THOMAS CRANMER'S DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST ALSO BY PETER NEWMAN BROOKS

CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Essays in Honour of Gordon Rupp (editor and contrihutor)

CRANMER IN CONTEXT

REFORMATION PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE Essays in Honour of A. G. Dickens (editor and contrihutor)

SEVEN-HEADED LUTHER Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentenary, 1483-1983 (editor and contrihutor)

*THOMAS CRANMER'S DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST An Essay in Historical Development

"'Also published by Palgrave Macmillan THOMAS CRANMER'S DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST An Essay in Historical Development

SECOND EDITION

BY PETER NEWMAN BROOKS Fellow 01 Robinson College, Cambridge

FOREWORD BY PATRICK COLLINSON, FBA Regius Professor 01 Modem History University 01 Cambridge

M © Peter Newman Brooks 1965, 1992 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1992978-0-333-54541-6

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brooks, Peter Newman 1931- Thomas Cranmer's doctrine of the Eucharist. - -znd cd. I. Eueharist I. Tide 264.36 ISBN 978-1-349-12165-6 ISBN 978-1-349-12163-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12163-2 MATRI PATRIQUE OCTOGENARIIS Contents

PAGE FOREWORD to the Second Edition by Patrick Collinson viii FOREWORD to the First Edition by Gordon Rupp XVll AUTHOR'S NOTF. on the Second Edition XlX PREFACE xx ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxv LIST ÖF ABBREVIATIONS XXVll INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I Phase One: From Roman Transubstantiation to a Scriptural Notion ofthe Real Presence 3 II Phase Two: From 'Real' to 'True' Presence 38 III The Continental Background 61 IV Thomas Cranmer's Mature Concept of 'True' Presence Doctrine 72 V Pastoral Practice: The Book 01 Common Prayer 1 12 APPENDIX: An English 'Real' Presence Tract ofthe mid-sixteenth century 163 BIBLIOGRAPHlCAL NOTE 173 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY SOURCES 176 INDEX 181

vii Foreword to the Second Edition

BY PATRICK COLLINSON, F.B.A. Regius Professor of Modern History, Universiry of Cambridge

It was in those still insular 'sixties, a quarter of a eentury ago, that Peter Newman Brooks first offered to take Arehbishop Cranmer back into the European eommon market of Reformation Studies in the original edition of his 'Essay in Historieal Development', Thomas Cranmer's Doc­ trine of the Eucharist. In no more than a hundred pages, this seminal little book signalIed the passing of a long epoeh in the study of the liturgical theology of the reformed Chureh of England and of the mind of its prineipal arehiteet. By no means dusty in scholarship - Professor Sir Henry Chad­ wiek has been heard to speak of the 'Rolls-Royee minds' deployed by some of the nineteenth-eentury exegetes of the Anglican formularies - this epoeh had been marked, and I think, marred, by a prejudiee against 'eontinental' as a prefix to this or that theological proposition or platform whieh is reminiseent ofthe no longer justified taste on ce feIt for eontinental trains and lavatories. In 1958 in The Mass and the English Reformers Clifford Dugmore wrote of the liturgieal work of sixteenth-eentury English divines as rooted in 'the aneient tradition of the Chureh', an enter­ prise quite distinet from that of 'the newly-emerged Protes- viii Foreword to the Second Edition lX tant churches ofthe continent'. 'Their whole approach was different' - which was to say better, more 'catholic', wh ether in upper- or lower-case. Professor Dugmore went on to explain that he considered himself to be redressing the balance of emphasis on the Continental and native English springs of reform. In his view altogether too much had been made of the continent. 'One is so tired of reading that everything said by Cranmer or Ridley, Frith or Latimer or Jewel, was derived from Luther, Zwingli or Calvin, as if they had no theological training, no knowledge of the Schoolmen or the Fathers, and were utterly incapable of thinking for themselves.' But it was that very sense of a Continental-English dichotomy, suggesting the need for a balance to be struck, wh ich was at fault; as was the inference that the Continental Refor­ mers had cut themselves off from patristic and scholastic sources of inspiration which remained only accessible to their English counterparts. Continuity rather than radical Protestant discontinuity was the hallmark of sixteenth­ century Anglicanism, and apparently of Anglicanism alone. Dugmore called the sacramental doctrine for which the English Reformers, and especially Ridley and Cranmer, contended a 'non-papist Catholic doctrine of the Euchar­ ist'. This was a doctrine of the middle way, derived more or less independently from an ancient Augustinian tradition predating 'papal Catholicism'. The source of that was a divergent Ambrosian tradition which, having passed through the Aristotelian sea-change of translation into scholastic categories, emerged in the high Middle Ages as transubstantiation, a doctrine (or, in Cranmer's perception, x Foreword to the Second Edition 'opinion') at the heart of the Mass understood as a constantly-renewed sacrifice of Christ's immolated body, really present on the altar. It was the realist-symbolist understanding of the Eucharist, anti-transubstantiationist, which came to be enshrined in Cranmer's Prayer Book, profoundly affecting the whole English-speaking world. Thus far Professor Dugmore. One 'continental' influence in particular had threatened to strangle the emergent Anglican tradition at birth, according to a succession of commentators. This was 'Zwinglianism', supposedly a eucharistie theology so nega­ tively ultra-protestant as to be not unfairly called a doctrine of 'the real absence'. While there have been distin­ guished exceptions, notably the work ofDr. C. C. Richard­ son, Anglophone scholarship (not excluding Dom Gregory Dix in The Shape 0/ the Liturgy, 1945) has made something of a caricature of the Swiss strand in protestant eucharistie theology. The pressure exerted by 'Zwinglianism' was held to have been so insidious and potent, especially at the time of the second, 1552 recension of the Prayer Book, that it was necessary for Anglican scholars to engage in some special and rather tortuous pleading in order to defend their Church against the charge, fundamental to Pope Leo XIII's discovery of 1896 that its orders were null and void, that the Church of England was not Catholic in any proper sense. It was said that while the 1552 Book involved a more drastic departure from the traditional liturgical sequence than 1549 it was the work ofpoliticians and only marginally involved qualified churchmen like Cranmer. Or that Cran­ mer, while suffering some damage to his liturgical sensibili- Foreword to the Second Edition XI ties, worked defensively and with some success to preserve a solid non-papal 'catholic' core even in 1552, and conse­ quently in the later vers ions of 1559 and 1662. This was the germ of an Anglicanism which continued to differ in fundamentals from the reformed churches ofthe Continent, and especially from 'Zwinglianism'. We owe much to the late Gordon Rupp, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge, for restoring a truer, because historically well-grounded, perception of how sixteenth-century English theology re­ lated to Protestantism, and indeed for putting English Reformation theology into its proper category as Protestant theology. For Rupp, as it happens a Methodist rather than an Anglican, was one of that always select band of English Reformation scholars who have asked, 'What do they know of England, who only England know?' He knew about Continental schools ofthought at first hand and was neither affronted by caricatures nor scared of the German lan­ guage. Thus in some of his Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition ( 1947) Rupp demonstrated that the English, indeed in a proper sense Anglican, doctrine of salvation was not different from those Lutheran paradoxes which were the doctrinal heart of the Protestant Reformation, as the classical commentators on the Thirty­ Nine Articles had contended, but made a lucid and balanced exposition of essentially Lutheran teaching, especially in the Homilies of Salvation, of Faith, and of Good Works. These were statements which Thomas Cranmer hirnself composed and which form to this day a kind of authorized appendix to the Articles. XlI Foreword to the Second Edition So the tide deeds of the reformed Church of England were protestant. Wh at of the fabric and furnishings of the edifice to which the tide deeds belong? What, in particular, of Professor Dugmore's 'non-papist Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist' and its liturgical expression in the Prayer Book? Cranmer's doughty and wily enemy Bishop Gardiner commented on the Homilies: 'Whoever has admitted the doctrine of "only faith" in justification is compelled to reject the sacrament of the Eucharist in the way we profess it.' Lex credendi, lex orandi. 'The way we profess it' was the tradition al Mass according to the Sarum Use, which Gar­ diner professed to believe was still implied, ifnot enshrined, in Cranmer's cautiously composed 1549 service. That was special pleading, to be taken with a pinch of salt, and this Cranmer in his Answer proceeded to apply. But in his main contention Gardiner was right. The Homily of Salvation, protestant and solifidian, presupposed something like the Book of Common Prayer wh ich contained in both versions, but less ambiguously in 1552, a protestant Communion rite and therefore a protestant doctrine of the Eucharist. To share that realistic insight requires a detached and both historically and theologically justified account of the doctrine of the Eucharist contained in the Prayer Book. It is necessary to abandon not only Gardiner's sophistry but the Anglican prejudice against the work of Continental Reformers and the particular difficulty over 'Zwinglian­ ism'. For the English Channel and the North Sea were not barriers in the sixteenth century but relatively convenient and inexpensive means of communication. It was easier and cheaper to convey bulky goods to London from Foreword to the Second Edition xiii Antwerp or Emden than from the Weald of Sussex, let alone Lancashire. And ideas too were capable of taking to the water. Most of the books read in Tudor England, certainly the leamed books printed in Latin, and almost all the paper on which they were printed, originated on the Continent. We may take a particular and apposite example. The relatively traditionalist and conservative doctrine of the Eucharist supposedly enshrined in the English Prayer Book, especially in the version of 1549, was partly depen­ dent upon a ninth-century treatise by Ratramnus, a monk of the Abbey of Corby, De corpore et sanguine Domini. By what means and in what form did Cranmer and, before hirn, Ridley encounter the work of Ratramn? They read it in one of the Continental printed editions, most probably published in Protestant Strassburg. Ratramn was a source which they shared with Martin Bucer and other Rhineland Reformers and perhaps if it had not been for those Refor­ mers they would not have known about hirn at all. Building on these foundations, Gordon Rupp's gifted pupil Peter Brooks proceeded to res tore Cranmer's euchar­ istie doctrine and its practieal, liturgical expression to its proper historieal and theological context. That was to approximate Cranmer and his Prayer Book to the conver­ gent position (or positions, since theology is never simply monolithie) whieh Dr. Brooks characterized as '''True'' Presence doctrine', 'the common possession of Bucer, Melanchthon, Bullinger and Calvin'. What that possession and those positions amounted to, it is superfluous to say. As the serials used to advise after covering 'the story so far' - 'now read on', especially in Dr. Brooks's chapters on XIV Foreword to the Second Edition 'The Continental Background' and 'Cranmer's Mature Concept of "True" Presence Doctrine'. Suffice it to. state that so poorly had this convergence been understood before Dr. Brooks communicated the fruits of the best and most relevant German scholarship that even a scholar as learned as the late Canon C. H. Smyth could perpetrate his ghastly howler about 'Suvermerians', I as if the Reformation were fragmenting into scattered sects and 'isms' at the very moment when it was in fact consolidating on a broad platform. 'True' Presence was a doctrine from which, admittedly, the Lutheran establishment of the so-called Evangelical Churches was excluded, hut not the Anglican Church, which was a local, political designation, Ecclesia Anglicana, by no means indicative of a distinct and separate version of Christianity. It was in 1640 that Lord Falkland of Great Tew, in a Parliamentary speech, charged Archhishop William Laud with breach of 'that union which was formerly between us and those of our religion beyond the sea'. Falkland called that breach both 'unpolitic' and 'ungodly'. The proper term for the historical theologian who effects that breach in retrospect is 'unscholarly'. I t may now be understood why Thomas Cranmer's Doc­ trine oJ the Eucharist is essential reading for all students of the English Church and its reformations in the sixteenth century, and why the republication of a book which first appeared as long ago as 1965 is to be welcomed. This new edition is greatly enhanced by an additional chapter on the Book oJ Common Prayer. It is clear why such a. chapter was originally omitted. After some unkind things said about

I See pp. 56-57 below. Foreword to the Second Edition xv some aspects of Anglican scholarship it is only fitting to pay tribute to the rare distinction of the source-critieal school ofliturgieal scholarship in its dissection ofthe Prayer Book. What German scholarship did for biblical texts their En­ glish counterparts have accomplished, more modestly, for these liturgieal texts. Brightman's English Rite, and the fastidious learning ofE. C. Ratcliff, not to mention the basic working handbooks, from Procter and Frere to the late G.]. Cuming's A History of Anglican Liturgy (1969, 1982, 1986, 1988) may have created the impression that there is little more that needs to be said about the elements ofwhich the Prayer Book is composed and their diverse origins. (What it ought to have meant and did mean to use those tightly integrated elements in the theatricality of divine worship is, of course, another question.) But since, after all, Thomas Cranmer was a practical rather than a dogmatic theologian, which is to say a liturgist, an account of his eucharistie theology which by-passed the Prayer Book itself would be not so much Hamlet without the Prince as the chef sans his principal oeuvre.

Patrick Collinson August 1990 Foreword to the First Edition

BV GORDON RUPP, D.D. Professor of Ecc1esiastical History, University of Manchester

THE views of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer concerning the Eucharist have long been the subject ofintricate controversy, the end of which is not yet. Apart altogether from the in­ trinsic importance ofthe subject, as a theological discussion, Cranmer's views cannot be dissociated from an even more debatable theme, namely, the intentions of those who framed the Order of Communion in the two Prayer Books of Edward VI. But of this debate within our island it is particularly true - 'What do they know of England, who only England know?' For the Eucharist was on the Con­ tinent the subject ofthe greatest controversy ofthe first part of the Reformation, one which broke the ho pe of a common Protestant front, and which had been argued at a most com­ plex level of Biblical, patristic and theological scholarship for twenty-five years before Cranmer wrote. The impor­ tance ofDr. Brooks'.s study is that he has studied extensively the Continental controversy. He has mastered those two massive studies by Walther Koehler wh ich one would have supposed to be a sine qua non of learned discussion of the theme. He is not one ofthose who can write that 'Frith may have been influenced by Oecolampadius' in happy xvii XVlll Foreword to the First Edition ignorance of anything which the Basel Reformer wrote, or who can continue the kind of half-truth diebes about Zwingli and Calvin and Luther which have made English eucharistie discussion seem so insular and one-sided. And here appears the second merit of this present study. Dr. Brooks by his reading in the Commonplace Books of Cranmer in The British Library has been able to prove how far from insular in this matter was Cranmer himself, and that while he was concerned very much with St. Augustine and the Old Fathers (though no more than Oecolampadius, Melanchthon, Bucer and Calvin), he took pains to read at first hand the writings ofZwingli, Oecolampadius, Erasmus, and the replies to them of Martin Luther whose arguments Cranmer had now plainly studied with great care. This present work therefore brings the whole discussion as it has been carried on in England for more than halfa century to a new stage. It is now obvious that Cranmer's doctrine must be set against the wider background, which itself must be studied in its complicated and many-sided structure. This is neither to play down nor to deny the importance of Cranmer's own learning, or his debt to colleagues like Nicholas Ridley. Dr. Brooks's formidable weight ofevidence will have to be sifted by scholars. It cannot be ignored. And his own observations are a timely and important contri­ bution to a weighty subject.

Gordon Rupp Ascension Day, 1963 Author's Note on the Second Edition

1989 marked the Quincentenary of Cranmer's birth and witnessed a revival of interest in the career and importance of arguably the most controversial figure of the English Reformation. In my Cranmer in Context, as weIl as in the illustrated catalogue published to accompany the British Library Exhibition 'Cranmer, Primate of All England' , I had an opportunity to reassess the comparatively neglected and much misunderstood figure who played such a promi­ nent role in Tudor religion and politics. If the general public found the subject fascinating, serious students of Reformation Studies continue to be intrigued by the theo­ logical development of Thomas Cranmer, a progress no­ where better illustrated than in the concentrated focus the Tudor Primate afforded the doctrine of the eucharist. In An Essay in Historical Development published a quarter of a century ago, I attempted to chart how Cranmer came to reach his ultimate conviction in such a central matter of the Christian faith; and encouraged by my publishers offer readers some thoughts on the practical outworking of the Archbishop's understanding as Cranmer expressed them in his Book 01 Common Prayer.

Peter N ewman Brooks Michaelmas, 1990 xix Preface

THOMAS CRANMER has received a singularly bad press - a fact that is nowhere more readily appreciated than in dis­ cussions ofhis eucharistie theology. From early days he has been the victim of party strife, and much energy has been expended by those concerned to prove his allegiance to semi-traditionalist, Lutheran, Zwinglian and even crypto­ Calvinist schools of thought. Although, therefore, he who attempts any reconsideration ofa problem that has intrigued the minds of so many is bound to be accused of threshing old straw, there can be no doubt that some further en­ deavour to place Cranmer firmly in his contemporary setting remains a valid subject for research. The task is vast, but amply rewarding, for it serves to set the English Archbishop in his own environment ofthe sixteenth century and all that that means in terms ofthe mingling ofthe very different intellectual climates of late Scholasticism, Eras­ mian Humanism and the new Biblieal theology, not to mention the revolutionary ideas of Martin Luther. It has always proved difficult for English scholars to assess the precise amount of Continental influence in this period of ideologieal ferment. Some have inclined to the view that, when Martin Luther dominates the Reformation scene, all the theorizing oflesser men, and Thomas Cranmer among them, merely exemplifies deviation from the Witten- xx Preface XXI berg party line and its primary creed ofJustificatio sola fole. In an attempt to redress the balance, others have consciously depreciated all Continental influence and made out a case for the English Reformers getting their sacramental ideas independently from the Fathers, and especially from St.

Augustine. I But it is likely that a compromise solution accords more with the facts of the sixteenth-century situa­ tion, for the period surely provides yet another instance in the his tory of ideas of men devoting their energies to the same books, making the same kind of enquiries, and at the last making discoveries that, although new to them, when viewed down the corridors of time, give evidence of being findings very much of a piece. It is the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery, and the modern parallel with the researches of scientists in this Age of the Atom and of the space probe scarcely needs elaboration. But how far are such investigations made and the appropriate conclusions really reached in splendid isolation? It is certainly part of a sound approach to credit Thomas Cranmer with a scholarly independence of mind. This is evident from an early letter to the Swiss Reformer Joachim Vadianus, where Cranmer declares that he has 'come to the conclusion that the writings of every man must be read with discrimination'. 'l And, indeed, the Archbishop's stand in so proving all things and holding fast to the good was

I A notable instance of this tendency is to be found in a recently published work - cf. C. W. Dugmore, The Mass and the English Rtformers (London, 1958) - where the author's avowed aim is clearly expressed on p. vii of his Priface. • P. S., Zurich Letters III, p. 13. XXII Preface just as valid in doctrine and liturgy as In his dramatic reavowal of the Reformed faith before the stake at Oxford in 1556. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of the Henrician hierarchy to place an effective ban on the writings of the Continental and Lollard Reformers, there was nothing approaching modern Iron and Bamboo Curtain techniques to ensure success. For, apart from the fact that ideas know no barriers, as far as Cranmer was concerned the damage was already done when, as a roving ambassador in the early 153os, he had seen something of Reformation faith and practice, an experience which must have provided food for thought in the days ahead. Although the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery is important therefore - and his­ torians know of Cranmer's researches from the massive Commonplace books uf 'notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning' (Fuller) - to attempt to make out a case for the English Reformers getting their sacramental ideas in­ dependendy from the Fathers, and not to some extent via the Continental Reformers, is surely to court disaster. In almost every respect the English Reformation is Act 11 of a Continental drama played out earlier and on a different stage. One of the dangers implicit in any reassessment is that of swinging the pendulum too far the other way, so that while attempts must certainly be made to recapture the medieval background to the Reformation controversies, I there must likewise be no devaluation of the dominant intellectual climates of the day in the driving power of first

I For another such work recently published in this field, cf. Francis Clark, Eucharistie Sacrifo:e and the Reformation (London, 1960). Preface xxiii the Lutheran, and then the varying shades ofSwiss, Reform. What follows here in abrief saeramental study is thus an attempt to foeus the various stages of Cranmer's progress from the moment when he abandoned the reeeived doetrine of the Western Chureh in the early days of his Roman allegianee until he eame in time to embraee the Reformed eause with his own eharaeteristie and well-tempered en­ thusiasm. Acknowledgements

LIKE all young historians I am indebted to those whose consideration and courtesy have greatly assisted my re­ searches. I owe my introduction to Reformation Studies to three eminent scholars. First, to Dr. Gordon Rupp who, in guiding my initial exploratory probings, proved a constant source of inspiration and friendly advice. Then too, only those who busied themselves with the study of Church History at Cambridge in his day can fully appreciate the scholarly stature, ready counsel and tireless good offices of the one-time Dixie Professor and late lamented Dean of Winchester, Dr. Norman Sykes. Likewise, I am deeply indebted to the Reverend E. C. Ratcliff, one-time Regius Professor of Divinity, for his helpful criticism and generous hospitality on a number of occasions. My years at Cambridge were also enlivened by conversa­ tions with a number of distinguished historians and theolo­ gians all ofwhom have given unsparingly oftheir time. The Master ofSelwyn, the Reverend Professor Owen Chadwick, the Master ofPeterhouse, Professor Herbert Butterfield, and that generous patron of all engaged in historical research, Dr. G. S. R. Kitson Clark, Fellow of Trinity College, have all helped me at various stages of my work, and I wish to record my gratitude to them here. Among others too numerous to mention, moreover, I have valued and gladly xxv xxvi Acknowledgements acknowledge help on a wide variety of problems from the Reverend Professor David Knowles, ProfessorC. R. Cheney, the Reverend Canon Charles Smyth, the Reverend Philip S. Watson, the Reverend Basil Hall, the Reverend Dr. William A. Clebsch and the Reverend Dr. Norman Nagel. Likewise, no list of acknowledgements can be complete without due and honourable mention of the kindly libra­ rians who have never tired of supplying the many valuable volumes that are the raw material of scholarship. I am grateful to them all: to Mr. J. P. T. Bury and Dr. Richard Vaughan of Corpus Christi College; to the former librarian of Trinity College, Mr. H. M. Adams; to the Assistant Librarian of Lambeth Palace Library; and to the many helpful librarians who have generously attended to my often excessive demands on their time in the Reading Room and Department of MSS at The British Library and the Bodleian Library. But I am especially grateful to the unflagging zeal of the staff of the Anderson Room in the Cambridge University Library whose ready assistance never failed to proeure, with an efficiency unknown elsewhere, mysterious sixteenth-century volumes, large and small. Finally, to my wife, I owe more than I can tell, for with­ out her unquestioning loyalty and the kind of self-sacrifice that, unaided, was ever ready to keep a certain little daughter out ofmischiefin my study, an overburdened schoolmaster could never have completed this little book.

Peter Brooks Petersham Palm Sunday, 1964 List of Abbreviations

B.C.P. The Book ofCommon Prayer C.C.B. Cranmer's Commonplace Books C.R. Corpus Reformatorum L.W. The American Edition of Luther's Works (Muhlenberg Press, Philadelphia) P.S. Parker Society W.A. Luther's Works (Weimarer Ausgabe)

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