Editing Matins (section)

====Vigil====
The every-night monastic [[canonical hours|canonical hour]] that later became known as matins was at first called a vigil, from [[Latin]] ''vigilia''. For soldiers, this word meant a three-hour period of being on the watch during the night. Even for civilians, night was commonly spoken of as divided into four such watches: the Gospels use the term when recounting how, at about "the fourth watch of the night", Jesus came to his disciples who in their boat were struggling to make headway against the wind,<ref>{{bibleverse|Mark|6:48|ESV}}; {{bibleverse|Matthew|14:5|ESV}}</ref> and one of the [[Psalms]] says to the Lord: "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night."<ref>{{bibleverse|Psalm|90:4|ESV}}</ref>

The sixth-century ''[[Rule of Saint Benedict]]'' uses the term ''vigiliae'' ("vigils") fifteen times to speak of these celebrations, accompanying it four times with the adjective ''nocturnae'' ("nocturnal") and once with the words ''septem noctium'' ("of the seven nights", i.e., the nights of the week).<ref name=Regula>[http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/benedict.html ''Regula S.P.N. Benedicti'']</ref>

English versions of this document often obscure its use of the term vigil, translating it as "Night Hour" or "Night Office". Thus Leonard J. Doyle's English version uses "Night Office" to represent indifferently the unaccompanied noun ''vigilia'' ("vigil"), the phrase ''nocturna vigilia'' ("nightly vigil"), and the phrases ''nocturna hora'' ("night hour) and ''nocturna laus'' ("nocturnal praise").<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html ''St Benedict's Rule for Monasteries'']; cf. [https://www.ewtn.com/library/priests/benrule.htm another translation]; [https://books.google.com/books?id=fZNnDQAAQBAJ&q=delatte+rule+benedict Paul Delatte, ''Rule of St. Benedict: A Commentary'' (Ravenio Books 2014)]</ref>

The practice of rising for prayer in the middle of the night is as old as the Church.<ref name=Benedictine>[http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9043 Benedictine Monks of Buckfast Abbey, "Divine Office: Matins — Prayer at Night", ''Homiletic and Pastoral Review'', pp.361-367, Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., New York, NY, January 1925]</ref> [[Tertullian]] ({{Circa|155|240}}) speaks of the "nocturnal convocations" (''nocturnae convocationes'') of Christians and their "absence all the night long at the paschal solemnities" (''sollemnibus Paschae abnoctantes'')<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0404.htm Tertullian, ''Ad uxorem'', II,4] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140304214727/http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0404.htm |date=2014-03-04 }}; [http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tertullian/tertullian.uxor2.shtml Latin text]</ref> [[Cyprian]] ({{Circa|200}} – 258) also speaks of praying at night, but not of doing so as a group: "Let there be no failure of prayers in the hours of night — no idle and reckless waste of the occasions of prayer" (''nulla sint horis nocturnis precum damna, nulla orationum pigra et ignava dispendia'').<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050704.htm Cyprian, ''De oratione dominica'', 36 (near end)]; [https://archive.org/stream/corpusscriptoru16wissgoog#page/n461/mode/2up Latin text]</ref> The ''[[Apostolic Tradition]]'' speaks of prayer at midnight and again at cockcrow, but seemingly as private, not communal, prayer.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=UK-BkfXmh20C&dq=taft+%22two+prayer+times+at+night%22&pg=PA26 Robert F. Taft, ''The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today'' (Liturgical Press 1986), pp. 25–26]</ref> At an earlier date, [[Pliny the Younger]] [[Pliny the Younger on Christians|reported]] in about 112 that Christians gathered on a certain day before light, sang hymns to Christ as to a god and shared a meal.<ref>[http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html Pliny, ''Letters'' 10.96-97]</ref> The solemn celebration of vigils in the churches of [[Jerusalem]] in the early 380s is described in the ''[[Egeria (pilgrim)|Peregrinatio Aetheriae]]''.

Prayer at midnight and at cockcrow was associated with passages in the [[Gospel of Matthew]]<ref>{{bibleverse|Matthew|25:6}}</ref> and the [[Gospel of Mark]].<ref>{{bibleverse|Mark|13:35}}</ref><ref>Taft (1986), p. 35</ref> On the basis of the [[Gospel of Luke]],<ref>{{bibleverse|Luke|12:35–37}}</ref> too, prayer at any time of the night was seen as having eschatological significance.<ref>Taft (1986), p. 15</ref>

The quotation from Tertullian above refers to the all-night vigil liturgy held at Easter. A similar liturgy came to be held in the night that led to any Sunday. By the fourth century this Sunday vigil had become a daily observance, but no longer lasted throughout the night. What had been an all-night vigil became a liturgy only from cockcrow to before dawn.<ref>[https://www.ewtn.com/library/PRAYER/DIOFFICE.TXT Lallou, William J. "Introduction to the Roman Breviary", ''Roman Breviary In English'', Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1950]</ref> Saint Benedict wrote about it as beginning at about 2 in the morning ("the eighth hour of the night") and ending in winter well before dawn (leaving an interval in which the monks were to devote themselves to study or meditation),<ref>''Rule of Saint Benedict'', 8</ref> but having to be curtailed in summer in order to celebrate lauds at daybreak.<ref>''Rule of Saint Benedict'', 10</ref>