"Red in the communion of the blood of Christ Jesus": the heart of early Anglican Eucharistic piety
By this means we draw nigh to Christ, we hide ourselves in his wounds, we suck at his breast, we feed of his body, and comfortably lay up in our mind, that his flesh was crucified and wounded for our sakes - John Jewel, A Treatise of the Sacraments.
Such affective Eucharistic piety is to be found in key figures of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church. In what does appear to more than an echo of his mentor, Hooker uses language very similar to Jewel:
These mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very cross, that by them we draw out, as touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the blood of his gored side, in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both in without and without - Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity V.67.12.
Donne refers to us being made "red in the communion of the blood of Christ Jesus", received sacramentally:
... since we are all made of red earth, let him that is red, be more red; let him that is red with the blood of his own soul, be red again in blushing for that redness, and more red in the communion of the blood of Christ Jesus; whom we shall eat all the days of our life, and be mystically, and mysteriously, and spiritually, and sacramentally united to him in this life, and gloriously in the next - John Donne, Sermon CXXVIII.
And Herbert reflects medieval piety concerning the "mystic winepress", celebrating the relationship between the Lord's precious Blood and the sacrament of wine:
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine - George Herbert, 'The Agony'.
Jewel, Hooker, Donne, Herbert: all, of course, conformists, but none of them amongst those whom Diarmaid MacCulloch terms avant-garde conformists. In other words, this affective Eucharistic piety was not evidence of an 'advanced' agenda, outside the Elizabethan and Jacobean mainstream, but, rather, an unremarkable conformist piety in the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana.
The fact that is also appears in the works of avant-garde conformists only emphasises the extent to which the avant-garde accepted and worked within a Reformed framework (mindful, as Torrance Kirby continually reminds us, that 'Reformed' was a contested and not settled category). Take, for example, Andrewes's 1623 Easter Day sermon:
But though there be in the word a saving power, yet is not all saving power in that, or in that only; there is a press beside. For this press is going continually among us, but there is another that goes but at times. But in that, it goes at such times as it falls in fit with the winepress here. Nay, falls in most fit of all the rest. For of it comes very wine indeed, the blood of grapes of the true Vine, which in the blessed Sacrament is reached to us, and with it is given us that for which it was given, even remission of sins. Not only represented therein, but even exhibited to us. Both which when we partake, then have we a full and perfect communion with Christ this day; of His speaking righteousness in the word preached, of His power to save in the holy Eucharist ministered. Both presses run for us, and we to partake them both.
Here is another echo of the medieval devotional contemplation of the "mystic winepress", and similar to the conformist authors above, a rejoicing in the sacramental symbolism of "the blood of grapes of the true Vine", by which we receive the fruit of the Lord's Passion. Earlier in the sermon, Andrewes states:
Of which wine so pressed then out of Him came our cup, the cup of this day, 'the cup of the New Testament in His blood,' represented by the blood of the grape.
Note too the distinctly Reformed Eucharistic understanding, that the gift of the Lord's Blood, received in the Sacrament, is "represented" and "exhibited" in the chalice of wine.
What are we to say about this rich Eucharistic piety? What actually comes to mind is Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars. The triumph of Protestantism was, Duffy has informed us, the end of the "imaginative world" in English Christianity, the deadening consequence of "a thousand 'no-popery' sermons", as the English Church was "much reduced in scope, depth, and coherence", and the richness of "Eucharistic symbolism" was lost.
The affective Eucharistic piety shared by conformist and avant-garde conformist, thoroughly Reformed in its theological commitments, gives the lie to Duffy's portrayal of the post-Reformation ecclesia Anglicana. Warm, rich, imaginative, deeply touching the emotions, this piety is to be cherished as a glorious example of the devotional fruit of the Reformed Eucharistic theology of Prayer Book and Articles.
Good reflection. While Duffy was a necessary remedy to give the lie to the smooth, moderate, and easy English Reformation of whig-inclined historians, his revisionist thesis is finally beginning to fall (he even wrote a book saying Mary Tudor wasn't so bad).
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your comment. Yes, something like Duffy was required to disturb Whig history. That said, I think the seeds of a revision of Duffy are to be found in the closing chapter of 'The Stripping of the Altars', when he begins to show the reasons for the success and attractiveness of the post-Reformation CofE. This popularity and attraction surely undermines his picture of the English Reformation. As for his book on Mary, perhaps it was useful in revealing his wider purposes (establishing a popular essentially RC narrative about the English Reformation). That said, it is rather disturbing how 'The Stripping' has shaped views.
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