The history of the Divine Office as it was performed in Anglo-Saxon England cannot be considered in isolation from the history of the Office on the Continent. In the present chapter, a few Continental themes of special importance to the Anglo-Saxon situation are explored, beginning with a brief account of the familiar classification of the medieval Office into two typical forms, one ‘secular’ and the other ‘monastic’. This classification is inadequate to describe the liturgical situation on the Continent and in England in the early Middle Ages. Instead, the role of monastic tradition, written and unwritten, in governing Office liturgy must be considered, particularly in the Office as it was sung from an early stage in the monasteries of Rome. The origin of the system of separate forms of the Office for secular clergy and monks must be sought in the imposition of the Roman Office on the Frankish Church in the eighth century followed by the adoption by Frankish monks, beginning in the ninth century, of a different form drawn from the Regula S. Benedicti.

The typical secular and monastic forms of the Office

For the greater part of the Middle Ages in the West, the Divine Office was celebrated according to one of two fixed patterns, or cursus. One was the secular cursus, sometimes called the ‘Roman’ or ‘cathedral’ cursus (not to be confused with the ‘cathedral Office’ of late antiquity, which was something altogether different), the other the monastic cursus, also called the Benedictine cursus.