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‘The Lay Folks' Mass Book’ and Thomas Frederick Simmons: Medievalism and the Tractarians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

DAVID JASPER  and
JEREMY SMITH
DAVID JASPER
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, No. 4, The Square, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ; e-mail: [email protected]
JEREMY SMITH
Affiliation:
Department of English Language, School of English and Scottish Language and Literature, University of Glasgow, 12 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Thomas Frederick Simmons (1815–84) combined his ecclesiastical duties and liturgical interests with editing the fourteenth-century Middle English Lay folks’ mass book (1879) for the Early English Text Society, with the aim of showing the continuity of the English Church from the medieval period through the Reformation. In the light of modern scholarship, this article recontextualises both medieval text and Simmons's own editorial practice, and shows how Simmons, as a second-generation Tractarian churchman, sought in this text – and others associated with it – evidence for the Church of England's Catholic underpinning in an imagined medieval English Church.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 785 - 804
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

We are indebted to William Whyte for extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Bridget Nichols and Wendy Scase for encouragement.

References

1 The lay folks’ mass book: or, The manner of hearing mass, ed. Simmons, Thomas F. (EETS lxxi, 1879)Google Scholar.

2 Powell, Susan, ‘The transmission and circulation of The lay folks’ catechism’, in Minnis, A. J. (ed.), Late medieval religious texts and their transmission: essays in honour of A. I. Doyle, Cambridge 1994, 67–84 at p. 69Google Scholar.

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6 The prymer: or, Lay-folks’ prayer-book, ed. Littlehales, Henry (EETS cv, cix, 1895–7)Google Scholar. This edition was based on CUL, ms Dd.xi.82. Littlehales had already edited the Prymer for an earlier, non-EETS edition, drawing on St John's College, Cambridge, ms G.24: The prymer: or, Prayer-book of the lay people in the Middle Ages, London 1891–2Google Scholar.

7 Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxonienses, Oxford 1891Google Scholar, and Crockford's Clerical Directory.

8 Six of the eight brothers were army officers, including Major-General Sir John Lintorn Arabin Simmons (1821–1903), governor of Woolwich, who, unlike Thomas, has attracted an ODNB entry. It should however be noted that Thomas Simmons's name does not appear in any of the contemporary lists of Sandhurst graduates, for which see <http://www.archive.sandhurstcollection.co.uk/>.

9 See Kirby, James, Historians and the Church of England: religion and historical scholarship, 1870–1920, Oxford 2016, 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 LFMB, pp. ix–x. A brief footnote in the 1882 Clarendon edition of Maskell's Ancient liturgy indicates that the author was aware of Simmons's B-text long before Simmons was, although he simply described it, in a footnote to the Confiteor Deo (Confession), as ‘consisting of long rubrics and prayers relating to the liturgy, all in English verse’ (p. 14).

15 Maskell, Ancient liturgy, 4.

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26 The manuscript containing text A – known after its scribe as the ‘Heege manuscript’ – is a very miscellaneous collection, including markedly secular material. See, for instance, Scott-Macnab, D., ‘The hunttyng of the hare in the Heege manuscript’, Anglia cxx (2010), 102–23Google Scholar, and references there cited.

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30 Ibid. lines 171–4.

31 Ibid. 46, text B, lines 488–91.

32 LFMB, 3. Maskell notes that ‘though now they are lost, there were formerly numerous other volumes in which complete instructions were to be found for the due vesting of both the celebrant and his assistant’: Ancient liturgy (1882 edn), 4–5.

33 LFMB, 6, text F, lines 21–4.

34 While in no sense tending towards anti-sacerdotalism both LFMB and the Tractarians clearly regarded eucharistic worship as corporate and of the whole Church. Simmons would have been well aware of the debates surrounding the issue of non-communicating attendance at the eucharist. See Härdelin, Alf, The Tractarian understanding of the eucharist, Uppsala 1965, 280–90Google Scholar.

35 Some dozen manuscript copies of the vernacular Prymer survive, listed in Littlehales's edition of the Lay folks’ prayer book: comparatively few, of course, in comparison with the many Latin versions that survive. Printed vernacular Prymers are however very numerous and may simply have replaced the manuscript versions subsequently deemed old-fashioned.

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41 See Scase, Wendy (ed.), The making of the Vernon manuscript, Turnhout 2013Google Scholar.

42 Aston, Lollards and reformers, 123. Langforde's Meditations are quite comparable in content with the LFMB, and it is no surprise therefore that Simmons printed (LFMB, 168) an extract from that manuscript on the vesting of a priest.

43 Caxton, Golden legend, fo. 435r.

44 For the most recent contextualising essays on this well-known, and massive, manuscript see Scase, Making of the Vernon manuscript.

45 A treatise of the manner and mede of the mass, lines 185–7: LFMB, 133.

46 LFMB, 389–95.

47 Such concerns are mirrored in the Tractarian sense of the drama of the eucharist, the emphasis shifting from the sacrificial to the sacramental, and the corporate aspect of worship: Härdelin, Tractarian understanding, 282.

48 Zieman, Katherine, Singing the new song: literacy and liturgy in late medieval England, Philadelphia, Pa 2008, 81Google Scholar.

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51 Spencer, Helen, English preaching in the late Middle Ages, Oxford 1993, 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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54 Cuming, A history of Anglican liturgy, 4.

55 Dom Gregory Dix, The shape of the liturgy, Westminster 1947, 605.

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57 The Book of Common Prayer: the texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Cummings, Brian Oxford 2011, 61Google Scholar. Unlike the Articles of Religion, which were a distinct document, the Tractarians regarded the Catechism, though not itself liturgical, as part of the Prayer Book, it being until 1661 an integral part of the rite of Confirmation: Härdelin, Tractarian understanding, 49.

58 Rex, Richard, The Lollards, London 2002, 43–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wilberforce, Robert Isaac, The doctrine of the holy eucharist, London 1853Google Scholar.

59 Zieman, Singing the new song, 82.

60 LFMB, p. xli.

61 As in Duffy, E., The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580, 2nd edn, New Haven–London 2005, 118Google Scholar.

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65 See Brilioth, Yngve, ‘The Romantic Movement and neo-Anglicanism’, in his The Anglican revival: studies in the Oxford Movement, London 1933, 56–76Google Scholar.

66 LFMB, 40, text B, lines 440–5.

67 LFMB, p. xxix.

68 The doctrine of concomitance holds that Christ's body, being indivisible, is fully present in both elements, thus justifying the laity's restriction to one kind. It was emphasised at the Council of Constance in 1415 which posthumously condemned John Wycliffe and declared Jan Hus a heretic. The B-text of the LFMB explicitly refers in lines 235–6 to ‘And so I trow þat housel es/ bothe flesshe & blode’.

69 Rex, The Lollards, 42–5.

70 Cf. Pusey's, E. B. discussion of transubstantiation in A letter to the Right Rev. Father in God, Richard, lord bishop of Oxford, on the tendency to Romanism imputed to doctrines held of old, as now, in the English Church, 2nd edn, Oxford 1839Google Scholar.

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72 Ibid. 284. Pusey's Types and prophecies was never published, but see Douglas, B., ‘Pusey's “Lectures on types and prophecies of the Old Testament”: implications for eucharistic theology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology xiv (2012), 194–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 LFMB, 225.

74 This perhaps accounts for why he and Nolloth tried to find lollardy in their edition of the Prayer Book – although, as Hudson points out, in that they were possibly proceeding beyond the facts.

75 Kirby, Historians of the Church of England, 2.

76 Yates, Nigel, Buildings, faith and worship: the liturgical arrangement of Anglican Churches, 1600–1900, 2nd edn, Oxford 2000, 142Google Scholar.

77 See Liddon, Henry Parry, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, iv, 2nd edn, London 1897, 211Google Scholar, and Härdelin, Tractarian understanding, 310–11.

78 In Tract 3 (1833), Newman, J. H. wrote that ‘there are some who wish the Consecration Prayer in the Holy Eucharist to be what it was in King Edward's first book; there are others who think this would be an approach to Popery’: Tracts for the times, new edn, i (1833–4), London 1838, no. 3, p. 1Google Scholar. Härdelin affirms both the importance of the 1549 version for the Tractarians, and their conservatism in matters of liturgical reform: Tractarian understanding, 259.

79 Dearmer, Percy, The parson's handbook, new edn, London 1903, 1Google Scholar.