You may find some history of the Liturgy of the Hours schemas interesting:
- 1536 - Quiñonez
- 1568 - Pius V
- 1736 - Paris
- 1911 - Pius X
gregorianbooks.com/gregorian/www/www.kellerbook.com/Foursch.htm
That site is a great resource for students of the LOTH and its history. I also recommend the book “From Breviary to Liturgy of the Hours” by Stanislaus Campbell. While I don’t agree with his conclusions, the book is a fascinating if somewhat dry read on how the LOTH came about. The process of reform to make it more convivial for secular clergy isn’t something new, and the Pius X psalter was the first radical attempt at it. His psalter took the weekly psalmody down from the 250 psalms or so of the Pius V psalter (and indeed also the monastic psalter) to a much more reasonable, but still too much, 150 psalms.
The rubrical changes from Pius X to LOTH should also not be ignored for the many important points:
- The until then licit practice of saying the entire breviary in one sitting was ended: the hours had to be said at their appropriate times;
- The use of the Gradual Psalms at the optional minor hours has a strong monastic foundation where these psalms would be said from memory at the little hours by monks working in the fields who couldn’t make it back to the chapel for recitation in choir;
- The practice I mentioned of saying the same three psalms every night at Compline, from memory, also having deep roots in monastic tradition;
- The longer readings at the Office of Readings again going back to the Rule of St. Benedict
- The traditional placement of many of the psalms (e.g. 62, 109, etc.)
- The ability to use the OOR as Vigils with the canticles for the last Nocturne
- The use of the Monastic cursus for all of the Vespers psalms of Week 4 and most of Week 3
There is much richness of tradition in the LOTH, in spite of what many here think. It was designed for secular life (active religious, clergy and indeed laymen and women), and does a good job of that. For some who want more, there is of course the optional minor hours, and now appropriate antiphonaries to say all of the daytime hours in Gregorian chant.
I, as an oblate, find that the LOTH is most appropriate for my daily liturgical life as so many elements in it embrace monastic tradition and are almost lifted straight from the Rule of Saint Benedict. I know many feel that no less than 150 psalms should be said in a week, as the Rule of Saint Benedict specifies that… but it should be noted, it does so for monks. Saint Benedict never wrote that part of the Rule for secular clergy.
Moreover, the true tradition here is not the number of psalms, but the fact that almost all of the psalter be said in a defined time period. To be truly “traditional” we’d have do like the desert fathers did, and say the entire psalter in a day. I find for seculars the 4-week division and the options allowed most convivial. I avail myself of the option to do the two minor hours in the winter season when I’m less active, I use the Vigils canticles on Sundays and solemnities, and I use the same psalms at Compline every night. However even if in winter I have to go out, and can’t say the optional minor hours, I won’t miss any psalms over 4 weeks unlike any of the other schemas.
