The Form and Function of the Daily Offices

Abstract The Prayer Book tradition of daily morning and evening services intended for clergy and laity developed out of a modification of the medieval forms for members of monastic orders and clergy, in which the recitation of all the psalms and the regular reading of scripture were foundational. This pattern has continued down to the present day, in spite of research having established that this was a purely monastic development and that earlier forms of ecclesiastical or cathedral worship were structured quite differently, and even before that were the daily prayers of ordinary Christians. Only very recently have reforms been made in a few Provinces to attempt to capture some of the spirit of those earlier ways of praying.