I

In the writers of the period from the sixth century to the eighth there are but scanty references to Eucharistic doctrine, and few of them are of any special importance. It may be sufficient to mention some passages in the writings of St. Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, St. Germain of Paris, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, and Theodulf of Orleans.

St. Gregory the Great was born at Rome about 540; he became Pope in 590; he died in 604. His life and writings are entitled to special interest on the part of Englishmen who remember him with gratitude as “ ‘Gregory our father,’ who ‘sent us Baptism’ ”. His allusions to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist make no attempt at definition, but they imply a belief that the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ. Of the gift bestowed and received in Communion he says:—

“The good Shepherd laid down His life for His sheep, that in our Sacrament He might give (verteret) His body and blood, and might satisfy the sheep whom He had redeemed with the nourishment of His flesh.”

“His body is taken, His flesh is distributed for the salvation of the people, His blood is poured not now into the hands of unbelievers but into the mouths of the faithful.”

He incidentally refers to the reserved Sacrament as “the body of the Lord” in the account of a monk who had died without the blessing of St. Benedict, whose body could not be kept under the earth until the Sacrament had been placed on his breast.

“The man of God at once gave with his hand the Communion of the body of the Lord, saying, ‘Go and place this body of the Lord on his breast with great reverence, and thus lay him in the grave’. And when this was done the earth received and kept his body and no longer cast it out.”

St. Gregory, without exactly defining wherein the sacrifice of the Eucharist consists, asserts that it is a sacrifice, ascribes specific effects to the offering of the sacrifice, connects it with both the passion and the heavenly offering of our Lord, and sees in it some kind of renewal of the passion. After mentioning instances of deliverance from captivity, impending death, and purgatory through particular offerings of the sacrifice with specific aims, he declares the duty of

“offering to God daily oblations of tears, the daily sacrifices of His flesh and blood. For this victim in a unique way saves the soul from eternal destruction, which in mystery renews (reparat) for us the death of the only-begotten Son, who, though He rising from the dead dieth no more and death shall not again have dominion over Him, yet living in Himself immortally and incorruptibly is again sacrificed on our behalf in this mystery of the sacred oblation.… Let us think of what kind this sacrifice on our behalf is, which to set us free ever represents the passion of the only-begotten Son. For who of the faithful can hold it doubtful that in the very hour of the sacrifice at the voice of the priest the heavens are opened, in that mystery of Jesus Christ the bands of the angels are present, things lowest are brought into communion with the highest, things earthly are united with the heavenly, and the things that are seen and those which are “unseen become one?”

Elsewhere he speaks similarly of the renewal of the passion and of the association with the heavenly offering.

“He who in Himself rising from the dead dieth no more still by means of this sacrifice suffers again in His own mystery on our behalf. For as often as we offer unto Him the sacrifice of His passion, so often we renew His passion to ourselves to set us free.”

“Without intermission the Redeemer offers a burnt-offering on our behalf, who without ceasing presents to the Father His Incarnation for us. For His Incarnation is itself the offering of our cleansing, and, when He shows Himself as Man, He washes away by His intervention the sins of man. And by the mystery of His humanity He offers a perpetual sacrifice because these things also which He cleanses are eternal.”

In this teaching two things are alike clear. St. Gregory does not mean that the Eucharist involves any physical renewal of our Lord’s sufferings or any repetition of His death; he does assert that it is a mysterious presentation to the Father of the passion and death and risen and ascended life of the incarnate Son.

With the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist as the offering of Christ St. Gregory links the oblation which Christians make of themselves. In like manner he connects the need of good conduct on the part of communicants with the necessity of receiving Communion. As in much else of his theology, he thereby follows teaching emphasised by St. Augustine. On these subjects he writes:—

“The mere reception of the Sacraments of our Redeemer is not enough really to consecrate the mind unless good works also be added. For what does it profit to receive with the mouth His body and blood and to be His enemy by evil conduct?”

“We must offer ourselves to God with a penitent heart, because we who celebrate the mysteries of the passion of the Lord are bound to imitate the rite which we perform. Then will it be really a sacrifice to God on our behalf, when we have made ourselves a sacrifice.… After death we shall not need the healthful sacrifice, if before death we ourselves have been a sacrifice to God.”

Incidentally St. Gregory refers to the worship of our Lord in the Sacrament when, in a passage already quoted, he speaks of the Lord’s body being carried “with great reverence,” and when he elsewhere says:—

“That the Sacrament of the Lord’s passion may not be ineffectual in us, we are bound to imitate what we receive, and to proclaim what we revere (veneramur).”

Isidore of Seville was born at Seville or at Cartagena about 560; he became Archbishop of Seville about 600; he died in 636. He was thus a younger contemporary of Pope Gregory the Great; and they may be taken as representative, St. Gregory of the Italian, Isidore of the Spanish, theology of their time.

Isidore teaches that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, and that the elements are made by consecration to be the body and blood of Christ.

“A type of this sacrifice was shown before in the priesthood of Melchizedek.… ‘Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek,’ that is, according to the rite of this sacrifice which Christ completely offered in His passion, and which He commanded that His Apostles also should have as His memorial.… Christ, the Wisdom of God, has made for Himself a house, that is, the holy Church, in which He has offered the sacrifices of His body, in which He has mingled the wine of His blood in the cup of the divine Sacrament, and has made ready a Table, that is, the altar of the Lord, sending His servants, the apostles and teachers, to the foolish, that is, to all nations ignorant of the true God, saying to them, ‘Come, eat My bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you,’ that is, Receive the food of the holy body, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you, that is, Take the cup of the sacred blood.”

“The transformation (conformatio) of the Sacrament, that the oblation which is offered to God, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, may be transformed (conformetur) to the body and blood of Christ.… The sacrifice which is offered by Christians to God, Christ our Lord first instituted as Master, when He gave to the Apostles His own body and blood.… The bread which we break is the body of Christ.… The wine is His blood.… The bread, because it strengthens the body, is called the body of Christ; the wine, because it produces blood in the flesh, is referred to the blood of Christ. Though these things are visible, yet being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, they are changed (transeunt) into the sacrament of the divine body.… To offer the sacrifice for the repose of the faithful departed, and to pray for them, because this custom is preserved throughout the whole world, we believe has been handed down from the Apostles themselves.”

Like St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great, Isidore clearly teaches that Communion does not benefit those who receive unworthily.

“They who live wickedly in the Church and do not cease to communicate, imagining that they are cleansed by such Communion, are to learn that it is of no avail for cleansing them.”

In two sentences already quoted, the phrase “sanctified by the Holy Ghost” ascribes to the Holy Ghost the work of the consecration of the elements. In his letter to Redemptus Isidore quotes the words of institution in a manner which implies that he regarded them as the formula of consecration.

“The essentials of the Sacrament are the words of God used by the priest in the sacred rite, that is, ‘This is My body,’ and wheaten bread and wine, with which it is customary to mix water because both, that is, blood and water, flowed from the side of Christ.”

In the same letter Isidore mentions that the presence is of the glorified body of Christ and that the whole Christ is present in both species.

“When the consecration has taken place, it is not the case, as some ignorant people think, that the flesh of Christ alone is under the species of bread, and that in the cup only the blood is taken; but in each kind is God and Man, whole and perfect Christ in His glorified body, whole Christ in the cup, living Bread who came down from heaven, whole in each kind.”

St. Germain of Paris was an older contemporary of the two writers last mentioned. He was born at Autun about 496, became Archbishop of Paris in 555, and died at Paris about 576. He is thus a representative of Gallican theology. He says that “the bread is transformed (transformatur) into the body, and the wine into the blood,” and that “the mystery of the Eucharist is offered in commemoration of the passion of the Lord”. Unless the reference is to a portion of the consecrated Sacrament reserved from a preceding celebration, he speaks of the still unconsecrated elements, when solemnly carried to the altar at the offertory, as “the body of Christ”.

The Venerable Bede was born in 673 at Jarrow or Wear-mouth. From the age of seven until his death in 735 he lived under monastic rule. Ordained deacon in 691 and priest in 702, he devoted his life to the work of a Christian student. An interesting figure to all who care for erudition or industry or devotion, he is an object of very special interest to English people, being, as Dr. Bright well said, “our first truly national scholar and author, the father of our history,” “the man of patriotic feeling, who loves old English songs, and hates whatever enfeebles his country or degrades the national life,” “a man ‘venerable’ and dear to all generations of English Christianity, a ‘candle,’ in the words of the great St. Boniface, ‘which the Lord lighted up’ in Northumbria”. Voluminous and various as are Bede’s writings, they do not contain any systematic teaching about the Eucharist. Incidental allusions, however, show that the doctrine held by this Northumbrian scholar was not different from that professed by St. Gregory the Great in Italy and Isidore of Seville in Spain and St. Germain of Paris in Gaul. Thus, he describes Communion as “the reception of the body and blood of the Lord”; he refers to the Eucharist as a “sacrifice,” “the most holy offering.” “the heavenly sacrifice,” “the sacrifice of the saving Victim,” which is offered to God on behalf of the living and the dead; and in one of his Homilies for Easter Even he says of the worship of Christians:—

“We celebrate the rite of the Mass, we offer anew to God for the advance of our salvation the most hole body end precious blood of our Lamb, by which we have been redeemed from sin.”

Alcuin was born of a noble Northumbrian family about 735. In his youth he was a pupil of Egbert the Archbishop of York, who had been the disciple and friend of the Venerable Bede, and of Ethelbert, who succeeded Egbert in his archbishopric. He was ordained deacon by Ethelbert soon after 767. Much of his life was spent at the court of the Emperor Charles the Great. Bishop Stubbs has told us that “the schools of Northumbria had gathered in the harvest of Irish learning, of the Franco-Gallican schools,” “and of Rome”; that in the school of York “was centred nearly all the wisdom of the West”; that “its greatest pupil was Alcuin”; and that “he carried the learning which would have perished in England, into France and Germany, where it was maintained whilst England relapsed into the state of ignorance from which it was delivered by Alfred”. He died at Tours about 804. His unquestioned writings show that in regard to the Eucharist he did not differ from St. Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville and St. Germain of Paris and Bede. His commentary on St. John’s Gospel reproduces the teaching of St. Augustine as to the need of abiding in Christ and of spiritual union with Him, with the additions made by him or by some other writer of his time for the purpose of preventing readers from supposing the passage to be a denial that the unworthy communicant receives the body of Christ, and so as to run:—

“This then is to eat that food and to drink that drink, to abide in Christ, and to have Him abiding in oneself. And in this way he who does not abide in Christ, and in whom Christ does not abide, without doubt does not spiritually eat His flesh, though carnally and visibly he press with his teeth the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, but rather to his own judgment eats and drinks the Sacrament of so great a thing.”

In his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews he reproduces the teaching of St. Chrysostom on the one sacrifice offered by our Lord on the cross, in heaven, and on the altar of the Church on earth. In his letters the following passages occur:—

“We have heard that some maintained that salt is to be placed on the sacrifice of the body of Christ.… From water and flour is made the bread which is consecrated to be the body (in corpus) of Christ; water and wine will be consecrated to be the blood (in sanguinem) of Christ.… Did the flesh of Christ rot in the tomb, so that His body should now need salt in the sacrifice?… Of this most sacred oblation a type went before in Melchizedek, who was wont to offer wine and bread to the most high God. Moreover the consecration of this mystery shows the effect of our salvation. In the water is understood the people of the believers. In the grains of wheat whence the flour is made that it may become bread, the union of the whole Church is indicated, which by the fire of the Holy Ghost is baked into one body, so that the members may be united to their Head. Also, in the waters which are mixed with the wine there is a figure, as we said, of the nations. But in the wine the blood of the Lord’s passion is shown.”

“Forget not, I beg, the name of your friend Alcuin, but store it up in some casquet of your memory, and bring it out at that fitting time when you have consecrated the bread and wine to be the substance (in substantiam) of the body and blood of Christ.”

Questions have been raised whether the treatise entitled Confession of the Faith, ascribed to Alcuin, is his work; but, since, whoever the author, it is a good representative of Western thought and belief of the eighth and ninth centuries, parts of it may be quoted here. The fourth book of the treatise is called Of the Body and Blood of the Lord. After an expression of personal unworthiness and of a deep sense of the mystery of the Sacrament, the writer proceeds:—

“Though it is offered by man, yet this Sacrament is a divine thing. And if it is a divine thing, or rather because it is such, God forbid that anything should be understood about it in other than a divine and spiritual sense. Therefore, although with bodily eyes I see the priest offering bread and wine at the altar of the Lord, yet by the gaze of faith and by the pure sight of the heart I behold the supreme officiant and true High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, offering Himself, of whose flesh and blood we eat and drink, and are thereby washed and satisfied and sanctified, and are made partakers of the one and supreme Godhead. Verily He Himself is the priest, He Himself is the sacrifice; and therefore this saving victim is not ever or anywhere diminished or increased, changed or altered, whether it is a righteous or a guilty priest who approaches the altar, but the Sacrament abides always and everywhere the very same. For by the power and words of Christ the bread and cup have been consecrated from the first. By the power and words of Christ it is always consecrated, and will be consecrated. Christ Himself speaks daily in His priests. His is the word which sanctifies the heavenly Sacraments. Priests perform their office, but Christ by the majesty of divine power does the work.… He Himself by the power of the Spirit the Paraclete and by the heavenly blessing consecrates His holy body and blood. Therefore in the most holy offering of the Lord’s body and blood common worship is presented to God both by the priests and by the whole family of the house of God.… I do not doubt that the citizens of heaven are present at this mystery, so that by means of the ministrations and prayers of the angels, as at the altar on high, it is offered in the sight of the divine majesty. For, if in that home there is a sacrifice of perpetual praise and a perpetual priest, there is a perpetual priest and a perpetual altar in heaven, not material but reasonable and spiritual, to which the offering is borne.… This is the true offering, in which the Son is offered and the Father is reconciled. This is the true and eternal victim, because His is the true and eternal power, and through Him is accomplished the true and eternal salvation.… He is offered while He is not being slain, He is eaten without being diminished, He restores others but fails not in Himself, being eaten He is alive because He rose from the dead.… All eat of Him, yet each one eats Him whole. He is divided into parts, and yet He is whole in every part.… Cleanse first your conscience. You can be injured not aided, if you approach unclean. So great is the virtue of this sacrifice that the body and blood of Christ is for righteous only, not for sinners. It cleanses those sins without which this life cannot be.… Because Christ foresaw that we should sin after that salvation where-with He redeemed us, He instituted this ineffable Sacrament in order that by its sanctification we might be pardoned without intermission. Therefore to some He comes for remission of sins and increase of virtue, to others for weight of judgment and greatest loss.… To each one will the body and blood of Christ be life, if that which is visibly taken in the Sacrament is spiritually eaten and spiritually drunk in very truth.… Where is His body, there truly is Christ Himself.”

Theodulf of Orleans may have been a native either of Spain or of Italy. He was brought to Gaul by the Emperor Charles the Great, and became Bishop of Orleans and Abbot of Fleury about 788. The probable date of his death is 821. Incidental references to the Eucharist in his writings afford an additional instance to those already given of the ordinary settled belief of the Western theologians at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century before the controversies of the ninth century arose. Theodulf speaks of the Eucharist as a sacrifice; he says that the Jewish priests had not a sacrifice so holy as that of Christians, and that Christian priests “handle not beasts as victims but the stainless body and blood of the Lord itself,” and that “by the visible offering of the priests and the invisible consecration of the Holy Ghost the bread and wine are changed (transeant) into the dignity of the body and blood of the Lord.”