Friday, May 26, 2006

What Are the Sarum and English Liturgies?

Some questions cropped up on my post noting that no canonical Orthodox jurisdiction endorses liturgical archeology, to wit: What are the Sarum and English liturgies celebrated by Western Rite churches in ROCOR? Hieromonk Fr. Michael has explained the provenance of these liturgies on Ely Forum:

The Sarum Liturgy (Usus Cascadae)

The text of the “Sarum” (Usus Cascadae) Liturgy is essentially the Sarum Use as translated into English by A. Harford Pearson and published in 1868 - although including some few translations of our own. Pearson noted in his introduction that he had preferred the Authorised Version for Biblical texts and the Coverdale (BCP) version for Psalms as being most familiar to our culture and practically usable. He also noted that he had preferred the already-translated (BCP from Sarum) Collects except where he found that the original had been altered.To Pearson’s work, we added the fixed hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty” to accompany the censing of the Altar in order to ensure that an appropriate hymn was used in this place. We also added at the Offertory Procession, the hymn “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” This is a 5th century hymn from the Liturgy of Saint James, translated in 1864. We removed one or two additions to Sarum which were unarguably Crusades oriented material and we made the post-Fraction short litany a fixed feature instead of seasonal. In many cases, we simplified the rubrics to make them more easily understandable. Perhaps the most significant addition was that of an Epiclesis. In the course of discussions with Archbishop Hilarion (Kapral) of Sydney, it was decided to match like cloth with the original and accordingly, we adapted the Collect for the Throne of Peter from the Gothic Missal as the Epiclesis and inserted it into the above-referenced translation. Because the Liturgy which resulted was (a) in English and (b) included the above alterations, we named it “Usus Cascadae” in deference to genuine Sarum scholars, while retaining a reference to Sarum on the title page in order that others would recognise its provenance.

The fact remains that the Usus Cascadae text as mentioned above, is over 90 percent the authoritative translation of Pearson, rather than a pastiche of byzantine-compatible oddities picked out of obscure versions of Sarum and other non-Sarum Continental/Roman missals.

The English Liturgy
...At the same time time we had included in the Saint Colman Prayer Book the “English Liturgy.” This is an adaption of the Church of England Book of Common Prayer of 1549 utilising both Sarum and later liturgical works (1718 etc.). This follows very much the pattern of the Sarum - as indeed is reasonable given that Sarum was the direct antecedent of the Liturgy of 1549. Along with considerable Sarum material, we inserted the same Epiclesis as noted above, and the same two fixed hymns as noted above. We also appended the Sarum Vesting and Divesting Offices as these were commonly used by the clergy of 1549-50 together with the new rite.This adaption was carried out strictly observing the terms of the 1907 report of the Commission of the Holy Synod of Russia, which fixed the method by which the services from the Book of Common Prayer might be adapted for use by Orthodox people.
You can read the "Russian Observations Upon the American Prayerbook" at this site. You can read the text of the Sarum Liturgy (Usus Cascadae) and the English Liturgy on the St. Petroc Monastery website.

God bless the Western Rite.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Blogger said...

I thought WROers defended the crusades. At least I remember an article in The Lion that seemed to. Would I be misinformed?

2:58 PM  

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