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Alexander of Hales was a native of Hales in Gloucestershire. After filling various ecclesiastical offices in England, he studied and taught at Paris. In 1222 he entered the Franciscan Order, and in his work as lecturer had much to do with the growth of learning in that Order. He died at Paris in 1245. He was the first schoolman to use the whole of the writings of Aristotle which were then accessible; and he used also parts of the writings of the Arabian philosophers. He did much to promote Realism. His Sum of Theology was completed after his death by his scholars about 1252; but probably represents his opinions even where it is not wholly His work. In its general method it exhibits the characteristics of scholastic theology which had by this time become marked. Abelard had placed different opinions on the same subjects side by side as expressed in quotations from earlier writers in his Yes and No. Peter Lombard had to some extent stated the views which he himself rejected. Alexander of Hales gives at length in all cases the position differing from his own, fully stating the arguments by which it may be defended, and answering them one by one. The book contains a long and elaborate treatment of the Eucharist. This affords an excellent instance of the way in which at this time the interest in the theology of the Eucharistic sacrifice had been to a large extent crushed out by the interest in the elaboration of the doctrine of the presence and gift. On the sacrifice the teaching is but scanty. One of the five causes of the institution of the Sacrament is “the commemoration of the death of Christ,” and another is “the pardon of daily sins”; but this “commemoration” seems to be referred to more as a reminder to Christians than as a memorial before God, and the “pardon” is viewed rather as a gift in Communion than as an effect of a sacrifice. The prayers and ceremonies of the ordinary and canon of the Mass are regarded, as in earlier writers, as a mystical presentation of the incarnate life, passion, and resurrection of our Lord. The interpretation of Peter Lombard that the fraction of the consecrated bread is a representation of the passion, is followed; and the two species are said to show the passion and sacrifice of Christ. The frequent celebration of the Mass is a means of repairing the daily faults of living Christians and also of mitigating the penalties of the soul in purgatory. The Eucharistic sacrifice is not further explained. In regard to the presence and gift, on the other hand, the treatment is most full. When writing on the subject of the Sacraments in general, before entering on the discussion of separate Sacraments, Alexander describes a Sacrament as a “real sign” which effects and contains what it denotes, which has virtue attached to it through “the institution of the Saviour,” “the form of words” appointed by Christ and used in the Church, “the due action of ministers,” “the passion and resurrection of Christ,” and “the faith of the Church”. The consecration of the Eucharist is effected by the recital of the words “This is My body,” “This is My blood”; and may be validly accomplished by a wicked or heretical or schismatical or degraded priest. At the consecration the bread and the wine are converted by Transubstantiation into the body and blood of Christ, and do not remain under the signs together with the body and blood. In this conversion only the accidents remain. The bread is not annihilated, but is changed for the better. The conversion of substance is marvellous and supernatural, and is accomplished by the power of the Holy Ghost. Through it Christ is whole and indivisible under each species by concomitance, though the bread is changed into the flesh and the wine into the blood. In the change there is no local movement, and the body of Christ does not descend from heaven. The accidents remain without a subject. They retain their own properties and are still the objects of sense. The accidents do not possess the property of nourishing; but by a return of the substance of bread and wine they nourish and are corrupted. As there is no local descent of the body of Christ when the elements are converted into His flesh and blood, so His presence is not of a limited kind or local or circumscribed. It can be grasped by the minds of mortals when illuminated by faith. The real body of Christ, into which the bread has been converted, is not broken when the species is broken, because it is incorruptible and indivisible and remains whole and unbroken in every part of the divided species; and Alexander maintains that the declaration of Berengar, as accepted by the Church, was intended to affirm that the consecrated bread is really the body of Christ, not that the body itself is broken. This real fraction of the species is possible because of the retention of the accident of quantity. At the institution of the Sacrament Christ gave His body in the immortal and impassible state in which it is now received in Communion by an anticipation of the spiritual endowments of His risen body. When received worthily the Sacrament conveys forgiveness of venial sins and protection against and sorrow for mortal sins; it increases virtues; it has greater efficacy when taken sacramentally and spiritually than when taken spiritually only. The good and the bad communicants alike receive the body of Christ sacramentally; but it has no efficacy and is not eaten spiritually unless it is received worthily, and it cannot be taken by irrational creatures or by angels. In the event of it ceasing to be under the sacramental species there is no local movement, as there is no local movement or descent at the consecration. Before the institution of the Sacrament the faithful ate Christ spiritually. since Christ is wholly taken in Communion under either kind, it is lawful to receive the Sacrament in the species of bread only, “as is done almost everywhere by the laity in the Church”. On the whole it may be said that the tendency of Alexander’s statements, though his elaborate and detailed discussion of minute points is painful reading, is to continue the attempt of earlier writers to use the philosophical treatment of Eucharistic doctrine to preserve a spiritual way of regarding the presence of the body and blood of Christ. There are parts of his work, however, which tend in a different direction, as when he discusses whether, if the body had been reserved when Christ died on the cross, the body so reserved would have been dead, and whether, if the body had been consecrated during the three days between our Lord’s death and His resurrection, it would have been body without soul, and in his lengthy dissertation on the body of Christ passing into the stomach, though his view of the return of the substances of bread and wine enables him to avoid supposing that it suffers corruption. Consideration of his work suggests the thought that by his time the use or the realistic philosophy to protect the spiritual character of the Eucharistic presence and gift had overshot the mark.

William of Auvergne became Bishop of Paris in 1228 and died in 1249. In his philosophical teaching he made great use of Aristotle and of much Arabian philosophy, although himself in some respects a Platonist. On the subject of sacrifice in general and of the Eucharistic sacrifice there are notable passages in his writings. Many of the elements in sacrifice, according to his teaching, involve the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of God and the dedication of man to Him; another element is that of communion with God, as the bodily refreshment in the sacrificial meal denotes the spiritual communion of the soul with Him; another is that of the association of one who offers sacrifice with the rest of the family of God through the sacrificial meal. The sacrifice which is required from men is of themselves; it has its inner side in the offering of a humble and contrite heart, and its outward side in external works of doing and suffering. The perfect sacrifice is that of Christ, who offered Himself on the cross for the reconciliation of the world, and made atonement to God. The priestly work of Christ is carried on in heaven in the presence of God the Father; but in order that the Church on earth may have a sacrifice the offering of the Eucharist has been ordained; and Christ is no less acceptable to the Father on the altar than He was on the cross, when He paid the price of the deliverance of the world, and “the oblation which was made on the altar of the cross and that which is daily made on the altar are of the same merit,” since the Victim is the same. Thus, the Eucharist, on its sacrificial side, has the element of appeasing God and of turning away His wrath. On the side of Communion, it is the means by which God supplies the soul with the needed food of spiritual life; and it sanctifies those who receive rightly. At the consecration “the material and visible bread gives place to the coming of the life-giving Bread, paying honour to the Creator,” “the form, that is, the variety of the accidents, being preserved for the ministering of the Sacrament”; “in the Transubstantiation nothing at all remains of the bread except” “the variety of the sensible accidents or sensible form”. The body of Christ into which the bread is transubstantiated at the consecration has the spiritual gifts of the risen life; and its presence in the Sacrament is accomplished by the change of the elements, not by its movement from heaven to earth. William of Auvergne suggests a different solution of the problem presented by the impossibility of the spiritual body of Christ being a power of bodily and material nourishment and by the absence of the substance of bread in the consecrated Sacrament than that suggested by Alexander of Hales. Like Alexander, he holds that the accidents cannot nourish substance; but, while Alexander regarded the Sacrament as having the power of nourishing the body through the return of the substance of bread and wine, William maintains that the Sacrament does not possess the power of nourishing the body, although the accidents can remove hunger and relieve thirst. William’s method is much less elaborate and argumentative than that of Alexander; his work presents the same general features of an earnest desire to use the Aristotelian philosophy as a support to the doctrine of the Eucharist, and to protect the spiritual character of the Eucharistic presence of Christ; in him, though to a less extent than in Alexander, may be marked the hampering effects of the application of a philosophic system to spiritual realities.