W. K. Lowther Clarke & C. Harris, editors. Liturgy
and Worship: A Companion to the Prayer Books of the Anglican Communion. SPCK, 1954. Print.
We will highlight certain sections.
IV – The Reign
of Edward VI
Henry VIII
died and Edward VI succeeded on Jan. 28, 1546–7. With a king a precocious boy
brought up in the “new learning” and hailed by Cranmer at his coronation as a
“second Josiah,” “to see God truly worshipped,” [Cranmer,
Misc. Writings, p. 127.] and with
Somerset as Protector, already recognized as “well disposed to pious doctrine,”
[Original
Letters, p.
256.] and a Council
of whom the majority were either disciples of the new learning or without
definite convictions, [A. F. Pollard,
England under Protector Somerset, p. 21.] Cranmer and
the reform party were free to promote the changes they desired with the consent
and cooperation of the Government; and accordingly new measures soon
followed.
In July
appeared Certain Sermons or Homilies, appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie to be
declared and redde, by all Parsones, Vicars, or Curates, every Sōday in their
Churches, where thei haue cures, i.e. the “First Book of Homilies,”
consisting of twelve sermons, four of them by Cranmer, the rest by various
authors. Such a publication had been proposed in Convocation, with Henry’s
approval, in 1542, and some at least of the homilies had been written and
presented to the Upper House of Convocation; but Henry had changed his mind, and
once more nothing had happened for the present.
In August
was issued a series of royal Injunctions [Cardwell,
Documentary Annals, i. pp. 4 ff.] and a general
visitation of the kingdom was planned, to be carried out by visitors armed with
articles of inquiry, who were also to distribute the Injunctions and the Book of
Homilies. Of these Injunctions, the 22nd requires that the Epistle and Gospel
be read in English at the high mass and repeats the direction of 1543, that on
Sundays and other holy days an English Lesson be read after Te Deum and
Magnificat; by the 29th, under the plea that strife has arisen “by reason
of fond courtesy and challenging of places in procession,” and in order that the
people “may the more quietly hear that which is said or sung,” it is ordered
that the Litany be recited before the high mass no longer in procession, but by
priests and choir kneeling in the midst of the church; the 33rd requires that
one of the Homilies be used every Sunday; the 37th orders that Prime and Hours,
i.e. all the Hours but Mattins, Lauds, and Vespers, be omitted when there is a
sermon; and the whole concludes with “The form of bidding the common prayers,”
i.e. the Bidding of the Bedes, a modification of that of 1536, which had already
appeared in 1540 or later in the preceding reign.
These
measures were taken by the Council without reference to Parliament or
Convocation, which did not meet till November. In Parliament two Bills were
then introduced, the one providing for the restraint and punishment of revilers
of the Sacrament of the Altar, the other for communion of the people in both
kinds. In the course of their passage through the Upper House the two Bills
were combined into one, which was passed by the Lords on Dec. 10, ten bishops
voting for it and five against, while eleven were absent; and it was finally
passed by the Commons on Dec. 17. Meanwhile on Nov. 25 the Lower House of
Convocation had somewhat informally given its assent to communion in both kinds.
[Gee and Hardy,
Documents, p. 322; Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of
Common Prayer, pp. 74 f; Wilson, The Order of the Communion, pp. vii.
ff.]
After the
prorogation of Parliament on Dec. 24 the Council resumed its arbitrary
proceedings.
In the 5th
of the Homilies Cranmer had denounced holy bread, holy water, palms, candles,
etc., as “papisticall superstitions and abuses”; and now, in Jan. 1547–8, the
Council prohibited the use of candles, ashes, and palms at Candlemas, on Ash
Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, holy
bread, and holy water. [Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. pp. 35, 38.]
In March
appeared The Order of the Communion, [H. A. Wilson,
The Order of the Communion, 1548, H.B.S., London, 1908.] being a form
in English for communicating the people in both kinds, to be used in the Latin
Mass after the priest’s communion, put forth, according to the royal
proclamation prefixed to the book, in order to avoid “any vnsemely and vngodly
diuersitie” in carrying out the provisions of the statute. A letter of the
Council to the bishops, requiring them to enforce the use of the Order, says
that it was “agreed upon” “after long conference together” by “sundry of his
majesty’s most grave and well learned prelates and other learned men in the
Scripture.” [Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. p. 61.] Who these
were is unknown, but no doubt Cranmer had a chief hand in the compilation; and
the tenor of the Act of 1547 and certain coincidences of language between it and
the Order suggest that the book was in some sort of existence before the
Bill was drafted. The Order consists of an exhortation, notifying on
what day communion would be given, with instruction how to prepare for it, to be
recited at least one day before the communion; an exhortation, warning, and
invitation at the time of communion; a General Confession, about half of which
is derived from that of Hermann von Wied’s Cologne Order, but avoids all that is
characteristic of it; the general Absolution of the Breviary and the Missal,
with the opening clauses of Hermann’s Absolution prefixed; four “Comfortable
Words” (Zech. 1. 13), being St. Matt. 11:28 and three of Hermann’s alternative
verses, themselves derived from the later editions of the Strassburg rite; the
prayer “We do not presume,” every clause of which is a quotation, though the
combination is original; the traditional words of administration, with “which
was geuen for the” and “which was shed for the” inserted; and a blessing
expanded from Phil. 4:7. There is no suggestion in the Order that
communion shall be given at every mass, even on Sundays and other holy days; but
soon after it came into use there were already churches in which it was used at
all masses; [Wilson, pp. xx,
29.] in which, in
other words, private masses were no longer said.
At the end
of 1547 or the beginning of the next year questions on the Mass were circulated
among the bishops, the ninth of which asked “whether in the Mass it were
convenient to use such speech as the people may understand”; and the answers
were almost all of them in the negative, and Cranmer himself only assents with
the reservation “except in certain secret mysteries, whereof I doubt.”
[Cranmer,
Misc. Writings, p. 151.] As early as
April 1547 Compline had been sung in English in the King’s chapel; and in the
Mass at the opening of Parliament in November Gloria in excelsis, Credo,
and Agnus
Dei were in
English. So, as we have seen, was the Order of the Communion, and by May
1548 vernacular Mattins, Mass, and Evensong were in use at St. Paul’s and other
London churches. [Gasquet and
Bishop, op. cit., p. 58; Wriothesley, Chron., i. p. 187, ii. p.
2.]
Of the text of these services nothing is known except from some manuscript
choir books; and possibly a translation of the canon of the Mass made by
Coverdale was intended for a practical purpose, or at any rate was so used.
[Foxe, Actes
and Monuments, 1563, vol. vi, pp. 362 ff. (ed. 1870); reprinted in The
Anglican Missal (1921).] As a result
of these innovations, which the Government attempted to check, but apparently
without success, [See the
proclamation of Feb. 6, 1548; Cardwell, Doc. Ann., i. p. 34, and the
letter to preachers, May 13, ibid., p. 51.] “divers and
sundry forms and fashions have been used in the Cathedral and Parish Churches of
England and Wales, as well concerning the Mattens, or Morning Prayer, and the
Evensong, as also concerning the holy Communion, commonly called the Masse, with
divers and sundry Rites and Ceremonies concerning the same, and in the
administration of other Sacraments in the Church. And as the doers and
executors of the said Rites and Ceremonies, in other form than of late years
they have been used, were pleased therewith; so other not using the same Rites
and Ceremonies, were thereby greatly offended.” [Act of
Uniformity, 1549; Gee and Hardy, Documents, p. 358. Cf. Orig.
Lett., p 470.]
In the
proclamation prefixed to the Order of the Communion Edward is made to
exhort his “loving subiectes” “with suche obedience and conformitie to receaue
thys oure ordinaunce, and most godly direction, that we may be encouraged from
time to tyme, further to trauell for the reformation and setting furthe of suche
godly orders, as maye bee moste to godes glory, the edifiying of our subiectes,
and for the aduauncemente of true religion. Whiche thing, wee (by the healpe of
God) mooste earnestly entend to bring to effecte”; and a rubric requires the
Order to be used “without the variying of any other Rite or Ceremony in
the Masse (until, other order shalbe prouided).” The design so far disclosed
issued a year later in the “First Book of Edward VI.” Of the history of the
compilation of the Book little is known. According to a proclamation of Sept.
23, 1548, the King is “minding to see very shortly one uniform order throughout
the realm,” “for which cause at this time certain bishops and notable learned
men, by his highness’ commandment are congregate.” [Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. p. 59.] This company,
generally referred to as “the Windsor Commission,” according to the most
probable account, consisted of Cranmer with six bishops and six divines, “some
favouring the old, some the new learning,” [Cranmer, Misc.
Writings, p. 450.] who were
assembled at Chertsey Abbey before Sept. 9 and removed to Windsor about Sept.
22. [The best
discussion of this matter is that of W. Page, “The first Book of Common Prayer
and the Windsor Commission” in Church Quarterly Review, xcviii, April
1924.] It is not to
be supposed that the “commissioners” were the authors of the Book, but rather
that it had already been drafted by Cranmer, with whatever assistance, and in
fact had possibly provided the “Mass, Mattins, and Evensong and all divine
service” already in use in the King’s chapel; which had been adopted in Oxford
at Christ Church, and had been (June 4) urged by Somerset on Magdalen College;
of which also Somerset on Sept. 4 had sent a copy to Cambridge and required it
to be used in the University. [Wilson, The
Order of the Communion, p. xx: Magdalen College, p. 88.] The business
of the company must have been rather to discuss, criticize, or emend. The
result was submitted to a meeting of bishops in October or November and there
assented to. [Gasquet and
Bishop, pp. 177 f.] The Bill
embodying the Book was read in the House of Lords on Dec. 14, and on the 15th
began a four-days’ debate on the Mass and the Book, [For the report
of this debate see ibid., pp. 397 ff.] in the course
of which it emerged that at the meeting just mentioned some bishops had rather
acquiesced in the book than positively approved of it, and this only on the
understanding that “many things that are wanted in” it “should be treated of
afterwards”; while one bishop asserted that in one respect the Book had been
altered after it had been assented to. [Ibid., pp. 163 ff.,
404 f.] On Dec. 19 it
was read in the Lower House and on Jan. 7 the Bill of Uniformity appeared in the
Lords, where it was passed at the third reading on Jan. 15, ten of the bishops
present voting for it, and eight, with three temporal peers, against it, while
of the four bishops who voted by proxy, two were certainly in favour of the
Bill, one against it, and it remains doubtful which way the fourth voted. The
Bill had been finally passed by both Houses by Jan. 21, and received the royal
assent on March 14, 1548–9. This First Act of Uniformity (2 & 3 Ed. VI c.
1) [Gee and Hardy,
Documents, p. 358.] required that
the Book should come into exclusive use at latest on Whitsunday, June 9, and
imposed severe penalties on those of the clergy who failed to use it. The
official records of Convocation for this period were incomplete, and what there
was of them perished in the great fire of 1666; but other evidence, if it is to
be trusted, suggests that in some form or other the Book received the assent of
Convocation. [See Procter and
Frere, pp. 50 ff.; Dixon, iii. pp. 5 ff.; Gasquet and Bishop, ch. x. Procter
and Frere’s conclusion is that “the Prayer Book was held to have the assent of
the bishops by their votes in the House of Lords, and was further submitted to
the Lower Houses of Convocation, and won the assent of the clergy generally
through their representatives there.” Dixon, however, sums up: “Even if the
first Prayer Book had been submitted to the Convocation of Canterbury ... it
would still have lacked the consent of the northern province. But it may be
concluded that the first Book was not submitted to either Convocation.” Gasquet
and Bishop also conclude: “There can remain very little doubt that the Book was
never submitted to Convocation at all.”]
The
contents and sources of THE booke of the common prayer and administracion of
the Sacramentes and other rites and ceremonies of the Churche: after the vse of
the Churche of England may be described summarily as follows.
(1) The
Preface is mostly translated from that of Cranmer’s second Breviary scheme,
which itself reproduces a large part of that of Quiñones. Except, therefore,
for the last paragraph referring to the solution of doubts which may arise
concerning the understanding and execution of the “thynges conteygned in this
booke,” the Preface is concerned only with the Divine Service, the recitation of
which in a note following is made obligatory only on ecclesiastics who “serue
the congregacion.” The orders how the Psalms and how the rest of Holy Scripture
is appointed to be read are also translated from Cranmer’s second scheme. The
Calendar, with the tables of Psalms and Lessons, follows. The Calendar contains
no commemorations except those of the New Testament saints and All Saints, for
which proper service is provided in the Book. The table of Lessons follows the
civil, not the ecclesiastical, year, Genesis, St. Matthew, and Romans all
beginning on Jan. 2. The Divine Service of Mattins and Evensong is a
simplification of Cranmer’s second scheme. Both offices are constructed on the
same plan, except that Mattins has Venite before the
Psalms of the day. Both open with the Lord’s Prayer said by the officiant, no
longer silently, but aloud, and the traditional introduction: then Psalms,
Lesson, Canticle, Lesson, Canticle, Preces and three Collects. Mattins
represents the old Mattins, Lauds, and Prime, deriving Venite and Te
Deum from Mattins, Benedictus and the Collect of the day from Lauds,
the Creed Quicunque vult (on six great festivals) from Prime,
Preces from Lauds and Prime, the second Collect from Lauds of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and the third Collect from Prime: Evensong is derived from Vespers
and Compline, taking Magnificat and the Collect of the Day from Vespers,
Nunc Dimittis, the Creed, and
the third Collect from Compline, Preces from Vespers, and the second
Collect from Vespers of the Blessed Virgin.
(2) The
second section concerns “The Supper of the Lorde, and the holy Communion,
commonly called the Masse.” It begins with the Introits, Collects, Epistles,
and Gospels, to which are added references for the proper Psalms and Lessons of
those days to which any are assigned. The Introits are now whole Psalms,
appropriate ones being chosen for festivals and for Ash Wednesday, the first two
Sundays in Lent, Good Friday, and Easter Even, and, for the Sundays not included
among these, short Psalms in the order of their occurrence in the Psalter. The
Collects, Epistles, and Gospels of the Temporale are for the
most part those of the Sarum Missal, only nine of the Collects being new, while
of the Epistles and Gospels, some are lengthened or shortened, and a few
Epistles and two Gospels are changed. Before the Mass of Easter Day is set the
procession before Mattins from the Processional, but little changed. In the
Sanctorale fourteen of the
Collects are new, replacing Collects which are generally rather jejune and
monotonous petitions for the help of the merits and intercessions of the saints.
The structure of the Mass – at which the priest is to wear a plain alb with a
vestment (chasuble, stole, and maniple) [For this
interpretation of “vestment” see Scudamore, Notitia
Eucharistica, ed. 2, pp.
72–75. But some authorities hold that the rubric enjoins the Lutheran practice
of wearing the chasuble without stole or maniple.] or cope, and
the other ministers albs and tunacles – remains unchanged; but of the private
prayers of the ministers, all that remain are the Lord’s Prayer and Collect to
be said during the singing of the Introit, while those at the Offertory, at the
Communion, and at the end disappear, along with the Gradual and Alleluia or
Tract and all allusion to incense or hand-washing. The Sermon, which in England
in recent centuries commonly followed the Offertorium, now follows
the Creed, and, if in it the people have not been exhorted “to the worthy
receyuing of the holy sacrament,” is itself followed by the exhortation from the
Order of the Communion. While the “Sentences,” which no longer, like the old
Offertoria, relate to the
day or season, but to almsgiving, are being sung, the people offer alms in a
chest placed in the choir, and those intending to communicate remain in the
choir. The priest takes so much as is required of bread, in the form of
unleavened wafers thicker than heretofore and without print, and wine mixed with
water, and sets them on the altar, laying the bread on the corporal or the
paten. Then after “The Lord be with you,” “Lift up your hearts,” etc., follows
the Preface, for which five propers are provided, those of Christmas and
Pentecost new compositions, the language of which largely comes from the
Necessary Doctrine. The structure of the Canon is unaltered, except that
one prayer is differently placed. Te
igitur and
Memento are represented by the more detailed prayer “for the whole state
of Christes churche,” in which some suggestions are adopted from Hermann’s
prayer after the Sermon “for all estates of men and necessities of the Church”:
Communicantes by the commemoration of the saints, especially the Blessed
Virgin Mary, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; after which follows
the prayer for the dead, being Memento
etiam removed from
its former place and combined with the conclusion of the collect of the Mass “Of
the Five Wounds”. Hanc
igitur is replaced by
a commemoration of our Lord’s one oblation of Himself and His institution of the
Eucharist as a “perpetual memory” of it. For the beginning of Quam
oblationem is substituted,
in accord with a well-known interpretation of the paragraph, an invocation “with
thy holy spirite and worde vouchsafe to † blesse and † sanctifie these thy
gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne,” while the end of the paragraph is
retained in the form “that they maye be” (not “become”) “vnto vs the bodye and
bloud of thy moste derely beloued sonne.” Qui pridie
quam pateretur becomes “Who in
the same nyghte that he was betrayed” (1 Cor. 11:23), and all the non-scriptural
additions to the record of the Institution are removed, and elevation is
forbidden. The following paragraph corresponds to Vnde et
memores and
Supra quae: “Wherefore, O
Lorde and heauenly father, accordyng to the Institution of thy derely beloued
sonne, our sauioure Iesu Christe, we thy humble seruantes doe celebrate, and
make here before thy diuine Maiestie, with these thy holy giftes, the memoriall
whiche thy sonne hath willed vs to make: hauing in remembraunce his blessed
passion, mightie resurrection, and glorious ascencion, renderynge vnto thee
moste heartye thankes, for the innumerable benefites procured vnto vs by the
same, entyerely desyringe,” continuing as in the present Book down to “benefites
of his passion”. One current interpretation of Supplices
te understood
“these things” (haec) to mean the
mystical body on earth, and the prayer to ask that it may be united to the body
on high. The corresponding paragraph of the English is, therefore, the
self-oblation of the Church, “oure selfe, oure soules, and bodyes” (Rom. 12:1),
ending like the Latin, that “whosoeuer shalbee partakers of this holy Communion,
maye woorthely receiue the most precious body and bloude of thy sonne Iesus
Christe: and bee fulfilled with thy grace and heauenly benediction,” with the
addition “and made one bodye with thy sonne Iesu Christ, that he maye dwell in
them, and they in hym.” Nobis
quoque peccatoribus is replaced by
the familiar “And although we be vnworthy” down to “duetie and seruice,” after
which is inserted another current interpretation of Supplices
te which makes
“these things” to be the prayers of the Church: “and commaunde these our prayers
and supplicacions, by the ministerye of thy holy Angels, to be brought vp into
thy holy Tabernacle before the syght of thy diuine maiestie”; and, with the
Latin, the canon ends with the clause “not waying our merites, but pardoning our
offences,” and the doxology. The Communion then begins with the Lord’s Prayer,
preceded by a somewhat shortened prologue, and still said by the priest alone,
except for the last clause, which as before is a response of the people. There
is no Libera
nos. Fraction and
Commixture are omitted; but one of the final rubrics requires that each wafer
shall be divided into at least two parts. “The Peace of the Lord” is followed
by a new feature, a sort of invitation compiled from 1 Cor. 5:7, 8; Heb. 10:10,
1 Pet. 2:24, and S. John 1:29. Then comes the Order of the Communion
from “You that do truely” down to the administration of the chalice, with little
change except in the opening lines of the Absolution, which now take the shape
they have retained ever since. During the Communion the Agnus
Dei is sung; and
after the communion is sung or said one of a series of verses from the New
Testament, “called the post-Communion”. Since wafers had come into use, and
consequently the Fraction, which the Agnus was originally intended to
cover, took no appreciable time, the Agnus was sung during the priest’s
communion, and in the absence of other communicants, the Communio, the proper
anthem meant to be sung during the communion of the people, followed the
priest’s communion, and therefore already by the thirteenth century was often
called “postcommunio”. [Durandus,
Rationale, iv. 56: cf.
St. Thomas Aq., Summa III. lxxxiii. 4 c., “cantus
post communionem”. Gasquet and
Bishop’s (p. 214) “This is a change of name” is therefore uncalled for; nor is
it true that “This prayer [Postcommunio] is discarded
in the new service,” except that it is fixed instead of being
variable.] The English
“post-Communion,” therefore, corresponds to the old Communio. This
finished, there follows the Post-communion proper, no longer a collect
varying with the day, but a fixed prayer of thanksgiving, which has remained as
the last prayer in subsequent revisions of the Order of Holy Communion. The
whole Mass concludes with a Blessing, a combination of that of the Order of
the Communion with a current traditional form. Though the final benediction
was in use on the Continent by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
[Bernold of
Constance, Micrologus, 21; Durandus,
Rationale, iv.
59.] and became a
constant feature of the German Church Orders of the sixteenth century, it had
not been common in England, though according to the Rationale it was
“sometimes” given. [Ed. Cobb, p. 28,
where see the editor’s note.] After the
blessing are a number of rubrics: allowing the omission of Gloria in
excelsis, Creed, Homily, and Exhortation on weekdays and at celebrations for
the sick: requiring that on Wednesdays and Fridays the Litany shall be used, and
that on these days and other days when the people are accustomed to come to
church, if there are no communicants, the priest shall vest in alb or surplice
and cope, and say all of the Mass up to the Offertory, adding one or two of
eight collects here provided, and the blessing; requiring some to communicate
with the priest at every mass; regulating the character of the bread, and
arranging that each of the households of the parish in turn shall at the
Offertory every Sunday offer the cost of the bread and wine and send one of its
members or a substitute to communicate, in order that the priest may not be
prevented from celebrating; requiring everyone to resort to his parish church
for divine service and then to communicate once a year at least and “receive all
other sacraments and rites” appointed in the Book, on pain of excommunication or
such other punishment as the ecclesiastical judge shall inflict; and lastly
directing that the people receive the Sacrament of Christ’s body in their
mouths, not in their hands.
The
Litany, which in some impressions is printed, not here, but after the
Commination, is so far altered from that of 1544 that the invocations of the
saints and three of the final prayers are omitted. It is only expressly directed
to be used on Wednesdays and Fridays, but in “Certayne notes” at the end of the
Book its use is implied on Sundays and Festivals.
“The
Administracion of Publyke Baptism” consists of the “Order for making a
catechumen and the Rite of Baptising” of the Manual. The former is
greatly simplified. The first three prayers, and the exorcism of the salt and
its administration, are omitted, and the office begins, as it still does, with a
short bidding, partly taken from the Albertine-Saxon Order of 1540,
followed by Luther’s recast of the prayer Deus
patrum which retains
only the final clauses of the original. The signing with the cross on brow and
breast is accompanied by a formula combining suggestions from Hermann, the
Encheiridion of Cologne, and the Rationale. The exorcisms are reduced to
one, composed of clauses collected from the several Latin exorcisms, and only
one of the accompanying prayers, “Almighty and immortal God,” is retained. The
Gospel is not, as hitherto in England, from St. Mat. 19, but from St. Mark 10,
adopted through the Hermann or the Albertine-Saxon Order and Luther from
mediaeval German use. “Effeta” and the touch with spittle (St. Mark 7:31 f.)
are omitted. Though it is not noticed in the Latin Manual, it appears
from the Rationale that in practice the priest at this point exhorted
those present to pray for the infant before the recitation of the
Pater noster, etc.;
accordingly, there follows the address, “Frendes you hear in this Gospell,”
largely translated in part from the Albertine-Saxon Order, in part from
the Latin of Hermann, and ending with the invitation to say the Lord’s Prayer
and the Creed, which follow, with the thanksgiving and prayer, “Almightie and
euerlasting God, heauenly father,’ an original composition in Hermann. The
signing of the right hand is omitted, and the priest immediately leads the
catechumen into the church, reciting as he goes a new formula. The “Rite of
Baptising” opens with the admonition “Welbeloued frendes, ye haue brought,”
translated from the Albertine-Saxon Order, as a prelude to the
renunciations and the Confession of Faith; after which the Sarum Order is
followed closely, with only the following changes. The renunciation of the
“pomps” of the devil is expanded into that of “the vayne pompe and glorye of the
worlde” from the Encheiridion of Cologne, and all its “couetous desyres”
from Hermann, and the third renunciation of the flesh is quite original. The
unction with oil is omitted. The second paragraph of the Creed is recited,
interrogatively, not in the abbreviated form of the Latin, but completely. The
traditional permission to use aspersion instead of immersion is added.
[Durandus,
Rationale, VI. lxxxiii. 12; Lyndwood, Provinciale, iii. 24, note
c.]
The “whyte vesture, commonly called the Chrysome,” is put on before instead of
after the unction with chrism; and the delivery of the torch is omitted. The
charge to the godparents and the following rubric cover the same ground as those
of the Sarum Manual, but are fuller in their directions for the education
of the child, and here a few lines are borrowed from Hermann. The order “Of
them that be baptised in private houses in tyme of necessitie” sets out at
length what is only prescribed in general terms in the Sarum Manual; but
whereas the Manual directs that, if the child survives, all that has been
omitted shall be supplied, the English Office, fitly it might seem, omits the
whole of the admission of the catechumen except the Gospel with the following
address, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed; and then proceeds immediately to the
renunciations and confession of faith, and the clothing with the chrysom, omits
the unction, and finishes with Hermann’s “Almightie and euerlasting God,
heauenly father,” which had been omitted after the recitation of the Creed. All
that precedes the Gospel –the direction to curates to warn their people not to
baptize their children at home “without great cause and necessitie,” and to
instruct them in such case to say the Lord’s Prayer and then to baptize with the
right formula, and not to doubt the sufficiency of their action; and, when the
child is brought to church, to inquire into the circumstance of such baptism,
and if they are found satisfactory, formally to certify its validity – is
translated from the Albertine-Saxon Order. The rubric at the end of the
Office is from the same source; but whereas, if the evidence of the witnesses
leaves room for doubt as to what was said and done, the German rubric requires
the child to be baptized absolutely, the English, in accord with traditional
practice, prescribes the use of the conditional formula. The “Blessing of the
Font” which in the Manual is placed immediately before the “Rite of
Baptising,” follows here in the new Book, to be used before any baptism after
the water has been changed; and this is to be done once a month at least.
Except the first half of the final collect, which comes from the Roman
consecration, the whole of the text is translated or paraphrased from the
Mozarabic or old Spanish Liturgy, which had been printed for the use of those
churches of Spain which still observed the ancient rite, by Cardinal Ximenes,
archbishop of Toledo, in 1500. [Migne, P.L.,
lxxxv. cols. 464 ff.] “Confirmation
wherin is conteined a Cathechisme for children” opens with a note to the effect
that it is thought good that none hereafter shall be confirmed unless they can
say the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the ten Commandments in English, and can
answer the questions of the Catechism following: and this for three reasons.
First (in language largely borrowed from Hermann), that they being of age to
have learned what was promised for them in Baptism, they may themselves openly
before the Church ratify the promises and undertake to fulfill them. Secondly,
since confirmation is conferred that they may receive strength and defense
against temptation, it is meet that it be conferred when children are of age
that they begin to be in danger of falling into the temptations of the flesh,
the world, and the devil. And thirdly, because it is “agreable to the vsage of
the churche in tymes past, wherby it was ordayned that confirmacion shoulde be
ministered to them that were of perfecte age,” that they might be able openly to
profess their faith and promise obedience. This, of course, is a mistake, but a
mistake which, if; as it seems, it arose from a misunderstanding of
“ut ieiuni ad confirmationem veniant perfectae etatis,” quoted by the
canonists from a Council of Orleans, [Burchard,
Collect. can., iv. 60; Ivo, Decretum, i. 254;
Gratian, Decretum, III. v.
6.]
had already been made 250 years before in the Rationale of Durandus, with
which no doubt the compilers of the Book were familiar. [Rationale, VI. lxxxiv.
8.]
The Catechism is exceptional in omitting any treatment of the Sacraments, and
in leaving so much, through its extreme conciseness, to be developed by the
catechist. When it is most fully developed, in the exposition of the
Commandments, nearly every word comes from the Necessary Doctrine. In
“Confirmacion” the only changes of any importance are that the sacrament is
conferred by imposition of the hand and signing on the brow without unction,
that the relative formulae are modified in consequence, and that part of
Hermann’s Confirmation prayer is substituted for the collect Deus qui
apostolis. Rubrics are
added requiring that curates shall catechize before evensong on some Sunday or
holy day at least once in six weeks; that parents and school teachers shall send
their children, servants, and apprentices to be catechized; and that on notice
of confirmation being given by the bishop, curates shall bring or send in
writing the names of the children who can say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and
the Commandments, and signify how many of them can say the Catechism; and a
final rubric directs that none shall be admitted to communion until they are
confirmed. [The
corresponding Sarum rubric and Peckham’s constitution Confirmationis (Lyndwood, i.
6) make exception of those who are in the article of death or have been
reasonably hindered from receiving Confirmation.]
“The Forme
of Solemnization of Matrimonie” is that of Sarum with the following alterations.
Into the opening address to the people is interpolated a passage on the
institution and dignity of marriage and the three causes of its institution,
which, though it only repeats the ordinary mediaeval treatment of the subject,
[See Chaucer, The
Parson’s Tale, “De
luxuria” and
“Remedia c. luxuriam”.] is perhaps
derived immediately from the Encheiridion of Cologne (f. 200); while the
clauses concerning the temper in which marriage should be taken in hand are from
Tobit 6:17 and Hermann. The challenge to the parties, “I require and charge
you,” for which the Sarum rubric only gives a general direction, is mostly that
of the York Manual. The ring, which is now to be placed on the left
hand, not the right, is not blessed, but the two blessings of it are combined in
a single prayer for the parties, said after the imposition of the ring. Then
follows, what was new in England, “Those whome God hath joyned,” etc., and the
declaration of the accomplished marriage, “Forasmuche as N. and N.,” etc.,
derived through Hermann from Luther. The former of these occurred in some
continental Rituals, and it is likely that it was in the Ritual which
Luther used, as it was in that of Cologne. [See
Encheiridion, f. 212.] The short
blessing, Ps. 68:28–30, preces, and collect, following the imposition of
the ring, are omitted, and the Espousals, which have been “made,” not as
heretofore at the door, but in the body of the church, end as heretofore with
the blessing “God the father bless you †” etc. For the procession into the
choir, Ps. 67 is provided as an alternative to Ps. 128; the first two collects
following the preces are combined into one, “O God of Abraham,” and the
rest omitted; and the Nuptial Benediction, i.e. the two prayers “O merciful
lorde” and “O God whiche by thy mightie power,” follows here and not after the
Lord’s Prayer and the Fraction in the Mass; and there is no allusion to the
venerable ceremony of the pallium, held over the bridegroom and the bride. The
first of these prayers is a combination of the substantial part of its original
Latin, with the final clauses of that of the second; and the second itself is so
far changed that it relates both to the man and the woman, and not, as hitherto,
to the woman alone. The final blessing is one of the collects omitted, as
already noted, after the preces at the beginning of the Nuptials. The
Mass follows, apparently that of the day, not as hitherto that of the Holy
Trinity, and a sermon is to be preached after the Gospel on “thoffice of man and
wyfe” “according to holy scripture”; failing which a series of selections from
the Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter is supplied to serve as a
homily.
In “The
Order for the visitation of the sicke, and the Communion of the same,” whereas
the Sarum rubric directs that the priest and his ministers shall recite the
seven penitential Psalms, with the antiphon, “Remember not, Lord,” etc. on the
way to the sick person’s house, the English provides that only the last of the
penitentials, Ps. 143, with the antiphon, shall be used in the sick room.
[The York
Manual has Ps. 51 in the same place.] The Sarum
preces follow, with two of the collects. The exhortation with the
following rubrics, which still remain unaltered, except by the adjustment of the
quotations from Heb. 12:6–10 to the text of the A.V., reproduce the topics of
the Sarum exhortation – Patience, Faith, Charity, and (omitting Hope)
Repentance. But the first few lines of the Latin are expanded into a discourse
of some length on the reasons for suffering patiently, in which some use is made
of the Homily “On the fear of death” and of Hermann’s chapter “Of the cross and
afflictions”; the curiously incomplete paraphrase of the Creed is replaced by
the interrogative baptismal creed; the topic of Charity, including alms,
restitution, and forgiveness, and, what is a new item, the duty of making a will
and declaring debts for “the quietnesse of his executours” – this and the
requirement of “a speciall confession” if the sick have any grave matter on his
conscience, are treated of, no longer in the form of a prescribed exhortation,
but in rubrical directions. The Absolution, which is also to be used in all
private confessions, opens, like that of the Order of the Communion, with
the first clauses of Hermann’s form, and proceeds with the more essential
clauses of the Sarum absolution, followed by one of the Sarum prayers, “O most
mercifull God,” the ancient absolution at the time of death, already found in
the Gelasian Sacramentary and the Frankish supplement; [Gelas.
Sacr., i. 39
(Wilson, p. 66); Gregorian Sacr. (Wilson, p. 208).] and Ps. 71
with the antiphon “O Saviour of the world” with which the Sarum Office of
extreme unction opens; and a new and stately benediction. Unction is to be
administered if the sick person desire it; but the form is drastically
simplified. In place of seven applications of the oil with the sign of the
cross to as many parts of the body, each accompanied by a Psalm and a formula,
there is now to be a single application, still crosswise, either on brow or
breast, with a single longer formula, partly compiled of fragments from the
opening prayer and the closing benediction and prayer, and the first of the
Psalms (13) of the Latin.
The
preliminary rubrics of “The Communion of the sicke” reproduce in substance and
sometimes in wording those of the Lutheran Order of Electoral Brandenburg
(1540). They remain practically unchanged in the present Book of Common Prayer,
except that after the words “to communicate with him” a paragraph has been
omitted directing that, if, on the day on which the sick desires to communicate,
there is a celebration in church, the priest shall reserve so much of both kinds
“as shall serue the sicke person, and so many as shall Communicate with him (if
there be any),” and as soon as is convenient after the celebration shall go,
and, after saying the Confession, the Absolution and the Comfortable words,
shall communicate first the people present and then the sick person, and
conclude with the thanksgiving. The order of “The Celebration of the holy
Communion for the sicke” at home is: Ps. 117 for Introit, the Kyries,
each once “without any more repeticion”; the Sarum memorial Collect “for a sick
person very near to death”; Heb. 12:5 for Epistle, and St. John 5:24 for Gospel;
“The Lord be with you” and “Lifte up your hearts, etc., Vnto the ende of the
Cannon.” Further rubrics direct that the priest and the people present
shall communicate before the sick; that the sick shall always desire some of his
household or his neighbours to communicate with him, so modifying Hermann’s
direction that both relatives and neighbours assist and communicate; and that if
there are several sick persons to be communicated on the same day, the priest
shall reserve at the first celebration and so communicate the rest. The rubric
concerning the sufficiency of spiritual communion for those who are prevented by
any just impediment from receiving the sacrament does not suggest that “lack of
Company to receive with him” is such an impediment.
The
obsequies of the Sarum Manual, including the “Commendation of Souls,” the
“Service (Vespers, Mattins, and Lauds) of the Dead,” the Mass, and the “Burial
of the Dead,” form an immensely long process, covering every moment and every
movement from the house of the departed to the grave, and involving, along with
much else, the recitation of something like fifty Psalms, and preces,
i.e., Kyrieleison, etc., Pater
noster, versicles, and
a Collect, seven times repeated. With admirable insight into the essential
structure of the whole, the compilers of the Book of 1549 produced an office of
great simplicity, sufficient, and of reasonable length, consisting of the
Procession, the Burial, an Office of the Dead, and the Mass. (1) The Office
begins at the “Churche style,” the lychgate, and three anthems are provided for
the procession to the church or the grave, the first (St. John 11:25 f.) being
the antiphon to Benedictus in the Lauds of the Dead, the second (Job
19:25 ff.) the first responsory of the Mattins. (2) At the grave while the body
is being prepared for burial – and, as appears from the next rubric, is being
laid in the grave – are said or sung “Manne that is borne,” being the opening of
the 5th Lesson, Job 14:1–6, of the Mattins of the Dead; and “In the midst of
life”. This use of Media vita, hitherto the antiphon to Nunc
dimittis in the Sarum
Compline of the third and fourth weeks in Lent, is borrowed from the Lutheran
Church Orders, in several of which and in Hermann it or Luther’s metrical
version of it, “Mitten wir
im leben sein,” is sung at or
on the way to the grave. The priest then begins the filling in of the grave by
casting earth on the body, while saying the Sarum commendation and adding “in
sure and certayne hope,” etc., and Phil. 3:21. Meanwhile the grave is being
filled in, and the anthem “I heard a voice” (Apoc. 14:13, the antiphon to
Magnificat in the Vespers of the Dead) is added, evidently to allow time
for the filling-in to be finished. Two prayers follow – one of commendation,
the other of thanksgiving, with petitions for the happy resurrection both of the
dead and of ourselves – which seem to be original. (3) The Office of the Dead,
to be used either before or after the burial, consists of three Psalms: 116 (in
the Latin Psalter 114 and 115, from the Vespers of the Dead and the Commendation
of Souls respectively), 139 (from the Commendation), and 146 (from Vespers); a
Lesson, 1 Cor. 15:20–58, of which Hermann suggests 20–28 or 50–58, as a Lesson
at the grave; “Lord, have mercy,” etc., “Our Father,” and versicles and
responses, from the Sarum “Burial of the Dead,” and a collect combining clauses
from three of the prayers of the “Burial of the Dead” with the conclusion of the
collect of the Mass “Of the Five Wounds”. (4) “For the celebration of the holy
communion when there is a Burial of the Dead” the Introit is Ps. 42, the Collect
is a new one, of the same character as the two Collects following the burial;
the Epistle, that of the Sarum Mass when the body is present, 1 Thess. 4:13–18,
and the Gospel that of the Mass for the dead on Tuesdays, St. John
6:37–40.
“The Ordre
of the purificacion of weomen,” apart from the curiously ungrammatical
invitation at the opening, is translated from the Sarum Order, omitting
the second Psalm (128). The aspersion with holy water is, of course, wanting;
and since the Office is to be said, not before the church door, but “nygh vnto
the quier doore,” the priest does not lead the woman into the church with the
formula “Enter into the temple of God,” etc.
The
direction that the woman shall return the chrysom comes from the charge to the
godparents at baptism; the “other offerings” are only “accustomed” and are not
mentioned in the Manual; and the suggestion that the woman communicate
“if there be a communion” is new.
What is
headed “The first daie of Lente commonly called Ashwednisdaye” is the
penitential office of Ash Wednesday in the Sarum Missal. The long
discourse, including the commination, which in form is quite new, takes the
place of the sermon there provided for; the seven penitential Psalms are reduced
to one, Miserere, and the office
proceeds unaltered down to the end of the first Collect. The second Collect is
woven together out of extracts from the following prayers; and the Anthem,
“Turne thou vs,” is compiled from Jer. 31:18, Joel 2:12, 17; Hab. 3:2, and the
first antiphon sung during the distribution of the ashes.
The
dissertation “Of Ceremonies Why some be abolished and some retayned,” which as
we have seen [Ps.
146] owes something
to the “Thirteen Articles” of 1538, follows here: and the Book ends with
“Certayne notes for the more playne explicacion and decent ministracion of
thinges, conteyned in thys book,” three of them regulating the vestments of the
clergy elsewhere than at the altar and of bishops in all ministrations; another
leaving the use or disuse of “kneeling, crossing, holding vp of handes, knocking
vpon the Brest, and other gestures” to the prompting of “euery mans deuocyon”;
and another allowing the use of any passage of Holy Scripture “hereafter to be
certaynly limited and appoynted” instead of the Litany on five great feasts.
[See above,
section on Henry VIII.]
The Book
was issued early in March and was due to come into use three weeks after it was
received and at latest on Whitsunday, June 9. In the choir of St. Paul’s and in
several other churches in London and elsewhere [Wriothesley’s
Chron., ii. p. 8.] it was adopted
at once, at the beginning of Lent; and if there was any justification for
Somerset’s assertion, made in a letter to Reginald Pole on June 5, that “a form
and rite of service” has been “published and divulged to as great a quiet as
ever was in England and as gladly received of all parts,” [Pocock,
Troubles connected with the Prayer Book of 1549, p. x.] it must have
been widely adopted in the intervening three months. At the same time it may be
suspected that it was received by many rather as an installment of further
changes to come than as a final settlement. On the other hand, three weeks
after Pentecost a royal letter to Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, complains
that the Book “remaineth in many places of this our realm either not known at
all, or not used, or at least, if it be used, very seldom, and that in such
light and irreverent sort, as the people in many places either have heard
nothing, or if they hear, they neither understand, nor have that spiritual
delectation in the same, that to good Christians appertaineth.” The blame is
laid on the bishops, and Bonner is commanded to see to it that in his own
diocese “the curates do their duties more often and in more reverend sort and
the people be” induced by the advice and example of the bishop and his officers
“to come with oftener and more devotion” to Common Prayer and Communion.
[Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. pp. 67 f.] It was soon
reported that some of the clergy were continuing to use the customary incidental
ceremonies and gestures at the altar and elsewhere. A new visitation was
therefore projected and articles were drawn up revoking some of the
Injunctions of 1547, among the rest that which sanctioned the two altar
lights, and forbidding any to “counterfeit the popish Mass” by observing such
ceremonies – some of which were only customary and unrecognized by the
Missals, while others of them were expressly allowed by the Book itself –
and inhibiting the celebration of more than one mass on other days than
Christmas and Easter. [Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. pp. 63 ff.] Meanwhile,
although the Book was used in the choir of St. Paul’s, in the chapels votive
masses, like those of the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary, had been
continued under the style of “the Apostles’ communion” and “our Lady’s
communion,” and Bonner had been ordered by a royal letter to put them down.
[Ibid., pp. 65
f.]
From a later letter it appears that the bishop himself “seldom or never”
celebrated at St. Paul’s on festivals, as had been his custom, and he is
required to resume his custom; [Foxe, Acts
and Monuments, ed. Pratt, v. p. 729.] and on Sunday,
Aug. 18, he “dyd the offes at Powlles both at the processyon and the comunione
dyscretly and sadly.” [Grey Friars’
Chronicle, p.
62.] Stephen
Gardiner of Winchester had been in the Tower since 1547 and did not see the Book
till it was brought to him in the middle of 1550 and his consent to it demanded,
when he replied that “having deliberately seen” it, “although I would not have
made it so my self, yet I find such things in it as satisfieth my Conscience,
and therefore I will both execute it my self, and also see other my Parishioners
to do it.” [Edward VI’s
Journal, June 14,
1550.] So much for
those who accepted the Book either willingly or with reluctance, making the best
they could of it. On the other hand, there were those who received it with
denunciation and resistance. On the one side Hooper, Somerset’s chaplain,
afterwards bishop of Gloucester, flatly refused to “communicate with the church
in the administration of the supper” ... “if it be not corrected.”
[Original
Letters, p.
79.] On the other
hand, the rebellions of 1549, which were only put down by Somerset’s foreign
mercenaries, if at bottom agrarian, were partly occasioned by the situation
created by the new Book. This is specially true of the rising in Devon and
Cornwall, the first program of which demanded the restoration of the old rites
and an indiscriminate return to the conditions of the latter years of Henry
VIII. [Dixon, iii. pp.
56 ff.]
When at
the end of the year Somerset fell and went to the Tower, it was expected in some
quarters that a return to the old rites would follow, “as though the setting
forth of the said Book [of Common Prayer] had been the only act of the said
duke.” [Hooper, Orig.
Letters, xxxvi. In modern English, “of the said duke alone”.] Consequently
an order was issued on Christmas Day for the bringing in, defacement and
abolition of the old ritual books, “the keping wherof shold be a let to the
usage of the said Boke of Commenne Prayers,” [Cardwell,
Doc. Ann., i. pp. 73 ff.] and this was
afterwards confirmed by an Act of Parliament (3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 10):
[Gibson, Cod.
Jur. Eccl. Angl., xi. 1. p. 264. Ed. 1761.] and further,
complaint is made that “dyvers frowarde and obstinate persons do refuse to pay
towards the fyndinge of bredde and wyne for the holy communion, according to the
order prescribed in the saide boke”: it is required that they be admonished and
that if they refuse compliance they be punished by suspension, excommunication
and other censures of the Church.
It has
already been mentioned that the Pontificals are omitted from the list of books
to be destroyed, partly perhaps because they were not the property of churches
but of individual bishops, but certainly also because they were still needed for
the rites of Ordination which were not provided for in the new Book. This
omission was now to be supplied. An Act of Parliament (3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 12)
[Gibson, iv. 2,
p. 100.] was passed on
Jan. 31, 1549–50, which empowered the King to appoint six bishops and six others
to prepare “a form and manner of making and consecrating of Archbishops,
Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and other ministers of the Church.” Since the work
of the commission was done in a week, it is obvious that the new rites had
already been compiled, no doubt again by Cranmer; and they were published in
March.
In the new
rites the clause “and other ministers of the Church” is ignored, and the
ordinations are confined to those of bishops, priests and deacons. For these
the structure of the traditional forms is preserved with considerable
simplification. In the old Roman rite, after the proclamation of their
election, before the gospel of the Mass the Archdeacon presented those to be
ordained deacon and presbyter, and when the Pope had called for the prayers of
the people, the Litany was recited, followed by a collect. Then the ordinations
were conferred by a solemn prayer and the imposition of hands, the ordained were
clothed in their characteristic vestments, and one of the new deacons sang the
Gospel. In the consecration of bishops the procedure was the same, except that
they were vested in dalmatic, chasuble and shoes before being presented. The
Gallican procedure was essentially the same; but in addition, during the prayer
and imposition of hands on a bishop two bishops held the Book of the Gospels
open on his head, and after the ordination the hands of bishops and presbyters
were anointed. In the course of the Middle Ages the rites became complicated:
the Roman and Gallican forms were conflated, so that the essential Gallican
prayer followed the Roman, and the imposition of the Gospels and the unction
were adopted generally. The “tradition of the instruments,” which formerly
belonged only to the Gallican ordination of the minor orders, was extended to
presbyters and deacons. Thus presbyters received the paten and chalice, deacons
the Gospels; subdeacons, deacons and priests were clothed by the bishop in their
characteristic vestments, each delivered with a verbal formula, and bishops were
invested with staff, ring and miter. Further, the imposition of hands on
deacons and priests became detached from the prayer, and a second imposition
with Accipe
spiritum sanctum (St. John xx.
22) was added in the case of priests. Veni
creator was also
inserted at some point in the ordination of bishops and priests.
The
principal differences between the old rite and the new are as follows: (1)
Hitherto priests and deacons had been ordained in the course of the Mass of the
Ember Vigil, which had no reference to ordinations: now there is provided a
proper Introit for priests and bishops, a Collect for deacons and priests, and
an Epistle and a Gospel for all three. (2) Hitherto only bishops had been
scrutinized in a series of questions: now such scrutiny is extended to priests
and deacons. (3) The long exhortation addressed to candidates for the
priesthood seems to be a new feature in England. (Such exhortations are not
unknown, however, elsewhere: e.g. in the Pontificale secundum usum ecclesie Romanae, Venice, 1520,
ff. 22–25, there are admonitions before ordination for all orders up to deacon,
and for the priesthood there is one before ordination and another at the end of
the Mass; and a second series is added for use after each ordination.) (4) In
the Pontificals the imposition of hands on deacons and priests is detached from
the ordination prayer, and in the case of priests is repeated with
Accipe spiritum sanctum: in the new
rite, for deacons the imposition remains in the same relative position with a
new imperative formula, Take thou authority, etc., and the prayer is,
unhappily, transferred to the end of the Mass; for priests, the imposition of
hands with “Receive the Holy Ghost,”’ etc., follows immediately the prayer,
which is a new composition. A consequence of the complication of the mediaeval
rite had been uncertainty as to what was the essential form and matter of
ordination, and it is obvious that the compilers of the English rite followed
one of the several views, viz. that the essential form for the priesthood was
Accipe spiritum sanctum. Indeed, they
so exclusively concentrated the action on this that the Prayer is rather for the
Church in general than for the ordinands in particular. The diaconate is also
conferred by an imperative formula. (5) Unctions and vestings and the delivery
of miter and ring to the bishop are omitted, and priests receive neither wine
nor paten, only the chalice with the bread and the Bible.
A large
contribution to the new English rite was made by the De
ordinatione legitima ministrorum ecclesiae of Martin
Butzer (Bucer) [Scripta
Anglicana, pp. 238
ff.] of Strassburg.
Driven out by the enforcement of the Interim of Augsburg (1548), he came to
England and was the guest of Cranmer in the spring and summer of 1549, and no
doubt wrote his work at Cranmer’s desire in view of the contemplated English
forms of Ordination. The work supplies a single form for what Bucer calls “the
three orders of presbyters,” only suggesting that the procedure be more “lengthy
and weighty” in the ordination of bishops than of priests, and of priests than
of deacons. Bucer’s order suggested the Introits, Epistles and Gospels of the
ordination of priests and of bishops, three of the questions in the scrutiny of
deacons, and three in that of bishops, the allocution to priests and the Prayer
of their ordination; but unfortunately the English order omits the impressive
clause praying for the gift to them of the Holy Ghost, and also the first half
of the Prayer for the consecration of bishops.
It is
probable that the Book of 1549 was never satisfactory to Cranmer; that he
regarded it as a temporary compromise, and only waited for further innovations.
In these years “Reformed” opinions, originating in Switzerland and Southern
Germany, were being diffused in England. There was an influx of continental
refugees from the pressure which culminated in the Interim of 1548. From
Strassburg Peter Martyr was welcomed in 1548 and Bucer in 1549, and both were
made Regius Professors of Divinity, the one in Oxford, the other in Cambridge.
There came also Valérand Pullain, a successor of Calvin in the pastorate of the
French Reformed community in Strassburg, along with his congregation, and John
Laski from Emden in Friesland with his congregation. Englishmen who had been
living abroad returned, Coverdale from the Rhenish Palatinate, Hooper from
Zurich, and both these were made bishops. The relaxation of the censorship made
possible a flood of books and pamphlets written in England, most of them
treating of the Eucharist and the Mass, and most of them scurrilous, besides the
importation of foreign “reformed” works. Besides Hermann’s Consultation,
three other Service books were published in England: Pullain’s Liturgia
Sacra, 1551, the rite
of the French congregation of Strassburg, derived by Calvin with some little
modification from the contemporary German rite of Strassburg; Laski’s
Forma et ratio tota ecclesiastici Ministerij, in some
respects at least derived from Guilbert Farel’s La manière
et fasson, 1533, in use
at Geneva before Calvin’s final settlement there in 1541; and The form of
common prayer used in the churches of Geneva, 1550, being a translation by
W. Huycke of Calvin’s Genevan rite, La forme
des prières et chantz ecclésiastiques, 1542.
Further, the leading bishops of the old learning, Bonner of London, Gardiner of
Winchester, Day of Chichester, Heath of Worcester, Tunstall of Durham, were
being deprived by the Council.
As early
as 1548, Ferrar, bishop of St. Davids, two months after his consecration by the
bishops of the “Windsor Commission” at Chertsey, preached at Paul’s Cross “not
in hys abbet of a byshoppe, but lyke a prest, and he spake agayne all maner of
thynges of the churche and the sacrament of the auter, and vestmentts, coppes,
alterres, with alle other thynges.” [Grey Friars’
Chronicle of London, p.
57.] ... In the
Lent of 1550 Hooper, preaching before the King, expressed his no doubt
representative criticisms of the Book of 1549: he would have the magistrate
“shut up the partition called the chancel,” and “turn the altars into tables”;
“the memory of the dead” should be left out; “sitting” at communion “were best”;
the priest “should give the bread, and not thrust it into the receiver’s mouth:
for the breaking of the bread hath a great mystery in it of the passion of
Christ ... therefore let the minister break the round bread” (as he is in fact
directed to do in the Book): in Baptism whatever is added to “pure water,” “oil,
salt, cross, lights, and such other,” should be “abolished”: in the Ordinal he
“wonders” at the “oath by saints,” at the requirement that the candidates wear
albs; and asks “where and of whom and when they have learned that he that is
called to the ministry of God’s word should hold the bread and chalice in one
hand and the book in the other.” [Early Writings
of John Hooper, Parker
Society, pp. 440, 479, 488, 491, 533ff. Cf. Orig. Letters, i. p.
51.] In the summer
Ridley was carrying things with a high hand, and in spite of the Book ordered
the destruction of altars throughout the diocese of London. In this he was
supported by Northumberland and the Council, who then proceeded to order the
same throughout the kingdom. In this year too Bucer was invited to express his
judgment on the Book of Common Prayer, and in response he wrote his
Censura super libro sacrorum, seu ordinationis Ecclesiae atque
ministerii ecclesiastici in regno Angliae,
[Scripta Anglicana, Basel, 1577,
pp. 456 ff.] which he
presented to Thomas Goodrich, bishop of Ely, on Jan. 5, 1551. The
Censura is a review of
the whole Book, and while this expresses a keen appreciation of its merits as a
whole, it criticizes it in detail. It appears from this that revision has been
already in some sort begun, since he implores that some alterations which appear
in the Book of 1552 shall not be made. Some of the criticisms are merely
prosaic and of no importance. For the rest: Bucer would further limit the
number of holy days; he deprecates the position of the officiant at Divine
Service “ in the quire”: as to the Mass, it s to be noticed that he makes no
criticism of the structure of it in general, nor of the canon in particular; but
he would abolish the vestments and the gestures allowed by “Certayne notes” at
the end of the Book; he would have the Confession and “We do not presume” said
by the people with or after the priest; he would eliminate the idea of
consecration and consequently also the direction that only “so much bread and
wine” should be set forth at the Offertory “as shall suffice for” the
communicants, the invocation of the Holy Spirit and Word, the sign of the cross
and the taking of the paten and chalice into the priest’s hands; he deprecates
the exclusive use of wafer bread, the delivery of the Sacrament into the mouth
of the communicant, the presence of non-communicants at the Mass, the use of two
Masses at Christmas and Easter, [His dislike of
this provision is based on the fact that it implies that there will be more
communicants on these days than on others, whereas properly all should
communicate every Sunday.] and of the
“half-mass” when none have signified their intention to communicate, and the
permission for a household whose turn it is to “offer” for the charges of the
Communion and to provide a communicant to send a substitute to offer and
communicate in its stead. In Baptism he would not have the rite begun at the
church door, and would eliminate the exorcism, the benediction of the font, the
unction and the chrysom; he would have the catechism enlarged and more frequent
catechizing, and would impose new conditions for admission to Confirmation; he
desires the abolition of the unction of the sick and prayers for the departed at
their burial, the substitution of maledictions against violators of the
decalogue for the existing series in the Commination, and its use four times a
year; he would have more strict inquiries concerning candidates for ordination.
For many of the passages which he dislikes he suggests a new text. Peter
Martyr also wrote a criticism on the basis of an inadequate Latin version of the
Book, but on learning more of it from the Censura he adopted
Bucer’s criticisms, but added a further objection to communicating the sick in
the reserved sacrament without a repetition of “the words” (of Institution) in
the sick person’s presence; [Strype,
Memorials of Cranmer, App. lxi.] and also he
made a further report to Cranmer which is no longer extant.
In a
letter to Bucer dated Jan. 10, 1550–1, Peter Martyr expresses his satisfaction
that both of them had had an opportunity of admonishing the bishops and relates
that he had been told by Cranmer that at a meeting of the bishops it had been
decided that many changes should be made, and further he is cheered by hearing
from Cheke that if the bishops will not make the desirable changes the King will
do it himself! [Strype,
Memorials of Cranmer, App. lxi.] Nothing is
known of this process of revision except that the King caused the “ordre of
commō seruice, entituled, The boke of common prayer, to be faythfully &
godly perused, explaned, & made fully perfect” [Act of
Uniformity, 5 & 6 Edw. VI. cap. i.] by “a great
many bishops and others of the best learned within this realm appointed” (of
course by Northumberland and the Council) “for that purpose,” and that Cranmer,
Ridley and Peter Martyr were among them. [Cranmer’s Letter
of Oct. 7, 5552: Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book, p. 225.] It is true
that the Dean of Gloucester has contended [Ibid., pp. 40
ff.] that the
well-known letter of Guest’s, [Ibid., pp. 215
ff.] commonly
supposed to refer to the revision of 1559, really belongs to that of 1551. If
this is so, then it follows that some important person or persons were anxious
to restore some ceremonies that had vanished and to retain some things which it
was proposed to abolish: also that at some stage the draft book required that
those not intending to communicate should be dismissed [Bucer notes
(Censura, 27) that in
1550 some priests “dismissed” the non-communicants after the sermon.] before the
Creed, and either was silent as to kneeling at Communion or explicitly allowed
either standing or kneeling (not sitting) according “to every man’s
choice”.
Parliament
met on Jan. 23, 1551–2. [{At this point
Dr. Brightman’s work was interrupted by his death on March 35, 1932. What
follows is by the Rev. K. D. Mackenzie, who also corrected the proofs of Dr.
Brightman’s MS. – ED.}]
Convocation also met on the following day. Heylin states that he can find no
record of their proceedings, but it is thought by Procter and Frere
[P.
286.] that the
debates which he assigns to the meeting of the previous year belong in truth to
the assembly of 1552. These debates, however, were only concerned with
questions of the Calendar and of the words of administration of the Communion,
and in any case it is certain that the Lower House never gave any sanction to
the liturgical changes which were now enacted. [Dixon, iv. p.
73.]
Parliament, however, made little difficulty about passing the statute which made
the new Book part of the law of the land. Aldrich and Thirlby voted against it,
as they had done against the former Book: but the natural leaders of opposition,
Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day, Tunstall, were all in prison, and the Second Act
of Uniformity had passed through both Houses by April 14. [Gee and Hardy,
Documents, No. lxxi.]
It
describes the Book of 1549 as “ a verye Godlye ordre ... agreable to the woorde
of God and the Primatiue Churche, verye coumfortable to all good people,” but
complains that “a greate noumbre of people in diverse parts of this Realme ...
doe wilfully, and damnablye before almightie God, absteyn and refuse to come to
theyr parishe Churches.” If this can be assumed to be honest and coherent, it
would seem that the recusants referred to are rather the “reformed” extremists
than those of the old learning, since almost all the alterations made in the
Second Book are entirely in the “reformed” direction. But if the main motive of
the Book was to reconcile extremists in one direction, it certainly appears that
there was also a deliberate motive of making impossible the position of
conservatives like Gardiner. The very things which seemed to him to make the
First Book tolerable are made to disappear in the Second. Such are the
statement that “the whole body of our sauioure Jesu Christe” is received in each
fragment of the Sacrament; the close association of intercession for the Church
with the actual memorial of Christ’s death; and the prayer that the bread and
wine maye be vnto vs the bodye and bloud” of Christ.
The spirit
of the new Book is indicated by a significant change of title. While the First
Book was styled the “booke of the common prayer and administracion of the
Sacramentes, and other rites and ceremonies of the Churche: after the use of the
Churche of England,” the Second drops the allusion to “the Churche” and claims
no more than to regulate such administration “in the Churche of
England.”
For the
rest, the effect of the revision may be summarized as follows: – The recitation
of the Divine Service is now made obligatory on all priests and deacons
(preaching and study being no longer an excuse). The titles of the offices are
changed to “Morning” and “Evening Prayer”. They are to be recited no longer
necessarily in choir, but where they may best be heard. The Introduction to
these services appears for the first time. The Alleluia and procession at
Easter are omitted, the latter reappearing in the form of a substitute for
Venite. Psalms
alternative to the Gospel canticles are inserted. “The Lorde be wyth you,” and
“Let vs praye” appear in a novel place before “Lord, haue mercy,” instead of
before the Collect.
The
Communion Service has a new title, “The Order for the administracion of the
Lordes Supper or holye Communion”; and the word “Masse” disappears. “Table” is
substituted for “Altar”; and it is to stand “in the bodye of the Churche, or in
the chauncell”. The celebrant (still called “the Priest”) is to stand “at the
north-syde”. The Introit, “Glory be to thee,” before the Gospel,
Osanna, Benedictus, “the peace of
the Lorde,” “Christ our Pascal lābe,” Agnus Dei and the post-communion
sentences are omitted. Nothing is now to be sung except the Epistle, the
Gospel, the Creed, and the Gloria in excelsis. The ninefold “Lord, haue
mercie” is expanded and appears as a series of responses after each of the Ten
Commandments, which are now to be rehearsed before the Collects. Gloria in
excelsis is transferred to the end of the service. Unleavened wafers are no
longer required. A new exhortation is added containing a rebuke to those who
assist without communicating, which is described as being an even greater fault
than that of being altogether absent. But by far the most serious change, and
one which entirely altered the whole tone of the rite, was the breaking up of
the canon in such a way as to obscure its character as one continuous act of
memorial, springing from the Preface and Sanctus and culminating with the
Lord’s Prayer and Communion. The Prayer for the Church, somewhat altered by the
omission of all mention both of the saints and the rest of the departed, is now
brought to a position immediately after the almsgiving (which is all that is
left of the ancient offertory): [All mention of
the preparation of the gifts is omitted. Nothing is said about the adding of
water to the chalice because nothing is said about the contents of the chalice
at all. If any alteration was intended, a direction for it might be expected
among the final rubrics, where an alteration in the character of the bread is
actually commanded.] then follow
the Exhortations with Confession, Absolution and Comfortable Words: the
connection between the Preface and the Consecration is obliterated by the
insertion of “We doe not presume” between the Sanctus and the Prayer of
Consecration: Communion now is to come immediately after Consecration, and the
latter part of the canon (reduced by the omission of the anamnesis, of
the petitions no longer appropriate after Communion, and of the final petition
for the acceptance of our prayers “by the ministerye of the holy angels”) is
postponed till after the Communion, where it now appears, strangely, as an
alternative to the thanksgiving. The Lord’s Prayer also is to be said after,
instead of before, Communion. In the actual Prayer of Consecration the
invocation of the Holy Spirit, the crossings and manual acts, are all removed.
The words of administration of both kinds, now described as “the bread” and
“the cuppe,” are entirely altered, the second part of the words as they stand in
the 1661 Book being substituted for the first, which had been the 1549 formula
and was almost a direct inheritance from the Sarum rite. The species of bread
is now delivered into the hand, no longer into the mouth, and communion is
required of the laity three times, instead of once, in the year. The first Mass
of Christmas and the second of Easter are omitted. Daily Mass seems to be no
longer expected, even in Cathedrals; though the rubric governing the use of the
Proper Prefaces no doubt implies the possibility of a Communion on days for
which no special Epistle and Gospel is provided. Whereas in the 1549 Book the
first half of the service was to be said on Wednesdays and Fridays (if there
were none to communicate with the priest), now the same regulation is
transferred to holy days.
In baptism
the rite is no longer begun at the church door, so that the distinction between
the making of a catechumen and the actual Baptism disappears: the Exorcism, the
recitation of Pater and Creed, the Benediction of the water, the chrysom, and
the unction are all abolished; the signing with the cross is postponed till
after Baptism; [There were
numerous crossings in the Sarum rite. Of these the 1549 rite retained the first
only, which belonged to the admission of the candidate to the status of a
catechumen. The post-baptismal crossing in the Sarum rite was accompanied with
chrismation, as though it were a kind of anticipation of Confirmation; but the
1552 Book, omitting the chrismation, associated the crossing with the novel idea
of receiving the child “into the congregacion of Christes flocke”.] and, apart
from exhortations, the service ends with the Lord’s Prayer and a thanksgiving.
The minister is instructed to command that the children be brought to
Confirmation as soon as they are sufficiently instructed. In Confirmation the
sign of the cross, which in 1549 accompanied the imposition of hands, is
omitted, and a prayer is substituted for “I signe thee with the signe of the
crosse, and lay my hand vpon thee.” At the Burial of the Dead no part of the
service is now to be said in church (although, apparently, if there are singing
clerks the body may be conducted by them and the priest unto, but not into, the
church): the Office of the Dead (see (3), p. 166) is now to be said at the
grave, but without the psalms and preces. All prayers for the dead
disappear; so also does the Mass, except indeed that “The Collect” remains, but
without any indication of the use to be made of it. “The Purificacion of Women”
becomes “The Thankes geving of Women after Childe Birth, commonly called The
Churchynge of Women.” The order for the return of the chrysom naturally
disappears. The title “A commination” now appears for the first time as the
description of the Ash Wednesday service of 1549, but the service is now to be
used “dyuers tymes in the yere”. “Certayne notes” disappear, their place being
taken by the rubric, now printed before Morning Prayer, forbidding the use of
Alb, Vestment or Cope. In the Ordinations, the vestments and the tradition of
the chalice to priests and of the staff to bishops are suppressed, and in the
consecration of bishops the Bible is to be “delivered” to the new bishop, and no
longer laid upon his neck. The form of the oaths is changed to avoid invoking
the help of the saints and of the Gospel. [The earlier form
of the oath was one of the stumbling-blocks which made Hooper scruple to accept
episcopal consecration (Original Letters, p. 81). Micronius states that
at his second appearance before the Council on July 20, 1550, in consequence of
Hooper’s arguments the young King struck out the incriminated words with his own
hand (ibid., p. 566 f.).] Signing with
the cross, except after Baptism, and The Lord be with you, except in
Morning and Evening Prayer, and Confirmation, are eliminated.
It will be
seen that many of these alterations are the result of Bucer’s criticisms, or at
least in harmony with them. But of the outstanding features of the new Book,
the dislocation of the canon and the new words of administration, the one had no
foundation in the Censura and the other
was definitely deprecated, and about one-third of Bucer’s criticisms are
ignored.
The
penitential introduction to Morning and Evening Prayer may have been suggested
by a somewhat similar arrangement in Pullain’s Liturgia
sacra or Laski’s
Forma et ratio.
The use of
the Decalogue in the Mass has a longer and more interesting history. There was
a traditional class of hymns with Kyrieleison as a refrain. Following
such a tradition Luther made the Ten Commandments into a metrical paraphrase
(Dys synd die heylgen zehn gebet) with the
refrain Kyrioleys after each, and Coverdale translated it into English.
There was thus a suggestion already near at hand for a means of retaining the
traditional Kyrie while neutralizing the apparent vanity of its repetitions.
But there was also, as we have seen, a tradition, especially in England,
connecting the Decalogue with Mass, not indeed as part of the rite, but as one
element of the vernacular and informal office called the Prone. The German
Lutheran Kirchenordnungen and the French
and Swiss Reformed services all look as though they were suggested by this
office. It was therefore not unnatural that they should include the Decalogue,
nor that Cranmer, under the double influence of English tradition and the
contemporary practice of highly respected foreign reformers, should have hit
upon the idea of combining the Decalogue with Kyrieleison as a regular portion
of the new rite. [See Brightman,
The English Rite, pp. clv. ff.]
As we have
seen, the new Book had no ecclesiastical authority. But in the form in which it
was finally published it had not even the authority of Parliament. It was
discovered through the violent propaganda of John Knox that the direction to
kneel for the reception of Communion was in fact an innovation! The Book of
1549 had made no mention of posture, though, of course, kneeling was taken for
granted. The extreme party among the reformers made an uproar, and at
Berwick-on-Tweed at Knox’s behest the practice of sitting was actually
introduced. [Original
Letters, p.
591.] The Council,
under the pretext of having discovered printer’s errors, suspended the
publication of the Book (Sept. 27, 1552) and directed Cranmer to reconsider the
question. Cranmer (Oct. 7) expressed himself as ready to obey the Royal command
in the matter, but protested vigorously against the alteration of what had been
settled by Parliament with the King’s assent, and argued against the contention
of Knox and his associates. [State Papers of
Edw. VI: Domestic XV: No.
15.] Time was
pressing; and the upshot was that on Oct. 27, five days before the Book was to
come into use, Goodrich, bishop of Ely and Lord Chancellor, was ordered by the
Council “to have joined unto the Book of Common Prayer lately set forth a
certain declaration signed by the King’s Majesty’ touching the kneeling at the
receiving of the Communion.” [Dixon, iii. p.
483.] This is the
so-called “Black rubric,” which declared that by the requirement to kneel “it is
not mente ... that any adoracion is doone, or oughte to bee doone, eyther vnto
the Sacramentall bread or wyne, there bodelye receyued, or vnto anye reall and
essenciall presence there beeyng of Chrystes naturall fleshe and
bloude.”
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