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".