Читать книгу Prayer Book Through the Ages - William Sydnor - Страница 12

Elizabeth became queen November 17, 1558, and a new day dawned in the religious life of England. The Protestant exiles returned from the continent full of extreme reaction to the unbending Romanism of Mary’s reign. What form of worship would now become the official one?

Elizabeth assured the Spanish ambassador that her purpose was to restore religion to the form it had had under her father, Henry VIII. But this was nearly impossible. There was no longer an appreciable base of support for such a stance. Some of the former proponents were dead, some had been converted. Moreover, the returned exiles made further steps toward Protestantism inevitable.

The religious direction in which England would move depended on the queen and the religious leaders whom she appointed and whom she supported. What was she like? What were her private religious and philosophical views? John Booty gives us this description:

She was a Protestant-humanist who read Socrates and Cicero, Saint Cyprian and Philip Melanchthon, and who was well acquainted with the works of Desiderius Erasmus. Ascham said in 1570 that the Queen “readeth here now at Windsor more Greek every day than some prebendary of this church cloth read Latin in a whole week.” Indeed, she was accustomed to reading some part of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament daily. Her religion was not that of the zealous—she could not approve of John Knox and his ways. It was that of the Christian humanist, involving devotion and moderation, and delighting in beauty, the beauty of a perfect literary style, the beauty of orderly religious ceremony. It was a religion linked to national sentiment, with the conviction that God was doing a mighty thing, through his Deborah, for England and, through England, for the world.¹

So the queen sided with “the small but sensible moderate party.” Very shortly this resulted in the authorization of the 1592 Book relieved of its more extreme features. But in the meantime firm action had to be taken to avoid religious chaos. To end disorders resulting from violent sermons on both sides, a royal proclamation was issued on December 27, 1558, forbidding all preaching. The Epistle, Gospel, and Ten Commandments were to be read in English as was being done in the queen’s chapel “until consultation may be had by Parliament.” But there were ceremonial tensions, even in the queen’s chapel. On Christmas day (Elizabeth had been on the throne five weeks) when Bishop Oglethorpe was saying Mass in the Royal Chapel, she sent a message to him during the singing of the Gloria, ordering him not to elevate the host, because she did not like the ceremony. The bishop refused, and the queen left after the Gospel.

It was going to be a delicate matter to revise and adopt an acceptable Prayer Book, and it seems that the queen followed the cautious warning of Armagil Waad that the matter would require “great cunning and circumspection.”

And no doubt the queen did intend to proceed cautiously. Her plan was to follow the Edwardian pattern by permitting Communion in both kinds, then after leisurely consultation to have a new Act of Uniformity passed, perhaps in the autumn, with a Prayer Book attached. Perhaps that would have been the ideal way to proceed; however, conditions dictated otherwise. On the one hand, the exiles were impatient and pressing. Elizabeth realized that, if she did not accept the 1552 Book, she might be faced with a demand for the Genevan Form of Prayers. On the other, because peace had been signed with France, there was now no need to attach much weight to the wishes of papal Catholics. So the 1552 Book was adopted with a few revisions, changes in the direction of the 1549 Book. The queen and her government showed that they were independent of the more zealous Protestants by rejecting any revisions that would make the Book more Protestant and by adopting revisions that could only be interpreted as conservative. This religious settlement was to Elizabeth what was possible and best for the nation, and she would not countenance any major adjustment of it. If there could be no revival of 1549, there would certainly be no movement in Calvin’s direction.

The Act of Uniformity was passed in April, 1559. Convocation was not even consulted, and it passed by only three votes; in the House of Lords, nine bishops voted against it. Percy Dearmer concludes that “the consent of the Church can thus only be claimed by virtue of its subsequent acquiescence.”² It became the official Book on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1559, and the penalties for failure to use it were severe: a fine of one year’s stipend and six months imprisonment for the first offense, forfeit of all “spiritual promotions” and one year imprisonment for the second, life imprisonment for the third.

These are the significant changes in the 1559 Book as compared with the 1552 Book:

Morning and Evening Prayer were read in the choir “with a loud voice” rather than, as 1552 put it, “in such place . . . as the people may best hear.” The other rubric at the beginning of Morning Prayer, known as “the Ornaments Rubric,” states that “the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use such ornaments in the church as were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth.” This has cast long shadows of influence across the Church for centuries. The second year of Edward VI was 1548. So, on the question of vestments and ornaments, the Elizabethan Book disallows the puritanical bareness of ornament which characterized the 1552 Book. In every other respect, Morning and Evening Prayer are identical with the previous Book. They both end with “the Third Collect.”

The Litany was the only service in English used during Mary’s reign. Of course, when it was used that offensive petition in the 1552 Book which prayed for deliverance “from the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities” was dropped. Now this edited version of the Litany appears in the Elizabethan Book. A similar reference to the Pope’s “usurped power and authority” has also been dropped from the ordination services. These polemic phrases were unnecessary and likely to be embarrassing to those conducting diplomatic affairs among continental Catholics. A prayer for the queen has been added at the end of the Litany and also, following “A Prayer of Chrysostom,” there appears for the first time 2 Corinthians 13:14, which in time came to be known as “the Grace.”

The rubric at the beginning of Holy Communion reads: “The Table having at the Communion time a fair white linen cloth upon it, shall stand in the body of the church, or in the chancel, where Morning and Evening Prayer be appointed to be said. And the priest standing at the north side of the Table shall say . . .” The sequence and content of the service are those of the 1552 Book with two exceptions. The words of administration combine those of 1549 and 1552. 1549: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul into everlasting life”; and 1552: “Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.” The “black rubric” of 1552 regarding the meaning of kneeling to receive Communion is dropped.

To the great displeasure of the Genevan party, church music was officially encouraged. The Injunctions of 1559 included this directive for parish churches: “For the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted that in the beginning or in the end of the common prayers, either at morning or at evening, there may be sung an hymn or such-like song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of him may be understanded and perceived.”³

John Day published a book of services for four voices in 1565; in several of them the whole of the congregations part is set to music. This was also true of Thomas Tallis’ “Dorian.” It soon became the custom to set only the Kyrie and the creed to music. This may have been because the practice of ending the morning service with Ante-Communion on three Sundays out of four was becoming general. However, the normal Sunday service was thought of as Morning Prayer, Litany, and Holy Communion.

In collegiate chapels and some parish churches there were bequests for the maintenance of a choir. Plainsong was generally used for the canticles and the Psalms. Sometimes, on great festivals, harmonized settings were used. The Injunctions of 1559 made it permissible to sing compositions with English texts; often they were parts of the Collect, Epistle, or Gospel of the day. These acquired the name of “anthem”—a variant of “antiphon.” The organist was permitted to play an organ solo during the offertory at Communion, and short voluntaries were sometimes inserted between the lessons and canticles.

In the age of Elizabeth, edification was the primary aim in worship. Two characteristics of that worship makes this evident. First, this emphasis is reflected in the attitude toward the esthetic. While church music was certainly not ignored during the Elizabethan period, the Church sought to subject it and everything else to the principle of edification. The Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were set in large letters on the east wall. So it was the basis of Christian faith in words that took the place of images and pictures. Religion was becoming more and more word-centered and intellectual—a matter of reason and reasonableness. Secondly, the tone of worship itself pointed in the direction of edification. It was solemn, impressive, and penitential. Morning Prayer, the Litany, and Ante-Communion were the didactic and penitential preparation for the occasional Holy Communion and for the living of the Christian life.

The Occasional Offices, Baptism through Burial, remained just as they were in the 1552 Book. The only change in the Ordinal was the deletion of derogatory references to the Pope as noted above. The queen’s sovereignty over the church within her realm was clearly stated as “against the power and authority of any foreign potentates.”

In May 1552 the Privy Council issued Forty-two Articles endeavoring to enforce some of the doctrines of the Continental Reformers upon the English church. The Church was not invited to sanction these articles, but the Council had the effrontery to state on the title page that they had been agreed upon by the bishops in Convocation. In 1562, the Forty-two Articles were reduced to thirty-nine. Article 42, which had asserted the existence of hell in terms very moderate for the times, disappeared forever.

The reinstituting of Prayer Book order met with little opposition. While there were places where devout congregations continued to flock to the Latin Mass, almost as soon as Elizabeth became queen there were many places where the people “entirely renounced the Mass” and by early January were bringing back the Prayer Book. On Easter, several weeks before the actual Act of Uniformity had passed, the service in the Royal Chapel was Mass “sung in English according to the use of King Edward,” and after it the celebrant took off his vestments and gave Communion in both kinds to the queen and many peers, vested only in a surplice. By Whitsunday (May 14), a number of parish churches and the monks at Westminster made haste to follow suit. St. Paul’s was the only church in London which retained the Latin services up until the last minute.

The actual transition was very quietly accomplished. The resistance of the bishops and principal clergy was both strenuous and solid, but this does not seem to have been the case among the rank and file; most suffered in silence, though certainly many of them deprecated change. In the changeover from the Roman Catholic days of Mary to Elizabeth’s Protestant regime, not more than some 200 clergy were deprived of their livings during the years 1558-1564, a state of things which is in marked contrast with the wholesale policy of deprivation by which the Marian ecclesiastical policy was carried through.

During the forty-five years Elizabeth was on the throne, the Prayer Book was under attack by the Puritans on the left and the Roman Catholics on the right. The Prayer Book was only a part of that religious struggle out of which was forged the genius of what has come to be called “Anglicanism.” And it is that part—the fortunes of the Prayer Book in Elizabethan England—which we now seek to appreciate.

The most persistent and uncompromising attacks on the Prayer Book came from the Puritans. With the Act of Uniformity, the Prayer Book party in Parliament won the day. But the exiles who had come streaming back to England after the death of Queen Mary had hoped to have the 1552 Book as revised and used in Frankfurt. What they got was 1552 revised in the other direction. Their annoyance must have been great when the revision swept away several of the Puritan portions of Edward’s second Book and brought back some of the discarded ceremonies and vestments of earlier times. They were disillusioned by the queen’s conservatism, but this did not keep them from trying by various means to further reform in Convocation, in Parliament, and, if need be, independently. Their two main principles were that nothing is admissible that is not actually found in Scripture; and that nothing tainted with Romanism is admissible, even if it is mentioned in Scripture. Strict observance of these principles ruled out the use of the surplice, wafer bread, the sign of the cross in Baptism, kneeling for Communion, the ring in marriage, the veil in Churching, bowing at the name of Jesus, and the use of organs and “effeminate and over-refined” music. In Baptism, it was in their minds an usurpation of the father’s responsibility that the minister should address the infant and the godparents answer in its name. Other reprehensible practices included emergency Baptism by women, Confirmation, the preaching of sermons at funerals, and, unexpectedly, the reading of the Bible in church. In the first decade there was little criticism of the Prayer Book text beyond what was involved in these practices.