'The Scripture Moveth us in Sundry Places...' Strategies of Persuasion in Sixteenth-Century Anglican Liturgy

An Examination of the Book of Common Prayer as Technical Writing for an Oral–Aural Culture

“…Doctrine which the Church regarded as most essential to believe, recall, and act upon is reiterated over and again within individual rites, which themselves are repeated again and again, some daily, some weekly, some at pivotal life transitions, such as birth, marriage, and death. The cumulative effect is compelling, or, as Holderness (1999) puts it, persuasive.…”

“…There is considerable evidence, then, that the catechism, in combination with the rest of the Prayer Book , the preaching of the clergy, and metrical psalm-singing proved generally successful in imparting the essential doctrines of the Reformed faith to the English people. To what extent it contributed to general moral improvement is more difficult to investigate, but it must not be forgotten that improvement of life is equally part of the technical aim of this text (see Holderness, 1999, p. 37, on the combination of knowledge and love in the Prayer Book ).…”

“…In the history of literary criticism from Johnson down to relatively recently, there has been a strong prejudice in favor of works of individual authorship, originality, novelty, and a tendency to regard translations and certainly official and functional documents as of lesser value. As Holderness (1999) notes, if “liturgy is to one degree or another collectively authored and anonymously assigned, ‘liturgy’ can never quite be ‘literature’” (p. 21).…”

“…The recent studies of the Prayer Book already mentioned are indicative of this wider trend. Holderness (1999) argues that the Prayer Book is “‘persuasive’ in a recognizably ‘literary’ sense,” that its language is “not simply functional and utilitarian, but also poetic and creative” (p. 27) and that it not only provides “expositions of dogma and doctrine, but attempts after the imaginative apprehension of spiritual and devotional experience” (p. 28). While I agree that the Prayer Book contains many persuasive and poetic qualities, Holderness’s attempt to reassess it from a literary standpoint downplays its utility.…”