Prayer Book Through the Ages. William Sydnor

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СКАЧАТЬ Peace (“The Peace of the Lord be always with you”) “Christ our Pascall lambe is offered for us . . .”

      The Invitation (“Ye who do truly and earnestly repent . . .”)

      General Confession

      Absolution

      Comfortable Words

      Prayer of Humble Access (“We do not presume to come . . .”) Communion (“In the Communion tyme the Clarkes

      shall syng” the Agnus Dei)

      Postcommunion Thanksgiving

      “The Peace of God . . .”

      The rubrics contain directives that those who intend to commune sit “in the quire, or in some convenient place nigh the quire, the men on the one side, and the women on the other side.” They further direct that there be “Communion in both kindes,” that the wafers are to be “without all manner of print” and be placed in the people’s mouths, and that “all must attend weekly, but need communicate but once a year.” There is a significant departure from the medieval Latin rite in the Prayer of Consecration. The Latin rite had no invocation of the Holy Spirit. The Latin rite accented the centrality of the words of institution in the Middle Ages by such new ceremonies as the Elevation of the Host. Cranmer corrected this straying from tradition by inserting the invocation of the Holy Spirit from Eastern practice (mainly the Eastern Liturgy of Saint Basil). He inserted the words, “with thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts of the bread and wine,” before the words of institution. In that way he attempted to bring together Eastern and Western ideas.

      

The Litany is the same as the 1547 revision of Cranmer’s 1544 Litany.

      

The services here are those which in varying degrees were based on the Manuale— Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, Visitation of the Sick, Burial, Purification, and Commination (the Ash Wednesday service). In Baptism, the child is dipped “discretly and warely” in the water three times. If, however, the child is weak, “it shall suffice to powre water upon it.” The water is ordered to be changed once a month (imagine the dusty scum and sediment!) and new water blessed. The catechism is included along with the Confirmation service. Here is the reason both for its placement and for its contents: “All the Reformers laid great stress on education, and particularly on religious education . . . Their Catechisms were not usually connected with Confirmation, but were intended to cover the whole field of doctrine.” Cranmer’s aim was different. He confined himself to the requirements of godparents at the end of the Baptismal service, namely, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. It was the duty of godparents to teach their godchildren these formulas, and by ancient tradition the children could not be confirmed until they could repeat them.⁵

      

At the end of the book are two appendices with self-explanatory titles: “Of Ceremonies” and “Certain Notes.” The former states that excess of ceremonies is wrong; meaningful ceremonies are profitable; so “some be abolished and some retained.” It does not detail which ceremonies. “Certain Notes” states that the minister shall wear a surplice for Matins, Evensong, Baptism, and Burial. But this is modified. The surplice is not an absolute requirement save in colleges and cathedrals and for archdeacons, deans, provosts, and the like. A country vicar is at liberty to use a surplice or not. The Litany, Matrimony, Churching, and Ash Wednesday are not mentioned, but as each of these is normally followed by the Communion, it may be assumed that the Mass vestments will be worn for them also. The bishop always wears a rochet and carries his pastoral staff, unless it is held by his chaplain; but no mitre is mentioned. The Communion service is conceived as essentially musical, and the “clerks” who lead the singing are directed to stay throughout the service even if they are not intending to commune. (The musical setting of John Merbecke, a minor canon of Windsor, came out in 1550.)

      

The Ordinal was not a part of the 1549 Book. It was prepared the next year, published in March, 1551, and was annexed to the 1552 Book.

      With Parliament’s Act of Uniformity in January, 1549, and the actual use of the Book beginning in March of that year, the good ship Book of Common Prayer was launched on its stormy voyage and as of now has logged some 440 years. During that time it has been overhauled and refitted for service eight times. For each of those eight times, as well as for the issuing of this first Book, the occasion has been one of joy or anguish, relief or disgust, pride or dismay, dedication or revolt. In 1549, such strong feelings as these poured over the Book almost before the ink was dry.

      In producing the 1549 Book, Cranmer and his colleagues were sincerely and honestly seeking to lead the Church of England into a genuine revival of its worship practices. They aspired to help worshippers find greater meaning and significance in practices which were grounded in the rich heritage of Christendom. “Cranmer was trying to edge a nation notorious for its conservatism into accepting a reformed service, though, for all its comprehensiveness, the Book turned out to have gone almost too far. He hoped to satisfy the reforming zealots by suppressing all mention of oblation, to pacify the conservatives by keeping the time-hallowed framework, and to supply a positive, reformist-Catholic statement of what all had in common. This would provide the basis for further advance. For the moment, the more doctrinal positions that could be read out of it, the better.” The attempt failed from every point of view. The conservatives disliked its innovations and the omission of old services; the reformers thought it retained too much of the old and did not go far enough in innovation.⁶ The law required that the Book be used everywhere beginning with Whitsunday, June 9, 1549. By Monday, ominous, open revolt against the government had erupted in many parts of England. While much of this was smoldering opposition to “the miserable government of the Protector and Council,” some of it at least was due to worshippers’ violent resentment of the new Prayer Book. Because of the danger of insurrection and the fear that France would find the widespread unrest an inviting opportunity to attack its old foe, the government was forced to secure its safety by foreign mercenaries.

      The most violent of the revolts was in the West Country and was clearly a revolt by ordinary worshippers against the new changes in religion. They were adamant. “We demand the restoration of the Mass in Latin without any to communicate, and the Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament: Communion in one kind, and only at Easter: greater facilities for Baptism: the restoration of the old ceremonies—Holy-bread and Holywater, Images, Palms, and Ashes. We will not receive the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game; but we will have our old service of Mattins, Mass, Evensong and processions in Latin, not in English.”⁷ They also demanded the recall of the English Bible “as tending to encourage heresy.”

      Parliament’s Act of Uniformity had anticipated opposition to the Book, for it contained a penal statute regarding the enforcement of its use. Extreme measures by the government were therefore legally justified. By the end of August, the uprising had been suppressed. Lord Russell and his foreign mercenaries stamped out all traces of it, distributed rewards, pardons, punishments, and, by the special direction of the Council, pulled down the bells out of the steeples in Devonshire and Cornwall, leaving only one, “the least of the ryng that now is in the same,” to prevent their being used again in the cause of sedition. These were the elaborate steps the government had to take in order to enforce the adoption of the new Book.

      All of that violent opposition was “due to the stiffest conservatism of men who did not wish even their least justifiable usage to be disturbed This comment of Proctor and Frere is equally applicable to the СКАЧАТЬ