Coverdale's Translation of the Roman Canon
DonaJoanna
Shipmate Posts: 2
Might anyone please have a link or the text itself?
DonaJoanna
Shipmate Posts: 2
Comments
Such expressions of "sealed with the seal of faith, and who sleep the sleep of peace" and "for the redemption of their souls, for the hope of their salvation and safety; and who offer their prayers unto thee, the eternal God, the living and the true" are a gift.
I actually received a blessing from my bishop to celebrate according to the Roman rite on the 3rd Sunday of Lent, as it fell this year on the feast of St Gregory the Great, but I was unable to prepare the music, booklets, or servers in good time.
We wouldn't have used the Coverdale translation because our custom is to use contemporary language but for places that use older forms of English, it is difficult to imagine a better rendering.
That's perfect, Thank you so much, Jo
Was it done by Coverdale or by someone else in an imitation of the style of either Coverdale or one of the two Edwardian prayer books? What is it a translation of? And when? Coverdale died in his early eighties in 1569. By then he was in failing health. The Tridentine Mass wasn't finally promulgated until the next year, 1570 and was never promulgated in England.
Coverdale was also a committed reformer from the end of the 1520s and briefly Bishop of Exeter in the reign of Edward VI.
So, if it does derive from him, is it a translation of whatever was in use in Exeter before the 1549 BCP was promulgated, of whatever was used in Rome about the same time, something Coverdale would have been unlikely to have experienced, some sort of draft that might have been being aired at the Council of Trent sometime around 1560, or what?
Remember, Coverdale was a committed reformer.
I think I'd say "prayer books issued in the reign of Edward VI" - Edwardian has connotations very far removed from prayer books.
This is a bit of a tangent, but, if you and your bishop are Orthodox, is the version of the Roman Canon that you would use if you celebrated the Roman Rite altered in order to provide an Epiclesis more aligned with what Orthodox Eucharistic theology requires?
Being Western Orthodox rather than simply Western Rite within an Eastern Orthodox church, we aren't held bound by some the unusual insistences of the Eastern Orthodox hierarchies. One of them is that the Roman Canon as used in our communities that celebrate the Gregorian Liturgy regularly (mainly in North America) does not have a Byzantine or Gothic epiclesis inserted into it.
My understanding is that it is indeed the action of the Holy Spirit that consecrates the Holy Gifts but that the Roman Canon is of such antiquity that it took form before it became customary to express this doctrinal reality liturgically. In this form it was used prior to the Schism by countless saints with no question of its authenticity as a legitimate anaphora, and there doesn't appear to be any good reason to go tampering with it today.