Edwardine Ordinals

Roman Pontifical The word ordinal in the medieval period, rather than applying to a liturgical book containing the rites of ordination, was the title given to a text associated with the recitation of the canonical hours that was eventually assimilated into the breviary. Prior to the English Reformation, the liturgies of ordination–for the conferral of holy orders–in the Latin liturgical rites were contained within several versions the pontifical, most prominently the Roman Pontificals of the Roman Rite and the Sarum Pontifical of the Sarum Use. These ordination liturgies were a matter of debate between Rome and Reformers; 17th-century scholar Jean Morin summarized the Catholic Church's position that the contemporary Roman Pontificals "omit[ted] nothing that was present in the older" pontificals, while Anglicans have suggested that the laying on of hands by consecrators were variously deleted or obscured by other rituals. The Gallican ordination liturgies, which had influenced broader Roman Rite practices in the early medieval period, were ritually complex but also possessed clear moments of ordination. For priestly ordination, the bishop laying of hands on a candidate would say it was "the blessing of the presbyterate". The anointing of a priest's hand with chrism appeared within Gallican and Roman liturgies, including the 11th-century Leofric Missal. In 1439, this practice was identified by Pope Eugene IV as an essential part of ordination. These medieval practices and their convoluted nature–duplicated actions were common within the ordination Masses–were the result of Roman and Gallican rites being conflated with local permutations. It was not uncommon for elements to be inserted into ordination liturgies that were associated with neither the formal texts nor the liturgical actions. ==First Edwardine Ordinal==

With the English Reformation and independence of the Church of England from Rome, Henry VIII mandated that the oath of obedience to the pope be deleted from the Sarum and Roman pontificals still in use; these modifications can be seen in some preserved copies of these texts. In 1547, a meeting between parliament and convocation resulted in an act of convocation that permitted clerical marriage in the Church of England. However, no wholly revised ordinal immediately accompanied the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and the Church of England continued to use the Sarum ordination form for the first year of the prayer book's authorization. German reformer Martin Bucer–who had been exiled to England in 1548–drew on the discussions that had already occurred among his fellow reformed countrymen in Germany regarding the role of the priesthood and compiled an ordination liturgy in Latin, De ordinatione legitima ministrorum ecclesiæ reuocanda, for the English reformers to study. The authorization and production of an ordinal was formally requested in a House of Lords bill on 8 January 1550 and authorized by an act of Parliament on 31 January that mandated its preparation under the authority of the king "before the first day of April" of 1550. A commission was set up to authorize a form for the new ordinal. Nicholas Heath, a moderate Catholic and the Bishop of Worcester, is the only person known to have been on the commission; Heath was imprisoned for 18 months for refusing to sign off on the ritual form produced for the commission. This form, largely arranged by Cranmer, was derived from Bucer's work with additions that could be traced to Martin Luther and featured some "personal creative contribution" from Cranmer. The ordinal was completed and published by 25 March that year, with the liturgy accompanied by a literary preface. The examination of candidates, which in the Sarum Use had been exclusive to episcopal consecrations, was also extended to the candidates for the diaconate and priesthood. As with the medieval ordination Masses, these elements were dispersed throughout the 1550 ordinal liturgies with less attention to cohesion than inclusion of the actions; there is a different ordering of share events within the three ordination rites relative to the Holy Communion office. The 1550 ordinal retained the practice of giving a newly ordained priest certain items, with the addition of a Bible in addition to paten and chalice. Laypersons could and would attend ordinations, with an opportunity for those gathered to "declare 'any impediment'" and give negative endorsement of the candidates to prevent their ordination. The Catholic bishops in England did not receive the ordinal in a positive manner. Despite having accepted the 1549 prayer book, Nicholas Heath refused to accept the 1550 ordinal, as he believed that it eroded the Church of England's catholicity. He was deprived of his bishopric at Worcester and imprisoned. A similar fate befell the Catholic Stephen Gardiner. Episcopal consecration The ordering and contents of the 1550 form for consecrating bishops differed from both that present in the Sarum Pontifical and Bucer's Latin liturgy: ==Second Edwardine Ordinal==

Resistance to the first ordinal was not exclusive to the Catholic party. John Hooper was nominated to become the Bishop of Gloucester on Easter 1550, but refused to be consecrated in accordance to the vestments–a surplice and rochet–which were prescribed by the 1550 ordinal. He further rejected an oath within the ordinal which made reference to the saints having publicly pronounced as much on 5 March in a sermon on Jonas. Edward VI is said to have been so moved by Hooper's words that he personally struck the passage from the ordinal's oath; it would be the modified passage which appeared in the 1552 ordinal. The ordinal, as authorized in the 1552 Act of Uniformity and inaugurated on 1 November, would drop the vestment requirement; ordinands would not be required to wear an alb. the giving of the Bible remained a practice in the subsequent Church of England prayer books. Elizabethan restoration and further revision '' between Reformation and Catholic impulses. Following Elizabeth I assuming the throne and the Elizabethan Religious Settlement's return of Reformation values, the 1552 ordinal that had accompanied the 1552 prayer book was thought to have been authorized under the 1559 Act of Uniformity. However, William Cecil, Elizabeth's Secretary of State, advised the queen that the act made no mention of the ordinal and that Thomas Cranmer's ordination liturgy was illegal. Despite this, the text was accepted along with the subsequent 1559 Book of Common Prayer; The ordinal published in 1559 was essentially identical to that of 1552, but altered the wording of the oath from the "King's Supremacy" to the "Queen's Sovereignty" and removed reference to the pope's "usurped power and authority". A 1565 act of Parliament would establish the ordinal as "good, lawful and perfect." Fleeing the Marian Persecution, many English Reformers had encountered the Continental ordination patterns and ministerial theologies. In Frankfurt, exiles encountered liturgy according to the local "Liturgy of Compromise" described four ministerial offices–pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons–but lacked ordination rites. Some of the exiled Englishmen were further exiled from Frankfurt and would thus become familiar with the Genevan reformed liturgies as organized by John Calvin. Returning during the Elizabethan restoration, many were dismayed that they were not permitted to introduce Continental influences to English rites but instead were to celebrate ordination according to the 1552 ordinal. Unlike prior editions, the ordinal was not only bound together with the 1662 prayer book but considered a part of the prayer book. ==Later influence==

In 1909, a resolution was raised at the Church of England's convocation in the Committee of the Lower House of Canterbury to alter a portion of the ordination of deacons which had remained unchanged since 1550. The examination posed towards diaconal ordinands concerning the sufficiency of Scripture was to be altered with influence from the examination of priests to adopt a "less fundamentalist attitude to Scripture." This proposal was steadfastly opposed by Henry Wace and other Evangelicals, but a majority favored a change. Initially, this majority failed to agree on a revised wording and the York Convocation supported retain the original form; ultimately, a revised form was adopted after years of discussion. Possibly as a result of this dispute, few other alterations to the ordinal were debated by convocation despite outside proposals to implement further revisions during the attempts to authorise a revised prayer book. The traditio instrumentorum has remained excluded from most Anglican ordination rituals following the 1552 ordinal, though it was reintroduced as an optional ceremony within ordinations according to the Church of England's Common Worship, a series of liturgical texts introduced in 2000 to serve as an alternative to the 1662 prayer book. There, the vessels are presented before the Holy Communion so that they be used within the liturgy. The Church of Ireland's 2004 Book of Common Prayer–which, like the 1552 prayer book, notionally considers the ordinal a separate text–retains the delivery of the Bible to new priests, though officially this action has no bearing on the validity of the rite. ==Debate over validity of ordinations==

The Catholic Church and its members have repeatedly questioned the validity of Anglican orders, with pronouncements and policy latterly maintaining them as invalid according to the church. Catholic critics have argued that since Mary I's reign Anglican orders according to the Edwardine Ordinals have been seen as invalid, citing a 1554 injunction; the merits of this conclusion have been disputed by Bradshaw. In 1871, English Benedictine Wilfrid Raynal held that the 1662 ordinal's forms would be sufficient for valid ordinations, but that these changes "came too late to save the Anglican Church" as he considered their apostolic succession already broken. It was a "defect of form" and a "defect of that intention" within the required for ordination—the latter argued as present in at least the 16th century—which were evaluated by Pope Leo XIII as invalidating Anglican Holy Orders in his papal bull on the matter, the 1896 Apostolicae curae. Frederick Temple and William Maclagan–the Archbishops of Canterbury and York respectively–sent a response in 1897, Saepius officio, addressing the criticisms and arguments made in Apostolicae curae. This letter was not received with much notice and has been given little academic consideration despite its direct disputation of Leo XIII's points. Of particular note were its liturgical discussion and the authors' belief that the papal bull would find defects "in the catechisms of the Oriental Church". The matter of whether certain bishops from whom later Anglicans derived their apostolic succession were consecrated according to the 1552 ordinal or revived Sarum Pontifical was another point of debate. One such challenged consecration was that of Matthew Parker, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559 and was principally consecrated by William Barlow. Despite some 20th-century efforts to place Parker's consecration in October 1559 and thus according to the Sarum Pontifical, other commentators have placed the date in December 1559 and determined it was according to the second Edwardine Ordinal. ==See also==