Lee Palmer Wandel

"In its depth of understanding, linguistic analysis and breathtaking range of scholarship, The Eucharist in the Reformation is unique. While other scholars have limited their study to one set of beliefs or geographical region, Wandel has written the first comprehensive study of the eucharist and the set of rituals, symbols, and material culture in which it took place. The book's breadth is surpassed only by the sophistication of Wandel's interpretation of how the meaning of the words signified changing practice and belief in the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic churches of the sixteenth century. Analyzing the words used by Jesus at the Last Supper, this is, my body and this do, Wandel shows how each church saw individual understanding - or misunderstanding - of those words as the crucial determinant of salvation or damnation. The struggle over the meaning of Jesus's seemingly simple words once and for all ended the notion of a universal church. The Eucharist in the Reformation is a tour de force, one of the most important Reformation books to have appeared in recent years." Larissa Juliet Taylor, back cover.