The Printing and the Printers of The Book of Common Prayer, 1549–1561

Bibliographers have been notoriously 'hesitant to deal with liturgies', and this volume bridges an important gap with its authoritative examination of how the Book of Common Prayer came into being. The first edition of 1549, the first Grafton edition of 1552 and the first quarto edition of 1559 are now correctly identified, while Peter W. M. Blayney shows that the first two editions of 1559 were probably finished on the same day. Through relentless scrutiny of the evidence, he reveals that the contents of the 1549 version continued to evolve both during and after the printing of the first edition, and that changes were still being made to the Elizabethan revision weeks after the Act of Uniformity was passed. His bold reconstruction is transformative for the early Anglican liturgy, and thus for the wider history of the Church of England. This major, revisionist work is a remarkable book about a remarkable book.

Divine Visitation: The 1662 Prayer Book’s Theology of Sickness and Plague

When it began to be clear that COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, clerics were scrambling for liturgical ways to address the crisis. But it turned out that most twentieth-century Anglican Prayers Books have few, if any, prayers for times of plague or great sickness. This was not always the case. In light of the current pandemic and the pastoral challenges it has introduced, this article explores the theology of sickness and plague in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer in light of the devastating history of plagues and sicknesses in England, both before and after the sixteenth-century reformations. This exploration makes use of the lens of ‘divine visitation’ as an ordering principle, one of the distinctive phrases that the Prayer Book uses repeatedly to speak of bodily illness.

“Essentials” for Worship: Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book

This article explores some of the theological principles required for effective church worship. In 1927, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) outlined four “Essentials” or principles for effective liturgy, identified in the context of revisions to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: adoration, the historic, the Eternal, and the interplay between spirit and sense. This article explores the extent to which these four theological principles are actually embodied in prayers that Underhill selected and wrote for retreat leading at The House of Retreat, Pleshey (north London, UK), recently published as Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book. Additional theological principles, not mentioned in Underhill’s “Essentials” essay but evident in her book of prayers, are also evaluated and exemplified. Underhill’s guidance to her spiritual directees about the value of liturgy in their spiritual lives is also briefly touched upon.

A Body That Matters: Liturgy, Mediation, Performativity

Taking the liturgy of The Episcopal Church as an extended case study, this article develops a poststructuralist eucharistic theology that bears upon the theorization of religious identity, Christian liturgy, and material religion. My point of departure is the question of whether a dinner-church Communion—that is, one in which an Episcopal priest consecrates items other than bread and wine—would qualify as an Anglican eucharistic celebration if that service was conducted using the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. To this query I respond in the affirmative. In conversation with Birgit Meyer on religious media and Judith Butler on language and matter, I argue that it is in being interpreted as the body and blood of Christ that the eucharistic elements come to be materialized as such, with the Book of Common Prayer governing that interpretation for Anglicans and giving it force.

The Prayer Book Printed

This chapter considers several aspects of the material embodiment of the Prayer Book in paper and ink. The topics range from general questions, such as identifying the sequence of words that constitute the Book of Common Prayer and how their integrity is maintained, to details such as orthography, punctuation, editorial updates, the use of red ink and blackletter type, printers’ interventions, and the curiously named Black Rubric. The chapter also touches on nonverbal features of Prayer Books as books, such as typography, and design. Included are a number of examples of illustrations, unofficially added to various editions, which both interpret the printed text and indicate how it was understood.

The Golden Age

The long eighteenth century has been called the Prayer Book’s golden age. Nothing in the text itself changed. But the text was disseminated in works meant to aid and encourage the personal and domestic devotions of families and individuals. There were thoughtful but not hostile proposals for revising the Prayer Book, two of which are discussed in this chapter as indications of what the text was expected to be and do in an enlightened age. And beyond the limits of the ecclesiastical establishment, the eighteenth century saw the beginning of a development that won its way to acceptance in Scotland and influenced a new version of the Book of Common Prayer in the newly independent United States.

Preambles: “But One Use”

This chapter examines the Prayer Book’s self-presentation in its preliminary, nonliturgical prose: the two Acts of Uniformity (1559 and 1662) that define the constitution of the text and regulate its use in the Church of England; and the three prefatory essays, two of which were written by Thomas Cranmer for the original, 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and have been retained ever since. These texts are themselves primary sources that provide a preliminary context in which to understand the origins and purpose of the liturgies they precede. They outline the successive revisions of the Prayer Book, and indicate both the political and the theological dimensions of its contents.

Divine Service

“Divine Service” is a name for the most frequently performed act of public worship that is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. Most of this chapter examines the texts of the three liturgical offices in which Divine Service has consisted on Sundays: Morning Prayer (or Mattins), the Litany (or General Supplication), and the beginning of Holy Communion (or the Lord’s Supper), as these would take place on one specific day. Evening Prayer (or Evensong), which is a separate part of Divine Service, is also described. In the course of the discussion the chapter introduces a number of basic terms used throughout the book.