III

The treatise entitled An Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, which has been ascribed to St. Peter Damien, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, the friend of Pope Gregory VII., who died in 1071, if not by St. Peter Damien himself, may have been written at no long interval after his death with the intention of setting out his beliefs. The facts that throughout the Berengarian controversy to the time of his death St. Peter Damien was the trusted friend of the authorities of the Church and that at the Roman Council of 1078 Berengar appealed to words of his as a justification of his own opinions may supply an indication that he had expressed what the Church authorities were really desirous to maintain and had said something to protect the spiritual aspects of the mystery of the Eucharist. With such an indication the teaching contained in the Exposition of the Canon of the Mass would fall in well. The writer goes through the canon of the Mass from the recital of the institution to the Agnus Dei with brief comments and explanations. He describes the Eucharist as the “sacrifice of the body and blood” of Christ and the “sacrifice of praise”; as the commemoration of three events, the passion, the resurrection, and the ascension; and, in the words of St. Gregory the Great, the means of the union of earthly and heavenly worship when borne to the altar on high by the ministry of angels. At the recital of the words of institution by the priest the bread and wine are changed into the flesh of Christ which was taken from the Virgin and the Blood which He shed on the cross by the power of the Word which was exercised in the creation and the Incarnation, in the miracles of the Old Testament, and when the water was made wine. This change is called Transubstantiation; and the bread and the wine are said to be transubstantiated into the flesh and blood of Christ. On questions which, as has been seen, were keenly discussed in the Berengarian controversy it is here said:—

“The whole Church daily partakes of, yet never consumes, the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whether parts are made into parts or the whole into the whole He knows who accomplishes it; what is left I burn with fire, for we are commanded to believe, we are forbidden to distinguish. But because an importunate questioner demands an answer, we grant that, the faith being preserved, such bread is changed into such body, and not a part into a part. Nevertheless, the majesty of the faith being preserved, I confess that, when the bread has been consecrated, the whole Christ is in the whole species of bread, whole under every separate part, whole in what is great and what is small, whole in what is unbroken and what is broken.… It is inquired whether the body of the Lord is local, whether it makes local distance, whether it ought to be said that He lies or sits or stands; but many other inquiries could be made on the present subject, which I wish rather to leave untouched than to define rashly; for ‘the beast which shall have touched the mountain shall be stoned’. It is safer in such matters to remain within the limits of reason than to go beyond them.… Many often ask and but few understand what is here broken, what is devoured by a beast, what is consumed when the Sacrament is burnt. The answer is that as the substance is miraculously converted into the Lord’s body and the body begins to be in the Sacrament, so after a kind of way there is a miraculous return, when that ceases to be there.… The species of bread is broken and crushed, but the body of Christ is taken and eaten; the references to corruption concern the species of bread, those to reception concern the body of Christ.… Christ passes from the mouth to the heart; it is better that He go to the mind than that He descend to the stomach. This food is not of the flesh but of the soul.… The species suffers corruption and defilement, but the reality is never corrupted or polluted. … For three reasons He instituted the Sacrament of His body and blood to be received under a different species, to increase merit, to help feeling, to avoid ridicule; to increase merit, because in this one thing is seen and another thing is believed; to help feeling, lest the mind should be repelled by what the eye would see; to avoid ridicule, lest the heathen should mock at anything done by a Christian”.

The treatise contains comments on some of the ceremonial used in connection with the prayers of the canon of the Mass, particularly on the signing of the Sacrament with the cross as significant of the stages in the mystical commemoration of the passion and on the commixture as signifying “the union of the flesh and the soul in the resurrection of Christ”.