ABSTRACT
In current usage, the word ‘liturgy’ is widely understood to refer to any form of public worship, often with a more specific understanding as the formally prescribed texts and actions that shape the performance of specific rites and religious services or ceremonies. In the medieval West, there was never an equivalent term, and the assumption that there was indeed a generic concept of ‘liturgy’ brings with it various constraints. For a monk following the rule of Benedict, formal worship primarily took place in the observance of the Divine Office, the name given to the chants, readings and prayers sung in the eight canonical hours of each day and night; but every aspect of the monastic life was consecrated to the service of God and controlled by Benedict’s rule, and may therefore be considered liturgical in a broader sense. For a parish priest and his lay parishioners, the situation was somewhat different, and for them it is easier to see a division between divine worship and the other components of everyday life. The patterns followed in a cathedral or collegiate church fall somewhere between these alternatives, although the basic round for the clergy, wherever they were, was still shaped by the hours of the Divine Office.
