Lauds in The Early Christian Ages and Their Origin
Lauds, or the Morning Office or Office of Aurora, is one of the most ancient Offices and can be traced back to Apostolic times. In the 6th century St. Benedict gives a detailed description of them in his Rule: the Psalms (almost identical with those of the Roman Liturgy), the canticle, the last three Psalms, the capitulum, hymn, versicle, the canticle Benedictus, and the concluding part. St. Columbanus and the Irish documents give us only very vague information on the Office of Lauds. An effort has been made to reconstruct it in accordance with the Antiphonary of Bangor, but this document may not give the complete Office.
Gregory of Tours also makes several allusions to this Office, which he calls Matutini hymni. He gives as its constitutive parts: Psalm 50, the Benedicite, Psalms 148 - 150, and the versicles. Descriptions predating the fifth and fourth centuries appear in John Cassian, in Melania the Younger, in the Peregrinatio Ætheriae, St. John Chrysostom, St. Hilary, Eusebius.
Other forms of the Office are practiced in the different Christian provinces. The general features, however, remain the same: it remains the Office of the dawn (Aurora), the Office of sunrise, the morning Office, the morning praises, the Office of cock-crow (Gallicinium, ad galli cantus), the Office of the Resurrection of Christ. The author calls it hymni matutinales; it is considered the principal office of the day. In Jerusalem the liturgy displays all its pomp: the bishop was present with all his clergy, the office being celebrated around the Grotto of the Holy Sepulchre itself; after the psalms and canticles had been sung, the litanies were chanted, and the bishop then blessed the people. The earliest evidence of Lauds appears in the second and third centuries in the Canons of Hippolytus, in St. Cyprian, and in the Apostolic Fathers, so much so that Bäumer does not hesitate to assert that Lauds together with Vespers are the most ancient office, and owe their origin to the Apostles.
Read more about this topic: Lauds
Famous quotes containing the words early, christian, ages and/or origin:
“Very early in our childrens lives we will be forced to realize that the perfect untroubled life wed like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we dont want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“I wouldnt take the Pope too seriously. Hes a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;”
—Arthur William Edgar OShaughnessy (18441881)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)