“I AM a historian,” was the definition claimed most continuously (and sometimes with a touch of mischief) by Gregory Dix to explain his diverse calling, which prolonged well beyond the confines of research and arcane texts.
As admirers and critics alike acknowledged, he was a tangle of talents and contradictions: a loyal priest; a monk dedicated to the Rule of St Benedict; a sensible pastor, teacher, and scholar; a gifted speaker with the capability to encourage and encourage huge gatherings; and, periodically, an intransigent cleric who clashed with those that questioned his scholarship, or resisted his unflagging determination to revive a correct Catholicity to the Church of England and its worship.
His close and distinguished friend of long standing, Kenneth Kirk — formerly Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, and, from 1937, Bishop of Oxford — described Dix as “essentially the most sensible man within the Church of England”. Detractors thought otherwise, pointing to the shortage of originality in his historical research, and a readiness to assert an excessive amount of on the premise of too little solid evidence.
To some, he was a papist, openly disdainful of Cranmer and the Prayer Books that bore his imprint. In his defence, Dix insisted that his overriding concern was to disclose what history disclosed concerning Christian worship from the earliest centuries, and make it each accessible and exciting for a large audience.
TO THE end of his life, Dix resisted the lure of Rome personally while eager for reunion. He continued to like the Church of his birth —– “this half-heretical, muddle-headed Church of England of ours” — and admired the sweetness and clarity of Cranmer’s writing, whilst he lamented its Evangelical insistence that the Lord’s Supper was unequivocally an act of remembrance and nothing more.
Always the historian, and in addition a son of the vicarage and a father steeped in Nineteenth- century Anglo-Catholicism, Dix yearned for the Church of England to rediscover its sacramental nature. He insisted that it was neither an establishment nor an organisation, but a living organism — a mystical and divine creation, with Christ the Living Bread made real within the eucharist and the lives of worshippers.
In articles, books, and addresses throughout the Thirties, he taught that the liturgy was, above all, a collective endeavour: a series of immersive actions that constituted an actualisation of past events. Often quoting or paraphrasing Augustine, he would remind readers and listeners that “the Lord willed to impart his Body and Blood . . . for the remission of sins. If you might have received well, you’re that which you might have received.”
IN 1945, Dix accomplished his most achieved work, The Shape of the Liturgy. Running to greater than 700 pages, it addresses the sweep of church history with a lightness of touch which illuminates the depth and power of its worshipping life through time. By turns intriguing, accessible, and provoking, it realised Dix’s ambition that as many individuals as possible should know more of the roots and riches of Christian liturgy and its meaning for a Christ-centred life in a world still afflicted by the grief and pity of war.
Early reviews of the book were greater than favourable. The Church Times called it “liturgy made thrilling”. Leading scholars, including Baptists and Methodists, expressed their gratitude; and John Robinson, then at Clare College, Cambridge (later to turn out to be Bishop of Woolwich), gave thanks for Dix’s “making the meaning of the eucharist clearer to us”. He had “lit a candle” that solid the eucharist in a recent light.
The book quickly became a set text for ordination training, and has never been out of print within the 80 years since its publication. Without query a piece of significant scholarship, it’s also an affidavit to Dix’s imagination, quiet devotion, and writing that is commonly lyrical and affecting.
Towards the tip of the book, as he acknowledges the Church’s exemplary obedience through many generations to Christ’s command “Do this”, he writes: “The sheer stupendous quantity of the love of God which this ever-repeated motion has drawn from the obscure Christian multitudes through the centuries is in itself an awesome thought. (All that going with one to the altar every morning!)”
OVERWHELMING indeed, but, to cement a fairly abstract thought within the mind of his readers, Dix goes further and provides a picture that, for a lot of, has proved unforgettable: “There is somewhat, ill-spelled, ill-carved, rustic epitaph of the fourth century from Asia Minor — ‘Here sleeps the blessed Chione who has found Jerusalem for she prayed much.’ Not one other word is thought of Chione. . . But how lovely if all that ought to survive after sixteen centuries were that one had prayed much. . . What did the Sunday eucharist in her village church every week mean to the blessed Chione — and to the hundreds of thousands like her then, and each yr since?”
This is only one instance wherein Dix’s spirituality, theology, and imagination mix for instance the efficacy of the eucharist disclosed within the obscurity of prosaic life.
THE Shape of the Liturgy added lustre to Dix’s fame, and more demands on his time. Configuring the work of scholarship and ecclesiastical politics with the lifetime of a priest and monk became increasingly difficult. In 1948, he was appointed Prior of Nashdom Abbey. While still desiring the soundness at the center of his calling, he was committed to long trips to the United States, where whirlwind speaking engagements raised large sums of cash to support St Gregory’s Benedictine Abbey in Michigan — an independent Anglican religious order that continues today, and owes its inspiration to the lifetime of the Nashdom community within the mid-Thirties. Lectures in Sweden, involving extensive travel, taxed his considerable resilience even further.
People got here to lean heavily on Dix, and his personal charm increased their expectations. His health began to fail, and, on 12 May 1951, on the early age of fifty, he died of cancer. He is commemorated by the Church of England on the anniversary of his death. Only 24 hours earlier, his mind had been lucid enough to recall authors and manuscripts of the Early Church, and to receive a penitent who wished to make his confession.
Obituaries praised Dix’s gifts and lamented his early demise. The Times portrayed him as “extreme”, but in addition acknowledged his “impish sense of humour and a streak of sheer naughtiness”. His endearing qualities aside, and considering his many and varied contributions to the Church, The Shape of the Liturgy constitutes his singular and most enduring legacy.
Canon Rod Garner is an Anglican priest, author, and theologian.
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