Praying the psalms with St Benedict/7 - Time and the Work of God

So far in this series I've looked briefly at some of the key purposes of the Office - purgation and penance; adoration and intercession.

In the next section of the series, I plan to focus in on the seven day cycles - around creation, salvation history, the life of Christ and that of our own spiritual development (among others) that I think are embedded within the Office through the psalm cursus.

The sanctification of time

Before we do that, though, by way of bridge, I want to look at one more dimension of the Office, namely the relationship between the Office and time.

The Divine Office is, by its nature, deeply connected with the idea of the sanctification of time.

Some of the connections in the Benedictine version of the Office are reasonably obvious. The spacing of the hours through the day, for example, gave it an equivalent to one of the old watches (of three hours), as well as a Trinitarian meaning attested to by St Cyprian. [1]  Similarly, the use of twelve psalms (one for each hour) mirrors the number of hours of the day and night, that is Prime to None, and Matins. [2]

Some perhaps are a little less obvious - the use of seven psalms in the twilight hours (Lauds, Vespers+Compline) to symbolise completeness, for example.

But there is one aspect of the sanctification of time that I have not seen explored in the literature, and which I think is perhaps best understood by consideration of the three alternative Office models I've been looking at from the first half of the sixth century, and that is the way that different forms of the Office focus those singing or hearing it on different points in salvation history.

Different forms of the Office, I want to suggest, can reflect very different conceptions of sacred time, which in turn reflect different conceptions of the exactly the 'Work' of the Office is intended to accomplish.

Sacred time and the liturgy

The Office, of course, as liturgy, connects us to the liturgy of heaven: we pray, at the very least, 'in the presence of the angels' (Psalm 137); more, we are joined through it to the angelic choir. [3]

But that is not the same thing as connecting us to the eternity of God, whose eternity stands outside of time and space.

Instead, as creatures, whether in heaven or on earth, our prayers have a before and after, and thus a temporal dimension.

In heaven - at least before the coming of the new heaven and earth - the progress of that time may be different to that we experience on earth.  Without bodies, after all, and the needs associated with them, we may indeed gain the ability to literally pray without ceasing!

But for us here on earth, our progress through time is reflected in the Office in the temporal and sanctoral calendars of the year; in the 'hours' of the Office each day; and in the cycle the hours repeat over.

Agaune's perpetual liturgy and making heaven visible

Consider for example the case of Agaune's perpetual liturgy.

St Alexander the Sleepless, we saw earlier in this series, in the first half of the fifth century, developed a form of the liturgy which almost certainly either directly inspired, or was outright copied by Agaune in the early sixth century, inspired by the model of God's ordering of creation into the twelve hours of day and night.

But St Alexander also seems to have had in mind imitation of the perpetual liturgy of the angels, an idea which fit well with Agaune's history as a shrine of soldier-saints, the martyrs of the Theban legion, whose legend depicted soldiers who refused (an immoral order) to fight, soldiers who laid down their arms and allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than turn on, as the Emperor ordered, their fellow Christians. By this action, so the early fifth century version of their legend asserted, they were transformed into members of the heavenly choir: “Thus", says Eucherius of Lyon, "that whole angelic legion was murdered, which now, we believe, joins with legions of angels in heaven in always praising together the Lord God Sabaoth.” [4]

And it was this choir to which the earthly members of the monastery were portrayed as literally being members of, transported effectively to heaven now, to that time after the descent of the new Jerusalem described in Revelations, or at least so the early literature surrounding the monastery asserted. St Gregory of Tours, for example, told the story of an Agaune monk who died very young before he could make profession, to the great distress of his mother, who then spent her days weeping in the Church.  Happily, St Maurice appeared to her and assured her that her son was still part of the chorus made up not just of the still living monks, but the dead among their number as well as the Theban legion itself.  To prove this, he invited her to return the next morning at Lauds, and every subsequent day that she so desired for the rest of her life, so that she could hear his voice joining that of the other (still living) monks. [5]

The sermon given by Bishop Avitus of Vienne for the dedication of the new basilica on September 22, 515 similarly made considerable play on the idea of the monks as livers of the angelic life, since, he claimed, they had no possibility of committing any sins, for all their time was consumed now with the work of heaven:

..but when it has come to the present psalmody…you have surpassed even your own works.  For…that glorious custom has been instituted, in which the Christian always pours forth sound, Christ is always present, the onlooker is always heard, the hearer always seen.  You who are about to dwell here…labour in this world invites to the hope of perpetual rest, and all the time for sinning is cut off from those occupied in happy action...May death renew rather than end this action [6]

His sermon also invoked the imagery, as I have previously noted, that seems to me to be an allusion to the description of the New Jerusalem that will descend after the last judgment in Apocalypse 21, a jewel encrusted city in which there is 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…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 [7]

Agaune's Office, with a psalm cursus that almost certainly repeated each day, rather than carrying over several as most other Offices did, was surely meant to signal this new age, this eighth day fully realised.

The nuns of Arles and the accumulation of merit

If Agaune and its Office attempted to anticipate the blessed life to come, the life that will come after the Second Coming, the Rule of Caesarius of Arles, I would suggest, portrays his nuns as living a step back in salvation time from that.

In particular, his Rule focuses above all on waiting for the Second Coming and judgment, the time of the coming of the bridegroom to the wedding feast.

Watchers for the second coming

In the Rule, St Caesarius tells his nuns to pray assiduously for the coming of the Son, and to be watchers for it, quoting St Luke:

Watch ye, therefore, praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are to come, and to stand before the Son of man.  [8]

The nuns then, unlike the monks of Agaune, are not yet living the angelic life, bur rather are looking out in this world, for the signs of Christ's return.

In fact the key image he invokes throughout the rule is that of the wise and foolish virgins in the parable of the bridegroom, who are drowsing while waiting, prepared or otherwise, for the coming of bridegroom; with the wise preparing by cultivating the oil of good works. [9] Indeed the image of the drowsing virgin must have been particularly close to their hearts given the long hours they spent in vigils in the church, for St John of Arles employed a model where the number of psalms said in the Night Office lengthened and shortened with the seasons as the length of time of darkness changed.

An Easter people!

But there is also some important symbolism, I think, in the fact that Caesarius barely mentions Lent (beyond a brief reference to fasting rules) or repentance at all in his Rule; instead he provides a symbolic starting point for the Office, not with Matins and Lauds, as St Benedict does, but rather Terce of Easter Day. [10]

St Benedict, in chapter 8 of the Rule, insisted on Lauds each day being timed to start at daybreak, symbolically the time of the rising of Christ.

Caesarius, however, in chapter 66 of the Rule for Nuns, jumps forward two hours, over Lauds and Prime, and starts the whole of his discussion of the Office from the third hour of Easter Day, linking it to the literal completion of three days after the crucifixion, not least through the particular hymn he specified be used at it, Iam surgit hora tertia, which provides a nice counter to the image of the drowsing virgins fighting off sleep as they keep their vigil:

This hour at which He ends our time Of stupor from that first bad crime, Destroys the world's guilt with His blood; Washed out death's kingdom with its flood…[11]

Terce on ‘the third day’ (after Good Friday), in other words, completes the work of redemption, and inaugurates the ‘third age’ of grace in St Augustine’s schema of before the law/under the law/under grace in which we are now living.

But Easter Day is just the start of the liturgical year in this description of the Office: it is the eschatologically charged season of Epiphany, the showing out of Christ to the gentiles, that is its end.  And these two key seasons are linked by a series of all-night vigils each Friday from Easter to Pentecost, and again in the lead up to Epiphany; Vigils which start from ‘third hour of the night’. [12]

The task of the nun, then, is to accumulate grace  - that good oil - through her prayer and vigils, which can then be applied not only to herself but to others, stretching out to aid the conversion of the world.

St Benedict's Lenten monk

St Benedict's Rule, I want to suggest, takes us back another step in salvation time, to Lent.

Lent barely rates a mention in the Rule of Caesarius, and then only in relation to fasting, not the liturgy proper. [13]

In the Benedictine Rule, by contrast, Lent is the only liturgical season mentioned by name, and the saint explicitly tells us that the life of a monk should always be Lenten in nature. [14]

St Benedict reinforces this, I think, by starting his liturgical prescriptions not with the bright light of the festive celebration of the risen Lord, but rather with a discussion of the hour for rising in the dark in the long nights of his winter season (November to Easter). [15]

His focus is on monks still unreformed, yet to open their eyes to the ‘deifying light’; asking still for  'our lives to be lengthened and a respite allowed...that we may amend our evil ways' (Prologue), for far from living the angelic life themselves, monks need to be wary because that their actions are constantly being scrutinized and reported to God by the angels. [16]

There are no all night Vigils in St Benedict's Office, and his priority is clearly not Matins, whose readings can be cut if necessary, but rather Lauds, which he makes a daily celebration of the Resurrection (symbolized by the rising of the Son/sun).  

The rising

Instead, in St Benedict's theology, the imagery of the Resurrection as the pattern for the monk is not just the starting point, but the dominating theme: in the Prologue, he urges, ‘Exsurgamus ergo’ (let us therefore arise); in chapter 7 he argues that we ascend to heaven through humility.

In the liturgy he parallels these ideas by starting the Night Office with Psalm 3, which is usually interpreted, in Patristic texts, as speaking of the Resurrection (Ego dormivi…), through the use of the ‘psalms of ascent’. 

Above all, each week the Office starts again from Sunday, with its three Nocturn Matins in particular a celebration of the Resurrection.

To fear the day of judgment...

St Benedict’s Rule, does, it is true, allude to the common monastic meme of acting as watchers for the Second Coming in their Night Vigils.

His discussion of sleeping arrangements for the monks in RB 22, for example, is actually mainly about ensuring their readiness for the Night Office, and in doing so paraphrases the instructions of Luke 12:

A lamp shall burn constantly in the cell until morning. Let them sleep clothed and girded with cinctures or cords…Being thus always ready…’ [17]

And awareness of the coming judgment is certainly a key theme of the Rule.

But it is a day to be feared (RB 4), rather perhaps than prayed for, lest our process of reform be incomplete.

Indeed, I started this series pointing to the connection between Lent and the forty psalms said in the Benedictine Office each day, and our necessary preparation for entering heaven.  It is instructive, I think, to read Caesarius of Arles' explanation of the significance of forty in a sermon on David and Goliath, which interprets it to mean our entire earthly life:

The children of Israel faced their enemies for forty days. These forty days, by reason of the four seasons of the year, and of the four continents of the globe, are a figure of this present life, during which the Christian world does not cease to be arrayed in battle against the devil and his angels, as it were against Goliath and the army of the Philistines. [18]

And it is to emphasize this process of reform, that the Benedictine psalm cursus, I want to suggest, traces the path of creation, salvation and redemption history from its beginning, and towards its ultimate destiny each week, encouraging us to reform ourselves, with the aid of grade, in line with it.

But more on that in the next post.


Notes

[1] St Cyprian, Treatise 4, On Prayer: "And in discharging the duties of prayer, we find that the three children with Daniel, being strong in faith and victorious in captivity, observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, as it were, for a sacrament of the Trinity, which in the last times had to be manifested. For both the first hour in its progress to the third shows forth the consummated number of the Trinity, and also the fourth proceeding to the sixth declares another Trinity; and when from the seventh the ninth is completed, the perfect Trinity is numbered every three hours, which spaces of hours the worshippers of God in time past having spiritually decided on, made use of for determined and lawful times for prayer."

[2] St Benedict directs our attention to the number of psalms said at the various hours in his chapter headings to chapter 9 (Quanti psalmi dicendi sunt nocturnis horis) and 17 (Quot psalmi per easdem horas dicendi sunt) and the discussion in these chapters.  Chapter 17 in particular effectively provides three groupings of hours: Matins and Lauds; Prime to None; Vespers and Compline.  Unfortunately he does not discuss the rationale for the various numbers of psalms, assuming, presumably, that the reader would already be familiar with the discussions of the topic to be foound in the earlier literature such as Cassian, Cyprian and Basil.

[3] RB 19: Ubique credimus divinam esse praesentiam et oculos Domini in omni loco speculari bonos et malos, [2] maxime tamen hoc sine aliqua dubitatione credamus cum ad opus divinum assistimus. [3] Ideo semper memores simus quod ait propheta: Servite Domino in timore, [4] et iterum: Psallite sapienter, [5] et: In conspectu angelorum psallam tibi.

[4] 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.

[5] Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2: Gregorii Turonensis Opera. Teil 2: Miracula et opera minora. Editio nova lucisope expressa (Hanover, 1885), pp. 34–111 (at c. 74-75). Trans Raymond van Dam, LUP, 1988, pp 69-71

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

[7] ibid.

[8] RC 21

[9] See especially RC 1, 63.

[10] RC 66

[11] For techniques to stay awake during the Night vigils, see RC 15; the Latin of the hymn can be found here and a translation of the hymn here.

[12] RC 68

[13] RC 71.

[14] RB15, 48.

[15] RB 8

[16] RB 7

[17] (RB 22)

[18] Caesarius of Arles, Sermon,

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.

Praying the psalms with St Benedict 5D - St Benedict on the liturgy as prayer Pt 2

Given that today is the feast of St Benedict, I thought this would be a good moment to tease out a few key points on the relationship of the Divine Office in St Benedict's Rule to ceaseless prayer.

Good works as prayer

In the last post in this series I suggested that St Benedict generally talks mostly about frequent, or short and fervent prayer, rather than continuous prayer, as the objective of the monk; and followed a line of Scriptural interpretation that interpreted 'prayer' very broadly, as a state of mind as much as a formal act, so that prayer encompasses, even requires good works beyond formal and informal prayer.

In this he was surely following the monastic models of St Basil, with its emphasis on good works; and the line of exegesis suggested by St Augustine, who, rather than insisting on the monk or nun be constantly ruminating on Scripture while they worked, ate, or even slept, provided an alternative solution to the problem by defining good works as prayer:

Praise the Lord, you say to your neighbour, he to you: when all are exhorting each other, all are doing what they exhort others to do. But praise with your whole selves: that is, let not your tongue and voice alone praise God, but your conscience also, your life, your deeds. For now, when we are gathered together in the Church, we praise: when we go forth each to his own business, we seem to cease to praise God. Let a man not cease to live well, and then he ever praises God....But God has willed that it should be in your choice for whom you will prepare room, for God, or for the devil: when you have prepared it, he who is occupant will also rule.  Therefore, brethren, attend not only to the sound; when you praise God, praise with your whole selves: let your voice, your life, your deeds, all sing. [1]

But in saying this, I don't want to suggest, as some have done, either that the Office (or at least the psalm component of it), was not actually seen as constituting prayer at all (a theory propounds by some in the past); nor do I want to suggest that the Office does not play an absolutely crucial role in sustaining our ability to, as Psalm 1 puts it, 'meditate on the law of the Lord day and night.'

It is quite clear, I think, that  even though St Benedict took a much wider view of what constituted  good works appropriate to a monastic than others of his time such as Caesarius of Arles, the Divine Office was, for him, clearly the supreme good work: what after all could be preferred or put before the good work that is the Work of God. [2]?

Is the Office prayer at all?!

Before I go on, I thought I should briefly touch on the argument, popular in the 1970s and which still has its advocates today [3], following the work of Gabriel Bunge and others, that in late antiquity singing the psalms was not seen as prayer as such; instead the psalms were viewed as akin to other Scriptural readings, that had to be turned into prayer through pauses between psalms, use of psalm collects, and other such devices. [4]

It is certainly true that some of St Benedict's contemporaries employed practices that have been seen as fitting this model. Most of the psalmody at the monastery of Arles that we have briefly looked at, for example, was responsorial rather than antiphonal; psalm collects do seem to have been employed there; and Scripture reading in general featured much more heavily in the Arles Office than in the Roman or Benedictine. [5]

But even if these practices reflect a view of psalms more as Scripture than as the prayerbook of the Church (a view I rather doubt), it was certainly not the only tradition.

 Athanasius' famous Letter to Marcellinus for example, makes it clear that the psalter not only services as Scripture and a personal spiritual guide, but also gives us words we can use as our own prayers, identifying particular ones as appropriate to our various needs.

Similarly St Basil the Great, in his sermon on Psalm 1, highlights not only their ability to teach us doctrine; to calm and soothe out souls; but also represent a means of asking for help, and bind us together:

A psalm forms friendships, unites those separated, conciliates those at enmity. Who, indeed, can still consider as an enemy him With whom he has uttered the same prayer to God? So that psalmody, bringing about choral singing, a bond, as it were, toward unity, and joining the people into a harmonious union of one choir, produces also the greatest of blessings, charity. A psalm is a city of refuge from the demons; a means of inducing help from the angels, a weapon in fears by night, a rest from toils by day, a safeguard for infants, an adornment for those at the height of their vigor, a consolation for the elders, a most fitting ornament for women... [6]

And it is this tradition, I would suggest, that St Benedict's Office follows: the psalmody is antiphonal, not responsorial; there is no mention of pauses or prostrations between psalms; nor is there any mention of psalm collects. [7]

The psalms, it is true, had a special status in St Benedict's Office, but I don't think we should assume, as some argue, that Chapter 20 of the Rule, on prayer, is only referring to prayer outside the Office. [8]  Rather, it seems to me that St Benedict's comments on the importance of reverence, fervour, and short but pure prayer, is something of a defence of his Office in the face of  other contemporary traditions, as well as instruction on prayer more generally.

Short but fervent?

That emphasis on frequent, rather than literally continual prayer becomes even clearer if one compares the Benedictine Office to the two other contemporary Offices we've talked about in this series, those of Agaune and Arles.

The table below shows just how much shorter the Benedictine Office is compared to that of the two contemporary offices we've been looking at: the Benedictine is around half the length of that of Arles, and a third of that of Agaune.

As a consequence, the Benedictine psalter spread the psalms over a much longer period, a week compared to the day or couple of days of the others.

Moreover, St Benedict's Office wasn't just lighter on psalmody; at least compared to the Arles Office, it seems to have been much lighter on Scripture reading as well.

Table: The liturgies of the three monasteries [9]

	Agaune	Arles	Benedictine
Foundation details	Monks Royal foundation (Sigismond) Dedicated to St Maurice and the Theban legion. Located in Burgundy. Refounded c515.	Nuns (though similar rule for monks). Episcopal foundation (Caesarius of Arles). Dedicated to St John the Evangelist and St John the Baptist. Located in Gaul (Ostrogoth Kingdom), c510.	Monks (and nuns). Lay foundation (St Benedict with lay patrons). MC dedicated to St Martin of Tours and St John the Baptist. Located in Italy. Foundation dates Subiaco c505, Monte Cassino, c529;  ?Plombariola;  Terracina, c545.
Length of Office	24/7 in shifts	12-16 hours per day	4-8 hrs per day
Extended/all night vigils	Always	Yes – Fridays and Saturdays, feasts; some seasons	No
Psalter said over…	Day+	?2-3 days, depending on season	Week
Psalms per day	Unknown – estimated 450?	60-80+	40
Psalm order	Unknown	Some fixed psalm for each hour; at Vigils, numerical order	Selected for each hour
Scriptural readings (other than psalms)	Unknown	Readings at all of the hours except lucernarium + vigils of readings interspersed with prayers and psalms Sat&Sun plus winter.	Scripture light – short verse only at all hours except Night Office on Sundays and winter weekdays. Summer weekdays:  short verses at all hours only Winter: three readings and responsories at weekday Nocturns
Hymns, antiphons, prayers	yes	yes	Yes – but no collects
Divided into x ‘hours’ per day	[?7]	[7-9] Nocturns/Vigils, Lauds, Prime (S&S only), Terce, Sext, None, Lucernarium, Duodecima,	8 – Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline

Liturgy sustains us

One possible explanation for St Benedict's very different balance between liturgy and other good works to Agaune and Arles lies perhaps in St Augustine's argument that liturgy is needed to sustain us as we do good works.  And in St Augustine's view, the amount of time needed for formal prayer is not minimal or minimalist.  In Letter 130 the saint explained:

When we cherish uninterrupted desire along with the exercise of faith and hope and charity, we pray always. 

But at certain stated hours and seasons we also use words in prayer to God, that by these signs of things we may admonish ourselves, and may acquaint ourselves with the measure of progress which we have made in this desire, and may more warmly excite ourselves to obtain an increase of its strength. 

For the effect following upon prayer will be excellent in proportion to the fervour of the desire which precedes its utterance. And therefore, what else is intended by the words of the apostle: Pray without ceasing, than, Desire without intermission, from Him who alone can give it, a happy life, which no life can be but that which is eternal? This, therefore, let us desire continually from the Lord our God; and thus let us pray continually. 

But at certain hours we recall our minds from other cares and business, in which desire itself somehow is cooled down, to the business of prayer, admonishing ourselves by the words of our prayer to fix attention upon that which we desire, lest what had begun to lose heat become altogether cold, and be finally extinguished, if the flame be not more frequently fanned. 

Completeness...

There was also a certain symbolism in St Benedict's insistence on praying seven times a day (and again in the night), given the association between the 'sacred number seven', as meaning completeness due to the connection (which the saint alludes to in his explanation) to the number of days of creation, and eight, as symbolism the new age inaugurated by Christ. [10] St Augustine, for example, interpreted seven times as signifying continuously or always:

For whence is that which is said, seven times in a day will I praise you? Does a man sin who does not praise the Lord so often? What then is seven times will I praise, but I will never cease from praise? For he who says seven times, signifies all time. [11]

In the next post I will explore the importance of short but fervent prayer more, in the context of the Office and intercessory prayer.

Notes

[1] St Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 148, J.E. Tweed, trans, From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.

[2] RB 43.3: Ergo nihil operi Dei praeponatur.

[3]  See for example Columba Stewart, Benedictine Monasticism and Mysticism in Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, 2013.

[4] Gabriel Bunge, Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition, trans Michael J Miller, Ignatius Press 2002 (original  German ed, 1996).

[5] See chapters 66-68 of the Rule for nuns of Caesarius of Arles (for the full text of the Rule itself, see Caesarius of Arles, Oeuvres Monastique, de Vogue and Courreau ed and trans, 2 vols, Sources Chretienne 345, 398).

[6] St Basil the Great, Exegetical Homilies, Sr Agnes Clare Way, trans, Fathers of the Church no 46, Homily on Psalm 1.

[7] Joseph Dyer, in the The Singing of Psalms in the Early-Medieval Office, Speculum, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 535-578 (and subsequent articles) argued that the switch to unison singing and alternating choirs happened rather later than Benedict's time.  More recent studies, however, have challenged this view, pointing to descriptions of alternating choirs in the sixth century monastic literature, including in St Gregory's Dialogues (IV:15), and in the Rule of Paul and Stephen.

[8]  See in particular Adalbert De Vogue, The Rule Of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary (Cistercian Studies) 1999.

[9]  Based on the Rule of St Benedict, chapters 8-19; Rule of Caesarius of Arles, chapters 66-72; Laurent Ripart, De lérins à agaune: Le monachisme rhodanien reconsidéré, in Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, Monachesimi d’oriente e d’occidente nell’alto medioevo, Spoleto, 2016, pp123-193.

[10] St Benedict cites two verses of Psalm 118 in support of his construction of the hours in  RB 16: Ut ait propheta: septies in die laudem dixi tibi. Qui septenarius sacratus numerus a nobis sic implebitur...quia de his diurnis horis dixit: Septies in die laudem dixi tibi. [4] Nam de nocturnis vigiliis idem ipse propheta ait: Media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi.Ergo his temporibus referamus laudes Creatori nostro super iudicia iustitiae suae...

[11] Sermon 45.

Praying the psalms with St Benedict 5C - Three models for praying without ceasing/3: St Benedict on good works

So far in this series we have looked at two theories on how 'praying without ceasing' can be realised: a literal interpretation, based on constant textual prayer, carried over even into talking in one's sleep; and a collective realisation of the ideal, where some pray on behalf of others when they need to take a break for sleep or other purposes.

There were, however, other, rather less literal interpretations of the various Scriptural texts taken by the Fathers as the basis for the Office and prayer such as Psalm 1, and today I want to start to look at St Benedict's particular take on the subject and the theological context from which it grew. [1]

Rome and ceaseless prayer?

Before looking at St Benedict's Rule itself, I think it is worth noting that some modern historians, seeing references to assiduous, continual or prayer 'day and night' in rules, monastic charters, and other literature relating to late antique monasticism, have argued that these references should be interpreted literally and broadly, especially for Gaul in the seventh century onwards, suggesting that the Agaune model in particular was much more influential than previously believed.

But there is fairly clear evidence for Rome and North Africa at least, and also I think for Gaul, that references to continuous prayer did not always refer to what we now call the laus perennis, or literally continuous adoration and/or liturgical prayer.

James McKinnon pointed out, for example, that in references to the agreements between monasteries offering prayers in Rome's basilical churches, where one manuscript of the Liber Pontificalis describes a monastery as offering prayer 'day and night', another manuscript variant offers instead a list of the specific hours said, namely Terce, Sext, None and Matins. [2]

In the Rule attributed to St Augustine, the instruction is to 'Be assiduous in prayer (Col 4:2), at the hours and times appointed'. [3]

For Gaul, studies of sermon collections beyond those of Caesarius, as well as more in depth scrutiny of some of the later rules, have made it clear that neither Caesarius' interpretation of monastic life (or that of Columbanus later), were not the only ones that prevailed. [4]

St Benedict on prayer

At least as far as St Benedict's Rule goes though, the rather less literal interpretation of the various Scriptural texts relating to prayer had a firm theological underpinning that I want to briefly explore briefly in this post.

This interpretation was grounded in the idea, I think, that ceaseless prayer is a state of mind rather than literal prayer; a state of mind, moreover, that should be manifested through active works and service as well as contemplation.

As for Arles and Agaune, St Benedict’s Rule views the Divine Office as an absolutely core obligation.  Indeed the Rule provides that it has to be fulfilled by each individual religious: the daily ‘pensum’ has to be carried out even if the monk is unable to make it to the monastery’s oratory for the official hours, (RB 50).

One of the clear contrasts between St Benedict's Rule and those of Caesarius of Arles, though, is that while Caesarius explicitly instructed his monks and nuns to strive to pray without ceasing, to pray day and night; and Agaune literally did that, St Benedict never uses either the Thessalonians quote or the other similar terms often employed in relation to Agaune and Arles such as assiduous, continuous or perpetual prayer.  Instead, in the liturgical section of the Rule, he arguably implies that ceaseless prayer is achieved symbolically, through the use of he number of day hours, since seven was generally interpreted to mean continously. [5]  Indeed, in his discussion of prayer in chapter 19, and again on the use of the monastery chapel in chapter 52, St Benedict stresses that prayer should be fervent rather than long, and in his tools of good works St Benedict instructs his monks not to pray without ceasing, but rather to ‘pray frequently’ (RB 4). And where the monks of Agaune had to deal with the psychological challenges that go with both long hours and shift-work; while the nuns of Arles had to be given techniques to use to help stay awake through long hours in chapel; St Benedict instead made a deliberate effort to provide a timetable, which, while certainly demanding, aimed at ensuring his monks are at least not too sleep deprived (RB 8&48).

Prayer and good works in St Benedict's Rule

One of the particular features of the Benedictine Rule is the number of references to the importance of good works: in the Prologue, for example, the would be monk is invited, in the words of Psalm 33, to turn away from evil and do good; to gird his loins with faith and the performance of good works.

In an earlier post, I noted that Caesarius of Arles suggested that the only good work a monk or nun needed to focus on was the Office and prayer. St Benedict, by contrast, supplies an entire chapter devoted to a list of good works, starting from the commandments, including the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, and much more.

Most intriguingly of all, St Benedict uses the phrase day and night, and continuously, so often used in early monastic sources as an allusion to Psalm 1's injunction to meditate on the law of the Lord day and night not in relation to the Office or prayer, but rather in relation to the tools of spiritual works.  The monastery, he says, is a workshop:

Behold these are the tools of the spiritual craft. If we employ them unceasingly day and night (die noctuque incessabiliter adimpleta), and on the Day of Judgement render account of them, then we shall receive from the Lord in return the reward which he himself has promised: Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, what God hath prepared for those that love him. (RB 4)

Psalm 1 and meditation day and night

One of the key verses often referred to in relation to monastic prayer was Psalm 1's key verses:

Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence: But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night.

It was this verse of Psalm 1 that apparently inspired St Jerome to set off from Rome to Bethlehem to live out a monastic calling; and it was also cited in the Liber Pontificalis to describe Pope Damasus’ claimed institution of the office in the churches, basilicas and monasteries of Rome (in an entry dating from circa 530).

St Alexander the Sleepless, you will recall, focused on the phrase day and night as a reference to the pattern given to us by God's ordering of creation, and saw meditation as meaning prayer.  Another school of thought though, focused on the idea of the will being engaged on the law, and gave it a far more active interpretation. The Syriac writer Aphrahat (c. 280–c. 34), for example, in his Demonstration 4:16, states that  'a person should do the will of God, and that constitutes prayer'. [6]  And the approach St Benedict followed was perhaps most pithily of all summarised by Cassian's teacher Evagrius Ponticus  (345–399 AD) in his commentary on Psalm 1, namely:

He meditates constantly on the law of God, who is accomplishing good works. [7]

Evagrius was far from being alone in both the Eastern and Western traditions in the idea that meditation on the law was more about cultivating state of mind, a matter of faith demonstrated through works, rather than formal prayer as such.

Origen, for example, in his commentary on Psalm 1 said:

The blessed person meditates on the law of the Lord day and night, not as one who entrusts the words of the law to his memory without works, but as one who by meditating performs works consistent with it…. [8]

 And in his Treatise on prayer he argued that right action is how continuous prayer is manifested:

Now, since the performance of actions enjoined by virtue or by the commandments is also a constituent part of prayer, he prays without ceasing who combines prayer with right actions, and becoming actions with prayer. For the saying “pray without ceasing” can only be accepted by us as a possibility if we may speak of the whole life of a saint as one great continuous prayer. (ch 7) [9]

Similar sentiments can be found in SS Jerome, Hilary, Basil and Augustine.  St Hilary, for example, explicitly linked Psalm 1 and praying without ceasing.  How, he asks, can we literally pray without ceasing, or meditate day and night, given our bodily needs for food, sleep and so forth?

Meditation in the Law, therefore, does not lie in reading its words, but in pious performance of its injunctions; not in a mere perusal of the books and writings, but in a practical meditation and exercise in their respective contents, and in a fulfilment of the Law by the works we do by night and day, as the Apostle says: Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. The way to secure uninterrupted prayer is for every devout man to make his life one long prayer by works acceptable to God and always done to His glory: thus a life lived according to the Law by night and day will in itself become a nightly and daily meditation in the Law. [10]

St Benedict and the liturgy

It was this stream of theology, I want to suggest, rather than any economic imperatives, that impelled the balance St Benedict's sets up in his Rule between giving his monk's opportunities within the monastery to do good works through their service of each other and their hospitality to guests on the one hand, and their liturgical service and prayers on the other.

In drawing out this broader interpretation of how ceaseless prayer can be realised, though, I don't want to suggest for a moment that liturgical and formal and informal non-liturgical prayer were unimportant to St Benedict: quite the contrary. In the next post I will look specifically at that side of the balance.

Notes

[1] Gregory W. Woolfenden, Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology (Liturgy, Worship and Society Series), Routlege, 2004, includes a useful compendium of these.

[2]  James McKinnon, The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper, University of California Press, 2000, pg 83.

[3] The Rule of St Augustine, ch 2.

[4] See in particular Lisa Kaaren Bailey, Christianity's Quiet Success The Eusebius Gallicanus Sermon Collection and the Power of the Church in Late Antique Gaul, University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.

[5] See the discussion by Fr Cassian Folsom on St Benedict's use of number symbolism: Praying without ceasing conferences

[6]   Sebastian P Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Cistercian Studies 101, 1987), pp21.  An online translation can be found here.

[7] Trans Luke Dysinger, Evagrius on the Psalms.

[8] Craig A. Blaising and Carmen S. Hardin, ed, Psalms 1 - 50, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol VII, pg 6.  For an online version, see Tertullian.

[9] William A. Curtis, Sacred Invocation: Origen on Prayer, available on Luke Dysinger website.

[10]  E.W. Watson and L. Pullan, trans,  Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 9. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1899.) Homily on Psalm 1.