“I AM a historian,” was the definition claimed most frequently (and often with a touch of mischief) by Gregory Dix to describe his diverse calling, which extended well beyond the confines of research and arcane texts.
As admirers and critics alike acknowledged, he was a tangle of talents and contradictions: a devoted priest; a monk dedicated to the Rule of St Benedict; a wise pastor, teacher, and scholar; a gifted speaker with the capacity to encourage and inspire huge gatherings; and, periodically, an intransigent cleric who clashed with those who questioned his scholarship, or resisted his unflagging determination to restore a proper 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 “the most brilliant man in the Church of England”. Detractors thought differently, pointing to the lack of originality in his historical research, and a readiness to claim too much on the basis 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 reveal what history disclosed concerning Christian worship from the earliest centuries, and make it both accessible and exciting for a wide audience.
TO THE end of his life, Dix resisted the lure of Rome personally while longing for reunion. He continued to love the Church of his birth —– “this half-heretical, muddle-headed Church of England of ours” — and admired the beauty and clarity of Cranmer’s writing, even as he lamented its Evangelical insistence that the Lord’s Supper was unequivocally an act of remembrance and nothing more.
Always the historian, and also a son of the vicarage and a father steeped in 19th- century Anglo-Catholicism, Dix yearned for the Church of England to rediscover its sacramental nature. He insisted that it was neither an institution nor an organisation, but a living organism — a mystical and divine creation, with Christ the Living Bread made real in the eucharist and the lives of worshippers.
In articles, books, and addresses throughout the 1930s, 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 have received well, you are that which you have received.”
IN 1945, Dix completed his most accomplished work, The Shape of the Liturgy. Running to more 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 inspiring, it realised Dix’s ambition that as many people 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 more 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 become Bishop of Woolwich), gave thanks for Dix’s “making the meaning of the eucharist clearer to us”. He had “lit a candle” that cast the eucharist in a new light.
The book quickly became a set text for ordination training, and has never been out of print in the 80 years since its publication. Without question a work of serious scholarship, it is also a testimony to Dix’s imagination, quiet devotion, and writing that is often lyrical and affecting.
Towards the end 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 action has drawn from the obscure Christian multitudes through the centuries is in itself an overwhelming thought. (All that going with one to the altar every morning!)”
OVERWHELMING indeed, but, to cement a rather abstract thought in the mind of his readers, Dix goes further and provides an image that, for many, has proved unforgettable: “There is a little, 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 another word is known of Chione. . . But how lovely if all that should 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 millions like her then, and every year since?”
This is just one instance in which Dix’s spirituality, theology, and imagination combine to illustrate the efficacy of the eucharist disclosed in the obscurity of prosaic life.
THE Shape of the Liturgy added lustre to Dix’s reputation, and more demands on his time. Configuring the work of scholarship and ecclesiastical politics with the life of a priest and monk became increasingly difficult. In 1948, he was appointed Prior of Nashdom Abbey. While still desiring the stability at the heart of his calling, he was committed to long trips to the United States, where whirlwind speaking engagements raised large sums of money to support St Gregory’s Benedictine Abbey in Michigan — an independent Anglican religious order that continues today, and owes its inspiration to the life of the Nashdom community in the mid-1930s. Lectures in Sweden, involving extensive travel, taxed his considerable resilience even further.
People came to lean heavily on Dix, and his personal charm increased their expectations. His health began to fail, and, on 12 May 1951, at the early age of 50, 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 also acknowledged his “impish sense of humour and a streak of sheer naughtiness”. His endearing qualities aside, and taking into account 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, writer, and theologian.
