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Patristics and Reform: Thomas Rattray and The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Stuart G. Hall
Stuart G. Hall*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
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Extract

In reforming Christian worship radical change often follows from the attempt to restore what was ancient. Nowhere is this more clear than among the liturgical scholars of the early seventeenth century, when advances in critical scholarship made it possible for some to believe they could restore the Church’s worship to that of apostolic times. This is well illustrated in the work of Thomas Rattray (1684-1743), a Scot of great learning, and among Scottish Episcopalians of lasting influence. Rattray was a Non-juror, one of those expelled or withdrawn from the churches of England and Scotland after 1689 for refusing obedience to the new regime. They pinned their hopes, and the survival of what they perceived as the true Catholic Faith, on the Roman Catholic House of Stuart in exile in France. Their hopes perished in blood on the field of Culloden in 1746. That was three years after Rattray’s death. The Episcopalians hold Rattray’s name in honour, both because of the part he played in fixing their Church’s constitution, and because of one book of learning and ingenuity, called The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 240 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

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References

1 See Gordon, Alexander, ‘Rattray, Thomas, D. D. (1684-1743)’, DNB, 47, pp. 312–14 Google Scholar; Allchin, A. M., ‘Thomas Rattray: after 250 years’, Scottish Episcopal Church Review, 4 (1995), pp. 50–63 Google Scholar (lecture given after a celebration of Rattray’s liturgy in Edinburgh on 22 May 1994).

2 The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, being the Liturgy of St. James, Freed from all latter Additions and Interpolations of whatever kind, and so restored to it’s Original Purity: by comparing it with the Account given of that Liturgy by St. Cyril in his fifth Mystagogical Catechism, And with the Clementine Liturgy &c. (London 1744) [hereafter The Ancient Liturgy]. See Grisbrooke, W.J., Anglican Littirgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Alcuin Club Collections, 11 (London 1958), pp. 317–32.Google Scholar

3 Tellini, Gianfranco, ‘The Pittenweem manuscript Prayer Book of 1743’, The Royal Martyr Annual 1985 ([Edinburgh], 1985), p. 6.Google Scholar

4 Hunt, William, ‘Collier, Jeremy (1650-1722)’, DNB, 11, pp. 341–7.Google Scholar

5 Note to p. vii.

6 Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, 2 vols (Paris, 1716).

7 Euchologium sive rituale graecorum (Paris, 1647).

8 De liturgia gallicana (Paris, 1685) (= PL 72, cols 101-448).

9 Bibliotheca patrum, II (Paris, 1626).

10 Codex apocryphus novi testamenti, 2 vols (Hamburg, 1703; rev. and enlarged, 3 vols, Hamburg, 1719).

11 The publisher’s note in The Ancient Liturgy quotes a letter from Rattray listing his textual sources on p. xvi.

12 Brett, Collection of the Principal Liturgies, pp. iii-iv.

13 Aberdeen University Library, MS 2180/1, letter 11 March 1720, lines 19-26.

14 Ibid., lines 27-9.

15 The Ancient Liturgy, p. 30/32.

16 Ibid., p. 117.

17 Aberdeen University Library, MS 2180/1, letter 6 Oct. 1719 lines 8-16.

18 Ibid., lines 25-31.

19 St Andrews University Library, Deposited MS 84 [hereafter ‘Pittenweem MS’] p. [192] (the pages are unnumbered).

20 Cyprian, , Ep. 63: S. Thasci Caecili Cypriani Opera omnia, ed. Hartel, W., CSEL, 3, 2 vols (Vienna, 1868-71), 2, pp. 701–7 Google Scholar, especially cc. 2, 13.

21 Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 11.ii.19-21: Clemens Alexandrinus, erster Band: Protrepticus und Paedagogus, ed. O. Stählin, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der crsten drei Jahrhunderte, 3rd edn (Berlin, 1972), pp. 167.15-168.30, especially 19.4-20.1 (p. 168.1-5).

22 One reference in The Ancient Liturgy, p. 117, is to Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses V.2.3: Irénée de Lyon, Contre les hérésies, livre V, ed. A. Rousseau, L. Doutreleau, and C. Mercier, SC, 153 (Paris, 1969), p. 34,11. 37-42. Rattray also cites Irenaeus, Adv. Haereses IV.57, a reference I cannot find. Rattray presumably has in mind V.1.3 (Rousseau et al., Contre les hérésies, pp. 24-7), where Ebionite rejection of mixing ‘heavenly wine’ with ‘worldly water’ is connected to their rejection of the union of deity with humanity in Christ.

23 For this history see Gordon, ‘Rattray, Thomas’, pp. 312-14.

24 The Ancient Liturgy, p. 1.

25 The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 1-110.

26 Ibid., pp. 111-22.

27 Ibid., pp. v-x.

28 Ibid., p. xii, citing [John] Johnson, Unbl[oody] Sacrifice and Altar] (London, 1714-18). There is an interesting discussion of Johnson’s view in the light of Thomas Brett’s opinion and other contemporaries in the publisher’s note in The Ancient Liturgy, pp. xiv-xv.

29 The Ancient Liturgy, pp. xii-xiii.

30 Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical catechesis V.7: Cyrille de Jérusalem, Catachèses mystagogiques, ed. A. Piedagnel and P. Paris, SC, 126 (Paris, 1966), p. 154 (my translation).

31 Dix, Gregory, The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster, 1945), pp. 197–8 Google Scholar, quoting Brightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western ([Oxford], 1896), p. 469.Google Scholar

32 The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 15-27.

33 Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, p. 198.

34 Ibid., p. 179 n.1.

35 Ratcliff, E. C., ‘The Sanctus and the pattern of the early Anaphora’, JEH, 1 (1950), pp. 29–36, 125–34 Google Scholar; cf.idem, , ‘The original form of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari: a suggestion’,JThS, 30 (1928), pp. 23–32 Google Scholar; both reprinted in Ratcliff, E. C., Liturgical Studies, ed. Couratin, A. H. and Tripp, D. H. (London, 1976), pp. 18–40, 80–90.Google Scholar

36 Didachê, 9-10; the last view, with comprehensive documentation, is in Die Didache. Erklãrt von Kurt Niederwimmer, Kommentar zu den Apostolischcn Vätern, 1 (Göttingen, 1989), pp. 173-9.

37 Dix, Shape of the Liturgy, pp. 90-3.

38 The Ancient Liturgy, pp. xi-xii.

39 Ibid., pp. 23, 25.

40 Ibid., pp. 25, 27. The allusion to fire relates to such passages as Judges 13.15-20.

41 See n.21 above.

42 Ratcliff, E. C., ‘The institution narrative of the Roman “canon missac”: its beginning and early background’, JThS, 30 (1957), pp. 64–82 Google Scholar (= Ratcliff, Liturgical Studies, pp. 49-65).

43 Cyprian, Ep. 63,1: Hartel, , Cypriani Opera omnia, 2, p. 701.Google Scholar

44 Acts of Peter (Cod. Vercellensis 158) 2; Acts of Thomas 120, 152, 158; cf.Cocchini, F., ‘Aquarii’, Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. Berardino, A. di, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1992), 1, p. 64.Google Scholar

45 Matt 26.29; Mark 14.25; Luke 22.18.

46 I Cor. 10.16, 11.25-9, with 11.21.

47 Irenaeus, Advenus haereses v.1.3 (Rousseau et al, Contre les hérésies, pp. 25-6); Acts 2.46.

48 The Ancient Liturgy, pp. 113-15.

49 Ibid., p. 117; Thomas Brett’s edition of the 1718 Office in his Collection of the Principal Liturgies, pp. 144-5.

50 Since this lecture was given I have been informed by the Revd W. D. Kornahrens, Rector of Holy Cross Church, Edinburgh, that he has recently identified an early booklet printing of the text of the Pittenweem MS (see below, pp. 257-9) in the British Library, but no further details are available.

51 See Burleigh, J. H. S., A Church History of Scotland (London, 1960), p. 243.Google Scholar

52 The Ancient Liturgy, p. iii.

53 It is 15.5 X 10 cm, with 214 written and 18 blank pages. How it got to Pittenweem is a matter of speculation.

54 The Pittenweem manuscript Prayer Book’, pp. 3-6.

55 Pittenweem MS, p. [49].

56 Ibid., p. [53].

57 The Ancient Liturgy, p. 113; Pittenweem MS, p. [56].

58 Ibid., pp. [199-205].

59 Scots Confession 1560 (Confessio Scoticano) and Negative Confession, 1581 (Confessio Negativa), ed. G. D. Henderson (Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, 1937), p. 75, Art. 18; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. F. J. McNeill, 2 vols, Library of Christian Classics, 20-1 (London and Philadelphia, PA, 1960), 2, p. 1023; Thirty-Nine Articles, 19.

60 The Ancient Liturgy, p. 113.

61 Rattray is commemorated in the present Calendar of the Scottish Episcopal Church on the anniversary of his death, 12 May.