Living with Cranmer’s Lectionary

From The Living Church-

At the time of the Reformation, Anglican Reformers guided a church whose grasp of Scripture among both lay and ordained was pitiful. They set out on the multigenerational task of changing this from the grassroots up. Although medieval priests were required to observe the sevenfold Daily Office, until 1549 each parish’s focal point of worship was likely to have been some version of the Mass to begin the day, with the Angelus rung out three times a day. These were replaced by Morning and Evening Prayer said daily in the parish church, and in that context there was a thorough and ordered reading of Old and New Testaments, some Apocrypha, and a monthly cycle of the Psalms.

Cranmer’s Daily Office, adapted from the sevenfold Office, was a brilliant innovation, yet I find myself wondering whether its expectations of an uneducated population with limited literacy may not have been too high, especially for absorbing Scripture. The Lectionary and Kalendar in the opening pages of the 1552/1662 Book of Common Prayer remained the norm for three centuries, only slightly modified in the Victorian era, before being eviscerated in the 20th century — during which time, even among the faithful, daily Scripture reading dropped out of fashion.

More here-

https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2018/09/03/living-with-cranmers-lectionary/