The symbolic vacuum of 16th century English vessels

The Symbolism of the Chalice

The “Grund Chalice” (V&A Museum), the Bedingfeld Chalice (V&A Musuem), and an Elizabethan Communion Cup (SJ Shrubsole).

I recently came across three amazing examples of English silverwork and wanted to share the history and symbolism that these pieces manifest. The story of these three items tells the story of the English Reformation and reveals much about the symbolism of the chalice as the meeting place of heaven and earth (as well as what happens when this meeting-place breaks down).

As you know, I am a silversmith that specializes in liturgical art, so this topic is very important to me, especially as my work includes making custom chalices for liturgy.

The symbolism of the Chalice

To start off, it is important to understand what “a Chalice” is. Basically you have to know that a chalice is a cup. It is a container to hold liquid. We pour into it and pour out of it. We put water, juice, wine and other drinks in cups everyday to drink out of them, and you can understand that by placing something in a cup, we are elevating that thing above over liquids. We do this to separate it from other substances that we don't want to drink.

We put our attention on what is in the cup. When I pour myself a glass of water, for example, I am separating the water in my cup from all other water (from the tap, from the lake, from the river, the ocean, and from other people's cups as well). From the perspective of the person holding the cup, the water in the glass is separated because it is clean and good to drink. The contents of a cup are meant to be good to drink and therefore valuable. So this is important to realize from the start that the symbolism of the chalice is rooted in what it means to be a cup.

“The Chalice” is the highest version of “the Cup”. It is the highest a cup can go on the vessel hierarchy. Below the chalice are things like goblets, and then below that are everyday cups, and below that are things like disposable cups. (image: Miguel Salazar)

Just like everything in the traditional Christian liturgy, the cup becomes the highest version of itself. The chalice can be said to be "the cup of cups", because it holds the most precious substance, the presence of God himself. If you take all the types of cups in the world and stack them into a hierarchy, the chalice would be at the top. You could have your everyday drinking cup in the middle, maybe a wine glass or goblet above that, a paper cup on the bottom, and at the top would be the chalice because it contains the most valuable substance in your world, and therefore it cannot be anything higher in the “realm of cups”.

That is why the chalice is traditionally made out of the most valuable materials we have: gold and silver, often with intricate embellishments like jewels and icons. These decorative elements serve a symbolic purpose, which is to indicate the highest function that an object can have.

Because it is the highest version of a cup, a chalice acts as a doorway. It has a top-down function as well as a bottom-up function. The divine substance drops into it from above and pours out from it below. Like a waterfall, the chalice transmits its contents and does not hold on to them. From bottom-up, the "earth" is offered upwards towards heaven.¹ This is manifested in the bread and wine that are offered up in the chalice, as well as the multiplicity of people participating in the liturgy through the priest.

This means that in the traditional liturgy, the chalice serves as the meeting place between heaven and earth.

The chalice is the meeting-place between heaven and earth. Heaven comes down into the chalice, and then into earth. Likewise, earth goes up into the chalice and then into heaven. (Image: Miguel Salazar)

Hopefully by now you can see how symbolically important the chalice is to the Christian imagination for the past 2,000 years. And this should help people to understand what is going on in a traditional liturgy as well as what is meant in the symbolism of stories like the Holy Grail and the Last Supper.

There is a lot to be said, and much to be veiled, here in the symbolism of the chalice. We can't get through all of it, but I wanted to touch on a few items that will help people understand enough to see it's importance.

Gothic chalice covered by a veil. (Photo by Christian Liebel on Unsplash)

Because it contains the divine substance and is the focal point of the liturgy, the chalice is the primary symbol of the Christian liturgy. From the perspective of the people in the church building, the chalice is veiled for most of the liturgy until is raised up for all to see in the consecration and communion. Then the chalice is made visible and is revealed as the physical meeting point between the priests, the congregation, and God.

It is important to realize that chalices are blessed in a special way that makes them set-aside for only the purpose of the liturgy, and they are not allowed to be used for other purposes.

Your Womb becomes the Holy Table Icon. (image: Russianicons.wordpress.com)

If you hadn't noticed yet, there is a special relationship between the chalice and Mary the Mother of God. Both are set aside only to hold the presence of Christ, both serve as distributors of the Divine to the world, and both serve as the container that brings together heaven and earth. Like the Blessed Mother, the chalice is often veiled and hidden when not presenting Christ to the people.

There are a lot of scriptural references to the "cup" and they all relate to this symbolic understanding of the chalice as well. It is understood in the tradition of the Church that these point to and are fulfilled in the chalice of the liturgy which participates in the mystery of Christ's life, death and resurrection.

16th Century English Chalice Disaster

So with that, let's turn to two historic examples of chalices from medieval England and compare them with what came afterward. This will help us understand what was happening with the symbolism of the chalice during that period.

The first is the Grund Chalice which is a late romanesque chalice from 1200. The second is the Bedingfeld Chalice which is a late gothic chalice made in 1518-1519 according to its hallmarks. We will get to the third cup shortly.

Both of these chalices would have been recognizable to most people in England in the 1520s as chalices seen in everyday church liturgies. They are neither especially ornate, nor are they of the cheap pewter or copper variety that sometimes were used in poor parishes. However, the fact that these have survived the “Chalice Disaster” of the 16th century in England is extremely remarkable and makes these two pieces exceedingly rare items.

The Grund chalice has a typical Romanesque wide bowl, a large, flattened and ornate spherical knob and trumpet-like stem and foot. Along its outer rim is an inscription in Latin “My blood is true drink” (John 6:55). It was presumedly made in England and then ended up in the farming village of Grund in Iceland by the 19th century. However it got there, it was certainly one of the few English romanesque chalices to have survived the 16th century.

Even more extraordinary is the Bedingfeld Chalice (made 1518-1519). This Gothic chalice was hidden in the Norfolk family chapel of the Bedingfeld family, one of the few English Catholic families that never gave in to the Tudor purge of traditional religion. Their story of enduring faith is remarkable.² The fact that the Bedingfeld Chalice was made in 1518-1519 means that this is one of the very last of the Gothic chalices made in England.

Banning the chalices

Of course, a massive disaster struck only a few years after the Bedingfeld chalice was made. During the reigns of Henry VIII, his son Edward, and daughter Queen Elizabeth, the English Reformation dismantled the traditional religion of England, but did not completely replace it.

Among the many egregious religious laws passed by Parliament and the monarchs, the Royal Injunctions of 1547 struck a heavy blow to traditional Christianity in England with one provision in particular where it outlawed "chalices" and attempted to replace them with "communion cups".

Churches were allowed only one communion cup and were forced to hand over, or melt down their medieval chalices. Some chalices were hidden in rocks and caves or in secret passages, but most all were eventually destroyed. This, along with the dissolution of the monasteries, of course was a catastrophe for the people and for medieval art in England. Today very precious few of the medieval chalices have survived.

An Elizabethan Communion Cup (photo: SJ Shrubsole, text by Miguel Salazar)

It’s NOT a chalice

Now, one of the problems with the communion cup in terms of form and function is that it is identical to a common "goblet". Both have a tall cup and sparse decoration, and are used for drinking ordinary (non-ritual) wine. In the 16th century, the “Communion Cup” was not to be considered sacred by any means and it was definitely NOT a chalice. During the order of communion in the Book of Common prayer, all reference to the sacrificial aspect of communion was removed as well as any mention of the divine substance in communion.

So by removing chalices, the royal injunctions of 1547 had the consequence of eliminating the highest cup in the "hierarchy of cups" you could say.

Now, typically what would happen is that one of the best of the lower types would morph into a higher form to fill in the gap. This is what happened for example in the first few centuries of Christianity when the Greco-Roman "Calix", which was a normal clay drinking vessel, was elevated to become the golden, sacred chalice used in liturgy. I am working on another video that details that interesting story.

When you remove the highest element in the hierarchy, it creates a symbolic vacuum that MUST be filled one way or another. The “Communion Cup” was NOT allowed to replace the Chalice, so the public vacancy remained. This caused occult practices to attempt to fill the role that the chalice once had. (image: Miguel Salazar)

However, in 16th century Elizabethan England, the normal process was not allowed to fully take place. The chalices were not really 'replaced'. They were removed and not replaced: outlawed. The communion cups were specifically NOT chalices. They were goblets for passing out communion wine which was specifically stated in the Book of Common Prayer to NOT be identical to the Divine substance.

So of course, if you no longer have the divine substance in the container, you no longer have the 'highest cup of cups". In effect, the public repudiation of the chalice is the same as denying the ability of contact and attain union with God on earth.

To the 16th century Anglicans, the chalice floated away to heaven and was unreachable by mankind. All that they had access to was a common goblet. Indeed, it was no more than a goblet for wine according to the Book of Common prayer, which even instructed the priest to simply take the remainder of the communion bread and wine home to eat as normal food. Nevertheless, the Communion Cup was ‘haunted’ by the memory of Christ, as the congregation was instructed that communion was a “reminder” of Christ, but not Christ Himself. Thus, like the loss of the Divine presence from the Temple in Jerusalem, the Church of England also became a white-washed empty tomb.

This of course was a spiritual disaster for the English people, and many rebellions sprang up during the 16th century to demand the reinstatement of the traditional mass. Sadly they were all put down by the English monarchs, and the communion cup was promoted into the future.

The symbolic vacuum

So when the communion cup was installed after 1547, the old chalice was outlawed. This did away with the chalice as the meeting place of heaven and earth.

The communion cup broke the old system, and ironically broke communion between heaven and earth, as well as communion between England and the rest of the traditional Christian world.

Symbolically, this was akin to Adam and Eve choosing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life. The chalice was the good fruit which God gave to earth, but the Elizabethan communion cup was despairing of the broken unity with God.

Unintentionally, the loss of the chalice created a symbolic vacuum for the English mind and soul. Starting here in the 16th century, the vessel that connects the earth to the spiritual realm was officially denied public access. However like all needs, something else soon emerged to replace it.

Many traditional Catholics in England went underground. These are the famous "recusants" the old believers who hid Catholic priests in their houses and held Latin masses in secret. (By the way, it is almost certain that Shakespeare was one of these.³)

Unfortunately, there was also a dark side to the story.

It is here in the 16th century that occult practices began to emerge among English anglican academics and even clergy. Figures like Doctor Dee are notable for their obsession with finding a way to commune with angels. Having lost the old religion, they felt the loss of communion with heaven and wanted to reconnect. Unfortunately, like Adam and Eve, they attempted to reach up to take knowledge for themselves instead of receiving it humbly as a gift from above.

The occult movement in western Europe can largely be traced back to this fundamental symbolic rupture with traditional Christian liturgy since they are fundamentally about trying to regain communion with the spiritual world in the wrong way.

Going back to these three vessels, I hope this helps to explain the massive story that these objects can tell about the symbolism of the chalice.

1. For more on the biblical cosmological vision of Heaven and Earth, see Matthieu Pageau’s book The Language of Creation https://www.amazon.com/Language-Creation-Symbolism-Genesis-Commentary/dp/1981549331.

2. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/rats-nests-bedingfeld-history-oxburgh-hall/

3. https://catholicherald.co.uk/why-im-now-convinced-shakespeare-was-a-catholic/