Lauds (Morning Praise)

LAUDS (Morning Praise). - Solemn prayer at sunrise, already in use in the first Christian centuries (Tertullian, De oratione, 25: «ingressu lucis»; Peregrinatio Aetheriae [CSEL, 39, 71 ff.]: «ubi coepit lucescere»). It was regulated in the Traditio of Hippolytus of Rome (R. H. Connolly, The so-called egyptian Church order, Cambridge 1916, n. 64, note 4) and in the Apostolic Constitutions (11, 59; VIII, 34-39); from the 4th-5th centuries it was in use among the clergy of the basilicas and in the monasteries. Lauds festively close the night prayer; for this reason in choral recitation these two canonical hours are not separated. From the 12th century onward the morning Office, leaving the name Matutinae to the night prayer, was called simply Laudes (L.).

The most ancient elements are psalms 50, 62 and 66, then at Rome a canticle varying according to the day, reserving the Benedicite for Sunday; there follow psalms 148, 149, 150, already in use in the ritual of the Synagogue. A brief lesson or a chapter, originally missing from the Roman Office but introduced into the monastic Office by St. Benedict, passed also into the Roman Office in the 7th century; the same may be said of the hymn introduced into the Roman Office in the 12th century. The culminating points of the morning Office are the recitation of the Benedictus and the solemn incensing of the altar, already recorded in the Ordo Lateranensis of Cardinal Bernardo (written before 1145; ed. L. Fischer, Munich 1916). With the reform of Pius X, the order of psalms used from the 5th-6th centuries was changed; a double scheme of Lauds was introduced, festal and penitential (Advent and Septuagesima-Lent). On the Roman model, St. Benedict ordered monastic Lauds, but added the chapter and the hymn.