'Dost assure us thereby': Adolph Tidemand's paintings of the Lord's Supper administered to the dying
They provide us with significant insights into magisterial Protestant piety. This is particularly evident in an important detail in the paintings. In both cases - and this, I think, must surely be Tidemand's informed intention - they portray the chalice being administered to the dying. This expresses the importance to the magisterial Protestant traditions of communion in both kinds: in the words of the Augsburg Confession, "To the laity are given Both Kinds in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, because this usage has the commandment of the Lord".
The minister of the Sacrament is the prester, Norwegian for 'priest'. This is a reminder that it was not the Church of England alone at the Reformation which retained this term for the ordained minister: it was also retained by the Lutheran churches of the Scandinavian kingdoms. Indeed, the term priest can be found in use in some central European Reformation churches, such as the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren. In other words, the word 'priest' is not alien to the Churches of the Reformation. Its use by the reformed Church of England can only be deemed as somehow indicative of 'unreformed' thought and practices if we fail to look across the North Sea, to the Churches of the Lutheran kingdoms.
The prester in both paintings is wearing the distinctive samarie and white ruff. In an unfortunate case of progressive dislike of particular traditions, the Church of Norway abandoned this vesture in 1981. Seeing it in Tidemand's paintings, however, points us to how a range of vesture was found amongst the Churches of the Reformation. The samarie and white ruff was as distinctive as the surplice of the Church of England parish priest. At the same time, it also had similarities with the black gown of the Reformed tradition. Mindful that both painting by Tidemand date to the 1860s, it was still the case in that decade that there were clergy of the United Church of England and Ireland who maintained the traditional practice of preaching in the black gown. Trollope, in his 1856 novel Barchester Towers, reflects this when he notes of the high church clergy of Barchester, "They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them".
These paintings, therefore, can be used to illustrate both what was shared in magisterial Protestant piety across confessions and kingdoms, and how a diversity of practices and orders, taking root in various kingdoms, gave expression to what we might term, using a phrase from Burke, "a sense of habitual native dignity". Indeed, this is a key aspect of Tidemand's work, as he joyfully captured the life and particularities of Den norske kirk.
What of the specific rite portrayed by Tidemand in both paintings, the administration of the Sacrament to the dying? The Communion of the Sick was, of course, to be found in the Book of Common Prayer. It had been routinely attacked by those who in the 16th and 17th centuries sought a 'more thorough Reformation' of the English Church. Richard Hooker's quite beautiful defence of the rite, part of "the charitable order of the Church wherein wee live", can be profitably read as a commentary alongside Tidemand's paintings:
There is nothinge which the soule of man doth desire in that last hower so much as comfort against the naturall terrors of death and other scruples of conscience which commonlie doe then most troble and perplex the weake ... Our generall consolation departinge this life is the hope of that glorious and blessed resurrection againe from the dead ... This life and this resurrection our Lord Christ is for all men as touchinge the sufficiencie of that he hath don; but that which maketh us pertakers thereof is our particular communion with Christ, and this sacrament a principall meane as well to strengthen the bond as to multiplie in us the fruites of the same communion (LEP V.68.12).
We might suggest that placing the paintings alongside Hooker is an example of the shared primary Eucharistic affirmations of both the Augsburg Confession and the formularies of the Church of England (commonly noted by divines of the Church of England across the 18th century):
Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord - Augusburg Confession, Article X;
The Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper - the Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer.
Readings Hooker's defence of the Communion of the Sick alongside viewing Tidemand's paintings also leads us to consider how this rite was a practice shared between Churches of the Reformation. In the 1618 Articles of Perth, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, at the behest of James VI/I, restored this practice:
If any good Christian visited with long sickness, and known to the Pastor, by reason of his present infirmity unable to resort to the Church for receiving of the holy Communion, or being sick, shall declare to the Pastor upon his conscience, that he thinks his sickness to be deadly, and shall earnestly desire to receive the same in his house: The Minister shall not deny to him so great a comfort ...
It was rejected by opponents of the Articles of Perth as a 'Romish' practice. Tidemand's paintings reveal it to be nothing of the sort. Indeed, in both cases - Lutheran and Anglican - the Sacrament was (and this should still be the case) consecrated at the bedside, not administered from the 'reserved' Sacrament: a clearly definitive Reformation statement. Note, in this regard, the Table upon which the prester in both paintings has consecrated the Sacrament. What is more, the paintings speak of the eucharistic piety of Churches of the Reformation: in the words of Luther's Small Catechism, on the benefits of the Sacrament, "That is shown us in these words: Given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins; namely, that in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation". We might also, therefore, read words from the 1662 Holy Communion alongside viewing the paintings:
Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee, for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of the most precious death and passion of thy dear Son.
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