BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. - After the Bible this is the only official book of the Anglican or Church of England. In it are found: the official devotional (morning and evening prayers); the calendar (the ecclesiastical arrangement of the year with the passages of Holy Scripture that are to be read on the principal feasts and on the individual Sundays of the year); the ritual (ceremonies and rites in the administration of the two Sacraments admitted by the Anglicans, and certain others); the breviary (the Psalms that are to be read each day of the month); the missal (the prayers to be recited in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, on all Sundays and principal feasts of the year); the pontifical (the consecration of deacons, priests and bishops). The "articles of religion" that are found at the end of the B. of C. P. are a later addition.
The first B. of C. P., under the title The Lord's Supper and Holy Communion commonly called the Mass, was compiled at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI (1547). Into it were gathered many formulas from the ancient Catholic liturgical books in use in England, and to it were added elements drawn from the consultatio of Archbishop Hermann of Cologne, made under the influence of Bucer and Melanchthon. There were also found the injunctions or certain decrees of King Edward VI, among them one that obliged the ministers of the Church to preach four times a year against the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff. The book was printed in 1549 but remained in use only three years. In 1552, under the same king, it was thought necessary to correct certain points, to add others, to explain some that were too obscure, and the last part was removed from the original title, that is, the words "commonly called the Mass." In its fundamental lines, this book is substantially the one that has come down to our own days.
Suppressed during the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), it was restored at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth in 1559, but with the omission of the famous "black rubric," that is, the rubric printed in black at the end of the liturgy of the Communion, in which it was established that the consecrated bread and wine were to be received kneeling, with the explanation that this signified absolutely no act of adoration.
The revision of 1604, although it introduced certain changes, did not substantially alter that of 1552, and was rather a reaction of Anglicanism, and above all of King James I (1603-25), against the Puritan-Calvinist tendency. The request to incorporate the "Lambeth Articles" into the B. of C. P. was rejected, because they were openly Calvinist.
More important was the revision of 1662, made after the restoration of the monarchy and of the Anglican Church in England. Once again the Anglicans reacted against the Puritan-Calvinists. Certain modifications were important; two must be mentioned: the reinsertion of the "black rubric," and the substantial change of the formula for the consecration of bishops. In the Edwardine formula (1552) it said: "Receive the Holy Spirit and remember to stir up the grace of God which is in thee by the imposition of hands, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of soberness," in which nothing at all is found that indicates the episcopal office. In the new one, approved in the year 1662, it says: "Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Very appropriately Leo XIII noted in the bull Apostolicae Curae (15 Sept. 1896): «Eadem adiectio, si forte quidem legitimam significationem apponere posset, serius est introducta; elapso iam saeculo post receptum Ordinale eduardianum, quum propterea, hierarchia extincta, potestas ordinandi iam nulla esset».
The various currents and the divisions that manifested themselves in the Anglican Church during the 19th century introduced such differences in the practical execution of the liturgy that the competent ecclesiastical authority after 1906 decided on a revision of the B. of C. P. Only in 1927 was the so-called Deposited Book ready, which brought certain modifications or additions to the edition of 1662; it was approved by the majority of an Anglican ecclesiastical commission, and also by the House of Lords (14 Dec. 1927), but it was rejected in a sensational manner in the House of Commons (15 Dec. 1927, with 238 votes against 205). Proposed again to the same House with certain variants and explanations, it was again rejected (14-15 June 1928, with 266 against 222). The subjection of the Anglican Church even in purely ecclesiastical matters, not to the king but to a lay assembly, in which many non-Anglican individuals participate, could not be demonstrated with greater clarity. In certain modern editions, the proposed changes, although they have been rejected, have nevertheless been published and are noted either with some sign, if they are brief, or indeed proposed after the ancient form under the title of "Alternative order of the Communion... of Public Baptism," etc. In these alternative formulas the Anglican ministers are free to use the ancient B. of C. P. of 1662 or the new one. Among the additions and changes we note the introduction into the calendar of certain new feasts, for example, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Bernard; the commemorative celebration of the dead on 2 Nov.; the epiclesis placed before the consecration, new rubrics on sacred vestments, the faculty of reserving, with the bishop's permission, the consecrated bread and wine to bring them to the sick, without however their being the object of other ceremonies, etc.
Bibliography8 works
Camillo Crivelli