Practices
Compline
Devotional Practices
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Origin Fixed in 6th-century monastic legislation; the Rule of St Benedict prescribes its psalms and the silence after it
Compline is the church's night prayer, the last office of the day, said before sleep: a short, almost unvarying service of quiet trust whose name comes from the Latin completorium, the completion. Its constants are the most intimate in the office: Psalm 91 with its shelter of wings against the terror of the night, the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon's prayer to depart in peace, an examination of conscience, and the final anthem to Mary, the Salve Regina foremost, sung in the dark at the day's end. Monastic custom follows it with the Great Silence, unbroken until morning.
Facts
Practice
Category of Practice Who Performs ItClergy or ordained officiants 1 FrequencyDaily 1Tradition: Christianity Cadence DetailDaily, as the last prayer before sleep 1Tradition: Christianity Solitary or CommunalPerformed alone or together 1 Liturgical and Scriptural RoleThe last office before sleep, closing with the gospel canticle Nunc Dimittis and, in Roman use, a final antiphon to the Virgin. 1 Origins
Origin PeriodFixed in 6th-century monastic legislation; the Rule of St Benedict prescribes its psalms and the silence after it 1 Place of OriginFixed in sixth century monastic legislation; the Rule of Saint Benedict prescribes its psalms and the silence after it. Identity
Also Known AsCompline is also known as Night Prayer in the modern English language editions of the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. 1 Meaning
Literal MeaningThe completion, from the Latin completorium, the office that completes the day. 1 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Learn More
The Church's Goodnight
Compline is the office that changes least, because night needs the same words every time. Its psalms are fixed or nearly so, led by Psalm 91, the great psalm of protection: you will not fear the terror of the night, he will cover you with his wings. Its hymn, Te lucis ante terminum, before the ending of the light, has been sung at this hour since the early Middle Ages. Its Gospel canticle is Simeon's, the Nunc Dimittis, now let your servant depart in peace, the prayer of a man ready to die, placed on the lips of everyone going to sleep in the tradition's frank acknowledgment that sleep rehearses death; the responsory before it, into your hands I commend my spirit, quotes the words of Christ on the cross, and the concluding prayer asks for a quiet night and a perfect end.
The office opens with an examination of conscience and a confession, so the day is reckoned with before it is surrendered, and it closes, in the Western tradition, with an anthem to the Mother of God sung by heart in the dark, the Salve Regina above all, whose valley of tears and after this our exile are among the most familiar phrases medieval piety produced. In monasteries the office ends with the abbot's blessing and the Great Silence begins, no speech until after the morning office. The whole service takes ten minutes, and contains, in miniature, a complete theology of endings.
From Benedict's Cloister to the Late Service
Night prayer before sleep is as old as Christian devotion, but Compline as a distinct office belongs to the monastic legislators. The Rule of St Benedict in the sixth century prescribes it exactly: three psalms said straight through without antiphons, the hymn, a lesson, the blessing, and after it the rule of silence, enforced with penalties, that turned the monastery's night into a fast of speech. Liturgical historians debate how much Benedict invented and how much he codified from the practice of his age, with the office's roots visible in the prayers before sleep that Basil and Chrysostom already commend; what is certain is that the Benedictine shape carried the hour through the Western Middle Ages, gathering the enrichments that became its identity, the Nunc Dimittis, the Marian anthems sung after it in season, and the confession of sins at its head.
The Reformation folded Compline into Anglican Evening Prayer, but the office refused to disappear: the 1928 English proposals and the modern prayer books restored it, and sung Compline by candlelight has become, unexpectedly, one of the most successful late-modern liturgical revivals, drawing students and seekers to cathedrals and college chapels for a service of plainchant, darkness and silence with no sermon and no demand. The Byzantine tradition keeps its own parallel, the apodeipnon, after-supper, with a Great Compline for Lent whose refrain God is with us rolls through the night services of the fast. Last of the hours to form, Compline has proven the hardest to kill: the day insists on ending, and the office owns the ending.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.
Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.
Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.
Kept in the Church of Greece.
Kept in the Church of Ireland. Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.
Kept in the Church of Sweden, which retained the historic episcopate through the Reformation as few Lutheran churches did. Compline stands in the modern Lutheran books as the last office of the day.
Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches.
Kept in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Compline stands in the modern Lutheran books as the last office of the day.
Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century.
Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.
Compline stands in the modern Lutheran books as the last office of the day.
Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.
Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books.
Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.
Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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