'Referring to the times of the Messiah': Cantate Domino at Evensong

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we turn to the alternative to the Magnificat at Evensong, Cantate Domino. Shepherd notes that it "is rarely used". This, interestingly, contrasts with earlier commentators. Sparrow, for example, encourages the use of Cantate Domino (and Deus Misereatur) in the penitential seasons and when the first lesson "speaks of the enlargement of the Church by bringing in the Gentiles into the Fold of it". Secker, writing in the mid-18th century, says of Cantate Domino that it "may be used, and in some places it frequently is". The difference between Shepherd and these earlier commentators is probably due to local practice, rather than a more widespread move away from use of Cantate Domino.

It certainly was not the case that Shepherd disapproved of the use of this canticle. Even while stating that it "is rarely used", he suggests that where the first lesson "treats of any extraordinary instance of divine protection, and mercy, Cantate seems more proper than Magnificat" (a view which echoes Wheatly's understanding of the canticle). 

Cantate Domino is, says Shepherd, "a form of praise and thanksgiving, perfectly suitable to a Christian assembly", having a deeply Christocentric theme:

Viewing it, as referring to the times of the Messiah, we behold the psalmist extolling the miraculous salvation, which God has wrought for his church; and celebrating in the most animated strains, the righteousness, mercy, and truth of our redeemer. He calls upon all the earth, and even the inanimate parts of the creation, to break forth in joy, and to sing praises to their creator. 

Shepherd also draws attention to the relationship between Cantate Domino and Magnificat:

The subject of this general joy is the coming of our Saviour "to judge the world with righteousness, and the people with equity." Between Cantate Domino, and Magnificat, there is a considerable degree of resemblance; and part of the latter is evidently borrowed from the former, applying the prediction to its own accomplishment. 

In other words, to occasionally replace Magnificat with Cantate Domino is not to remove a Marian dimension from Evensong, for this psalm was also the psalm of the Maiden of Nazareth, shaping her praises of the God of Abraham at the Incarnation. It was a psalm on the lips of the Blessed Virgin.

As a final comment, Shepherd reminds us "It was added in Edward's second book". This brings to mind a recent superb talk by Rowan Williams to a Prayer Book Society branch on the subject of what it means to be a Prayer Book Catholic. Summarising the view of Cranmer which has emerged from scholarly work of recent decades, Williams fully accepts that Cranmer's intentions were distinctly and thoroughly Protestant. The role of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition is not to reject this, but to recognise that the Prayer Book (like any text) can be more than the author's intention, that it can carry a greater weight of meaning than perhaps intended. 

We can apply this to Cantate Domino. It may indeed have been offered as an alternative to Magnificat in 1552 because of the sensitivities of the 'hotter sort' of Protestant when it came to the "Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (as it is described in the 1662 rubric). Cantate Domino, however, also has - as Shepherd discerned - a deeply Marian dimension. To say Cantate Domino at Evensong after the first lesson, the reading of the law and the prophets, is to say this canticle with the Daughter of Sion.