Lee Palmer Wandel offers a very welcome comparative study of Eucharistic practice. Its balanced, cross-denominational approach provides rich new insights into the differing enactments of the central Christian sacrament, differences that often served as the flashpoint for bloody contention. Does “This is my body” mean Christ’s body is present? If so, how? What is the nature of Christ’s body? What is the meaning of “This do in remembrance of me”? Does the supper reenact Christ’s sacrifice? Should it recreate the fellowship of the apostles at the Last Supper? Should those of weak faith be excluded? This study depicts the well-known answers offered by the Catholic and major Protestant churches by the end of the Council of Trent as part of a larger, often turbulent sea of teachings and practices that were in flux before and during these defining years and often continued to be so afterward as well.
Wandel takes a holistic approach that seeks to give as much weight to ritual practices as to doctrine, to reject the notion that “prescriptive texts” are “normative,” while “images and performances” are “derivative” (20). Moreover, a major theme of her book is that no church followed an inexorable path to correct theology. She begins by depicting the diversity of medieval approaches. This diversity, she argues convincingly, is better understood as reflecting a variety of sources rather than as simple variants of the Roman model: elevation of the host, for example, reflected the influence of lay piety. She then turns to early Reformation Augsburg, where a variety of approaches competed for legitimacy, and shows that Augsburgers heeded the voices of locally-known preachers, of city officials and of ordinary laypeople as much as they did the teachings of such renowned theologians as Zwingli, Bucer, and Oecolampadius.
In her chapter on Luther and Lutheranism, she again suggests that doctrine and practice emerged out of both theological debates and the pressures of local circumstances. Her view of Luther is indicative of her larger approach. Other reformers “did not … ’follow’ ’Luther’ [sic] at all: they found in the writings, in the articulated positions of a theologian and preacher what they themselves held to be ’true Christianity’—he spoke for them because he spoke what they themselves understood the truth to be” (107). To illustrate this view she describes the different forms the Eucharist took in two Lutheran cities, Nuremburg and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, where differing local cultural realities and religious traditions resulted in differing practices, albeit ones heavily influenced by Luther’s “translocal” teachings. For Lutheran churches (as for Augsburg) political authorities played a major role in fixing eucharistic practice. Thus diversity was perpetuated from one political jurisdiction to another even as uniformity was eventually established within each.
She then turns to an extensive discussion of Calvin’s views, followed by the practices of Genevans, French Huguenots, and Scottish and Dutch reformers. Among other variations, she finds that many of Calvin’s putative followers used the Eucharist more to distinguish the faithful from the weak than to strengthen the faith of all congregants (Calvin’s own inclination and Genevan practice). She concludes her study with a look at the variety of concerns involved in the Council of Trent’s formalization of Catholic practice, and shows that much of the Council’s doctrine was formulated disjointedly, often in explicit response to the criticisms of reformers. She also includes some interesting insights on the reception of the Mass in the Andes, where the notion of God becoming man was much more comprehensible than transubstantiation.
A study of this breadth must inevitably neglect detailed attention to many fine points of doctrine, to cross-influences, and to specific social contexts. Nevertheless, some topics might have been treated more clearly and thoroughly. Her observation that Luther retained much of the Mass but was indifferent to the details of its performance is one such area. Another involves her brief discussion of Zwingli and her more extensive one of Calvin. Although she offers the novel view that they both believed in a “somatic,” but non-corporeal, presence, this formulation is never clearly explained. While Zwingli’s views on this issue are to be treated more fully in a forthcoming article, an extended discussion of his eucharistic teachings would have been appropriate here. She rightly emphasizes Calvin’s notion that Christ’s body provides spiritual nourishment, but her view does not take sufficient account of his strong dualism and underestimates the reality for him of spiritual, intangible phenomena. Wandel repeatedly contrasts the Catholic mimetic practice to the Reformed representational approach. Yet she notes that Luther does not fit clearly into this schema; perhaps this suggests its limitations. The book would have also benefited from further proofreading for content. At one point “non-ordained” is equated with “secular” clergy (26). At another, it is unclear why a group of Augsburg ministers evoked the warning in 1 Corinthians 11 against a partaker eating and drinking “judgment unto himself,” yet remained indifferent to whether “one was sinning when one came to the table.” Nor can we tell just what the city council found troubling in their approach (79–80).
Yet overall this book is very valuable for its impressive scholarship, its innovative and evenhanded comparative approach, its emphasis on the variations of Eucharistic teaching and practice within each of the major churches. It will repay careful reading by all students of religious culture in the Reformation era and is certain to serve as a spur to further comparative study of the Eucharist and other central religious rituals.
