Esperanto is probably the most widely known invented language, spoken by perhaps a million people worldwide. It was developed in the late 1800's as a means of communication among people of differing cultures and native languages and thus a way of fostering world peace. Esperanto gained its widest popularity in the early 1900's, which was when this translation was made. It is a translation of the English 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and was published in five parts, of which this is the first — thus the limited number of services presented here. Like all translations of the 1662 BCP, it was not officially authorized and appears to have been made by a Church group interested in Esperanto. Esperanto contains several characters not part of the standard ASCII character set: c, g, h, j, s circumflex, and u breve (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ). If you use a particularly old browser, these may not display correctly.