medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 04:58 PM 9/16/2002 -0500, Dennis Martin (hereafter, "you") wrote:
>I deliberately left Anglo-Catholics out. Most reject the label Protestant
>precisely because of these and similar issues. The present Anglican
>calendar cannot be equated with the 16thc and early 17thc calendar
>because, as you note, Archbishop Laud came in between. Things were
>confused in the 16thc century and certainly some parties within the Church
>of England had a very Catholic view of these matters but others had a very
>Reformed (meaning Calvinist) view of these matters. For all these reasons
>and more, I mentioned Lutherans and Calvinists. Even comparing Lutherans
>and Calvinists one finds significant differences.
>
>And that is the point I am trying to make: I think a fairminded assessment
>of the spectrum of Protestantism by the later 16thc would put the
>Calvinists at the one end as "most Protestant" and the Lutherans and
>Anglo-Catholics at the other end as the most Catholic--which is why the
>Presbyterians and Puritans had it in for the Catholicizing party within
>the Church of England. And veneration of saints as well as other "high
>church" liturgical matters were at the heart of these disputes.
>
>That all traditions honor their dead heroes, respect them, look up to
>them, are inspired by them is certainly true from a sociological,
>anthropological perspective. And it is a point worth making. But it can
>also obscure real differences, differences over which people died
>(including St. Charlie I) in the English "Civil War." Veneration of
>saints was really a divisive issue at the time and we undermine any
>valuable sociological perspective gained by observing the common tendency
>to honor past heroes and martyrs if we obscure the religious and
>theological differences in the way that honor was carried out. What
>happens to the dead, whether they are still actively part of our lives by
>intercession or whether they are actively part of our lives as historic
>memories reflects important, intuitive, deeply felt aspects of our
>religious worldview.
>
>Finally, there is the important historical methodological requirement of
>avoiding anachronism--one cannot go from present-day Anglican or
>Episcopalian practice directly back to 16th or 17thc Church of England
>practice--
Nor did I. What I asked was a question about Anglicans "when they made
these additions", not one about Anglo-Catholics in the earlier 17th
century. Most of what you've said up to this point, though familiar to
people with some recent understanding of conflicts in England in the
Jacobean-through-Commonwealth period and worth saying to others lacking
such understanding, seems extraneous to the question as posed. Which, as
it was brief and as you've devoted a longish response to it, I assume you
read with care.
>the recatholicizing of large segments, though by no means all, of the
>Church of England (accompanied by controversy well into the 19th or early
>20th century) is an important but easily overlooked development.
Then in your view (their own self-construction on this point is another
matter) these segments of the Church of England are not Protestant? If I
understand you correctly, that's the answer to my query. And bears
directly on the issue of whether certain persons now venerated by some in
the C of E are actually "Protestant saints" (rather than
Catholic-though-not-Roman ones). Thank you.
> I would think that the Puritan divines (and some of the Anglo-Catholic
> divines of the early 17thc) would be turning over in their graves at the
> thought of liturgical veneration of Ridley and Latimer, perhaps even Cranmer.
That's my (largely second-hand) perception also.
Best again,
John Dillon
who had earlier said:
>At 03:59 PM 9/16/2002 -0500, Dennis Martin wrote:
>
> >There was a definite retention of the evangelists' and apostles' feasts in
> >the liturgical calendar for Lutherans, perhaps in some Calvinist
> >circles. But even that actually marks out a difference: these could be
> >retained liturgically because they were the first generation and were
> >"biblical".
>
><snip>
>
> >Yes, all deceased Christians who died in faith (who were of the Elect in
> >Calvinist terms) are in heaven, but from the Protestant perspective one
> >did not add them to liturgical calendars or invoke their intercession.
>
>Yet the post from Phyllis Jestice to which this is a reply mentions
>(correctly, in my experience) Anglican liturgical commemorations of
>Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley. I have attended an Anglican commemoration of
>Charles the Martyr in which Laud and (because this was in a mostly black
>congregation whose priest had been ordained by an Ethiopian bishop) Haile
>Selassie were also commemorated in prayers. Leaving aside the matter
>of intercession, it seems incontrovertible that Anglicans have added to
>their liturgical calendars saints who were not "biblical". Does the
>above-quoted statement about "the Protestant perspective" (clearly
>different from "most Protestant perspectives" or even from "the perspective
>of most Protestants") mean that Anglicans were not Protestant when they
>made these additions? If not, what does it mean?
>
>Best,
>John Dillon
>*************************************************************************
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John B. Dillon TEL: 608-262-0342
European Humanities Bibliographer
278E Memorial Library FAX: 608-265-2754
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