Pewter communion beaker with surface engraved in wriggle-work with scenes from the life of Christ. Dutch, ca. 1710.

Pewter communion beaker with surface engraved in wriggle-work with scenes from the life of Christ.

Port Bequest

The Reformation in England
On the eve of the Reformation, churchgoing in England was a colourful, sensory experience, rich in ceremony. In the 1530s, however, Henry VIII threw off the authority of the pope. Under his successor Edward VI (reigned 1547-53) major changes in worship and church decoration were introduced.

English Reformers wanted a return to a simpler, more direct form of worship. Their boldest move was to reject the Roman Catholic belief in 'transubstantiation', in which the bread and wine are miraculously transformed during the Mass into the body and blood of Christ. They proposed instead a symbolic service of shared communion, conducted in interiors stripped of distracting furnishings and images. The congregation would play an active role in the communion, regularly taking wine as well as bread, whereas before they had been chiefly spectators.

Crown commissioners confiscated or destroyed much of the goldsmiths' work of the medieval church. Some parishes concealed or sold their silver before the commissioners arrived, but by the early 1550s, many were left with just a single cup and paten. Some churches had no precious metal at all.

Consolidation
The success of the Reformation by 1600 owed much to an ingrained culture of obedience to the crown. During the brief reign of Mary I (1553-8) England returned to Catholicism, but under Elizabeth I it swung back to Protestantism, spurred on by state propaganda that Catholicism represented a political threat. Even so, this rupture with the past met with quiet resistance as many people were attached to the old faith and its trappings.

To consolidate this break with traditional religion, the church authorities launched a programme from about 1560 to replace the 'old massing chalices' with 'decent' communion cups of prescribed design. This gave a massive boost to the goldsmiths' trade and the great demand led to the formal establishment of assay offices outside London, at Chester, York, Norwich and Exeter. About 2000 communion cups from the period survive.

In the Lutheran churches of the Netherlands, silver and pewter beakers were often used for serving the consecrated communion wine. In this early 18th-century example, three rows of wrigglework engravings show scenes from the life of Christ, each bearing a title. The ones in the upper row include a Nativity scene, showing Christ's birth in Bethlehem (DE GEBOORTE CRISTIS TOT BETTELEM).

Wrigglework engraving consists of zigzag lines. To make these lines, the engraver rocks a steel gouging tool from side to side as it travels across the surface of the metal.

M.147-1930