Summary
The Alcuin Club is an Anglican organization seeking to preserve or restore church ceremony, arrangement, ornament, and practice in an orthodox manner.
The organization was founded in 1897 and named after Alcuin of York.[1] It was a reorganization of an earlier group, the Society of St. Osmund, which was formed in 1889.[2] The Alcuin Club's first publication, English Altars by W. H. St. John Hope, appeared in 1899. The club is dedicated to the Book of Common Prayer and conformity to its exact rubric.
The club's publications were read by ecclesiastical scholars, not a popular audience. In order to reach a broader audience, the Anglican priest Percy Dearmer and later faculty member of King’s College for sacred art, worked to spread the club's message. He sought to win artists and craftsmen with genuinely high aesthetic standards for liturgical work in churches and chapels.[3]
The club was active in the debate over the rewriting of the Book of Common Prayer in the 1920s.[4] Its influence faded somewhat after the first part of the century and it is now dedicated to studying ceremony of all Christian churches. The club's members are active in the liturgical researches of the Anglican churches. The club has members in the United Kingdom and many in the United States.
The Alcuin Club selects works on liturgy and ceremony and hagiography every year to include in its collections.
See also edit
- E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley
- Edward C. Ratcliff
- Warham Guild
- Alcuin Society, an organisation for the book arts in Canada
References edit
- ^ Historical Dictionary of Anglicanism, p. 25
- ^ Alcuin Club, Notes and Queries S9–11(44)
- ^ Middleton, Arthur Pierce (1988). New wine in old skins: liturgical change and the setting of worship. Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow. p. 21.
- ^ A Survey of the Proposals for the Alternative Prayer Book From the Alcuin Club - 1923 & 1924, Society of Archbishop Justus
External links edit
- Official website
- Selected bibliography from Project Canterbury
