Synopsis: Anglicanism, from the time of King Henry VIII until well into the 18th century, was defined in part by a cult of monarchy; for much of that time, it was believed that the anointed monarch had the ability to miraculously cure certain diseases. One of these monarchs, King Charles I, who was martyred on 30 January 1649, later became the first commemorated Anglican saint. Yet his feast day, like our royalist heritage, has been forgotten. If Anglicanism is to find a way forward, it must come to terms with its past, and creatively reinscribe it into both its present and future. In this first section, I consider what it means that King Charles the Martyr has been forgotten.



Introduction

January 30 is the feast day of King Charles the Martyr, the first commemorated saint in the post-Reformation Church of England.  In the liturgy for his commemoration appended to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, it is written that although the king was “given up to the violent out-rages of wicked men”, “yet do we most gratefully commemorate the glories of thy grace, which then shined forth in thine Anointed, whom thou wert pleased, even at the hour of death, to endue with an eminent measure of exemplary patience, meekness, and charity, before the face of his cruel enemies” (663).  For almost two hundred years, in services of both morning and evening prayer, King Charles the Martyr was remembered in Anglican churches on January 30 as the preeminent exemplar of imitating Christ “even at the hour of death”.  Sadly, this is no longer the case; Anglicans today have almost entirely ceased to remember our first distinctly Anglican saint.  Such historical and hagiographical amnesia presents us, however, with an opportunity for theology to become creative again, remembering the past, reviving its memory, and reinscribing it into the present.

I. Remembering: Cultural and Political Anglicanism

In his excellent book The Anglican Spirit, Michael Ramsey, our 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, devotes a chapter to what he calls “Cultural and Political Anglicanism”.  Its position in the book is worth noting.  It immediately follows his chapter “Scripture, Antiquity, and Reason”, in which he discusses the development of Anglican theological method in the Reformation; it immediately precedes his chapter on the Oxford Movement.  In this 11-page chapter, Ramsey covers the period between the Restoration of 1660 and the Oxford Movement of 1833 “because we must be aware both of the influence of that setting upon it [i.e., Anglicanism] and of its influence upon that setting [i.e., England’s culture and politics]” (25).  The outcome of this two-fold influence is what Ramsey helpfully denotes “cultural and political Anglicanism”.  However, the real function of this chapter is to focus on the ways that church and state were bound up with one another during this period, so as to get on with the Oxford Movement and the development of Anglicanism as a Communion beyond and without the state.

For most Anglicans, such a telling of Anglican history probably seems standard, if not almost sacrosanct.  After all, the union of church and state under the monarch, so central to the Church of England from the time of King Henry VIII onward, is an embarrassment to most us today.  It offends our ecclesiology, which locates the Church in both the succession of bishops and the communion of these bishops with one another.  Perhaps more importantly (even if more subtly), it also offends our politics: monarchy is opposed to democracy, the latter of which is seen today as the sine qua non of all viable political order, and the true guardian of human rights (whether fairly or unfairly may, of course, be argued).  It is, at the very least, curious to reverently remember a particular monarch and to speak of those who put him to death as “wicked men” who were seized by “violent outrages”.  However, if we Anglicans are to recover our identity, a retrieval of such remembrance must be undertaken, even as it necessarily involves some sort of critical negotiation with the intervening history between the time of King Charles the Martyr’s commemoration and the present.

The question I pose is simple: can “cultural and political Anglicanism”, so clearly an identifiable period in our history, be consigned to a mere 11 pages that function primarily as a bridge between the catholic humanism of Richard Hooker and the nascent Anglo-Catholicism of the Oxford Movement?  This period of nearly 175 years saw the liturgical articulation of Anglican self-understanding through the annual commemoration services of King Charles the Martyr; this liturgical practice inspired poetry, devotion, and iconography, just as it grounded a particular social vision that was imbued with theological conviction.  The creative task of Anglican theology today is to reinscribe “cultural and political Anglicanism” back into Anglican memory and practice, preserving the past without confining us to it.  The most obvious place to begin such a task is with our first saint, King Charles the Martyr.

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