TERZA. - The canonical hour of the third hour of the day, corresponding to 9 a.m.
It is the most solemn of the minor hours and precedes Solemn Mass on feast days. The hymn alludes to the descent of the Holy Spirit; on the feast and during the octave of Pentecost it is replaced by the Feni Creator Spiritus. In antiquity, as is known from Hippolytus and the Cost. ap., the third hour of prayer was connected with the condemnation of the Lord before Pilate. The canonical hour was at first an act of private devotion, then the public and canonical prayer of monks and, from the 5th-6th centuries, also of the secular clergy; its structure is common to that of the other minor hours, Sext (v.) and None (v.).
BIBL.: C. Callewaert, De Breviarii Rom. Liturgia, Brugge 1939, nos. 212, 226, 317, 318; P. Albrigi, Sacra liturgia. L'Orazione pubblica, Vicenza 1941, pp. 38-90, 439-41; M. Righetti, Man. di st. liturg., Milano 1946, pp. 421-23, 584-86; A. Leclercq, Sexte et Tierce, in DACL, XV, cols. 1396-99.