three-hour period of being on the watch during the night. Even for civilians, night was commonly spoken of as divided into four such watches: the Gospels use the term when recounting how, at about "the fourth watch of the night", Jesus came to his disciples who in their boat were struggling to make headway against the wind, and one of the Psalms says to the Lord: "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." The sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict uses the term vigiliae ("vigils") fifteen times to speak of these celebrations, accompanying it four times with the adjective nocturnae ("nocturnal") and once with the words septem noctium ("of the seven nights", i.e., the nights of the week). English versions of this document often obscure its use of the term "vigil", translating it as "Night Hour" or "Night Office". Thus Leonard J. Doyle's English version uses "Night Office" to represent indifferently the unaccompanied noun vigilia ("vigil"), the phrase nocturna vigilia ("night vigil"), and the phrases nocturna hora ("night hour) and nocturna laus ("nocturnal praise"). The practice of rising for prayer in the middle of the night is as old as the Church. Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240) speaks of the "nocturnal convocations" (nocturnae convocationes) of Christians and their "absence all the night long at the paschal solemnities" (sollemnibus Paschae abnoctantes) Cyprian (c. 200 – 258) also speaks of praying at night, but not of doing so as a group: "Let there be no failure of prayers in the hours of night — no idle and reckless waste of the occasions of prayer" (nulla sint horis nocturnis precum damna, nulla orationum pigra et ignava dispendia). The Apostolic Tradition speaks of prayer at midnight and again at cockcrow, but seemingly as private, not communal, prayer. At an earlier date, Pliny the Younger reported in about 112 that Christians gathered on a certain day before light, sang hymns to Christ as to a god and shared a meal. The solemn celebration of vigils in the churches of Jerusalem in the early 380s is described in the Peregrinatio Aetheriae. Prayer at midnight and at cockcrow was associated with passages in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark. On the basis of the Gospel of Luke, too, prayer at any time of the night was seen as having eschatological