BENEDICAMUS DOMINO. — Formula used at the end of Mass in place of the Ite missa est on Sundays and weekdays 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 Orenus.
Whereas the Ite missa est (v.)—the solemn announcement of the dismissal of the people after Mass—is of Roman origin, the B. d. is probably of Gallican origin. In fact, the sources of the Roman liturgy do not know it before the year 1000. In the mid-twelfth century it appears in the Ordo eccl. Lateranensis, both in the Office and in the Mass. But already during the eleventh century a compromise was reached between the two formulas, and the b. d. came to be used 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 twelfth century.