Alan Jacobs


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This brings us back to the Black Rubric. The 1552 book had eliminated the term “Mass,” and Cranmer had changed the wording of certain passages that described (or were widely thought to describe) what exactly is happening to the elements of the Supper, but he would not acquiesce in the demand made by many reformers, including the aforementioned Bishop Hooper and the passionate Scot John Knox, to eliminate the people’s longstanding habit of kneeling while receiving Communion. For Knox this was idolatry plain and simple, the worshipping of the creature instead of the Creator; Cranmer disagreed. In Cranmer’s view enough had been done to combat the traditional popular desire to worship the consecrated elements: “Heave it higher, sir priest!” the people used to call out during the elevation of the Host, and one of the demands of the Cornish rebels was “to have the sacrament hang over the high altar and there to be worshipped as it was wont to be.” But the new Book of Homilies that Cranmer had overseen heaped scorn on these superstitions, and he went so far as to forbid the elevation of the bread (for him it was manifestly not the Host) altogether. But he would not tell the people they couldn’t kneel simply because that gesture could be “misconstrued, depraved, and interpreted in a wrong part.” Kneeling was in fact appropriate—far more appropriate than the sitting posture Knox preferred—and “well mente, for a sygnificacion of the humble and gratefull acknowledgyng of the benefites of Chryst, geven unto the woorthye receyver.” At one point in the debate, Cranmer pointed out to Knox that if he wanted this Supper to be performed New Testament-style, then all the congregants should take the sacrament reclining on one arm, since that was the ancient Palestinian custom.