Medieval society so valued constant prayer that many people made substantial donations to monasteries so that monks and nuns, largely freed from manual labor, could become “professional” pray-ers on behalf of the rest of society. In fact, many monks and nuns, in obedience to Paul’s command to “pray without ceasing,” lived an institutional life of prayer, praying day and night.

If the chief monastic activity was prayer, what would be better suited than the Jewish-Christian prayer book, the Psalms? Most Benedictine monks and nuns chanted all 150 psalms once a week in a cycle of seven daily “hours.” Thus the first thing required of new monks or nuns was learning to read, if they did not already know how to. Second, they had to memorize the Psalms, which might take anywhere from six months to two years. The Rule of the Master, a forerunner of Benedict’s Rule, says that monks traveling on monastery business should take with them wax tablets covered with Psalms to memorize.

The ...

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