Matins (also Mattins) is a canonical hour in Christian liturgy, originally sung during the darkness of early morning (between midnight and dawn).
[citation needed] In the Byzantine Rite, these vigils correspond to the aggregate comprising the Midnight office, orthros, and the first hour.
[citation needed] Lutherans preserve recognizably traditional Matins, distinct from the office of morning prayer.
[citation needed] In Oriental Orthodox Christianity and Oriental Protestant Christianity, the office is prayed at 6 am, being known as Sapro in the Syriac and Indian traditions; it is prayed facing the eastward direction of prayer by all members in these denominations, both clergy and laity, being one of the seven fixed prayer times.
[13] Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240) speaks of the "nocturnal convocations" (nocturnae convocationes) of Christians and their "absence all the night long at the paschal solemnities" (sollemnibus Paschae abnoctantes)[14] Cyprian (c. 200 – 258) also speaks of praying at night, but not of doing so as a group: "Let there be no failure of prayers in the hours of night — no idle and reckless waste of the occasions of prayer" (nulla sint horis nocturnis precum damna, nulla orationum pigra et ignava dispendia).
[16] At an earlier date, Pliny the Younger reported in about 112 that Christians gathered on a certain day before light, sang hymns to Christ as to a god and shared a meal.
[23] Saint Benedict wrote about it as beginning at about 2 in the morning ("the eighth hour of the night") and ending in winter well before dawn (leaving an interval in which the monks were to devote themselves to study or meditation),[24] but having to be curtailed in summer in order to celebrate lauds at daybreak.
[30][31] The vigil office was also shortened in the summer months by replacing readings with a passage of scripture recited by heart, but keeping the same number of psalms.
Both in summer and in winter the vigil office was longer than on other days, with more reading and the recitation of canticles in addition to the psalms.
An early instance of the application of the named "matins" to the vigil office is that of the Council of Tours in 567, which spoke of ad matutinum sex antiphonae.
The invitatory was to be recited slowly out of consideration for any late-arriving monk, since anyone appearing after its conclusion was punished by having to stand in a place apart.
[39] Since summer nights are shorter, from Easter to October a single passage from the Old Testament, recited by heart, took the place of the three readings used during the rest of the year.
[42] Its matins began, as in the monastic matins, with versicles and the invitatory Psalm 94 (Psalm 95 in the Masoretic text) chanted or recited in the responsorial form, that is to say, by one or more cantors singing one verse, which the choir repeated as a response to the successive verses sung by the cantors.
[43] On a feast of simple rank, a feria or a vigil day, matins had 12 psalms and 3 readings with no division into nocturns.
[46] In 1947, Pope Pius XII entrusted examination of the whole question of the Breviary to a commission which conducted a worldwide consultation of the Catholic bishops.
[48] In 1970, Pope Paul VI published a revised form of the Liturgy of the Hours, in which the psalms were arranged in a four-week instead of a one-week cycle, but the variety of other texts was greatly increased, in particular the scriptural and patristic readings, while the hagiographical readings were purged of non-historical legendary content.
[50] For that purpose alternative hymns are provided and an appendix contains material, in particular canticles and readings from the Gospels, to facilitate celebration of a vigil.
[51] The Roman liturgy now uses the term vigil either in this sense of "a night watch" or with regard to a Mass celebrated in the evening before a feast, not before the hour of First Vespers.
[53] To those who find it seriously difficult, because of their advanced age or for reasons peculiar to them, to observe the revised Liturgy of the Hours Pope Paul VI gave permission to keep using the previous Roman Breviary either in whole or in part.
In the Tridentine Roman Liturgy this custom, so ancient and so solemn, was no longer represented but by the Homily;[33] but after the Second Vatican Council it has been restored for the celebration of vigils.
[55] The Ambrosian Liturgy, better perhaps than any other, preserved traces of the great vigils or pannychides, with their complex and varied display of processions, psalmodies, etc.
Here too were found the three nocturns, with Antiphon, psalms, lessons, and responses, the ordinary elements of the Roman matins, and with a few special features quite Ambrosian.
[33] In the Eastern Churches, matins is called orthros in Greek (ὄρθρος, meaning "early dawn" or "daybreak") and Oútrenya in Slavonic (Оўтреня).
Fixed Preface “Lord, if you open my lips, my mouth shall declare your praise.” (twice) Acclamation: “Blessed is the consubstantial, unitary, and undivided Holy Trinity...Amen.
Psalms, Hebrew numbering in parentheses: 3, 88 (87), 103 (102), 143 (142) “Glory to the Father...now and always...Amen” Hymn of the Night Liturgy by Nerses Shnorhali: “Let us remember your name in the night, Lord...” Proclamation by John Mandakuni “Having all been awakened in the night from the repose of sleep...” “Lord, have mercy” (variable number of times: thrice for Sundays and feasts of Christ, 50 times for the feasts of saints, 100 times on days of fasting) Hymn of Nerses Shnorhali: “All the world... (Ashkharh amenayn)” “Lord, have mercy” (thrice).