Eucharistic devotion and textual appropriation in post-reformation England

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores the forms of sacrament centred piety that developed in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart church. It does so by utilising Christopher Sutton’s “Godly Meditations”, first published in 1601. The text’s movement from Catholic mass book to Protestant communion guide, and Sutton’s amendments to later editions, are used to examine the ways texts were altered to fit different theological and pastoral requirements. Attention is paid to the ambiguous and flexible rhetoric of the “Meditations” and of avant-garde conformists more generally. It is shown that this ambiguity allowed such texts to be appropriated by Laudians who cast them as precedents for their innovations. In doing so, Laudians recast avant-garde conformity as something much narrower than it had been. Ultimately, it is suggested that a more nuanced approach to avant-garde conformity is required; one which recognises that anti-Calvinism was not an inherent part, or necessary consequence, of sacramental piety.