Chesterton on the "Book of Common Prayer"

Hilaire Belloc commented on Thomas Cranmer's masterpiece of English prose in the Book of Common Prayer as I noted in my review of Mysterium Press's edition of Cranmer last week. Belloc was born and raised in a Catholic family; his friend G.K. Chesterton was a convert to Catholicism after sharing the Anglo-Catholic faith of his wife Frances for years. As an Anglican, Chesterton used the Book of Common Prayer in church services; as a Catholic (after 1928), he looked back on the experience.

The late Father John Hunwicke (+April 30, 2024), a former Anglican minister who converted to Catholicism as a member (and priest) of the Anglican Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, posted some comments from Chesterton about the Book of Common Prayer on his blog. He does not give the source, however, but I wonder if they're from a collection of columns from the Illustrated London News. This post from the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society doesn't give the source either.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment, May 2, 2018:

" ... why has the old Prayer-Book a power like that of great poetry upon the spirit and heart? The reason is much deeper than the mere avoidance of journalese. It might be put in a sentence; it has style, it has tradition; it has religion; it was written by apostate Catholics. It is strong, not in so far as it is the first Protestant book, but in so far as it was the last Catholic book. 

"As it happens, this can be proved in the most practical manner from the actual details of the prose. The most moving passages in the old Anglican Prayer Book are exactly those that are least like the atmosphere of the Anglicans. They are moving, or indeed thrilling, precisely because they say the things which Protestants have long left off saying; and which Catholics still say. Anybody who knows anything of literature knows when a style lifts itself to its loftiest efforts; and in these cases it is always to say strongly what we [Catholics] still endeavour to say, however weakly; but which nobody else ever endeavours to say at all. Let anyone recall for himself the very finest passages in the Book of Common Prayer, and he will soon see that they are concerned specially with spiritual thoughts and themes that now seem strange and terrible; but anyhow, the reverse of common."

Father Hunwicke further commented: More of this tomorrow; it comes from a collection of his pieces published in 1935, the year before he died (he had converted in 1922). When you read my next instalment, you will grow, I suspect, more and embarrassed about .... modern Catholic culture.

Here is the second post and here is the third.

Even though the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) revised some of the rubrics, etc., much of Cranmer's English prose, including the Litany and the Collects, etc., remained, as this interview about the 1662 BCP notes:

This quality is one that the 1662 BCP preserves from Cranmer’s work more than a century earlier. It reflects the orality of mid-sixteenth century written English. This is also why people notice its strong cadences. It was written for the ear. That’s a great usability advantage because it increases memorability.

So Belloc and Chesterton agreed on the excellence of Cranmer's English prose! ChesterBelloc!

Book Review: Belloc on Cranmer

Please note that I received a copy of this book, Cranmer by Hilaire Belloc from Mysterium Press, the publisher, in exchange for my review and comments. The book is sold in the USA by Os Justi Press, but is as of this writing Out of Stock! More to come, I presume.

Something important to note about this book: Belloc wrote it based upon the work of Professor Alfred W. Pollard, Thomas Cranmer and The English Reformation. A brief notice dated on the Feast of the Assumption in 1931 at the beginning of the book tells us:

This is not a life of Cranmer: it is but a study of his character and motives, with exposition of, and emphasis upon, his literary genius and its legacy to the Church of England. . . .

Belloc explains that he has based most of the facts he narrates "on the scholarship of Professor Pollard, as must everyone since the publication of his monograph, which treats of Cranmer as a "Hero of the Reformation."

So the facts are Pollard's but the interpretation is Belloc's, I presume. I have not read Professor Pollard's book. Belloc reserved the right to provide some notes "to such few errors as appear in that work and call for correction."

Table of Contents:

1. The Beginning

2. Cambridge

3. The Accidental Entry

4. The Testing

5. The Call

6. The Divorce to Order

7. The First Peril

8. Back to Heel

9. The Bible

10. The Hoodwinking of Henry

11. The Second Peril

12. Cranmer Set Free

13. The Resistance of the English

14. The Third Peril

15. The Ordeal

16. The Fire

One thing about Belloc we can be certain of is that he has definite opinions of the characters in his historical studies! In his analysis of Thomas Cranmer's life and career in service to the Tudors and the Reformation, Belloc is convinced that aside from his great artistry in English prose, Cranmer had few qualities to recommend him. As the publisher's blurb attests: "A timid, furtive, scholar, unduly raised to aid the king’s divorce, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer lived a double life. Under the penalty of public ministry he burned within – forced to put his best years into the system which he yearned in secret to destroy, and to send back to the continent his own unlawful bride." 

He failed as a diplomat for Henry VIII's Great Matter on the Continent when ambassador to the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor, he was wavering in his loyalty to people and causes, and his main goal in life seems, in Belloc's mind, to be protecting himself and surviving. Until the end, perhaps.

Evidences of this survival instinct offered by Belloc: Cranmer did nothing to save John Frith, condemned to being burned alive at the stake for denying the Real Presence (and the doctrine of Purgatory) in 1533, while Cranmer did not believe in the Real Presence (it would not have been convenient to admit it at that time!); Cranmer, anachronistically speaking, threw Anne Boleyn under the bus once it was clear that she was going to be declared guilty and executed (his first peril). At first he protested that he couldn't really believe she would have been so unfaithful to Henry but soon acquiesced to reality. Belloc proposes that when Cranmer visited Anne Boleyn he used a technique--previously used against poor Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent in 1533--of seeming sympathy to extract more information. Belloc says that Anne Boleyn was convinced she'd be released and sent into exile in Antwerp at the end of her interview with Cranmer! Cranmer evaded disaster again when Cromwell fell--writing a letter to Henry VIII again to demonstrate that his fealty was to Henry VIII alone (his second peril).

Belloc emphasizes that even after Cranmer had rejected Catholic doctrine about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion, adopting a Zwinglian (not Lutheran) view, while Henry VIII was alive, he celebrated Holy Mass consistently (although if he did not intend what the Church intends, none of those Masses was valid). He also notes that when Cranmer became the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was subservient to Thomas Cromwell, the Vicegerent of the King in Spirituals who took over administration of the Church in England (Cromwell had "supplanted the bishops" Belloc notes on page 109). Cromwell and Cranmer connive to sneak in Tyndale's English translation of Holy Bible against Henry VIII's objections to it, but Belloc wonders about Cranmer's frustration during the last years of Henry's reign as the King would not permit his changes in Catholic Church doctrine and liturgy. 

Once Henry dies, however, like King Hamlet's Ghost ("Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,/No reckoning made, but sent to my account/With all my imperfections on my head:/O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!") and without a tomb prepared, "Cranmer [Is] Set Free"! Edward Seymour becomes Protector and guardian of the minor, King Edward VI, who is raised as thoroughly Protestant and anti-Catholic. As Belloc notes, Cranmer's main target was the Catholic Mass as a Sacrifice. It must be destroyed and replaced, gradually, given the Common's devotion to it, but irrevocably. He made other changes in prayer and belief, detailed in the 42 Articles of the Church of England in 1553, but these never took effect because of the brevity of Edward's reign.

On pages 184 and 185, while describing Edward VI's Coronation, Belloc explains how Cranmer elevated Edward VI so highly above the Church in authority and power that he was nearly Divine--the Divine Right of Kings. At the same address, Cranmer told the bishops they were no longer the Successors of the Apostles; the sees they'd received from Henry VIII--not from the Vicar of Christ in Rome--were forfeit until assigned to them by the new Vicar of Christ in England, Edward VI. What a prevenient blow to the project of the Tractarian Movement centuries later!

When it comes to the 1549/1552 Book of Common Prayer, however much Belloc regrets the liturgical and doctrinal changes Cranmer made, he admits there's "a quality of literary beauty, of excellence in English prose, unsurpassed in anything before or since his time." After listing all Cranmer's bad qualities (hypocrisy, timer-serving, cowardice, timidity) and good qualities (suavity, courtesy, kindness, etc), Belloc praises one special talent: "He was a master of the Word, he possessed the secret of magic. He had been granted power in that which is perhaps the highest medium we know of expression among men, English at its highest." (pp. 198-199) Belloc highlights the Litany, the Collects, the prefaces and other prayers as treasures of England.

Finally, the illness and decline of young king Edward VI, and the plan of Duke of Northumberland to thwart Henry VIII's will and plan for succession to bring Lady Jane Grey to the throne after the former's death, bring about Cranmer's third peril. If the Princess Mary, a devout Catholic comes to the throne, all his work to change the religion of England would be lost, so he goes along with the plot.

Northumberland, Paget, Grey, and others did not account for the loyalty of the people to the rightful heir--nor with Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel (Belloc presumes) warning Mary of her arrest. They should have had her in custody before Edward died. As Belloc notes, however, even after Mary in declared rightful queen and begins her reign, she did not take immediate revenge--not until the Wyatt Rebellion. Then the executions (for those already found guilty of treason) and trials for heresy began.

In the last two chapters, "The Ordeal" and "The Fire", Belloc narrates the story of those heresy trials and of Cranmer writing his recantations of his denials of Catholic doctrine and practice, that is, of the heresies he had refused to adjure at trial, all in the hopes of saving his life after Ridley and Latimer and he had been found guilty of heresy, and after the other two bishops had been burned at the stake in Oxford. 

He seems to have repented with his pen most heartily. But when no pardon was given, he turned against all that repentance and went eagerly to the stake, running down Brasenose Lane, standing at the stake, repenting for his recantation, and holding his right hand that wrote that recantation "steadfastly into the flame. . . . till flame and smoke hid all. This is the way in which Cranmer died." (p. 255)

Belloc ends the volume there without commentary or analysis, which I find interesting. He lets Cranmer's last words and dying gestures speak for themselves. Otherwise, throughout the volume Belloc has provided the reader with thorough analysis of the all the controversies, plots, and events of Cranmer's involvement in Henry VIII's Great Matter, the rise and fall of queens, consorts, courtiers, and bishops, plots and negotiations, politics and policy, all in his own masterful style. 

I certainly hope that Mysterium Press will be able to publish more of Belloc's biographies of English monarchs, etc., and that Os Justi will offer them in the USA.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Cranmer burning at the stake from Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

St. John the Baptist and Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity, 1559

I posted yesterday on the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the great forerunner of the Lord. Today on the feast of St. John's Nativity, one of the Quarter Days at the time, it's sad to note that the provisions of Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity of 1559 all took effect on this feast:

Where at the death of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI there remained one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies in the Church of England, which was set forth in one book, intituled: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies in the Church of England; authorized by Act of Parliament holden in the fifth and sixth years of our said late sovereign lord King Edward VI, intituled: An Act for the uniformity of common prayer, and administration of the sacraments; the which was repealed and taken away by Act of Parliament in the  first year of the reign of our late sovereign lady Queen Mary, to the great decay of the due honour of God, and discomfort to the professors of the truth of Christ's religion:

Be it therefore enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the said statute of repeal, and everything therein contained, only concerning the said book, and the service, administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies contained or appointed in or by the said book, shall be void and of none effect, from and after the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming; and that the said book, with the order of service, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies, with the alterations and additions therein added and appointed by this statute, shall stand and be, from and after the said feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist, in full force and effect, according to the tenor and effect of this statute; anything in the aforesaid statute of repeal to the contrary notwithstanding. 

And further be it enacted by the queen's highness, with the assent of the Lords (sic) and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by authority of the same, that all and singular ministers in any cathedral or parish church, or other place within this realm of England, Wales, and the marches of the same, or other the queen's dominions, shall from and after the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming be bounden to say and use the Matins, Evensong, celebration of the Lord's Supper and administration of each of the sacraments, and all their common and open prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said book, so authorized by Parliament in the said fifth and sixth years of the reign of King Edward VI, with one alteration or addition of certain lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year, and the form of the Litany altered and corrected, and two sentences only added in the delivery of the sacrament to the communicants, and none other or otherwise. . . .

The Act of Uniformity also set out the penalties for those who refused to use The Book of Common Prayer and for those who refused to attend Church of England services. It made the celebration of the Catholic Mass, which Elizabeth I's father Henry VIII had attended up to three times a day, illegal. This is an obvious overreach--in our terms today--by the secular state over the Church in matters of worship and doctrine, and a clear violation at the time of the freedoms of the Church guaranteed by the Magna Carta, as the first clause stated "[this charter has] confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired." Since the English Church had become one with the State and the monarch it was no longer free, had no rights nor liberty.

Only one bishop (Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff), an elderly prelate who has acquiesced to every religious change from Henry VIII on, accepted the Elizabethan Acts of religious settlement--that's quite a turnaround from all the bishops save one (St. John Fisher) accepting Henry's Supremacy, etc. 

You might remember that St. John the Baptist has another feast on the Roman Calendar, that of his Beheading, on August 29, and a friend of mine once pointed out that the Orthodox churches honor St. John the Baptist even more often: September 23 —Conception of St. John the Forerunner; January 7 — The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner; February 24 — First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; May 25 — Third Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; June 24 — Nativity of St. John the Forerunner, and August 29 — The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner!

St. John the Baptist, pray for us!

Another Tudor Rebellion Begins

On Whitsunday, 1549, The Book of Common Prayer was the only service book English churches could use, per Parliamentary law. On Whit Monday, June 6, the people of Cornwall began to express their dissatisfaction with the change in liturgy. The crucial issue was the language of The Book of Common Prayer, English, as this blog describes:

The Book of Common Prayer was meant to unify Anglican services throughout the kingdom. The prayer book contained English language liturgical rites devised by Cranmer, banned religious processions, and ordered communion under both kinds. But its biggest novelty was simply that it mandated Mass be said in English, and authorized inspections by royal officials to ensure its provisions were carried out. Thus, though it was now fifteen years into the Anglican schism, the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer on Whitsunday, 1549 marked the first time most Englishmen had ever heard the Mass said in English.

And what they heard upset them, for it became clear that what they had was no longer the Mass. Still, fifteen years of royal propaganda had done its work throughout much of the kingdom, and though there was some grumbling about certain aspects of the new rite, most of England was disposed to grudgingly accept it. That is, except the districts of Devon and Cornwall.

As this post from History Today explains, once the rebellion began, it spread and the Tudor government of Edward VI, headed by Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, soon responded with the customary Tudor thoroughness:

The protest soon spread to the Devonshire village of Sampford Courtenay, where, the day after the new prayer book came into force, the villagers demanded that their priest wear his old garments and read from the old service book. The minister swiftly reverted to “his old popish attire and sayeth mass and all such services as in times past accustomed”, while a local yeoman who tried to oppose the protestors was killed.

The events at Sampford Courtenay had a snowball effect and soon many other local people were demanding that their traditional ways of worship be restored. In fact, such was the strength of the opposition to the book that a powerful force of Cornish rebels were soon marching over the Devon border to join forces with those of Sampford Courtenay.

In July 1549, the combined force of Cornish and Devon rebels – by now some 4,000–6,000-strong – made the fatal decision to besiege Exeter, the regional capital, whose inhabitants remained loyal to the crown. The siege dragged on for six weeks “until the famine was so sore, that the people [of Exeter] were fain to eat horse-flesh”.

“The rebellion was the outcome of an accumulation of grievances, some of which dated back to before Edward came to the throne”, says Professor Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton. “The revolt was primarily fuelled by religious conservatism, but a desire to protect Cornish cultural distinctiveness also played its part.”

Read the rest there.

The Prayer Book Rebellion

Like the Pilgrimage of Grace in northern England during Henry VIII's reign, the Prayer Book Rebellion in Cornwall during Edward VI's reign demonstrates that some of the people didn't want the religious change that was being imposed on them after Henry proclaimed himself Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England. The BBC History Magazine posts this story, including links to nine locations associated with the Prayer Book Rebellion:

Then, in 1549, the government introduced a new Book of Common Prayer. Printed in English, the book was alien to the common people, who were accustomed to hearing their church services in Latin. It proved even more incendiary in Cornwall, where many people still spoke Cornish, a Brythonic language very like Welsh. Here, the replacement of the Latin service with an English version awoke cultural sensitivities as well as religious ones.

In June 1549, the county exploded into rebellion and thousands of angry commoners, together with many parish priests and some gentlemen, gathered at the ancient hill fort of Castle Canyke near Bodmin. Within a few days, the rebels had captured all who remained loyal to the king, and nowhere in Cornwall held out in support of the crown.

The protest soon spread to the Devonshire village of Sampford Courtenay, where, the day after the new prayer book came into force, the villagers demanded that their priest wear his old garments and read from the old service book. The minister swiftly reverted to “his old popish attire and sayeth mass and all such services as in times past accustomed”, while a local yeoman who tried to oppose the protestors was killed. . . .

“The rebellion was the outcome of an accumulation of grievances, some of which dated back to before Edward came to the throne”, says Professor Mark Stoyle of the University of Southampton. “The revolt was primarily fuelled by religious conservatism, but a desire to protect Cornish cultural distinctiveness also played its part.”

Among the list of demands that the rebels sent to the government was one which stated that: “We will not receive the new service because it is but like a Christmas game, but we will have our old service of matins, mass, evensong and procession in Latin not in English, as it was before. And so we the Cornish men, whereof certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse this new English.”

After laying siege to Exeter and failing to take the city, the rebels fought battles with the royal forces and were finally defeated. Then the usual process of punishing the rebels began--four of the nine sites included in the BBC History Magazine are associated with executions and a massacre. Two priests supporting the rebellion were hung in chains: "Henry Joyes, the vicar of Chipping Norton" in Oxfordshire and "Robert Welsh, a Cornishman by birth and the vicar of St Thomas church near Exeter". More than 900 rebel prisoners were murdered at the orders of John Russell, Earl of Bedford at Clyst St Mary and of course the rebel leaders were executed, including Sir Humphrey Arundell, in London.

In 2007, the Anglican Bishop of Truro, William Ind, apologized for the government's actions in the Prayer Book Rebellion:

In acknowledging the "brutality and stupidity" of the atrocities on behalf of the Church, Bishop Bill Ind tried to heal much of the hurt felt by many Cornish people, who believe the Church of England has long tried to ignore the events of 1549 Prayerbook (sic)Rebellion.

In a wide-ranging address at Pelynt Parish Church in South East Cornwall, the man dubbed "The People's Bishop" attempted to draw a line under a moment in history which left one in ten of the Cornish population dead.

Bishop Bill, who was in Pelynt to be presented with the prestigious Trelawny Plate, said: "I am often asked about my attitude to the Prayerbook Rebellion and in my opinion, there is no doubt that the English Government behaved brutally and stupidly and killed many Cornish people. I don't think apologising for something that happened over 500 years ago helps, but I am sorry about what happened and I think it was an enormous mistake."

Alternative History: If Thomas Cranmer Had Survived

Diarmaid MacCulloch speculated on what might have happened if Thomas Cranmer hadn't been executed during the reign of Mary I (because Mary I never reigned) in this 1996 article from History Today magazine:

What would the Church of England have looked like if instead of Queen Mary's triumph in 1553, Queen Jane's quite reasonable hereditary claim to the throne had succeeded in establishing her regime? The Lady Mary would have to have been effectively neutralised, and one fears that neutralising her for good would have involved the block, in a return to Henrician savagery. The Lady Elizabeth could have been married off to Lord Robert Dudley, a good catch for a royal bastard, and a good chance for them both of a happy love-match.

Archbishop Cranmer, living to his allotted three-score years and ten or beyond, could produce a third version of his two earlier Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552, in the light of friendly criticism from continental reformers whom he respected, like Peter Martyr, Johann Heinrich Bullinger and Calvin. He would be succeeded as archbishop by Nicholas Ridley or Robert Holgate, with energetic younger. reformers like Edmund Grindal ready to make their mark and pick up good ideas from the best reformed churches of Europe. The Scots immigrant John Knox, mellowed by an increasingly successful career in the Church of England, would be appointed Bishop of Newcastle, benevolently taking no notice of the advanced congregations in his diocese who received communion sitting; this was a practice in any case increasingly common throughout Jane's Church, despite Cranmer's grumbles. Cranmer's cherished reform of the old popish canon law would be achieved; the primer and catechism published at the very end of Edward's reign in 1553 would become the standards; the Forty-two Articles would have been unmodified by Elizabethan hesitations about relegating the significance of the sacrament of Holy Communion to that merely of a symbolic repetition.

Out in the parishes, metrical psalms in the style of Geneva would quickly have spread: these were the best secret weapon of the English Reformation, making its public worship and private devotional practice genuinely popular throughout increasing areas of the kingdom. This congregational music would also take over in the cathedrals, now devoid of choirs or polyphony, and with their organs (where they survived) used mainly for entertainment in the Dutch fashion. The conservative nobility would continue the sullen public compliance with religious change which they had shown under Edward VI, their private celebration of ceremonial worship tolerated as eccentricity, like the Lady Elizabeth's patronage of choral music in her own chapel.

The traditionalist higher clergy would gradually die off in senior church offices and the universities, with no possibility of like-minded replacement: since the universities produced no major haemorrhage of exiles in the 1560s, the Jesuits and other religious orders would find it difficult to recruit potential clergy to train for their attempt to treat Jane's England as a mission field. England would have become the most powerful political player in the Reformed camp, with Cranmer a cordial if geographically distant partner with John Calvin. It is powerfully symbolic that it was Cranmer's son-in-law Thomas Norton who translated Calvin's Institutes into English, and Cranmer's veteran printer Reyner Wolfe who published it. With a Cranmer-Calvin axis, the profile of Reformed religion across the whole Continent would have been changed, and with the help and encouragement of Bishop Knox, the Reformation in Scotland might have followed a close path to the Reformed Church of England.

Then MacCulloch acknowledges what happened instead when Elizabeth I came to the throne after Mary I's death and created a compromise Church of England that in some ways thwarted Cranmer's reforms, especially in its "long march away from Cranmer's eucharistic theology". MacCulloch traces the ambiguous legacy of Thomas Cranmer through the Stuarts to the Tractarians concluding:

In an ecumenical age, which honours honest doubt and hesitancy as a lesser evil than clear-eyed ideological certainty, Cranmer may win admirers and sympathisers and take his due place in Anglican history. He would not have known what Anglicanism meant, and would probably not have approved if the meaning had been explained to him, but without his contribution, the unending dialogue of Protestantism and Catholicism which forms Anglican identity would not have been possible. Beyond the concerns of Christianity, for all those who criticise his politics, or find his theology alien, Cranmer's language remains as the most enduring monument to Henry Vlll's and Edward VI's most faithful servant. Twentieth-century scholarship has reminded us just how fundamental is the structure of language to the way in which we construct our lives and our culture. Cranmer's language lies at the heart of our own English-speaking culture, which has now become so central to the destiny of the world.

Read the rest there.

Creeping to the Cross Before, During, and After the English Reformation

As Eamon Duffy describes in The Stripping of the Altars, Good Friday was a solemn day of fasting and mourning in English Catholic churches before the English Reformation. The sacramental reality of Jesus's redemptive suffering and death were commemorated by the ritual of "Creeping to the Cross" which compares to our current form of Venerating the Cross as one of the four parts of the Good Friday service. As this website notes, Henry VIII allowed the performance of this ritual throughout his "rule" as Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England, but wanted to make sure that no one celebrated it, and other observances, out of superstition:

"Holy water, holy bread, the use of vestments, Candlemas candles, ashes, palms, creeping to the Cross, sepulchres, hallowing of the font, and “all other like laudable customs, rites, and ceremonies” were allowed by the Ten Articles of 1536 “as good and laudable things to put us in memory of what they signify.” On February 26, 1539 (Wilkins, III, 842), Henry issued a proclamation in which holy water, holy bread, kneeling and creeping to the Cross on Good Friday, setting up lights before the Corpus Christi on Easter Day, bearing candles at the Purification were allowed since “as yet” they had not being abolished. But they were to be used without superstition. “Let the minister on each day instruct the people on the right and godly use of every ceremony. On every Sunday let him declare that holy water is sprinkled in remembrance of our baptism and of the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. On every Sunday let holy bread be given, to remind men of the housel, or Eucharist, which in the beginning of the Christian Church was received more often than now, and in sign of unity, for as the bread is made of many grains so are all Christian men one mystical body of Christ. Let candles be borne at Candlemas, but in memory of Christ, the spiritual light. On Ash Wednesday let ashes be given to every Christian man to remind him that he is dust and ashes. On Palm Sunday let palms be borne, but let it be declared that it is in memory of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Let it be declared on Good Friday, that creeping to the Cross and kissing the Cross signify humility and the memory of our redemption. They are signs and tokens, not the workers nor the works, of our salvation”. This explanation is almost identical to No. IX of the Ten Articles (1536). The same ordinances concerning ceremonies were embodied in some royal directions which appeared on Nov. 10, 1539. In January, 1545-46, Cranmer prepared letters for the King, which however never received Henry’s signature, abrogating creeping and kneeling to the Cross (Cranmer, Remains. p. 415). The Royal Injunctions of 1547 (No. 27) tolerated holy water, holy-bread and palms, did not condemn ashes, Candlemas candles, creeping to the Cross, Easter sepulchres, hallowing of the font, and allowed two lights; although the Homily of Good Works published before them and ordered by them to be read, condemned fire, bread, water, palms and candles.

During the reign of Edward VI, Archbishop Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer omitted the ceremony and Parliament forbade it. Mary I's restoration of Catholicism revived the practice which then was forbidden again under Elizabeth I. 

To me, it represents great devotion to Jesus and the Paschal Mystery and acknowledgment of sin and penitence--not something you would want to condemn at all. People did not want to give it up, either, and Anglican bishops complained that some still "creeped" on their knees to the Cross on Good Friday during Elizabeth's reign.

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist and Elizabeth I's 1559 Act of Uniformity

Today is the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only two other birthdays are celebrated on the Church Calendar: The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, saints and blessed are remembered on the dates of the deaths (or perhaps the "translation" of their remains or some other important date--not usually their birthdate). The saint's day of earthly death is the beginning of their eternal life in Heaven. This site offers the reason for honoring St. John the Baptist on his birhday--because he was cleansed from Original Sin, baptised as it were, when Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth and he leapt in his mother's womb when the unborn Jesus in Mary's womb came near him. St. Augustine pointed to this understanding of St. John the Baptist's holy birth.

(St. John the Baptist has another feast, that of his Beheading, on August 29, and a friend of mine pointed out that the Orthodox churches honor St. John the Baptist even more often: September 23 —Conception of St. John the Forerunner; January 7 — The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner; February 24 — First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; May 25 — Third Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; June 24 — Nativity of St. John the Forerunner, and August 29 — The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner!)

Devotion to St. John the Baptist is ancient in the Church and his Nativity was celebrated with a vigil and with bonfires on the feast. This site points out a pilgrimage site in Norfolk before the English Reformation demonstrating devotion to the saint as a martyr, as it had a replica of the head of St. John the Baptist. The image was destroyed at some point during the Reformation, of course.

The provisions of Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity of 1559 all took effect on this feast:

Where at the death of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI there remained one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies in the Church of England, which was set forth in one book, intituled: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies in the Church of England; authorized by Act of Parliament holden in the fifth and sixth years of our said late sovereign lord King Edward VI, intituled: An Act for the uniformity of common prayer, and administration of the sacraments; the which was repealed and taken away by Act of Parliament in the  first year of the reign of our late sovereign lady Queen Mary, to the great decay of the due honour of God, and discomfort to the professors of the truth of Christ's religion:

Be it therefore enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the said statute of repeal, and everything therein contained, only concerning the said book, and the service, administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies contained or appointed in or by the said book, shall be void and of none effect, from and after the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming; and that the said book, with the order of service, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies, with the alterations and additions therein added and appointed by this statute, shall stand and be, from and after the said feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist, in full force and effect, according to the tenor and effect of this statute; anything in the aforesaid statute of repeal to the contrary notwithstanding.

St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, Prophet and Martyr, pray for us!

In Wichita, Kansas tonight, at Blessed Sacrament Church, Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite will be celebrated at 19:00 hours! (7:00 p.m.)

Image credit: (public domain) Birth of St John the Baptist by Artemisia Gentileschi c. 1635