BISHOP, EDMUND

BISHOP, EDMUND. - English liturgist, b. at Tonbridge of Anglican family on 17 May 1846, d. at Downside on 17 Feb. 1917. Secretary first to T. Carlyle, then a member of the Educational Department in the Privy Council Office, he was received into the Catholic Church in 1867. His first work of major historical interest was a comparison of the official liturgical book of the Anglican Church with its Catholic sources: *Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer* (2nd ed., London 1891). A driving force behind the renewal of liturgical studies, a profound investigator, possessed of rare bibliographical knowledge, he is regarded as a master in the field of historical liturgy, in which he carried out fundamental studies and researches on the genius of the Roman rite, the history of the altar, the Sacramentarium Gelasianum, the text of the primitive Roman Canon of the Mass, the Kyrie eleison, etc., largely collected in *Liturgica Historica* (Oxford 1918).