To these were added others: in the 3rd century for example we hear of one at dawn and one at sunset: the former, being especially a praise service, came to be known as Lauds or Mattin-lauds; the latter was soon called Vespers (vesper=evening).
In the 4th century we hear of two more, making up the seven times a day of Psalm cxix. 164. During this growth of daily services there is sometimes a {7} doubt whether the night Service is included in the reckoning: but eventually we find for the daytime Mattin-lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.
The precise time of each is not defined by its name. If Mattins (i.e. Lauds) was not finished when Prime was due, these two Services were united.
But the office for Terce might be said at the 2nd hour or at the 3rd: and in like manner Sext belonged to any of the three hours before 12; and None to the three hours between 12 and 3.
Thus the day was divided into portions of three hours each: each portion had its own Service, named from its close, but said at a variable time according to the appointment of the Ordinary[2]. The tendency was to appoint an early part of the three hours for the Service; and this is visible in the word 'noon,' if it is true that 12 o'clock is so named from the custom of saying None at that time.
Compline (completorium) is so called from its completing the services of the day.
It will be noted that many of the names of Church Officers and many other terms having a technical Church meaning are Greek in their derivation. Archangel, Angel, Bishop, Priest, Deacon, Church, Ecclesiastical, Apostle, Prophet, Martyr, Baptism, Epistle, Evangelical, are instances of this; and many languages show by these and other terms that Christian Churches derive much of their organization from times and places where the Greek tongue was prevalent.
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It might be thought perhaps that the Latin derivation of the names of the Day Hour services would imply a more local and a Western Source for these Hours of Prayer. But some of them are, as we have shown, very early in their origin, and indeed there is evidence from books that something of the same order was very early observed in the Eastern parts of Christendom also.
This frequency of Services had a great charm for men who lived together and worked together in communities, with no great distance between their work and their Church, and who were able to fit their day's tasks and necessary meals to the intervals between the Services.