Clare Johnson provides a careful discussion of the “other” six sacraments that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church celebrate. Relying on the liturgical books themselves, she investigates their biblical roots, the logic behind their coherence, and their theological significance.

This chapter explores christological underpinnings to eucharistic theology. It delineates transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and three versions of impanation in the effort to offer an incarnational model of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

The fifth and final chapter analyses how people of African (and indigenous) descent practiced Catholicism in the 1770s to 1790s. It puts villages in the interior Caribbean and haciendas in Antioquia in conversation with the mines of the Pacific, revealing both how there were longstanding rural autonomies and possibilities and how they could be swiftly destroyed by the arrival of conquering missionaries or visiting judges. The chapter illustrates how Catholicism was at once a mode of colonial governance and transcultural, local, and interstitial. The first section examines the reducciones of arrochelados by the conquering friar Joseph Palacios de La Vega and is followed by a discussion of trials for illicit relations in Antioquia as part of a violent Enlightenment drive to reorder colonial (and especially black) life. It concludes with an analysis of baptismal and confirmation records from the mines of Nóvita, which reveal the extent to which people of African descent and the worlds of the mines of the Pacific transformed Catholicism.

Chapter 4 charts the provision and/or absence of instruction in Catholicism in the cultural worlds of the Pacific, which the bishops of Popayán framed as “spiritual pasture.” It begins with an analysis of the patterns of baptism and godparentage in the small city of Cartago, far from the gold mines where enslaved labourers shored up the white elite. The chapter examines two controversies that divided the mine and slave-owning elite and the upper echelons of the Church for decades; first, a debate over the stipend system in which slaveholders had to pay itinerant clergy to travel to the mines to administer the sacraments, and second, over mineros allowing enslaved people to work on holy days, despite myriad laws and papal bulls outlawing it. Ultimately, the remoteness of the mines from towns, and the disinterest of whites in settling there, meant that enslavers continued the long-held custom of enslaved people labouring on holy days and saving up gold dust to pacify them. Condemned by the bishops as “spiritual abandonment,” the custom helped to create conditions for the growth of the large free black population and perhaps the practice of their own religions that largely remain outside of view.

Augustine’s preaching touches numerous aspects of his theology which are predominantly present in his most important treatises. The sacraments of the Church are treated in his controversies with heretics but they are also very much present in his sermons, where he teaches the sound doctrine of the Church and performs the Christian rites for the edification of the faithful. This chapter examines Augustine’s teaching on baptism and the Eucharist in his preaching. Having considered his definition of the sacraments in general in his preached works, it presents his teaching on the sacraments in his catechesis to the baptism candidates and to the newly baptised Christians of his congregation. The study further takes into consideration what Augustine says on baptism and the Eucharist in his sermons while addressing the problems of the Donatists and Pelagians. Augustine makes difficult theological concepts understandable to his flock by adapting his language to them.

St. Paul speaks about the church as the body of Christ, and he also speaks about the Eucharist as the body of Christ. How are these two affirmations related? Christian medieval authors gave consideration to the notion of the church as the “mystical body” of Christ and understood the church as the fruit or result of eucharistic communion in the “true body” of Christ. This chapter examines the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the church and its relation to the sacraments. It also shows how this conception has deeply informed the modern idea of the church as a sign and instrument of grace for all human beings, called to communion in the one Christ.

This chapter traces the consequences of the Laudians’ view of the church as the house of God for the internal arrangements and beautification of the church and its fabric. It draws out the full practical and theological significance of the Laudian ideal of the beauty of holiness. Their claims that their policies and practices were based in part on the Jewish temple and in part on the cathedrals and the Chapel Royal are outlined and assessed.

The Laudian view of the sacraments as the places where Christ’s presence in its church reached its apogee and of the altar as the site of the most intense divine presence in the church are expounded. The Laudians placed the reception of the sacrament at the centre of the collective worship of the church and of the life of faith, and thus made the altar the focal point of divine worship. The life of faith was defined in sacramental terms as a journey from font to altar, and stress placed on the need to give physical expression to these views and priorities through bowing towards the altar and worshipping towards the east. The Laudian altar policy, which placed railed-off communion tables altarwise at the east end of the church and reoriented worship towards them was the logical expression of such views. Through a case study of the church at East Knoyle, the communion room and altar are shown to have been that part of the church where the Laudians conceived the church triumphant and church militant came into closest contact in this life; something rendered explicit by their repeated insistence that angels attended the reception of the sacrament.

The chapter on sacraments in general and baptism and confirmation in particular, follows the formulation of the decree of the seventh session, from the list of heretical propositions idenifying their authors and meanings, to the conciliar discussions of them, to the draft decrees, and their final wording. It points to misunderstanidngs and polemical stances that ecumenical dialogue can help to bridge.