A visitor comments,
The Liber Precum Publicarum appeared in 1560. It wasn't really a translation of the 1559 Prayer Book, or only in part. It contained things (like a kind of "Requiem Communion Service") that were not in that book at all, and in some cases (such as the formula for a declaration of forgiveness of sins in the Communion Service, which far from being a translation of that of 1559 was actually a Latin translation of that in the 1548 "Order of Communion," which was the Catholic formula of absolution) things contradicting it.
This can be found on line
here. The visitor refers me to a fascinating
1856 reprise of a controversy from the late 1500s regarding a rumor that Pope Pius IV would approve the use of this prayer book, provided Elizabeth would recognize his primacy. The thrust of the 1856 reprise was that the rumor was circulated by Jesuit agents about 1581 for the purpose of sowing dissension. (Sounds a lot like more recent Russian bots to me.)
Those writers, who have made the assertion on Ware's authority, have utterly mistaken their author; for he mentions the rumour for the purpose of refuting it. The whole was a trick of the missionary priests, in order to produce divisions in the English Church. On such slender grounds does the assertion rest: and yet we find it repeated by one writer after another, until many persons actually receive the statement as an undoubted fact.
The 1856 summary of the controversy concludes,
It is, of course, a matter of small moment to a member of the Church of England, whether the Bishop of Rome recognised our Orders, and approved our Liturgy, or no; but should any of your readers be curious in the matter, they may see the pros and cons in Courayer's Defence of the Dissertation on the Validity of the English Ordinations, vol. ii. pp. 359-378.
A modern observer of the 1856 controversy concludes,
It is clearly all rumour and hearsay, and the most probable motive for
it, if there was a motive and it was not simply accidental (which is the
most likely), is that it was used as a wedge issue to divide Catholics.
That would fit with the actual appearance of the rumour in the
historical record, which was perhaps in the 1580s, when the regime felt
the need to counter the impact of the Jesuits and seminary priests.
What this suggests to me is the general level of uncertainty, sorta-kinda, and ultimately duplicity that seems to surface in any serious inquiry into what "Anglicanism" consists of. Isn't this what the "Anglican patrimony" is, especially since those who celebrate it seem otherwise unable to define it with any greater precision?
