Abstract
Gerald Bray deserves thanks for producing in a modern critical edition The Books of Homilies, one of key texts from the English Reformation, and making it more accessible for those interested in the Anglican tradition, homiletics, theology, and history. He modestly states that this edition broadly follows the standard one produced by Griffiths in 1859, though he has clarified and updated all footnote references and provided a helpful Introduction and aids for the reader. Most important, is the addition of the 1555 Homilies of Bishop Edmund Bonner of London alongside the two Books of Homilies of 1547 & 1563 [revised in 1571] found in Griffiths.
The 1547 Book was composed under the direction of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer to provide a set of model sermons for the new Protestant Church of England. With few parish clergy licenced to preach, they were instructed instead to read these homilies in Sunday worship. The sermons were directly addressed to the ‘good, decent Christian people’ (p. 449) and made a serious attempt to explain in simple terms key tenets of Christian belief.
Having himself contributed a sermon to the 1547 Book, Bonner copied the format eight years later to reassert Roman Catholic theology. He used John Harpsfield, the archdeacon of London, to write most of the sermons to re-educate the clergy and the laity of his diocese. Some covered contentious issues, such as Eucharistic theology, and at the end of Bonner’s own section about objections to the Mass he explained the great rain then afflicting the country, as if heaven itself was weeping for the sins of England because it had strayed from the Catholic fold.
Each of the Books of Homilies carried the weight of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and gave the ‘official line’ on issues, such as the political duties of subjects. In the Elizabethan Book of Homilies, the text on idolatry, based on one of Bullinger’s tracts, had to be divided into instalments, too long even for sixteenth-century ‘sermon gadders’. Questions were employed to drive the exposition of the biblical texts and direct teaching on moral issues. Though appearing rhetorical on the page, these questions possibly evoked replies from the congregations, who were far less passive than has been thought. Couched in the familiar cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, these homilies still have much to offer modern sermon enthusiasts.