Anglo-Catholic Altar Books and the Genesis of the English Missal

Abstract

This article examines the development of the earliest published un-official altar books in the Church of England that were produced as part of the Ritualist Movement of the Anglo-Catholic revival in the late nineteenth century. The content of the three earliest works, Ritual of the Altar, the Altar Service Book, and Priest to the Altar, is examined. This study establishes a context and a foundation for the development of perhaps the most important Anglo-Catholic altar book of the twentieth century, Missale Anglicanum: The English Missal. Henry William Gordon Kenrick compiled a single manuscript copy in 1906 which was the progenitor for the five published editions from 1912 to 1958. This article provides a detailed examination of the contents of all of the editions of the English Missal.