When were the Canonical Hours prayed before modern clocks?

[Brandon_Cal]

There are a host of Catholic websites out there that explain (very briefly) the history of the Liturgy of the Hours. Many of these tell us that from the Middle Ages until the invention of the clock, the hours were based on daylight hours rather than discreetly measured hours as we understand them today. This was done on the Roman system of accounting for time: There are 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. It stands to reason then that there would only be two days out of the year for which there were 12 actual hours of daylight and 12 actualhours of night. During the winter daylight hours would be shorter than night hours and the opposite would be true during the summer (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere).

This is all fine and dandy except when these same websites go on to tell us the usual time for the praying of particular hours. Lauds is prayed at dawn (and completed before sunrise). Vespers is completed before sunset. Sounds about right. Prime, however is said to start at “6:00AM”; Terce, “9:00AM”; Sext at “12:00PM”, etc. For an example of such a website refer to “Fish Eaters: Canonical Hours”.

I have two questions:

1. If the “First Hour”, “Third Hour”, “Sixth Hour”, etc. are reckoned based on their relative position in the total duration of daylight hours how can such websites as Fish Eaters equate the canonical hours to the static 60-minute-interval hours that we’re so accustomed to?

I’m assuming that this convention of setting Prime at 6AM, Terce at 9AM, etc. to be a shorthand notation rather than the actual times of day a Catholic in the Middle Ages would have prayed those hours, otherwise a Catholic during the Middle Ages would’ve had to oftentimes pray Lauds after Prime (for example, today the sun rose in Rome at 6:52 AM).

So how exactly did the Church determine when to pray which hour? I suspect it was a simple as looking at the position of the sun relative to its meridian: The sun just rose over the horizon? It’s Prime. The sun is halfway between the horizon and the meridian? It’s Terce. The sun is directly overhead at its meridian? It’s Sext. etc. Is this understanding correct?

1. Where does this leave folks who were praying the Divine Office at the northern latitudes, where daylight hours can get as short as 4 hours!? For example: On the winter solstice the sun rises on Trondheim, Norway at 10:02AM and sets at 2:32PM! Did Norwegian Christians actually pray Prime at 10AM? Vespers at 2:30PM? I did the math quickly and this leaves enough time for all minor hours assuming you pray them roughly one actual hour apart. How did monks, nuns, and priests ever have enough time during the daylight to get anything done assuming they were nearly constantly praying?

 

[Ignatius]

I’m not sure, but wasn’t sunrise the first hour and then, using a sun dial, approximately every three hours thereafter? I don’t know how they did the Matins and Compline which would have been in the dark.

 

[captainrick]

Accurate sundials have been in use for thousands of years. Egyptians used water clocks as long ago as 1000 B.C. What Christians used, I don’t know, but the technology did exist.

 

[OraLabora]

There are a host of Catholic websites out there that explain (very briefly) the history of the Liturgy of the Hours. Many of these tell us that from the Middle Ages until the invention of the clock, the hours were based on daylight hours rather than discreetly measured hours as we understand them today. This was done on the Roman system of accounting for time: There are 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. It stands to reason then that there would only be two days out of the year for which there were 12 actual hours of daylight and 12 actualhours of night. During the winter daylight hours would be shorter than night hours and the opposite would be true during the summer (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere).

This is all fine and dandy except when these same websites go on to tell us the usual time for the praying of particular hours. Lauds is prayed at dawn (and completed before sunrise). Vespers is completed before sunset. Sounds about right. Prime, however is said to start at “6:00AM”; Terce, “9:00AM”; Sext at “12:00PM”, etc. For an example of such a website refer to “Fish Eaters: Canonical Hours”.

I have two questions:

1. If the “First Hour”, “Third Hour”, “Sixth Hour”, etc. are reckoned based on their relative position in the total duration of daylight hours how can such websites as Fish Eaters equate the canonical hours to the static 60-minute-interval hours that we’re so accustomed to?

I’m assuming that this convention of setting Prime at 6AM, Terce at 9AM, etc. to be a shorthand notation rather than the actual times of day a Catholic in the Middle Ages would have prayed those hours, otherwise a Catholic during the Middle Ages would’ve had to oftentimes pray Lauds after Prime (for example, today the sun rose in Rome at 6:52 AM).

So how exactly did the Church determine when to pray which hour? I suspect it was a simple as looking at the position of the sun relative to its meridian: The sun just rose over the horizon? It’s Prime. The sun is halfway between the horizon and the meridian? It’s Terce. The sun is directly overhead at its meridian? It’s Sext. etc. Is this understanding correct?

1. Where does this leave folks who were praying the Divine Office at the northern latitudes, where daylight hours can get as short as 4 hours!? For example: On the winter solstice the sun rises on Trondheim, Norway at 10:02AM and sets at 2:32PM! Did Norwegian Christians actually pray Prime at 10AM? Vespers at 2:30PM? I did the math quickly and this leaves enough time for all minor hours assuming you pray them roughly one actual hour apart. How did monks, nuns, and priests ever have enough time during the daylight to get anything done assuming they were nearly constantly praying?

The hours were somewhat elastic. Note that Tierce, Sext and None are very short hours, had (from Tuesday to Friday) invariable psalms, and thus were often prayed from memory in the fields or at work rather than in choir, especially if the work site was some distance from the monastery (Prime was also usually attached to the daily chapter meeting). Recited quickly, they’d barely take 5 minutes each. It was and is fairly common to also combine hours/the Mass. Sometimes two minor hours are combined; sometimes Tierce is combined with the Mass, however in early monastic days (around the time of St. Benedict), daily celebration of the Mass was somewhat rare. The Rule basically says nothing about the Mass other than talking about the equality of brothers except for service at the altar; yet the Divine Office is laid out in great detail.

The Rule did make some allowances for the seasons. In summer, with the shorter nights, the lessons of Vigils were shorter and Lauds and Vigils were said essentially back-to-back except for a short pause between the two for the “necessities of nature” (very practical guy, St. Benedict )

Eventually though monks divided into choir monks and lay brothers especially as the singing of the Office got more and more elaborate with antiphons set to complex chants, hymns, etc; the lay brothers were charged with the physical work, the choir monks with the work in choir. This situation was reversed after Vatican II and remaining lay brothers received as fully professed monks as it was never the intention of the founder, St Benedict, to have two classes of monks (one of the reasons that canonically, Benedictines now are only held to a two-week division of the psalter though many still use a one-week schema).

Lay brothers started to appear around the 10th century I believe; also monks hired laymen for some work, abbeys tended to be quite wealthy in those days (Benedictines do not make a vow of poverty; instead the rule stipulates that monks are to hold no property in private but all is common property of the community). If one looks at the monasteries of say Norway, the earliest foundations were around the 12th century; Cluny (which really emphasized the division between lay and choir monks) had great influence then, so it is quite probable that the choir monks did mostly just pray the hours while the lay brothers did much of the work (and weren’t held to the canonical hours; they had their own little offices, and most were also illiterate in those days).

 

[1ke]

FrDavid has an excellent explanation somewhere on CAF. You might want to search.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

I have read that, during Lent, the Benedictines had a small snack during the reading from a Collection of Works Collation in Spanish] during Vespers. [Thus the English word *collation for a small snack.] Over time they tended to do Vespers a bit earlier each day until it was ruled that Vespers could not be conducted before Nones [the ninth hour]. Then Nones began to creep earlier until it was ruled that Nones could not be recited before the sun crossed the median; thus the English noon for midday.

Don’t know how much of this is true, but according to my dictionary noon does derive from nones.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

In Medieval times, weren’t there also special candles that burned at a known rate, and were marked-off in hours? Believe I have seen recreations and pictures of these. Something like these, coupled with the monastery bell, would seemingly have been an effective timekeeper.

 

[Brandon_Cal]

BUMP

 

[AvailableName]

In Isaiah 38:8

“Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.

A miracle being measured by a sundial!

By the time Jesus was born sundials were rather advanced. Hour glasses had been in use for over a century and they work at night. I believe that these were the two most commonly used clocks in the time of Jesus. And both were actually pretty good. There were also some other clocks that people fiddled with… water clocks, burning candles and so on; but sundials and hour glasses dominated, Why is hard to accept that timekeeping was a solved problem?