Amanda Wrenn Allen argues that the Eucharistic debate between Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Cranmer (1550–1551) was central in shaping the English reformation across multiple regimes and that the debate itself was theological, political, and, most importantly, personal. Both men had been Cambridge dons drawn into royal service during Henry VIII's divorce campaign; both became bishops (Gardiner of Winchester, Cranmer of Canterbury); and both were supportive of Henry's supremacy. Cranmer, however, developed connections with the Zurich reformation, while Gardiner, though supportive of England's break with Rome in the 1530s, was a traditionalist in other respects. The flashpoint, Allen tells us, was the Eucharist, a subject dividing not only Protestants from Catholics but Protestants from Protestants. During Edward's reign (1547–1553), Gardiner was jailed while Cranmer led a program for change with an obviously Reformed accent. In these years Cranmer and Gardiner engaged in a published debate over the Eucharist: Cranmer offered his Defence, to which Gardiner responded with his Explication to which Cranmer replied with his Answer. When Mary ascended in 1553, Cranmer found himself in the tower and then burned. Gardiner, on the other hand, was made Lord Chancellor and witnessed England's reconciliation with Rome. Allen's book is a close examination of their debate. Chapters are given over to each man's use of scripture, patristic sources, and theological works by continental reformers. The key for Allen is the fraught relationship between the two men, and the strength of the book is the close reading of the three texts. She helpfully demonstrates Gardiner's surprising willingness to portray Luther and Zwingli in a positive light in his rhetorical maneuvers meant to discredit Cranmer. Likewise, her presentation of Cranmer's obsession with a response to Gardiner's writing even while waiting for execution highlights the personal nature of the debate.

Despite this strength, the text has some problems. First, there are issues relating to historiography. Claims that the Edwardian reformation and the Eucharistic debate have been neglected by scholars are unsupportable. There is also a lack of engagement with several important studies of Cranmer, the English reformation, and Eucharistic theology in the sixteenth century: works by Gordon Jeanes, Bryan Spinks, Colin Buchanan, Brian Gerrish, Peter Marshall, E. C. Ratcliff, and, in particular, a collection of essays on Cranmer edited by Paul Ayris and David Selwyn. Allen also operates with a relatively tidy view of “the Reformation.” There is the problematic assumption, for example, that Gardiner, the author of a defense of the royal supremacy, was not a reformer himself. We need a more nuanced picture of “traditionalists” than what is presented here. This rather clean approach is captured in Allen's description of the Six Articles of 1539 as “Post-Reformation,” as if the “Reformation” was accomplished with the break from Rome. Most scholars today opt for a messier picture of various reformation movements developing across the century. “Puritans,” too, are portrayed in Allen's book as a monolithic block who opposed the Cranmerian legacy in the reign of Elizabeth instead of a hazy spectrum of Reformed Protestants many of whom had completely legitimate claims to continuity with Cranmer. Here we might look to the analysis of, among others, Peter Lake.

This leads us to Allen's argument that Cranmer was a Zwinglian who believed in the “spiritual presence” of Christ and that it was Cranmer who defined Eucharistic doctrine for the Elizabethan church instead of the more current assessment that multiple competing theological and practical positions emerged even among Church of England conformists. While Allen is correct to tie Cranmer to Zurich, the scholars whom she does not consult have shown Cranmer to be related, theologically, to Heinrich Bullinger. Zwingli died some twenty years before the debate; Bullinger had been the chief pastor of Zurich since 1531. Both Cranmer and Bullinger understood God to communicate grace parallel to receiving the elements but not, as Calvin and Bucer taught, through them instrumentally. Parallelism and instrumentalism were both distinct from the memorialism of the long-dead Zwingli. Allen's presentation of Reformed Eucharistic theology needs nuancing. More problematic is the idea that Cranmer defined Eucharistic doctrine for the Elizabethan church. Cranmer's 1552 communion service has an intentional disconnect between the elements and the reception of grace: there is no “consecration” at the table, no manual acts. The elements are taken in memory of Christ, if the elements run out during administration, there is no requirement to “consecrate” more, but rather, one might simply fetch more bread and wine, and if any is left over, it may be consumed as everyday food stuffs. However, with Elizabeth's accession the “Black Rubric” disappeared, the administrative sentence was changed, and the Articles of Religion were revised to omit or alter key Cranmerian language. Within a decade, bishops began to require clergy to return to the table to consecrate additional elements. In one court case, the offending cleric who refused this new pattern even cited “Master Cranmer” for support. The bishops decided, in effect, that Cranmer was wrong and this needed to be fixed. In his 1562 Apology, John Jewel wrote of a consecration of the elements by joining the words of Christ to the material elements. This Calvinist instrumentalism, which was at odds with Cranmer's parallelism, was winning out among many in the Church of England. By the 1662 revision of the prayer book all the practical details listed above concerning the elements had been changed. In short, Cranmer's theology was only one strain even among conformists and not determinative.

Finally, if the key to the debate is the relationship between these two men, why is there no discussion of how it was in fact Gardiner who brought Cranmer into royal service? This seems like an important facet of their complex relationship. While Allen's book has some real strengths, the above problems regrettably detract from an otherwise valuable study.