Chapter 13
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
How Lauds are to be conducted on ordinary days On ordinary days, however, the office of Lauds shall be celebrated in the following manner: that is, let the 66th psalm without an antiphon again be chanted, a little drawn out (that is, slowly)1 as on Sundays, so that all the monks may be present for the 50th psalm, which shall be sung with its antiphon.
After this psalm, according to custom, two other psalms shall be chanted and in the following order: on Monday the 5th and the 35th; on Tuesday the 42nd and the 56th; on Wednesday the 63rd and the 64th; on Thursday the 87th and the 98th; on Friday the 75th and the 91st; but on Saturday after the 142nd psalm, there shall follow the canticle from Deuteronomy (xxxii,
1-43), which should be divided into two parts, each with its Gloria Patri, etc. On the rest of the days of the week (Monday to Friday, inch), there shall be chanted the customary canticles from the prophets, as is the usage of the Church at Rome.2 On all the days of the week, as on Sunday, there shall then follow the Laudes (Psalms 148-150), a lesson from the Apostle, which is to be recited from memory, the responsory, the hymn (Ambrosianum), the canticle from the Gospel (Luke i, 68-79), the Litany (Kyrie eleison), and the conclusion.
In any case, let neither the morning office (Lauds) nor the Evensong (Vespers) be concluded before the Lord's Prayer has been chanted by the superior, aloud and in the hearing of all, on account of the thorns of scandal that are wont to arise, so that the brethren, mindful of the promise they make when they say: "Forgive us as we likewise forgive," may cleanse themselves ot such faults. At the other offices, however, let only the last
1 Cf. chap, ix, Excursus; The rather simple melodic style of a "psalm without anti phon" could easily be prolonged to more than ordinary lengths.
2 On account of a dearth of really reliable liturgical sources, we can at this late day no longer establish where St. Benedict garnered the structural elements of his prayer arrangement, one that is up to the present hour still highly regarded by all Benedictines, or to what extent it is his own creation. As he clearly states here, he did adopt some of the Roman usages.