Roman Rite Vigil The every-night monastic
canonical hour that later became known as matins was at first called a vigil, from
Latin vigilia. For soldiers, this word meant a three-hour period of being on the watch during the night. Even for civilians, night was commonly spoken of as divided into four such watches: the Gospels use the term when recounting how, at about "the fourth watch of the night", Jesus came to his disciples who in their boat were struggling to make headway against the wind, and one of the
Psalms says to the Lord: "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." The sixth-century
Rule of Saint Benedict uses the term
vigiliae ("vigils") fifteen times to speak of these celebrations, accompanying it four times with the adjective
nocturnae ("nocturnal") and once with the words
septem noctium ("of the seven nights", i.e., the nights of the week). English versions of this document often obscure its use of the term vigil, translating it as "Night Hour" or "Night Office". Thus Leonard J. Doyle's English version uses "Night Office" to represent indifferently the unaccompanied noun
vigilia ("vigil"), the phrase
nocturna vigilia ("nightly vigil"), and the phrases
nocturna hora ("night hour) and
nocturna laus ("nocturnal praise"). The practice of rising for prayer in the middle of the night is as old as the Church.
Tertullian () speaks of the "nocturnal convocations" (
nocturnae convocationes) of Christians and their "absence all the night long at the paschal solemnities" (
sollemnibus Paschae abnoctantes)
Cyprian ( – 258) also speaks of praying at night, but not of doing so as a group: "Let there be no failure of prayers in the hours of night — no idle and reckless waste of the occasions of prayer" (
nulla sint horis nocturnis precum damna, nulla orationum pigra et ignava dispendia). The
Apostolic Tradition speaks of prayer at midnight and again at cockcrow, but seemingly as private, not communal, prayer. At an earlier date,
Pliny the Younger reported in about 112 that Christians gathered on a certain day before light, sang hymns to Christ as to a god and shared a meal. The solemn celebration of vigils in the churches of
Jerusalem in the early 380s is described in the
Peregrinatio Aetheriae. Prayer at midnight and at cockcrow was associated with passages in the
Gospel of Matthew and the
Gospel of Mark. On the basis of the
Gospel of Luke, too, prayer at any time of the night was seen as having eschatological significance. The quotation from Tertullian above refers to the all-night vigil liturgy held at Easter. A similar liturgy came to be held in the night that led to any Sunday. By the fourth century this Sunday vigil had become a daily observance, but no longer lasted throughout the night. What had been an all-night vigil became a liturgy only from cockcrow to before dawn. Saint Benedict wrote about it as beginning at about 2 in the morning ("the eighth hour of the night") and ending in winter well before dawn (leaving an interval in which the monks were to devote themselves to study or meditation), but having to be curtailed in summer in order to celebrate lauds at daybreak.
Matins The word
matins is derived from the
Latin adjective , meaning 'of or belonging to the morning'. It was at first applied to the psalms recited at dawn, but later became attached to the prayer originally offered, according to the fourth-century
Apostolic Constitutions, at cockcrow and, according to the sixth-century
Rule of Saint Benedict, at could be calculated to be the eighth hour of the night (the hour that began at about 2 a.m.). Between the vigil office and the dawn office in the long winter nights there was an interval, which "should be spent in study by those [monks] who need a better knowledge of the Psalter or the lessons"; in the summer nights the interval was short, only enough for the monks to "go out for the necessities of nature". The vigil office was also shortened in the summer months by replacing readings with a passage of scripture recited by heart, but keeping the same number of psalms. Both in summer and in winter the vigil office was longer on Sunday than on other days, with more reading and the recitation of canticles in addition to the psalms. Outside monasteries few rose at night to pray. The canonical hour of the vigil was said in the morning, followed immediately by lauds, and the name of "matins" became attached to the lengthier part of what was recited at that time of the day, while the name of "lauds", a name originally describing only the three Psalms 148−150 recited every day at the end of the dawn office (until excised in the 1911
reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X; see
Lauds), was applied to the whole of that office, substituting for the lost name of "matins" or variants such as
laudes matutinae (morning praises) and
matutini hymni (morning hymns). An early instance of the application of the named "matins" to the vigil office is that of the
Council of Tours in 567, which spoke of
ad matutinum sex antiphonae. The
Rule of Saint Benedict clearly distinguished matins as the nighttime hour, to which he applied
Psalm 118/119:62, "At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules". The word
vigil also took on a different meaning: not only a prayerful night watch before a religious feast, but the day before a feast.
Monastic matins The canonical hour began with the
versicle "Lord, open our lips: And we shall praise your name" (the latter said three times) followed by
Psalm 3 and
Psalm 94/95 (the
invitatory). The invitatory was to be recited slowly out of consideration for any late-arriving monk, since anyone appearing after its conclusion was punished by having to stand in a place apart. After this a hymn was sung. Next came two sets of six psalms followed by readings. (Such sets would later be called
nocturns.) The first set was of six psalms followed by three readings from the
Old or
New Testaments or from
Church Fathers. Each reading was followed by a
responsory. The second set of six psalms was followed by a passage from the
Apostle Paul recited by heart and by some prayers. The Night Office then concluded with a versicle and a litany that began with
Kyrie eleison. Since summer nights are shorter, from Easter to October a single passage from the Old Testament, recited by heart, took the place of the three readings used during the rest of the year. On Sundays, the office was longer, and therefore began a little earlier. Each set of six psalms was followed by four readings instead of three after the first set and a single recitation by heart after the second set. Then three
canticles taken from Old Testament books other than the Psalms were recited, followed by four readings from the New Testament, the singing of the
Te Deum, and a reading by the abbot from the Gospels, after which another hymn was sung.
Roman Breviary matins In the
Roman Breviary, use of which was made obligatory throughout the
Latin Church (with exceptions for forms of the
Liturgy of the Hours that could show they had been in continuous use for at least two hundred years) by Pope Pius V in 1568, matins and lauds were seen as a single canonical hour, with lauds as an appendage to matins. Its matins began, as in the monastic matins, with versicles and the
invitatory Psalm 94 (Psalm 95 in the Masoretic text) chanted or recited in the responsorial form, that is to say, by one or more
cantors singing one verse, which the
choir repeated as a response to the successive verses sung by the cantors. A
hymn was then sung. After that introduction, Sunday matins had three sections ("
nocturns"), the first with 12 psalms and 3 very short scriptural readings; the second with 3 psalms and 3 equally short
patristic readings; and the third with 3 psalms and 3 short extracts from a homily. Matins of feasts of
double or semidouble rank had 3 nocturns, each with 3 psalms and 3 readings. On a feast of simple rank, a
feria or a vigil day, matins had 12 psalms and 3 readings with no division into nocturns. The psalms used at matins in the Roman Breviary from Sunday to Saturday were Psalms 1−108/109 in consecutive order, omitting a few that were reserved for other canonical hours: Psalms 4, 5, 21/22−25/26, 41/42, 50/51, 53/54, 62/63, 66/67, 89/90−92/93. The consecutive order was not observed for the invitatory psalms, recited every day, and in the matins of feasts. Each reading was followed by a
responsory, except the last one, when this was followed by the
Te Deum.
20th-century changes Matins underwent profound changes in the 20th century. The first of these changes was the
reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X in 1911, resulting in what
Pope Paul VI called "a new Breviary". The reservation of Psalms 1-108/109 to matins and the consecutive order within that group were abandoned, and, apart from the invitatory psalm, which continued in its place at matins every day, no psalm was ordinarily repeated within the same week. To facilitate an even distribution among the days of the week, the longer psalms were divided into shorter portions, as only the very long Psalm 118/119 had been previously. Matins no longer had 18 psalms on Sundays, 12 on ordinary days and 9 on the more important feasts: on every day it had 9 psalms, either distributed among three nocturns or recited all together, maintaining the distinction between celebrations as three nocturns with nine readings (including Sundays) and those arranged as a single nocturn with only three readings. The
Second Vatican Council's
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy dealt in some detail with the Divine Office, requesting that "the hour known as Matins" should become an office with fewer psalms and longer readings, suitable for nocturnal praise in a communal setting and for use at any time of the day in other cases. Subsequently in 1970,
Pope Paul VI published a revised form of the
Liturgy of the Hours, in which the psalms were arranged in a four-week instead of a one-week cycle, but the variety of other texts was greatly increased, in particular the scriptural and patristic readings, while the hagiographical readings were purged of non-historical legendary content. Matins was then given the name of "Office of Readings"
(Officium lectionis) and was declared appropriate for celebrating at any hour, while preserving its nocturnal character for those who wished to celebrate a vigil. For that purpose alternative hymns are provided and an appendix contains material, in particular canticles and readings from the Gospels, to facilitate celebration of a vigil. The Catholic Church has thus restored to the word vigil the meaning it had in early Christianity. Pope John XIII's
Code of Rubrics still used the word vigil to mean the day before a feast, but recognized the quite different character of the
Easter Vigil, which, "since it is not a liturgical day, is celebrated in its own way, as a night watch". The Roman liturgy now uses the term vigil either in this sense of "a night watch" or with regard to a
Mass celebrated in the evening before a feast, not before the hour of First Vespers. The psalmody of the Office of Readings consists of three psalms or portions of psalms, each with its own antiphon. These are followed by two extended readings with their responsories, the first from the
Bible (but not from the Gospels), and the second being patristic, hagiographical, or magisterial. A Gospel reading may optionally be added, preceded by vigil canticles, in order to celebrate a vigil. These are given in an appendix of the book of the
Liturgy of the Hours. To those who find it seriously difficult, because of their advanced age or for reasons peculiar to them, to observe the revised Liturgy of the Hours, Pope Paul VI gave permission to keep using the previous Roman Breviary either in whole or in part. This is done by
traditionalist Catholic communities, such as the
Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the
Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.
Non-Roman Western Rites In the office of the Church of Jerusalem, of which the pilgrim
Ætheria gives us a description, the vigils on Sundays terminated with the solemn reading of the
Gospel, in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This practice of reading the Gospel has been preserved in the
Benedictine liturgy. In the Tridentine
Roman Liturgy this custom, so ancient and so solemn, was no longer represented but by the
Homily; The
Ambrosian Liturgy, better perhaps than any other, preserved traces of the great vigils or
pannychides, with their complex and varied display of processions, psalmodies, etc. The same liturgy also preserved vigils of long psalmody. This nocturnal office adapted itself at a later period to a more modern form, approaching more and more closely to the Roman liturgy. Here too were found the three nocturns, with
Antiphon, psalms, lessons, and responses, the ordinary elements of the Roman matins, and with a few special features quite Ambrosian. Its structure is similar to that of the Roman Liturgy of the Hours, with variations such as having on Sundays three canticles, on Saturdays a canticle and two psalms, in place of the three psalms of the other days in the Ambrosian Rite and of every day in the
Roman Rite. In the
Mozarabic liturgy, on the contrary, Matins is a system of antiphons, collects, and versicles which make them quite a departure from the Roman system. ==Lutheran Churches==