A Revolt over a Prayer Book

I’ve been reading a history of the Tudors, covering four rulers of England – Henry VIII, the boy-king Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I. Sixteenth-century England, particularly from about 1520 to 1558, when Elizabeth became queen, was a time and place of social, religious and economic upheavals that left their mark on England and Britain, and even upon what became the English colonies in North America.

The religious upheaval was likely the most profound and far-reaching. When Henry VIII became king in 1509, all seemed right with the English world. Its landscape was dotted with hundreds of abbeys, cathedrals, monasteries, convents, and friaries. At one point, the Pope named Henry the “Defender of the Faith” (a title still used by British sovereigns). No one could imagine the convulsion that England was going to experience, largely but not totally caused by the inability of Henry and his wife Katherine of Aragon to produce a male heir.

But the convulsion came. Henry broke with Rome but not as completely as we might think. At one point in the English Reformation, a conservative reaction set it, and Henry pulled in the reins. But overall, by the time of Henry’s death in 1547, English Catholicism was largely in physical and financial ruin. Some of the worst depredations included the destruction of the shrines of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey and Thomas Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral.

During the short reign (1547 – 1553) of Henry’s son, Edward, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, published a new order of religious worship, what today we call The Book of Common Prayer. It caused a rebellion by the common people, especially those who lived in rural areas, who demanded a return to the “old religion.” Yes, the revolt was put down. It was one of numerous revolts that happened all through this period. Upheaval must have seemed almost commonplace.

It’s what can happen when a society becomes unhinged from its most basic foundations.

At First Things, editor R.R. Reno recently posted a short article about T.S. Eliot and the idea of liberalism. Eliot, in his Idea of a Christian Society, discussed liberalism as a foundational principle for any society. Liberalism champions freedom, especially individual freedom, but that it also something of a fatal flaw. Individual freedom invariably leads to individual excess, and liberalism is forced to turn to a stronger and stronger central government to maintain order. It is one reason, Reno says for example, why universities are increasingly in the business of speech codes, censorship, the stifling of free speech, and ever more stringent regulations on sexual relations.

The people who lived through the Tudor era may have something to teach us. The Book of Common Prayer wasn’t the cause of societal upheaval, but it did provide a spark. Conditions were already worsening; things were breaking down, from law and order to growing economic inequality.

When we unhinge ourselves from the principles and ideas and guide society – like Christianity – upheaval and chaos can often be the result. And the only remedy for upheaval and chaos is a strong, authoritarian government that will, inevitably, reduce individual freedoms.

Related: The Book of Common Poetry.

Painting: An Allegory of the Tudor Succession, attributed to Lucas de Heere. From left: a figure representing war; Philip of Spain, husband of Mary; Henry VIII; his son, Edward; Elizabeth; and figures representing peace and plenty. 

The Book of Common Poetry

This post was first published at The Master's Artist.

We were in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the gift shop of the Bruton Parish Church, mostly looking at nativity sets. As I am known to do, I wandered around and found a display case with two shelves of books.

And there it was – an Oxford University Press reprint of the 1928 edition of The Book of Common Prayer. And here I was, right in the middle of a manuscript that needed references from the 1928 edition, which is very similar to the 1789 edition (the one done after the American Revolution). It met my immediate need.

It also did something else. It came to be something I read from, with its litanies and orders of services, language for uses with rites like marriages and births, and the psalter. The book connected me to Henry VIII and the first edition published in 1549 as a result of the English Reformation.

But it’s the book’s wonderful language that’s the enchantment. To read (and read aloud) some of the litanies, and Gospel passages, and scripts for burial services is to sense the late 18^th century scholars and theologians who revised the earlier edition and the language that seems to lift to God (I’m convinced that this is the language spoken in heaven). I’m not the only one who’s been taken by the language – Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists have borrowed from it for their prayer books as well.

What’s fascinating is to see the language actually work. I take a passage or section, written in paragraph form, and use the same words in poetic form, to give a sense of how to read the words and what the language actually sounds like. Consider this familiar passage, the paragraph rendered poetically:

I require and charge you both,

as ye will answer at the dreadful day

of judgment, when the secrets

of all hearts shall be disclosed,

that if either of you know

any impediment,

why ye may not be lawfully

joined together in Matrimony,

ye do now confess it.

For be ye well assured,

that if any persons are joined

together otherwise than

as God’s word does allow,

their marriage is not lawful.

The rite continues through the exchange of rings, finishing with this:

Bless, O Lord, this Ring,

that he who gives it

and she who wears it

may abide in thy peace,

and continue in thy favour,

until their life’s end;

through Jesus Christ,

our Lord.

Amen.

This works in virtually every section of the book – the Bible readings, the language of the rites, and the psalter. The book contains a beautiful, almost poetic cadence and rhythm that lifts and inspires. The language comes from the language of the King James Version of the Bible, and even Shakespeare, and it continues to resonate.

We speak and write more practically today, emphasizing brevity, conciseness and more utilitarian language. We’ve gained speed and immediate effectiveness, if not understanding, but we’ve also given something up – the wonder of words and language that can lead to heaven. 

Related: Copies of all of the various editions of The Book of Common Prayer can be downloaded as pdf files here. 

John Donne and Marriage

Karen Swallow Prior tells us in Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, that it was poet John Donne who taught her about marriage. 

If you’re not familiar with the English poet John Donne (1572-1631), you will at elast have heard of some of his more famous liens and poems – “Death be not proud;” “No man is an island;” and “Ask not for whom the bells toll; they toll for thee.”  

Born to a Catholic family when being Catholic could be a dangerous thing, Donne converted to Anglicanism after this brother died in his prison for his faith. Donne attended Oxford and Cambridge. He was appointed private Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, falling in love with Egerton’s niece, Anne, and secretly married her. Egerton, when he found out, was not pleased; he had Donne briefly imprisoned and provided no dowry.  

Eventually Egerton accepted the marriage, and Donne eventually found himself running in royal circles. King James I told him to become an Anglican priest, which he did, and served as royal chaplain until the King’s death. In 1621, Donne was appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Donne’s poetry (and he wrote a considerable amount of it) is considered among the best of the metaphysical poets, a group that included George Herbert and Andrew Marvell. 

Donne was deeply in love with his wife. They had 12 children; she died in childbirth at 33. He had written a fair amount of love poetry to her, and some of fairly erotic, but he never wrote another love poem after her death. And he never remarried. Their marriage was an expression of their faith, and that expression included spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical love. 

Prior’s reference to the marriage ceremony in The Book of Common Prayer, which Donne would have been intimately familiar with, reminded me of something I did in my novels. I found a facsimile of the 1928 version while we were on vacation in Williamsburg a few years ago, and I read it cover to cover. A chunk of Dancing Priest that didn’t make it into print was the wedding ceremony for Michael and Sarah, the two main characters; it followed the Book of Common Prayer ceremony almost exactly. 

True confession: I used elements of Donne’s life in the character of Michael Kent. 

Come August, my wife and I will have been married 40 years. We have children and grandchildren. We manage to hide (most of) our gray hair. We have been times of plenty and times of need, fat years and lean years, good times and bad, hard times and easy times. We have been through life, and we are still going through life. 

We’ve now been married longer than my own parents, and almost as long as her parents. We have lived with each other longer than we have lived with anyone else, including our parents and our children. I love my wife as much as I did when we married. No, that’s wrong. I love my wife more than I did when we were married. I can say that only because of the grace of God.  God has blessed us in our marriage.  

His blessing hasn’t meant our marriage would be easy. But it did mean it would be true, and lasting fort however long we’re physically alive, and even after that. And it meant that we would be bound together as one. 

Donne’s poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was written to his wife, not when she had died, but when he was leaving on a trip. And I understand it. 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
   "The breath goes now," and some say, "No." 

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
   Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined

   That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

We’ve been reading Booked at The High Calling, and today is the final discussion. It’s a marvelous book, totally delightful in so many ways, and I highly recommend it. If you love great literature, Booked will take you back to high school and college. You can read the final posting at The High Calling.

The Book of Common Poetry

We were in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the gift shop of the Bruton Parish Church, mostly looking at nativity sets. As I am known to do, I wandered around and found a display case with two shelves of books.

And there it was – an Oxford University Press reprint of the 1928 edition of The Book of Common Prayer. And here I was, right in the middle of a manuscript that needed references from the 1928 edition, which is very similar to the 1789 edition (the one done after the American Revolution). It met my immediate need.

It also did something else.

To continue reading, please see my post today at The Master’s Artist.