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Some Architectural Aspects of the Role of Manuals in Changes to Anglican Liturgical Practice in the Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The evangelical Francis Close, rector of Cheltenham and Dean of Carlisle, pithily observed in 1844 that ‘Romanism is taught Analytically at Oxford [and] Artistically at Cambridge … it is inculcated theoretically, in tracts, at one University, and it is sculptured, painted, and graven at the other’. The two forces to which he was referring – the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society – emerged within a few years of each other, in 1833 and 1839 respectively. Although they were very different in the ways in which they achieved their ends, they were essentially products of the same Zeitgeist, and their influence combined to bring about radical changes to the conduct of church services and church affairs generally within the Church of England. The most significant and fundamental change was the reinstatement of the celebration of Holy Communion as the central act of Christian worship. Like the crucial doctrine of apostolic succession, which was the keystone of Tractarian philosophy, this sacrament provided a direct link with Christ, being a re-enactment of the ceremony which he instituted at the Last Supper. For the service was not simply, as it was for Protestants, a commemoration of that event; it was a renewal of Christ’s sacrifice and was accompanied by a belief in the Real Presence. This is reflected in the terminology used. The Book of Common Prayer calls the service ‘Holy Communion’, which emphasises that part of the service where the people take part and share ‘the Lord’s Supper’. High Churchmen invariably referred to ‘the Holy Eucharist’, ‘Eucharist’ meaning ‘thanksgiving’, thus stressing the sacrificial aspect of the service which might be, in the more advanced ritualist churches, celebrated without the active participation of the congregation, as it had been before the Reformation. Further evidence of this attitude is the use of the word ‘altar’, with its sacrificial overtones, rather than the more domestic ‘Lord’s table’.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
References
1 Quoted in White, James F., The Cambridge Movement: the Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1962), 142 Google Scholar.
2 W.J. Sparrow Simpson, ‘The Revival from 1845–1933’, in N.P. Williams and Charles Harris, eds, Northern Catholicism (1933), 58; J.S. Reed, Glorious Battle: the Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville, TN, 1996), 69.
3 Quoted in (inter al.) A. Symondson, ‘Theology, worship and the late Victorian church’, in Chris Brooks and Andrew Saint, eds, The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society (Manchester, 1995), 195.
4 For example, Ritual Notes, 8th edn (1935).
5 Anson, P.F., Fashions in Chureh Furnishings (1965), 176 Google Scholar.
6 Illustrations exhibited at the Architectural Exhibition, London, 1857–8.
7 Ecclesiologist, 19(1858), 101–2.
8 Anson, Fashions, 176.
9 Indeed, the Ecclesiologist thought it unwise of Purchas to have revealed so much of ritualistic practice to ‘a scoffing and irreligious public’ (quoted in Anson, Fashions, 178).
10 Including William White, William Wilkinson, J.P. St Aubyn, Charles Buckcridge, J.W. Hugall, and S.J. Nicholl (who was also associated with Cox & Sons). See Builder, 24 (1866), 905; 25 (1867), 390; 26 (1868), 589, 842–3; 27 (1869), 666–7; 28 (1870). 106–7, 166–7, 786–7; 29 (1871), 586–7, 886–7; 38 (1880), 387; 40 (1881), 44; 41 (1881), 330–2.
11 Cox & Sons, Illustrated Catalogue of Gothic and Other Artistic Domestic Furniture, Fittings, Decorations, Upholstery and Metal Work (1872).
12 An Illustrated Catalogue of some of the Articles in Church Furniture manufactured by Jones and Willis (Willis Brothers) (Birmingham, 1880).
13 Preface to 1st edn, quoted from 3rd edn (1866), viii.
14 Ecclesiologist, 23 (1862), 239.
15 ‘Pastoral staff designed by the late Mr. Edmund Sedding’: A Glossary of Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Terms (1877), 273.
16 Quoted from 3rd edn (1866), xliii.
17 Symondson, Theology, worship’, 197.
18 DNB. He was the father of the architect Edmund Harold Sedding (d. 1921).
19 The study of foreign Gothic architecture, and its influence on English art’, The Church and the World (1866), 397–411.
20 ‘Art and religion’, The Church and the World (1868), 574–98, which includes a memorable attack on what he calls ‘the Original and Ugly School’ of modern church architecture.
21 Ritual of the Altar (1870), vi.
22 Ibid., xx.
23 Ibid., xxxiv.
24 Ibid., lii.
25 Ibid., xliv.
26 Unnumbered pages.
27 Similar to the diagram included in Dale’s Ceremonial, but four fewer swings of the censer because of the absence of monstrances.
28 There is also little to choose between Geldart’s altar and the one illustrated in The Reformation and the Deformation, published by Mowbray in 1868 (reproduced in Anson, Fashions, pi. 3).
29 Lee, F.G., Notitia liturgica (1866), 20 Google Scholar.
30 For whom separate manuals (e.g. Charles Walker’s Sewer’s Handbook of 1871) were available.