This Is My Body: Communion and Cannibalism in Colonial New England
Attempting to police these boundaries, early modern Protestants found especially troubling the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, wherein priests transformed wafers and wine into Jesus' actual flesh and blood. Protestants argued that in their own communion ceremonies, they only symbolically consumed Christ. Yet in both Europe and European colonial outposts, Protestants and Catholics alike practiced medicinal cannibalism, ingesting substances derived from the human body for medical purposes, while explicitly comparing corpse medicine to communion. In addition, Early Puritan colonists repurposed secular drinking implements as communion vessels; and using French-made copper kettles, the Huron practiced a ritual called the Feast of the Dead, as well as other forms of ritualized, literal cannibalism. Examining communion vessels and rituals from the French, the Huron, and the English, this cultural history contends that these combatants were willing to kill and die over perceived differences between what were in fact strikingly similar ideas and practices.
See more of: AHA Sessions