The Vicar of Chippenham

Christopher Haigh

  • Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy
    Oxford, 641 pp, £25.00, May 1998, ISBN 0 19 820168 0

For most of us, rites of passage are chaotic family events, with crying babies, cranky children, bored teenagers, tipsy fathers and complaining grandmothers – an excuse for a party, a reception or a wake. For the clergy, however, ritual is a serious business. They want their ceremonies to be tidy, dignified and meaningful – no photographs in church, no confetti in the churchyard. They prefer not to christen the babies of non-churchgoers, nor to heap hypocrisies on the coffins of people they have never known.

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