Sacraments

The devotional life of Catholicism was (and is) based on the seven sacraments: the Eucharist, bap

Tism, confirmation, marriage, penance, extreme unction, and ordination (for the clergy). The Eucharist (from the Greek word for “thanksgiving”), also called Holy Communion, was part of the liturgy celebrated during mass. Worshipers consumed wine and bread, which were believed to be miraculously transformed into the blood and body of Christ. Although Lutherans believed in a variation of this doctrine, the Calvinists and Zwinglians (see pages 43-44) did not. Because most theological disputes of the Protestant Reformation involved

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

The Eucharist, this sacrament is discussed in greater detail later. Penance, the confidential and sincere confessing of sins to a priest, followed by absolution, was the other sacrament repeated throughout one’s life. Friday was set aside as a general day of penance, when Catholics were forbidden to consume meat. Penance was a private sacrament whereas the Eucharist and its Mass were public, observed in the church by the entire congregation as each person received the host (holy wafer). (For more information about the Catholic liturgy, see Chapter 6, on music.)

EUCHARIST

Originating in the Last Supper of Christ with his disciples, the Eucharist was discussed in detail by the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. He explained how the mundane properties of wine and bread could be changed into the “substance” of Christ, a process known as transubstantiation. Most Lutherans believed in consubstantiation, meaning that the substance of Christ was present with the substance of wine and bread. They did not believe in an actual change in the properties of the wine and bread. This latter interpretation, promoted by Martin Luther (1483-1546), was one of the fundamental disagreements between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. In addition, by the Renaissance, Catholic congregations usually consumed only the wafer while the wine was reserved for the priest administering the Eucharist. In prints as well as paintings, the Last Supper was a popular image, appearing in missals and even as the frontispiece to Christian commentaries on classical texts. One early 16th-century woodcut depicted the Last Supper inserted below an image of the Crucifixion.

In the Catholic Church, where images were sacrosanct, the public nature of the Eucharist gave rise to elaborate monstrances (from monstrare, Latin “to show”), where the host wafer was displayed and venerated. These vessels could be quite large, gold or silver, ornamented with engraving, precious stones, and rock crystal. Often they were in the shape of a tabernacle, presenting the host in its own churchlike structure. During the annual feast of Corpus Christi (body of Christ), processions of the faithful paraded through the streets, carrying the monstrance with its host. The spiritual power of the Eucharist and its mass was often called upon to protect a congregation from plague, drought, and other threats, and masses were celebrated for the dead to ease their way through purgatory.

2.5 Gilt silver monstrance for presenting the Eucharistic host. Cristobal Becerril, c. 1585. (Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, R3019)