medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
As Medieval Religion ended messily and indeterminately in England and
Wales (it ended remarkably peacefully, and overnight, in Scotland)
perhaps I could mention the Book of Common Prayer, as it is not
obviously not medieval?
Hard on the heels of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible comes
the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Prayer Book. To coincide with that has
been published Brian Cummings's edition "The Book of Common Prayer: The
Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662" (OUP, 2011) ISBN 978-0199207176
Rowan Williams (bless him!) chose it as one of his "books of the year"
in the TLS acouple of weeks ago... The title is somewhat misleading,
however: it gives (uniquely, I think) a complete original-spelling
edition of the 1662 text, but the 1549 and 1559 texts are severely
truncated, and the 1552 text is not included. So you need to supplement
it with E.C.S. Gibson's 1910/1948 Everyman "The First and Second Prayer
Books of Edward VI", last re-issued by the Prayer Book Society in 1999,
which gives the full text of the 1549 edition and a shortened version of
that of 1552 (but which can be completed using the 1549 text), as well
as full texts of the 1550 and 1552 Ordinals (the Psalter is not,
however, included.)
For 1559 text, I recommend John E. Booty's "The Book of Common Prayer,
1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book" (University of Virginia Press, 1976),
re-issued in 2005 with a pretty vacuous Foreword by Judith Maltby. That
is a modern spelling (and American spelling at that) edition, but rather
more seriously it omits the 1561 Calendar and the Ordinal - for these
Booty blithely directs us to W.K. Clay's "Liturgical Services: Liturgies
and Occasional Forms of Prayer Set Forth in the Reign of Queen
Elizabeth", published by the Parker Society in 1847!
So I end up having to purchase volumes of the Parker Society (available
surprisingly cheaply) - and that was one rabbit hole I never imagined
disappearing down.
Now I only need a 1539 Great Bible for the lessons for Mattins and
Evensong...
--
John Briggs
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