Gregory Dix

The Reverend Dom Gregory Dix Order of St Benedict
Prior of Nashdom Abbey
Portrait of Dom Gregory Dix
In office	1948 to 1952
Orders
Ordination	1925 (priest)
Personal details
Born	4 October 1901 London, England
Died	12 May 1952(1952-05-12) (aged 50) England
Nationality	British
Denomination	Anglicanism
Education	Westminster School
Alma mater	Merton College, Oxford
Sainthood
Feast day	12 May
Venerated in	Church of England

Gregory Dix, OSB (born George Eglinton Alston Dix; 4 October 1901 – 12 May 1952) was an English monk and priest of Nashdom Abbey, an Anglican Benedictine community. He was a noted liturgical scholar whose work had particular influence on the reform of Anglican liturgy in the mid-20th century.

Dix was born in Woolwich, south London. He was the son of a schoolmaster who became a priest and served as the first principal of the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea. He was educated at Westminster School and became an exhibitioner at Merton College, Oxford. His modest degree did not reflect his real ability and from 1924 to 1926 he was appointed lecturer in modern history at Keble College, Oxford while studying at Wells Theological College. He was ordained priest in 1925. He entered Nashdom the following year and was sent to the Gold Coast as a novice until his health broke down in 1929.

Returning to Nashdom he became an intern oblate and took his final vows only in 1940. During the Second World War he lived for a while in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire and looked after the Anglo-Catholic daughter church of St Michael whilst his brother Ronald, who was the priest there, served as a military chaplain. With another monk he lived in the parsonage, kept the round of monastic offices and cared for the parish. On his return to Nashdom he was succeeded in Beaconsfield by Dom Augustine Morris, who was to become Abbot of Nashdom in 1948. Dix was elected to the Southern Convocation in 1945 and prior of his abbey in 1948.

As a scholar, Dix worked primarily in the field of liturgical studies. He produced an edition of the Apostolic Tradition in 1935. In The Shape of the Liturgy, first published in 1945, he argued that it was not so much the words of the liturgy but its "shape" which mattered. His study of the liturgy's historical development led him to formulate what he called the Four Action Shape of the Liturgy: Offertory, Consecration, Fraction, Communion. Dix's work then influenced liturgical revision in the Anglican Communion. More recent scholars, however, have criticised it as lacking historical accuracy. Dix's conclusion that "Cranmer in his eucharistic doctrine was a devout and theologically founded Zwinglian, and that his Prayer Books were exactly framed to express his convictions.", also proved controversial.