[Scriptum compendiosum Psalterii intentionem declarans]

Regarding the second, where it must be seen regarding the manner of singing.

For it must be diligently noticed that in the manner of singing, any ecclesiastical person, and especially a religious one, is always bound to please God more than those assisting. For everyone studies to please God in singing; the more purely and simply one has sung, the more one will please God. For God attends more to the devotion and purity of the heart than to the modulation of the voice, as someone said to all: "Not the voice, but the vow; not musical strings, but the heart; not clamor, but love sings in the ear of God." Whence our father and preceptor Augustine himself is read to have said in his Confessions: "When it happens to me that the singing moves me more than the thing that is sung, I confess that I sin penally, and then I would prefer not to hear the singer." Where he also recounts how he, when he had been in Milan, immediately after his baptism had visited the churches, and was refreshed delightfully by the modulation of the mind of the hymns and the melody of the psalms, and was weeping happily. The blessed Augustine also narrates in the same place about Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, that he made the psalms be read with such a moderate inflection of the voice that the reader was more similar to one speaking than to one singing. A certain devout brother was accustomed to singing frequently with great devotion in the choir and with such zeal that he had for the divine office that, as it seemed to him, he could never be fatigued by singing. But when he had sung so much on a certain solemnity that he almost failed from breath,

resting in his little bed, he is seized by sleep. It seemed as if all the breath which he had breathed out from his heart while singing to the honor of God was breathing back from the heart of God. Having woken up, therefore, he felt himself entirely comforted and entirely recreated, and from that time he sang with even greater fervor. But clamorous and broken singing, which is done not for the praise of God but for vain glory, God considers little, but the demon approves. Whence Caesarius recounts that on a certain feast day, with certain clerics singing and lifting tumultuous voices on high, a certain religious man saw a certain demon in a higher place of the church holding a large sack in his left hand, and with his right hand he was putting the voices of the songs into that same sack. But to those boasting among themselves after the singing was finished, as if they had praised God well and strongly, he who had seen the vision replied: "You sang well indeed, namely a sack full of songs." When they were wondering and asking why he said these things, he explained the vision to them. The same man also recounts that in a certain Cistercian monastery, the monks having begun the psalms with a moderate voice and following it in the same way, a youth, arrogant enough, raised his voice beyond the third tones, and although the seniors were resisting him, he, with certain others helping his part, prevailed, and thus he resulted in a scandal to the seniors. Soon a demon went out from his mouth like glowing iron to those who had helped him. When, however, the brothers are standing in the choir for the divine office, let everyone be careful that he is not slothful and fastidious, but let the choir compel the spirit to stand reverently and to sing to God alacritously before the angels who are present there assisting. For the Psalmist says: "In the sight of the angels I will sing to you." Let a brother utterly detest laughter and useless words where he ought to assist the Lord of majesty with fear and reverence. Let him pronounce the words of psalmody distinctly and integrally, not by syncopating nor by accelerating too much. Whence Bernard on the Canticles, in his forty-eighth sermon, admonishes his brothers, saying: "I admonish you, most beloved boys, always and strenuously always to be present at divine praises. Strenuously indeed, so that you may be reverent, thus also that you may assist the Lord alacritously, not sluggish, not sleepy, not yawning, not omitting voices, not skipping."