THE MAKING OF THE PRAYER BOOK.*
THE MS. here edited, with a valuable introduction and notes, by Dr. Wickham Legg is well worth the attention of all who are interested in the sources of the Book of Common Prayer. Its existence has been known to liturgical scholars for a quarter of a century, and portions of it were printed in 1890 in the appendices to the work on Edward the Sixth and the Book of Common Prayer by Cardinal Gasquet and Mr. Bishop. It is now printed completely for the first time, and the progress of liturgical study in the last quarter of a century has enabled Dr. Legg to make some important suggestions about it.
The MS., which is corrected in Cranmer's handwriting, contains two alternative schemes for the daily services of the Church. The second of these, which may be the earlier in date (although Dr•. Legg points out that Cr•anmer's habit of vacillation renders this uncertain), contemplates a much more elaborate scheme than was finally adopted. The seven or eight mediaeval hours of prayer are reduced to three, but rather by rearranging them in three groups than by omitting any entirely. Mattins, Lauds, and Prime make one group, Terce, Sext, and None another, and Vespers and Complin the third. The first scheme in the MS. resembles much more closely the arrangement in the Book of Common Prayer. Complin, Prime, Terce, None, and Seat are omitted, and Cranmer explains in a rubric that this decision has been taken because Terce, Seat, and None are so like each other as to render them a wearisome repetition. The first scheme differs from the second in other important respects. The whole Psalter was to be said once a month, as it is to-day, instead of once a week, and the Lord's Prayer was to be said and the lessons read, in the vernacular. The Book of Common Prayer was clearly based upon Cranmer's suggestions in the first part of this MS.
Whence did Cranmer derive these suggestions P This is the question upon which the learned editor throws most light. It has been generally believed that Cranmer took his ideas of Mattins and Evensong from German sources. Dr. Legg examines the various possible sources in the Lutheran Agenda, and shows that the evidence for this assumption is far from cogent. It is not even certain, as Cardinal Gasquet and Mr. Bishop pointed out, that copies of these German books were to be found in England, though Dr. Legg has discovered that one Order, used in Denmark and Norway and Pomerania, was presented by its author to Henry VIIE, and was probably seen by Cranmer. The resemblances (which are far from complete) between the Lutheran Agenda and the Book of Common Prayer are explained by Dr. Legg in two ways. " The essence of Divine Service consists in the saying or singing of psalms and scripture hymns or canticles, followed by the reading of portions of Holy Scripture and the recita- tion of the Lord's Prayer." This was admitted both in Germany and in England, and it follows that there must be resemblances between books constructed on the same principle. Further, there had been, in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, attempts to make a much-needed reform in the services of the Church, and these revised Breviaries were known both in Germany and in England. The reforms had the sanction of the Papacy, and Clement VIE had entrusted the task to the famous Cardinal Quignon. His first revision of the Breviary was being issued between February, 1535, and July, 1536, and in these eighteen months had gone through some ten editions. A second recension was published in July, 1536, and had an immense popularity. Its use was prohibited by Paul IV. in 1558, and afterwards permitted by Pius IV.; but Pius V. renewed the prohibition, and the use of Quignon's Breviary died out in the Roman Church.
In this book Dr. Legg shows for the first time the full indebted- ness of Cranmer to the second recension of Quignon's Breviary. The points he raises are too minute for discussion here, but they can be well illustrated by the dependence upon Quignon of the famous preface to the Prayer Book. Dr. Legg prints in parallel columns the prefaces to Quignon's first and second recensions, to Cranmer's projects in the first part of the present MS., and to the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, The famous sentence beginning "There was never anything
• Crammer's Liturgical Projects. Edited from British Museum MS., Royal 7. B. IV., by J. Wickham Long. Loudon: Issued to Members of the henry Bradshaw Society. by the wit of man so well devised" is a translation of Cranmer's Latin preface, which, in turn, was based upon Quignon, whose words run : "Nihil enim humane elaboratum ingenio tam exaotum." From Quignon are also derived the complaints about the neglect of the godly and decent order of the ancient fathers, the reading of only three or four chapters of a Book of the Bible, the untrustworthy character of the legends of saints read in church, the "number and hardness of the rules called the pie," and the great difficulty of finding out what should be read; and similarly the recom- mendation of the new arrangement as " plain and easy to be underatanded," the omission of " Anthetnes, Responder, Invitatories, and such like things as did break the continual course of the reading of the scripture," and the defence of "reading upon the book" as against "saying things by heart," are also the words of Quignon, borrowed and adapted by Cranmer. There are, of course, numerous differences. Cranmer omitted much that it was important for Quignon to say, and the reader will naturally look in vain in Quignon for the passage about " such language spoken to the people in the church as they might understand." But the differences may easily be taken for granted, and the surprising thing is the similarity.
It is an odd coincidence that Dr. Legg's book, which, he tells us, has been in preparation for many years, should be issued to members of the Henry Bradshaw Society at a moment when some of us may be tempted to be glad that the Book of Common Prayer should owe less to Germany than we had imagined. Such a feeling, in Stevenson's phrase, is "a mere digression "; the important thing is that this book adds much to the scientific study of the Book.
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