Quick Rehearsal of English History
Let’s do a recap of how the first two English prayer books came about, because they set up the two fundamental structural choices offered to Anglicans regarding the shape of the Communion Office.
Henry VIII came to the throne of a Catholic England in 1509; the most common liturgy of the day was the Latin-language Sarum Rite although other Latin uses were also used around the kingdom.
The rise of the New Learning in Europe had many people in many countries questioning many things including the nature of the Church and State.
Martin Luther started an enduring Protestant movement on the Continent with the posting of his 95 Theses in 1517; Jean Calvin broke with the Roman Church around 1530, bringing his ideas to the Continental reformation.
Henry was against both of these and wrote against Luther’s views on the sacraments, receiving the title “Defender of the Faith” from the Pope, still a title held by English monarchs.
In 1532, Henry VII made a structural break with the Roman Church, but was very conservative liturgically and theologically. In the 1540’s he declared the official liturgical books of the Church of England to be the Latin Sarum Missal and Breviary along with a bilingual Latin/English Primer.
Yes, the first official liturgies of the Church of England were in Latin…
On the death of Henry, his son Edward the 6th came to the throne under the influence of very protestant regents.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer led a committee of bishops, both traditional and protestant in the production the first English liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer, in 1549. The basis of this book was liturgical work that Cranmer had done under Henry VIII and followed Henry’s traditional beliefs. As a result, this first Communion Office with in the 1549 BCP was a very traditional one, closely following the Sarum Rite but with a number of Lutheran leaning changes.
Due to criticism from Martin Bucer, Peter the Martyr, other Calvinist reformers and English protestants who didn’t feel that the first prayer book had gone far enough, Cranmer and a different group of English bishops produced a second effort three years later incorporating a variety of Calvinist revisions to the Communion Office and other portions of the prayer book.
The differences between these two initial books set up the two options that Anglicans would build from in the succeeding centuries:
Comparing the Contents
In order to get the clearest possible sense of what these two options contained with reference to the Communion Office and how they compared with what came before, here’s a line-up of the major liturgical elements of the Communion Office of the Latin Sarum Rite, the 1549 BCP and the 1552 BCP:
The color-coding here identifies the placement of elements in the traditional pattern in blue and protestant placements in yellow.
The wild thing here is that Cranmer did not substantially change the words of the service. While he did add a number of things, the text remained mostly the same. But he moved key elements around that had important theological ramifications.
The single biggest change in the experience of the 1552 Communion Office is that the reception of the elements come immediately after the Institution Narrative. So, after a vestigial Invocation (that I can’t call a true Invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts) and the Words of Institution, the bread (having been broken within the Words of Institution) and wine are then distributed to the people. The Oblation and rest of the Canon could be said after the reception or else the Post-Communion Prayer could be said.
The Lord’s Prayer was moved after the reception of the elements, not before, lest anyone think that the “daily bread” being requested was the Eucharist. The Prayer of Humble Access was moved to the very beginning and prayed by the priest alone so that it would be said before the reception of the elements but separated from it.
Finally, the Gloria in excelsis was moved to the very end of the service. I don’t recall reading any good reasons why this was done, but I have my own theories. One of Calvin’s challenges with the traditional Communion Office was his concern about the actual location of the Body of Christ. Christ had ascended, and was therefore in heaven. Thus, he interpreted the phrase “Lift up your hearts” to mean, spiritually ascend into heaven where Christ is.
Now, in the theological logic of the traditional rite, the congregation’s entire worship is conducted within the presence of the whole heavenly host—and a primary signal for that is opening with one of the classic songs of the angels: the Gloria in excelsis. The other angelic hymn is the Sanctus which takes place in the Communion Office after the opening dialogue to “Lift up your hearts,” and after the invocation to join with all the hosts of heaven. My read is that the Gloria in excelsis was moved to the end of the rite in service of Calvin’s notion that the congregation is not in a heavenly place until that spiritual ascent that begins with the Communion Office’s opening dialogue.
Making the Choice
Mary I suppressed the1552 Book of Common Prayer when she returned England back to the Roman fold. When her sister Elizabeth made the Church of England separate again, the rite of the 1552 book was mostly restored. A few pieces of verbiage from the 1549 book were put back in, but structurally, it followed 1552.
Even after the English Civil Wars and their suppression of the Book of Common Prayer in favor of the much more Calvinist Directory for the Public Worship of God, the Restoration of the monarchy brought back in the prayer book that would become the official liturgy of the British Empire as it spread across the world, the 1662 BCP. By looking at its contents in comparison to the first two books, it’s clear to see what happened:
The structure of the 1552 Communion Office proved decisive and this Calvinist arrangement is what the Colonists would have used from the first English foundations in America through the American Revolution.