Copper gilt, England, ca.1570

Copper-gilt communion cup and paten with tapering bowl, baluster stem and domed round foot, the bowl engraved with a band of arabesque foliage.

No early provenance has been found for these objects, which were purchased by the V&A in 1920.

Historical significance: Only three 16th century English communion cups made from copper-gilt are known to survive, two in the V&A collections (including this one) and one at the Society of Antiquaries, London.

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.

Legally, post-Reformation English communion cups were required to be made from precious metals only. This copper example is unmarked and may have been made for a poor parish for use until funds were available for a silver replacement.

This cup and paten were used in Protestant worship to serve the consecrated wine and bread during the service of Holy Communion. In post-Reformation England, it was illegal for communion cups to be made from any metal other than silver, but poor parishes had little choice unless a generous donor came forward. This is one of only three communion cups made of copper thought to survive from the 16th century, the others now in the V&A (Museum Number M.215-1925) and at the Society of Antiquaries in London. Like the other two cups, its early history is not known and, unlike silver examples from the period, it bears no hallmarks.

M.300-1920