Reinventing Medieval Liturgy in Victorian England

Thomas Frederick Simmons and the Lay Folks' Mass Book

By (author) Professor David Jasper, Jeremy J Smith

Publication date:

03 October 2023

Length of book:

280 pages

Publisher

Boydell Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9781805431039

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.

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

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.