TERZA. - The canonical hour of the third hour of the day, which corresponds to 9 o'clock.

It is the most solemn of the minor hours and precedes the 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 Veni Creator Spiritus. In antiquity, as is known from Hippolytus and the Apostolic Constitutions, the third hour of prayer was connected with the Lord's condemnation before Pilate. The canonical hour was at first a private act of piety, then the public and canonical prayer of monks and, from the 5th-6th century, also of the secular clergy, and its structure is common to that of the other minor hours, Sext (v.) and None (v.).

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: C. Callewaert, De Breviarii Rom. Liturgia, Bruges 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., Milan 1946, pp. 421-23, 584-86; A. Leclercq, Sexte et Tierce, in DACL, XV, cols. 1396-99.

Pietro Siffrin

@incollection{ec11_terza, author = {Siffrin, Pietro}, title = {Terza}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XI}, pages = {2035}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/terza} }

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