The Rule of St Benedict Chapter 50

Of Brothers who are working at a distance from the oratory or are on a journey

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Text

Brother who are working at any distance and cannot get to the oratory at the proper time, and if the Abbot judges that this is the case, they should perform the work of God there, where they work, bending their knees in godly fear.

Fratres qui omnino longe sunt in labore, et non possunt occurrere hora competenti ad oratorium, et Abbas hoc perpendit quia ita est, agant ibidem opus Dei, ubi operantur, cum tremore divino flectentes genua.

Similarly those who are sent on a journey should not let the appointed hours pass them by, but if they can, perform them there, and not neglect the duty of their service.

Similiter qui in itinere directi sunt, non eos prætereant Horæ constitutæ: sed ut possunt, agant ibi, et servitutis pensum non negligant reddere.

Comment

St Benedict is eminently practical in all things. While most monks will be working close to the monastery, it may be that sometimes they are too far away to be able to make it back to the oratory for the Divine Office. Those working out in the fields, for example, may not be able to get back, wash and attend the office promptly.

As Dom Delatte notes, in his commentary, the rules of St Pachomius and St Basil also mention saying the office in the fields so it is an ancient practice. The fact that the offices of Terce, Sext and None are exactly the same from Tuesday to Saturday certainly helps – easy to remember.

Those travelling should do likewise, but subject to the practicalities of their journey. It’s this practice which generated the invention of the Breviary. If you look at the history of liturgical books, they were originally divided into books for particular functions. So there would be a book for the cantor, containing the antiphons and beginnings of psalms. The psalms themselves would be in a separate book, the martyrology in another, the hymns in another, etc. But monks or priests who were travelling needed all the parts in one book, hence the invention of the breviary and monastic diurnal.

If you look at an old breviary, one of the things they all have at the end is the prayers for those setting out on a journey. And that’s a relic of why the book was created in the first place.

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