Gospel Antiphons and the Concordance between Mass and Office

This essay examines the connections between the gospel pericopes sung at Mass and the Magnificat and Benedictus antiphons sung at the Divine Office on the Sundays after Pentecost in the medieval and Tridentine Roman liturgies. Contrary to the assertion of Josef Andreas Jungmann that concordance between Mass and Office was a post-Tridentine innovation, the Franciscan and Roman curial liturgies of the thirteenth century already show a sophisticated coordination. The Office antiphons draw directly on the biblical material of the gospel pericopes of the Mass, while treating the biblical material with a certain flexiblity and drawing on other parts of the biblical canon to enrich the text of the liturgical antiphons.