An Elliptical Glory: Elizabethan Eucharist 2016 Rite

Holy Communion

As Celebrated in the Time of

H.R.M. Elizabeth I

Queen Regnant of England & Ireland

A Public Offering by

Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Monday June 6, 2016

7:00 p.m.

With selections from William Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices

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Holy Communion in the Age of Elizabeth

Henry VIII’s split from Rome in 1534 brought ecclesiastical autonomy for England’s Church, but was not a reformation. Henry, a conservative “Defender of the Faith,” kept the Latin rites and general doctrines of the Church. But the Protestant Reformation taking place on the Continent was having its effect in England. Henry acceded to the Reformation’s call for Bible study and to Renaissance Humanism’s call to a “return to the sources” by authorizing the 1539 publication of Miles Coverdale’s English language Great Bible, and requiring that a copy of the large volume be made available for public reading in all churches.

Reform of the English liturgy came in 1549, when Henry’s son Edward VI published the first Book of Common Prayer. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was its principal author. It included simplified forms for Daily Morning and Evening Prayer adapted from the breviary of the monastic hours as well as a Holy Communion rite simplified from the late medieval Sarum (Salisbury) Mass Rite with some adjustments taken from reformed rites from the Continent. A second edition, published in 1552 also under Cranmer’s editorial direction, was more intentional and thoroughgoing in its Protestantism, stripping the Holy Communion rite of Roman ceremony and sacrificial Eucharistic theology. This Second Prayer Book never came into full use because when Edward VI died in 1553, his half-sister Mary I immediately banned the Prayer Book and restored Roman Catholic worship.

On Mary’s death in 1558, Elizabeth I came to the throne, setting the stage for the great Elizabethan Settlement of public religious practice in the British Isles. The Latin rite of the Mass was once more banned and in its stead English language Prayer Book rites were restored. The Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer published in 1559 was the third revision of the English prayer book. It largely followed the “protestant” Prayer Book of 1552 but restored several key instructions and ritual passages from the “catholic” Prayer Book of 1549. Elizabeth’s Prayer Book was to remain the standard of English worship for almost 100 years, until the Puritan Long Parliament of 1645 outlawed it as part of its abolishing the monarchy of Charles I. The 1559 Prayer Book was thus not only the Tudor Prayer Book, but the Stuart Prayer Book as well. This was the first Prayer Book used in America, brought here by the Jamestown settlers and others in the early 1600's.

Elizabeth’s Prayer Book put to a halt the movement in the previous two Prayer Books toward a more Protestant church. Its changes include:

Dropping the very last rubric in the Communion service (called the "Black Rubric"), which had sought to assure that kneeling during Communion did not in any way imply worship of the elements;
Combining the two versions of the sentences used for administration of the elements during Communion from the previous two Prayer Books “The Body of Christ … take this in remembrance that Christ died for thee”;
Dropping prayers against the Pope from the Litany; and
Adding a rubric to Morning Prayer prescribing the use of traditional choir vestments, cassock and surplice.

The Tudor Prayer Book included Scripture lessons for Holy Communion taken from Coverdale’s 1539 Great Bible. Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms is the source for the Psalter for all Prayer Books from Elizabeth’s down to the U.S. 1928 Prayer Book, and remains the basis of the Psalter in the current (1979) U.S. BCP.

The vestments for choir in the Tudor Prayer Book’s rubrics, black cassock and white surplice, were the most common vestment for clergy celebrating Holy Communion. Tudor ruff collars and Cambridge hats were often part of this set of clothing. Genevan preaching tabs often graced the collars of those preaching sermons or reading from the Book of Homilies.

In an effort to capture the feeling of the era more than reproduce exactly its rites, and in an ecumenical effort that is more an artifact of our own age than Elizabeth’s, we have chosen to use William Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices as the musical setting of this Holy Communion. Byrd was a student of Thomas Tallis and one of Elizabeth’s court composers. He composed many liturgical pieces for the English texts of the Prayer Book but in later life became more and more a devout Roman Catholic. He did this at great risk to himself and family since after Pope Pius V in 1570 absolved Roman Catholics of allegiance to Elizabeth such religious affiliation was taken as evidence of treason against the Tudor monarchy. He was suspended for a time from his position at the Chapel Royal and his house was placed on a search list by the Tudor secret police. His Mass for Three Voices is a choral setting of the Latin ordinary of the Tridentine Mass, promulgated by Rome in 1570.

While the setting and text is different from the Holy Communion rite of Elizabeth’s Prayer Book, it is one of the high points of English religious music of the Tudor era. We have included the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei here at places in the Elizabethan Prayer Book rite where they seem best to go, though the Elizabethan rite included no Kyrie or Agnus Dei as such, and moved the Gloria from its place at the opening of the rite to near its end as a kind of prayer of thanks. We will be chanting the Creed rectatonally with the congregation in order to give a sense how the Prayer Book texts were at times sung by congregations. Our blending of the Elizabethan rite and the Tridentine Latin rite here is intended as a healing act, to honor the martyrs on both sides of the Tudor religious controversies: the Protestant and later Catholic martyrs under Henry, the Protestant martyrs under Mary, and the Catholic martyrs executed for treason at Tyburn under Elizabeth.

All Tudor clergy were male; the Tudor Prayer Book gives no explicit instruction about the role of deacons in Holy Communion. In our service today, women clergy will participate and a deacon will read the Gospel in accordance with their traditional liturgical role in Eucharists in the Western and Eastern Church. (AAH)

[[The reproductions of the 1559 rite here used are from a 1583 reprint of the 1559 Prayer Book now at the Schoenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania Library. The clips were downloaded from http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=commonprayer&PagePosition=1 ]]

Holy Communion Rite

From the 1559 Book of

Common Prayer

The Table, having at the Communion-time a fair white linen cloth upon it, shall stand in the body of the Church, or in the Chancel, where Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer be appointed to be said. And the Priest standing at the North-side of the Table, shall say the Lord's Prayer [[if it is not to follow at communion, as here]] with this Collect following.

[[ALL STAND.]]

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

[[ALL KNEEL AS ABLE.]]

Then shall the Priest rehearse distinctly all the ten Commandments: and the people kneeling, shall after every Commandment, ask God mercy for their transgression of the same, after this sort.

Note: [[--]] brackets indicate insertions or interpolations not present in the 1559 text. Rubrics from the 1559 text are here printed in red italics, and spelling has been modernized.

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The Minister.
GOD spake these words and said; I am the Lord thy God:
Thou shalt have none other gods but me.

People.
Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

Minister.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them: For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and shew mercy unto thousands in them that love me, and keep my commandments.

People.
Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

Minister.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: For
the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain.