The Boke of Common Prayer (1583?)

The Boke of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and Other Rites and Ceremonies in the Churche of Englande is an edition of the Anglican Communion’s Prayer Book, which includes written prayers for specific situations—such as the re-churching of women following childbirth and daily morning prayer—as well as instructions, general prayers, collects for every Sunday in the ecclesiastical calendar, and other such formulas for the celebration of the Mass, and psalms set to musical notation, among other things.

Though the exact print date cannot be ascertained with absolute certainty, it seems to have been printed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a devout Protestant. This particular edition is in reasonably fair condition, although it has been rebound poorly, as evidenced by the state of the covers (discussed further below). Conveniently, this book was recently digitized (2022) by the University of Pennsylvania library system. Specifically, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at UPenn currently has possession of this version of the BCP.

Background

Authorship of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Thomas Cranmer, leader of the English Reformation and creator of the first vernacular Christian liturgy in English, was a zealous man but a paradoxical one. He married twice, despite his track of study—theology, with the aim of being ordained a priest—and having lost his first wife in childbirth, he married Margarete Osiander. When he was appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, he hid his second marriage, as priestly celibacy was still the rule in England at the time. He defended the annulment of King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragorn, but when the pope rejected the annulment, the Reformation Parliament declared King Henry to be the head of the English church in place of the pope. Cranmer would have considered this a great victory, as evidenced by this quote of his:

“And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.”

Eventually, after helping to organize the newly independent church, Cranmer completed the first edition of the Prayer Book in 1549 and another version, more explicitly Protestant and Reformed than the first, in 1552. Despite Cranmer’s and King Henry’s questionable marital choices, the Prayer Book has since become not only a keystone of the English language and Reformation, but also a force of a devotional book which is still in use by many today, including the Church of England, the Episcopal Church, and Continuing Anglicans, though the more theologically progressive churches use newer, pared down versions.

Subsequent major editions include the 1559 edition, the 1662 edition, the 1928 edition, and most recently, the 2000 Common Worship series (which is so different from the original that it arguably cannot be counted as a new edition), although there were hundreds of less significant editions made prior to the more significant 1662 edition. Cranmer’s original versions were very Scripturally based; that is, many of the prayers included direct quotes from the Bible in addition to Cranmer’s own written compositions.

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