The design of the Benedictine Office and Thursday Vespers, Part I

We are  a little over half way through Psalm 139, the third psalm of Thursday Vespers in the Benedictine Office, and I thought this might be a good point to pause briefly, and provide the first part of a series of posts that I plan to post weekly, looking at the reasons for the selection of these particular psalms for Thursday Vespers.

This little sub-series may be of interest to those interested in the spirituality of the Benedictine Office in particular, or Office history more generally, but if you are just interested in the individual psalms, feel free to skip past this quickly.

Just how the psalms fall out?

Before we can consider possible reasons for the allocation of particular psalms to particular hours and days in the Benedictine Office we need first to look at the question of whether they really were deliberately selected at all, or they just happened to land on particular days by virtue of the psalm sequences.

For the much of the last century, the consensus view has been that the allocation of psalms to particular days of the week in the Benedictine Office is 'just how they happen to fall out'.

The liturgists have argued that the Roman Office, which, it was thought, was used both by monks and the secular clergy, had a fixed weekly psalm cursus that predated St Benedict's version of the Office, with Psalms 1-108 essentially allocated to the morning hours, and Psalms 109 to 147 to the evenings.

St Benedict, they argued  simply made a few tweaks to this in order to shorten the day hours and provide more variety.  Consequently, the allocation of the psalms to Vespers each night is driven by purely mechanistic considerations.

There is now, I think, strong evidence that the liturgists were altogether wrong about the Roman Office's fixed psalm cursus predating the Benedictine.

In this post though, I want to start, for arguments sake, from the assumption that St Benedict's starting point was indeed the Roman psalm cursus as we know it (in its pre-1911 form), and demonstrate that the ordering is not simply 'how things happen to turn out'. 

The allocation of psalms in the early Roman Office

The early Roman Office as we know it had five psalms each day.  None of the psalms were divided, a principle maintained throughout the Office except in the case of Psalm 118, which was repeated each day from Prime to None.  

Roman Vespers was based around the sequence of psalms from 109 to 147, but skipped over four psalms allocated to other hours, viz Psalms 117 (Prime in the Roman Office, Lauds in the Benedictine), 118 (day hours), 133 (Compline), and 142 (Lauds).

The table below shows the Roman ordering of Vespers prior to 1911, and the post 1911 ordering (the later strictly for reference purposes).

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Roman 1911-1962	109 110 111 112 113	114 115 119 120 121	122 123 124 125 126	127 128 129 130 131	132  135/1  135/2  136 137	138/1  138/2  139 140 141	143/1 143/2 144/1 144/2 144/3
Roman Pre 1911		114 115 116 119 120	121 122 123 124 125	126 127 128 129 130	131 132 134 135 136	137 138 139 140 141	143 144 145 146 147

Shortening the Office?

If this was St Benedict's starting point, his first key decision, it is generally assumed, was to reduce the number of psalms from five to four each day.  

It is often claimed that this would have shortened the hour compared to its Roman counterpart, but in reality they would probably have been roughly the same length since the Benedictine Office includes a hymn, whereas the Roman didn't (until the tenth century).

St Benedict omitted the same psalms as the Roman from the 109-147 sequence, but in order to achieve a further reduction in the number of psalms said at the hour, St Benedict also transferred the first nine of the Gradual Psalms, Psalms 119-127, to Terce to None on weekdays.  

Why the Gradual Psalms?

One key question is, why move  the first nine Gradual Psalms out of Vespers?  

They do, it is true, follow on numerically from Psalm 118, which St Benedict spread over the Sunday and Monday day hours, but if St Benedict's aim was purely to make the day hours very short in order to accommodate the demands of farm work, as is often suggested, he could have made other choices, starting with Psalms 116 and 132, for example, the two of the shortest psalms of the psalter.  

St Bede, however, suggests that this decision has to do with St Benedict's humility theme in the Rule, and indeed, humility is, I think, one of the key themes driving St Benedict's design of his Office, a point I will talk more about in the next part of this series.

Dividing the longest psalms?

The excision of Psalms 119-127 leaves the hour two psalms short, as the following table illustrates, showing the sequence just run through in numerical order.  

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Early Roman	109 110 111 112 113	114 115 119 120 121	122 123 124 125 126	127 128 129 130 131	132, 135/1, 135/2, 136, 137	138/1, 138/2, 139, 140, 141	143/1 143/2 144/1 144/2 144/3
Four psalms, No divisions	109 110 111 112	113 114 115 116	128 129 130 131	132 134 135 136	137 138 139 140	141 143 144 145	146 147 [] []

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Benedictine actual order	109 110 111 112	113 114 115/116 128	129 130 131 132	134 135 136 137	138/1 138/2 139 140	141 143/1 143/2 144/1	144/2 145 146 147

In contrast to the Roman practice, St Benedict was quite willing to divide psalms in his Office, so the key question for Vespers would have been which ones to split in order to fill the missing slots.

At the other hours with divided psalms (Matins, Lauds and Prime), St Benedict simply divided  the longest psalms, thus helping to even out the length of the hours somewhat.  

The table below shows what would the Benedictine Vespers have looked like if St Benedict had simply divided the largest psalms. 

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Divide longest psalms	109 110 111 112	113 113 114 115	116 128 129 130	131 132 135 135	136 136 137 138	139 140 141 143	144 145 146 147

In fact though, the Benedictine psalm cursus looks quite different.

First, instead of treating Psalm 116 as a separate psalm, perhaps desirous of keeping the Gradual Psalms together (since 119 - 127 are said at Terce to None from Tuesday to Saturday each week), St Benedict combined Psalm 115 and 116 under one doxology, thus creating the need to divide three psalms, not two.

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

There is another oddity here -  it would have been straightforward enough to make Tuesday Vespers flow on directly from Tuesday None's Psalm 127, and start at Psalm 128, then consist of five psalms (perhaps making it technically four by combining two of the hours under one doxology) in order to have all of the Gradual Psalms said on that day.  

He could then have also divided the longest psalm of the hour to fill in the resulting gap, as the table below illustrates: 

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Graduals on Tues	109 110 111 112	113 113 114 115/116	128 129 130 131 [132]	134 135 135 136	137 138 138 139	140 141 143 144	144 145 146 147

The Benedictine psalm allocation

In fact though, rather than dividing the longest psalms of the hour, St Benedict divided the third, fourth and seventh longest psalms of the set, Psalms 138 (23 verses), 144 (22 verses) and 143 (18 verses) respectively. 

This means that instead of the Gradual Psalms being said in sequence, Psalm 128 is said essentially out of order from the Tuesday vertical Gradual sequence, at Monday Vespers, and the psalms allocated to their days also shifts in important ways, as the table below, showing the actual Benedictine Office psalm ordering illustrates: 

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Ben. actual order	109 110 111 112	113 114 115/116 128	129 130 131 132	134 135 136 137	138/1 138/2 139 140	141 143/1 143/2 144/1	144/2 145 146 147

In particular for our purposes, rather than Thursday Vespers starting with Psalm 137 as would have been the case if the longest psalms were divided, it starts at Psalm 138 and encompasses Psalm 140.

It also results in a quite uneven number of verses said each day at Vespers, as the table below illustrates, with Monday and Wednesdays being the longest, because they contain the two longest psalms, Psalms 113 and 135 respectively, each of which has 27 verses.   

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Verses	44	63	36	69	58	47	43

Conclusion: why engineer the Office?

The changes St Benedict made to a purely mechanistic allocation of the psalms, I hope to convince you over the course of this series, were quite deliberate.

The reasons for them, I want to suggest, can be divided into three broad categories: 

• a desire to give each hour in the Office a distinctive character, through use of particular themes and repeated words and images; 
• some particular thematic connections between St Benedict's Office and Rule, most particularly relating to his humility theme; and 
• themes that go to the very reasons for adopting a weekly psalter in the first place, related to the idea of a seven day cycle based around the days of creation and other cycles that the Fathers saw as flowing from that seven day template. 

You can find the next part in this series here.

Psalm 139 v 6: The cords that bind us into sin

Verse 6 of Psalm 139 tells that evil doers are doing their best to set up traps to stop us along the way.

Looking at the Latin

Phrase by phrase

Et funes extendérunt in láqueum: juxta iter scándalum posuérunt mihi.

And they have stretched out cords for a snare: by the wayside they have laid for me a stumbling block

Word by word: 

Et (and) funes (a line/cord) extendérunt (they have stretched) in láqueum (in a snare/trap): * juxta (near) iter (the way/path) scándalum (stumbling block/snare) posuérunt (they have set) mihi (for me).

The key vocabulary for the verse is:

funis, is, m., lit., a line, cord, rope,

rete is n a net

extendo, tendi, tentum, ere 3, to stretch out or forth; to extend, prolong, protract, continue;

laqueus, ei, m., a noose for capturing animals; a snare, trap

juxta +acc, near, close to, at hand; according to; adv., near, close to, by the side of.

iter, itineris, n., way, journey

scandalum, i, n. lit., a trap, snare, that which causes one to stumble, a stumbling-block.

pono, posui, itum, ere 3, to put, place, lay, set.

The difference in translations is that the Pian and Novo-Vulgate follow the Masoretic Text (and Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew) in suggesting a net rather than a cord or rope trap.

6	V	Et funes extendérunt in láqueum: juxta iter scándalum posuérunt mihi.
	OR	et funes extenderunt in laqueo pedibus meis iuxta iter scandalum posuerunt mihi
	Pian	Et funes extendunt ut rete, Iuxta viam tendiculas collocant mihi.
	NV	et funes extenderunt in rete, iuxta iter offendicula posuerunt mihi.
	JH	et funibus extenderunt rete: iuxta semitam oifendiculum posuerunt mihi.
	Sept	καὶ σχοινία διέτειναν παγίδας τοῖς ποσίν μου ἐχόμενα τρίβου σκάνδαλον ἔθεντό μοι διάψαλμα

The assorted English translations reflect the different text traditions on the particular method of hunting:

DR	And they have stretched out cords for a snare: they have laid for me a stumbling block by the wayside.
Brenton	and have stretched out ropes [for] snares for my feet; they set a stumbling-block for me near the path.
MD	And stretched a net to catch me: they placed a trap for me upon the way.
RSV	and with cords they have spread a net, by the wayside they have set snares for me.
Cover	and spread a net abroad with cords, yea, and set traps in my way.
Knox	what nets they spread to catch me, what traps they lay in my path!
Grail	have spread out lines in a net, set snares across my path.

Cords or nets?

St Augustine's commentary on the verse makes a big play on the importance of the word funis (cord), pointing to connections with other Scriptural verses:

What cords? The word is well known in holy Scripture, and elsewhere we find what cords signify. For each one is holden with the cords of his sins [Proverbs 5:22] says Scripture. And Esaias says openly, Woe to them that draw sin like a long rope [Isaiah 5:18]. 

And why is it called a cord? Because every sinner who perseveres in his sins, adds sin to sin; and when he ought by accusing his sins to amend, by defending he doubles what by confession he might have removed, and often seeks to fortify himself by other sins, on account of the sins he has already committed....

St Cassiodorus drew out one of the key implications of the image of the cord type of trap, namely that once tripped, it tightens around us:

The snare of a cord is so placed as always to draw its bonds tighter; its hold does not soften or slip, for it encloses trapped objects in knotted coils.  

St Robert Bellarmine, however, commented on both words in his discussion of the verse, offering this on the meaning of nets:

Now, the devil “hides his net” when he displays the advantage of any human act, and hides the evil of it; that is, when he causes man to look upon the utility or the pleasure of anything, without reflecting on the consequent sorrow and suffering sure to follow from it. Thus, he causes the adulterer to revel in the beauty of the object of his desire, and hides the heinousness of the sin from him. He makes the thief gloat over the stolen property, and keeps from his view his having lost the kingdom of heaven for it. He puts before the eyes of the ambitious the advantages of their preeminence, and conceals the danger of a fall from such a height. Finally, he never fails in bringing under our notice the pleasure of the transgression, while he studiously conceals the bitterness of the consequent punishment. 

Stay on the path of righteousness

Either way, the verse provides the key to avoiding such traps, for the traps do not extend over the path, but along side it, as St Augustine pointed out:

Beside the paths have they laid a stumbling-block for me: not in the paths, but, beside the paths. Your paths are the commandments of God. They have laid stumbling-blocks beside the paths; do not thou withdraw out of the paths, and you will not rush upon stumbling-blocks. Yet will I not that you should say, God should prevent them from laying stumbling-blocks beside my paths, and then they would not lay them. Nay, rather, God permitted them to lay stumbling-blocks beside your paths, that you should not leave the paths.

Vulgate	Douay-Rheims
In finem. Psalmus David.	Unto the end, a psalm of David.
1 Eripe me, Dómine, ab hómine malo: * a viro iníquo éripe me.	Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: rescue me from the unjust man.
2 Qui cogitavérunt iniquitátes in corde: * tota die constituébant prælia.	3 Who have devised iniquities in their hearts: all the day long they designed battles.
3 Acuérunt linguas suas sicut serpéntis: * venénum áspidum sub lábiis eórum.	4 They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent: the venom of asps is under their lips.
4 Custódi me, Dómine, de manu peccatóris: * et ab homínibus iníquis éripe me.	5 Keep me, O Lord, from the hand of the wicked: and from unjust men deliver me.
5 Qui cogitavérunt supplantáre gressus meos: * abscondérunt supérbi láqueum mihi:	Who have proposed to supplant my steps: 6 The proud have hidden a net for me.
6 Et funes extendérunt in láqueum: * juxta iter scándalum posuérunt mihi.	And they have stretched out cords for a snare: they have laid for me a stumbling block by the wayside.
7. Dixi Dómino : Deus meus es tu: * exáudi, Dómine, vocem deprecatiónis meæ.	7 I said to the Lord: You are my God: hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication.
8 Dómine, Dómine, virtus salútis meæ: * obumbrásti super caput meum in die belli.	8 O Lord, Lord, the strength of my salvation: you have overshadowed my head in the day of battle.
9 Ne tradas me, Dómine, a desidério meo peccatóri: * cogitavérunt contra me, ne derelínquas me, ne forte exalténtur.	9 Give me not up, O Lord, from my desire to the wicked: they have plotted against me; do not forsake me, lest they should triumph.
10 Caput circúitus eórum: * labor labiórum ipsórum opériet eos.	10 The head of them compassing me about: the labour of their lips shall overwhelm them.
11 Cadent super eos carbónes, in ignem dejícies eos: * in misériis non subsístent.	11 Burning coals shall fall upon them; you will cast them down into the fire: in miseries they shall not be able to stand.
12 Vir linguósus non dirigétur in terra: * virum injústum mala cápient in intéritu.	12 A man full of tongue shall not be established in the earth: evil shall catch the unjust man unto destruction.
13 Cognóvi quia fáciet Dóminus judícium ínopis: * et vindíctam páuperum.	13 I know that the Lord will do justice to the needy, and will revenge the poor.
14 Verúmtamen justi confitebúntur nómini tuo: * et habitábunt recti cum vultu tuo.	14 But as for the just, they shall give glory to your name: and the upright shall dwell with your countenance.

And for notes on the next verse of Psalm 139, please continue on here.