A William IV Chalice

Extract

One of the pastoral consequences of the English Reformation was a change in the way that the viaticum was administered. For many centuries the sacrament had been reserved in churches, and this had been compulsory since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Holy communion was taken to the sick and dying, often accompanied with much ceremonial, but now this was brought to an end. Every edition of the Book of Common Prayer had contained a form for ‘the communion of the sick’, a celebration of the eucharist in ‘a convenient place in the sick man's house’. The 1549 book also had provision for what we should now call ‘communion by extension’, taking the consecrated elements to the sick after a celebration in church, but that disappeared in 1552, and is disallowed by a strict following of the rubric in 1662. William Kennedy long ago argued that communion by extension had probably been legal after 1552, but that he had found no mention of it in the visitation papers of the period. ‘With infrequent communions provided in the year – three or four, or twelve at the most – the opportunities for ‘carrying the communion’ to the sick were very few, and communion by means of a private celebration became the regular method.’