Writing About Eucharistic Belief and Practice Among Historians of Protestantism in Seventeenth-Century Ireland

Abstract

Evie Monaghan considers how several Protestant and Presbyterian scholars of the seventeenth century tackled the historical dimensions of the eucharist. The precise nature of the eucharist had been of interest to reformers for centuries before the Reformation, but with the splits in western Christendom in the sixteenth century it took on added significance. While Catholics understood that during the Mass the bread and the wine underwent a physical change into the body and blood of Christ, Protestants in general preferred a spiritual understanding of the event. There were, however, various subtle differences of interpretation among the denominations, and this chapter explores how certain historians made use of what they considered to be earlier church practices to formulate their respective histories of eucharistic practice and belief. Among the scholars discussed are Archbishop James Ussher, Sir James Ware and Archbishop William King for the Church of Ireland, and Robert Blair and Patrick Adair for the Presbyterians. It is argued that while Ussher and Ware set out to link eucharistic practices in their own day with those of the early Irish church, King, writing in the context of the glorious revolution at the end of the century, took a more polemical approach. For their part, Presbyterian scholars focused on the beginnings of ‘godly communities’ in Ireland, their identity driven more by spiritual connections than by historical roots.