How Many Psalms Are Sung in Different Places

For we have found that many people in different countries have made different rules and arrangements for themselves in this matter, according to their own fancy, having, as the apostle says, “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” Some have appointed that twenty or thirty psalms should be said each night, and that these should be drawn out by the music of antiphonal singing, with some added melodies as well. Others have even tried to go beyond this number. Some use eighteen. In this way we have found different rules appointed in different places, and the systems and regulations we have seen are almost as many as the monasteries and cells we have visited. There are some, too, who have thought it good that in the daytime services of prayer, namely the third, sixth and ninth hours, the number of psalms and prayers should correspond exactly to the number of the hour at which the service is offered to the Lord. Some have seen fit to assign six psalms to each daytime service. So I think it best to set out the most ancient system of the fathers, which is still kept by the servants of God throughout the whole of Egypt. In this way your new monastery, in its untrained infancy in Christ, may be instructed in the most ancient institutions of the earliest fathers. [a]