Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
In 1879, Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons edited the late medieval poem now known as The Lay Folks' Mass Book creating what remains the standard edition of the text. This volume shows how Simmons' interest in the text was related profoundly to contemporary debates about worship in the Church of England, and how he used his medievalist researches as the basis for the most important attempt at Prayer Book revision between the Reformation and the twentieth century.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 280
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Publication Date:
03 October 2023
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781783277483
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Victorian Era (1837-1901), RELIGION / Christian Theology / General, RELIGION / Christianity / Anglican, European history
This is an excellent study, well researched, and is valuable for those who study liturgy, and the mind of the Victorian English Church, as well as the wider Romantic Movement. It is the first critical assessment of The Lay Folks' Mass Book since Simmons's edition, and places the work in its context. It also raises some questions for the contemporary Church of England.
Smith and Jasper do a superb job of interpreting what Simmons was about in this work, helping readers to understand the LFMB's context and aims, and to appreciate its quality. More than that, for those whose view of Tractarianism skews toward its Roman Catholic converts, this book usefully shows how determinedly English-oriented and English-interested its other side could be and, in divines like Simmons, was.
In Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England, David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith meticulously probe into Victorian medievalism to foreground the revival, reinterpretation, and reverberations of medieval liturgy, evidenced through a case study on The Lay Folks' Mass Book. Through a detailed inquiry into the reconstructed text and its editor, Thomas Frederick Simmons, the authors illuminate how medieval devotional texts were not merely reprinted but reimagined in the nineteenth century.
Smith and Jasper do a superb job of interpreting what Simmons was about in this work, helping readers to understand the LFMB's context and aims, and to appreciate its quality. More than that, for those whose view of Tractarianism skews toward its Roman Catholic converts, this book usefully shows how determinedly English-oriented and English-interested its other side could be and, in divines like Simmons, was.
In Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England, David Jasper and Jeremy J. Smith meticulously probe into Victorian medievalism to foreground the revival, reinterpretation, and reverberations of medieval liturgy, evidenced through a case study on The Lay Folks' Mass Book. Through a detailed inquiry into the reconstructed text and its editor, Thomas Frederick Simmons, the authors illuminate how medieval devotional texts were not merely reprinted but reimagined in the nineteenth century.
Preface
Introduction: Imagining the Past
1.Thomas Frederick Simmons and the Lay Folks' Mass Book
2.Re-imagining Medieval Devotion: Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of the English Church
3.Simmons and the Early English Text Society
4.Simmons as Editor: The Philologist
5. Simmons as Editor: The Liturgist
6. Simmons as Parish Priest, and Liturgical Reform in the Victorian Church of England
7.The Afterlives of the Lay Folks' Mass Book
Conclusion: Liturgical Moments in Time
Plates
Appendix IThe Lay Folks' Mass Book: Text and Translation
Appendix IIThe Lay Folks' Mass Book and the Sarum Rite
Bibliography
Index
Introduction: Imagining the Past
1.Thomas Frederick Simmons and the Lay Folks' Mass Book
2.Re-imagining Medieval Devotion: Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of the English Church
3.Simmons and the Early English Text Society
4.Simmons as Editor: The Philologist
5. Simmons as Editor: The Liturgist
6. Simmons as Parish Priest, and Liturgical Reform in the Victorian Church of England
7.The Afterlives of the Lay Folks' Mass Book
Conclusion: Liturgical Moments in Time
Plates
Appendix IThe Lay Folks' Mass Book: Text and Translation
Appendix IIThe Lay Folks' Mass Book and the Sarum Rite
Bibliography
Index