In the
Lutheran Church, Matins is a morning-time
liturgical order combining features that were found in the Medieval orders of
Matins
Matins (also Mattins) is a canonical hour in Christian liturgy, originally sung during the darkness of early morning.
The earliest use of the term was in reference to the canonical hour, also called the vigil, which was originally celebrated b ...
,
Lauds, and
Prime
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
. Lutherans generally retained the Order of Matins for use in schools and in larger city parishes throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. In some places, Matins continued to be sung in Latin still longer. For example, at the close of the eighteenth century in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, one historian records that "every Sunday and festival day the canonical hours taken over from the Roman Catholic Church are still being chanted before
he chief serviceat 6:30 am."
[Leonhardi, p. 416; cited in Stiller, p. 49] The orders experienced a revival in the Confessional Renewal that took place in the 19th century, and now have a stable place in modern Lutheran
liturgical book
A liturgical book, or service book, is a book published by the authority of a church body that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services.
Christianity Roman Rite
In the Roman Rite of the Catholic C ...
s.
Representative examples
A few examples of Matins in the Lutheran Church can be found below. The first column contains the Offices of Matins, Lauds, and Prime as found in the pre-Reformation breviary from the
Archdiocese of Magdeburg. The second column provides the Office of Matins from the
Lutheran Cathedral of Havelberg, a
suffragan of Magdeburg, as found in the 1589 ''Vesperale'' of Matthäus Ludecus, dean of the Havelberg Cathedral. The third column provides Matins as it was sung in the
Lutheran Cathedral of Magdeburg in 1613, precisely one century after the pre-Reformation breviary in the first column. The final column contains the Order of Matins as found in the 1941
Lutheran Hymnal of the
Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Along with the outline of the office itself, the various propers for Matins of the First Sunday in Advent are also included.
References
Bibliography
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{{Lutheran Church
Lutheran liturgy and worship