THE EPISCOPAL NEW YORKER

The Church Year: John Mason Neale

By the Rev. Timothy E. Schenck

Imagine the Palm Sunday procession without “All glory, laud, and honor.” Envision Good Friday devoid of “Sing my tongue the glorious battle.”

Without John Mason Neale, Anglican hymnody and liturgy would be much impoverished. Indeed, The Hymnal 1982 would be unrecognizable. While Neale composed nary a tune, his contribution as translator of ancient Latin and Greek texts is unparalleled. Neale is responsible for 27 texts covering 45 tunes. That’s a remarkable 45 hymns we wouldn’t have access to without Neale’s dedication and scholarship. No one else approaches this level of contribution; not Charles Wesley, not Isaac Watts, not F. Bland Tucker.

But of course, Neale’s motivation wasn’t to see his name cited in a hymnal index. His intentions were driven by the desire to recapture the lost texts and theology of the early Church fathers. One consequence of the English Reformation was the singing of hymns in the vernacular. Unfortunately few had been adequately translated into English, leaving many classic texts unavailable to worshippers.

Neale’s own words in The Christian Remembrancer highlight the dilemma:
Among the most pressing of the inconveniences consequent on the adoption of the vernacular language in the office-books of the Reformation, must be reckoned the immediate disuse of all the hymns of the Western Church. That treasury, into which the saints of every age and country had poured their contributions, delighting, each in his generation, to express their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, in language which would be the heritage of their Holy Mother until the end of time — those noble hymns, which had solaced anchorites on their mountains, monks in their cells, priests in bearing up against the burden and heat of the day, missionaries in girding themselves for martyrdom — henceforth became as a sealed book and as a dead letter.

Without Neale’s translating work, many ancient texts would have remained in liturgical purgatory, incapable of proclamation by the faithful. Neale translated hymns from a variety of sources including Ambrose of Milan, John of Damascus, The Venerable Bede, Bernard of Cluny, as well as many unattributed Latin and Greek texts. The texts have been set to the music of, among others, Franz Joseph Haydn, Henry Purcell, William Henry Monk and various modes of plainsong.

In addition, Neale did compose several hymn texts of his own. The Hymnal 1940 contained six of his original compositions. While better known for the poetry of his translations, Neale wrote the lyrics for two popular Christmas hymns, “Good King Wenceslas” and “Good Christian Men, Rejoice.”

Though Neale’s academic work is integral to modern liturgy, this was not his sole contribution to church life. He is identified with the 19th-century catholic revival known as the Oxford Movement. Though ordained a priest in 1842, Neale’s poor health precluded him from parish ministry. Rather, he served in an academic post as Warden of Sackville College in East Grinstead. This allowed him ample time to pursue scholarly endeavors.

He and a few friends founded the Cambridge Camden Society, which addressed the poor condition of many English church buildings. And while at Sackville College, Neale encountered the poverty of the nearby village residents. In response to this, Neale in 1855 founded and served as pastor, confessor and administrator for the Society of St. Margaret, one of the first Anglican sisterhoods.

Throughout his life and ministry in the Church, Neale was never adequately rewarded or recognized for his contributions. His high churchmanship and “Romish ways” left him marginalized and excluded from many official Church circles. Neale’s convictions in the passionate conflicts over liturgy and theology stemming from the Oxford Movement were controversial. Perhaps this explains the collect for his feast day on August 7: “Following the example of your servant John Mason Neale, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear.”

When he died in 1866 at the age of 42, Neale could never have envisioned his impact upon Anglican hymnody. Less his contribution to the Church, our liturgical and musical tradition would be diminished.

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