Matins (also Mattins) is a canonical hour in Christian liturgy, originally sung during the darkness of early morning (between midnight and dawn).
The earliest use of the term was in reference to the canonical hour, also called the vigil, which was originally celebrated by monks from about two hours after midnight to, at latest, the dawn, the time for the canonical hour of Lauds (a practice still followed in certain orders). It was divided into two or (on Sundays) three nocturns. Outside of monasteries, it was generally recited at other times of the day, often in conjunction with lauds.
Liturgy In the Liturgy of the Hours of the Latin Church, Matins is also called “the Office of Readings”, which includes several psalms, a chapter of a book of Scripture (assigned according to the liturgical seasons), and a reading from the works of patristic authors or saints.
In the Byzantine Rite, these vigils correspond to the aggregate comprising the Midnight office, orthros, and the first hour.
Lutherans preserve recognizably traditional Matins, distinct from the office of morning prayer.
In the Anglican Daily Office, Matins, occasionally spelled Mattins, combines the hours of Matins and Lauds as established by St. Benedict in Roman Catholicism and observed in England until the Reformation, most grandly in the Sarum Rite. It is one of the two daily times for prayer, the other being Evensong, which combines St. Benedict's Vespers and Compline.
In Oriental Orthodox Christianity and Oriental Protestant Christianity, the office is prayed at 6 am, being known as Sapro in the Syriac and Indian traditions; it is prayed facing the eastward direction of prayer by all members in these denominations, both clergy and laity, being one of the seven fixed prayer times.
"Matins" is sometimes used in other Protestant denominations to describe any morning service.
History From the time of the early Church, the practice of seven fixed prayer times has been taught; in Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus instructed Christians to pray seven times a day "on rising, at the lighting of the evening lamp, at bedtime, at midnight" and "the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day, being hours associated with Christ's Passion." With respect to praying in the early morning, Hippolytus wrote: "Likewise, at the hour of the cock-crow, rise and pray. Because at this hour, with the cock-crow, the children of Israel refused Christ, who we know through faith, hoping daily in the hope of eternal light in the resurrection of the dead."
Catholic Church Roman Rite Vigil The every-night monastic 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,; 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."
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).Regula S.P.N. Benedicti
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").St Benedict's Rule for Monasteries; cf. another translation; Paul Delatte, Rule of St. Benedict: A Commentary (Ravenio Books 2014)
The practice of rising for prayer in the middle of the night is as old as the Church.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 Tertullian () speaks of the "nocturnal convocations" (nocturnae convocationes) of Christians and their "absence all the night long at the paschal solemnities" (sollemnibus Paschae abnoctantes)Tertullian, Ad uxorem, II,4 ; Latin text Cyprian ( – 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).Cyprian, De oratione dominica, 36 (near end); Latin text The Apostolic Tradition speaks of prayer at midnight and again at cockcrow, but seemingly as private, not communal, prayer.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 At an earlier date, Pliny the Younger 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.Pliny, Letters 10.96-97 The solemn celebration of vigils in the churches of Jerusalem in the early 380s is described in the Peregrinatio Aetheriae.
Prayer at midnight and at cockcrow was associated with passages in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark.Taft (1986), p. 35 On the basis of the Gospel of Luke, too, prayer at any time of the night was seen as having eschatological significance.Taft (1986), p. 15
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.Lallou, William J. "Introduction to the Roman Breviary", Roman Breviary In English, Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1950 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),Rule of Saint Benedict, 8 but having to be curtailed in summer in order to celebrate lauds at daybreak.Rule of Saint Benedict, 10
Matins The word matins is derived from the Latin adjective , meaning 'of or belonging to the morning'.Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary It was at first applied to the psalms recited at dawn, but later became attached to the prayer originally offered, according to the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, at cockcrow"Offer up your prayers in the morning, at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, the evening, and at cock-crowing" (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles , VIII, iv, 34) and, according to the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict, at could be calculated to be the eighth hour of the night (the hour that began at about 2 a.m.).Rule of Saint Benedict, 8Delatte, Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Wipf and Stock 1922), p. 141
Between the vigil office and the dawn office in the long winter nights there was an interval, which "should be spent in study by those [monks] who need a better knowledge of the Psalter or the lessons"; in the summer nights the interval was short, only enough for the monks to "go out for the necessities of nature".Rule of Saint Benedict, 8Paul Delatte, Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Wipf and Stock 1922), p. 157 The vigil office was also shortened in the summer months by replacing readings with a passage of scripture recited by heart, but keeping the same number of psalms. Both in summer and in winter the vigil office was longer on Sunday than on other days, with more reading and the recitation of canticles in addition to the psalms.Rule of Saint Benedict, 10−11
Outside monasteries few rose at night to pray. The canonical hour of the vigil was said in the morning, followed immediately by lauds, and the name of "matins" became attached to the lengthier part of what was recited at that time of the day, while the name of "lauds", a name originally describing only the three Psalms 148−150 recited every day at the end of the dawn office (until excised in the 1911 reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X; see Lauds), was applied to the whole of that office, substituting for the lost name of "matins" or variants such as laudes matutinae (morning praises) and matutini hymni (morning hymns). An early instance of the application of the named "matins" to the vigil office is that of the Council of Tours in 567, which spoke of ad matutinum sex antiphonae.Fernand Cabrol, "Matins" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 10 (New York 1911);
The Rule of Saint Benedict clearly distinguished matins as the nighttime hour, to which he applied Psalm 118/119:62, "At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules".Psalm 119:62Rule of Saint Benedict, 16
The word vigil also took on a different meaning: not only a prayerful night watch before a religious feast, but the day before a feast.Oxford English DictionariesMerriam-Webster
Monastic matins The canonical hour began with the versicle "Lord, open our lips: And we shall praise your name" (the latter said three times) followed by Psalm 3 and Psalm 94/95 (the invitatory). The invitatory was to be recited slowly out of consideration for any late-arriving monk, since anyone appearing after its conclusion was punished by having to stand in a place apart.Rule of Saint Benedict, 43 After this a hymn was sung.
Next came two sets of six psalms followed by readings. (Such sets would later be called nocturns.) The first set was of six psalms followed by three readings from the Old or New Testaments or from Church Fathers. Each reading was followed by a responsory. The second set of six psalms was followed by a passage from the Apostle Paul recited by heart and by some prayers. The Night Office then concluded with a versicle and a litany that began with Kyrie eleison.Rule of St Benedict, 9–10
Since summer nights are shorter, from Easter to October a single passage from the Old Testament, recited by heart, took the place of the three readings used during the rest of the year.Rule of Saint Benedict, 10
On Sundays, the office was longer, and therefore began a little earlier. Each set of six psalms was followed by four readings instead of three after the first set and a single recitation by heart after the second set. Then three canticles taken from Old Testament books other than the Psalms were recited, followed by four readings from the New Testament, the singing of the Te Deum, and a reading by the abbot from the Gospels, after which another hymn was sung.Rule of Saint Benedict, 11
Roman Breviary matins In the Roman Breviary, use of which was made obligatory throughout the Latin Church (with exceptions for forms of the Liturgy of the Hours that could show they had been in continuous use for at least two hundred years) by Pope Pius V in 1568, matins and lauds were seen as a single canonical hour, with lauds as an appendage to matins.John Henry Newman, On the Roman Breviary as embodying the substance of the devotional services of the Church Catholic (Tracts for the Times, 75), p. 19
Its matins began, as in the monastic matins, with versicles and the invitatory Psalm 94 (Psalm 95 in the Masoretic text) chanted or recited in the responsorial form, that is to say, by one or more cantors singing one verse, which the choir repeated as a response to the successive verses sung by the cantors. A hymn was then sung.