THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

lasting impact on English letters was the result of the incorporation of his revised version of the Book of Psalms
(1539) into the Book of Common Prayer. As such, Coverdale’s Psalter became an integral part of the formal daily
worship of the Church of England, ingrained in generations of worshippers through its daily recitation in parish
churches and in what the Prayer Book refers to as ‘Quires and Places where they sing’. The distinctive ‘yeas’, ‘evens’,
and ‘neithers’, which indicate emphases within the original texts, serve to give the English versions a regular and
dignified pace which echoes between Psalms expressive of quite different moods. Coverdale’s gift for phrasing
manages to retain both the solemnity of the Latin Psalter, so long familiar in the worship of the Western Church, and
the vivid imagery of the original Hebrew poetry. Mountains skip ‘like rammes’ in Psalm 114 and in Psalm 65 the
valleys ‘stand so thicke with corne, that they shall laugh and sing’. The Lord makes ‘darknesse his secret place’ and
‘his pavilion round him, with darke water’ in Psalm 18; in Psalm 19, in which ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’,
he comes forth ‘as a bridegroome out of his chamber, and rejoyceth as a giant to run his course’, while in Psalm 104
he decks himself ‘with light as it were with a garment: and spreadest out the heavens like a curtaine’. Certain of
Coverdale’s most carefully blended phrases (such as the famous ‘valley of the shadow of death’ of Psalm 23, the
description of mariners in Psalm 107 as ‘they that goe downe to the Sea in ships’, or the haunting mistranslation ‘the
yron entred into his soule’ of Psalm 105) have become so assimilated into spoken English as almost to seem detached
from their precise Biblical and liturgical source.
The Book of Common Prayer, to which Coverdale’s Psalter was attached, is the statement of one of the most
influential liturgical reforms of the sixteenth century, paralleling those of the more conservative Lutheran churches of
Germany and those of the Roman Catholic Church set in motion by the Council of Trent. In 1548 Archbishop
Cranmer, supported by a committee of scholars, completed the draft of a single, comprehensive and authoritative
guide to the future worship of both priest and people in the English Church. It
[p. 101]
was designed as a vernacular replacement for the multiple and often purely local Latin rites in use in pre-Reformation
England and Wales (notably those of Salisbury, York, Hereford, and Bangor) and for private devotional volumes,
breviaries, and prayer books (‘Common Prayer’ implied public and corporate worship). It was also to serve as a
further significant element in the Tudor policy of bringing a degree of uniformity to national life. The 1549 Book of
Common Prayer was deliberately open-ended in its eucharistic theology, deliberately conservative in its retention of
Mass vestments and in prayers for the dead. As revised in 1552 its emphasis became more Protestant, with, for
example, the words ‘Mass’ and ‘altar’ omitted from the recast Communion rite. As revised again on the accession of
Elizabeth, a certain theological ambiguity crept back into its formulas and expression, much to the subsequent offence
of Puritan dissenters. Most of the original wording determined on by Cranmer and his committee remained unaltered
despite efforts to curtail, move, or break up certain fixed prayers, addresses, or responses. Cranmer’s tact in adapting
and simplifying is perhaps best observed in the shapes he evolved for the Morning and Evening Offices, both of them
fluent structural developments from the Hours of Prayer used in medieval collegiate and monastic churches and now
adapted for use in parish and cathedral alike. The Collects, the short prayers appointed for the major feast-days and
Sundays of the Christian year, are, for the most part, careful translations of Latin texts, though Cranmer himself
probably added the two first Advent Collects (the second of which famously asks that God might assist the faithful as
they ‘hear ... read, marke, learne, and inwardly digest’ the Holy Scriptures). The effect of these Collects frequently
depends on a balance of synonyms and on a suggestive development of concepts through series of complementary
phrases. The second Collect for peace in the ‘order for Morning prayer’, for example, opens with an address to God as
‘the author of peace, and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect
freedom’ and the third Evening Collect (‘for ayde against all perils’) petitions: ‘Lighten our darknesse, wee beseech
thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night, for the love of thy onely
Sonne our Saviour Jesus Christ.’ The Book of Common Prayer is distinctive for its general (some might say typically
English) avoidance of emotional language and imagery. Though scrupulously Christocentric in its piety, it eschews
dwelling on the passion, the wounded body, the saving blood, and the bloody sweat of the Saviour; though insistent on
the particular dignity accorded to the Virgin Mary and on ‘the one communion and fellowship’ of the saints, it refuses
to drift towards Mariolatry or to contemplate the agonies of the martyrs; though sure and certain of the Resurrection
of the Dead and of the ‘unspeakable joyes’ of the Heavenly City, it declines to indulge in rapturous previews of
Heaven; though it recognizes the ‘manifold sinnes and wickednesse’ of humanity, it generally abstains from the
expression of morbid self abasement and from threatening sinners with an eternity in hell. The ‘middle way’ pursued
by the Church of England, and later
[p. 102]
by its imperial daughter Churches, was, from the beginning, significantly defined by the sober beauty and the