The Books of Homilies

Attempts to reformulate the doctrine of the English Church, led by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer under Thomas Cromwell as Vicegerent, begun with the adoption of the (partly Lutheran) Ten Articles in 1536, was augmented in 1537 by a volume of disquisitions known as the Bishops' Book, or The Institution of a Christen Man.[2] This book was divided into four sections as follows:

* The exposition of the Apostles' Creed
* The declaration of the Seven Sacraments
* The exposition of the Ten Commandments
* The exposition of the Pater noster and the Ave, with the articles of Justification and Purgatory.

Dedicated by the bishops to King Henry, this was first ordered to be read from the pulpits, but then suppressed with a view to revision. In 1539 the Six Articles were enacted in law, a reactionary formula with severe penalties for violation. The revised work called the King's Book, or The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for Any Christen Man, was deliberated upon at the Convocation of 1540 (at the time of Cromwell's fall) and published in 1543.[3] The King's Book contained sections as follows, as in the Bishops' Book giving lengthy paraphrases or expositions on each of the various articles within the sections, line by line:

* The declaration of Faith
* The articles of our belief, called the Creed
* The seven sacraments
* The ten commandments of almighty god
* Our lord's prayer called the Pater noster
* The salutation of the angel, called the Ave Maria
* An article of free will
* An article of justification
* An article of good works
* Of prayer for souls departed.

The Second Book, mainly written by Matthew Parker with Bishop John Jewel and others, was printed perhaps in two or more editions by Richarde Iugge and John Cawood, "printers to the Queenes Maiestie". According to Parker, the Homilies had already been printed in 1562 and only awaited the Queen's approval at Midsummer 1563 for final publication.[8] Entitled Certayne Sermons appoynted by the Queenes Maiestie, it contained twenty sermons. Reprints appeared in succeeding years.[9] The publication followed the Convocation's approval of Thirty-Nine Articles, from which the Queen removed a further article to pacify objections from her Catholic subjects. These complete the promised scope of the Homilies as projected in the final notice of the First Book.

Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury

The full second series of twenty-one homilies, entitled The Second Tome of Homilees, was published in 1571.[10] The reinstatement of the Thirty-ninth Article, and the publication of the Second Book of Homilies containing the final, twenty-first homily (against Disobedience and wilful Rebellion), followed the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth by the papal bull named Regnans in Excelsis. The Thirty-fifth Article (still so mandated today) states:

"The second Book of Homilies, the several Titles whereof we have joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholsom Doctrine, and necessary for these Times, as doth the former Book of Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the People."[11]

John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury

This volume includes:

1. Of the right use of the Church.
2. Against peril of Idolatry.
3. For repairing and keeping clean the Church.
4. Of good works. And first of Fasting.
5. Against gluttony and drunkenness.
6. Against excess of apparel.
7. An homily of Prayer.
8. Of the place and time of Prayer.
9. Of Common Prayer and Sacraments
10. An information of them which take offence at certain places of holy Scripture.
11. Of alms deeds.
12. Of the Nativity.
13. Of the Passion for good Friday.
14. Of the Resurrection for Easter day.
15. Of the worthy receiving of the Sacrament.
16. An Homily concerning the coming down of the holy Ghost, for Whitsunday.
17. An Homily for Rogation week.
18. Of the state of Matrimony.
19. Against Idleness.
20. Of Repentance and true Reconciliation unto God.
21. An Homily against disobedience and willful rebellion.

Many of the sermons are straightforward exhortations to read scripture daily and lead a life of prayer and faith in Jesus Christ; the other works are lengthy scholarly treatises intended to inform church leaders in theology, church history, the fall of the Byzantine Empire and those aspects of the Roman Catholic Church and doctrine from which the Reformed Anglican faith had turned away. Each homily is heavily annotated with references to holy scripture, the Church Fathers and other primary sources.

The longest homily is the second of the second book, "Against Peril of Idolatry", which runs to about 136 printed pages (pp. 25–161 in the 1571 edition) and is divided into three parts. The first part elaborates the Mosaic law against the worship of images, and down to St Paul's condemnations: the second part follows the patristic writings on the same point, and traces from the Iconoclastic Controversy (which underlay the schism between Western and Eastern churches, and aroused Rome's hostility towards the parts of Christendom not under papal authority). The third part presents, from the perspective of the Reformed Church, a history of such Roman Catholic religious teachings and practices as were deemed to have led to idolatrous observances, as, for instance:

"And where one saint hath images in divers places, the same saint hath divers names thereof, moste lyke to the Gentiles. When you heare of our Lady of Walsingham, our Lady of Ipswich, our Lady of Wilsdon, and suche other: what is it but an imitation of the Gentiles idolaters? Diana Agrotera, Diana Coriphea, Diana Ephesia, etc., Venus Cipria, Venus Paphia, Venus Gnidia. Whereby is evidently meant, that the saint for the image sake, shoulde in those places, yea in the images them selves, have a dwellyng, whiche is the grounde of theyr idolatrie. For where no images be, they have no such meanes" (at p. 99).

The homilies contain many historical spellings, based on the Vulgate and Septuagint, of Biblical names such as Noe for Noah and Esay for Isaiah. The colourful expression "mummishe massyng" appears in the fifteenth sermon of the second book (Of the worthy receaving of the Sacrament), not to characterize the Mass itself, but (on the contrary) to describe those who come to the Lord's Supper "unreverentlye, not discerning the Lordes bodye" (like the Corinthians blamed by St Paul, I Corinthians, xi, 27–29), with "rude and unreverent ignoraunce", as if it were a mime-show.[12]