“Let all the Ministers of the Church,” says Bishop Quevil, in 1287, “be diligent and careful in saying the Divine Office. In the name of the Holy Trinity we order every minister of the church, carefully, devoutly, clearly, and entirely, without any cutting down, to sing or say the night and day Divine Office appointed by General Council. Let those who chant it remember to pause in the middle of the verse, and let no one begin any verse before the other has finished the verse preceding;” and, in regard specially to parish churches, the same Constitution ordered that “parish priests shall not leave their churches until on feast days and Holy days they shall have said the canonical hours either before or after Mass: and that no priest say his Mass before he has done his duty to his Creator by saying Matins and Prime.”
In the same way, in 1364, the Synod of Ely, held by Bishop Simon Langham, ordered that priests were to say the whole office in their churches, and
“that all pastors of souls and parish priests, when they had finished the recitation of their Office in their churches, shall apply themselves diligently to prayer and the reading of Holy Scripture, in order that, by a knowledge of the Scriptures, they may be ready, as becomes their office, to satisfy any one who asks for the reason of their faith and hope. Let them ever be earnest in the teaching and the effect of Scripture on their work, like the poles in the rings of the ark of the covenant, so that their prayer may be nourished and rendered fruitful by assiduous reading as by their daily bread.”
In some of the larger parish churches a considerable portion of the Divine Office, as well as the Mass, was sung daily. A note in the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, London, written in 1538, asks prayers for “Richard Atfield, sometime parson of the church ... for that he, with consent of the bishop, ordained and established Mattins, High Mass, and Evensong to be sung daily, in the year 1375.” This had been done regularly for 163 years, and the hours at which the various services were held would appear to have been: Matins at 7 a.m., High Mass at 9, and Evensong on work-days at 2 p.m.
In many of the larger churches, also, benefactors or fraternities had arranged for the singing of a Salve or other anthem of Our Lady in the evening time at her altar or statue. At these times also tapers would usually be lit in honour of Christ’s holy Mother. In the church of St. Mary-at-Hill, for example, in 1353, the practice existed, for in that year a parishioner left money to support a priest, and among his duties it is said “that he be every day in the same chirch after evensong, at the time of syngyng of Salve Regina, and that he sing the same, or else help the syngers after his cunnyng, in honour of our blessed lady the Virgin.” At other places, as at St. Edmund’s, Salisbury, for instance, the singing of the Salve was only undertaken at stated times. In this case the Fridays in Lent were apparently chosen for this evening hymn to Our Lady.
Chaucer, in The Prioress’s Tale, makes a little boy, who doubtless had taken his part in this, ask his older schoolfellow what another such anthem of Our Blessed Lady meant—the Alma Redemptoris.
“Noght wiste he what this Latin was to seye,
For he so yong and tendre was of age;
But on a day his felow gon he preye
T’ expounden him this song in his longage,