Gift and Gratitude in the Middle Ages

INTRODUCTION
Seneca’s de Beneficiis was known to the Christian Middle Ages, as were some of the gift and gratitude customs of the Roman world. We’ll examine the use that Aquinas makes of Seneca when we get to the Summa later this week. But in addition to these ancient sources, medieval Christians drew on specifically Christian and/or medieval sources for their conceptions of giving and gratitude. I will examine three: First, there are theological sources – particularly in the Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity and the Anselmian doctrine of the atonement. Second, there are cultural-political sources in feudalism. Finally, there are liturgical sources, in that the Eucharist – an act of thanksgiving – was at the heart of medieval worship, and arguably at the heart of medieval culture.

THEOLOGY
The primary source for Trinitarian notions of gifts and gift-giving was Augustine’s de Trinitate, far and away the most important source in the development of Western Trinitarian theology. Augustine famously discerned a triadic pattern in human love that is analogous to the love that is the Trinity: the Father loves His beloved Son, and the Spirit is the love that is shared between them. Prior to developing that analogy, however, Augustine explores an analogy of gift (Book 5, chapter 3).

He begins with the observation that the Holy Spirit is describes in Scripture as the gift of God. He is attempting to discern how “Holy Spirit” serves as a distinguishing name of a single person of the Trinity. This is a problem because God is spirit and holy, and therefore the whole of the Trinity can be described as both holy and spirit: “And yet the Holy Spirit whom we understand as being not the triad but in the triad, insofar as he is properly or peculiarly called the Holy Spirit, is so called relationship-wise, being referred to both Father and Son, since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.” Though the relationship of the Spirit to the Father and Son is not apparent in the name “Holy Spirit,” it is apparent in another scriptural name for the Spirit, namely, the “gift of God.” Augustine cites Acts 8:20 and John 4:10, and argues: “He is the gift of the Father and of the Son because on the one hand he proceeds from the Father (Jn 15:26), as the Lord says; and on the other the apostles words, Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ is not one of his (Rom 8:9), are spoke of the Holy Spirit. So when we say ‘the gift of the giver’ and ‘the giver of the gift,’ we say each with reference to the other.” That is to say, both “giver” and “gift” are relationship terms. Giver describes one’s relationship to a recipient and also to something given, and a gift is a gift only when it is given by a giver.

He goes on to say that “the Holy Spirit is a kind of inexpressible communion or fellowship of Father and Son, and perhaps he is given this name just because the same name can be applied to the Father and the Son. He is properly called what they are called in common, seeing that both Father and Son are holy and both Father and Son are spirit. So to signify the communion of them both by a name which applies to them both, the gift of both is called the Holy Spirit.” The translator and editor of the New City Press edition of de Trinitate, Edmund Hill, comments that “This conclusion is scarcely an inference from the name ‘gift,’ but rather from his being the gift, and the Spirit of each. One must be careful not to construe the idea as meaning that he is the gift of the Father to the Son.” As noted below, Hill seems to capture Augustine’s point, but there’s no reason to deny that the Spirit is the mutual gift that constitutes the communion of the Father and Son. This is supported by the economic revelation of the internal Trinitarian relations – since the Spirit is definitely the gift of the Father to the Son both at Jesus’ baptism and at His exaltation (Acts 2).

Augustine continues his exploration of the proper ways of speaking about the internal relations of the Persons of the Trinity, explaining that the Father is described as “origin” because He produces the Son, and because He produces all things. Yet, the Spirit too is an origin, the source of the various gifts that edify the church (1 Cor 12:7-11). Though the Spirit is a giver of gifts to the Church, He is also the chief gift of the Father and Son to the Church, and therefore the terminology regarding the Spirit is different from that regarding the Son and Father. The Son is not our Son, but the Father’s Son. Yet, the Spirit may be called both the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the church; the Spirit is both God’s Spirit, and ours, and the reason has to do with His character as gift: “what has been given is referred both to him who gave and to those it was given to; and so the Holy Spirit is not only called the Spirit of the Father and the Son who gave him, but also our Spirit who received him. It is like salvation, which is called the salvation of the Lord who gives salvation, and also our salvation because we receive it.” Augustine distinguishes between the sense in which the Holy Spirit is “ours” and the sense in which our own spirit is ours. He acknowledges that “as a matter of fact we also received that spirit which is called the spirit of man” and cites 1 Corinthians 4:7 to back this up. But still he distinguishes between that spirit that is given to all and the Spirit given to the church: “what we received in order to be is one thing, what we received in order to be holy is another.”

This leads into an insistence on the filioque: “If therefore what is given also has him it is given by as its origin, because it did not receive its proceeding from him from anywhere else, we must confess that the Father and the Son are the origin of the Holy Spirit; not two origins, but just as Father and Son are one God, and with reference to creation one creator and one lord, so with reference to the Holy Spirit they are one origin; but with reference to creation Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit are one origin, just as they are one creator and one lord.”

At the conclusion of 5.3, Augustine raises the question of whether “gift” describes the Spirit’s being, as “Son” describes the being of the Son. Or, more precisely, does the Spirit get His being as gift by being given or does he receive His being as such by being given: “the Son by being born not only gets his being the Son but quite simply his being; does the Holy Spirit in the same way not only get his being gift by being given, but also quite simply his being?” Involved in this is the question of “whether he was even before he was given, but was not yet gift, or whether perhaps even before he was given he was gift because God was going to give him.” This is a problem because “if he only proceeds when he is given, he would surely not proceed before there was anyone for him to be given to. How could he already be that divine substance, if he only is by being given, just as the Son gets his being that substance by being born, and does not just get being Son, which is said relationship-wise?”

To answer this question, Augustine distinguishes between the Spirit as gift and the Spirit as “donation”: “the Holy Spirit always proceeds and proceeds from eternity, not from a point of time; but because he so proceeds as to be giveable, he was already gift even before there was anyone to give him to. There is a difference between calling something a gift and calling it a donation; it can be a gift even before it is given, but it cannot be called in any way a donation unless it has been given.” He clarifies in 5.4: “T

he Spirit, to make myself clear, is everlastingly gift, but donation only from a point of time.” Hill is right: Augustine does not see the Spirit as the gift of the Father to Son, but as a gift in relation to creation. Since the Spirit proceeds eternally as the gift-that-will-be-given, He is eternally a gift, though He is not eternally given.

Late in his treatise (15.5), Augustine returns to the Spirit-as-gift, now transformed by his discussion of the Spirit-as-charity. Because the Spirit is love, the Spirit given to us implants love in us, and “nothing is more excellent than this gift of God.” It is the sole gift that “distinguishes between the sons of the eternal kingdom and the sons of perdition.” The Spirit, to be sure, gives other gifts, but “without charity they are of no use.” Augustine raises again the question of why the Spirit specifically is “gift”: “Only because of the love without which the man who has not got it, though he speak with the tongues of men and of angels, si booming bronze and a clashing cymbal; and if he has no prophecy and knows all mysteries and all knowledge and has all faith and if he gives over his body to burn, it does him no good. What a great good must it be the, without which such great goods cannot bring anyone to eternal life! . . . So the love which is from God and is God is distinctively the Holy Spirit; though him the charity of God is poured out in our hearts, and through it the whole triad dwells in us. This is the reason why it is most apposite that the Holy Spirit, which being God, should also be called the gift of God. And this gift, surely, is distinctively understood as being the charity which brings us through to God, without which no other gift of God at all can bring us through to God.”

Augustine’s conception of the Spirit as gift is picked up by many medieval theologians. Peter the Lombard (c. 1100-1164) followed Augustine quite closely in his discussion of the Spirit in Book 1, Distinction 18 of the Four Books of the Sentences. He asks if “the Holy Spirit, through whom gifts are divided (among the faithful), is Himself a gift, whether it must be conceded, that through a gift gifts are divided and given” (ch. 1). And he answers that the Spirit as gift is the one through whom specific gifts are given for the common good of the church: “through a gift, which is the Holy Spirit, (gifts) proper to each are divided, and all the good commonly have that (gift).” He raises the question of whether the Holy Spirit can be described as eternally a gift, or only a gift in time, as He is granted as a gift. According to Lombard’s summary, Augustine “openly says, that the Holy Spirit is named ‘gift,’ because He is given. Moreover if form this only He is named ‘gift,’ because He is given, He was not from eternity a ‘gift,’ because He is not given, except in time.” Yet, there is a sense in which the Spirit is given from eternity. Distinguishing as Augustine did between gift and donation, Peter writes, “the Holy Spirit is both said (to be) ‘a gift’ and ‘a given’ or ‘a granted,’ but is said (to be) ‘a given’ or ‘a granted’ for this only, that He is given and/or granted, which He has only in time” (ch. 2: Spiritus sanctus et donum dicitur et datum sive donatum, sed datum sive donaturm ex eo tantum dicitur, quia datur vel donatur, quod habet tantum ex tempore). But He “is said (to be) ‘a gift’ not from this only, that He is granted, but from the property, which He had from eternity; wherefore He was also from eternity a gift. For sempiternally He was a gift, not because He was given, but because He proceeded from the Father and the Son.” In sum: “Therefore the Holy Spirit is not said (to be) ‘a gift’ for this only, that He is granted; for He was also a gift before He was granted” (ch. 2).

The procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son lends the Spirit a gift-character, even before He is given to the church in time. He is eternally gift because He eternally proceeds. Does this procession from Father and Son make the Spirit a gift from Father to Son, and vice versa? Not for Lombard: “just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from eternity, so is He a gift from eternity, not because He was given by the Father to the Son, and/or by the Son to the Father, but because from eternity He has proceeded as ‘a grantable’” (ch. 2: donabilis). To whom is the Spirit grantable if not to the Father and Son? Lombard answers that the Spirit is grantable “only to us,” and thus is a “gift from this, that He was proceeding in this manner as a grantable.” Lest this confuse the personal distinctiveness of the Spirit and Son (since the Son is equally “given” to us), Peter clarifies the distinction of the two: “the Holy Spirit proceeded as a grantable only to us, not to the Father and/or to the Son, just as also He has only been given to us. And the Son has been truly given to us and has from eternity proceeded from the Father, not only as a grantable; but as One begotten, who also could be granted. Therefore, He proceeded as One begotten and grantable; but the Holy Spirit does not proceed as One begotten, but only as the Gift.” Later, Lombard formulates his conclusion as follows: “according to this, that He is sempiternally a gift, He is referred to the Father and the Son, but according to this, that He is said (to be) ‘a given’ and/or ‘a granted,’ He is referred both to him who gives, and to those to whom He is given, and He is said (to be) of him, who gives, and to those to whom He is given.” Eternally the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son; sempiternally, He is Gift, but not granted because there is no recipient; temporally, He is given/granted because He is both given by the Father and Son and received by the faithful. Eternity is freedom from temporal limits by such, and so the Spirit proceeds from the Father in His divine nature which transcends time. Sempiternity is the created image of eternity, and is simple endless temporal duration, everlastingness.

Richard of St. Victor, in developing the Augustinian analogy of Trinitarian love, also follows Augustine in calling the Spirit “gift”: “The Holy Spirit is given by God to man at the moment when the due (debitus) love that is found in the divinity is breathed into the human soul . . . . Insofar as we enable the love that is due (debitum) to our creator to go back to him, we are quite certainly configured into the property of the Holy Spirit. It is precisely for this end that he is given, that he is breathed into man, so that the latter may be, to the full extent of what it possible, configured into him. For the rest, this gift is sent to us, this mission is given to us at the same time and in the same way by the Father and by the Son. It is, after all, from the one and from the other that the Spirit has everything that he possesses. And because it is from the one and from the other that he has his being, power and will, it is right to say that it is they who send and give him, who has received from them the power and the will to come from them into us and to dwell in us.”

Bonaventure (1221-1274) likewise discusses the Spirit as gift at some length in his commentary on the Sentences. At the conclusion of his discussion of the appropriateness of using the name “Gift” for the Spirit, Bonaventure writes, “The question is not, whether this name in general befits the Holy Spirit, but under what reckoning it befits Him, that is, whether it is a personal name or a property of the Person, or an essential one. — To understand the solution better, it must be understood, that in a divine gift two reckonings are comprised, the one with a real relation to the One giving, the
other with a relation of reckoning to the one to whom it is given. The looking-back to the One giving, that is to the Father and the Son, conveys, that the Holy Spirit emanates through the manner of a grantable; and by the reckoning of this looking-back the name ‘gift’ is proper or personal. For Richard of Middleton rightly observes (loc. cit., below): ‘Gift’ insofar as it is accepted among the divine, is a proceeding thing, to which from its own manner of proceeding the first reckoning of ‘gift’ befits. But the first reckoning of ‘gift’ is love [amor] . . . Moreover it is proper to the Holy Spirit, because He proceeds as Love.” The other reckoning conveys a looking-back of the reckoning to creatures: ‘Nor, however,’ as St. Thomas rightly observes (Summa, I, q. 38, a. 1, in reply to n. 4), ‘through this, that in a gift there is conveyed a looking-back to the creature, is it necessary [opportet], that it be essential, but (rather) that something essential be included in its own understanding, just as essence is included in the understanding of a Person.’”

Among many other things, this construct brings gift into the very nature of God. Contemplating the incarnation, Anselm also brings “gratitude” (gratia) directly into his understanding of the Son’s incarnation and atonement. Anselm asks in his Cur Deus Homo what “gratitude” we owe God if He accomplished salvation for His own sake rather than ours. Necessity, he argues, can either remove graciousness or diminish the graciousness of an action, or it can increase the gratitude owed for a benefaction: “when someone acts beneficently against his will due to the unavoidable circumstances to which he is subject, he is owed either no gratitude or less gratitude. When, on the other hand, he subjects himself freely to a force which inevitably requires him to do good, and is not reluctant to endure it, then he certainly deserved greater gratitude for his good deed. Now, this action is not to be called an act of necessity but an act of grace, because it is under no one’s compulsion that he undertakes it and carries it out, but freely.” He offers the following example: “suppose you promise today that you will give a present tomorrow and tomorrow make the gift of your own free will: even though it is a matter of necessity for you to keep your promise, if y9ou can – otherwise you will be a liar – the person to whom you are making the gift is no less indebted to you than if you had not made the promise, because you did not hesitate to make yourself his debtor before presenting the gift.” A vow to enter a monastic life is similar: “It is true that he is of necessity under an obligation to keep the vow after he has made it, in order that he may not incur the condemnation due to an apostate; it is true, also, that he can be forced to keep it, supposing he does not wish to. But even so, if he keeps his vow willingly, he is not less, but more, pleasing to God than if he had not made the vow, since what he has renounced for the sake of God is not only life in ordinary society but permission to participate in it.”

Julian of Norwich, by contrast, places the emphasis on the Lord’s gratitude toward us. In the sixth of her Revelations of Divine Love, she describes heaven as a feast where God displays His gratitude for His people, a gratitude that ascends in three stages. Reflecting on the words “I thank thee for thy travail, and especially for thy youth,” she sees the following vision: “And in this [Shewing] mine understanding was lifted up into Heaven where I saw our Lord as a lord in his own house, which hath called all his dearworthy servants and friends to a stately feast. Then I saw the Lord take no place in His own house, but I saw Him royally reign in His house, fulfilling it with joy and mirth, Himself endlessly to gladden and to solace His dearworthy friends, full homely and full courteously, with marvellous melody of endless love, in His own fair blessed Countenance. Which glorious Countenance of the Godhead fulfilleth the Heavens with joy and bliss. God shewed three degrees of bliss that every soul shall have in Heaven that willingly hath served God in any degree in earth. The first is the worshipful thanks of our Lord God that he shall receive when he is delivered of pain. This thanking is so high and so worshipful that the soul thinketh it filleth him though there were no more. For methought that all the pain and travail that might be suffered by all living men might not deserve the worshipful thanks that one man shall have that willingly hath served God. The second is that all the blessed creatures that are in Heaven shall see that worshipful thanking, and He maketh his service known to all that are in Heaven. And here this example was shewed.—A king, if he thank his servants, it is a great worship to them, and if he maketh it known to all the realm, then is the worship greatly increased.—The third is, that as new and as gladdening as it is received in that time, right so shall it last without end. And I saw that homely and sweetly was this shewed, and that the age of every man shall be [made] known in Heaven, and [he] shall be rewarded for his willing service and for his time. And specially the age of them that willingly and freely offer their youth unto God, passingly is rewarded and wonderfully is thanked. For I saw that whene’er what time a man or woman is truly turned to God,—for one day’s service and for his endless will he shall have all these three decrees of bliss. And the more the loving soul seeth this courtesy of God, the liefer he is to serve him all the days of his life.”

FEUDALISM
In addition to the theology resources of patristic and medieval theology, the feudal social and political system placed a premium on gifts and gratitude. Feudalism was a system in which vassals received grants of property (fiefs) from lords in exchange for promises of service, a promise of loyalty or fealty. According to Catherine Dunn, “Gratitude was of the essence of feudalism from the very earliest years of its growth, springing from the desperate conditions of the time. The mutual fidelity of lord and vassal acquired the character of a continuous circle of benefits and thankfulness, which, once established in the structure of society, was to remain a serious obligation even in later centuries, after the need which had generated this obligation had ceased to exist.”

Leon Gautier, in a book on chivalry, also highlights the central importance of gratitude in feudal society: “It was gratitude extended to the condition of social law. What do I say? it was gratitude which entered into all the manners and customs of a whole race – of all the world. A brutal and gross species of gratitude, I am ready to admit, but both sincere and lively also. Without it and God it would have been all over with us.”

A document of 970 from Oswald, bishop of Worcester, makes the connection explicit: “To my dearest lord Edgar, King of the English, I, Oswald, bishop of the church of Worcester, return thanks before God and men for all the gifts which by your clemency have been granted to me. Therefore, if the mercy of God will allow, before God and men will I always remain faithful to you, remembering in my gratitude your abundant goodness, in granting to me that which I desired so deeply, and taking up my quarrel and that of the holy church of God. This you did through the aid and intervention of my spokesmen, the most reverend archbishop Dunstan, and the venerable Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and that magnificent man, Earl Brihtnoth; and in accordance with the counsel of his wise men and magnates decided it justly, and to the sustentation of the church which he graciously committed to me to rule. Wherefore, in what manner with the lands which were handed over to my power, I have endowed m
y dependents, for the space of life of three men, that is of two heirs after themselves, with the license and attestation of the same my lord king it has pleased both myself and my helpers and counsellors to explain openly through the form of a chirograph to my brethren and successors, that is the bishops. They will thus know what ought justly to be required from them according to the agreement made with them and with their promise. I have also been careful to compose this letter by way of caution, lest any one in the future, instigated by wicked cupidity, and desiring to change this, should renounce the service of the church. So this agreement was made with them, the same my lord king approving and by his attestation corroborating and confirming the greatness of his munificence, all the wise men and magnates of his court attesting and consenting.”

Having expressed his gratitude for the king’s favor, he specifies the obligations he is taking on himself: “With this agreement I have conceded to them the lands of holy church to be held under me, that is that all the law of riding which pertains to equites should be fulfilled by them; and that they should fully perform all those things which justly belong to the right of the same church, that is to say those things which in English are called churchscot and toll (that is Theloneum), and tac (that is swinsceade,) and other rights of the church, unless the bishop shall wish to pardon anything to any of them; and they must, moreover, affirm with an oath that so long as they hold his lands they will continue humbly in all subjection to the commands of the bishop. Besides this, moreover, they shall provide themselves ready for every need of the bishop; they shall provide horses, they themselves shall ride; and for all the burning of lime for the need of the church and for the building of the bridge they shall be found ready; moreover they shall provide, of their own accord, for building the hunting lodge of the lord bishop, and shall turn their own spears to hunting whenever it shall please the lord bishop. Moreover, for the many other occasions of need which the lord bishop often requires, either for his own service or to fulfill that to the king, they should always be subjected in all humility to the governance of that leader and to the will of whomsoever presides over the episcopal office, on account of the benefices which have been granted to them, according to his will and according to the quantity of lands which each one possesses.”

A fourteenth-century document names ingratitude as the cuase for which a manor was removed from one Walter de Vernon, ingratitude expressed in a refusal to perform the feudal service promised to the lord: “It is presented by the jurors above named that the manor of Chinnole along with the hamlet of Sydenham was held of old, from the time of the Conquest, from the lord king of England, by a certain man who was named Walter de Vernon, as one knight’s fee; and because the said Walter de Vernon refused to perform his due senice from the said manor to the lord king John in the time of the war which sprang up between the lord king John and the king of France, the lord king John with the advice of his council seized that same manor with its appurtenances and removed the said Walter de Vernon, on account of his ingratitude from the possession of the aforesaid manor forever. And the lord king John granted that same manor with its appurtenances for the services that to the same lord king were due from it to Saer de Quincy formerly earl of Winchester, to hold to himself and his heirs in ratite from the lord king as one knight’s fee; and the heirs of the said Saer held the aforesaid manor in succession, and still hold it, except the hamlet Sydenham, which the abbot of Thame holds as a gift from Roger de Quincy.”

Dunn suggests that this feudal system is critical background for Renaissance ideas of ingratitude as an act of treason and betrayal. Remigio Nannini wrote that “If I euer desired to be prouided and furnished with liuely and fit speeches, effectuall and of force, I desire it in this occasion, wherewith I must blame a vice, which cannot be so much blamed as it ought: for as treason cannot be sufficiently punished; euen so ingratitude cannot bee sufficiently blamed, being so conioyned togethers, that man may say, that euery Traitor is ingratefull, and euery ingratefull man is a Traitor: for like as treason is no other thing than a breach of faith and dutie; euen so ingratitude is no other thing, than a breach of the band and dutie due vnto a man, by reason of a pleasure receiued.”

William Bullein echoed these words with a specific biblical example: “Thys Ingratitude of Judas, is a goodly president, vnto all Traitours agaynste Prynces, by whome they haue receyued Benefites: and many seruauntes, whych haue ben brought up from rascall and Beggers states, and through thyr maisters, haue bene preferred into the calling of estimacion, Wealth, and Worship, whych afterward haue sucked the bloud of them which gaue them first their sucke, and nourishment in theyr adversitie.”

The Mirror for Magistrates (1587) includes this on Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain:

A princely heart the liberall gifts disclose.
Hee gaue to eche such guerdons for their facts,
As might them only mooue to noble acts.

No labours great his subjects then refus’d.,
No trauayles that might like his regall minde:
But ech of them such exercise well vs’d
Wherein was praise, or glory great to finde.
And to their liege bare faithfull hearts so kinde
That what hee wild they all obeyd his hest,
Nought else was currant, but y kings request.

The Renaissance conception of gratitude was also mixed with conceptions of honor, a mix of themes that Dunn traces to Aristotle. In the 1629 treatise “The Cities Advocate, in this case or question of honor and armes,” the writer says “it will worthily well become them [lords who owe their wealth to commerce], freely and thankfully to acknowledge so honest originals, as all this Realm from thence is filled with . . . . Which acknowledgment, besides that it is in the lawes of honour, an act of bounden duty, that may the rather take it for a glorie, because our Princes haue vouchsafed to be incorporated; as members of seuerall Companies in the Citie, coming thereby as it were vnder that banner.”

Dallington’s Aphorisms linkes ingratitude and dishonor: Prince “should hold the rod of Iustice and correction ouer them [their favorites], when they abuse this fauour. For when the fauourite shall dare to contradict, or disobey the expresse commandement of his master, and to giue him check-mate, by stopping the draught of his power, it is intolerable: it derogateth too much from his honour that so ill bestowed the fauour, and staineth the honestie of him that so vnworthily receiued, and so vngratefully requited it.” Gratitude is second only to an oath, Dallington suggested, in tying a man to “honestie and faithful performance.”

EUCHARIST
John Bossy points out that for “Augustine and the old church . . . sacraments were the skeleton of the social body. If you wished the Church to remain a social body, you had better have sacraments; what was decided about sacraments would determine what sort of social body the new Church was to be.” The Reformers continued to seek to “establish the Eucharist as the centre of the consciousness of Christians and of social unity. Luther offered a version of the mass which represented the unifying sacrament without the divisive sacrifice; Zwingli designed a social community of remembrance, invited to take Christ into its heart by assembling around a table of imitation of the Last Supper. Calvin expounded with great eloquence the bond of brotherhood in the body of Christ, and some of his successors proved better than he did at getting a sense of thi
s into their liturgy. Cranmer tried the German way and then the Swiss, in search of a ritual which would bring unity to the commonwealth. All reformers looked for an intenser communion through mutual participation in the cup.” In spite of these efforts, and in spite of the fact that the Reformers “were building on a solid layer of familiar quasi-eucharistic institutions of eating and drinking, in church and out of it,” by the mid-seventeenth century “few reformed communities had managed to create a symbol of social unity as powerful as the Host, or a celebration of togetherness as popular as the feat of Corpus Christi.”

Bossy cites several reasons for this. One was that the Reformation placed emphasis on “the perspicacious word over the mysteriously integrative rite, of faith over charity.” Even if the Reformers had agreed on a Eucharistic formula, he argues, it is unlikely the Eucharist could have emerged as a socially unifying symbol that the early Reformers desired: “There seems something inherently unreasonable about raising the standard of community as high as the reformers were doing, and expecting entire populations to live up to it for more than a couple of days in the year, and without the assistance of alcohol.” In the end, the post-Reformation Protestant Eucharist “was affected by the heresy which loomed at the further end of the Christianity of the spirit: that the union to be sought was with that other spirit, God, not with that tiresome incarnation your neighbor.” Zwingli’s “Christ in the mind was rather easily separable from Christ the social body; as easily perhaps as the Christ in the heart of Thomas a Kempis’s interior dialogue.” This “private eucharist of asocial mysticism . . . was eventually to become the Holy Communion of modern and subcontemporary Catholicism” – not to mention, of course, much of Protestantism.

For medieval Christianity, Eucharist was at the center of social life, which was centered on the church. A dramatic illustration of the central importance of the Eucharist is evident in the careers of Wyclif and Galileo. According to Miri Rubin, “Wyclif’s trenchant criticism of papal authority, the wealth of the church, the religious orders, images and pilgrimages were all tolerated early in his career, until he began to pronounce on the eucharist. From 1381 on, with the publication of his Confessio, his views were subjected to ecclesiastical condemnation, the patronage of John of Gaunt was withdrawn, some of his followers were chased out of Oxford, and he retired to his parish of Lutterworth in Leicestershire.” Rubin cites Redondi’s finding that Galileo’s theory of optics was condemned “because of their implications when applied to the edifice of eucharistic doctrine. His corpuscular theory of physics threatened to change the way in which substance and accidents were related, and contradicted the Aristotelian foundations which were so necessary for the maintenance of the eucharist as a mystery of Christ’s body with the appearance of bread. Galileo’s atomistic theory meant that the colour, taste, smell and heat, the accidents, were contained in tiny particles of substance which must remain, in the case of bread and wine, even after the consecration to produce the accidents of bread and wine, and this was obviously anathema.” These stories confirm what the bishop of Vienne said to Pope Paul III before the Council of Trent: The Eucharist “indeed is the hinge around which things revolve . . . The heresies are many, and very grave, Yet Your Holiness must first and foremost consider those which concern the mass and the sacrament of the eucharist.”

More concretely, Rubin points to the ways that the Eucharist, and particularly the celebration of Corpus Christi “was also taken up as a theme for patrician virtue in English towns” and thus the eucharist marked out hierarchies that “enabled, if not forced, an identification of order and a disposition of power.” When the Lollards and Hussites argued for an alternative “symbolic ordering of access to God,” they were also challenging the hierarchical system in which the Eucharist was embedded – a hierarchical both clerical and civil Thus the Lollards challenged notions of sacerdotal efficacy and the Hussites advocated Utraquism, “which broke down the barriers between priest and laity and expressed a more egalitarian and anti-authoritairan creed.”

The question for us, however, is not merely the centrality of the Eucharist, but the centrality of Eucharist as God’s gift that is received Eucharistically – with gratitude. Luther accused the medieval Eucharistic doctrine of undermining the gift-character of the Eucharist by turning it into a sacrificial performance, a work. Was Luther’s critique justified? Supposing that medieval society was organized around Eucharist, does that mean it was organized around gift-and-gratitude? I don’t pretend to have worked this out in detail, but the following considerations suggest something of the complexity of the situation.

First, there is little doubt that the Eucharist was seen as a gift, but the direction of the gift was not only (and perhaps not primarily) from God to His church as it was the opposite. EJ Kilmartin explains that later theories of Eucharistic sacrifice can be grouped as “theories of oblation” and “theories of destruction.” According to the former, “the offering of a gift is the essence of sacrifice. In the case of the Eucharistic sacrifice, influenced by the Tridentine order of treatment of the sacraments of the somatic real presence of the whole Christ and the Eucharistic sacrifice, the offering of the gift of Christ was depicted as conditioned by the prior conversion of the bread and wine.” This is consistent with the suggestion of some scholars that the early Eucharist grew out of the Jewish “thank offering” (Frank Senn discusses this theory in The People’s Work: A Social History of the Liturgy). The Eucharist is an offering of Christ to the Father, the whole Christ, head and body.

Second, the Eucharistic prayers of the middle ages suggest that the Eucharistic drama of gift and gratitude was distorted and disrupted by late medieval developments. The various prayers and hymns that Rubin includes are prayers of salutation, recognition of Jesus’ presence in the elements of bread and wine, but not prayers of thanksgiving. There was a thanksgiving inherent in the Roman mass, but Bouyer describes a late medieval situation where the Eucharistic prayer is buried “under untraditional formularies.” In the early 13th century, the elevation of the host began “to draw the whole popular devotion in the mass to itself,” as the church reacted to the threat of Berengarian symbolic interpretations of the real presence and as “the entire mass tended to center around the production of this presence, which was seen as the result of the repetition of Christ’s words over the bread and wine.”

In this context, even the best of the later medieval discussions of the Eucharist reduced the thanksgiving “to an expression of gratitude for the gift of God received in communion, or expected from the celebration. The sacramental actuality of the sacrifice gave way to the consideration of the ‘fruits’ that were expected from it and which no one tired of enumerating. But, most often, they had very little in common with the ancient view of the whole church being fulfilled in its common participation in the one redemptive sacrifice, so magnificently expressed by St. Augustine.” The older Eucharistic forms never entirely disappeared, but they survived in a reduced form and in a somewhat alien context.

The Reformers, by Bouyer’s account, failed to recover the full Eu
charistic character of the celebration. Luther insisted that the laity be included and receive both bread and wine, but “this was soon weakened by the fact that Luther, still following the medieval pattern, looked upon the communion as the foremost opportunity for acts of penance grafted upon the worship of the Christus passus. The sole ‘thanksgiving’ he retained was the medieval thanksgiving for the assurance of forgiveness that was renewed in this way.” Luther knew that “the eucharist must involve us in a pure ‘sacrifice of thanksgiving’ for the gift received from the Savior. But, for him, and even more narrowly for his followers, this gift tended to be reduced to the subjective awareness of forgiveness.” Thus, in their zeal to “prevent the mass from appearing to be a new sacrifice, distinct from Christ, which the priests could perform at will, no other sacrifice was admitted than the subjective self-offering made by the believer in his grateful commitment to God’s service elicited by his renewed sense of forgiveness.” Rejecting the real presence, many Protestants deny that there can be “any other sacrifice in the eucharist than the very Pelagian sacrifice that man, and man alone, offers to God in gratitude for his benefits.”