Ceremonial Use of Lights - Anglican Usage

Anglican Usage

In the Church of England the practice has been less consistent. The first Book of Common Prayer directed two lights to be placed on the altar. This direction was omitted in the second Prayer-book; but the Ornaments Rubric of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book again made them obligatory. The question of how far this did so is a much-disputed one and is connected with the whole problem of the meaning and scope of the rubric. Uncertainty reigns with regard to the actual usage of the Church of England from the Reformation onwards. Lighted candles certainly continued to burn in Queen Elizabeth's chapel, to the scandal of Protestant zealots. They also seem to have been retained in certain cathedral and collegiate churches. There is, however, no mention of ceremonial candles in the detailed account of the services of the Church of England given by William Harrison (Description of England, 1570). They seem never to have been illegal under the Acts of Uniformity. The use of wax lights and tapers formed one of the indictments brought by Peter Smart, a Puritan prebendary of Durham, against Dr. Burgoyne, John Cosin and others for setting up superstitious ceremonies in the cathedral contrary to the Act of Uniformity. The indictments were dismissed in 1628 by Sir James Whitelocke, chief justice of Chester and a judge of the Kings Bench, and in 1629 by Sir Henry Yelverton, a judge of Common Pleas and himself a strong Puritan.

The use of ceremonial lights was among the indictments in the impeachment of Laud and other bishops by the House of Commons, but these were not based on the Act of Uniformity. From the Restoration onwards the use of ceremonial lights, though far from universal, was usual again in cathedrals and collegiate churches.

It was not, however, until the Oxford Movement of the 19th century that their use was widely extended in parish churches. The growing custom met with some opposition; the law was appealed to, and in 1872 the Privy Council declared altar lights to be illegal (Martin v. Mackonochie). This judgment, founded as was afterwards admitted on insufficient knowledge, produced no effect. In the absence of any authoritative negative pronouncement, churches returned to practically the whole ceremonial use of lights as practised in the Roman Catholic Church.

The matter was again raised in the case of Read and others v. the Bishop of Lincoln, one of the counts of the indictment being that the bishop had, during the celebration of Holy Communion, allowed two candles to be alight on a shelf or retable behind the communion table when they were not necessary for giving light. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose court the case was heard (1889), decided that the mere presence of two candles on the table, burning during the service but lit before it began, was lawful under the first Prayer-Book of Edward VI. and had never been made unlawful. On the case being appealed to the Privy Council, this particular indictment was dismissed on the ground that the vicar, not the bishop, was responsible for the presence of the lights.

The custom of placing lighted candles round the bodies of the dead, especially when lying in state, has never wholly died out in the Anglican communion. In the 18th century, moreover, it was still customary in England to accompany a funeral with lighted tapers. A contemporary illustration shows a funeral cortege preceded and accompanied by boys, each carrying four lighted candles in a branched candlestick. The usage in this respect in Anglo-Catholic churches is a revival of pre-Reformation ceremonial as is found in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the Church of Ireland, a branch of Anglicanism that is both Catholic and Apostolic in origins and in the closest historical and doctrinal communion with the younger Church of England, but with a more generally robust middle- to low-church tradition in ritual, the use of candles and lanterns of all kinds is canonically forbidden except for the specific purpose of "giving light" during services. This conforms to that Church's similar abjuring of, for example, incense, all but rather simple clerical vestments, mitres, eucharistic wafers, the Reserved Sacrament and the elevation of the sacred elements in the Eucharist.