Although psalms have played a major part in traditional Christian worship, many modern worshippers appear to be very uncertain what it is they are supposed to be doing when they say or sing them in church services. However, when we turn to the traditions of the early Church for some illumination of this question, we do not find there a single consistent apology for the Christian use of psalms, nor an unchanging practice. Instead, a number of quite different ways of using the psalms can be seen, together with their individual explanations for the particular custom. While some of these appear to have emerged in parallel with one another, others seem to have developed out of earlier forms of psalmody. This evolution in practice and interpretation over the centuries brought about a significant shift in the role that psalms played in Christian liturgy and spirituality, which we shall attempt to trace.
Psalms as prophecy
The book of Psalms is cited more frequently in the New Testament than any other Old Testament Scripture, and it is there chiefly viewed as being a book of prophecy – or one might say as the prophetic work par excellence of the Old Testament – thought to have been written by King David under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, for example, Jesus himself is said to have cited Psalm 110.1 as a messianic prophecy:
How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared:
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet.’
David himself calls him Lord; so how is he his son?1
Similarly, in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter refers in his speech on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2.14–36) both to that same psalm text and also to Psalm 16.8–11 as messianic prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
This same prophetic/Christological method of interpreting psalms was continued by Christian theologians and preachers in the succeeding centuries. Among early examples is Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, which features an extensive treatment of Psalm 22.2 But it was from the third century onwards, apparently under the influence of the exegetical method adopted by Origen from classical literature,3 that Christological interpretation was gradually extended from certain selected psalms to encompass virtually all the psalms. The words of the psalms were understood either as addressed by the Church to Christ, or as speaking about Christ, or as the voice of the Christ himself. Indeed, even those texts that referred explicitly to God were commonly interpreted as really meaning the divine Christ.4
In the light of the above, we might well expect that at least certain psalms – or parts of psalms – that were easily susceptible of a messianic interpretation would have been used in early Christian assemblies as prophetic readings, like the other books of the Old Testament. Traces of such a custom can perhaps be seen in Luke 24.44 (where Jesus says that ‘everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled’) and in the third-century Syrian Didascalia Apostolorum, where the paschal vigil is said to have taken place ‘with readings from the prophets, and with the Gospels and with psalms’ (5.19.1). However, the meaning of both of these passages has been challenged. Some scholars have argued that the Lukan text is using the term ‘psalms’ in a broader sense to refer to the ‘Writings’, the third of the traditional Jewish divisions of the Old Testament along with the Law and the Prophets.5 It has also been noted that the description of the paschal vigil does not say explicitly that the psalms were being used there as readings, still less as prophetic readings.6 On the other hand, somewhat more sure is the statement in the diary of the fourth-century pilgrim Egeria that at Jerusalem on Good Friday the readings were ‘all about the things that Jesus suffered: first the psalms on this subject, then the Apostles which concern it, then passages from the Gospels. Thus they read the prophecies about what the Lord would suffer, and the Gospels about what he did suffer.’7
Since this evidence is so limited, we have no way of knowing whether the psalms might have had a place in every formal ministry of the word alongside other prophetic readings from the Old Testament in the first three centuries, or whether they were only used occasionally in place of such readings, or whether indeed they only featured once a year in connection with the paschal celebration. Our only other explicit reference to psalms in a formal ministry of the word during this period occurs in a description by Tertullian of a Montanist service led by a woman.8 While the same practice may also have existed in the Catholic tradition of the day, we cannot automatically conclude that this was so, nor even that by the word ‘psalms’ Tertullian here necessarily means biblical psalms, since the term tended to be used quite loosely by patristic writers.
Psalms as the summary of Scripture
It was among the ascetics and early monastic communities of the fourth century, and especially those in the Egyptian desert, that the canonical psalms came to be used extensively within daily worship. As we saw in the previous chapter, although the early Pachomian communities of Upper Egypt read passages from a variety of biblical books and did not give any special place to the psalms in their daily services, the desert fathers in general singled out the Psalter from the rest of the Scriptures and encouraged their followers to commit its contents to memory and recite it constantly throughout their waking hours. Several of their sayings tell of individuals completing the whole Psalter in the course of a single night.9 While such stories certainly go far beyond normal practice, they clearly illustrate the ideal towards which the serious Christian ascetic was expected to strive.
It has sometimes been thought that the psalms were here functioning as a form of prayer. But that is not the case. The sources frequently speak of prayer and psalmody, and reveal that the characteristic way of using the psalms in this tradition was to alternate the saying of a psalm with a period of silent prayer. When two or more people prayed together, only one of them said the psalm and the other(s) listened to it. Then all prayed in silence, and after that another psalm was said, and so on. Thus the psalm was functioning not as prayer itself, but as a reading, as the source of inspiration for the meditative prayer that was to follow it.10 This was true not only of the Egyptian tradition but also of ascetic practice in Syria. For example, Theodoret of Cyrrhus describes how Julian of Abiadene (c.350) instructed his disciples ‘to go out at dawn into the desert in pairs, and while one was to offer the worship due to the Master on his knees, the other was to chant fifteen psalms of David standing; and then they were to alternate the work, the one standing to chant, the other kneeling on the ground to worship. And they continued doing this from early morning until evening.’11
Why those who took to the deserts should have shown such an overwhelming preference for psalms above all other Scripture for this purpose has been a source of puzzlement for scholars. But perhaps the answer lies in the prophetic/Christological interpretation described earlier. As is well known, Origen’s ideas exercised a strong influence over the spirituality of the desert fathers, and hence it is likely that his Christological exegesis of the psalms would have commended itself to the early ascetics, whose fundamental aim was to conform their lives to the pattern of Christ. What better way could there be to do that, therefore, than by meditating upon the mind of Christ as revealed in the psalms?
Yet, whatever the original cause for their adoption, the psalms soon came to be regarded in this tradition as much more than Christological prophecy. The Psalter was thought to ‘embrace all Scripture’,12 to encapsulate all that the rest of the Old Testament had to offer. And the monk was expected to apply its words to his life and view them as fulfilled in him.13 This idea soon spread far outside monastic circles. Because virtually every outstanding Christian personality of the period had lived as a monk at one time or another during their career, the form of spiritual life that they advocated to ordinary lay people was essentially monastic in character. While these figures certainly continued to acknowledge the prophetic dimension of the Psalter,14 they made much greater claims for it, asserting it to be a summary of all Christian teaching and the remedy for all spiritual ills. St Basil typifies the attitudes of his contemporaries:
Now the Prophets teach some things, the Historians other things, the Law still other things, and the form of advice of the Proverbs something else, but the Book of Psalms encompasses what is valuable from them all. It prophesies what is to come; it recalls history; it legislates for life; it gives practical advice; and it is in general a common treasury of good teachings, carefully finding what is suitable for each person. For it heals the old wounds of souls; it brings swift recovery to the recently wounded; it treats what is diseased; it preserves what is pure; and as far as possible it takes away the passions that in many ways dominate souls in the life of human beings. And it does this with a certain diligent persuasion and sweetness that engender a moderate disposition.15
The Christian leaders who viewed the Psalter from this perspective did not lose sight of the fact that the psalms were hymnic in form. Indeed, they could hardly do so, since (as we shall see below) psalms were being sung as hymns in the church services that they themselves attended. But they still argued that the teaching function was primary, and that God had deliberately arranged matters in this way in order to make learning more pleasurable for human beings:
When the Holy Spirit saw that the human race was with difficulty led toward virtue, and that because of our inclination toward pleasure we neglected an upright life, what did he do? He mixed sweetness of melody with the teachings so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without realizing it the benefit of the words, just like wise physicians, who often smear the cup with honey when giving the fastidious rather bitter medicines to drink. Therefore he devised these harmonious melodies of the psalms for us, so that those who are children in age or even those who are young in their ways might appear to be singing but in reality be training their souls.16
Of the fourth-century advocates of psalmody, only Athanasius, who in any case belonged to a slightly older generation than the others, dissented from this latter explanation: ‘Some of the simple ones among us, even while believing the texts to be divinely inspired, still think that the psalms are sung melodiously for the sake of good sound and the pleasure of the ear. This is not so.’ Instead, in typical Alexandrian fashion, he adopted an allegorical explanation for the use of chant: ‘to recite the psalms with melody is not done from a desire for pleasing sound, but is a manifestation of harmony among the thoughts of the soul. And melodious reading is a sign of the well-ordered and tranquil condition of the mind.’17
Psalms as hymns
At the same time as psalms were in the ascendancy in desert monasticism, a small number of them were also finding a place within the ‘cathedral’ office that was emerging after the Peace of Constantine.18 However, their inclusion here was not derived from the monastic custom, since they had an entirely different function and method of execution. They are explicitly described as ‘hymns’, and performed in a quite distinct manner: after each verse chanted by a cantor, the assembly repeated a refrain, and there was apparently no period of silence after the psalm.
This practice was not a complete innovation of the fourth century. Tertullian at the beginning of the third century informs us that ‘those who are more diligent in praying are accustomed to include in their prayers Alleluia and this type of psalms, with the ending of which those who are present may respond’ (De oratione 27). Biblical psalms had also been included along with non-canonical compositions that were sung by individuals to others at mealtimes: Tertullian again states that at the end of a Christian community supper ‘after the washing of hands and the lighting of lamps, each is invited to stand in the middle and sing a hymn to God, from the holy Scriptures or of his own composition as he is able’.19 This usage may very well be the source of the later adoption of psalms in other occasions of corporate prayer, in the same way that the ritual lighting of the lamp was taken over into the evening office of the ‘cathedral’ tradition from earlier Christian communal meals.
Singing psalms and hymns in connection with meals was certainly very ancient. The Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria, in recounting the customs of a sectarian community known as the Therapeutae, describes their practice in similar terms to Tertullian. At their festal meals ‘the president rises and sings a hymn addressed to God, either a new one which he has composed or an ancient one by poets of old . . . After him the others take their turn in the order in which they are arranged, while all the rest listen in complete silence, except when they have to chant the closing lines and refrains, for then they all, men and women, sing . . .’20 In the New Testament 1 Corinthians 14.26 includes a ‘psalm’ among the verbal contributions that individual participants might bring to a Christian ministry of the word, and Ephesians 5.19 speaks of believers ‘addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs . . .’. Both of these occasions may well have been in connection with a meal.21 We cannot of course be sure that canonical psalms were included in these last two instances as well as psalms and hymns composed by Christians themselves, but it seems likely that they were, given the high regard for the psalms displayed by the New Testament writers.
It appears probable, therefore, that the use of psalms as hymns has its roots in the use of psalms as prophecy. Individual first-century Christians would have sung selected Old Testament psalms to demonstrate that Christ was the expected Messiah, having fulfilled what had been prophesied in the Scriptures, and the assembled community would have responded to each verse with an acclamation of praise. Yet by the time that we are in a position to identify the particular psalms being sung as hymns in the fourth-century ‘cathedral’ office, any former connection with the prophetic usage must have been lost along the way. It is not the obviously Christological ones that constitute the regular core here, but instead psalms inviting praise which include within them the Alleluia response (Psalms 148–50), and also those appropriate to the particular hour of the day (e.g., 63 in the morning, 141 in the evening).
Nevertheless, the use of the responsorial method of psalmody clearly implies an affiliation to the two preceding uses that we have examined. Although they were called ‘hymns’, it was actually the refrain, and not the psalm itself, that constituted the song of praise to God. The psalm verses were still apparently viewed as the word of God, since they are proclaimed by one voice alone to the listening assembly. And Augustine can on occasion refer to the responsorial psalm in the eucharistic ministry of the word as a ‘reading’.22 Of course, one might want to argue that, in the absence of printed texts and in any case in a culture in which there was a large measure of illiteracy, the responsorial method was the only practical way to use unfamiliar liturgical texts. But, while this may be true, we need to remember that the psalms employed in the ‘cathedral’ office were very few in number and were generally repeated every single day throughout the year. The problem of unfamiliarity therefore cannot have lasted for long, and does not really explain the universal adherence to this method of psalm-singing.
Moreover, John Chrysostom offers an explanation of the significance of the refrain that supports this conclusion: ‘Do not then think that you have come here simply to say the words, but when you make the response, consider that response to be a covenant. For when you say, “Like the hart desires the watersprings, my soul desires you, O God”, you make a covenant with God. You have signed a contract without paper or ink; you have confessed with your voice that you love him more than all, that you prefer nothing to him, and that you burn with love for him . . .’23
Psalmody as praise
We have suggested that a distinction should be drawn between the use of psalms in Egyptian desert spirituality, where the whole Psalter was recited in its biblical order as the basis for individual meditation, and the use in the fourth-century ‘cathedral’ office, where selected psalms were sung by a cantor as a proclamation of God’s word, to which the community responded with a refrain expressing their praise of God. This distinction, however, rapidly became blurred, and in later centuries disappeared altogether, with the result that in both monastic and secular circles in the West the chanting of psalms came to be thought of as itself an act of praise to God.
James McKinnon described the roots of this development as a ‘psalmodic movement’, which he defined as ‘an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for the singing of psalms that spread from east to west through the Christian population in the closing decades of the fourth century’.24 He attributed the source of this movement to the influence of desert monasticism. While the idea of using the whole Psalter certainly came from there, Joseph Dyer has rightly qualified his claim and argued that it was in urban monastic circles that the singing of the psalms was fostered and developed, as a distrust of music as being a distraction to monastic values was common among the desert fathers.25 McKinnon attributed the shaping of the ‘cathedral’ office itself to monasticism: ‘it is no exaggeration to say that the urban ecclesiastical office, the so-called cathedral office, was flooded with the continuous psalmody of monasticism’.26 But this does seem to be something of an exaggeration. Once again, as we saw in the preceding chapter, it was in urban monasticism that continuous psalmody was first introduced alongside selective psalmody, and it was their hybrid practice, rather than the pure ‘cathedral’ office as such, that became the foundation for the worship patterns of virtually all later forms of the daily office.27
The mingling of the two traditions in urban monasticism effectively obscured the previous contrast between the psalms as Scripture and selected psalms as hymns, and caused leading church figures of the fourth century both to advocate the use of much more extensive psalmody by ordinary Christians and to offer explanations for its dual function, as we noted earlier. It also, in turn, encouraged these monastic communities to take greater cognizance of the hymnic character of the psalms and to introduce more elaborate forms of their performance. As James McKinnon noted, ‘Monasticism made a quantitive contribution to the song of the fourth-century church, and received in exchange the gift of musicality.’28 However, the defence that had to be mounted by certain patristic writers with regard to these innovations suggests that at first not everyone welcomed them.29
A second factor that especially helped to develop in the West the notion that all the psalms could be sung as the praise of God was the responsibility given to communities of monks from the early fifth century onwards for maintaining the prayer and sacramental life of basilicas in the city of Rome. Even though the external form of their daily offices of psalmody may have remained unchanged, yet in this new context their function was effectively transformed from the spiritual advancement of the individual members of the community to the celebration of the praise of the Church. Moreover, this Roman institution provided a model that was imitated by others, including the establishment by the Franks of similar foundations in connection with sanctuaries dedicated to specially venerated saints.30
What of the difficulty, however, that not all of the psalms actually expressed words of praise to God – indeed that some of them were prayers of desperation and others called down fire upon the psalmist’s enemies? This did not present a serious obstacle to the new understanding, because it was thought that it was the act of psalm-singing rather than what the text of the psalms themselves said that was pleasing to God: we chant the psalms because God likes to hear them. One can see this attitude emerging in the Rule of the Master, a forerunner of the Rule of Benedict that was written in the late fifth or early sixth century:
So great must be the reverential seriousness and the manner of chanting the psalms that the Lord listens more lovingly than we say them; as Scripture declares: ‘You take delight in the coming of the morning, and in the evening’, and again: ‘Sing the psalms to him joyfully and skillfully, for direct is the word of the Lord’, and again: ‘Exult in him with fear’, and again: ‘Sing to the Lord wisely’. Therefore if it commands the singing of psalms to be done wisely and with fear, the person singing them should stand with body motionless and head bowed, and should sing praises to the Lord with composure, since he is indeed performing his service before the Godhead, as the prophet teaches when he says: ‘In the presence of the angels I will sing your praise’.
So the singer of psalms must always be careful not to let his attention wander elsewhere, lest God say to us when our mind has strayed to some other thought: ‘This people honors me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me’, and lest it likewise be said of us: ‘With their mouth they blessed and in their heart they cursed’, and lest when we praise God with the tongue alone, we admit God only to the doorway of our mouth while we bring in and lodge the devil in the dwelling of our heart.31
It is true that this chapter of the rule, like other sources of the period, later goes on to offer a second and more traditionally monastic reason why the singer should pay attention to every single verse of the psalm, ‘because if each verse is noted the soul derives profit for salvation and therein finds all it seeks, for “the psalm says everything for edification”; as the prophet declares: “I shall sing and understand in the way of integrity, when you come to me”.’32 Yet it is clear from the rest of the chapter that praise has succeeded edification as the primary purpose for the use of psalms, and that what makes the psalm acceptable to God as praise is not the words that are spoken but the attitude and intention of the singer.
As a result of this change of function, it was inevitable that less importance would be accorded to the silent prayer that came between the psalms. The Rule of the Master (chapter 48) directed that these periods of silence should always be kept short, to avoid the risk of any of the community falling asleep or being tempted to evil thoughts. The Rule of Benedict echoed all the above exhortations, although expressing them more succinctly and giving as the reason for brevity in prayer that ‘we are not to imagine that our prayers will be heard because we use many words’.33
In the light of all this, it is not surprising to find that the period of silence between psalms eventually disappeared altogether in later Western usage, and that the usual method of psalm-singing itself changed. Already by the late fourth century, in an effort to relieve the monotony of the responsorial method, especially during the long night vigils, a variation had emerged – antiphonal psalmody – in which the assembly was divided into two choirs that took it in turns to sing the response to the verses sung by the soloist, or sometimes by two soloists alternating the verses.34 By the ninth century, however, the two choirs themselves, instead of a soloist, began to sing the verses alternately, and the response (or antiphon, as it came to be called) was relegated merely to the beginning and end of the psalm. Joseph Dyer has argued that this change came about as a result of an increasing emphasis on the efficacy of individual effort towards growth in grace. ‘Prayers and good works which were frequently repeated added to the soul’s store of grace and helped overcome uncertainty about personal salvation. From this perspective active participation in chanting the sacred words of the psalms would have seemed more meritorious than merely listening to them.’35 While there may certainly be some truth to his claim, such an attitude required as its prerequisite that the act of psalm-singing already be thought of as directed towards God rather than towards the edification of oneself or others.
Psalmody as penance
The use of certain psalms in order to express contrition for one’s sins is clearly attested from the fourth century onwards, apparently originating in the strongly penitential atmosphere of urban monastic circles, where Psalm 51 (‘Have mercy on me, O God . . .’) begins to make an appearance at or near the beginning of each day’s worship in several sources. Other appropriate psalms, too, were to be used by individuals in order to ask for the forgiveness of their sins.36 In addition to this use of particular psalms, we find encouragement for individuals to think of the daily offices as a whole as being an opportunity to acknowledge their faults privately and ask for forgiveness. It is to be noted, however, that there is no evidence to suggest that at this time the rites themselves included any explicitly penitential prayers or litanies. It was only much later that these emerged.37
Yet such an attitude towards the offices laid the foundations for the subsequent development of the idea that the act of singing or saying psalms could function as an expression of penitence. Thus Caesarius of Arles in the sixth century lists psalmody among the pious exercises in which a penitent person might engage: ‘I believe that in the mercy of God he will deign to inspire you in such a way that you do not pursue sinfulness through neglect, but rather through repentance are able to reach the remedy of forgiveness by fasting, prayer, singing the psalms, and almsgiving.’38 Similarly, he includes it along with fasting, prayer, and the keeping of vigils as an appropriate Lenten practice.39
From this use, psalms then found their way into more formal penitential discipline. The Celtic penitential system, which often assigned the performance of extremely demanding penances for many sins, also permitted commutation – the substitution of an easier or shorter penance for a more arduous or lengthier one. Hence the recitation of a certain number of psalms frequently became the permitted – and much preferred – alternative to other forms of penitential practice. A very early example of this development appears in the so-called Canones hibernenses, where as a substitute for a superpositio (a double fast-day) 100 psalms may be recited instead.40 Other Celtic sources regularly speak of multiples of 50 psalms functioning in this manner.
Psalmody as intercession
The roots of the use of psalms for intercessory purposes seem to lie in the funeral customs of the early Church. A notable characteristic of early Christian practice was the singing of psalms and hymns that proclaimed the hope of the resurrection, as death approached, as the body was prepared for burial, and in procession to the grave. One of the most common texts used for this purpose was Psalm 116. This custom stood in sharp contrast to the usual pagan practice of the period, which was to accompany death and burial by wailing and lamentation.41 As the centuries went by, however, Christianity was increasingly influenced by the surrounding culture, and the fear of judgement and condemnation began to displace confident hope of the resurrection in the liturgies surrounding death. As a result, funeral psalmody took on a more penitential tone, as those present began to recite on behalf of the dying and deceased the sort of psalms that they believed that those persons themselves would have said as prayers for the forgiveness of their sins, had they been able to do so.
Our earliest testimony to this development appears to be a document dating from the second half of the eighth century, which describes the monastic observances of Monte Cassino. This states that on the day of the burial of a monk, the community were to chant the seven penitential psalms after vespers.42 Later sources reveal further developments from this practice: the psalms used were no longer restricted to those that were penitential in character, and the act of intercession could now be for the living as well as the departed. Thus various documents prescribe 50, 100, or the whole 150 psalms to be said on the occasion of a death, and monthly or annually thereafter.43 Similarly, the biography of Benedict of Aniane (d. 821) recounts that he directed that the monks of his monastery, on going to their places in the choir each morning, should recite privately 15 psalms before the office began. These were arranged in three sets of five, the first set being for the living, the second for all the faithful departed, and the third for all the recently deceased. Each set was concluded with a short collect related to the intention for which the preceding psalms had been said. Although the biographer does not specify which particular psalms were used for this purpose, scholars are generally agreed, because of the evidence from later sources, that they were the 15 gradual psalms (Psalms 120–34).44
Conclusions
What emerges from this survey is that an important distinction has to be drawn between the first three ways of using the psalms described above and the second three. In the first group, it is the content of the psalms that is all-important. It is because of what the psalms say, that they can be used as prophecy, as teaching, or as hymns. While the roots of the second group may lie in this same area, in their later development content recedes into the background, and it is the action of singing the psalm and the particular intention of the singer that renders it a vehicle for praise, for penitence, or for intercession. One might go so far as to say that in this second group of uses, psalms have simply become the accepted currency for divine–human interchange: their value lay not in their intrinsic merit but solely in the fact that God was thought to favour them. God could just as easily have preferred the performance of some other form of religious activity, but because he apparently liked to hear psalms, he could in that way be paid what was due to him in praise, be repaid what was owed to him in penitence, or be induced to grant the desires of the supplicants.
The use of content-related psalmody did not of course thereafter vanish from the Christian liturgical tradition. Appropriate psalms and sections of psalms went on being appointed for a wide variety of occasions in the ecclesiastical calendar, and certain psalms continued to be regarded as especially suitable to express particular sentiments. Yet there was now an underlying sense that one psalm was really just as good as another, and that what the words of a text said mattered less than the intentions of those using it. These attitudes have lingered on down to the present day, and often contribute to a lack of sensitivity on the part of those responsible for deciding what psalms shall be used in worship and how they are to be performed, as well as to the confusion of those who are expected to participate in that psalmody.
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1 Mark 12.35–7; parallels in Matthew 22.42–5; Luke 20.41–4.
2 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 97–106. For other examples, see Graham W. Woolfenden, ‘The Use of the Psalter by Early Monastic Communities’, Studia Patristica 26 (1993), pp. 88–94, here at p. 89.
3 See Marie-Josèphe Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe–Ve siècles), II, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 220 (Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, Rome 1985), pp. 39ff.
4 The classic study of this phenomenon in early Christianity is Balthasar Fischer, ‘Christ in the Psalms’, Theology Digest 1 (1951), pp. 53–7. On the later interpretation of the psalms in the monastic tradition, see Dyer, ‘The Psalms in Monastic Prayer’, pp. 65ff.
5 See, for example, Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (SPCK, London 1985), pp. 110–18.
6 See J. D. Crichton, Christian Celebration: The Prayer of the Church (Chapman, London 1976), p. 60.
7 Egeria, Itinerarium 37.5; ET from Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, p. 137.
8 Tertullian, De anima 9.4 (MECL 82).
9 See, for example, Apophthegmata patrum, Epiphanius 3; Serapion 1; Anonymous 150 (MECL 124, 126, 127).
10 See further Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘Psalmodier n’est pas prier’, Ecclesia Orans 6 (1989), pp. 7–32.
11 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Historia religiosa 2.5.
12 A saying of Abba Philimon, in G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherard, and K. Ware (eds), The Philokalia (Faber & Faber, London 1979), II, p. 347.
13 See John Cassian, Conferences 10.11; Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum 11.
14 See, for some examples, Pierre Salmon, The Breviary through the Centuries (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville 1962), pp. 42–61.
15 Basil of Caesarea, Homilia in psalmum 1.1. For other examples see Ambrose, Explanatio psalmi 1.7, 9; Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum; John Chrysostom, Expositio in psalmum 41.1; Niceta of Remesiana, De psalmodiae bono 5. See also Brian Daley, ‘Finding the Right Key: The Aims and Strategies of Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms’, in Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community (SBL, Atlanta 2003), pp. 189–205.
16 Basil, Homilia in psalmum 1.1. See also John Chrysostom, Expositio in psalmum 41.1; Homiliae in epistulam ad Colossenses 9.2; Niceta of Remesiana, De psalmodiae bono 5.
17 Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum 27, 29; ET from MECL 100.
19 Tertullian, Apologeticum 39.18. This custom also continued in later centuries: see, for example, John Chrysostom, Expositio in psalmum 41.2 (MECL 166).
20 Philo, De vita contemplativa 80. See also Peter Jeffery, ‘Philo’s Impact on Christian Psalmody’, in Attridge and Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community, pp. 147–87.
21 See Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church, pp. 44–5.
22 Augustine, Sermones 165; 176. On the origin of this psalm in the eucharist, see James W. McKinnon, ‘The Fourth-Century Origin of the Gradual’, Early Music History 7 (1987), pp. 91–106 = idem, The Temple, the Church Fathers and Early Western Chant, IX.
23 John Chrysostom, Expositio in psalmum 41.5.
24 James W. McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourth-Century Psalmodic Movement’, Music and Letters 75 (1994), pp. 505–21, here at p. 506 = idem, The Temple, the Church Fathers and Early Western Chant, XI. See also idem, ‘The Book of Psalms, Monasticism, and the Western Liturgy’, in Van Deusen (ed.), The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, pp. 43–58.
25 Joseph Dyer, ‘The Desert, the City and Psalmody in the Late Fourth Century’, in Sean Gallagher (ed.), Western Plainchant in the First Millennium (Ashgate, Aldershot 2003), pp. 11–43, esp. pp. 21–4. For urban monasticism, see above, pp. 113–14; and for the reluctance of desert monks to accept liturgical chant, see Robert F. Taft, ‘Christian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decomposition, Collapse’, in Attridge and Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community, pp. 7–32, here at pp. 12–14.
26 McKinnon, ‘The Book of Psalms, Monasticism, and the Western Liturgy’, pp. 50–1. Peter Jeffery concurred with him: ‘Monastic Reading and the Emerging Roman Chant Repertory’, in Gallagher (ed.), Western Plainchant in the First Millennium, pp. 45–103, here at pp. 47–8.
27 The phenomenon of the ‘popular psalmodic vigil’ that McKinnon particularly cites to support his claim for the influence of monasticism on the ‘cathedral’ office, although certainly having its origins among ordinary Christians in earlier centuries, appears rather to have become something that was kept alive from the fourth century onwards only by urban monastics and those exceptionally pious individuals who supported them, and not by the general Christian populace. See below, p. 139 and Dyer, ‘The Desert, the City and Psalmody in the Late Fourth Century’, p. 26.
28 McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourth-Century Psalmodic Movement’, p. 519.
29 See especially Basil, Epistula 207.3; and Niceta of Remesiana, De psalmodiae bono 2.
30 See Angelus Haüssling, Mönchskonvent und Eucharistiefeier, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen 58 (Aschendorff, Münster 1973), pp. 123–42.
31 Regula Magistri 47; ET from Luke Eberle, The Rule of the Master (Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI 1977), pp. 205–6.
32 On the importance attached in the developing monastic tradition to conforming the heart to the words being sung, see Dyer, ‘The Psalms in Monastic Prayer’, pp. 62–4.
33 Rule of Benedict 19–20. See also Adalbert de Vogüé, The Rule of St. Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary (Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI 1983), pp. 139–49.
34 See Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, p. 139; idem, ‘Christian Liturgical Psalmody’, pp. 19–23.
35 Joseph Dyer, ‘Monastic Psalmody of the Middle Ages’, Revue bénédictine 99 (1989), pp. 41–74, here at pp. 70–1.
36 See, for example, Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum 21.
37 For further details of all these developments, see below, pp. 135–41.
38 Caesarius, Sermones 208; ET from M. M. Mueller, Saint Caesarius of Arles – Sermons, 3, Fathers of the Church 66 (Catholic University of America Press, Washington, DC 1973), p. 89.
39 Sermones 202, 238; ET ibid., pp. 68, 224.
40 Text in F. W. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (Verlag Graeger, Halle 1851), p. 139. Cyrille Vogel, ‘Composition légale et commutations dans le système de la pénitence tarifée’, Revue de droit canonique 9 (1959), pp. 1–38, here at p. 3, dates this section of the document to the sixth century.
41 See Geoffrey Rowell, The Liturgy of Christian Burial, Alcuin Club Collections 59 (SPCK, London 1977), pp. 19–30.
42 See Edmund Bishop, ‘The Prymer’, in idem, Liturgica Historica (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1918), p. 216.
43 For examples, see ibid., p. 216, and esp. n. 4.
44 Ibid., p. 214; Joseph Jungmann, Christian Prayer through the Centuries (Paulist Press, New York, 2nd edn, 2007), pp. 53–4.