Advent is just around the corner; Christmas is on the horizon. A few days ago my wife was casting a professional eye (ear?) over the musical programme for the Nine Lessons and Carols here and, as one now does, for a source of inspiration, had a quick look at the recordings from Kings Cambridge on You Tube.
Listening to the beauty of the music, set off by the soaring architecture and the colours of the stained glass, the choir robes, the gold cope of the officiant, one was struck by the fact that in its origins this is Catholic Anglican patrimony, too.
Yes, we know that, with a few notable exceptions, over the last thirty years or so those who were deeply unfashionable enough (unintelligent enough, the slander goes) to espouse an orthodox Catholic theology in the Anglican Provinces in these islands have been pretty ruthlessly marginalised and excluded from influence.
Yet without the Oxford Movement and its inheritance none of what are now regarded as the glories of mainstream Anglicanism would exist at all, and the public liturgies in most of our churches (those that would exist at all) would be performed by someone slouching around in a black gown. Remember, the original ecclesiastical “riots” of the 1840s in London, Devon and elsewhere were triggered, not by eucharistic vestments, smells and bells and injudicious use of the Roman Canon, but by those who objected to the clergy donning the humble surplice in the pulpit.
the public liturgies [...] would be performed by someone slouching around in a black gown. Remember, the original ecclesiastical “riots” of the 1840s in London, Devon and elsewhere were triggered [...] by those who objected to the clergy donning the humble surplice in the pulpit.
ReplyDeleteBut "pulpit" is the operative word: he would have worn the surplice for the rest of the liturgy - the gown was only worn for preaching.
Yes, I should have been clearer about that point. However, exactly how much "liturgy" there would have been is open to question. Before the Oxford Movement celebrations of Holy Communion had become somewhat infrequent, monthly or quarterly in most parishes, and the descriptions we have of the "parson and clerk" reading the Prayer Book offices are far from edifying, even allowing for the exaggeration of those committed to changing the status quo .
ReplyDeleteQuite.
ReplyDeletePeople forget too (do not know?) how little congregational participation there was. The people didn't actually say/sing their part: it was said for them by the clerk, who in effect performed a duet with the parson. And the "Morning Service" was very long: Mattins (with all the psalms for the day and the long readings of Cranmer's original lectionary), run together with the Litany and Ante-Communion, and ending with a sermon (doubtless not short).
Must have been very tedious.