V

Hincmar of Rheims was one of the most prominent of the figures in the ecclesiastical world of the ninth century. He was born about 806, was made Archbishop of Rheims in 845, and died in 882. Among his writings is a treatise On Avoiding Vices and Acquiring Virtues, which was addressed to Charles the Bald, three chapters of which relate to the Eucharist. Most of what he thus wrote is little more than a reproduction of statements of earlier writers, as, for instance, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great and Paschasius Radbert and Florus of Lyons, on the perpetual offering of His manhood by Christ in heaven, on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, on the commemoration there made of Christ’s death, on the effect of consecration in making the elements the body and blood of Christ by virtue of the creative power of God there exercised as in the conception by the Virgin and the miracles of the Old Testament, on the spiritual character of the presence and gift so that the whole Christ is entirely present in each fragment of the Sacrament, on the reception of the body of Christ by those who already are His mystical body, and on the different consequences of reception in those who communicate worthily or unworthily. Hincmar’s agreement with Paschasius as to the identity of the Eucharistic body with the body which out Lord took of His virgin mother appears to be shown by a passage where he says:—

“In the holy Church, which is the body of Christ, neither are the priestly acts efficacious nor are the sacrifices real unless the actual High Priest reconcile us in the characteristic life and reality of our nature (in nostrae proprietate ac veritate naturae) and the actual blood of the stainless Lamb cleanse us, who, though He be set on the right hand of the Father, yet in the same flesh which He took from the Virgin accomplishes the Sacrament of propitiation.”

Another instance of the acceptance of the teaching of Paschasius Radbert may be given from a letter of Haymo. Haymo was born about 778; he was a friend of Rabanus Maurus at Fulda and at Tours; he became Abbot of Hersfeld in 839 and Bishop of Halberstadt in 840 or 841; he died in 853. His fame as an expositor of Holy Scripture was very great. In his letter about the Eucharist he says:—

“We believe and faithfully confess and hold that by the operation of the power of God, as has been said above, this substance, that is, the substance of bread and wine, that is, the nature of bread and wine, is substantially converted into another substance, that is, into flesh and blood.… The invisible Priest changes His visible creatures into the substance of His flesh and blood by His unseen power. In which body and blood of Christ the savour and appearance of bread and wine remain to prevent disgust on the part of those who receive them, the nature of the substances being wholly converted into the body and blood of Christ.… It must be observed that this consecrated bread and cup are called signs. But this is not to be understood in relation to the flesh and blood of Christ; … for in that case they would not be the body and blood of Christ. No sign is that of which it is the sign; and no thing is called the sign of itself but of something else. And every sign, insofar as it is understood to be a sign, is different from that which it signifies. The body and blood of Christ then are called a Sacrament, that is, a sacred sign, not of themselves, … but they are rightly called signs in regard to the likeness of those who receive them. For, as bread, which is consecrated to be the body of Christ, is made one bread out of many grains, and as the liquid, which becomes by consecration the blood of Christ, is made one liquid out of many grapes, so all those who receive this Sacrament worthily are made one body in Christ out of many people. The body and blood of Christ can also be called signs, in another way, inasmuch as that which we eat and transfer into our body of Christ seems to be incorporated and united in some kind of way with us. Therefore this bodily and temporal eating and incorporation of the flesh and blood of Christ signifies that spiritual and perpetual vision of eternal society and refreshment, whereby we shall be with Him incorporated and united in the future, so to remain with Him for ever.… This also the faith of those who receive this Sacrament ought firmly to hold, that, whatever fragment they may seem to receive of this Sacrament, they receive the body of Christ not divided and separated into parts but wholly complete.… He is no different from an unbeliever who irreverently, when he is defiled by all the offences of sin, presumes to approach the Table of the Lord; or rather he is worse than an unbeliever and deserves more severe punishment.… ‘That ye come not into judgment,’ that is, that ye do not receive the body of Christ blameably to your condemnation.”

A short treatise On the Celebration and Meaning of the Mass, which forms the fortieth chapter of a treatise On the Divine Offices wrongly ascribed to Alcuin, may have been written by Remi of Auxerre about 908. In it the Eucharist is regarded as a commemoration of the passion, and a means of union with the worship and the priestly work of Christ in heaven. The earthly offering is the act of the whole Church, though needing the specific ministry of the priest. The consecration is effected by the blessing of God and the power of the Holy Ghost and the power and words of Christ; and at all the altars where it takes place there is the one body of Christ which He took from the Virgin and gave to the Apostles. He is thus daily eaten and drunk, yet He abides living and unhurt. He who gave His blood for us on the cross, and who washes the baptised by the mystery of His passion, “also daily takes away the sins of the world, and washes us from our daily sins in His blood, when the memorial of His same blessed passion is made at the altar”.

The famous French scholar Gerbert, who as Sylvester II. was Pope from 999 to 1003, wrote a short book On the body and blood of the Lord, partly to defend the main thesis of Paschasius and partly to deprecate some of the coarser current speculations as to the natural processes to which the body of Christ might be supposed to be subjected after the reception of it by communicants. His own beliefs may be shown by the following quotations:—

“Let us, ‘not minding high things but condescending to things that are lowly,’ simply acknowledge that there is a figure, since the bread and the wine are outwardly seen; but also a reality, since the body and blood of Christ are believed in reality to be within.”

“That which we receive from the altar is by nature (naturaliter) the body of the Lord, since it is so in reality, not as represented.”

“As a certain wise man says, … how plain it is that the body of Christ is one with that which He took from the Virgin’s womb. For it must actually and unhesitatingly be believed that at the very time of the sacrifice the heavens are opened at the prayer of the priest, and it is borne by the ministry of angels to the altar on high, which is Christ Himself; who is both Priest and Victim, and by His touch becomes one.”

“There is the outer man, who is subject to corruption, and there is the inner man, who is renewed. Now the body of Christ is spiritual food which pertains rather to the inner man, with whom the process of digestion has nothing to do. Yet if it should pertain at all to the outward man, it would be pious and healthful to believe that it is diffused throughout the members so as to benefit those who are to be raised in the general resurrection. It is clear that it does not share the lot of natural food.”