Foundations of the Anglican Church CIX

Religious Dissenters at the time

of the English Civil War

Well, I want to continue on with the threat of schism that is emerging under Francis, but first let’s go back for a posting or two on the history of the Church of England.  My readership always falls when I do straight history instead of commentary on present situations and their historical impact, but I do have a small but devoted following on this Church of England series and I do think there are lessons we can learn from that history.  Not the least lesson is just how many readers, including Anglicans and Episcopalians, have forgotten (or never known) that the Church of England was decidedly Protestant in both theology and praxis (and that means liturgical praxis) in the second half of the sixteenth century and pretty much right straight through until the early 19^th century.)  I guess I should give a spoiler alert about that. 

We left our saga of the Church of England after talking about the Seekers and the Quakers, groups that rejected both clergy and sacraments in favor of a more interior approach to religion.  (We had already treated the more traditional—by comparison—Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists.   The Quakers, as I said, rejected any trappings of traditional Christianity such as Baptism, Holy Communion (they viewed true Communion as an interior and highly personal experience, perhaps somewhat akin to the pious custom of “spiritual communion” among Catholics) as well as any structured liturgy or Creed.  While originally quite orthodox in their doctrines about Christ and about salvation, over time Quakerism has developed a breadth of opinions that range from orthodox Christian to Unitarian and even Universalist.  They are to be commended on their holding fast to the key principles of charity (brotherly/sisterly love) and pacificism which are needed values for all Christians to recover.  We Catholics could do a bit better on this, and might perhaps if it weren’t for the Krazies among us who keep insisting on baptizing their Tea Party whimsies into a sort of pseudo-Catholic orthodoxy.  This by the way is why Pope Francis drives them krazy as he just isn’t on their page.  But I digress. 

As radical as the Quakers were, there were plenty of groups off to their left.  One of these groups were the Fifth Monarchy Men.  They took their name from the Book of Daniel that spoke of the four ancient monarchies that would precede the reign of Christ.  (These were the Babylonian, Persian, Greek (Alexander the Great), and Roman Empires.)   The Fifth Monarchy Men, devoted to the Fifth Monarchy—that of Christ—took the “Number of the Beast”, 666, and believed that in 1666 Christ would return and establish an earthly kingdom.  The Fifth Monarchy Men initially cooperated with Cromwell in his overthrow of the Stuart kings, but they rejected the idea of any earthly government save of that of “King Jesus.” 

Another group which emerged at this time were the “Levelers” or, as they were often popularly known, the “Diggers.”  The Diggers were influenced by the writings of Gerard Winstanley (1609-1676) and believed that God’s plan was for the land, from which all derived their sustenance, to belong to all and not to be private property of the landowners.  This was at a time when much of the “common land”—the open pastures and fields which did not belong to any one person and to which all had access to pasture their sheep or cattle—was being increasingly appropriated and “enclosed” (fenced in by stone walls or by shrubbery) by great landowners.  The Diggers began themselves to cultivate the common land and even land left fallow by the wealthy, and the powerful owners in an attempt to establish small agrarian communities where property was held in common after the example of the Acts of the Apostles.  Like the Fifth Monarchy Men they were anarchists. 

Then there were the Ranters.  The Ranters rejected all religious authority over individuals—not only that of the Church and the clergy, but even of the Bible.  They believed that individuals should surrender themselves to the Divine Spirit within themselves.  Under the influence of this “Divine Spirit” one could not sin—there were no boundaries set on behavior other than those set by the Spirit on an individual.  They got a bit of a reputation for sexual immorality and they also rejected private property. 

The Muggletonians were a breakoff group of the Ranters led by one Lodowicke Muggleton.  Muggleton taught that there is no Divinity but Jesus Christ, the glorified human man; that the devil is the illogical use of reason; that heaven is a realm of light beyond the stars; hell is this earth with the sun and moon extinguished; angels are beings of pure reason; and that the soul dies with the body but will be raised with the body at the end time.    Muggletonians survived into the mid-twentieth century before dying out. 

There are numerous other groups, but along with the entries on the Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and others already mentioned, this gives a good spectrum of the variety of sects and cults into which the Church of England devolved during the English Civil War.  This is always the problem with schism: keeping a movement united and from shattering into a variety of ever more extreme groups.  We have seen that in our entries with the Lefebvrists , with the sede-vacantist groups and others who reject the authority of the Second Vatican Council and how they divide and subdivide into new and more extreme groups.   

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIX

Lancelot Andrewes

Elizabeth’s political savvy and personal charisma was able to hold the Church of England together during her reign.  Moreover, while the Puritan faction was not happy about bishops or the Prayer Book and its still somewhat Catholic Liturgy, both the Presbyterian (Puritan) and Episcopal (bishops) factions shared a strong Calvinist bent in their theology that kept the arguments more about discipline than doctrine.  The Puritans wanted to push for more Reform on the Geneva model of less structure in worship with more extempore prayer, “prophesying” (greater emphasis on the sermons), and a de-emphasis on the Holy Communion and other rites.  In fact, under the influence of Puritan clergy many congregations did not adhere closely to the Prayer Book and followed continental models for Reformed Worship.  While Elizabeth wanted liturgical uniformity according to the Prayer Book liturgy, her Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindal, actually favored the “prophesying” model hoping to increase the quality of preaching and the Queen herself pushed no harder than she dare lest she alienate the Puritan faction which controlled the House of Commons.  Religion was important to Elizabeth but not so important as to sacrifice her larger political agenda and she needed Puritan support for that.

The pax ecclesiastica  of Elizabeth’s reign actually masked a growing schism that remained beneath the surface as long as she was on the throne, but which began to bubble up when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.  The Puritans had hopes for their Scots king as James had been raised by Presbyterians and the Scots Church was, at the time of his accession, mostly Presbyterian in its makeup.  (At the time that James inherited the English Throne, there were   two bishops in Scotland, appointees of the Scots Parliament and without diocesan jurisdiction.  The post was primarily honorary as the Scots Parliament recognized the Presbyterian organization of the Kirk (Church) in 1592. )  But those optimistic Puritans did not know James.  He was an ardent proponent of Episcopal Church polity and by his death in 1625 had reestablished a full bench of diocesan bishops in Scotland.  James’ theme was “no bishop, no king” and he realized that the elimination of episcopacy was just a tad too democratic for his crown to rest secure.

The heroes of the faith under Elizabeth were those ministers who had fled the England of “Bloody Mary” for the Reformed Churches of Geneva, Zurich, and Strasbourg and then, upon Elizabeth becoming Queen and reestablishing Protestantism, returned to England.   Their time abroad had confirmed them in Reformed Church Polity (which was Presbyterian) and Calvinist doctrine.  The “High Church” party in the Church of England, the group which favored bishops and held more Catholic views of the sacraments, remained very much in the shadows while Elizabeth was on the throne, despite the Queen’s own support of episcopacy and her liking for a certain amount of ritual in her chapel.  Under James, however, there was a marked movement away from Calvinist theology by some of the bishops, notably Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester and later Bishop of Winchester as well as Dean of the Chapel Royal.  Andrewes defended the doctrine of the Real Presence (though he rejected Transubstantiation) claiming that after the bread is consecrated (his word) it is no longer bread in a natural sense.   He used terms such as “sacrifice” and “altar” in referring to the Holy Communion and to the table on which it was celebrated.  His private chapel was fitted out with silver candlesticks, a censer, and five copes among other High Church paraphernalia.   Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft (1604-1610) was another bishop who tried to move the Church of England away from its Calvinist foundation.  Bancroft’s successor, George Abbot was Calvinist in his soteriology (theology of salvation) but held a strong Catholic understanding of the Apostolic Succession and the priesthood, though he was a mortal enemy of William Laud who would later be Archbishop of Canterbury and bring down both the episcopacy and the crown with his High Churchmanship.    George Montaigne who under James held successively the Sees of Lincoln, London, Durham, and York rejected Calvinist Soteriology and insisted on conformity to the Prayer Book in worship.  Thomas Dove, (bishop of   Peterborough)  and John Overall (bishop first of Coventry and Lichfield and later of Norwich)   were staunch opponents of Calvinist doctrine.  Thomas Ravis, bishop of London, (1607-1609) rigidly opposed the Puritan faction.  On the other hand, his predecessor Richard Vaughn, James’ bishop of London (1604-1607) had been a staunch Calvinist, but found himself in a theological minority on the episcopal bench. 

The Puritan party began to realize that the bishops were a threat to the Calvinist faith and Protestant legacy for which Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer and the other Marian Martyrs had shed their blood.  There were in fact two distinct Churches in England—the Episcopal Church of England with its bishops and Arminian doctrine and increasingly Catholicized Liturgy and the Puritan Church of England with its non-conforming clergy and Calvinist doctrine and non-Liturgical worship.  They would somehow hold together during the reign of King James, but his son, Charles I, would inherit a religious tinderbox along with the Crown and when it blew—as indeed it would—the consequences would be disastrous for Crown and Miter alike. 

Ok—a little glossary of terms here to help the reader become familiar with something they might get on Jeopardy some day. 

Arminianism, Arminians,  Arminian.  The Arminians  (named after Dutch Theologian Jacobus Arminius) were adherents of a theological position antithetical to Calvinism in as that they denied the double pre-destination taught by Calvin.  Double predestination is that God has foreordained those who will be saved to salvation and those who will be damned for damnation.  Calvin’s position does not ascribe free will to the individual as his or her ultimate fate has been pre-determined by God.  Grace is given only for the elect; Christ died only for the elect.  The Armenians taught that Christ died for all and that grace sufficient for salvation is offered to all though the freedom of the will permits some to accept saving grace and others to reject it. 

Non-conformist, non-conforming clergy.  The non-conformists were those of the Puritan party who refused to “conform” to the Prayer Book and its liturgy but rather practiced the more free-style worship of the Reformed or Presbyterian Churches.  This term will be important in the Church of England until the end of the 17^th century when the non-conformists will withdraw from the Anglican Church to form their own religious bodies.  During the period of the English Civil War and subsequent Parliamentary “Protectorate” of the Cromwells, the non-Conformists will have the ascendency in the Church of England.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXXVIII

Saint Benet's, Paul's Wharf, London

a Wren Church that embodies the 

Calvinist espirit of Low Church

Anglican Worship 

There is a big difference between an oratorio and an opera. Oratorios, at least classic ones, most often tell a biblical story or are composed from biblical texts.  In an oratorio the music can be exquisite but there is no movement save for the orchestra playing their instruments.  The singers, usually dressed in black formal attire or perhaps, and especially for amateur groups, choir robes stand in their place and sing.  An opera, on the other hand is filled with color and drama that accompanies the story.  Most operas have secular themes though some, such as Tosca, have scenes of breathtaking religious pageantry.  But drama and pageantry are what opera is all about.  There are dramatic theatrical sets, elaborate costuming, and the singers act out the story they are singing.  The oratorio reflects the Protestant cultures of Northern Europe.  The opera is definitely Catholic, being a secular manifestation of the same appreciation of human sensuality that is found in the Catholic approach to the Liturgy.  Probably the reason that most operas of the period were secular was the religious love of drama and beauty was found in the stripped-down Liturgy whereas in those Protestant cultures that developed the oratorio—England and Germany primarily—the need for beauty was not found in the liturgy and the oratorio was a sensual—if limited to the sense of hearing—expression of faith.    

We can see the same contrast if we look at the Church of England in 1535 during the middle of Henry’s break with Rome and again in 1575 during Elizabeth’s reign.

In 1535 the day began with the parish clergy ringing the bells as they and some educated laymen gathered in the Church choir to sing Matins and Lauds.  In Latin, of course.  The choir, by the way, sometimes called the chancel—is that part of the Church between the nave (where the faithful sit) and the altar.  It contains seats and benches for the clergy and their assistants.  These seats are traditionally arranged not facing the altar but in rows facing each other across a central space.  After the council of Trent, choirs became rare in Catholic Churches because the reforms of Trent wanted the altar moved closer to the people so that they could have a clear  view of the liturgy.  In some places, especially Italy, the choir was moved to a new position behind the altar.  In other places, choirs were simply done away with.  Today in our country you may a choir in a Cathedral Church such as Saint Patrick’s in New York or the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, but they are rare in Catholic churches.  However back to England on the eve of the Reformation:  The candles on the altar were lit, the clergy and singers were robed in their surplices and tippets.  It might be a bit ragged in the poorer and smaller parish churches, but you definitely knew a service was going on.  There would be incense at the proper times and the sacred ministers moved back and forth to the altar from their places with bows and genuflections.  The service was unintelligible to most people—being in Latin—but that did not stop people from attending to be caught up in the mystery of the things, much like being caught up in drama of an opera.  The morning prayers were concluded with Mass in which the priest wore the traditional vestments, used a chalice made of gold or silver, and stood at a stone altar adorned with a crucifix and candles.  Votive lights burned around the church at the various chapels and shrines.  Almost no one but the priest received Holy Communion—usually the priest did not even pause in the Mass to give communion to any present but continued straight on through.  The Mass differed from day to day according to the feast of the saint commemorated.  Certain days called for processions.  Ashes were given on Ash Wednesday.  Palms on Palm Sunday.  Fields were blessed in procession on rogation days.  Candles and incense were an invariable a part of worship.  The music, sometimes performed well and sometimes not depending on the resources of the local parish, was a part of every Mass and indeed all the public ceremonials were sung rather than simply recited in a reading tone.  In the evening the clergy and their faithful would gather again for vespers and compline.  Again, there was incense, bells, candles.  At the end of Compline there was a procession to the Lady Chapel—the chapel in the Church dedicated to the Blessed Mother, usually located behind the main altar or parallel to the choir on the gospel side—where the traditional Marian antiphon would be sung to conclude the day. 

Forty years later it was a very different scene.  The clergy and faithful still gathered for morning prayer, but it was usually a read service, not sung.  The priest was dressed in a plain black gown, similar to today’s academic gown.  There were no candles, no incense.  The cross was gone from the altar—indeed the altar was gone with only a plain table shoved against the back wall to be brought out for Holy Communion.  There were no votive candles—what candles there were were for light alone.  The service was somewhat perfunctory.  Granted in a cathedral you might get better, especially with music and perhaps the priest would wear a cope, at least if it were a major feast.  Statues were gone and the walls of the church were whitewashed over the old murals depicting biblical scenes and the lives of the saints.

Holy Communion did not follow Morning Prayer except in some cathedral churches.  In the parish churches Holy Communion was administered only on Sundays and even then not always.  The Protestant Prayer Book required that at least 12 faithful be ready to communicate with the priest.  During the Catholic centuries people had become disaccustomed with regular communion, many receiving only yearly, and even the most faithful once a month.  Consequently the priest often did not have the required dozen.  It took time to win people over to the idea of a regular communion.  Moreover the more ardently Protestant clergy were sacramental minimalists and themselves didn’t see the benefits of regular communion, putting all the emphasis on the sermon. The first part of the service would be read with the lessons and prayers but Holy Communion did not follow unless the required number of communicants was met.  For Holy Communion too, like the morning prayers, the priest wore a plain black gown.  The communion table would be dragged out from against the rear wall of the church, positioned lengthwise in the choir (that part of the church between the nave and the sanctuary where were seats for the clergy and dignitaries.  The priest would stand on the north side of the table with the dozen or so who were to receive Holy Communion seated opposite him and celebrate the Holy Communion.  There was no crucifix, no candles, just a simple white linen cloth on the table with a pewter—or perhaps silver—flagon of wine and a plate with ordinary table bread on it.  Some few saints and feasts were retained in the Church calendar but most often ignored in the parishes.  The cathedrals again were somewhat better.  In the cathedrals there was usually music—good music from the choristers and an organ—and the clergy often wore surplices and copes over their black gowns when celebrating, giving a bit of color to an another wise drab prayer being too long on words and too short on piety. 

In the evening the priest and people—at least the more pious—would gather for Evening Prayer—a service that combined the old vespers and compline.  Again there was a psalm and a canticle and a reading from each of the testaments.  There was often, especially but not only on Sundays, a sermon, a long sermon. The Magnificat was sung like in the old days but there was no incense.  Nor was there a procession to the Lady Chapel and saluting the Virgin with the final antiphon of the day.  Indeed the Lady Chapel now was most often turned into a storage room or perhaps a schoolroom where the priest gave lessons to the boys of the neighborhood.  No statue was there to remind the worshippers of earlier days and ancient prayers. The days of the Catholic opera were over and the Protestant oratorio was in the ascendancy.  It was definitely more fun to be a Catholic; I think it still is—or would be—if the Krazies would let the liturgy breathe and not try to foist and embalmed relic of 1955 on us as the liturgiam authenticam.

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXXVII

Elizabeth's Chapel

in the Palace of SaintJames

I have a backlog of things to post.  I have a few entries on the ever-popular Katholic Kraizies.  Whenever I do a posting on them, my readership doubles.  I want to bring up the dispute over the remains of the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the consequent suspension of his cause for beatification.  I also have been holding back on some comments about the neo-Traditionalist blog, The New Liturgical Movement.  But I want to go back to the Church of England for an entry to two.  I recently was at dinner with an Episcopalian clergyman who was going on and on about that series without realizing that I was the author of the blog.  I didn’t tell him but here is a shout-out: Hi Bill.  Now can you guess who it is that is writing this history?  Anyway, back to Elizabeth. 

Well into Elizabeth’s reign, let’s say as late as the Armada in 1588, the majority of her subjects remained discretely, if not secretly, Catholics.  This was not true for the capital however—the mercantile cities and especially London, had been quick to embrace the Reformation and were strongly committed to Protestantism.  Max Weber, the 20^th century German sociologist, well noted the link between Protestant—and especially Reformed (or Calvinist)—thought and capitalism.  The merchants wanted their money to invest in business, not to squander on supporting monasteries or purchasing vestments or commissioning religious art.  This is not to say that the Protestant merchants were stingy when it comes to God.  Far from it.  But with God, as with business, they wanted to put their money where it would reap a return on their investment.  They endowed schools and scholarships to the universities.  They opened schools for poor children and orphans.  They built hospitals for the indigent sick.  They provided dowries for respectable young ladies from families that had fallen on hard times.  They just didn’t want to sink their money into buildings and the accessories of ritual. 

This led to a significant cultural change.  Art and architecture had, to this point, been primarily at the service of religion, but with the Protestant preference for the stark in matters religious, the arts shift to the secular.  We get far more portraits of solid prosperous English men and women and much fewer saints.  We get still-lifes and some landscapes.  Secular building projects take off as well.  No more abbeys, but we start getting the great manor houses built from the ruins of those monasteries.  Theatres and public buildings go up in London and other large cities.   Society itself secularizes. 

Secularization was not among the goals of the Protestant leadership, of course.  They wanted a “godly realm of England.”  But this is the trouble when you have a break in religious tradition, even a good break.  Once the hold of religion over the culture, or indeed individuals, is broken and the ancient “givens” are called into question, the whole religious establishment collapses like a house of cards.  When you see everything you once held sacred being discarded, nothing remains sacred in your eyes.  But again, this is where Protestantism failed its own ideals—it devolved into religion with an emphasis on doctrine and discipline.  Had Protestantism been able to reach its Evangelical goals and emphasized the conversion of life to which the Gospel shows us the way, secularism would never have gained the foothold in the culture that it did.  But the forest of the Christian life was lost sight of as the Church got tangled in the innumerable trees of cold and abstract doctrine.  Without the ways that medieval Christianity had been able to reach into the daily lives of the ordinary person with the stories of the saints and the feast days and the processions, there was nothing  but secularism to fill the gap in people’s lives. 

One area of art which remained at the service of the Church was music and the two great composers of the time, William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, ironically were Roman Catholics.   Tallis was Catholic from the old days before the split with Rome and even though he was a musician in the Chapel Royal of King Henry and later King Edward, he never gave up the old faith.  Byrd was a convert to Catholicism during the reign of Elizabeth.  Being Catholic did not stop them from writing music for the Anglican liturgy, though both wrote for the Catholic liturgy as well.  Byrd was the music director of Elizabeth’s chapel, an indication of how Elizabeth did not go looking for religious conflict as well as an indication of her preference of a more formal approach to liturgy. 

The fact that the Church of England developed a fine musical tradition should not confuse us into thinking that the average English subject attending Sunday worship in his or her parish church was being exposed to good music.  What happened in the chapel royal or in the occasional cathedral was one thing, but in the average parish the service was pretty drab, mostly read and not sung, and what little singing there might be was only the psalms, the Puritans considering hymns and anthems “too Catholic.”  Indeed church wasn’t a lot of fun due to the strong puritan influence that was suspect of anything ritualistic.  More about that in the next posting.

Back to where I started.  London was Protestant.  So was Norwich and the other larger towns of the south east, but there were Catholics aplenty in the countryside, and especially in the North where many of the great landowning families were still Catholic and with sufficient political clout, at least on the local level, to get away with it.  But priests are funny people and the seminary priests returning from their education and ordination abroad were supposed to pass through London and head into the Catholic regions to support the remaining Catholic population.  They didn’t.  They stayed in London, or at least the majority of them did.   They loved the big city and didn’t want to spend their years toiling away in the rural north.  Historians think that had the clergy dispersed into the Catholic areas, not only would far fewer of them had to pay for their faith with their lives, but that the Catholic faith would have continued to hold on in the North and West of England.  But you know, priests have always been known for liking a good restaurant and let’s face it, even in the sixteenth century you can’t beat London for the nightlife.   How can you keep them down on the farm…?