Chapter III — On the number and definition of the Canonical Hours

I. Question I. How many are the Canonical Hours? Answer. Some contend that there are eight, because they distinguish Lauds from Matins; but the common opinion restricts them to seven, and they are: Matins with Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Fitting reasons are assigned for this number seven. David, Psalm 118, says: Seven times a day I have given praise to thee. Likewise there are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and seven petitions of the Lord's prayer, seven mortal sins, seven demons, and seven wickednesses, seven trumpets by whose sound the city of Jericho fell, seven candlesticks of the Church, which foreshadow the seven Canonical Hours. Several other figures are commonly adduced, which seem in some way to indicate such seven Canonical Hours.

II. Question II. What is the definition of the Canonical Hours? Answer. The divine office is a certain manner of publicly praising God, with mind and voice together, instituted by the authority of the Prelates of the Church. It is called a certain manner, because it is prescribed by the Church with designated psalms, hymns, and prayers. There is added publicly, since the divine office is paid publicly, in the name of the whole Church, for the common good, by public ministers. There is added of praising and beseeching God, which shows that the divine office is to be paid to God alone, since in every office, whether of the Saints, or of the season, or for the dead, God is praised. The last words declare that the divine office must be recited with mind and voice together, because the Church has prescribed this form in several Councils.

IV. Question IV. What are the major and minor parts of the divine office, and at what time were they anciently celebrated? Answer. The major parts are Nocturns, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. The minor: psalms, hymns, lessons, canticles, antiphons, responsories, chapters, collects. As to the time, anciently among the Jews time was divided into twelve nocturnal and as many diurnal hours. The nocturnal hours were divided into four watches, of which the first began at sunset and ended at the third hour of the night; the second ran from the third to the sixth; the third flowed from the sixth into the ninth; the fourth, finally, which was properly called the morning watch, began at the ninth hour and ended at the twelfth. Of these watches the Evangelists make mention. To the four nocturnal watches correspond four hours of the day, namely the third, sixth, ninth, and the evening.

V. Question V. Is it a sin to separate Matins from Lauds? Answer. This separation includes no sin, but is altogether licit: since from the earliest institution this separation was always permitted, and no reason occurs why it should not be permitted, especially outside choir. Nay, it is better that those who recite the nocturnal Hours at the beginning of the night, or toward evening, defer the recitation of Lauds until the dawn of the following day.

of dawn, that the hymns may be recited at the opportune time according to their meaning. The method must nevertheless be observed in this separation, namely that the Collect be recited at the end of the Nocturns.

VI. Question VI. Is the custom of reciting the Canonical Hours in choir ancient? Answer. By the name of ecclesiastical choir is understood the assembly of Religious who come together to pour out prayers to God according to the form prescribed by the Church. That this manner of praying took its origin from the Apostles themselves is certain, the substance of the matter being regarded. Of the first Christians it is read, Acts 1: They were persevering with one mind in prayer.

VII. The Waldensians, the Wycliffites, and other more recent Heretics have raved against this rite of the Church, and have carped at ecclesiastical chant. But the holy Scriptures stop their mouths. For in Moses' time the custom prevailed of singing sacred canticles. The Davidic psalms were recited with the harp and with song. Chrysostom, homily 83 on Matthew, says of Christ the Lord: He sang a hymn, that we too might do likewise. Isidore, Basil, and the other Fathers describe the usefulness of this chant.

VIII. Question VII. Are musical instruments to be used in ecclesiastical chant? Answer. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 91, art. 2, ad 4, answers in these words: As the Philosopher says in the eighth book of the Politics, neither pipes are to be brought in for teaching, nor any other artificial instrument, such as a harp, or anything else of that kind; but whatever things make good hearers. For musical instruments of this kind move the soul more to delight than they form within it a good disposition. But in the Old Testament there was a use of such instruments, both because the people were more hard and carnal, whence they had to be roused by instruments of this kind, just as by earthly promises; and also because instruments of this kind, being corporeal, figured something. Cajetan observes, in his commentary on this passage, that in St. Thomas's time the use of organs did not prevail in the Church, just as the Roman Church did not use organs before the supreme Pontiff. But Cajetan adds this: And if we have meditated more attentively the reason brought forward in the text from the eighth book of the Politics, it will appear that in the ecclesiastical office, to which we come together for the sake of receiving divine interior discipline, according to that word, "The sacrifice of praise shall honor me, and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God," musical instruments are not to be admitted. And they are to be excluded all the more, in that the interior divine discipline is more excellent than all human disciplines that reject instruments of this kind. And although this be true, speaking of itself, yet the now widespread custom of organs can, per accidens, be tolerated, on account of the excessive alienation of men from divine worship, that being thus enticed at least they may attend the divine offices.

IX. The custom, now universally introduced, renders the use of organs and of musical chant licit, provided such chant be of a kind by which the hearers can perceive, beyond the sound of the voice, the divine praises that are being recited. Fr. Suárez teaches that harmonic concert alone sometimes excites more devotion than the psalms and hymns themselves. Sensible things, he says, move us more. Assuredly the senses are moved more, and more carnal pleasure is brought about. But that musical instruments excite the mind and soul to God more efficaciously than the psalms dictated by the breath of God, seems false to me. Nor do I dare to approve musical instruments. Benedict XIV, happily reigning, has prohibited many things. What if effeminate men, exercising a theatrical profession, should pass from the theaters to singing in the Churches? What if they should sing the divine psalms and hymns in theatrical fashion, with gesture and modulation? What then? Will you dare to disapprove such a custom? Or shall I approve it? Far from it. I shall rather bewail with bitter tears what I cannot abrogate. Hear what Cajetan writes on this matter, in the Summa, under the word Organ: Nor are they excused by the fact that sound is abstracted from all matter, and any melody of sound can be applied to sacred words: both because, according to the truth of the matter, these sounds are made to be accommodated to the delight of the hearers, who know them only as the sounds of profane or shameful words — a sign of which is that hearers, from that sound, are aroused to those profane or shameful things, as experience attests, so that there is no room for denial; and also because chant too is abstracted from all matter, and yet the Church has forbidden profane chants in the Church, such as theatrical chants, as is plain from distinction 92, chapter "Cantantes." Remember here the apostolic sentence: Be not deceived; God is not mocked, nor deceived. And there are involved in the same crime not only those who play, but those who hire, and consent to those who play these things, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled: They that hated thee have gloried in the midst of thy solemnity.

X. As often as more evil than good follows in the exercise of any art, that art must be taken away, teach Plato, St. Thomas, and common sense itself. Let us hear St. Augustine, who, book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 33, writes this: The pleasures of the ears had more tenaciously entangled and subjugated me. But thou didst loosen and free me. Now in the sounds which thy words animate, when they are sung with a sweet and skillful voice, I confess I rest a little — not indeed that I remain there, but that I rise, when I wish ... But the delight of my flesh, to which the mind ought not to be given over to be enervated, often deceives me, when the sense of feeling does not so accompany reason as to follow it patiently; but, because for its sake it deserved to be admitted, it strives even to run ahead and to lead. Thus in these things I sin without perceiving it, and afterward I perceive it. But sometimes, guarding too immoderately against this very deception, I err with too much severity — so much so, at times, that I would wish all the melody of the sweet chants with which the Davidic Psalter is commonly sung to be removed from my ears, and that of the Church itself; and it seems safer to me what I remember was often told me of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm sound it with so slight an inflection of voice that he was nearer to one pronouncing than to one singing. Nevertheless, when I remember the tears I shed at the chants of thy Church in the first days of my recovered faith, and now, when I am moved not by the chant, but by the things that are chanted, when they are chanted with a clear voice and the most fitting modulation, I again acknowledge the great usefulness of this institution. Thus I waver between the danger of pleasure and the experience of its wholesomeness, and I am led rather — not indeed pronouncing an irrevocable sentence — to approve the custom of singing in the Church, that through the delights of the ears a weaker soul may rise to an affection of piety. Yet when it happens to me that the chant moves me more than the thing that is sung, I confess that I sin penally; and then I would rather not hear the singer.

XI. Fr. Suárez, book 4, chapter 8, number 2, answers that the sin which Augustine recognized in himself was either penal or venial. Be it either. What follows from this? Augustine's doctrine always stands, namely, that that chant which by its immoderate harmony and inflection of voice impedes the perception of the sense of the words and of the divine praises is illicit. Read more in Tome 2 on the Decalogue, book 2, dissertation 2, chapter 4.

XII. The Fathers, the Councils, and the graver Theologians disapprove and detest that the divine praises be celebrated with theatrical chant by effeminate men. Whether the musical concerts with which the greater Solemnities are today commonly celebrated are just so many profanations of temples and treadings-down of divine worship, let others judge. To this end men gather, and the vainest women, adorned with the enticements and illusions of the world and of the devil, that they may see and be seen, and they show no less impudence than if they were sitting in a theater. Who will purge from crime this depraved abuse and sacrilegious corruption?

XIII. There must be kept, then, an ecclesiastical chant grave and simple, and a use of organs approved by the custom of the Church; but measure and manner must be applied. A general rule cannot be prescribed. Those who preside over Churches and choirs will render an account to God, unless they hinder, so far as lies in their power, their profanation.