VESPERS (Vesperae, Agenda vespertina, Synaxis vespertina, Solennitas vespertina, Gratia vespertina, Duodecima). - Canonical hour at sunset; perhaps the most ancient of the hours of prayer. In the Old Testament it was the hour of the evening sacrifice.

For Christians of the first three centuries it was an hour of private prayer; it became public in the monasteries and churches. Sometimes it is identified with the lucernarium (v.). According to Callewaert (differently from Batiffol and others), Vespers were already recited privately in Rome in the 3rd century, then in the 4th and 5th centuries as a canonical hour. St. Benedict gives (Rule, ch. 41) the hour is so established as not to need a lamp, that is, as a daytime hour of the afternoon. According to Fr. J.-M. Hanssens, the psalms proper to the lucernarium were replaced in the Roman rite by the current psalms of the psalter (the psalmi vespertini, 109-47), a monastic usage.

The parts added later to the primitive nucleus of the five psalms with their respective psalmodic antiphons have reduced the present Roman Vespers to a scheme similar to that of Lauds.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: C. Callewaert, De Breviarii Romani Liturgia, Bruges 1939, nos. 223-26; id., Vesperse antiquae in officio praesertim Romano, in Sacris Erudiri, Steenbrugge 1940, pp. 91-117; M. Righetti, Man. di stor. litur., II, Milan 1946, pp. 587-603; J.-M. Hanssens, Aux origines de la prière liturg. Nature et genèse de l'Office des Matines (Anal. Gregor., 57), Rome 1952, pp. 24-41, 42-43, 87-89.

Pietro Siffrin

@incollection{ec12_vespri_vesperae_agenda_vespert, author = {Siffrin, Pietro}, title = {Vespri (Vesperae, agenda vespertina, synaxis vespertina, solennitas vespertina, gratia vespertina, duodecima)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1322--1323}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/vespri-vesperae-agenda-vespertina-synaxis-vespertina-solennitas-vespertina-gratia-vespertina-duo} }

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