Sarum Rite - Revival

Revival

Many of the ornaments and ceremonial practices associated with the Sarum rite - though not the full liturgy itself - were revived in the Anglican Communion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as part of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement in the Church of England. Some Anglo-Catholics wanted to find a traditional formal liturgy that was characteristically "English" rather than "Roman", and they took advantage of the 'Ornaments Rubric' of 1559 which directed that English churches were to be furnished as they had been at the start of Edward VI's reign, which is to say, in Sarum fashion with few concessions to Protestant practice. However, there was a tendency to read back Victorian centralizing tendencies into mediaeval texts, and so a rather rubrical spirit was applied to liturgical discoveries. It was asserted, for instance, that Sarum had a well-developed series of colours of vestments for different feasts. Indeed, there may have been tendencies to use a particular colour for a particular feast (red, for instance, was used on Sundays, as in the Ambrosian rite), but most churches were simply too poor to have several sets of vestments, and so used what they had. There was considerable variation from diocese to diocese, or even church to church, in the details of the rubrics: the place where the Epistle was sung, for instance, varied enormously; from a lectern at the altar, from a lectern in the quire, to the feature described as the 'pulpitum', a word used ambiguously for the place of reading (a pulpit) or for the rood screen. This has led many to believe that the readings were proclaimed from atop the rood screen, something most unlikely given the tiny access doors to the rood loft in most churches which would never have permitted dignified access for a vested Gospel procession.

Chief among the proponents of Sarum customs was the Anglican priest Percy Dearmer, who put these into practice (according to his own interpretation) at his parish of St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill, in London, and explained them at length in The Parson's Handbook, which ran through several editions. This style of worship has been retained in some present-day Anglican churches and monastic institutions, where it is known as "English Use" (Dearmer's term) or "Prayer Book Catholicism".

The Sarum Mass has occasionally been celebrated within the Roman Catholic Church. A brief resurgence of interest in the 19th century did not lead to a revival. Sarum Masses were organised by the Oxford University Newman Society for the celebration of the Feast of the Translation of St Frideswide on 10 February 1996, and for Candlemas at the Anglican chapel of Merton College in 1997. In April 2000 Mario Joseph Conti, then Bishop of Aberdeen, celebrated a Sarum Mass in King's College Chapel at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the quincentenary of the pre-Reformation founding of the chapel by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen. That Aberdeen never celebrated according to Sarum, but had its own use, did not deter the organisers.

The Sarum Use has been revived in the Eastern Orthodox Church among a number of communities, including a large number of Western rite parishes and missions of the Old Calendarist Holy Synod of Milan; it is also used, in significantly adapted form, by Western Rite members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, including Saint Petroc Monastery and its missions.