The Book of Common Prayer

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2013

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

With:

Diarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford

Alexandra Walsham Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge

Martin Palmer Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:47.0	Hello two years after the death of Henry the 8th a new prayer book was published
0:51.6	which affected not only what people did in church but the way they spoke and wrote.
0:55.6	The Book of Common Prayer first appeared in 1549 and was largely the work of Henry's Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Common prayer was the first attempt to provide a liturgy in
1:06.4	English for the newly reformed church. It was hugely controversial and many people, including Cranmer himself, lost their lives in the religious turmoil
1:14.7	of the following decade. The final version of the Book of Common Prayer published in 1662
1:20.3	remains to this day the official liturgy of the Church of England.
1:23.5	It's full of phrases now in everyday use such as the words from the
1:26.9	marriage service in sickness and in health till death us do part.
1:30.0	Like the works of Shakespeare and Tyndall, it has shaped the English language.
1:34.0	But it's also a text in which can be found evidence of years of religious disputes,
1:39.0	civil war and political tension.
1:41.0	With me to discuss the Book of Common Prayer are Martin Palmer,
1:44.6	Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture.
	...

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