn’t restore them all: there are still no hymns, chapters or responsories at the day hours for example. 

In addition, up until the thirteenth century, Easter Vespers in Rome was very different indeed, to the point it bore little or no resemblance to its normal form.  

So what is the history behind all of this? 

Just how old is the Triduum: towards reassessment? 

The liturgists have long argued that the Triduum was very ancient indeed: while there is no direct evidence for Tenebrae as such before the early eighth century, Baumstark and his followers argued that its archaic seeming features (such as the lack of introductory prayers, hymns, chapters, doxologies and so forth) are classic example of the ‘law’ that holds that the most ancient feasts tend to preserve ancient practices. 

As for so many of Baumstark’s claims, his ‘first law of liturgical development’ has been pretty thoroughly trashed since his time, challenged both on general methodological grounds, and undermined by concrete research findings (most particularly, somewhat ironically since it is in the ritual of this period that the law claimed to be based, that of Holy Week) that directly contradict it  [1]. 

Indeed, Miklós Földváry has recently suggested that the law should be reformulated to suggest that rather than the most solemn days of the year preserving ancient practice, they actually tend to attract the most innovation (a principle all too often demonstrated in the period after Vatican II!).  It follows that we should be wary of taking at face value what appear to be, or are even claimed to be, ancient practices. 

That’s not to suggest that at least some of the elements of these Offices do not have a long history: Földváry in fact goes on to argue that divergences from the normal pattern are suggestive of various stages in the development of a service, with archaisms sometimes surviving through a process of reinterpreting their meaning.  

As it turns out, more recent research has suggested that Tenebrae, and particularly its distinctive use of light and darkness, developed only fairly slowly, primarily between the sixth and eighth centuries; that its development was strongly influenced by the Gallican liturgy; and that one of its most distinctive features the extinguishing of a candle as each psalms is said, emerged only around 1200 [2]. 

Triduum and the Benedictines 

The history of Benedictine use of the Roman Office during the Triduum and Octave turns out to be much more complicated than earlier thought as well. 

Pierre Battifol, amongst others, for example, assuming Tenebrae was already ancient, found it difficult to explain why St Benedict doesn’t mention the Triduum in the Rule.  In the end, the early liturgists either simply asserted or assumed that the saint and his monks would have used the Roman form: Battifol’s English translator, Atwell Baylay even added a footnote to the History of the Roman Breviary saying: 

“It is remarkable that S. Benedict provided no offices of his own for the Triduum.  He adopted the Roman Offices unchanged – strikingly divergent as is their structure from that of his own offices. It seems to give ground for believing that the office of the Triduum – mattins and lauds, at all events – already existed in Rome in the sixth century in much the same state as now – AB.” [3]

 Although this claim continues to be repeated in even very recent books though, there is, alas, not a shred of hard evidence to support it. 

On the contrary, given that the design of the Roman Offices for the Triduum and Holy Week (as we known them) directly contradict several provisions of St Benedict’s Rule, his silence on the topic would seem more likely indicate he didn’t intend for his monks to follow the practice - if it really existed back then - than that he did. 

In a number of other liturgical matters after all - such as the structure of Matins for solemnities and saints’ feasts, the weekly pattern of fasts (he omitted the Roman Saturday fast), use of hymns and much more - St Benedict most certainly did not follow the Roman practices of his time. 

The Benedictines in Rome? 

Another suggestion has been that perhaps the Benedictines adopted the Roman Triduum when the monks took refuge in the Lateran after the destruction of Monte Cassino [4]. 

There are, as we shall see though, some reasons to doubt this, and the earliest evidence we have for any Benedictine use of the Roman Triduum dates from the late eighth century, with a letter that states that the monks of the newly refounded Monte Cassino had adopted the Roman Triduum – but not the Octave (amongst a number of other Romanizations of the Benedictine Office they followed) [5].  

But outside of Rome and its orbit, Benedictine monasteries (several of which had been established longer than the refounded Monte Cassino) may actually have been using a Benedictine version of Tenebrae.  [6]   

The Triduum and the Carolingians 

The issue apparently came to a head at the Council of Aachen in 816, which came down (to the dismay of some) on the side of the use of the secular version of the Office in the Triduum. 

Hildemar of Corbie’s Commentary on the Rule provides an interesting commentary on the debate, claiming that Louis the Pious had championed the use of the Benedictine Office during the Triduum, but that he and his supporters were overruled by the bishops:

 Nevertheless, it must be known that the Lord’s Supper and the Preparation [Good Friday] and Holy Saturday and Pascha [Easter] pertain to the solemnities of Christ. With regard to those four days it was defined in council that the Office should be chanted completely by the monks, in accordance with the Roman Church and not in accordance with the Rule. 

Yet there are more zealous monks who do not wish to act in accordance with the Roman tradition in those four days but to speak fully in accordance with the Rule because, if on other days we do not transgress the Rule in chanting Offices, we also do not want to transgress it in those four days… 

For the most pious Emperor Louis wished that monks should do the Office according to the Rule; but because the bishops said that it is not good that in those days they should be unlike the Roman Church in chanting the Offices, then there were some abbots who consented with the bishops. [7] 

The ultimate decision, according to Hildemar, was that Benedictines would say the Roman version during the Triduum, but return to the Benedictine Office for the Sunday (and Octave, as we do now): 

And although some did not agree, the bishops prevailed, so that only in those three days, i.e., Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, would they do the Roman Office, but the good abbots did not consent to act so upon the Lord’s Day. Instead they do the Office in accord with the Rule. 

Hildemar’s rationale for sticking with the Rule, aside from compliance with it, is particularly interesting: he cites the authority of a letter by St Gregory the Great reproduced by Bede on his Ecclesiastical History: 

For, as it seems to me, it is better that in those four days the Regular Office should be sung rather than the Roman because as St Gregory says, “There is no harm with regard to diverse customs in the Catholic faith and in good actions.” Nevertheless for this reason, i.e., with regard to those four days, there was a synod in Francia that monks should not do otherwise, i.e. not by the Rule, but they should act as does the Roman Church. 

The link to an English source may well be significant, since many of the first wave of Benedictine monasteries in the Empire had been founded by, or with the help of English missionary monks and nuns such as SS Boniface and Willibrord, thus perhaps hinting at the source of the diversity in practice Hildemar was pointing to.  

Indeed, it seems likely that the English Benedictines did not actually adopt the Roman Triduum until the tenth century, and even then, they seem to have done so with some reluctance: the Regularis Concordia also appealed to St Gregory’s authority to justify the change, this time, on the basis of his (supposed) antiphoner. [8]  But it also required all monks and nuns to recite the entire 150 psalms of the psalter after Prime each day perhaps in reparation! [9] 

The surviving English antiphoners from the Middle Ages also suggest considerable diversity in practices around the Triduum and Octave, such that the issue was really only resolved by the first post-Trent breviary [10]. 

But we are getting ahead of ourselves – in the next post, I want to go back to the beginning of the story, which may actually be a time when the Roman Office may not have been said at all on these days. 

Notes 

[1] Miklós István Földváry, Usuarium A Guide to the Study of Latin Liturgical Uses in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Vols I–II (Budapest, 2023), pp 201-2. 

[2] A J MacGregor, Fire and Light in the Western Triduum their use at Tenebrae and at the Paschal Vigil, (Collegeville, 1992). 

[3] Pierre Battifol, trans Atwell Baylay, History of the Roman Breviary, second ed (London, 1912), note 3 pg 92.  The original version was L'Histoire du Bréviaire Romain (Paris, 1893). 

[4] See for example H B L Tolhurst (ed), Introduction to the English Monastic Breviaries, (Bury St Edmunds, 1942), pp 206. 

[5] Theodemar, Epistola ad Theodoricum gloriosum, c12, ed J Winandy and K Hillinger, Initia consuttudines Benedictinae, CCM 1, pp 132. 

[6] There are at least some possible traces of a Benedictine form of the Triduum in some of the early antiphoners, including some manuscripts that preserve a full twelve responsories for Maundy Thursday, and I’ll look at this later in the series. 

[7] (And subsequent quotes): Commentary on the Rule, Chapter 14, trans Zachary Guiliano for The Hildemar Project, (with thanks to Albrecht Diem). 

[8] Jesse Billett, ‘The liturgy of the ‘Roman’ Office in England from the Conversion to the Conquest’ in Claudia Bolgia et al, (eds) Rome across Time and Space Cultural transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c500 – 1400 (Cambridge, 2011), p105. 

[9] Thomas Symons (trans), The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation Regularis Concordia, (Oxford, 1953), p 38. 

[10] Tolhurst, Introduction to the English Monastic Breviaries, pp 206 -226.