V

Odo of Cambrai was born at Orleans in 1050; he became Master of the Cathedral School at Tournai in 1087, abbot of the monastery of St. Martin at Tournai at some later date, and Bishop of Cambrai in 1105; he was exiled in 1110, and died at Anchin in 1113. In his treatise An Exposition on the Canon of the Mass he goes through the canon of the Mass sentence by sentence with explanatory comments. It is of much interest in regard both to the Eucharistic presence and to the Eucharistic sacrifice. On the presence the teaching of Odo is very clear that at the moment of consecration the elements become the body and blood of Christ. More than once he speaks as if the bread and the wine cease to exist when consecrated, and he refers to the deception of the senses in a way which seems to imply not only the presence of the body and blood of Christ but also the absence of the bread and wine. With these statements he links strong assertions of the spiritual character of the flesh and blood of Christ as present and received and a reference to the spiritual condition of His body after the resurrection, though there are fewer traces in this book of serious effort to co-relate the reality and the spirituality of the presence of Christ than are found in the treatise on the same subject ascribed to St. Peter Damien and in the letter already quoted from St. Anselm. Of the bread immediately before consecration he says, “It is still bread, not yet flesh”; of it immediately after consecration he writes, “Now it is flesh, it is no longer bread”. Of the act of consecration he says, “By the word of Christ” “the creature” “becomes the body and blood of Christ”. On the deception of the senses he writes, “It is perceived by the senses to be wine; and it is not. It does not appear to be blood; and it is.” As to the spiritual character of the flesh and blood, his words are:—

“This offering is pure because, although it is real flesh and blood, yet it is spiritual and incorruptible. It is divided, and it cannot be consumed. It is eaten, and it remains uncorrupted. It is crushed, and it is unimpaired. It is broken, and it is whole. This offering is flesh, but it is not carnal. Rather it is unstained light, and therefore pure. It is body, but not corporal. Rather it is spiritual light, and therefore pure. It is pure and cleansing, pure and purifying, pure because divine, purer than material light.”

With this should be compared an earlier passage in the treatise in which Odo exhibits less carefulness to avoid confusion of expression than the book ascribed to St. Peter Damien and the letter of St. Anselm. He there writes:—

“We daily consume Christ on the altar, and yet He abides; we eat Him, and yet He lives; we crush Him with the teeth, and yet He is unbroken. Now we consume and eat and crush not only in the species but also in fact, not only in the form but also in the substance. And in a marvellous way He who abides is consumed, He who is unmarred is crushed, He who is undivided is distributed, as after the resurrection He gave a spiritual body to be handled. With like contrariety that which is spiritual cannot be touched, and that which can be touched is not spiritual. For in the species and taste of bread and wine we eat and drink the very substance of the body and blood, the substance under the same qualities being changed, so that under the figure and taste of the former substance the real substance of the body and blood of Christ is made to be.”

On the subject of the Eucharistic sacrifice there are passages of great interest in connection with the prayers in the canon of the Mass in which supplication is made that the offering may be accepted as the offerings of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek were accepted, and that it may be borne to the altar on high.

“Why do we pray the Father to be favourable and gracious towards the offering, and to accept it, when there is nothing which He holds more acceptable and when He always regards it favourably and graciously? For it is written, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’. But the reference is to those who offer, that they who are afraid because of their sins and have no trust in themselves, may stretch out on their behalf an acceptable offering, so that, protecting themselves under its shield, they may implore the Father to be favourable and gracious to them, and may desire that they be accepted because of that the acceptableness of which they never question, so that they who dare not offer in themselves, lest they should provoke by evil, set forth the beloved Son, that they may come in, and under His protection enter the presence of the Father.… There is a difficulty how we pray that the body and blood of the Lord may be borne in the presence of God, since it is written that Christ ever stands before the face of the Father, making intercession for us, and we read that Christ, ascending to heaven, was exalted above all things, sitting on the right hand of the Father. How then do we pray that Christ may be borne where He ever is?… We pray that, as Christ was borne away from the earth into heaven in the presence of His disciples, and vanished out of their sight, being about to send the gift of the Holy Ghost afterwards, so this offering may be borne from the earthly altar, on which it is offered, to the altar on high in the presence of God, so that thence we may be filled with all heavenly blessing and grace, so that what is visibly done on earth may be invisibly accomplished in heaven. It is offered here, it is accepted there, not by change of place or by succession of time, as if a movement of translation were begun in this place and completed in another. But in the same place that which was bread becomes the flesh of the Word. There is no transference of place that bread may become flesh; yet there is transference from the altar to heaven, because from being bread it is made God. But, since God is everywhere, it is not by change of place that the flesh which is made from bread is joined to God.… In mentioning Christ we pray that our prayers may be borne by the hands of the angel, that the good angels may present good prayers under the plea of so great a sacrifice.… What is it for the offering to be borne to the altar on high except for the sheep to be placed on the shoulders of the Shepherd? And what is it for the sheep to be placed on the shoulders except for man to be taken by the Word? And what is higher than the Word of God? Daily the Word of God takes to Himself the faithful by their participation in this sacrifice. The Word of God then is the altar on high, to which we pray that the offering may be borne in the presence of God and that we through it may be brought in. The presence of God is the Word of the Father in whom He sees all things which He has done.… What then is the meaning of the offering being borne to the altar on high in the presence of God except that our offering be joined to the Word, be united to the Word, become God, and that through it we may be taken to God and that our prayers may be accepted.… The Church has a visible altar on earth, and there is an invisible altar in heaven with God. The offering which we offer to God on this altar is joined to God and becomes God. In this sacrifice earthly things are joined to heavenly, the creature to God. When from this altar we take His creature, we receive God from the altar on high. When here we take the body and blood of Christ, we receive God from heaven, in whom we are filled with all heavenly blessing and grace.”

Here, as in his teaching about the presence, Odo is hampered by his lack of clear thought or expression; but there can be little doubt that he is struggling to convey and explain the idea strongly emphasised by Paschasius Radbert, that at consecration the elements which have thereby become the body and blood of Christ are spiritually borne to the altar on high in the heavenly sphere and there presented in the presence of God and then given back to the people on earth as the body and blood of the Lord.

Ivo of Chartres was born at Beauvais about 1040. After being abbot of the monastery of St. Quentin at Beauvais he became Bishop of Chartres in 1091. He died in 1116. His collection of enactments of Church law known as Panormia contains forty sections relating to the Eucharist. They are collected from very various sources of very different dates and concern many matters of doctrine and practice. It is assumed in them that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ at consecration, and that the Eucharist is a sacrifice. They include the declaration to which Berengar assented at the Council of Rome of 1059. One of the Sermons of Ivo is a lengthy comparison between the rites of the Old Testament and those of the Christian religion. The earlier part of it is occupied with an enumeration and explanation of Old Testament prophecies and types of Christ, especially of His priesthood and sacrifice. After these Ivo goes on to explain the mystical significance of the stages of the offering of the Eucharist. He regards the details of the rite from the Introit to the Offertory as the mystical representation of the Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ. From the secret prayers which follow the Offertory to the end there is the presentation in mystery of our Lord’s earthly passion and of His intercession in heaven, both being represented as prefigured by the ceremonies of the Jewish Day of Atonement. On the Jewish Day of Atonement there were the death of the victim and the sprinkling of the blood in the Holy of Holies; in the sacrifice offered by Christ there are His death, His presentation of His blood in heaven, and His abiding pleading; in the Eucharist there are the commemoration of His death and the union of the earthly offering with His acts in heaven. The quotation of one passage of some length may be sufficient to show his line of interpretation:—

“The priest [that is, in the Eucharist] spiritually expresses what he asks for, namely, that these bodily elements may become to us the body and blood of Christ. This prayer as with smoke of most subtle perfumes shrouds the mercy-seat, and asks that the earthly and corruptible element may be united to the heavenly and incorruptible body. But faith alone must be used for this height of divine counsel, and it goes forth even to the parts within the veil, into which it could not enter if it strove to prove by the persuasive words of human wisdom the mysteries therein contained. The priest who serves the shadow [that is, of the Jewish law] turns to the East and sprinkles the mercy-seat and the sanctuary and the tabernacle with the blood of the bullock, and in the same rite with that of the goat which was offered; for the same Christ of whom the bullock was a type and who was signified by the goat which was offered for sin,—even Christ ascending to the East, that is, to the Father, from whom He came forth,—sprinkles Him, that is, the Father, whom He made propitious to us by the sprinkling of His blood. He sprinkles also the sanctuary and the tabernacle, because, entering into the hole places by His own blood, He made at peace things divine and human, for, as the Apostle says, ‘It pleased the Father in Him to restore all things which are in heaven and which are on earth,’ that is, the Church, which on earth was lost because of the disobedience of our first parent and in heaven was lessened because of the fall of the apostate angel. Our priest in the sacred mysteries, as if within the veil, imitates this sprinkling of the blood of Christ, as often as, turning to the East, whence the Saviour came to us, naming the mysteries themselves by their typical or proper names, He signs them with the sign of the cross. For what is the meaning of placing the sign of the cross on the things that have been consecrated or are to be consecrated in the mysteries themselves except to commemorate the death of the Lord?… When the sprinkling of the blood of Christ has been commemorated in the Lord’s words, the words of the rite follow, commemorating the same sprinkling of the blood by the mouth of the priest raising his prayer to the Father, ‘Wherefore also, O Lord, we Thy servants, mindful of the passion and resurrection and ascension of Thy Son, offer to Thy majesty,’ that is, we commemorate as offered in these visible gifts, ‘a pure offering,’ that is, without the leaven of malice; ‘holy,’ that is, consecrated; ‘stainless,’ that is, such as the animals signified which were sought for sacrifice without blemish. And this commemoration of the real sacrifice the priest prays may be accepted by God the Father as were accepted the gifts of Abel and Abraham and Melchizedek.… Since they could not hurt His Godhead, they sent Christ living into the wilderness, because they let Him go, free by the death of the flesh to ascend to that glory which He had alone with the Father, by the hands of a prepared man, that is, Himself, carrying the sins of the children of Israel, that is, taking away the sins of the world, not possessing them. This our priest commemorates when he says to God the Father, ‘Command these to be borne by the hands of Thy angel to Thy altar on high’. Who is that angel but the Angel of great counsel, who by His own hands, that is, by works endowed with unique worth, merited to ascend into heaven, and to raise Himself to the altar on high, that is, to the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us? Then the high priest returns to the camp, and the Lord says to the disciples, instructing them about His ascension, ‘I am with you always even to the end of the world’. Both of these acts the priest imitates. First, by his prayers he raises the body of Christ above the whole height of heaven. Then as if returning to the camp he says, ‘That all we who shall have received from this participation of the altar the most holy body and blood of Thy dearly beloved Son may be filled with all heavenly blessing’. Lo, there come to the mind the words of Blessed Andrew the Apostle, in which he says both that the body of the Lord is in heaven and that the body of the Lord can be taken from the altar.… If you ask how this can be, I will shortly answer, It is a sacrament of faith; search can be made into it healthfully, but not without danger.… We have Christ whole in heaven making intercession to the Father for us through the showing forth of His flesh; we have also His body whole in the Sacrament of the altar.”

William of Champeaux was a philosopher and scholastic theologian of great reputation in the early years of the twelfth century. He was Archdeacon of Paris and afterwards Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. In 1113 he founded the famous school of St. Victor at Paris. In 1121 he died. A fragment only of his worn On the Sacrament of the Altar exists. It may be worth while to quote from it a clear expression of the doctrine of concomitance and of the spiritual character of our Lord’s risen body:—

“He who receives either species receives the whole Christ. For Christ is not received limb by limb or bit by bit but whole in one kind or in the other. Wherefore infants just baptised receive the cup only, because they cannot take bread, and in the cup they receive the whole Christ.… Though there are the separate parts according to breaking and smell and warmth and taste, yet in each species is the whole Christ, who after His resurrection is wholly invisible and impassible and indivisible, so that neither is there the blood without the flesh, nor the flesh without the blood, nor either without the human soul, nor the whole human nature without the Word of God personally united to it.”

William adds that the two kinds of the sacrament are retained in the Church as one of those things which cannot be changed, because the object of the institution in two species was in order that there might be preserved the memory of the body which hung on the cross and of the blood which flowed from our Lord’s side.

Alger of Liège was born about 1070, was appointed a canon of Liège about 1101, became a monk of Cluny in 1121, and died about 1131. His reputation as a theologian stood very high, and his treatise On the Sacraments of the Lord’s Body and Blood was greatly esteemed in the Church. At the outset of this treatise Alger mentions six errors about the Eucharist which it is his purpose to refute. The six errors are, first, that the bread and wine are not really but only figuratively the body of Christ; secondly, that Christ is impanated in the bread; thirdly, that the bread and wine are changed into the flesh and blood not of Christ but of some son of man accepted by God; fourthly, that the conversion of the elements does not take place if the consecrating priest is a bad man; fifthly, that the consecrated elements again become only bread and wine if they are received by wicked communicants; and sixthly, that the flesh of Christ when taken in Communion is subject to the ordinary processes of digestion. In distinction from these six errors Alger develops the doctrine which he himself holds. He is careful to show the connection of his teaching on the subject of the Eucharist with other doctrines. Thus, he emphasises the truths of the Incarnation, the Virgin-birth, the resurrection, the ascension, and the union of Christians to Christ in His mystical body the Church. He is evidently desirous of avoiding confusions of thought which had arisen through want of care in defining terms, and explains that the word “Sacrament” is used to denote both “the Sacrament” and “the reality of the Sacrament” (res sacramenti), and the phrase “body of Christ” to denote note both “the Sacrament” and “the body of Christ”. He explicitly asserts that at the consecration the substance of the elements is converted into the substance of the flesh and blood of Christ, so that “what is there is not seen, and what is seen is not there,” and that “the flesh itself, since it is local, is really and substantially present both in heaven and on earth,” and “the flesh and blood of Christ are really eaten and drunk by the people, while Christ Himself abides living and whole in His kingdom”. This conversion of substance is held to involve that the substance of the elements ceases to exist; “in the Sacrament the body of Christ comes to be and is where bodily it was not, not only by way of Sacrament but also by a miracle, since there the bread ceases to be that which it was”. Yet while the substance of the elements is thus converted, they retain “certain qualities,” “the accidents do not cease to exist,” “the form and solidity and colour and taste of the bread” are “real” and not “phantasms”. Since the body of Christ is thus really present on earth, as in heaven, He is adored in the Sacrament. With these explicit assertions of the conversion of the substance of the elements into the substance of the flesh and blood of Christ Alger links much emphatic teaching of the spiritual manner of the presence. He supposes that at the institution of the Sacrament our Lord gave His “incorruptible and immortal” body to the disciples by an anticipation of the spiritual character of His risen body in some way parallel to His manifestation of His body after the resurrection with the marks of the wounds and susceptible of touch, the properties of the body after the resurrection being in the one case vouchsafed before it, and the properties of the body before the resurrection being in the other case vouchsafed after it. Following out this line of thought, he teaches that the body of Christ is taken in the Eucharist, “by faith, with the mind, with the hand of the heart, by inner drinking, spiritually,” that it is “spiritual and incorruptible and invisible” as well as “substantial”; that it is “not carnal but spiritual food and drink”; and that Christ remains “whole and undivided and unbroken”. Alger regards the Eucharistic sacrifice as a commemoration of the death of Christ. Though Christ does not again die, yet in the Sacrament there is a memory and presentation of His death; the sacrifice on the altar is the same as that on the cross. While thus a commemoration of Christ’s death, the Eucharistic sacrifice is also a means of union with His offering in heaven, as it is with His heavenly life; and in an incidental reference to the words of the canon of the Mass Alger writes:—

“The priest, consecrating the body of the Lord on the earthly altar as the minister of Christ (vice Christi), and yet not assigning anything to his own merits but all to the power and grace of God, prays in the canon to God the Father, saying, ‘Command that these oblations be borne to Thee by the hands and power of Thy Son, Thy Angel, who is the Angel of great counsel, not to this lowly and visible altar, where now He is, but to Thy altar on high, that is, Thy Son, whom Thou hast exalted to Thy right hand, in the presence of Thy majesty, that there may be to us the body and blood of Thy beloved Son,’ showing that the Son Himself, by the command of the Father, is in heaven offering sacrifice and is the sacrifice which is offered and is that on which it is offered; because we lean altogether on His faith and grace for our belief that the earthly elements are converted into Christ, and that He Himself, sitting in the heavenly places at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us, and is consecrated and is in the Sacrament of the altar.”

In the glosses which Alger adds to the words of the canon of the Mass in this passage he, like other mediæval writers, notably Ivo of Chartres, interprets the “holy angel” by whom the offering is borne to heaven to denote our Lord, and, like Odo of Cambrai and others, explains the “altar on high” as a description of Him.

Alger of Liège also wrote a much shorter work entitled On the Sacrifice of the Mass. It is a brief explanation of the mystical significance of the words and ceremonies of the Mass on much the same lines as the more elaborate treatise by Odo of Cambrai. The object of the celebration of the Mass from this point of view is described as being to “set forth the memorial of Christ coming in the flesh and represent His passion in mystery”. Among the details mentioned, the explanations of the use of the sign of the cross on the elements and on the priest, of the kiss on the altar after the consecration, and of the prayer for the bearing of the offering to the heavenly altar, are of interest.

“Our priest begins ‘Thee therefore,’ and as it were entering the Holy of Holies pours forth general prayer for the whole Church, and marking the sign of the cross sprinkles that oblation with the blood of Christ; and as often as he makes the sign of the cross on the heavenly sacrifice, so often he sprinkles with the blood of Christ the oblation that is set forth.… The priest humbly prays the Lord to command these to be borne by the hands of the holy angel to His altar on high, so that in this hour the mystery may be clear of the union of the bread to the Lord’s body and the communication to it of the one substance. Also he then kisses the altar, that he may show his desire to become a partaker of the same Sacrament; and, guarding himself with the sign of the cross, prepares himself to receive the mystery”.

Here the idea of the commemoration of the passion is so prominent that the signing of the elements with the cross is regarded the mystical sprinkling of the blood of Christ, and the union of the earthly rite with the heavenly offering is so clearly in view that the priest is said as it were to enter the Holy of Holies on beginning the canon and the elements on the altar are described as the “heavenly sacrifice”.

Gregory of Bergamo, who after being a monk at Asti became Bishop of Bergamo in 1134, wrote a treatise entitled On the Reality of the Body of Christ. He mentions that there had been a revival of Berengarianism in the form of denials that the Sacrament of the altar is more than a figure of the body and blood of Christ. From his treatise some of the arguments used by the advocates of this revived Berengarianism are known. Our Lord’s words, “Ye have the poor always with you; but Me ye have not always,” were said to be inconsistent with the continued presence of His real body in the Sacrament. The words “This do for My memorial” were said to show that He would not be actually present until He should come again at the end of the world. St. Paul’s statement, “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more,” was held to refute the belief that in the Eucharist there is a sacrifice of Christ. “The flesh profiteth nothing” was urged against the teaching that in the Sacrament His flesh is given. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more” was similarly used. Other arguments were based on teaching in the fathers that in the Eucharist there is a likeness of Christ, and that the sayings about His flesh and blood are to be spiritually understood, which were taken to mean that there is a likeness only without actual presence, and that there is no bodily gift of His flesh and blood. To these arguments Gregory replies in detail. “Me ye have not always” he regards as stating the fact that we have not Christ to talk with us, to be seen by the eyes of the body, to be the ordinary companion of our usual life. “This do for My memorial,” “The flesh profiteth nothing,” “Now we know Him so no more,” do not, he maintains, really militate against the actual presence of Christ’s flesh in the Sacrament. It is part, he says, of the ordinary teaching in regard to the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist that He does not again die but abides whole and unbroken and unhurt in His heavenly life. Incidentally Gregory mentions another argument of his opponents, to the effect that the words “This is My body” are to be interpreted figuratively to correspond with “The seven good kine are seven years” and “The reapers are angels,” an argument which he meets by pointing out that the circumstances in which these phrases were spoken were altogether different, and by saying that the right parallels are with “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded to you-ward” and “This is My beloved Son” and “This is the Son of God” in each of which cases an actual identification is denoted. In stating his own position Gregory maintains that there is an actual conversion of substance at consecration, that the Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ “not only in that which it is believed actually to be within but also in the outward species of bread and wine,” that the Sacrament is itself the body of Christ and as a figure denotes the Church, that in this actual conversion the species are retained to avoid horror and to give opportunity for faith and to prevent scandal to the heathen, and that there is both the bodily eating of the flesh and blood of Christ in the reception of the Sacrament and the spiritual eating of the inner union of the soul to Christ. He sums up the main points of his doctrine in the following passage:—

“The whole Church of God dispersed throughout the world holds that the visible creatures, the bread and the wine of the altar, are at the solemn consecration of the priestly act converted by the ineffable and incomprehensible power of God who thus orders into the essence of the Lord’s body and blood, the species of the aforesaid things remaining with certain other qualities; and that the real body and blood of Christ is itself taken by communicants from the Lord’s Table not only with the mouth of the heart but also with the mouth of the body, the body of Christ itself being unhurt and unmarred in the heavenly places.”

The main features of the belief of Gregory of Bergamo are the same as those of Alger of Liège; but a reader in passing from one to the other misses in Gregory the insistence on the spiritual character of the presence and gift in the Eucharist as being of the risen body of Christ which is so marked in the more famous and influential writer.