years past, having been drawn up by the late Chief Rabbi.' II Some years ago the late Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. W. E. Collins, asked me to help him with the service at his enthronization; and I came across in Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae a prayer which reminded me of that at the end of the consecration of Bishops in the Book of Common Prayer, and which has been there since the days of Cranmer. It is an expansion, as I venture to think, of the prayer Concede quaesumus,1 which was of course well known to Cranmer, for it is in the Sarum Missal, the collect of a mass pro episcopo. It may be found in other medieval missals, as at Hereford, and also at Westminster, in a mass for the abbot.4 2 It is my own fault, I have no doubt, but I do not find that the resemblance between these two 1 William Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Angli canae, London, Pickering, 1847, vol. iii. p. 288. 2 J. Wickham Legg, Sarum Missal, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1916, p. 397. 3 Missale Ecclesiae Herfordensis, ed. W. G. Hender son, Leeds, 1874, P. 414. • Missale ad usum Ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, Henry Bradshaw Society, 1893, fasc. ii. col. 1152. prayers has been pointed out in many of our more usual books of instruction on the Common Prayer.1 This, then, must be my excuse for printing in parallel columns the two prayers. So every one may thus be enabled to form a judgment for himself, whether they be alike or not. MISSALE SARUM (ed. Clarendon Press, P. 397). Concede quaesumus Domine famulo tuo episcopo nostro EDWARD VI'S FIRST (Consecration of Bis- Most merciful Father, we beseech thee to send down upon this thy servant thy heavenly blessing; and so endue him with thy holy Spirit ut praedicando et exer- that he preaching thy cendo quae recta sunt [2 Tim. iv. 2: 1 Tim. Word, may not only be earnest to reprove, beseech, and rebuke with all patience and doctrine; but also may be to such as believe an wholesome example, in word, in conversation, in love, in faith, in chastity, and purity; 1 It is, of course, in Dr. F. E. Brightman's English Rite, Rivingtons, London, 1915, vol. ii. p. 1016. B et aeternae remunera tionis mercedem a te piissimo pastore per- [2 Tim. iv. 7, 8] III that, faithfully fulfilling his course, at the latter day he may receive the crown of righteousness laid up by the Lord the righteous Judge, who liveth and reigneth one God with the Father and Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen. When I was working in the University Library at Würzburg in May 1911 I found a collect in the Würzburg breviary which reminded me of the Christmas collect in the Book of Common Prayer. The same collect is in a fifteenth-century edition as well as in that of 1518, and it is said at None on Christmas Day. It appeared afterwards that Dr. Neale had noticed some prayer of the same kind; for he says: 'We have noted something like our own Collect in more than one German Missal: a fact which ought to be known to English liturgical scholars.' 1 1 J. M. Neale, Essays on Liturgiology, etc., London, 1863, P. 52. It is quite possible that the Würzburg Collect given below may be that which Dr. Neale noticed as like to the collect in the Book of Common Prayer. It is indeed to be found in other liturgical books: for instance, at None on Christmas Day in the Eichstädt breviary of 1525 and the Constanz breviary of 1561: also at None on Christmas Day in the breviary of Uzès of 1493; and in the Lyons diurnal of 1738; at Sext on Christmas Day in the Pampeluna breviary of 1562; in the list of Christmas collects in the breviary of the canons of St. Augustine at Coimbra of 1531, fo. 103. From its appearance in so many different parts of Europe, it will be gathered that the collect is old; and by the aid of Mr. H. A. Wilson's invaluable Index to the Roman Sacramentaries it will be found in the Gelasian Sacramentary as the collect of a mass for Christmas.1 It occurs also, as Mr. Wilson points out, in a list of collects for use at Christmas in the Gregorian Sacramentary.2 A likeness of the collect in the Gelasian Sacramentary to that in the Prayer Book had been 1 L. A. Muratori, Liturgia Romana Vetus, Venetiis, 1748, t. i. col. 495. 2 Ibid., t. ii. col. II. noticed by Mr. Henry Bailey as long ago as 18471; but his observation does not seem to have been remarked by many. Cranmer was not likely to have been acquainted with manuscripts of the Gelasian or the Gregorian Sacramentary; whereas it is quite possible that in his expeditions to Germany he may have found a German breviary with this collect, and taken from it the idea of adoption' and 'grace,' which he afterwards planted into the latter part of the Edwardine collect. Nor does the early part of the collect seem so dissimilar that it might not have been suggested by the Latin collect. But in this I do not expect to find that all the world agrees with me. It will be enough if I have pointed out a possible source in the German collect for the origin which had escaped Dr. Neale, and which possible source he desired should be known to Englishmen. I will now give the two collects printed side by side : 1 Henry Bailey, Rituale Anglo-Catholicum, London, J. W. Parker, 1847, p. 113. |