Thomas More and the Eucharistic Controversies

Abstract: Both Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus invoked the consensus of the Church in reply to early Protestant theology. The shared communitarian orientation within their Renaissance theologies must not obscure the differences between these two Northern humanists. Erasmus defended the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but he did not oppose the sacramentarianism of Huldrych Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius with the consistency and clarity of his friend More. More drew from the works of the Church Fathers to explain the significance of embodied worship that made use of images, relics, pilgrimages, and especially the sacraments. Ceremonies were not crutches for the weak but a key element of the 'obedience of the flesh to God' for the ordinary layperson and for the learned. Indeed, More closely associated the vision of the church as the mystical body or 'common corps of Christendom' with the continuing presence of Christ's real body and blood on the altar.