The Breviarium Monastium is only used by monks in the Order of St. Benedict. Priests and deacons prior to Vatican II prayed the Breviarum Romanum; this is because the Benedictine Divine Office would require you to wake up at midnight for Matins and go to sleep no earlier than after Compline at 9pm, which is basically an impossible prayer schedule to keep unless you’re retired or live in some kind of monastery or priory.
Also, to my knowledge, most traditionalist Catholics accept without quandary all the official pre-Vatican II alterations to prayer and liturgy. It’s exceedingly rare to find somebody that prays a pre-1570 Missal (mostly because they were printed in a Latin font type that is unreadable by today’s standards).
God bless!
Benedictines variously do Matins either anticipated the night before, or around 4-5 am, in my experience at several monasteries, including one which uses the post-Vatican II version of the traditional Benedictine Office.
Compline at the abbey I’m an oblate of, is at 7:45 pm, and Matins at 5 am, which allows a full 9 hours between compline and rising for Matins. I don’t understand where you get your notion that they cannot go to sleep any earlier than Compline at 9 pm when Compline’s exact time has never been mandated AFAIK. A wise abbot will ensure that his monks get enough balance between work, prayer, sleep and recreation.
It does puzzle me that the 1910 Divine Office reforms are accepted but any post-Vatican II versions are not; the 1910 reforms were pretty radical, and certainly not “organic” which is the main argument against the Post V-II reforms, that they aren’t “organic”. Monastic Schema B (post V-II) is much lighter than the traditional Benedictine schema but retains the tradition of doing the entire psalter in a week.
Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma does the pre-Vatican II Traditional Latin Mass and Divine Offices.
Their schedule has Matins at 5:15 am, and Compline at 8:25 pm.
I think only the Carthusians these days are the ones who get up at midnight for Matins. Barroux, also traditionalists Benedictines, do Matins at 3:30 am and Compline at 7:45 pm.
The thing with Benedictines is that there’s as much variation as there are abbeys, as abbeys retain a significant degree of independence. And as Oblates, we’re allowed to fit the Divine Office to the realities of daily life; I sincerely doubt that even praying the 1961 Breviary in full on a daily basis is within the reach of most busy laity with families and jobs/professions; even that Office has 9 psalms, and there’s Prime, Terce, Sext and None. Most will do either the diurnal Offices only, or Lauds, Vespers and Compline. I know it’s a struggle for me; in summer when I’m busier and try to get to work earlier so I can have more time in the evening, I switch to the current LOTH; otherwise I do Monastic schema B like at our abbey on a two-week schedule, doing Matins at 6 am and Lauds at 7 am. In summer I combine the Office of Readings into Matins+Lauds.
In St. Benedict’s time, Matins was timed so that immediately after, at sunrise Lauds would be chanted. That meant in summer, a very short interval between the two Offices, and abbreviated readings at Matins (patristic second reading replaced by a short reading and responsory). Things were timed around the sun, not a clock.
In short the Benedictine day was never written in stone throughout the Benedictine world, each abbey had authority over organizing its own day and psalter.
