The Book of Common Prayer
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer. In 1549, at the height of the English Reformation, a new prayer book was published containing versions of the liturgy in English. Generally believed to have been supervised by Thomas Cranmer, the Book of Common Prayer was at the centre of the decade of religious turmoil that followed, and disputes over its use were one of the major causes of the English Civil War in the 1640s. The book was revised several times before the celebrated final version was published in 1662. It is still in use in many churches today, and remains not just a liturgical text of great importance but a literary work of profound beauty and influence.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
- Diarmaid MacCulloch
11 episodes
Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford -
Alexandra Walsham No other episodes
Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge - Martin Palmer
22 episodes
Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture
Reading list
-
The Book of Common Prayer
Thomas Cranmer with D. MacCulloch (preface) (Everyman, 1999) -
The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559 and 1662
Brian Cummings (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
The Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 1549-1999
D. N. Griffiths (ed.) (British Library, 2002) Google Books → -
The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer
C. Hefling and C. Shattuck (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books → -
The Study of Liturgy
C. Jones et al. (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 1992) -
Word and Worship: Essays Presented to Margot Johnson
D. Loades (ed.) (The Davenant Press, 2005) Google Books → -
Thomas Cranmer: A Life
D. MacCulloch (Yale University Press, 1996) Google Books → -
Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
Judith Maltby (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Google Books → -
Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain
Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds.) (Ashgate, 2013) Google Books → -
Comfortable Words: Polity and Piety and The Book Of Common Prayer
S. Platten and C. Woods (eds.) (SCM Press, 2012) Google Books → -
Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England
Timothy Rosendale (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England
Ramie Targoff (University of Chicago Press, 2001) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
Seventeenth Century Print Culture
26 Jan, 2006 000 Computer science, knowledge and systems -
The Restoration
15 Feb, 2001 940 History of Europe -
The Putney Debates
18 Apr, 2013 320 Political science -
The Oxford Movement
13 Apr, 2006 270 History of Christianity -
Caxton and the Printing Press
18 Oct, 2012 680 Manufacture for specific uses -
The Domesday Book
17 Apr, 2014 940 History of Europe -
Wyclif and the Lollards
16 Jun, 2011 270 History of Christianity -
The Glorious Revolution
19 Apr, 2001 940 History of Europe -
The Trial of Charles I
4 Jun, 2009 940 History of Europe -
Toleration
20 May, 2004 270 History of Christianity
Programme ID: b03ct4n4
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ct4n4
Auto-category: 200 (Religion)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, a new prayer book was published which affected not only what people did in church, but the way they spoke and wrote.