page_title: Ritualism in the Church of England
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Ritualism in the Church of England / Ritualist controversies in the 19th century / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: A "fiddleback" chasuble from the church of Saint Gertrude in Maarheeze in the Netherlands Made it myself
context_page_description: Ritualism, in the history of Christianity, refers to an emphasis on the rituals and liturgical ceremony of the church, in particular of Holy Communion.
  In the Anglican church in the 19th century, the role of ritual became a contentious matter. The debate over ritual was also associated with struggles between High Church and Low Church movements.
context_section_description: The development of ritualism in the Church of England was mainly associated with what is commonly called "second generation" Anglo-Catholicism, i.e. the Oxford Movement as it developed after 1845 when John Henry Newman left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic. Some scholars argued that it was almost inevitable that some of the leaders of Anglo-Catholicism turned their attentions to questions of liturgy and ritual and started to champion the use of practices and forms of worship more commonly associated with Roman Catholicism. There was only limited enthusiasm amongst ritualists to introduce the widespread use of Latin in the liturgy.
  The leaders of the first generation of the Anglo-Catholic revival or Oxford Movement (e.g. Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and John Keble) had been primarily concerned with theological and ecclesiological questions and had little concern with questions of ritual. They championed the view that the fundamental identity of the Church of England was Catholic rather than Protestant.  They had argued that Anglicans were bound by obedience to the use of the Book of Common Prayer. "Tract 3" of the Tracts for the Times series had strenuously argued against any revision of the Book of Common Prayer, viewing its use as a matter of absolute obligation. Even Tract 90, which analysed the 39 Articles, was more concerned with the theological dimension of the issue. It gave little attention to the question of altering current liturgical practice in the Church of England.
  The ecclesiological questions gave rise to an interest in giving liturgical expression to the theological conviction that the Church of England had sustained a fundamentally Catholic character after the English Reformation. In some circles, the shift of focus to the question of liturgy proved as provocative as had been the theological assertions of the first generation of Anglo-Catholicism.
  The clearest illustration of the shift that took place within Anglo-Catholicism from theological to liturgical questions is to be found in Pusey's attitude towards ritualism. Pusey, the only pre-eminent first-generation leader of Anglo-Catholicism to survive into the second generation, had no sympathy with the preoccupation with ritual. However, when priests started to be prosecuted and imprisoned as a result of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, Pusey was quick to show his support for those who were prosecuted.
caption: A "fiddleback" chasuble, the use of which by a priest could lead to prosecution
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