Biblos tēs Dēmosias Euchēs: Kai Yeleseōs Mystēriōn kai tōn Allōn Thesmōn kai Teletōn tēs Ekklēsias

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by The Church of England

Book of Common Prayer in Greek
BiblosTesDemosiasEuches1665TitlePage.jpg

Title page from Biblos tēs Dēmosias Euchēs, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.

Author Church of England
Editor {{{editor}}}
Translator James Duport
Published En tē Kantabrigia: Exetypōthē par' Iōannou Phieldou ...
Date 1665
Edition {{{edition}}}
Language Greek
Volumes {{{set}}} volume set
Pages [36], 126, [2]
Desc. 8vo. (17 cm.)
Location Shelf B-1
  [[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]
Title page for Psaltērion tou David, bound with Biblos tēs Dēmosias Euchēs.
The Book of Common Prayer is the liturgical book of the Anglican Church.[1] It was first compiled in 1549, after the English Reformation and the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church in Rome,[2] and was primarily the work of Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury.[3] Within one volume, the Book of Common Prayer set out "the forms of service for daily and Sunday worship… morning prayer, evening prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion ... the orders for baptism, confirmation, marriage, ‘prayers to be said with the sick’ and a funeral service."[4]


The Book of Common Prayer was altered significantly in 1552 in order to align it more definitively with Protestant traditions. Further revisions were made in 1559, 1604, and 1662.[5] Later proposals to alter it were unsuccessful, and the version used today is substantially similar to that of 1662.[6]

The influence of the Book of Common Prayer reaches beyond the Anglican Church: its prayers have been adapted by other Protestant denominations, and its marriage and burial rights are particularly well known.[7] It is the second most frequently cited book in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after the Bible.[8] Its influence on the English language is almost as great as that of the Authorized King James Bible and Shakespeare’s works.[9]

In 1665, James Duport, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, edited a verbatim Greek translation of the Book of Common Prayer, intended primarily for use in college and universities.[10] Duport (1606-1679) was a tutor at Trinity College for over thirty years, and was particularly known for taking on royalist students.[11] His other works included “a Homeric paraphrase of the book of Job,” and Homeri gnomologia, a collection of Homeric aphorisms annotated with quotations from the Bible and other texts.[12]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Liturgia Anglicana. Gr. 12mo." Thomas Jefferson inherited two copies from George Wythe. He gave one to his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph and kept one for himself. Jefferson later sold a copy to the Library of Congress in 1815. Wythe wrote a letter to John Norton on May 29, 1772 requesting a selection of books including "Common prayer in greek." All four of the [[George Wythe Collection sources ( George Wythe's Library[13] on LibraryThing and the Brown Bibliography[14] list the 1783 edition published in London, based on Millicent Sowerby's entry in Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson.[15] Unfortunately, Jefferson's copy no longer exists to verify the edition or Wythe's prior ownership.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Bound in contemporaneous full brown polished levant with gilt double ruled frame and tooled corners. Four raised bands and gilt tooling to spine and outer gilt dentelles. Includes the inscription "E libris J. Bishop E Coll: Reg: Oxon:" on the title page. Bound with: Psaltērion tou David. (En Kantabrigia: Etypothē par' Iōannou tou Fieldou, tou tēs Akadēmias typothetou, 1664).

View the record for this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

References

  1. ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. "Book of Common Prayer," accessed June 8, 2015.
  2. ↑ "The BCP Story," The Prayer Book Society, accessed June 8, 2015.
  3. ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. "Book of Common Prayer."
  4. ↑ "The BCP Story."
  5. ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. "Book of Common Prayer."
  6. ↑ Ibid.
  7. ↑ "The BCP Story."
  8. ↑ Ibid.
  9. ↑ Ibid.
  10. ↑ William Muss-Arnolt, "Chapter V: Latin and Greek Translations, II," in The Book of Common Prayer Among the Nations of the World (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1913).
  11. ↑ Rosemary O'Day, "Duport, James (1606-1679)" in Oxford English Dictionary of National Biography, accessed June 8, 2015.
  12. ↑ Ibid.
  13. ↑ LibraryThing, s.v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on November 19, 2013.
  14. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012, rev. May 2014) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433.
  15. ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 1:298 [no.632].
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