The Church Handy Dictionary

Step inside the mind of Victorian Anglicanism. This 1890 dictionary reveals how the Church of England understood itself at the height of its cultural power: every liturgical term, every sacramental definition, every ecclesiastical nuance rendered in the precise language of the era. Here are the definitions that Victorian clergymen taught to Sunday school children, that laity consulted before communion, that shaped how a generation encountered the sacred. The entries on Altar, Baptism, and Absolution do more than define, they preserve a worldview, a way of ordering the divine. Dedicated to the Bishop of Lincoln, compiled from multiple sources but unified by unmistakable Anglican perspective, this is not merely a reference work but a monument to a particular moment in English religious life. For historians of religion, for Anglican practitioners curious about their tradition's past, for anyone fascinated by the Victorians' earnest attempt to render the ineffable into precise terminology, this dictionary offers an unparalleled window into a world where faith and language were inseparable.