Compline

COMPLINE. - The last hour of the Divine Office.

I. NAME

It derives from the Latin completa, completorium (also used as an adjective in the plural: completorii, with psalmi understood), and thus is called the last canonical hour, with which the Divine Office ends and the liturgical day is closed. The expression ad complendum is already found in antiquity to indicate the postcommunio, which ends the Mass. The form completa is given for the first time in the Regula of St. Aurelian (d. 533): «Quando repusaturi estis, in scola ubi manetis, completa dicatur». Completorium is from St. Benedict (Regula, chaps. 16, 17, 18), who uses in the same sense also the verb comple (chap. 13): «omnes ergo in unum positi compleant, et exeuntes a completorio».

II. ORIGIN

Until the early years of the 20th century it was the common opinion that St. Benedict had been its deviser and institutor. B. Plaine and J. Pargoire demonstrate that in this too St. Benedict was an organizer, not a creator. Compline originated in the East. St. Basil in the Regulae fusius tractatae, q. 37, 5 (PL 31, 1016), written between 358-362, says: «Nocte incipiente, petendum est, ut inoffensa et a visis libera requie fruamur; qua hora etiam nonagesimus psalmus necessario dicatur». It is the oldest text that speaks clearly of the existence of Compline. Fifty years later St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) In epist. I ad Tim. hom., 14, 4 (PG 67, 577), speaking of the monks of Antioch, says: «Postquam paululum seerunt, hymnisque totum concluserunt, singuli quiescunt in stratis», where hymni, in the philological and historical context, indicates in all probability Compline. More probative is the testimony of Callinicus (ca. 477-50) in the Vita S. Hypatii (Acta SS. Iunii, III, Paris 1867, p. 325), who speaks of a canonical hour (πρωθέντα) between Vespers and the night Office. It cannot be a private prayer because it is named together with the other parts of the Office, without any distinction. There is no doubt that it is Compline.

These texts say clearly that in the East, between the 4th and 5th centuries, in the monasteries there was a prayer, of which the psalm 90 Qui habitat formed part, that was recited «nocte incipiente», between Vespers and the «vigiliae», and belonged to the series of canonical hours.

In the West the first sure testimony is found in the Regula secunda (5th century), in which after the Lucernarium (Vespers) it is prescribed: «consuetudinarii psalmi ante somnum dicantur» (cf. C. Lambot, Un «Ordo officii» du Ve siècle, in Rev. bénéd., 42 [1930], pp. 77-80). Before St. Benedict, therefore, Compline already has its place and its fixed psalmodic schema, but not yet a name of its own. The Regula of St. Aurelian recalls it as in common use in the monasteries of southern Gaul in the middle of the 6th century and with a special curius: «inprimis directaneus psalmus nonagesimus; deinde capitella consuetudinaria».

By this time Compline must have made its official entry also at Rome. St. Benedict speaks of it as of a known institution. Moreover, psalms 4, 90, 133 in the primitive Roman organization were included neither at Matins nor at Vespers, and this very probably because Compline was arranged together with the other canonical hours before the 5th century. For Rome, however, the first explicit mention is given by the Ordo of John «Archicantor» of St. Peter (ed. C. S. Silva-Tarouca, in Mem. della Pont. accad. rom. di Archeologia, 1 [1923], p. 212): «Pulsato signo, canuntur completurio (= completoria), ubi dormiunt in dormitorio, et extremo verso dicuntur antequam dormiant, hoc est. Pone Domine custodiam ori meo, et tunc vadunt cum silentio pausare in lectula sua». In the Roman monasteries assigned to the service of the basilicas at the end of the 7th century Compline still had the character of a private prayer. But the ecclesiastical canons sanctioned in the Council of Aachen of 816 include Compline among the obligatory canonical hours (Council of Aachen ca. 128).

III. STRUCTURE

Compline is composed, like Prime, of two parts: an introductory preamble, which we might call the Officium capituli, and the psalmody with its appendages, which constitute the Officium chori.

1. Officium capituli

It is formed essentially of a brief reading and the confession of faults. St. Benedict (Regula, ch. 42) prescribes that the monks, after Vespers and supper, gather together and listen to the reading of a good book, preferably the lives of the Holy Fathers, for the space of 4 or 5 folios or "quantum hora permittit." Then the psalmi completorii are recited, and, having received the abbot's blessing, all withdraw to rest. As for those absent, the Regula prescribes that they recite the lectio of St. Peter: "Fratres, sobrii estote." This pericope entered the Office of the secular clergy and has remained fixed to this day. The reading opened, as usual, with the blessing requested from the abbot (Noctem quietam) and ended with the Tu autem. The collatio closed with the invocation: Adiutorium nostrum. To the lectio many monasteries added the examination of conscience (which lasted the space of a Pater), followed by the accusation of the day's faults, which the monks, kneeling, made to one another, with the recitation of the Confiteor: "Laxant mutuo debita," says the Regula of St. Fructuosus (ca. 670) at ch. 2 (PL 87, 1099). Once the accusation was finished, the president expressed the common repentance with the verse: Converte nos, to which all responded Et averte, and the psalms were recited.

Among the Franciscans the first part of the Officium capituli (reading and concomitant formulas) took place in the refectory, during supper. From the refectory, saying the Miserere, the friars went to the church, where the recitation of the psalms of Compline took place, beginning with the Adiutorium nostrum (cf. A. Le Carou, L'Office divin chez les frères Mineurs au XIIIe siècle, Paris 1928, pp. 23-24).

2. Officium chori

Amalarius (ca. 830: De eccl. off., IV, 8) is the most authoritative witness to the primitive Roman schema of Compline. After the Deus in adiutorium followed four psalms: 4, 30 (the first stanza), 90, 133, which were invariable, for every day, and had been suggested for Compline by their meaning of divine protection in the night hour.

This arrangement lasted until Pius X, who reduced the psalms to three by suppressing Psalm 30 and reserving that schema for the Sunday and festal Office, while he endowed the other days of the week with their own current psalmody. In the arrangement of the Psalter it was one of the boldest reforms, which departed from the usage of sixteen centuries. After the psalms followed the verse Custodi nos, Domine, the canticle of Simeon Nunc dimittis, the prayers (Kyrie eleison, St. Benedict calls them, but in their present form they are late, perhaps from the 14th century), and the blessing of the abbot or of the one presiding. Et benedictiones missae sunt (Regula, ch. 17). Indeed the true blessing is today's oration Visita... habitationem istam (a clear allusion to the place where the Hour was recited, that is, the dwelling of the monks, not the Church), et benedictio tua sit super nos semper. The blessing that follows today: Benedict et custodiat is merely a duplicate of the preceding one. Finally the abbot sprinkled all with holy water.

Later three other elements came to be added to this original schema: the hymn Te lucis, the chapter Tu autem (attested first by Durandus, d. 1296) and the responsory In manus tuas, which, as a mandatory introduction, is still later than the chapter.

The verse Pone, Domine, custodiam ori meo, of which Amalarius speaks in the text cited above and which ended the hour of Compline, was called "versus clusor," because it closed the mouths of the monks in the most rigorous silence, until the "versus aperitionis," that is Domine labia mea aperies, with which Matins began the following night (cf. Regula Magistri, ch. 30 and 37: PL 88, 990 and 1005).

In the 13th century the custom arose of singing after Compline before an image of the Madonna the Salve Regina, which was then annexed to Compline and prescribed by Pius V, together with the other three major antiphons of the Madonna, to be recited according to the different seasons of the liturgical year.

Annibale Bugnini