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 72 4 Romancing the Eucharist: confessional conflict and Elizabethan romances Christina Wald In one of the most erotically charged scenes of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, a young princess called Philoclea finds herself in a perplexing situation. When she talks to her dear friend, the Amazon Cleophila, in a lonely pastoral setting, she is unexpectedly invited to witness ‘a miserable miracle of affection’: Cleophila asks Philoclea to ‘[b]‌ehold here before your eyes Pyrocles, prince of Macedon’.1 Alas, the only person whom Philoclea can discern is Cleophila; the
The doctrine of transubstantiation was presented formally in Canon 1 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which was presided over by Innocent III. 1 Transubstantiation, as explained explicitly in the canon, involved the replacement or transformation of one substance (the bread or the wine) by another (the body or the blood of Christ). This formal record of ‘orthodox’ eucharistic doctrine was the implicit target of much of Wyclif’s criticism of contemporary conceptions of material change in the host. It entailed necessarily for him
5 EXCLUSION FROM THE EUCHARIST: THE RE-SHAPING OF IDIOCY IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CHURCH C. F. Goodey Under the microscope of history of ideas, we can observe concepts of ‘intellectual disability’ by this or any other name being born, forming, re-forming, and completely metamorphosing. It is thus a historical and a cultural category. As such it contrasts with the underlying, seemingly cross-cultural persistence of the pathology that has given rise to such concepts over the centuries. Currently known to psychiatry as specific phobia, it occurs in individuals
The theological energies released by Martin Luther in 1517 created a set of theological insights and problems that eventually led to the development of kenotic Christology (i. e., the view that in order for the Son of God to become incarnate and live a genuinely human life, he emptied himself of his divine prerogatives or attributes). This article traces how kenotic Christology originated in the Eucharistic Controversy between Luther and Zwingli, before receiving its first extensive treatment in the debate between the Lutheran theologians of Tübingen and Giessen in,the early seventeenth century. Attention then turns to the nine-teenth century, when doctrinal tensions resulting from the enforced union of the Prussian Lutheran and Reformed churches created the conditions for a new flowering of kenotic Christology in the theologies of Ernst Sartorius and, subsequently, Gottfried Thomasius. Kenotic Christology ultimately originates with Luther, however, for it owes its existence to the creative theological energies he unleashed and which remain his lasting legacy.
This book explores a range of literary and theatrical forms as means of mediating religious conflict in early modern England. It deals with the specific ways available to mediate religious conflict, precisely because faith mattered more than many other social paradigms. The first part explores the ways in which specific religious rituals and related cultural practices were taken up by literary texts. In a compelling rereading of the final act of 'The Merchant of Venice', the book investigates the devotional differences informing early modern observances of Easter. Subsequently, it explores the ways in which Christmas provided a confessional bridge uniting different religious constituencies. Goodnight ballads were not only commercially successful pieces of public entertainment but also effective forms of predominantly Protestant religious persuasion. The book's consideration of Elizabethan romance links the literary form to the sacrament of the Eucharist, and argues that the Eucharist debate had an impact on Elizabethan romances. The second part 'Negotiating confessional conflict' provides a rereading of When You See Me You Know Me, exposing the processes of religious reform as an on-going means of mediating the new normality of confessional plurality. It examines the potential of the tragic form by a reading of the play The White Devil, and discusses the ideological fault line in the views of witchcraft. The book also shows that Henry V anticipates later sermons of John Donne that served to promote 'an interrogative conscience'.
Chapter 5 The sacrament Socinianized: Benjamin Hoadly and the Eucharist T he Eucharist long exerted centripetal and centrifugal forces on Christianity, and the Church of England’s formularies captured why that was the case. The Thirty-Nine Articles declared that the sacraments were ‘ordained of Christ’ and were ‘not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather … certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and
author himself.1 The question of Donne’s ecumenicalism may reasonably prompt us to search Donne’s oeuvre for statements that address the question explicitly. Such searches are quite productive. Even focusing specifically on Eucharistic theology (a particularly contentious area of early modern Christianity), one finds several strongly ecumenical statements in Donne’s sermons:2 A peremptory prejudice upon other mens opinions, that no opinion but thine can be true, in the doctrine of the Sacrament, and an uncharitable condemning of other men, or other Churches that may be
Chapter 3 Gatherings at the family table The liturgy, the Eucharist and Christ our brother Drink the wine and chew the wafer Two, four, six, eight Time to transubstantiate In his popular pamphlet examining the ways in which ‘the Catholic world [we] knew seems to have been turned upside down – and so quickly’, Frank Sheed presciently recognised that, of all the changes instituted around the time of the Council: for the man-in-the-pew the question ‘Is it the same Church?’ often enough boils down to the question ‘Is it the same Mass?’1 Writing two decades later in
John Wyclif (d. 1384) was among the leading schoolmen of fourteenth-century Europe. He was an outspoken controversialist and critic of the church, and, in his last days at Oxford, the author of the greatest heresy that England had known. This volume offers translations of a representative selection of his Latin writings on theology, the church and the Christian life. It offers a comprehensive view of the life of this charismatic but irascible medieval theologian, and of the development of the most prominent dissenting mind in pre-Reformation England. This collection will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of medieval history, historical theology and religious heresy, as well as scholars in the field.
The Reformation of the church also entailed a reformation of its rites. These conduits to grace, determined by the scholastic theologian Peter Lombard in the twelfth century, consisted of seven sacraments: baptism, the Eucharist, confirmation, ordination, marriage, penance, and extreme unction. By John Wyclif’s day, these were the very essence of medieval salvation. Medieval reformers, in particular Wyclif and Jan Hus, disputed the notion of transubstantiation, but it was Protestants who achieved a more