IV.2.3
DAILY ROUTINE
The monks' daily life was divided to allow some four hours
for common liturgical prayer and chant (opus dei), some
four additional hours for meditative reading or private
prayer (lectio divina), and another four to six hours for
manual occupations (opus manuum).[94]
OPUS DEI
The noblest of the liturgical occupations was the Work of
God, "over which nothing must take precedence" (Ergo
nihil operi Dei praeponatur).[95]
This began at two o'clock
in the morning, when, after seven hours' sleep, the brothers
rose from their beds to celebrate what to St. Benedict was
known as the Nocturne (to later monasticism as Matins).
In the course of the day that followed they attended seven
additional services: Lauds (called by St. Benedict Matutinas),
held at the break of dawn; four shorter ones—Prime,
Terce, Sext, and None[96]
—held at the first, third, sixth,
and ninth hours of the day; Vespers at sunset; and, on
the advent of darkness a last one, Compline.
Generally, these services began with an invitatory and a
hymn, followed by three to six psalms or canticles, three to
four readings from the Gospel, a responsory, and on
Sundays and feast days, a mass.
The central and longest phase of these services was the
chanting of the psalms. St. Benedict devoted no less than
nine chapters of his Rule to the order and manner in which
they were to be sung throughout the year.[97]
He makes allowance
for changes, provided "that the psalter with its full
hundred and fifty psalms be chanted every week and begun
afresh every Sunday at Matins."[98]
He makes clear on
which occasion the psalter should be sung "straight
through" (in directum) and on which occasion "with
antiphons" (cum antiphonis).[99]
The structure of the Hebrew
psalms renders it probable that the division of the religious
congregation into choirs singing separate parts in alternation
may have originated in the ancient Jewish Church. In
the Eastern Church antiphonal song was introduced by
Ignatius Bishop of Antioch (d. 115). In the West it was not
practiced prior to St. Ambrose (d. 379). Firmly established
in the ecclesiastical liturgy by Pope Gregory the Great
(d. 604), by the ninth century antiphonal singing had
developed into an elaborate sequence of responses which
soloists sang in alternation with various other groups of
singers under the guidance of a conductor. The performance
of this art was held in such high esteem that on the
days of the great feasts, visiting bishops did not hesitate to
join the rows of chanting monks to sing under the direction
of their former teachers.[100]
The supervision of this important
phase of the divine service was sometimes the
office of the cantor, at other times that of the master of the
library and scriptorium (armarius).[101]
In his commentary on
chapter 8 of the Rule of St. Benedict, Hildemar lists those
who perform specific functions in the chanting of the psalms:
the cantor, the praecentor, the succentor, and the concentor.
The cantor is a soloist "who modulates his voice" (vocem
modelatur in cantu), the praecentor "opens the song"
(vocem praemittit in cantu), the succentor "responds"
(subsequenter canendo respondet), and the concentor is the
one who "harmonizes" (consonat).[102]
The very existence
of these names is evidence of the extent to which the various
phases of the antiphonal chant had around 845 already been
delegated to specialists.
LECTIO DIVINA
The Rule allows for a long period of meditative reading and
prayer, that is, for the furthering of the spiritual well-being
of the individual rather than for the promotion of his intellectual
powers. It involved the reading of the scriptures,
early monastic literature, and the writings of the Church
Fathers. Monks with superior intellectual capacities could
devote this time to the copying of manuscripts and to their
own creative writing. Chapter 48 of the Rule states that
"one or two senior monks should be deputed to go round
the monastery at the times when the brethren are occupied
in reading, to see that there be no slothful brother who
spends his time in idleness or gossip and neglects the reading."[103]
The same chapter recommends that some kind of
manual labor be given to those who cannot read.
When Abbot Ratger of Fulda, in the heat of an ambitious
building program that fatigued the monks beyond endurance,
shortened the time for the lectio divina, the brothers
made this the subject of a complaint to Emperor Charlemagne.[104]
Initially rejected, eventually they secured the
dismissal of their abbot.[105]
OPUS MANUUM
Chapters 41[106]
and 48[107]
of the Rule speak clearly of monks
working in the fields. But the fact that the first synod of
Aachen found it necessary to admonish the brothers not to
murmur, "if the necessity arises to help in gathering the
harvest or in other chores of this kind,"[108]
implies that to
many, labor in the fields had become a task quite out of the
ordinary. The brothers' opus manuum, in fact was not
primarily work of this nature. Most of the regular and
heavy agricultural work was performed by serfs or coloni,
and the monks' manual labor was generally restricted to
tasks that could be performed within the cloisters or the
buildings directly connected with them: cooking, baking,
serving meals, sweeping the claustral buildings, and washing
and mending clothes. Those skilled in the arts and crafts
could spend the time allotted for manual labor in the nobler
pursuits of carving ivories, painting frescoes, illuminating
books, or making sacred vessels and ornaments.
It is likely that in addition to his regular chores, every
healthy monk, for part of his lifetime at least, participated
in the work of building and repairing the buildings in which
he worshiped and lived. At Fulda the number of hours
allocated to construction was so exorbitant that, as just
mentioned, the monks turned to the Emperor for redress.
They complained that the time given to building interfered
with their ancient rights to work "in the bakehouse,
the garden, the brewhouse, the kitchen, and the fields."[109]
The synod of 816 reaffirmed these rights, and prescribed
in addition that the monks wash their own clothes.[110]
END PART IV.2
