I

John of Paris was a Dominican theologian of eminence, who was a Professor of Theology in the University of Paris at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. About 1300 he wrote a treatise entitled On the Mode of the Existence of the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar, the following quotation from which show the characteristic point in his teaching on this subject:—

“I intend to defend the real and actual presence of the body of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar, and that it is not there only as by way of sign. And, though I hold and approve the usual opinion that the body of Christ is in the Sacrament of the altar by means of the conversion of the substance of bread into itself, and that the accidents remain there without a subject, yet I do not dare to say that this is of faith; but the real and actual presence of the body of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar can be securely held otherwise. Nevertheless, I solemnly declare that, if it be shown that the aforesaid method has been positively affirmed by a sacred canon or by the Church or by a General Council or by the Pope, whose power is that of the whole Church (qui virtute continet totam ecclesiam), I do not wish anything which I say accounted as said, and am ready to withdraw it at once. And, if it has not yet been positively affirmed but shall come to be so affirmed, I am ready to assent to it at once.… For the substance of the bread to remain under its own accidents in the Sacrament of the altar can be understood in two ways. First, the substance of the bread may be held to remain in the Sacrament of the altar under its own accidents in a subject of its own; and this is untrue, because in this case there would not be association of properties (communicatio idiomatum) between the bread and the body of Christ, nor would it be true to say, The bread is the body of Christ, or ‘My flesh is really food’. Secondly, the substance of the bread may be held to remain under its own accidents, not in a subject of its own, but in relation to the being and subject of Christ, so that in this way there would be one subject in the two natures. And this is true.”

The purport of this somewhat obscure passage appears to be that, provided it were secured that in the Eucharist there is only one subject, it might be asserted that the substance of the bread remained after consecration. On such a view, the subject in the Eucharist would correspond to the one Person of our Lord in His incarnate life, and the two substances of the earthly elements and of His body and blood would correspond to the two natures of manhood and Godhead. According to this treatise of John, the same view was held by other divines at Paris besides John himself. His book, however, was condemned by William, the Bishop of Paris, who deprived John of his professorship. He determined to appeal against this deprivation to Pope Clement V., but died at Bordeaux in 1306 without having done so.

Like John of Paris, Durand of St. Pourçain was a Dominican and a Professor of Theology at Paris, where he taught early in the fourteenth century. He became Bishop of Limoux in 1317, Bishop of Puy-en-Velay in 1318, and Bishop of Meaux in 1326. He died in 1334. His treatise on the Sentences of Peter Lombard contains some discussion of the nature of the Eucharistic presence. He asserts that “the conversion of the substance” of the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ is true and is taught by the Church. At the same time he allows that in the abstract it is possible for the substance of the bread to remain together with the substance of the body of Christ, basing this view largely on his rejection, very noticeable in a Dominican writer, of the Thomist opinions about place; and observes that the difficulties as to the capacity of corruption and the power of nourishing the body in the consecrated Sacrament would be solved if it were held that the substance of the bread and wine remains after consecration. On the way in which the “conversion of the substance” is effected, he writes:—

“Saving a better judgment, it can be thought that, if in this Sacrament there is a conversion of the substance of the bread into the body of Christ, this takes place in this way, that the form of the bread ceases to be, but that the matter of the bread is under the form of the body of Christ suddenly and by the power of God, as the matter of nourishment is under the form of the person nourished by the power of nature.… Now it is clear that the aforesaid method of the conversion of the substance of the bread into the body of Christ is possible; but the other method, which is commonly held, is unintelligible; neither has either of these been more approved or condemned by the Church than the other.”

William of Ockham was one of the most famous of the advocates of Nominalism in the fourteenth century. He was born in 1280 at Ockham in Surrey. He became a member of the Franciscan Order. Like the Dominicans John of Paris and Durand of St. Pourçain, he was a Professor of Theology at Paris. In 1322 he became the English Provincial of the Franciscans. In 1328 a condemnation was passed on his Nominalistic opinions by the University of Paris; and from that time until 1347, when he died at Munich, he took refuge from the hostility of Pope John XXII. at the court of Lewis, the King of Bavaria. In his theology in general the most noticeable feature is his assertion of the authority of Holy Scripture and the beliefs of the Universal Church as distinct from the possibility of error on the part of individual teachers however eminent or a General Council or the Pope. On the subject of the Holy Eucharist he claimed that he had no intention of diverging from the current doctrine taught at Rome, saying, “Whatever the Church of Rome believes, this alone and nothing different I believe either explicitly or implicitly”; and he appears to have departed from his general principle of the absolute validity of the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Universal Church alone on the ground of a supposed revelation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation to the Church at some later time than the period of the Fathers. He observes that, “although it is expressly found in the New Testament that the body of Christ is to be taken under the species of bread, yet it is not there expressed that the substance of bread does not remain,” and that on this latter point “there have been different opinions from early times”. He regards the view that “the substance of bread and wine remains, and in the same place and under the same species is the body of Christ,” as “very reasonable apart from a decision of the Church to the contrary,” “as avoiding all the difficulties which result from the separation of accidents from their subject,” as “not contrary to anything in the canon of the Bible,” as “not repugnant to reason”; and he says that “there is no more contradiction in the body of Christ co-existing with the substance of bread than in it co-existing with the accidents of bread”. But he accepts the ordinary doctrine on the ground of Church authority.

“The substance of the bread and the wine ceases to be, and the accidents alone remain, and under them the body of Christ begins to be. This is clear to the Church by some revelation, as I suppose; and therefore the Church has so decided.”

John Wyclif was at one time Master of Balliol College. Afterwards, he was the incumbent of several benefices in succession. The last of these was the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where, after ten years’ residence, he died in 1384. He resembled Ockham in the intensely scholastic character of his mind and in the importance which he attached to the authority of Holy Scripture. Unlike Ockham, he was a Realist; and he went far beyond Ockham in his rejection of the authority of the Church.

In or before 1381 Wyclif began his attack on the doctrine of Transubstantiation by publishing a series of statements on the Holy Eucharist. The most important of its twelve propositions are the following:—

“The consecrated host which we see on the altar is neither Christ nor any part of Him but an effectual sign.”

“The Eucharist has, by virtue of the sacramental words, both the body and the blood of Christ really and actually in every part of it.”

“Transubstantiation, identification, and impanation … are not to be established from Scripture.”

“It is contrary to the opinions of saints to assert that there is accident without subject in a real host.”

“The Sacrament of the Eucharist is in its nature bread and wine, containing, by virtue of the sacramental words, the real body and blood of Christ in every part of it.”

“The Sacrament of the Eucharist is in figure the body and blood of Christ, into which the bread and wine are transubstantiated, of which some being (aliquiditas) remains after consecration, although, as the faithful believe, laid asleep.”

“The existence of accident without subject is not tenable.”

The publication of these statements was followed by the declaration known as the Confession. In it Wyclif said:—

“I have often confessed, and do still confess, that the bread in the Sacrament, or consecrated host, which the faithful perceive in the hands of the priest, is really and actually the very same body of Christ and the same substance as was taken from the Virgin and as suffered on the cross and lay dead in the tomb for the holy three days, and rose on the third day, and after forty days ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father. The proof of this is, that Christ, who cannot lie, so declares. Nevertheless, I do not dare to say that this bread is the body of Christ essentially or substantially or corporally or identically (identice).… For we believe that there is a threefold way in which the body of Christ is in the consecrated host, namely, virtual, spiritual, and sacramental. Virtual, whereby throughout His whole rule He benefits in the good things of nature and grace. The spiritual way is that whereby the body of Christ is in the Eucharist and in the saints by means of grace. And the third way, the sacramental, is that whereby the body of Christ is in the consecrated host after a unique manner.… But, besides these three ways of being, there are three other ways more actual and more real, which the body of Christ fitly has in heaven, namely, substantially, corporally, and by dimensions. And men of gross ideas understand no other way of the being of a natural (naturalis: al. material, materialis) substance besides these. But they are not at all fit to grasp the mystery of the Eucharist and the subtlety of Scripture.”

Further on in the same Confession Wyclif repudiated the idea of “accident without subject,” and affirmed that them is “real bread and wine” in the consecrated sacrament.

It is possible that the statements of belief ascribed to Wyclif at the Council of London of 1382 are an accurate representation of his teaching. Those on the subject of the Eucharist are the following:—

“The substance of the material bread and wine remains in the Sacrament of the altar after consecration.”

“The accidents do not remain without a subject in the same Sacrament after consecration.”

“Christ is not in the Sacrament of the altar identically (identice), really, and actually in a proper bodily presence.”

“If a bishop or a priest is in mortal sin, he does not ordain or consecrate or baptise.”

Like teaching occurs in the works of the latter part of Wyclif’s life generally, and in particular in the detailed treatment in the Trialogus and the very lengthy discussions in De Eucharistia. The elaboration and subtlety of the arguments prevents either work from lending itself easily to quotation; but the following short extracts may give some idea of the doctrine taught.

“This venerable Sacrament is in its own nature real bread, and is sacramentally the body of Christ.”

“It is not to be understood that the body of Christ comes down to the host which is consecrated in any Church, but it remains above in heaven fixed and unmoved; therefore it has spiritual being in the host and not dimensional being and the other accidents which are in heaven.”

“In the words of Christ Elijah denotes that prophet of the ancient law; and in consequence the predication is to be said to be of relation (habitudinalis) but not of identity (identica), since Christ perceived that the Baptist is Elijah figuratively, and the Baptist perceived that he is not Elijah personally.… And so I understand other predications of relation (habitudinales) in Holy Scripture. And if you ask when the Baptist began to be Elijah, it seems to me that it was when he had that relation (habitudinem) to Elijah by the appointment of God, and that so the Baptist at least naturally was Elijah before Christ uttered those words. But concerning the Sacrament of the altar it seems probable that the bread is the body of the Lord when the sacramental words are uttered, and not before, so that by virtue of the words of Christ the bread has at the same time the name of the Sacrament and the name of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“It is not inconsistent that Christ is sacramentally in the wine mixed with water or other liquid, and even in the midst of the air, but pre-eminently in the soul, since the end of this Sacrament is that Christ dwell in the soul by means of virtues, so that the layman who remembers the body of Christ in heaven brings about better and more effectually than the priest who consecrates, and equally really, though in a different manner, that the body of Christ is with him. But the common people believe most faithlessly and blasphemously that this sacramental sign of the body of Christ is actually Christ Himself. And in this heresy clergy and prelates are involved.”

“It appears that the second opinion—the Thomist opinion that the same thing can be in two places at once only by being in one place dimensionally and in other places potentially and sacramentally, as against the Scotist opinion that the same thing can be dimensionally in more places than one at the same time—is to be held, since it is impossible for the same body to be at the same time in different places by way of locality and dimensions.… It is clear concerning the body of Christ that it is dimensionally in heaven, and potentially in the host as in a sign.”

Wyclif’s statements that the body of Christ is not present in the consecrated Sacrament “essentially or substantially or corporally or identically,” or “identically, really, and actually in a proper bodily presence,” and that “the consecrated host” “is neither Christ nor any part of Him but an effectual sign of Him,” and that “the Sacrament of the Eucharist is in figure the body and blood of Christ,” have often been understood as meaning that the consecrated bread and wine are only symbols of the body and blood of Christ, and not the body and blood themselves. Such an interpretation has much to support it; yet a comparison of different statements with one another and a careful examination of his exact phraseology tend to sustain the view that he was endeavouring in a scholastic fashion to assert the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated Sacrament, while distinguishing the way in which He is present on the altar from the way in which He is present in heaven, and maintaining the real character of the bread and wine after consecration, and attempting to avoid what seemed to him the insuperable logical contradictions of the current explanations; that his phrase “The consecrated host which we see on the altar is neither Christ nor any part of Him but an effectual sign of Him” was intended to apply to the outward part; and that in like manner the statement “The Sacrament of the Eucharist is in figure the body and blood of Christ” was an effort to express the doctrine that the consecrated elements are symbols of the body and blood of Christ which contain and convey that which they denote.

In 1395 a Bill was presented in Parliament incorporating twelve Conclusions representing the opinions of the Lollards, which were also affixed to the doors of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Of these Conclusions the fourth referred to the Eucharist in the following terms:—

“The feigned miracle of the Sacrament of bread leads all men but a few into idolatry; for they think that the body of Christ, which is never out of heaven, is by the power of the words of the priest in its essential being enclosed in a small piece of bread, which they show to the people. But God would that they would believe what the evangelical doctor says in his Trialogus, that the bread of the altar is by way of relation (habitualiter) the body of Christ; for we suppose that in this way any man or woman who is a believer in God’s law can make the Sacrament of this bread without any such miracle.”

In 1402 a statement about the opinions of the Lollards was laid before the Archbishop of Canterbury by Sir Louis de Clifford, who had for some time favoured them. In this statement they were said to hold—

“That the seven Sacraments are only dead signs, and are of no value in the way in which the Church uses them.”

“That the Church is nothing but the synagogue of Satan; and therefore they will not go to it to worship the Lord, or to receive any Sacrament, least of all the Sacrament of the altar, because they maintain that it is nothing but a morsel of dead bread and a tower or pinnacle of Anti-Christ.”

The doctrine that in the Sacrament there is real bread and also the body of Christ is found in the Confession and subsequent explanation of the Lollard Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, made in 1413. It is there said:—

“The most worshipful Sacrament of the altar is Christ’s body in form of bread, the same body that was born of the Blessed Virgin, our Lady Saint Mary, done on the cross, dead and buried, the third day rose from death to life, the which body is now glorified in heaven.”

“As Christ when dwelling here on earth had in Himself Godhead and manhood, yet the Godhead veiled and invisible under the manhood, which was open and visible, so in the Sacrament of the altar there is real body and real bread, that is, the bread which we see, and the body of Christ veiled under it which we do not see.”

In the description of the tenets of the Lollards given about 1449 by Reginald Pecock, the Bishop of St. Asaph, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, some of them were charged with holding that the Sacraments and the Church’s use of them were “points of witchcraft and blindness,” and with abhorring “the Sacrament of the altar,” “insomuch that they not only scorn it, but they hate it, miscall it by foul names, and will not come for its sake into the bodily church while this Sacrament is hallowed, treated, and used in the Mass”.

There is some doubt as to the opinions held in regard to the Eucharist by John Hus and Jerome of Prague. It is clear that the influence of the teaching of Wyclif was very great in Bohemia in the early part of the fifteenth century. Yet, whatever may be the facts as to the earlier teaching of Hus, he himself explicitly denied having taught that the material bread remains after consecration or that a priest in mortal sin cannot consecrate, and acknowledged the term Transubstantiation and the doctrine denoted by it, though deprecating close inquiries as to the manner of the change effected by consecration, and saving that for simple Christians it was enough to recognise that the body and blood of Christ are really present after consecration. Jerome of Prague was charged at the Council of Constance in 1415 with holding that “the bread is not transubstantiated into the body of Christ,” and that “the body of Christ is not in the Sacrament by way of presence and body but only as a sign,” and that “Christ is not really in the host or the Sacrament of the altar,” and that “the host is not Christ”; but there is some evidence of his having said that the Sacrament is bread before the consecration and the body of Christ after the consecration, though according to the same authority he evaded the question whether the bread remains in the consecrated Sacrament. The statements ascribed to Wyclif about the Eucharist were included in the propositions of Wyclif which he repudiated; and when before his death he retracted his abjuration of Hus and Wyclif, he may have meant to except from the retractation his denial of Wyclif’s statements about the Eucharist in saying that “he did not follow or hold anything which” Wyclif and Hus “had taught against the doctors of the Church concerning the Sacrament of the altar,” and that he “believed and held all that the Church believes and holds, and gave more credence to Augustine and the other doctors of the Church than to Wyclif and Hus”.

One of the leading opponents of Hus and Jerome of Prague was Peter d’Ailly, who was appointed Chancellor of the University of Paris in 1389, became Bishop of Puy-en-Velay in 1395 and of Cambrai in 1396, was made a cardinal in 1411, and died in 1420. His great distinction and his opposition to Hus and Jerome of Prague make it the more noticeable that in his treatise on the Sentences, while accepting the doctrine that the substances of the bread and wine cease to be in the Sacrament at consecration, he had spoken of the contrary opinion as “possible,” as “not repugnant to reason or to the authority of the Bible,” and as in itself “easier to understand and more reasonable” than any other view, and did not appear to regard it as actually precluded by any binding decree.

“The fourth opinion is more common, that the substance of bread does not remain but simply ceases to be. The possibility of this is clear. For it is not impossible to God that substance should suddenly cease to be, though it is not possible through created power. And, though it is not clearly involved in Scripture that this is so, nor even, so far as I can see, in the decision of the Church, yet because the Church favours it rather than any other opinion as being the common opinion of saints and doctors, therefore I hold it. And it is according to this way that I say that the bread is transubstantiated into the body of Christ in the meaning set forth in the description of Transubstantiation.”

An instance of rejection of the current doctrine which seems to go beyond the teaching of Wyclif is found in the book of John Wessel On the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Wessel was born at Groningen about 1429, was educated under the Brethren of the Common Life at Zwolle, studied at the University of Cologne, and taught at Paris and afterwards at Heidelberg. He died in 1489 after some years of retirement at Groningen. In early life he was a Realist but afterwards became a Nominalist. He appears to have taught that there is no essential difference between the presence of Christ in the Sacrament and that which may be found elsewhere; and this not in the sense in which the mediæval teachers had explained that by means of Spiritual Communion those who were hindered from actual Communion might receive the body of Christ, and in which the mediæval office books directed the priest to say to a sick man who was unable to receive Communion, “Brother, in this case real faith is sufficient for thee, and good intention: only believe, and thou hast eaten,” but in the very different sense which made the Eucharistic gift of no other character or degree than that which may at any time be in the devout prayer of a believer. The following are among the passages in his book which appear to indicate this meaning.

“Expressly must the word of the Lord be observed, ‘Except ye shall have eaten, ye will not have life in you’. But they who believe in Him have real life. Therefore they who believe in Him are those who eat His flesh.”

“Wheresoever His Name is blessed … there is He really present not only with His Godhead and goodwill, but also corporally.… I do not say that it is granted to every Christian man that he can have Christ sacramentally present by means of the Eucharist whenever he wishes; for this is granted to priests only. But I say that the Lord Jesus is really present to one calling on His Name, really present not only with His Godhead but also with His flesh and blood and whole manhood. For who will doubt that the Lord Jesus is often corporally present to His faithful ones in their agonies, though His session at the right hand of the Father is not left because of this? Who will doubt that this can happen simultaneously in such a way outside the Eucharist as in the Eucharist?”

“So did the Magdalen eat of Him when she sat at the feet of Jesus, whom she loved much.… So to partake of His flesh and blood is rather to eat than if ten thousand times we should receive the Eucharist at the altar from the hand of the priest with a dry heart and a cold will, even though in a state of salvation.”