Praying the psalms with St Benedict 6C - The intercessory components of the Office

In the last two posts in this series I have argued from contextual material that at least in the three groups of monasteries considered here (Agaune, Arles and those of St Benedict) the whole Office was viewed as intercessory in character, given for the salvation of the whole world, and most particularly to those closest to the religious - including their fellow religious, family, friends, benefactors and wider community - in late antiquity.

Later periods would add specific prayers and psalms to the Office: these, I would suggest, simply made explicit and specific what had always been implicit, rather than representing a fundamental change in the orientation of monastic life: the key difference, perhaps was that the interests of Church and State were more obviously firmly aligned from the early middle ages onwards.

But even in late antiquity there were already a number of specific features of the Office that would have signalled its intercessory intent to those who said and heard it.

The angelic salutation

I have previously pointed to the use of the angelic salutation from St Luke 2:12 (Glory to God in the highest; peace and good will to men on earth) in the liturgy of the Sleepless monks. If we assume that Agaune's liturgy was either directly or indirectly influenced by that of the Sleepless monks, as suggested earlier in the series, it probably did include explicit intercessory components.

In particular, the liturgy of the Sleepless Monks, according to the late fifth century life of St Alexander Aketemoi, raised petitions to God on behalf of their fellow Christians by singing the angelic salutation and making seventy-seven genuflections each day. [1] It is worth noting that this canticle was also used in the Office of Arles, at Lauds on Sundays. [2]

The Pater Noster

The use of the Our Father (Pater Noster) at each hour of the Benedictine Office may have been intended to play a similar function. [3]

St Benedict specifically gives the abbot's recitation of the prayer aloud at Lauds and Vespers an interpretation directed at the internal operation of the monastery:

The purpose of this is the removal of those thorns of scandal, or mutual offence, which are wont to arise in communities.  For, being warned by the covenant which they make in that prayer, when they say Forgive us as we forgive, the brethren will cleanse their souls of such faults. [4] 

This sevenfold recitation of the prayer each day, then, echoes the same Scriptural injunction to forgive others seventy times seven claimed for St Alexander's use of the angelic salutation and genuflection, albeit within the community rather than more broadly.

 But St Benedict surely also had in mind the broader interpretation of the prayer as well, since it was at the core of virtually every patristic exposition on prayer. In particular, its opening petition – thy kingdom come – surely perfectly expresses what the religious is meant to pray for. Caesarius of Arles, for example, instructed his nuns:

That, with the help of God, you may be able to keep them as you abide unceasingly in your monastery cell, implore by assiduous prayer [assiduis orationibus] the visitation of the Son of God…[5]

St Benedict would surely have found this perfectly in tune with his own take on the prayer, not least since his favourite Church Father, Cyprian makes it clear that the reference to Our Father is a reminder that the prayer is intended to be collective, made on behalf of all Christians:

Before all things, the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity would not have prayer to be made singly and individually, as for one who prays to pray for himself alone. For we say not My Father, which art in heaven, nor Give me this day my daily bread; nor does each one ask that only his own debt should be forgiven him; nor does he request for himself alone that he may not be led into temptation, and delivered from evil. Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one. [6]

Capitella, litanies and collects

I also noted earlier that the Arles Office included 'capitella', psalm verses collected together to cover particular intentions.

St Benedict doesn't include either collects (perhaps because of his Office's lay character) or capitella, but he does include the short litany 'Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy' as a conclusion to each hour. [7]

Towards heaven

The clearest signal (at least to Patristic eyes) of the intercessory nature of St Benedict’s Office though, is arguably embedded in number symbolism, programmed into its fundamental design.  

Modern eyes tend to be oblivious to the symbolism of the numbers included in Scripture and the liturgy.  Patristic writers, however, all saw deep meaning in the numbers mentioned in Scripture, and St Augustine in particular devoted extensive exegesis to it.

That St Benedict put considerable stock on this symbolism is suggested in the Rule and Office both explicitly, for example in his allusion to the 'sacred number seven' in his discussion of the number of day hours; and implicitly, for example in his discussion of the core of his spiritual theology in the first seven chapters of the Rule, and then description of the Office in the next twelve. [8]  

At the start of this series  I discussed one piece of symbolism employed by St Benedict, in the forty psalms said each day in the Office, a number that can be seen as symbolising our preparation for entering heaven.

A second important piece of number symbolism that I want to touch briefly on here is that associated with his insistence on saying all 150 psalms each week. [9]

Variable and fixed numbers of psalms in the Office

Although, as we saw earlier in the series, Cassian had insisted that the proper form of the monastic Office involved a fixed number of psalms each day (viz twelve at Vespers and Matins, and three at the little hours), in reality the more common form of the early Office, at least in the West, did not necessarily say the same number of psalms each day throughout the year.

Instead, the length of the Night office in particular varied with the seasons, and the number at the day hours could differ on Sundays and feasts.  The Office described by St Augustine's Rule (which may have reflected the practice of Rome in his time) took this form, as did that of Arles, that of the Master, and the Roman secular office described in the Liber Diurnis and used by suburbican bishops and in the tituli. [10] The logical consequence of the variable psalmody model was of course that the entire psalter was not said within any fixed period of time in the Office itself (though it may have been in private recitation).

It is unclear whether the Office Cassian advocated involved saying all of the psalms in the context of the Office itself in a particular period: the Egyptian and Palestinian Offices he described more likely used only a fixed selection of psalms said each day, with the remainder being said privately by the monk in his cell. [11]

In contrast, St Benedict's Rule (which may or may not reflect a recent contemporaneous change in the Roman basilican Office) provides us with the first documented insistence that all the psalms be said within a particular time period, viz a week. [12]

The sacred number 150

Patristic era writers supply several several explanations for the significance of the number of psalms, a favourite being it representing the Old creation/covenant (ie the seven days of creation) plus the eighth day of the New, and the link to the fifteen steps of the inner temple, which in turn symbolised the ascent to heaven in the corresponding Gradual Psalms. 

St Augustine, for example, specifically christened 150 as sacred, by dint of the number of psalms. In his commentary on the '70 or 80 years of life' to which man can aspire (on Psalm 89), he drew a number of important connections:

Moreover, seventy and eighty years equal a hundred and fifty; a number which the Psalms clearly insinuate to be a sacred one. One hundred and fifty have the same relative signification as fifteen, the latter number being composed of seven and eight together: the first of which points to the Old Testament through the observation of the Sabbath; the latter to the New, referring to the resurrection of our Lord. Hence the fifteen steps in the Temple. Hence in the Psalms, fifteen songs of degrees. Hence the waters of the deluge overtopped the highest mountains by fifteen cubits: and many other instances of the same nature. [13]

But it is probably significant that it is one of St Benedict’s contemporaries, Cassiodorus, who expands on the link St Augustine made between the number of psalms and the Great Flood:

."..we have observed that through the Lord's generosity the earth was cleansed of its sins after one hundred and fifty days, when the flood covered the earth.  So the spiritual depth of the psalms with their perennial cleansing purifies the hearts of men until Judgment Day; and from this we experience a saving flood which washes clean our minds befouled with sins." [14]

The monk’s daily and weekly ‘pensum’ of psalms then, can be seen as penance done on behalf of the people to purge them of their sins, so that, as Psalm 94 daily reminded the monk, all might hear and respond to God’s call, and thus enter the promised land of heaven.

And perhaps there is another implicit link which I will come back to in due course, in the spreading of the psalms over seven days, to the idea best articulated by St John Chrysostom and recently highlighted by Benedict Anderson, that the liturgy is about effecting the repair of creation, damaged by the Fall. [15]

And you can find the next post in this series here.

Notes

[1] Daniel Caner's Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 2002, pp 267.


[2] (RC 69).

[3] RB 13 12-14 - Plane agenda matutina vel vespertina non transeat aliquando, nisi in ultimo per ordinem oratio dominica, omnibus audientibus, dicatur a priore..., [14] Ceteris vero agendis, ultima pars eius orationis dicatur, ut ab omnibus respondeatur: Sed libera nos a malo.

[4] Propter scandalorum spinas quae oriri solent, [13] ut conventi per ipsius orationis sponsionem qua dicunt: Dimitte nobis sicut et nos dimittimus, purgent se ab huiusmodi vitio. 

[5] RC 1: Ch 1, trans McCarthy, in La Corte and McMillan ed Regular Life, Monastic, Canonical and Mendicant Rules, pp 58-9).

[6]  Cyprian, Treatise IV, Robert Ernest Wallis (trans), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.

[7] RB 9: [10] Post hos, lectio apostoli sequatur, ex corde recitanda, et versus, et supplicatio litaniae, id est Kyrie eleison.   Similarly, see RB 12, 13, 17.

[8] Due to their reflection of the pattern of creation, both seven and twelve were interpreted as meaning completeness, fulfillment or universality, with twelve having a governmental connotation (due tothe twelve tribes of Israel/number of apostles, etc).  The start of the Office material in chpater 8 is symbolically important too, given its association with the eighth day and thus ushering in of the era of the new creation: and St Benedict reinforces the importance of the number by having his monks rise at the eighth hour of the night, and concluding the chapter with a reference to Lauds, which he makes an explicit celebration of the Resurrection each day.

[9] RB 18:[22] Hoc praecipue commonentes ut, si cui forte haec distributio psalmorum displicuerit, ordinet si melius aliter iudicaverit, [23] dum omnimodis id adtendat ut omni hebdomada psalterium ex integro numero centum quinquaginta psalmorum psallantur, et dominico die semper a caput reprehendatur ad vigilias. [24] Quia nimis inertem devotionis suae servitium ostendunt monachi qui minus a psalterio cum canticis consuetudinariis per septimanae circulum psallunt, [25] dum quando legamus sanctos patres nostros uno die hoc strenue implesse, quod nos tepidi utinam septimana integra persolvamus.

[10] Augustine's, Ordo Monasterii gives a number of psalms for the Night Office that varies between 12, 15 and 18 psalms; the Rule of the Master specifies 12 to 16; the Cautio Episcopi (in the Liber Diurnis), 3 or 4 on weekdays, and nine on Sundays.

[11] For a discussion of the evidence see Armand Veilleux, La Liturgie Dans Le Cenobitisme Pachomien Au Quatrieme Siecle,  (Studia Anselmiana 57); Herder, Rome 1968 and Stig Simeon R. Frøyshov, The Cathedral–Monastic Distinction Revisited Part I: Was Egyptian Desert Liturgy a Pure Monastic Office?, Studia Liturgica 37 (2007), 198-216.

[12]  The liturgist's case for a shift to a fixed weekly psalm cursus of the Roman prior to St Benedict (rather than being a product of St Gregory's revamp) largely hangs on the claim that the 'de psalmiis' responsories, a set of psalm based responsories used in Epiphanytide, were selected to reflect the psalms used each day of the week at Matins, and were originally used throughout the year.  However, as the earliest evidence for the set dates from the seventh century (and the earliest listing of them as a set from the eighth), the strength of the case must be assessed as thin at the best.  But thisis a topic on which I plan t write more elsewhere!

[13] St Augustine's commentary on Psalm 89.  See also St Gregory the Great on Job chapter 35: "For by the number seven he expressed the present time, ‘which is passed by periods of seven days. But by the number ‘eight’ he designated eternal life, which the Lord made known to us by His resurrection...Hence it is, that the Temple is ascended with fifteen steps, in order that it may be learned by its very ascent that by seven and eight our worldly doings may be carefully discharged, and an eternal dwelling may be providently sought for. Hence also it is that, by increasing a unit to ten, the Prophet uttered a hundred and fifty Psalms."

[14]  Cassiodorus, commentary on Psalm 150, P. G. Walsh (trans), Explanations of the Psalms, vol 3, Ancient Christian Writers Series, Paulist Press, 1991, pp 466.

[15] Benedict Anderson, Et erant semper in templo: The Divine Office as Priestly Temple Service,  paper was originally delivered at the Fota XI International Liturgical Conference, July 7-9, 2018. 

Praying the Psalms with St Benedict 6B - St Benedict's Office as intercession

In the previous post I looked briefly at the intercessory context of late antique monasticism, including in relation to the monasteries of Agaune and Arles.  In this post I want to look more particularly at  the intercessory context for St Benedict's Rule and Office; in the next part I plan to look at the explicitly intercessory features of St Benedict's Office.

St Benedict and intercessory prayer

The Benedictine Rule makes clear that intercessory prayer is important.  

There are several references to prayers with the objective of the mutual support for the brethren of the monastery. [1]

And chapter 20 of the Rule, entitled on reverence in prayer (De reverentia orationis) which immediately follows the section on the liturgy, opens with key instructions on how to petition God:

If we wish to prefer a petition to men of high station, we do not presume to do it without humility and respect; how much more ought we to supplicate the Lord God of all things with all humility and pure devotion...[2]

But are these references all to prayer outside the Office, as some have argued, or do they also refer to the Office itself as a whole? [3]

The cultural and theological context we have already examined lends at least some support to the claim that at the very least, intercession was an important component of the Office and monastic life more generally.

Nor was this unique to Gaul and the East: there are numerous contemporary references for Rome and the surrounding regions that make it clear the intercessory function was an important consideration at the time, not least in justifying child oblation (or the near equivalent  consecration of girls as virgins, for example, for which there is an interesting contemporary literature on the value to family and state of this offering). [4]

Soldiers for Christ

Perhaps the most important cue to St Benedict's intercessory orientation though, lies in his depiction of prayer as the battlefield, and the monk as a soldier: the soldier, after all, fights not just for himself, but in an army, to defend the people. [5]

Rene Choi in particular has drawn out the way in which St Benedict depicts prayer as a battle against the ancient enemy, with the monks drawing support from each other, arrayed in choir as if lined up in ranks on the battlefield. [6]

And St Bede the Venerable later devoted considerable attention to drawing out the dual image of soldier and worker so integral to the Rule in his exposition of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, where the workforce alternated between guarding the walls of Jerusalem (and those within) and rebuilding them. [7]

The service of monks

There is one other important image in the Rule though, that is worth considering here, and that is the priestly, or ministerial role of the monk.

St Benedict makes several allusions to the ministerial role of monks - and he is clearly not referring to the ministerial priesthood since he makes it clear that only a few of the monks were expected to be priests in his time (RB 62).

There are, however, repeated references to the monk's service (servitutis) in the house of God starting from the Prologue, but especially in chapter 16, when talking about the hours of the Office.  He also warns the abbot, for example, of the terrible fate of Heli, priest of Silo (1 Samuel 2), for his failure to stop the corruption of his sons (RB 2).

Perhaps the most important, though, is in the very opening words of the Rule contain several important allusions to the book of Sirach, and introduce the important word servitutis, which St Benedict several times uses in relation to the Office:

Rule: Ausculta o fili,  praecepta magistri,  et  inclina aurem cordis tui et admonitionem pii patris libenter excipe et efficaciter comple; ut ad eum per obedientiae laborem redeas, a quo per inobedientiae desidiam recesseras.

Sirach: Fili, accedens ad servitutem Dei sta in justitia et timore, et præpara animam tuam ad tentationem. 2  Deprime cor tuum, et sustine: inclina aurem tuam, et suscipe verba intellectus: et ne festines in tempore obductionis. [8]

'Servitutis' is most often used, in Scripture to refer to slave, or hard labour, especially the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt, from which they were freed under Moses.  Only twice in the Old Testament, is it used in a more positive sense to mean ministry or service: aside from in Sirach, it is used in the book of Wisdom to Aaron's urgent intercessory prayer at Moses' urging, on behalf of the people in the face of God's killing anger.  In the Rule, though, St Benedict mostly uses the word consistently in the way it is used in Sirach and Wisdom, to mean the service of God. [9]

St Benedict and Bede on the efficacy of prayer

I noted above that it is sometimes argued that Chapter 20 of the Rule, on reverence in prayer, is about prayer outside of the Divine Office rather than including it.

That chapter argues that it is fervour - that is, humility, purity of heart and tears of compunction - not the length of the prayer or words that are important.  St Benedict argues that 'Our prayer, therefore, ought to be short and pure'.

While it is certainly possible that St Benedict is talking only about prayer outside the Office, the context of the two other, much longer, monastic offices I've been discussing in this series at the very least suggest that the chapter can also be read as a defence of his much shorter Office. [10]

That the issue was still live two centuries later is suggested by an interesting commentary of St Bede the Venerable on the Epistle of James. In particular, St James 5:16-18 points to the value of the 'assiduous' or continuous prayer, and gives the example of the trial by liturgical prayer between Elijah and the priests of Baal (3 Kings 18), where both set up sacrifices to their respective gods, but only Elijah is able to call up fire so that the holocaust is effected, and the drought is broken.

St Bede, in his commentary on the epistle, drew out the contrast between the long, loud and continuous - but ultimately fruitless - prayer of the priests of Baal, and Elijah's own short sharp prayers which gave instant results:

He illustrates by an appropriate example how much the unremitting prayer of the righteous person can accomplish, when Elijah by praying only once closed up the heavens for such a long time, kept showers away from the earth, denied fruits to mortals, and again, when he wished, when he ascertained that it was time...he prayed only once and restored the fruits of water which he had denied to the earth. [11]

It is worth noting, too, that Bede was obviously aware that the aftermath of the divinely given fire that effects the holocaust, Elijah instructed the King to go up the hill and watch for rain seven times, echoing the number of day hours - and on the seventh he sees the cloud heralding the saving rain.

May our prayers in this current crisis of pestilence be equally fervent and effective!

And for the next post in this series, continue on here.

Notes

[1] St Benedict, for example, insists on prayers for those making profession; the weekly servers and readers; those travelling outside the monastery; and monks who have been excommunicated for example (RB 28, 35, 38, 58, 67).  And as Choi has pointed out, the description of the cenobite in chapter one of the Rule is predicated on the mutual support necessary for prayer: Monachorum quattuor esse genera manifestum est.  Primum coenobitarum, hoc est monasteriale, militans sub regula vel abbate. Deinde secundum genus est anachoritarum, id est eremitarum, horum qui non conversationis fervore novicio, sed monasterii probatione diuturna, qui didicerunt contra diabolum multorum solacio iam docti pugnare,  et bene exstructi fraterna ex acie ad singularem pugnam eremi, securi iam sine consolatione alterius, sola manu vel brachio contra vitia carnis vel cogitationum, Deo auxiliante, pugnare sufficiunt.

[2] RB 20.1-2: Si, cum hominibus potentibus volumus aliqua suggerere, non praesumimus nisi cum humilitate et reverentia, quanto magis Domino Deo universorum cum omni humilitate et puritatis devotione supplicandum est.

[3]  See for example Terrance Kardong, Benedict's Rule: A Translation and Commentary, Liturgical Press, 1996, largely following De Vogue.

[4] RB 59.  See Kim Bowes, Private worship, public values, and religious change in late antiquity, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

[5] Prologue .3: Ad te ergo nunc mihi sermo dirigitur, quisquis abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus, Domino Christo vero regi militaturus, oboedientiae fortissima atque praeclara arma sumis.

[6] Renie Choi, Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the Time of the Carolingian Reforms, Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).  Choi points particularly to the implications of St Benedict's discussion of the distinction between hermits and coenobites in chapter 1 of the Rule, with its description of the battleline of brothers.

[7] Bede, On Ezra and Nehemiah, trans Scott deGregorio, Liverpool University Press, 2012.


[8] Prologue to the Rule: Hearken, my son, to the precepts of the master and incline the ear of thy heart; freely accept and faithfully fulfil the instructions of a loving father, that by the labour of obedience thou mayest return to him from whom thou hast strayed by the sloth of disobedience. To thee are my words now addressed, whosoever thou mayest be that renouncing thine own will to fight for the true King, Christ, dost take up the strong and glorious weapons of obedience.

Sirach 2: Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.  [Humble] thy heart, and endure: incline thy ear, and receive the words of understanding: and make not haste in the time of clouds [calamity/disaster].  Wait on God with patience: join thyself to God, and endure, that thy life may be increased in the latter end.  Take all that shall be brought upon thee: and in thy sorrow endure, and in thy humiliation keep patience.  For gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Believe God, and he will recover thee: and direct thy way, and trust in him. Keep his fear, and grow old therein (Douay-Rheims translation).

[9] The word occurs in Pr 45 (ergo nobis dominici schola servitii), 2:18 ( Non convertenti ex servitio praeponatur ingenuus, nisi), RB2:20 (sub uno Domino aequalem servitutis militiam baiulamus), 5:3 (  Propter servitium sanctum quod professi sunt) in relation to monastic life more generally; and in 16:2, 18:24, 49:4, 50:4 in relation to the Office.

[10] St Benedict himself contrasts his Office with that 'of our holy fathers [who] strenuously fulfilled in a single day what I pray that we lukewarm monks may perform in a whole week'. (RB 18).

[11] David Hurst (trans), Bede the Venerable: Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, Cistercian Publications, 1985.

Praying the psalms with St Benedict/6A: The Office as intercession

 In the last part  of this series on St Benedict's approach to the psalms I talked about the Office as the supreme good work of the monk, necessary at the very least as a foundation for his other manifestations of faith in works.

But there is another reason, I think, why late antique monastic thought considered the Office, at the very least, the most important of the good works the monk could do, and that lies in its intercessory power.

Is the monastic Office inherently intercessory?

The modern theological view, articulated for example, in Sacrosanctum Concilium, is that the Divine Office is inherently intercessory, an exercise, like the Mass, of the priesthood of Christ:

Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise. For he continues His priestly work through the agency of His Church, which is ceaselessly engaged in praising the Lord and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. She does this, not only by celebrating the eucharist, but also in other ways, especially by praying the divine office. [1] 

Although the modern office certainly includes prayers for specific intentions, this summary makes it clear, I think, that the intercessory power of the Office does not rest solely in those specific parts of it, but rather in the work as a whole.

Historians and liturgists, however, following Baumstark, have often argued that one of the key distinctions between earlier and later monastic liturgies is their intercessory orientation. [2] Many liturgists, for example, have argued that the early monastic office, in contrast to that of the cathedral, was primarily meditative in character, directed at personal transformation rather than having a strong ecclesial and intercessory dimension. [3]

Intercessory monasticism, it is frequently argued, was a rather later development, above all epitomized by the ‘powerhouses of prayer’ of the Carolingian period, dedicated above all to praying for the intentions of their founders, family, benefactors and the State. [4] This transformation, it is often claimed, necessitated the addition of special sets of psalms and prayers over and above the core Office set out in St Benedict’s Rule, for various specific intentions.

So the question I want to discuss in this post is, is the modern view of the Office, as inherently intercessory, anachronistic when applied to the sixth century Office of St Benedict?

I want to suggest that the answer is no.

The duty to pray for family, benefactors, city and the state?

The first point to note is that monks and nuns in late antiquity, as laypeople, shared in the general duties of all Christians, and that included the duty of intercessory prayer.

In a recent treatment of this subject, Renie Choi, for example, has convincingly shown that intercessory prayer for the State, for example, was always part of the monastic paradigm at least to some degree, in keeping with the general duty of Christians. [5] In 1 Timothy 2, after all, St Paul instructs that:

I desire therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men: For kings, and for all that are in high station: that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all piety and chastity.

Early Christians took this instruction seriously, as Tertullian, for example made clear in his Apologia:

For we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal, the true, the living God, whose favour, beyond all others, they must themselves desire...Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Cæsar, an emperor would wish. [6]

A propitious offering?

More fundamentally, there is plentiful evidence to support the claim that although explicit prayers for particular intentions were undoubtedly used at times, the life - and especially the primary work of monks, the Office - was viewed as inherently intercessory in character in late antiquity.  

Justinian's Novel 133, for example, which justified his regulation of monastic life in the Empire on the basis of the benefits that flowed from the monk's holy lives and prayer:

For if the monks offer prayers to God with pure hands and unstained minds, it is clear that the army will fare well and cities will flourish—for when God is propitious and well-disposed, how could it be that the greatest peace and complete observance of the laws would not exist—the earth will bear the fruits and the sea will yield its products, these prayers conciliating the benevolence of God in favor of the whole empire...[7]

The Office of St John of Arles, for example, almost certainly included some explicitly intercessory components, in the form of the ‘capitella’, or selected psalm verses used to conclude the various hours. [8] It is clear though that Caesarius of Arles regarded not just the capitella, but the whole of the Office as intercessory.  At the end of the Rule, for example, he says:

I beseech and supplicate you before our Lord God, O most dutiful sisters...that by your charitable intercession keep watch for us day and night [ut pro nobis diebus ac noctibus intercession uestrae caritatis inuigilet] and in public prayer through your holy supplication, obtain, in solemnities by day or vigils by night, that your petition…for faults are not amended unless he remits them through the prayers of the saints...[9] 

In part, of course, this springs from the very nature of the core of the Office, the psalter, since so many of the psalms contain pleas for help, not just for the individual, but the for the people as a whole.

Heresy and monasticism

But as for the early christians under Roman rule, the difficulty many monasteries faced in late antiquity was that their most fundamental prayer for the state was surely not for its maintenance, but for its conversion, or in some cases, their own protection from the State itself: they could hardly pray for intentions often at odds with the faith.

When the young monk, later bishop, St Fulgentius arrived in Rome from North Africa in 500, for example, having been turned back from his Cassian-inspired trip to Egypt by the threat of the monophysite heresy that had infected the monks there, he was horrified to find the holy city feting the (one and only) visit of the Arian Ostrogoth Emperor Theodoric the Great. [10]  He hastily cut short his trip, stopping only to take in the martyr sites and do a quick round of the Roman monasteries.  Instead of learning more of monasticism as he had hoped, he returned to a life playing cat and mouse (coupled with long periods of exile in Sicily) with the Arian rulers of his own territory.

Around the same time, the young St Benedict also fled Rome, first for  a religious community at Affile, and then to Subiaco, the former summer palace of the great persecutor-Emperor Nero.  

Whether Benedict fled Rome for the same reasons as Fulgentius, or it was other events  - such as the pagan revels of his fellow students, who ran naked through the streets of Rome to celebrate an old feast; clerical celibacy scandals, or worst of all, the violent Laurentian schism - that propelled him, the symbolism of twelve monasteries rising on the ruins of the old palace was surely a clear statement. [11]  In both cases, they may have prayed for the State, but for its salvation, for the coming of the new kingdom, rather than for the secular aims of the current regime.

The case of Arles

Caesarius of Arles, as a Catholic bishop in a territory mostly governed by Arians, had a far more ambivalent and attimes deeply strained set of political relationships to juggle, not least because the city was beseiged and changed hands several times during this period: indeed, the first monastery built outside the walls for his nuns was destroyed before it could be completed, and then had to be rebuilt in a safer location, within the walls.

The Life of St Caesarius commissioned by the nuns of St John's shortly after his death suggests that he solved the problem, at least in part, by focusing the monastery on the city itself, rather than its changing (and mostly heretical) overlords.  In particular, the Life explicitly claimed that the foundation was inspired by the desire for intercession for the city:

The man of God formulated the idea by divine inspiration from the ever-reigning Lord that the Church of Arles should be adorned and the city protected not only with countless troops of clergy but also by choirs of virgins. [12] 

The Rule written for the nuns similarly refers to the nun’s role in praying ‘for all the people’. [13]  

The case of Agaune

The monastery of Agaune is a particularly interesting case because unlike Arles or Subiaco, the monastery could, in theory at least, support the state, since its principal patron, Prince later King Sigismond, had converted from Arianism to Catholicism some time before he provided the funding to the monastery.

What is more hotly contested, however, just how far its intentions went so far as the connection to its secular rulers is concerned.

It is certainly clear both from correspondence of the time and the early Lives of the monasteries Abbots, that the bishops of Burgundy played a major role in supervising the foundation, and approving its constitutions. [14]

The funding for it, though, came from Sigismond, and a rather later (but on the whole plausible) life of Sigismond claims the idea of having a number of choirs maintaining a perpetual liturgy was his (inspired by a conversation with the martyrs on how to get them onside for his future rule).[15]

Still, there is after all, on the face of it, nothing inherently intercessory about a regime of twenty-four hours a day:  if it was Sigismond's idea, he could still have been motivated by strategic considerations as much as anything else. [16] And more importantly, perhaps, the constant singing of praise to God fits well with Eucherius of Lyon’s Passio which depicts the martyrs of Agaune as transformed into an angelic legion, gathered around God’s throne, devoted to his praise and adoration rather than intercession as such. [17]

There was of course some intercessory focus: in a sermon for the dedication of the monastery of Agaune, Bishop Avitus referred to the monk's prayers as a force for good for the region:

 You flee the world to be sure, but you pray for it, even though the saeculum has been shut out by you the act of which…may your sacred vigil keep watch over all, by which…May our Gaul flourish; let the world long for what [this] place has brought forth...Today let there begin an eternity for devotion and dignity for the region, with these men praising God in the present world, who will praise him equally in future. [18]

That intention of praying for the region though, seems to me a long way short of the claims made for it by Albrecht Diem, who has argued that the whole purpose of the foundation was to pray for the state of Burgundy, and particularly for its King, and that the militaristic language of the psalter would have taken on a whole new dimension in this light. [19] 

The choice of the monastery’s first Abbot seems particularly telling in this regard. According to his Vita, Hymnemodus had been a courtier to Sigismund’s Arian father, Gundobad, but had left the court to become a monk at Grigny.  The monks, though, were so afraid of possible retribution that they refused to accept him, so he became a hermit instead; it was only many years later that he was elected the monastery’s abbot, and then subsequently transferred to Agaune.  His Vita makes it clear that he saw a clear separation between what was owed to God, and what to the king, a distinction that would have become important in the event, given an early falling out between Sigismond and his bishops not long after became king. [20]  More importantly it was Hymnemodus, according to the Vita, who had already demonstrated his commitment to God over mammon, who set about recruiting the number of monk’s necessary to maintain a perpetual round of prayer, and presumably to organize and design its liturgy.

And Bishop Avitus' sermon at the monastery's dedication seems to have been designed to reinforce this eschatological orientation for its efforts: its perpetual liturgy, he argued, fitted perfectly with that described in the Book of Revelation, the future world to come after the descent of the jewel encrusted New Jerusalem, a place in which there would be no night:

Whose entry is not shut at night, because it has no night, whose doors are always wide open to the just, but inaccessible to the impious…[21]  

Intercession for friends, family and the state clearly were already important though, in this time, and I want to look at some of these in the context of the Benedictine Office in the next post. 

Notes

[1] Constitution On The Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 83.

[2] A. Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, rev ed  B. Botte, trans F L Cross, Westminster, 1958, pp 111 ff.

[3] For a critical review of the distinction, with an extensive bibliogrpahy, see Stig Simeon R. Frøyshov, The Cathedral–Monastic Distinction Revisited Part I: Was Egyptian Desert Liturgy a Pure Monastic Office?, Studia Liturgica 37 (2007), 198-216.

[4] The paradigm is breaking down however.  Renie Choi, in Intercessory Prayer and the Monastic Ideal in the Time of the Carolingian Reforms, OUP, 2016, provides a somewhat more nuanced account of the development of intercessory prayer as a core element of monastic spirituality; and Albrecht Diem as argued that Agaune actually represents the first example of this type of foundation, in Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and the Creation of a Burgundian Identity, in Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (eds), pp. 47-88, Brepol 2014.

[5] ibid.

[6]  Apology chapter 30: Nos enim pro salute imperatorum deum invocamus aeternum, deum verum, deum vivum, quem et ipsi imperatores propitium sibi praeter ceteros malunt...precantes sumus semper pro omnibus imperatoribus. illis prolixam, imperium securum, domum tutam, exercitus fortes, senatum fidelem, populum probum, orbem quietum, quaecunque hominis et Caesaris vota sunt...

[7]  Fred H. Blume, Annotated Justinian Code, 2nd ed, 2018.

[8] Rule for Virgins of Caesarius of Arles (RC), ch 40.2. For the full text of the Rule see Caesarius of Arles, Oeuvres Monastique, de Vogue and Courreau ed and trans, 2 vols, Sources Chretienne 345, pp 190ff, ch 66.

[9] ibid, ch 72.  The translation is by Maria Caritas McCarthy, reproduced in Daniel Marcel Le Corte and Douglas J McMillan (eds) Regular Life: Monastic, Canonical, and Mendicant Rules (TEAMS Documents of Practice), 2nd ed, Toronto, 2004.

[10] Robert Eno (trans), Life of Fulgentius, in Fulgentius: Selected Works vol 1, Fathers of the Church 95, Catholic University of America 1997.

[11] Gregory the Great, Dialogues II, chapters 1-3.

[12] Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, trans Klingshirn, LUP, 1994, Life, Bk I:28.

[13] Rule for Virgins of Caesarius of Arles (RC), ch 40.2. For the full text of the Rule see Caesarius of Arles, Oeuvres Monastique, de Vogue and Courreau ed and trans, 2 vols, Sources Chretienne 345, pp 190ff.

[14] On the case for the bishops as the prime instigators of the foundation, see B. Rosenwein, ‘Perennial Prayer at Agaune’, in S. Farmer and B. Rosenwein (eds), Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society (Ithaca, 2000), pp. 37–56; see also Vita abbatum Acaunensium (BHL 142), § 3, éd. B. KRUSCH, MGH, SSRM, III, Hanovre, 1896.

[15] On Sigismond's Vita, see Claire Maître, De saint-maurice d’agaune à saint-denis-en-france :La louange ininterrompue, Fruit d’une volonté politique? ,Revue Mabillon, n.s., t. 21 (= t. 82), 2010, p. 5-36.

[16] See Anne-Marie Helvétius, L’abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune dans le haut Moyen Âge, in Autour de saint Maurice. Actes du colloque Politique, société et construction identitaire : autour de saint Maurice, 29 septembre-2 octobre 2009, Besançon (France )- Saint-Maurice (Suisse), dir. N. BROCARD, F. VANNOTTI et A. WAGNER, Fondation des Archives historiques de l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice, 2012, p. 113-131.

[17] Eucherius of Lyons, The Passion of the Martyrs of Agaune (translation in the appendix of Tim Vivian, Kim Vivian and Jeffrey Russell trans, The Life of the Jura Fathers The Life of the Holy Fathers Romanus, Lupicinus , and Eugendus, Abbots of the Monasteries in the Jura Mountains...,  Cistercian Studies Series no 178, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, 1999,  Studies Series 178); for the latin text see Passio Acaunensium martyrum, BHL-5737.

[18] Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood (ed and trans), Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose, LUP, 2002, pp 380.

[19] Albrecht Diem, Who is Allowed to Pray for the King? Saint-Maurice d’Agaune and the Creation of a Burgundian Identity, in Post-Roman Transitions: Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (eds), pp. 47-88, Brepol 2014.

[20] Op cit. The key part of the Vita says: Sanctus igitur Hymnemodus natione quidem barbarus , sed morum benignitate modestus , ita inmunis ab omni feritate beneficio divinitatis effectus est , ut sub habitu saeculari iugum Christi blanda clementiae libertate portaret . Hic dum in aula regali sedulus famulator regiae potestati adsisteret hac tota mentis integritate commissum sibi ministerium adimpleret. Reddebat iuxta Salvatoris praeceptum , quae Dei erant Deo ; regi quoque inoffense debitum servitii e exhibebat. Nam cum , fervente spiritu, perfectae religionis intrinsecus maturasset consilium, mundanis spretis in lecebris et pompa tumentium potestatum dispecta, festinus  in monasterium Grenencense expetiit...

When he became King in 516 Sigismund quickly alienated many of his subjects through a bitter dispute with his bishops over their excommunication of one of his courtiers, leading him to exile most of his Catholic bishops for an extended period.  His subsequent murder of his eldest son precipitated attacks from both the Franks and Ostrogoths, culminated in the death of both him and his family at their hands in 523 (though he was later deemed a martyr).  The Kingdom itself did not survive him all that long as a separate entity: it was incorporated into Frankish territories in 534.

[21] Avitus letters...opcit; It is worth noting that the editors see this passage as a reference to Aen 6.127 and the gates of the Virgilian underworld, but Apocalypse 22 seems the more important allusion in the light of what follows, viz, Christ is its foundation, faith its frame, a wall its crown, a pearl its gates, gold its street, a lamb its light, its chorus the church.  Caesarius and other contemporaries such as Cassiodorus interpreted Revelation 22 not literally, but as depicting the Church inaugurated by Christ.