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.

The Prayer Book Sung

The Book of Common Prayer makes explicit provision for some of its words to be either “sung or said.” Vocal music, choral or congregational, has been a feature of Prayer Book services from the first. The original version of the text was set to music in 1550 by John Marbeck; since then, a tradition of “parochial music” has augmented Divine Service with metrical paraphrases of the Psalms, while “cathedral music” has developed a unique form of recitation known as Anglican chant, together with a genre of musical settings for choirs of the canticles at Morning and Evening Prayer.

Disruption

Three main topics are discussed in this chapter. One is the Hampton Court conference, the first of three largely unsuccessful attempts to take account of objections to the Book of Common Prayer on the part of “godly” protestant nonconformists. Another is the counter-puritan movement known as Laudianism and the abortive Prayer Book for Scotland, known as “Laud’s Liturgy.” The third topic is the parliamentary abolishment of the Prayer Book in England, which had the unintended consequence of elevating its status as a sacred text for those who continued to use it until its return as the Church of England’s statutory liturgy at the restoration of monarchy in 1660.

Preambles: Time and the Prayer Book

The “prelims” of the Book of Common Prayer include a number of tables, rules, schedules, and lists. All of these are necessary for specifying components of Divine Service that vary from day to day, most importantly the reading and recitation of passages from Christian scripture. The specification is significant in two ways, which this chapter will discuss. On the one hand, the various instructions situate Prayer Book worship in time, and more particularly within the annual sequence of holydays and seasons known as the ecclesiastical or liturgical year. On the other hand, they define the relation of the Book of Common Prayer to the still more sacred text of the Bible.

Establishment

The text of the Book of Common Prayer as it now stands in the Church of England was established in 1662 as part of the Restoration settlement of religion. A great many amendments were included in the final version of the text, notably the adoption of the Authorized or King James Version for many of the biblical extracts. Some of the revisions had been agreed to by both parties at the Savoy Conference, convened in response to long-standing puritan objections to the Prayer Book. While most of the changes had no effect on the meaning of the text, a few did modify the Communion service in a conservative direction. A number of new services were added as well; and with that the Book of Common Prayer arrived at the form it has had in England ever since.

Occasional Services

In addition to services that take place regularly, every day or every week, the Book of Common Prayer includes a number of “occasional” services, which are conducted when circumstances call for them. This chapter describes the Prayer Book’s provisions for these services—its three rites of Ordination; the wedding service, formally called the Solemnization of Matrimony; the initiation rite of Baptism and the closely related service of Confirmation; and liturgies used at the Visitation of the Sick and the Burial of the Dead—as well as other related texts. The discussion points out some of the theological issues and emphases that have been inseparable from these ad hoc liturgies.

Recessional

In the nineteenth century, pressures that strained the boundaries of Anglican Christianity, in so far as the Prayer Book defined them, came largely from the advanced “high-church” movement known as Anglo-catholicism, which sought to recover or re-introduce liturgical practices that had been abolished at the Reformation. An attempt to deal with the nonconformity of Anglo-catholic “ritualists” led to a proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer that Parliament declined to endorse. Nevertheless, revision gathered momentum, with the result that by the end of the twentieth century the “classical” Prayer Book had been superseded by other, modernized liturgies throughout the Anglican world. While it remains a venerable book, the Book of Common Prayer may be revered for what it once was more than for what it is.