XII

Peter of Poitiers was a disciple of Peter Lombard. He was appointed Chancellor of Paris in 1193. He died in 1205. He wrote a treatise of five books of Sentences, in which four chapters relate to the Eucharist. In these chapters Peter of Poitiers teaches that the bread and wine are changed at the consecration into the body and blood of Christ which He took of the Blessed Virgin, while their properties remain. He uses the words “Transubstantiation” and “transubstantiate” freely. He explains that the body of Christ in the sacrament is held and eaten and crushed by the teeth and broken in the same sense in which it is said to be seen “because the form of bread under which it is veiled is seen”. The body itself “remains whole and incorruptible”; it is the glorified body in the immortal and impassible state which ensued on the resurrection. On the Eucharistic sacrifice Peter of Poitiers practically reproduces the statement of Peter Lombard which has been quoted. He says:—

“It is inquired whether that is a real sacrifice which is daily made on the altar by the priest and whether Christ is daily sacrificed, and daily slain, and so whether one death of Christ is not enough. In answer to which it must be said that Christ is sacrificed in the Sacrament, and this sacrifice is called a sacrifice simply for the reason that it represents the real sacrifice which was once made with extended hands on the cross. As a picture represents that of which it is an image, and as an image is called by the name of the thing which it signifies, as the image of Achilles is called Achilles, so this sacrifice is called by the name of the real sacrifice, which was once made.”

An interesting feature in this treatise is in the record which it supplies of discussions and divergent opinions on minute points, as whether the prayers of the rite and the invocation of the Holy Trinity are necessary to the consecration, whether the water mixed with the wine is turned into the blood or into the water which flowed from the side of Christ or remains unconverted, whether the consecration of the bread is effected at the words “This is My body” or not until the words “This is My blood,” and whether Christ consecrated the Sacrament when He gave the elements to the disciples with the words “This is My body” and “This is My blood” or at the act of blessing which preceded. On this last point Peter’s own view appears to have been that our Lord said “This is My body” at the act of blessing and that the Transubstantiation then took place, and that He said the same words again to the disciples when He gave them the Sacrament but simply as asserting what the Sacrament was and not as then consecrating.

Lothair Conti, of the family of the Counts of Segni, was born at Anagni in 1160 or 1161, was made a cardinal in 1190, and became Pope with the title of Innocent III. in 1198. He died in 1216. His book On the Holy Mystery of the Altar was written before he was Pope, and may be taken as representative of the doctrine held to be true in the closing years of the twelfth century. In this book there is but little explicit teaching about the Eucharistic sacrifice, though the rite as a whole is viewed as a commemoration of the passion and resurrection and ascension of Christ, the ceremonies of the ordinary and canon of the Mass are regarded as a mystical representation of the passion and burial and resurrection, and the union of earthly and heavenly worship is referred to by the quotation of the words of St. Gregory the Great about it and by the explanation of the double sense of the four kinds of altars, whereby the “higher altar” denotes the Holy Trinity and the Church triumphant, the “lower altar” the Church militant and the “Table of the temple,” the “inner altar” a clean heart and faith in the Incarnation, the “outward altar” the altar of the cross and the Sacraments of the Church, in the comment on the words “Command these to be borne by the hands of Thy holy angel to Thy altar on high,” in which “these” is explained to denote “the offerings and prayers of the faithful,” and the “holy angel” is interpreted to mean the created angels. Like Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard, Innocent III. lays stress on the use of the plural number in the phrase “we offer,” and explains that “though one only offers the sacrifice, yet he says ‘we offer’ in the plural number because the priest does not offer sacrifice only in his own person but in the person of the whole Church,” and that “not only priests but also all the faithful offer, for that which is specially accomplished by the ministry of the priests is done generally by the offering of the faithful”. The offering is primarily directed to God the Father as the first principle of the Godhead, “yet the sacrifice of praise is offered equally to the undivided Trinity, as to the Father so to the Son and to the Spirit of Both, for as the majesty is indivisible so the worship is indivisible”. The treatment of the Eucharistic presence and gift, as distinct from that of the sacrifice, is very full and explicit and detailed. Many difficult questions are discussed at some length, and in regard to most of them Innocent, in spite of frequent assertions as to the limitations of human thought, pronounces with some confidence. The main lines of his teaching closely follow what has been observed in earlier writers. At the consecration the species remain, but the substances of the bread and wine are converted so that under the different species the one body of Christ is contained. In the Sacrament is the real body of Christ. The conversion into the flesh and blood of Christ has analogies with the exercise of the power of God in the creation, in the miracles of the Old Testament, in the Incarnation, and in the miracle at Cana of Galilee. The flesh in the Eucharist is that which was taken from the Virgin, and the blood is that which was shed on the cross; but when it is eaten in the Sacrament the flesh is not divided or torn but remains whole and unbroken, since “He who is eaten lives because after death He rose, and being eaten He dies not because He rose to die no more”. “There is no material formation of flesh and blood from the bread and wine, but the matter of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of flesh and blood, nor is any addition made to the body, but the elements are transubstantiated into the body.” Innocent repeats the ideas and the phraseology of St. Peter Damien on the questions whether “parts pass into parts or the whole into the whole,” and about local distance and position, saying that such questions must be left to God, but asserting that the whole Christ is in both species and in every fragment. When the substance of the bread and wine is converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, the accidents remain, and with the accidents “the natural properties appear to remain, the quality of bread which removes hunger by satisfying and the quality of wine which destroys thirst by refreshing”. The declaration to which Berengar assented at the Council of Rome in 1059, containing the statement that “the real body of Christ is in reality handled and broken by the hands of the priests and is crushed by the teeth of the faithful,” is accepted by Innocent with the explanation that “the body of Christ is not divided into parts or torn by the teeth, since it is immortal and impassible,” an explanation which shows that he regarded the wording of the declaration as a clumsy way of saying that the Sacrament which the priests handle and the faithful receive is the body of Christ. In the event of the profanation of the Sacrament by an animal the body of the Lord miraculously ceases to be there. Though it is the immortal body of Christ which is now received in the Sacrament, it is perhaps more likely that at the institution He gave His body in its mortal state than that the qualities of the risen body were then anticipated; yet each of the four qualities which are now characteristic of the risen body had on some occasion been manifested before the resurrection, “the subtlety when He was born of the Virgin, the glory when He was transfigured on the mount, the agility when He walked on the sea, the impassibility when He was eaten at the Supper”. “The real body of Christ is eaten sacramentally, that is, under the species; but the mystical body is eaten spiritually, that is, in faith under the species of bread, in faith of heart.” “Both good and bad eat the body of Christ, but the good to salvation, the bad to judgment.” The teaching and words of Hugh of St. Victor on the bodily reception being a means to the spiritual presence, which enables the soul to lay hold of Christ at the right hand of God, are reproduced.

“If it be asked whether Christ locally descends from heaven or ascends into heaven, when He conveys or withdraws His bodily presence, or otherwise begins or ceases to be under the species of the Sacrament, I reply that we ought not to be curious in such matters.… I do not know how Christ approaches, I am ignorant also how He departs, He knows who is ignorant of nothing.”

“When the first part of the words of consecration is said, the bread is changed from its nature into the body, and when the second part of the words is said, the wine is changed into the blood, yet the body is never without the blood, and the blood is never without the body, as neither is without the soul, but under the form of bread the blood is in the body when the bread has been changed into the body. So also it is in regard to the species of wine. Not that the bread is changed into the blood, or the wine changed into the body, but because neither of these can be without the other. Therefore the blood is under the species of bread not from the power of the Sacrament but from a natural concomitance.”

“One and the Same both then and now, both here and elsewhere, is offered by all, whole in heaven, whole on the altar, at the same time sitting at the right hand of the Father and abiding under the species of the Sacrament.… Christ is one in different places as He is whole in different portions.”

“Christ gives Himself wholly to us for food, that as He renews us by His Godhead, which we taste spiritually with the heart, so He may renew us by His manhood, which we eat bodily with the mouth, that so He may lead us from things visible to things invisible, from things temporal to things eternal, from things earthly to things heavenly, from things human to things divine.”

“By the mystery of the cross He delivered us from the power of sin. By the Sacrament of the Eucharist, He sets us free from the desire to sin; for, if the Eucharist be worthily taken, it frees from evil, it strengthens in good, it blots out venial sins, it protects from mortal sins.”

“Christ in His divine nature is in things in three ways, locally in heaven, personally in the Word, sacramentally on the altar. For, as in His Godhead He is essentially whole in all things, so in His manhood He is whole sacramentally in many places. By the power of this Sacrament it becomes possible that they who are of earth ascend to heaven.”

In one of the passages just quoted—in the words “When the first part of the words of consecration is said, the bread is changed from its nature into the body”—Innocent III. expresses his own opinion that the consecration of the bread is completed before the consecration of the chalice. While so writing he refers to the contrary opinion of others, possibly alluding to Peter the Eater, who was Chancellor of Paris from 1168 to 1178, or to Peter the Chanter, who was Precentor of Paris from 1184 to 1197. At a later point in his treatise he again expresses the same opinion; but says that in the event of a priest being unable to proceed to the consecration of the chalice after consecrating the bread, or of the discovery after the consecration of the bread that there was no wine in the chalice, it is better for the sake of security, since there are two opinions on the point, that the consecration of the bread should be repeated.