§ 81.
The time-table of a monastic day in church
and cloister must be reckoned with attention to the
fact that the day, between sunrise and sunset, was
divided, irrespective of the season, into twelve equal
parts. The hours in winter were thus some twenty
minutes shorter than in summer, and, with this in
view, a different arrangement was adopted during the
winter months, which began on Holy Cross day
(14 September) and lasted till Easter. Artificial light
was impossible in the cloister after sunset, and consequently
in winter the brethren went to bed earlier.
Their night was divided into two equal portions,
between which came the night-office of matins followed
by lauds. The rule of St Benedict contemplated an
undivided night, with matins as the first day-office,
said before daybreak; but the general practice followed
in all orders was to rise in the middle of the night
for matins and to return to the dorter afterwards.
At Durham the monks dressed by the light of cressets—bowls
filled with oil and floating wicks, and set in
hollows in square stone stands at either end of the
dorter. In most monasteries the brethren entered
and left the church in procession before and after
matins by the night-stair, and the time between
dressing and the signal to go to church was occupied
in private prayer. After preparatory psalms, the
service began with the invitatory, which included the
psalm
Venite exultemus. It was divided into nocturns,
each consisting of a group of psalms followed by three
lessons: on ordinary days matins consisted of a single
nocturn, but on most feast-days there were three.
Lauds followed: this service derived its name from
the three final psalms of the psalter, known from
their opening words,
Laudate Dominum, as the
laudes. The whole night-office was of considerable
length—equal, in fact, to that of the day-hours taken
together—and was further increased by the addition
of the office of our Lady and on certain days of
Placebo, or matins of the dead. When it was over,
the brethren returned to bed and rose, at daybreak
in winter, at sunrise in summer, for prime, when the
sub-prior unlocked the day-stair and the church was
entered by the ordinary doorway from the cloister.
