Vestments controversy

The vestments controversy or vestarian controversy arose in the English Reformation, ostensibly concerning vestments or clerical dress. Initiated by John Hooper's rejection of clerical vestments in the Church of England under Edward VI as described by the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and 1550 ordinal, it was later revived under Elizabeth I. It revealed concerns within the Church of England over ecclesiastical identity, doctrine and church practices. The vestments controversy is also known as the vestiarian crisis or, especially in its Elizabethan manifestation, the edification crisis. The latter term arose from the debate over whether or not vestments, if they are deemed a "thing indifferent" (adiaphoron), should be tolerated if they are "edifying"—that is, beneficial. Their indifference and beneficial status were key points of disagreement. The term edification comes from 1 Corinthians 14:26, which reads in the 1535 Coverdale Bible: "How is it then brethren? Whan ye come together, euery one hath a psalme, hath doctryne, hath a tunge, hath a reuelacion, hath an interpretacion. Let all be done to edifyenge." As Norman Jones writes: "Edification became one of the chief duties of the supreme head or governor of the church of England [i.e. the monarch] and was enshrined in the laws which enforced Protestantism in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth. Combined with the belief that most of the externals of worship were adiaphora, the concept of edification justified and circumscribed the monarch's right to intervene in the church's affairs." In section 13 of the Act of Uniformity 1559, if acting on the advice of her commissioners for ecclesiastical causes or the metropolitan, the monarch had the authority "to ordeyne and publishe suche further Ceremonies or rites as maye bee most meet for the advancement of Goddes Glorye, the edifieing of his church and the due Reverance of Christes holye mistries and Sacramentes." John Hooper, having been exiled during King Henry's reign, returned to England in 1548 from the churches in Zürich that had been reformed by Zwingli and Bullinger in a highly iconoclastic fashion.