'This is Bertram's doctrine': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner', Ratramnus, and the genealogy of Reformed eucharistic teaching

In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), Cranmer had to address Gardiner's allegation that his view of the Sacraments of the Old and New Covenants, as both being a participation in Christ, was "a novelty of speech". Cranmer, we should note, entirely rejected what we might term 'Scriptural primitivism' - that is, a belief that a thousand years of erroneous teaching within the Churches was of little concern as that was required was to return to Scripture. Instead, Cranmer invoked the genealogy for Reformed eucharistic teachings that he had previously set out in this work, with particular regard to how it also supported the Reformed emphasis on the sacraments of the New Covenant working as did the sacraments of the Old Covenant. 

The last post in this series demonstrated how this understanding of the sacraments was "after the mind of St. Augustine". Cranmer, however, did not stop with the great Augustine. He then turned to the 9th century Frankish divine Ratramnus, known as Bertram: 

This, besides St. Augustine, is plainly set out by Bertram about six hundred years passed, whose judgment in this matter of the sacrament, although you allow not, (because it utterly condemneth your doctrine therein;) yet for as much as hitherto his teaching was never reproved by none but by you alone; and that he is commended of other as an excellent learned man in holy Scripture, and a notable famous man, as well in living as learning; and that among his excellent works this one is specially praised, which he wrote of the matter of the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord; therefore I shall rehearse his teaching in this point, how the holy fathers and prophets before the coming of Christ did eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood. So that although Bertram's saying be not esteemed with you, yet the indifferent reader may see what was written in this matter before your doctrine was invented ...

The Augustinian eucharistic teaching of Ratramnus opposed the trajectory in Latin sacramental thought that would later be articulated by the term transubstantiation. Like 16th century Reformed theologies, Ratramnus emphasised the significance of John 6.63 for eucharistic teaching. This, of course, had particular relevance to the point Cranmer was addressing at this stage - that our partaking of Christ in the sacraments of the New Covenant has the same character as the partaking of Christ in the sacraments of the Old Covenant. At this point Cranmer then quoted at length from Ratramnus' key work, De corpore et sanguine Domini (c.831):

This is Bertram's doctrine: "Saint Paul saith, that all the old fathers did eat the same spiritual meat, and drink the same spiritual drink. But peradventure thou wilt ask, which the same? Even the very same that Christian people do daily eat and drink in the Church. For we may not understand divers things, when it is one and the self-same Christ, which in times past did feed with his flesh, and made to drink of his blood, the people that were baptized in the cloud and sea in the wilderness, and which doth now in the Church feed Christian people with the bread of his body, and giveth them to drink the flood of his blood. When he had not yet taken man's nature upon him, when he had not yet tasted death for the salvation of the world, nor redeemed us with his blood, nevertheless, even then our forefathers by spiritual meat and invisible drink, did eat his body in the wilderness and drink his blood, as the Apostle beareth witness, saying, The same spiritual meat, the same spiritual drink. For he that now in the Church by his omnipotent power doth spiritually convert bread and wine into the flesh of his body, and into the flood of his own blood, he did then in visibly so work, that manna which came from heaven was his body, and the water his blood." 

Here we see in a stream of late first millennium Latin theology, the same understanding of the relationship between the sacraments of the Old and New Covenants as 16th century Reformed theologies would emphasise. What is more - and this goes to the heart of the importance of the relationship between the sacraments of the Old and New Covenants - Ratramnus states that our partaking of Christ in the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper is the same as the partaking of Christ in the sacraments of the Old Covenant, that is, a spiritual participation, "by spiritual meat and invisible drink".

Cranmer therefore concludes:

Now by the things here by me alleged, it evidently appeareth, that this is no novelty of speech to say, that the holy fathers and prophets did eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood; for both the Scripture and old authors use so to speak, how much soever the speech mislike them that like no fashion of speech but their own.

It was "no novelty of speech" for the emerging Reformed theologies to declare that our partaking of Christ in the Supper is as the people of the Old Covenant participated in Christ by means of the Manna. We feed on the Lord's Body and Blood even as they fed on the Lord's Body and Blood. To affirm this was no innovation but, rather, a restatement of a vibrant tradition with Latin eucharistic theology.