Faithful Bodies. Heather Miyano Kopelson
in and of themselves, the emphasis on performances using them meant that they served as a conduit for devotions and taught puritans how to perceive and interact with the divine.10 We can use these embodied, object-centered experiences to look over the shoulders of those thousands of English individuals who did not leave much of an individual imprint on the written record in order to discern the many-layered process of place-making and the creation of corporate bodies of the faithful. At the same time that the communion vessels and the bread and wine they served were meant to direct participants to the overwhelming action of divine salvation, they also enacted human-made hierarchy through variations of practice in the distribution and consumption of the meal.
Much of this hierarchy of the table had been inherited from English society prior to the development of a puritan movement. Those with the highest rank ate first and took the best available option. Hosts had to provide food for all, including the poor, but it did not have to be of the same quality. Eating the same food was a mark of at least temporarily sharing the same rank, which is why during the early months of the faltering Jamestown colony yeoman John Smith bristled when Edward Wingfield, a minor noble, refused to eat from the literal “common kettle” of worm-infested grain ingested by the other council members. Another early English colony, Plymouth, attempted to mandate a common kettle among all inhabitants, cultivating and preparing food communally rather than familially. Even though many were dedicated to the idea of establishing a society based on being members of one body, they objected to the erasure of deeply established modes of labor distribution and quickly returned to household-based production.11
While the bread served as part of the Lord’s Supper was the same for all, participants found other ways to express hierarchy. One of the more detailed accounts of the conduct of the meal, while written by someone unsympathetic to puritan practice, corroborates with a prescriptive explanation of church practice by the unmistakably puritan John Cotton. As described by the lawyer Thomas Lechford, whose shift from dissenting to conforming beliefs about the scriptural warrant for bishops kept him barred from the ritual meal in New England, the first step was for those not partaking to leave the meetinghouse. Then “the Ministers and ruling Elders sitting at the Table, the rest” sitting “in their seats, or upon forms,” a type of backless bench, a “Teaching Elder” blessed and consecrated the bread. Depending on the size and configuration of the church, the table at which the minister and deacons sat might have been a relatively small hinged surface attached to the seating for the deacons or the front of the pulpit, or a larger freestanding one that strongly resembled its strictly domestic counterparts. After the prayer, “the ministers deliver the Bread in a Charger to some of the chiefe, and peradventure gives to a few the Bread into their hands, and they deliver the charger from one to another, till all have eaten.” The same process was repeated “in like manner” with the wine: “the cup, till all have dranke, goes from one to another.” John Cotton specified that after the minister partook of the bread and passed it to “all that sit at Table with him,” he remained “sitting in his place at the Table” while the deacons distributed it to the rest of the congregation. Cotton explained that the sitting posture denoted the communicants’ status as “co-sessors with [Christ] at the last Judgement.”12 A guide to liturgy followed in early Bermuda similarly noted, “The people shall communicate in order, and that sitting, as is most conformable to the first institution,” although it also allowed for standing “as is accustomed in some places.”13
The deacon gave bread and wine to those of highest social rank first, an acknowledgment of worldly status underscored by their selection from a variety of cups, beakers, and tankards whose differing types indicated varying levels of rank. These congregations echoed their greater focus on the differentiation of spiritual roles with an emphasis on social standing in this world. Samuel Sewall recorded the “humiliation” of one particular Lord’s Supper in 1724 when “Deacon Checkly Deliver’d the Cup first to Madam Winthrop, and then gave me the tankard.” Scholars have interpreted the emotions that “put [Sewall] to the Blush” as coming both from such a spiritual intimacy with Katherine Brattle Winthrop, a woman who had spurned his courtship, and from the social snub communicated in the humbler form of the tankard. Sewall’s gift of a silver tankard bearing his coat of arms to that church, the Old South Church in Boston, may have indicated that the incident rankled him to his death, but it may also have been Sewall’s reminder to himself and to others to focus on Christ and salvation rather than objects and people of the material world. A more highly valued form—like a vessel made of silver rather than pewter or wood—was not theologically necessary, but it expressed the tastes and practices of spiritual refinement as it aided in the development and acquisition of those very tastes and practices.14
Another style of distributing the Lord’s Supper that was widespread in New England emphasized connection among the participants rather than giving such a prominent role to leading laity. Instead of deacons approaching each individual with assorted vessels, communicants handed the bread and wine to each other in matching sets. Passing the bread and wine among the participants emphasized the equality of all who sat at the Lord’s Table and the sacrality of their connections with one another. A French engraving of the Lord’s Supper as celebrated by Dutch Baptists—who differed in baptismal but not communion practice—illustrates this style of distribution (figure 3.1). In the engraving, seated communicants pass bread and wine to each other in sets of matching vessels, a visual, perceptual, and experiential emphasis on similarity among participants.15 These matching sets survive in New England in greater number from the early eighteenth century, primarily among churches that maintained a narrow definition of admission to the ritual meal. With stricter terms of admission came fewer participants and less of a need to distinguish socially among them. Conversely, a more inclusive definition of the body of Christ and who might participate in the Lord’s Supper usually meant the expression of more social hierarchy in its administration.16
Figure 3.5. In the second half of the seventeenth century, most ovens in colonial houses in New England were built into the back of the fireplace instead of outside the house. Note the recessed oven in the back of the fireplace. Fireplace, Cooper-Frost-Austin House, Cambridge, Mass. Gift of William Sumner Appleton. (Courtesy of Historic New England)
Although information on seventeenth-century practice in Bermudian churches is scarcer than for their New England counterparts, surviving church silver suggests that a range of practice also existed on the island. The seventeenth-century vessels that remain in the church in St. George’s today are similar to the ones William and Mary presented to King’s Chapel in Boston in 1694. The Bermudian 1697/8 “King’s Set,” which is engraved with the arms and cypher of William III, contains a chalice with cover, a paten, two flagons, a basin, and a spoon. It is not clear when St. George’s acquired the chalice and cover, hallmarked 1625/6, that are engraved with the Sea Venture striking a rock in full sail, flying the banner of St. George, and with the Rose and Crown on the transom (figure 3.2).17 The explicitly ecclesiastical chalice and the existence of a cross in depiction of the ship’s pennants may seem to belie any puritan leanings. However, they do not necessarily indicate conformity to the Church of England practices.
The disputes over the validity of a presbyterian structure—whether there was any spiritual authority between each individual congregation and God—did not have direct bearing on celebrations of the Lord’s Supper or on most ministers’ refusal to use the prescribed Church of England liturgy. In addition to the stated preferences of ministers and the expulsion of many of them from positions in England, the location of the pulpit in many Bermudian churches was similar to its placement in New England meetinghouse architecture. It was across from the main entrance, emphasizing the centrality of preaching.18 There are also surviving Bermudian vessels more squarely in the puritan vein. In his 1654 will, Roger Wood bequeathed a beaker engraved with his name to Devonshire Church. Already in use when Wood died, the beaker would have blended into any number of New England churches’ collections of silver (figure 3.3 and figure 3.4).19
Corn, Cassava, and the “Purest Wheate in Heaven”
No matter how refined the metal, whether inscribed or not, the purpose of silver communion vessels was to be