Resources

Abstract of Project: "Reading the Homilies as Liturgical Act, Canonical Construct, and Homiletic Discourse," by Brian T. Hartley

Wolterstorff Seminar: "The Arts, Aesthetic Theory, and the Practice of Christian Worship," Summer, 2002

            The opening "Admonition to all Ministers Ecclesiastical" makes quite clear that the Elizabethan Homilies of 1563 are embedded in three very important, yet different, contexts.  First, they were meant to be read during a regular service of public worship (though it was left to the minister's discretion whether to divide the reading into two parts, the first in the morning and the second in the afternoon service).  That is, the primary purpose of these homilies was not for private reading or even for separate private catechetical instruction.  They were intentionally designed to be integrated into the regular service of worship and, as such, they partook in the normal rhythms of liturgical action.  Second, though they do not appear to have been constructed to be read seriatim, they were, of necessity, printed in a particular order.  Based on the opening table, then, the question arises regarding the logic of that order and the relationship of the various homilies to one another.  Finally, as one begins to read the Homilies, it is apparent that they function within what one might call a particular "vision of meaning," and beckon their hearers to live out their lives as an embodiment of this universe created entirely by homiletic discourse.  Though that "universe of meaning" may not be explicitly stated, it is, at least, implicitly acknowledged by the rhetorical pathos as well as the use of similar symbols and imagery from homily to homily.

            This project stands as chapter four in a larger dissertation project entitled, "Narratio Reformationis: The Elizabethan Homilies of 1563 and the Problem of Authority in the Ecclesia Anglicana," which was completed May 15, 2004 at Saint Louis University.  The first section lays out how a homily might be heard and understood in a service of worship and asks how it functions liturgically in general, and, more specifically, in the Elizabethan church.  The second section draws on the resources of developments in canonical criticism and provides a framework for understanding how "canon" serves as a means for providing and shaping spiritual formation.  And, finally, the third section looks at the question of the construction of a worldview shaped by homiletic discourse.  Together, these three sections provide a series of lenses by which to read and interpret the twenty homilies ordered to be read by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, and which were given specific authority in the Church of England by Article 35 of the Thirty-Nine Articles.