BCP Reference · Annotated Sources
Sources of the Litany
Tracing each part of the General Supplication to its historical origin
Cranmer composed the Litany in 1544, at the request of Henry VIII, who wanted a great corporate intercession in English to be sung in procession in time of war. Cranmer worked principally from the Roman Litany of the Saints as it stood in the Sarum Use — the form used both for the Lenten Rogation processions and at the bedside of the dying — replacing the long Latin invocations of the saints with a fourfold invocation of the Holy Trinity, and drawing also on Martin Luther’s Litany of 1529 for several of the obsecrations and supplications. The form was lightly amended in 1559 under Elizabeth, refined again in 1604 and 1662, and brought to its present shape at the Restoration.
The Litany of 1544 thus has a peculiar place in the history of Anglican prayer. It is the first liturgical composition of the English Reformation, written before the Book of Common Prayer existed; and it was already shaped, in its language and its rhythm, by the qualities that would mark Cranmer’s great work of 1549 — the long periodic sentences, the doubled and tripled epithets, the cadences that fall to a steady end. To pray the Litany is to pray with English Reformation prose at its earliest and best.
The page is organised by the Litany’s traditional structural divisions: the Invocations to the Trinity; the Deprecations (“From all evil…”) and Obsecrations (“By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation…”); the long Intercessions (“That it may please thee…”); the final cluster of invocations to the Son of God and the Lamb of God; and the closing Versicles, Psalm-anthem, and Prayers.
I.The Invocations to the Trinity
The Litany opens with a fourfold address — to the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the whole Trinity — each followed by the people’s response, “have mercy upon us miserable sinners.” This Trinitarian opening replaced the much longer Latin invocation of the saints which stood in the Roman and Sarum forms.
-
The Fourfold Invocation
“O God the Father of heaven: have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O God the Son, Redeemer of the world: have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son: have mercy upon us miserable sinners. O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God: have mercy upon us miserable sinners.”
Each invocation is sung or said by the Priest and answered in full by the people. The structure — address to each Person of the Godhead, then to the whole Trinity — is a Reformation simplification of the Roman Litany of the Saints, in which similar invocations to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost stood at the head of a long catalogue of saints invoked by name.
II.The Deprecations
From the Trinity’s mercy the Litany turns to the catalogue of evils from which the Church asks deliverance — sin, blindness of heart, plague, sudden death, false doctrine, and rebellion. Each petition is answered by the people, “Good Lord, deliver us.” The body of deprecations is Cranmer’s 1544 work; one petition was added at the Restoration.
-
The Body of the Deprecations
“Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.” Followed by the deprecations proper:
“From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil; from thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation; From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness; From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil; From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us.”
-
From Sedition, Privy Conspiracy, and Rebellion
“From all sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and Commandment, Good Lord, deliver us.”
Added in the Restoration revision of 1662, in the wake of the Civil War, the Interregnum, and the religious upheavals of the previous quarter-century. The petition gives the deprecations a distinctly seventeenth-century English voice while preserving the older medieval rhythm.
III.The Obsecrations
Where the deprecations name the evils to be delivered from, the obsecrations name the holy mysteries by which deliverance is asked. The body of obsecrations — addressing the great events of the life of Christ — is Cranmer’s adaptation of the Roman form. One petition is drawn from Luther’s Litany of 1529.
-
By the Holy Mysteries of Christ
“By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us. By thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us.”
The obsecrations rehearse the entire arc of the Incarnation as a single ground of intercession — not a remembering merely, but a pleading of the events of Christ’s life as the basis of the Church’s prayer.
-
In All Time of Our Tribulation
“In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgement, Good Lord, deliver us.”
Drawn from Martin Luther’s Litany of 1529, which Cranmer consulted alongside the Roman form when composing the English Litany. The petition gathers the four great occasions of human extremity — suffering, prosperity, death, and the Last Judgement — into a single supplication.
IV.The Intercessions
The longest section of the Litany is the great body of intercessions: a catalogue of petitions for the Church, the State, the suffering, the afflicted, the enemies of the Gospel, and the fruitfulness of the earth, each beginning “That it may please thee…” and answered by the people, “We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.” The bidding (“We sinners do beseech thee…”) was settled in 1559, and the body of intercessions has been added to in three layers: 1544 (Cranmer), 1559 (Elizabethan), and 1662 (Restoration).
-
The Bidding
“We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to rule and govern thy holy Church universal in the right way: We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”
The opening bidding which gathers the people into the long sequence of petitions that follow, set in its present form in the Elizabethan revision of 1559.
-
For the Sovereign / President
“That it may please thee to keep and strengthen in the true worshipping of thee, in righteousness and holiness of life, thy Servant N., our most gracious King and Governor.” Followed by a series of further petitions for the Sovereign — that he may rule his heart in faith, fear, and love; that he may be defended against his enemies; for the Royal Family.
In the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer the petition is for the President of the United States, all in civil authority, and the people of the land.
-
For Bishops, Priests, and Deacons
“That it may please thee to illuminate all Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, with true knowledge and understanding of thy Word; and that both by their preaching and living they may set it forth, and shew it accordingly.”
Added at the Restoration in 1662. Earlier forms of the Litany prayed for Bishops and pastors in less specified terms; the threefold ordering of orders is here written into the prayer.
-
For Counsellors, Magistrates, and the Whole People
A series of petitions for the Lords of the Council and all the Nobility; for the Magistrates, that they may execute justice and maintain truth; for the bodies of believers, that all may be kept; and for the nations, that they may be given unity, peace, and concord. The petitions move outward from the gathered congregation into the body of the commonwealth and the company of the nations.
-
For Truth in Doctrine and the Strengthening of the Weak
“That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth all such as have erred, and are deceived; That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet.”
-
For All in Affliction
“That it may please thee to succour, help, and comfort, all that are in danger, necessity, and tribulation.” Followed by petitions for travellers; for women in childbirth; for the sick; for prisoners and captives; for the fatherless, the widows, and the desolate.
The phrasing “to succour, help, and comfort” descends ultimately from the great intercessions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom — one of the few places in the Litany where Cranmer drew on a specifically Eastern source.
-
For Our Enemies, Persecutors, and Slanderers
“That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts.”
The petition is of Anglo-Saxon liturgical origin and was preserved through the medieval English uses into Cranmer’s Litany. The verb turn their hearts — older than the Norman Conquest in English liturgical prayer — carries the weight of the Sermon on the Mount: not only forgiveness, but the conversion of the enemy.
-
For the Kindly Fruits of the Earth
“That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them.”
A petition found in both the Sarum Use and Martin Luther’s Litany of 1529; Cranmer drew the two together in his English form. The phrase “kindly fruits” — kindly in its older sense of according to kind, natural — reaches back into Middle English liturgical vocabulary.
-
For True Repentance
“That it may please thee to give us true repentance; to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances; and to endue us with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, to amend our lives according to thy holy Word.”
One of the few petitions in this section that is identifiably Cranmer’s own composition rather than a translation. It carries the doubled-and-tripled cadence (“sins, negligences, and ignorances”) that became one of the marks of his liturgical English.
V.The Final Invocations
After the long body of intercessions the Litany returns to direct address — to the Son of God, to the Lamb of God, to Christ — and concludes with the threefold Kyrie. The “Son of God” petition is from Sarum; the two “Lamb of God” petitions, while not in Sarum, are found in other medieval English uses.
-
Son of God, We Beseech Thee to Hear Us
“Son of God: we beseech thee to hear us. Son of God: we beseech thee to hear us.”
The petition addresses the Son directly, as Christ — not under a title or by a mystery, but by his eternal generation from the Father.
-
O Lamb of God
“O Lamb of God: that takest away the sins of the world; Grant us thy peace. O Lamb of God: that takest away the sins of the world; Have mercy upon us.”
The Agnus Dei in twofold form. Though absent from the Sarum Litany, the form is preserved in other medieval English uses, and so came naturally to Cranmer’s hand in 1544.
-
O Christ, Hear Us · Kyrie eleison
“O Christ, hear us. O Christ, hear us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us.”
The threefold Kyrie which closes the body of the Litany — the same Greek-language acclamation of mercy that stands in Morning and Evening Prayer, here in its older threefold form.
VI.The Lord’s Prayer, Versicles, and Closing Prayers
The Litany closes with the Lord’s Prayer, a sequence of versicles drawn variously from Prime, Compline, and the Psalter, a Supplication adapted from Luther, and three of the same final prayers as Morning and Evening Prayer.
-
The Lord’s Prayer in the Litany
“Our Father, which art in heaven…” Said by Priest and people together, after the Kyrie. The placement — the Lord’s Prayer at the close of a long intercession — is of considerable medieval antiquity, and is preserved here without significant alteration.
-
The Versicles after the Lord’s Prayer
“Priest. O Lord, deal not with us after our sins. Answer. Neither reward us after our iniquities.”
A versicle and answer from Psalm 103, set here as an immediate response to the Lord’s Prayer.
-
The Supplication: O God, Merciful Father
“O God, merciful Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful; Mercifully assist our prayers that we make before thee in all our troubles and adversities…”
A long supplication adapted from Martin Luther’s Litany. The classical name of this prayer in liturgical commentary — the Supplication — identifies it as the formal asking-prayer that gives the Litany its character of corporate plea.
-
The Psalm-Anthem and Versicles
“O God, we have heard with our ears, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that thou didst in their days, and in the old time before them. O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thine honour.”
A passage of Psalm 44 with an old anthem-response. The series of versicles that follows — “From our enemies defend us, O Christ; Graciously look upon our afflictions; Pitifully behold the sorrows of our hearts…” — was originally a special intercession in time of war, sung by the choir as a single composition. It is from this military origin that the Litany itself first emerged in 1544.
-
The Sacerdotal Versicle
“Priest. O Lord, let thy mercy be shewed upon us. Answer. As we do put our trust in thee.”
A versicle pair drawn from the medieval Hours of Prime and Compline. Until 1662 the rubric marked it explicitly as The Versicle and The Answer, in keeping with the older monastic notation.
-
We Humbly Beseech Thee, O Father
“We humbly beseech thee, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities; and for the glory of thy Name turn from us all those evils that we most righteously have deserved…”
The principal collect of the Litany’s close. Drawn into the 1549 Book from the medieval English Litany used on the last Rogation Day, the Wednesday before Ascension — the day on which the Litany was sung in procession through the parish bounds.
-
A Prayer of St. Chrysostom
“Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee…” The same prayer that closes Morning and Evening Prayer.
For its source see Sources of Morning Prayer.
-
The Grace
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.”
The Apostle’s threefold blessing closes the Litany as it closes Morning and Evening Prayer. With it the great intercession is sealed and the assembly returned to its life. Here endeth the Litany.
The Litany’s peculiar character among the great Anglican forms of prayer is that it was composed for procession, not for sitting in a pew. Cranmer’s 1544 form was sung as the people walked — through the streets, around the parish bounds, in time of war or pestilence — one voice leading, all voices answering. To pray it now in church is to take part in something that has at its very root a body in motion, asking deliverance step by step. Its long catalogue of petitions has the rhythm of feet on a road; its Trinitarian opening and Christological close mark the road’s beginning and end.