lessons: on ordinary days matins consisted of a single nocturn, but on most feast-days there were three. Lauds followed: this service derived its name from the three final psalms of the psalter, known from their opening words, _Laudate Dominum_, as the _laudes_. The whole night-office was of considerable length—equal, in fact, to that of the day-hours taken together—and was further increased by the addition of the office of our Lady and on certain days of _Placebo_, or matins of the dead. When it was over, the brethren returned to bed and rose, at daybreak in winter, at sunrise in summer, for prime, when the sub-prior unlocked the day-stair and the church was entered by the ordinary doorway from the cloister. § 82. The day-hours were said every three hours, as their names imply—prime at the first, terce at the third, sext at the sixth, none at the ninth. In summer prime was followed in Benedictine and Cistercian houses by chapter. This began with the versicle _Pretiosa_ ('Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints') which preceded the martyrology or account of the saints commemorated on the day: this was followed by the necrology, or list of the dead to be remembered, and by a chapter of the rule with a sermon or commentary. The work of each monk was allotted for the day, and the meeting closed with _clamationes_ or individual complaints, public confessions and corrections by the head of the house. The interval between chapter and terce was occupied by the monks in work in the cloister or in their various offices. Terce was followed by the chapter mass, during which at Durham half the monks in priest's orders said their private masses. The other half said their masses during high mass, which was sung about an hour after the chapter mass and immediately before sext. During this time, no food was taken. Bread soaked in wine (_mixtum_) was allowed to those whose strength was hardly equal to the long morning. In the Premonstratensian order, where, as in Augustinian houses, the chapter mass seems to have been sung immediately after prime, and chapter was followed after an interval by terce, the _mixtum_ was distributed after terce to the infirm and the novices. All spare intervals were filled by work, and silence was rigorously maintained, all necessary conversation taking place in the parlour.