The Reformation brought about more than a need for Bibles in English; it also led to demands from some quarters for church services to be conducted in English rather than Latin. In order to achieve this goal, a series of service books in English were produced from 1549.
The original author of the new English service book was Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer had been appointed archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry VIII. His Book of Common Prayer (BCP) contained regulations for church services, lists of Bible readings to be used in the course of the liturgical year and the wordings for ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. In fact this prayer book provides many of the formulations with which we are familiar today: phrases such as ‘Till death us do part’ and ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ have their origins here.
Like the Bible, the precise wording used in the Book of Common Prayer proved controversial. The 1552 edition, for example, demonstrated increasingly Protestant tendencies: the word ‘Mass’ was dropped in favour of ‘Lord’s Supper’ or ‘Holy Eucharist’, and the priest’s traditional highly decorated clothing was abolished. Throughout the 16th century the wording of the prayer book continued to change to reflect the religious views of the government of the day.
Canterbury owns two early copies of the prayer book, a 1636 and a 1661 edition. Canterbury's 1661 text was one of the last to be produced incorporating an English biblical text that predated the King James Bible. The 1662 edition of the BCP was the first version to employ biblical citations taken from the KJB even though the latter had been in print for over half a century. The 1662 edition remained the standard usage of the Church of England and therefore it played an important role in familiarising people throughout the British Empire, including New Zealand, with the language of the 1611 Bible.
Further Reading
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided, 1490-1700 (London: Penguin, 2004).
