There were many different traditions for celebrating the Divine Office in Gaul before
the establishment of the Roman liturgy in Carolingian times; it is thus misleading to lump
them all together, as is generally done, under the term “Gallican rite.” Among the earliest
sources is the De institutis coenobiorum of John Cassian (ca. 360–435), who had lived as
a monk in both Egypt and Palestine prior to becoming abbot of a monastery in Marseille.
His recollections from his own observation were widely read and profoundly influenced
many of the major liturgical traditions of the West. Cassian described the Egyptian
practice as following a plan revealed by an angel, consisting of two main services—
cockcrow (early morning before dawn) and evening—each with twelve psalms,
suggesting the ideal of praying twenty-four hours a day. The more complex Palestinian
practice, as Cassian remembered it, added to these two services celebrations at the third,
sixth, and ninth hours, with three psalms each, and with all-night vigils on Fridays, which
were divided into three sections with three psalms and three readings each.
An office following the Egyptian plan was celebrated at the monastery of Lérins,
founded by Cassian’s disciple Honoratus (d. 429/30); evidence of it is preserved in the
monastic Rules of the Holy Fathers from the 5th and 6th centuries and, in much more
developed form, in the monastic writings of two bishops of Arles: Caesarius (r. 503–42),
who had been a monk at Lérins, and Aurelian (r. 546–51).
In 567, a council in Tours decreed that the cathedral office in that city follow the
Egyptian structure of twelve psalms morning and evening, though up to thirty psalms
could be sung on long winter nights. The careful adjustment of psalmody to the length of
the night was a feature of other Gallican liturgical traditions, such as the office outlined in
the monastic rule of the Irish monk St. Columban (d. 615), who founded the monasteries
at Luxeuil and Bobbio. Though Columban was aware of multiple traditions, he advocated
a daily cursus of six hours: three during the day with three psalms each, and three during
the night: services at the beginning and middle of the night with twelve psalms each, and
a vigil service with twenty-four to thirty-six psalms depending on the season, thirty-six to
seventy-five on Saturdays and Sundays (always arranged in groups of three).
By the 8th century, religious reformers increasingly sought to supplant the indigenous
Gallican traditions with usages derived from the liturgical tradition of Rome. Bishop
Chrodegang of Metz (d. 766), and the Anglo-Saxon missionary St. Boniface (680–754)
were two of the early champions of the Roman liturgy. King Pepin the Short (r. 751–68),
after meeting Pope Stephen II in 754, inaugurated a royal policy of romanizing the liturgy
in the Frankish kingdom, a policy continued by his son Charlemagne (r. 771–814). The
new Romano-Frankish liturgy of the hours took two basic forms: the Monastic Office,
based on the prescriptions of the 6th-century Rule of St. Benedict (regarded as the Roman
monastic rule) and the cathedral or secular Roman Office, to be used by nonmonastic
clergy (first described in detail by Amalarius of Metz). These two traditions shared much
common material and were similar in structure though they differed in the arrangement of
an-tiphonal psalms; the Monastic Office also used some direct psalmody, while the
Roman did so only in the Office of the Dead.
In both the Monastic and the Roman Offices, Sundays and major feasts began with
Vespers the preceding evening. Most days, however, began with a long vigil service,
Mat-ins, recited in the night hours leading up to sunrise. Like the Palestinian vigil
described by Cassian, Matins was divided into three sections, or nocturnes, after a brief
introduction featuring the Invitatory Psalm 94 and a hymn. (Vulgate psalm numbers are
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