None From The Fourth To Seventh Centuries
The eighteenth cannon of the Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381) orders that the same prayers be always said at None and Vespers. But it is not clear what meaning is to attached to the words, leitourgia ton euchon, used in the canon. It is likely that reference is made to famous litanies, in which prayer was offered for the catechumens, sinners, the faithful, and generally for all the wants of the Church. Sozomen (in a passage, however, which is not considered very authentic) speaks of three psalms which the monks recited at None. In any case this number became traditional at an early period. Three psalms were recited at Terce, six at Sext, and nine at None, as St. John Cassian informs us, though he remarks that the most common practice was to recite three psalms at each of these hours St. Ambrose speaks of three hours of prayer, and, if with many critics we attribute to him the three hymns Jam surgit hora tertia, Bis ternas horas explicas, and Ter horas trina solvitur, we shall have a new constitutive element of the Little Hours in the 4th century in the Church of Milan.
In the Peregrinatio ad loca sancta of Etheria, (end of 4th century), There is a more detailed description of the Office of None. It resembles that of Sext, and is celebrated in the basilica of the Anastasis. It is composed of psalms and antiphons; then the bishop arrives, enters the grotto of the Resurrection, recites a prayer there, and blesses the faithful. During Lent, None is celebrated in the church of Sion; on Sundays the office is not celebrated; it is omitted also on Holy Saturday, but on Good Friday it is celebrated with special solemnity. But it is only in the succeeding age that we find a complete description of None, as of the other offices of the day.
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“The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)