'Best kept by giving God thanks for the excellent persons, and by imitating their lives': saints' days and the Prayer Book
Yesterday many of us who are Anglicans will have observed Saint Matthew the Apostle, one of twenty observances of saints in the Book of Common Prayer 1662. This was, of course, a matter of some controversy in the Elizabethan Church and beyond. According to the 1572 Admonition to the Parliament, the inclusion in the Prayer Book of "holydayes ascribed to saincts" was evidence of its reliance upon "that popishe dunghil, the ... Masse boke ful of all abhominations". Such observances were contrary to "the best reformed churches".
There is a sense in which the Anglo-catholic tradition might affirm this, seeing in the observances of saints' days a continuation of pre-Reformation practice, undermining - or at least substantially qualifying - the Reformed nature of the Church of England and its liturgy.
It is possible that both streams of argument might point to the Second Helvetic Confession for support:
holy days which have been instituted for the saints and which we have abolished, have much that is absurd and useless, and are not to be tolerated. In the meantime, we confess that the remembrance of saints, at a suitable time and place, is to be profitably commended to the people in sermons, and the holy examples of the saints set forth to be imitated by all.
Notice, however, how the Second Helvetic Confession affirms "the remembrance of saints". Abolishing "holy days" - that is, commemorations which required communal observances and abstaining from labour - was quite different from "the remembrance of saints". The former was an enforced requirement, the latter a godly encouragement.
This is not dissimilar to Lutheran practice. In the words of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:
Our Confession approves honors to the saints. For here a threefold honor is to be approved. The first is thanksgiving. For we ought to give thanks to God because He has shown examples of mercy; because He has shown that He wishes to save men; because He has given teachers or other gifts to the Church. And these gifts, as they are the greatest, should be amplified, and the saints themselves should be praised, who have faithfully used these gifts, just as Christ praises faithful business-men.
Of course, Lutheran practice might be regarded as standing apart from the Reformed churches. This was not, however, entirely the case, as we see in Basel. Oecolampadius' reforms of the city's liturgy included provision for the commemoration of saints:
But the good works, great piety and blessedness of the holy and ever blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Apostles, St. John the Baptist and the martyrs of Christ ... should be earnestly remembered in those churches where daily morning prayer and sermon are held ... and their feast days should remain the calendar.
As Hughes Oliphant Old notes, "Although the saints' days were not to be regarded as public holidays, the saints were to be remembered in the regular course of daily preaching".
There is, then, good Reformation and, specifically, Reformed precedent for the saints' days of the Book of Common Prayer, providing opportunities for thanksgiving for their witness and encouragement by their example.
What is more, the collects provided by Cranmer for these saints days were, quite explicitly, products of the Reformation. The references in pre-Reformation collects to the merits and intercessions of the saints were entirely removed. This is seen, for example, when we contrast the Prayer Book collect for Saint Matthew, quoted at the outset, with the traditional Roman collect: "O Lord, may the prayers of the blessed apostle and evangelist Matthew help us to obtain the graces we ourselves cannot acquire by our merits ...".
Likewise, any reference to extra-biblical material entirely disappeared. This is particularly seen in the 1549 collect for Saint Andrew begin replaced in 1552. The former had referred to this legend of this apostle's experience of "the sharp and painful death of the crosse": the 1552 collect, by contrast, was based on the gospel accounts of the call of Saint Andrew. With this revision, none of the collects provided for the apostles had any references to the extra-biblical accounts of their martyrdoms.
While many of the Sunday collects were retained or only lightly revised by Cranmer, he re-wrote the vast majority of the collects for saints' days. The few which were retained from pre-Reformation sources - such as the collects of the Annunciation and Saint Michael and All Angels - were free of any implications of saintly merits or intercessions.
We can, then, regard Cranmer's collects for saints' days as exemplifying Reformation teaching and embodying the Reformation understanding of how and why the saints are to be remembered. The fact that all references to the merits or intercessions of the saints were removed in their entirety from the collects demonstrates how the Prayer Book's observance of saints' days is firmly rooted in Reformation concerns.
In Hooker's defence of the Prayer Book's saints' days, he emphasises the profoundly Christocentric nature of these observances:
for as much as wee knowe that Christ hath not onlie bene manifested great in him selfe, but great in other his Sainctes also ... there are likewise annuall selected times to meditate of Christ glorified in them ... glorified in everie of those Apostles whome it pleased him to use as founders of his kingdome here (LEP V.70.8).
These observances, then, can be compared to the practice of naming churches after saints. This, says Hooker, is not "superstitiously ment", as if saints exercised "defense protection and patronage of such places", but, rather, for to recall how "it pleased God ... to show some rare effect of his power" in them, to remember those who "suffered for the testimonie of Jesus Christ", and "to give such occasion of mentioninge them often, to the ende that the naminge of theire persons might cause inquirie to be made and meditation to be had of their virtues" (V.13.2).
Just as Cranmer's collects exemplify Reformation teaching regarding the saints, so too does Hooker's account of the observance of saints' days. It is an account which stands against pre-Reformation and Tridentine accounts rooting such observances in the merits, intercessions, and patronage of the saints. Hooker, by contrast, stands with the Second Helvetic Confession in pointing to "the holy examples of the saints set forth to be imitated by all".
It is also useful to consider how the practical observance of saints' days was understood by those who defended against critics their inclusion in the Prayer Book. In Holy Living (1650), Jeremy Taylor reflects both Cranmer's collects and Hooker's account of these observances:
The memories of the Saints are precious to God, and therefore they ought also to be so to us; and such persons who served God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doctrines and lives published and imitated; and we by so doing give testimony to the article of the communion of Saints.
He continues by noting the need for caution and moderation in how the commemorations are observed, not least in rejecting any sense that the observances are somehow necessary:
But in these cases as every Church is to be sparing in the number of dayes, so also should she be temperate in her injunctions, not imposing them but upon voluntary and unbusied persons, without snare or burden.
This reflects the Reformation refusal to regard saints' days as holidays. Finally, he explains how we are to keep the observances:
But the Holy day is best kept by giving God thanks for the excellent persons, Apostles or Martyrs we then remember, and by imitating their lives: this all may do.
Again, we can see the similarities with the Second Helvetic Confession. For Taylor, remembrance of the saints is about thanksgiving for and following their example, and "this all may do". The modest liturgical observances of the Prayer Book are a means to this end.
(When Taylor goes on to note "they that can also keep the solemnity, must do that too, when it is publickly enjoyned", it is a recognition of ecclesiastical order, and even then carefully qualified with the understanding that it applies only to "they that can" assemble for divine service i.e. those "unbusied persons" previously mentioned.)
The saints' days of the Book of Common Prayer, therefore, speak much less of continuity with pre-Reformation liturgy and practice than they do of Reformation teaching and piety. The purpose of the Prayer Book's saints' days, its liturgical provision for the observances, and the teaching the observances embodied were all radically different to pre-Reformation and Tridentine practice. In other words, observing the Prayer Book's saints' days is, in a profound sense, a magisterial Protestant practice.
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