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Rites of Passage and the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

David M. Loades*
Affiliation:
University College of North Wales, Bangor
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Extract

Nowhere were the doctrinal ambiguities of the English Church more evident than in its attitude to prayers for the dead. The problem had become evident well before 1549, in the policies of a king who claimed to be more Catholic than the Pope, but who not only dissolved monasteries, but also dismantled the shrines of the saints, and clearly threatened all intercessory foundations. The King’s Book of 1543, or A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christen Man had struck a delicate balance.

Type
Part II: Death and Salvation
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994 

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References

1 STC 5168.

2 A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christen Man (15+3) in Formularies of the Faith by Charles Lloyd (Oxford, 1825), pp. 213–337.

3 The opus dei, or cycle of prayer which was the main purpose of the monastic life, had a general intercessory purpose, but was not particularly connected with intercession for the dead. Gorrie, G. E., The Sermons of Hugh Latimer (Parker Society, 1844)Google Scholar.

4 Statute 37 Henry VIII, c.4; ‘An Acte for the dissolution of Colleges, Chantries, and Free Chapels’, Statutes of the Realm, 3, p. 988. Henry VIII’s will is printed in Rymer, T., Foedera, Con ventions, Literae (London, 1727—9), 15, p. 144Google Scholar.

5 The theological issues involved in these controversies about the state of departed souls are examined in Burns, Norman T, Christian Mortalismfrom Tyndale to Milton (Harvard University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 This sense of community is strongly emphasized in Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 134–41Google Scholar.

7 The first and second Books of Maccabees were declared to be canonical by the Council of Trent in 1546, but the Council’s decrees were not ratified until 1563. The Protestant Churches never accepted them, and their status during this period was consequently indeterminate.

8 Althaus, Paul, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Schultz, Robert C. (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 410–17Google Scholar.

9 An Exposition of Salomons Booke, Called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher (London, 1573), p. 60v. D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gestamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883—), 20, p. 70.

10 Salomons Booke, 151v-152r. D. Martin Luthers Werke, 20, pp. 162–3.

11 Williams, G. H., The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 581–3, 586Google Scholar; Bums, , Christian Mortalism, p. 31Google Scholar.

12 Calvin, John, institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk III, ch. xxv, sect, vi, ed. Allen, John (Phila delphia, 1936), 2, p. 253Google Scholar.

13 Duffy, , Stripping of the Altars, pp. 313–27Google Scholar, ‘Ars Moriendi’.

14 Liturgies … of the Reign of Edward VI, ed. Ketlcy, Joseph (Parker Society, 1844), pp. 136–7Google Scholar.

15 Liturgies … of lhe Reign of Edward VI, ed. Ketley, Joseph (Parker Society, 1844), pp. 145–6Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., pp. 147–8.

17 Ibid., p. 317.

18 Proctor, F. and Frère, W. H., A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1965 rpr.), p. 635 and n. 1Google Scholar.

19 Liturgies, pp. 319–20.

20 Gibson, E. C. S., The Thirty-Nine Articles (London, 1904), p. 88Google Scholar.

21 STC 16424.

22 Procter, and Frere, , A New History, p. 123Google Scholar.

23 Hughes, P. L. and Larkin, J. F., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 2, pp. 146–8Google Scholar. This issue is more fully discussed in Aston, Margaret, England’s Iconoclasts (Oxford, 1988), pp. 314–15Google Scholar.