Hervé Picton, A Short History of the Church of England. From the Reformation to the Present Day

With Professor Christianson, one can only deplore the paucity of books dealing with the history of the Church of England between the Elizabethan Settlement and the Civil War. With the exception of histories covering a somewhat longer time span, there has been no attempt at synthesis since Bishop W. H. Frere's The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1904), which was part of a series answering to a semi-popular and general interest in the Church of England ‘as a factor in the development of national life and character’. It is remarkable and even scandalous that the greatly altered perspectives of twentieth-century historians are not reflected in a more recent and adequate account of the post-Reformation and pre-revolutionary Church. The Jacobean epoch is a particularly neglected subject, to which even Frere devoted no more than 100 of his 400 pages, giving it no particular shape or significance. Jacobean bishops of the calibre of Toby Matthew, James Montague and Thomas Morton were not even mentioned. Today that singular and exemplary figure, Arthur Lake, Laud's predecessor as bishop of Bath and Wells, is totally forgotten. The reason for our myopia is not very flattering to modern historiography. Unlike the Reformation of the Church of England, or the Elizabethan Church, the Jacobean Church was not a subject for Gilbert Burnet or for John Strype, and consequently (or so it seems) it is not a subject for us.

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Confessional History and the Authority of Erudition

Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197266601.003.0008 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 264-300

Author(s):

Jean-Louis Quantin

Keyword(s):

Church Of England ◽

Primary Sources ◽

English Reformation ◽

Major Work ◽

Main Text ◽

Protestant Churches ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

The Church ◽

Genuine Effort

In his History of the variations of the Protestant Churches, his major work of confessional controversy, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) made a genuine effort to use various primary sources. In the case of England, however, he chose to rely on a single authority, Gilbert Burnet’s (1643-1715) History of the Reformation of the Church of England, which was available to him in a recent French translation. This reflected Bossuet’s tactical determination to employ only authors whom his Protestant adversaries could not object to, but also his paradoxical affinities with Burnet, whose very political reading of the English Reformation fitted well with his own interpretation. Burnet, however, had included in his History a rich collection of records, which Bossuet studied and occasionally used to challenge Burnet’s main text. Although Bossuet’s interests remained those of a polemical divine, he spoke the language of historical erudition to assert his trustworthiness.

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History of the Reformation of the Church of England

Notes and Queries ◽

10.1093/nq/s3-vii.169.252-b ◽

1965 ◽

Vol s3-VII (169) ◽

pp. 252-252

Keyword(s):

Church Of England ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

The Church

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Writing the History of the English Bible in the Early Eighteenth Century

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400015874 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 38 ◽

pp. 268-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Scott Mandelbrote

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Early Years ◽

Christian Belief ◽

Rule Of Faith ◽

The Bible ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

The Church

The letter of Scripture suffering various Interpretations, it is plain that Error may pretend to Scripture; the antient Fathers being likewise dead, and not able to vindicate themselves, their writings may be wrested, and Error may make use of them to back itself; Reason too being bypassed by Interest, Education, Passion, Society, &c…. Tradition only rests secure.The 1680s were a difficult decade for the English Bible, just as they were for so many of the other institutions of the English Protestant establishment. Roman Catholic critics of the Church of England, emboldened by the patronage of James II and his court, engaged in controversy over the rule of faith and the identity of the true Church, much as they had done in the early years of the Reformation or in the 1630s. Nonconformists and freethinkers deployed arguments drawn from Catholic scholarship, in particular from the work of the French Oratorian Richard Simon, and joined in ridicule of the Bible as a sure and sufficient foundation for Christian belief.

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English Cathedral Choirs in the Nineteenth Century

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History ◽

10.1017/s0022046900045048 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 15-37

Author(s):

Philip Barrett

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Full Account ◽

Ecclesiastical History ◽

Main Emphasis ◽

The Reformation ◽

History Of ◽

The Church

An important feature of the ecclesiastical history of the Church of England since the Reformation has been the unique and precious tradition of a choir of men and boys singing daily choral services in the cathedrals of this country. There have been several studies of this tradition and the music written for cathedral services, but there has not yet been a full account of cathedral choirs in the last century. There have been useful brief surveys by Owen Chadwick and Bernarr Rainbow, but these have been only parts of larger works whose main emphasis is elsewhere. Plenty of material exists, however, and the contemporary conditions which led S. S. Wesley to write his polemical pamphlet A Few Words on Cathedral Music in 1849 demand detailed investigation.

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The Architectural Impact of the Oxford Movement

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199580187.013.33 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Doll

Keyword(s):

Sense Of Belonging ◽

Church Of England ◽

Valuable Contribution ◽

Oxford Movement ◽

The Reformation ◽

Before And After ◽

History Of ◽

The Church ◽

Church Buildings

In this chapter the author argues that church buildings and their architecture influenced by the Oxford Movement cannot be understood apart from their essential grounding in the worship and self-understanding of the Church. This study sets the consideration of such church buildings in the wider context of the history of the Church of England both before and after the Reformation. The churches of the Church of England preceding and following the Oxford Movement articulate an Anglican sense of belonging to the Church universal and are thus a valuable contribution to the faith and witness of the Church far beyond the Anglican Communion.

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The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

10.1093/oso/9780190689681.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Charles Hefling

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

The United States ◽

History Of The Book ◽

Book Of Common Prayer ◽

Prayer Book ◽

Corporate Worship ◽

History Of ◽

Common Prayer ◽

The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

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