What did the Ornaments Rubric Mean?

‘Provided always … that such ornaments of [1] a church, and [2] the ministers thereof,

shall be retained and be in use as was [in use] in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament in [1549] until other order shall be taken by the authority of the Queen’s Majesty or of the Metropolitan of this realm [i.e the Archbishop of Canterbury] …’ (Act of Uniformity 1558)

‘the Minister, at the time of the Communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use ornaments in the church, as were in use by the authority of Parliament in [1549] according to the Act of Parliament [of 1558, above]’ (1558 rubric)

‘such ornaments of the church, and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in the Church of England, by the authority of Parliament [in 1549]’ (1662 rubric).

This question is phrased in the past tense advisedly.  The Ornaments Rubric no longer means anything to the English law of public worship.  The statutory authority that the Prayer Book rubrics once enjoyed was abolished by the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974, except in respect of banns of marriage.  This is discussed in a separate post, filed below.

However, the Ornaments Rubric was discussed at length by the Court of the Arches and by the Privy Council in two celebrated 19th century ritual cases

(1) Liddell v Westerton (1857) and

(2) Elphinstone v Purchas, later Hebbert v Purchas (1870-1)

Liddell concerned the ornaments of the church.  A faculty was sought for the removal of various items associated with ritualism, such as cross and lights on the altar and colourful altar coverings.

Purchas concerned the ornaments of the minister.  The Rev Mr Purchas was charged with ‘wearing … whilst officiating in the communion service … a vestment called a chasuble … [and] a certain vestment called an alb, instead of a surplice’ (p.167), i.e the catholic eucharistic vestments.  Mr Elphinstone, the original prosecutor, died before the case reached the Privy Council, so Mr Hebbert had to be substituted.  (Death was not allowed to frustrate the continued pursuit of Mr Purchas, such was the gravity of the case.)

The erudite Sir Robert Phillimore, Dean of the Arches and original author of the famous commentary on ecclesiastical law, had no difficulty with the Ornaments Rubric: ‘the construction of this Rubric according to general principles of legal interpretation … appear[s] to me as plain and simple as any which is to be found in any statutory enactment’ (Phillimore’s Ecclesiastical Judgments, p.162).  He saw the irony of the Rubric being used to oppose ritualism when its original purpose was to protect the ornaments of church and minister from iconoclastic radical protestants who wished to get rid of them.

Phillimore also understood that the Rubric is expressed in mandatory, not prohibitive, terms.  It provides that the identified ornaments must be used.  It does not provide that only those ornaments may be used and no other.

Unfortunately the Privy Council interpreted the Rubric differently.  It observed in Liddell that, upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, ‘a great controversy arose between the more violent and the more moderate reformers as to the Church service which should be re-established’ (Six Privy Council Judgments (1872) ed W.G Brooke, p.52).  This controversy dated back to the reign of the Queen’s half-brother, the boy King Edward VI.  During his short reign, two Prayer Books (or two different versions of the same Prayer Book) were published.  The first Prayer Book, in 1549, was conservative and ‘catholic’ in character.  As the political balance of power shifted in favour of the radical reformers, the second Prayer Book, published in 1552, was more avowedly protestant.

The Elizabethan settlement of 1558 was therefore a compromise between the two parties.  Elizabethan public worship would use the forms of service in the ‘protestant’ 1552 Book, but retain the ornaments mentioned in the ‘catholic’ 1549 Book.  Protestant services with catholic ornaments.  That was the deal.

The Privy Council reasoned that ‘the word ‘ornaments’ applies, and in this Rubric [i.e the Ornaments Rubric] is confined to, those articles the use of which … is [positively] prescribed by [the 1549 Book]’ (p.52).  Ornaments not prescribed by the 1549 Book could therefore not be permitted.

Thus the apparent conclusion was that the Elizabethan compromise still bound the Church of England, and the courts, 300 years later.  If extra ornaments were permitted, this would be a breach of the compromise.  The violent reformers would be short-changed.

The Privy Council was careful to state that the phrase ‘ornaments of the church’ did not refer to all physical items within Victorian churches.  The Ornaments Rubric did not mean that all articles not expressly referred to in the 1549 Book are illegal.  The ‘ornaments’ referred to in the Rubric comprised ‘All the several articles used in the performance of the services and rites of the Church’ (p.51).  Items used to decorate the church rather than to perform liturgical actions were outside the scope of the Rubric, and so might be permitted.  Therefore ‘crosses … when used as mere emblems of the Christian faith, and not as objects of superstitious reverence … may still lawfully be erected as architectural decorations …’, even though not referred to in the 1549 Book (p.65).

So much for the ornaments of the church.  In Purchas, the Privy Council proceeded to examine the ornaments of the minister.

Prima facie the ritualists were on stronger ground here.  The 1549 Book provided that, at the holy communion, ‘commonly called the masse’, the officiating priest ‘shall put upon him … a white alb … with a [eucharistic] vestment or cope’.  Any clergy assisting him were required to wear ‘albs with tunicles’.

The Act of 1558, as quoted above, suggests that the Ornaments Rubric was intended to be a temporary provision only.  It was to apply only ‘until other order shall be taken’.  Yet the 1662 rubric, which was authorized over 100 years later, is almost exactly the same wording as the 1558 rubric.  This may suggest that no such ‘other order’ was ever taken, and that the compromise of 1558 was revived in 1662 without alteration.

This was Phillimore’s view.  Certain ‘Advertisements’ concerning public worship were published in the 1560s, but Phillimore held that ‘the Queen never gave her official or legal sanction to these’ (p.169).  The canons of 1603 make no reference to eucharistic vestments, and provide that ‘Every minister saying the public prayers, or ministering the sacraments [including holy communion] or other rites of the Church, shall wear a decent and comely surplice’ (canon 58).  At holy communion in cathedrals, likewise, the officiating clergyman was required to wear ‘a decent cope’, but again no eucharistic vestments (canon 24).

However, as Phillimore pointed out, the canons of 1603 were promulgated under the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533, a quite different statute from the 1558 Act of Uniformity.  Moreover, they did not have the sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the 1558 Act required, because the See of Canterbury was vacant at the time they were promulgated.  The Bishop of London had presided instead of the Archbishop.

Thus, while the canons of 1603 might permit clergy to officiate at holy communion in a surplice, they could not forbid clergy from wearing eucharistic vestments.  The canons of 1603 could not replace or override the 1558 Act.

Once again, the Privy Council disagreed.  It held that the Advertisements of the 1560s did have royal authority, and so did constitute ‘other order’ under the 1558 Act.  Moreover, they were enforced by royal commissioners.  The practical effect of this was ‘that within a few years after the Advertisements were issued the [eucharistic] vestments … entirely disappeared’ (p.170).  There was no attempt to revive them before 1662.  The canons of 1603 ‘ordered surplice only to be used in parish churches’ (p.176).

Although the wording of the 1662 rubric may seem almost identical to the 1558 wording, the Privy Council detected a critical difference.  The 1558 rubric contains a specific reference to holy communion.  It distinguishes between the ornaments of the minister ‘at the time of the communion, and at all other times’.  The 1662 rubric, by contrast, makes no separate reference to holy communion.

This means, or so the Privy Council reasoned, that in 1558 clergy were expected to wear different ‘ornaments’ when officiating at holy communion and when officiating at other acts of worship.  In 1662, by contrast, clergy were expected to wear the same vestments (i.e surplice only, or surplice and cope) at all acts of worship, including holy communion.

The Privy Council therefore held, with ruthless logic, that ‘If the minister is ordered to wear a surplice at all times of his ministration, he cannot wear an alb and tunicle … if he is celebrating holy communion in a chasuble, he cannot celebrate in a surplice’ (pp.178-9).

Chancellor Bursell described this interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric as ‘rigorist’.  It was unjust to Mr Purchas.  It may well be true that Eucharistic vestments were officially discouraged and fell into disuse in Elizabethan times, and that there was no wish to revive them in 1662.  It may also be true that the 1662 rubric envisages that clergy will officiate at holy communion in surplices.

However, the 1662 rubric does not forbid clergy from wearing eucharistic vestments.  The Rev Mr Purchas had been charged with an ecclesiastical offence.  In deciding his case, the Privy Council was exercising a disciplinary, indeed a ‘criminal’, jurisdiction.  He should not have been convicted of using Eucharistic vestments without a clearly worded rule positively forbidding such use.  The wording of the 1662 rubric is not nearly clear enough.

The Privy Council’s treatment of the canons of 1603 was also anachronistic.  The canons did not positively forbid Eucharistic vestments, any more than the rubric.  On their wording they do not order surplice only.  They were not directed against 19th century ritualists, but to upholding minimum liturgical standards against a radical Protestantism that wished to do away with all ecclesiastical vestments.

While the original Elizabethan provision for ornaments may have effected a stable compromise, the Privy Council’s interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric merely resulted in anarchy.  Its judgments were ignored by the Church of England, and the study and reputation of ecclesiastical law never recovered.

In Persona Christi: Eucharistic Sacrifices

The author of this blog recently attended, for the first time, a service of Mass in the Extraordinary Form, also known as the Tridentine Mass or the Mass of Ages – i.e the traditional Latin Mass.  It was organised by the Latin Mass Society, with the permission of the genial local priest.  ‘Come along out of nostalgia!’, he winkingly encouraged his parishioners when announcing the event.  Almost none did.  There were only about six in the congregation.  The parish priest himself gave the Mass a miss.

As an aesthetic experience, the Mass was disappointing.  It was quickly over.  The sublime Latin of the Roman Canon was inaudible, as the celebrant dropped his voice to a near-whisper, ‘the blessed mutter of the Mass’.  It was only possible to follow the action by the elevation of the Host and the Chalice and the ringing of the bell.

And yet, from the 6th century (or even earlier) until as recently as the 1960s, this was the Mass of the Latin Church.  Untold millions of Catholics down the centuries knew no other.  Compared to it, the new Mass, which was only introduced in 1970, is a mere blink of the eye.  It inspired the Elizabethan martyrs of England and Wales to suffer hideous torture and death (and their fellow countrymen to inflict this on them).

Today the Eucharist is generally regarded as an ecumenical success story.  The Church of England has always agreed with the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is a sacrament ‘ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel’ (Article 25), by means of which ‘the Body and Blood of Christ … are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful’ (Catechism).  The Holy See acknowledged that, of all ecumenical issues, ‘it is in respect of Eucharistic doctrine that the [Anglican-Roman Catholic] Commission were able to achieve the most notable progress towards a consensus’ (Response to Final Report, 1991).

The principal ecumenical difficulty concerns the Eucharist as sacrifice rather than sacrament.  English ecclesiastical law at first seemed to reject any belief in a Eucharistic sacrifice.  Article 31 holds that ‘the sacrifices of Masses … were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits’.  All mediaeval references to the priest as sacrificer were removed from the reformed ordination rite.  (This was one reason why Anglican orders were held invalid by Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae (1896).)

Liturgical practices that suggested sacrifice were also suppressed.  Altars were replaced by ‘convenient and decent tables’ (canon 82 of 1603) placed in the chancel or in the centre of the church.  The east end, where Mass was formerly celebrated, was used to display the Ten Commandments instead.  Unleavened bread was replaced by ‘bread such as is usual to be eaten’.  And, of course, the Eucharist was celebrated in English, not Latin.

The case of Faulkner v Litchfield and Stearn(1845) 163 English Reports 1007 may be the first legally reported ritual case.  The Court of the Arches refused a faculty for a stone altar, described as a ‘table’, on the grounds that it was not a communion table within the meaning of the Prayer Book rubric and the 1603 canon.  In later cases the Privy Council held that Eucharistic vestments, unleavened bread and the eastward position were all unlawful (Hebbert v Purchas(1871) Law Reports 3 Privy Council 605), as were candles on the communion table ‘when [they] were not wanted for the purpose of giving light’ (Martin v Mackonochie (1868) Law Reports 2 Privy Council 365).  The Court of the Arches also held in Mackonochie that the elevation of paten and chalice was unlawful ((1868) 2 Admiralty and Ecclesiastical 116).

However, the Book of Common Prayer retained one phrase from the Latin Mass which describes the Eucharist as a ‘sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’.  Citing this rather slender authority, the Bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp, held in St Stephen’s Walbrook (1987) 2 All England Reports 578 that ‘a doctrine of the Eurcharistic sacrifice which is not that of a repetition of the sacrifice of Calvary can lawfully be held in the Church of England …’ (p.583).

The old regime of public worship was finally abolished by the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974.  Liturgical practices that were formerly unlawful are now permitted, and many have indeed become almost universal.  Canon F2 of the revised canons continues to refer to the ‘holy table’ rather than the ‘altar’, but allows that a communion table may be made of stone, and hence indistinguishable from an altar.  In St Stephen’s Walbrook, the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved permitted the introduction of a stone altar by Henry Moore.  Bishop Kemp, who was one of the judges, held that ‘an altar falls within the wide bounds of what can reasonably be called a holy table’ (p.581)

Just as the Church of England began to rediscover the Eucharistic sacrifice, so the Catholic Church seemed to move towards the Anglican conception of the Eucharist as a communal celebration, a sacrament of unity and charity rather than a sacrifice.  The new Mass is almost always celebrated in the vernacular, it provides for active participation by the laity and it disdains the eastward position.  In this country, at least, High Mass now usually begins and ends with the singing of rousing Protestant hymns.

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed 1998) noted that the Anglican-Roman Catholic ‘Agreed Statement’ on the Eucharist in 1971 (just after the introduction of the new Mass) ‘relegat[ed] the term transubstantiation to a footnote’.  Canon law also softened the emphasis on sacrifice.  A commentator relates that the original Code of Canon Law 1917 treated the sacrifice and the sacrament of the Eucharist in separate chapters.  The modern Code, promulgated in 1983, presents a more ‘integral’ treatment of the Eucharistic action (The Code of Canon Law. A Text and Commentary eds Coriden, Green and Heintschel 1985, Paulist Press, New York, p.643).  The author of this blog recalls a bright young Anglican theologian asserting, in 1985 or 1986, that the Catholic Church no longer believed in transubstantiation.

However, the 1983 Code is clear that ‘the Eucharistic Sacrifice [is] the memorial of the death and Resurrection of the Lord, in which the Sacrifice of the Cross is for ever perpetuated’ (canon 897).  The Code also provides explicitly that the priest (described as sacerdos in the definitive Latin text), acting in persona Christi, ‘bring[s] into being (conficere valet) the Sacrament of the Eucharist’ (900).

These provisions explain the Catholic Eucharistic Sacrifice.  As Bishop Kemp recognised in the Walbrook case, the Catholic sacrifice is not a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice (as the reformers may have erroneously concluded).  On the contrary, the sacrifice offered by the priest is one and the same as the sacrifice of Christ.  Hence the priest is acting, as the canon says, in persona Christi.

Today the structure and ceremonial of the Eucharist qua sacrament may be almost identical in the Catholic and Anglican Churches.  However, the Eucharistic sacrifices offered by the two Churches remain radically different.

Article 31 is entitled ‘the one oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross’. It asserts that ‘The offering of Christ once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world … and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone’. Hence its rejection of ‘the sacrifices of Masses’.  The Prayer Book liturgy follows Article 31 by asserting Christ’s ‘one oblation of himself once offered … a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice’.

Therefore, while the Catholic sacrifice is one and indivisible,  the Anglican Eucharist is concerned with 2 separate sacrifices:

(1) the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ offered in Palestine 2000 years ago and

(2) the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving offered by the Church in response to Christ’s sacrifice.

Modern Anglican liturgies may perhaps move (1) and (2) closer together than they are in the Prayer Book, but the distinction between them never disappears.

There is a metaphysical link or bridge between (1) and (2).  This enables those who receive the bread and wine in (2) thereby to receive the Body and Blood of Christ given in (1).  However, this is subject to the recipient’s piety of disposition.  Article 28 affirms that ‘The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten … only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.  And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten … is faith’.  Article 29 makes clear that ‘The wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press [the bread and wine] with their teeth … yet in nowise are they partakers of Christ’.

On this doctrine, the priest cannot act in persona Christi, because Christ’s sacrifice is once for all, finished.  Christ is the only true sacerdos.  So far from acting in persona Christi, the priest acts in persona ecclesiae.  He, or she, offers the Church’s sacrifice to Christ, but not vice versa.

The Anglican Eucharist, freed at last from all the restrictions imposed by the Privy Council, is often richly clothed in elaborate and colourful ritual that was originally inspired by the Catholic Eucharistic sacrifice.  This may serve to obscure the difference between the two.  The folksy informality of some modern Catholic worship may have the same effect, of course.  But the effect is superficial, not a truly ecumenical convergence.

Even though it was reduced to a footnote, the discussion of transubstantiation in the 1971 Agreed Statement is helpful: ‘The term [transubstantiation] should be seen as affirming the fact of Christ’s presence and of the mysterious and radical change which takes place … not … as explaining how the change takes place’.

The doctrine of transubstantiation is often associated with St. Thomas Aquinas and with mediaeval scholastic philosophy.  However, Aquinas and his colleagues were merely offering a rational explanation, or model, of how bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.  They were not defining any religious belief.  As this footnote makes clear, the Catholic Church believes, and has always believed, that transubstantiation does occur, but it does not require acceptance of the Thomist explanation (or any other explanation) of how it occurs.