BENEDICAMUS DOMINO. – Formula adopted at the end of Mass in place of the Ite missa est on Sundays and ferias of Lent and Advent, on vigils, and on days when the Gloria is omitted, as well as at the end of the canonical hours after the Oremus.
While the Ite missa est (q.v.), the solemn announcement of the dismissal of the people after Mass, is of Roman origin, the B. D. is probably of Gallican origin. Indeed, the sources of the Roman liturgy do not know it before the year 1000. In the middle of the 12th century it appears in the Ordo Ecclesiasticus Lateranensis, both in the Office and in the Mass. Yet already during the 11th century a compromise between the two formulas was reached, and the B. D. was introduced only in Masses without the Gloria. Medieval liturgists soon found symbolic and mystical reasons for it as well. The Requiescant in pace of the Mass for the dead appears only in the 12th century.