V

Gabriel Biel was a professor of theology at Tubingen in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and died at that place in 1495. He may be regarded as the most famous of the Scotist theologians of the time. On the Eucharistic presence he accepts the ordinary teaching of his age. At the consecration the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, so that “the body of Christ, which was taken from the Virgin Mary, which suffered and was buried, which rose and ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father, in which the Son of God will come to judge the living and the dead, is really and actually contained under the species of bread”. “The substance of bread does not remain but is actually and really converted or transubstantiated or changed into the substance of the body of Christ.” Both “matter” and “form” of bread cease to be, “perchance by the withdrawal of the conservation of God”; “the accidents are preserved in their own being without a subject”; “the real body of Christ by real presence comes into the place of the substance of the bread under the same accidents, so that the bread is no longer there (ad panis desitionem)”. On the effects of Communion, after pointing out that good material food injures some by reason of the unhealthy state of their bodies, and that in like manner the “spiritual food” of the Eucharist does harm to those who receive it “irreverently and unworthily,” Biel goes on to say:—

“I think that no mortal being can fully describe the fruits of the offering and reception of it by those who approach or offer worthily.… In this most sacred food, when worthily received, the real body of Christ is joined by a unique union to His mystical body, which is denoted in this Sacrament, and from it there comes to the members of the mystical body a whole inflow of blessed life. Christ the Bridegroom is joined to the Church His bride; and from Him she receives the adornment of perfection according to the measure of each member until she comes to the measure of the fulness of Christ.… This food kindles love, keeps up the memory of the Lord’s passion, sustains for the performance of good, strengthens for the preservation of holy desire, increases hope, cleanses venial sin and sometimes mortal sin, refreshes with eternal consolation him who eats it spiritually, gives the life of grace, unites firmly to Christ, establishes faith without error, fortifies against the falls which are the result of human weakness, and lessens the burning fire of fleshy lust in the face of the assaults of the devil.”

In view of later controversies, the teaching of Biel about the Eucharistic sacrifice is of some importance. He explains that the Eucharist is called a sacrifice because it was “instituted to be a memorial of the supreme sacrifice offered on the cross”. He speaks of the priest as “the instrument and minister of the Church”; and says that the sacrifice is “the sacrifice of the whole Church,” and that “the Church offers it through the priest as through a minister appointed and ordained for this purpose,” and that the holiness of the Church secures the acceptance of the sacrifice even when the priest who offers is not pleasing to God because he is sinful. Yet the priest is “not only an instrument” but also “an administrator,” and “in offering the sacrifice in the person of the Church, he can apply its fruit and virtue specially to some one person or to certain persons,” and he can “determine his own intention as to those for whom he will specially offer it”. In connection with the consecration Biel says incidentally that “Jesus Christ Himself is priest and sacrifice”. On the merit of the sacrifice he writes:—

“It is clear that the merit of the Mass is not infinite so far as the merit of the Church which offers it and the personal merit of the priest who celebrates are concerned. For neither grace which is the root of merit nor the acts of the creatures, the Church and the priest, which are elicited by grace, are infinite. Therefore neither is the merit infinite. For merit is commensurate to grace and to act.… The merit of the offering of Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass is far less than was the merit of His offering on the cross. For on the cross Christ offered Himself immediately, being made a real sacrifice, dying once for the effectual redemption of all the predestined.… In the service of the Mass there is the same sacrifice and oblation, not by a repeated death but by the commemorative representation of the once suffered death.… Wherefore He suffered once only; and yet we daily present the memorial of His one death in this sacramental sacrifice.… The Mass is not of equal value with the passion and death of Christ as regards merit, because in the sacrifice of the Mass Christ does not again die, though His death, and therefore all its merit, is specially commemorated in it.… If the Mass were of equal value with the passion and death, then, as Christ suffered once only for the redemption of the whole world, so also one Mass would suffice for the redemption of all souls from all the pains of purgatory, and for obtaining from God all good, which is not to be said.”

Elsewhere Biel writes of the effects of the sacrifice of the Mass:—

“The Sacrament of the Eucharist, as a sacrifice offered to the Most High Father, takes away not only venial but also mortal sin, I do not say simply of those who receive it, but, of all those for whom it is offered, so far as concerns guilt and penalty, to a greater or less degree according to the disposition of those for whom it is offered. … And therefore this service is offered for the living and for the dead.”

In most of the doctrine thus taught about the Eucharistic sacrifice Biel follows closely the lines of the theology of Duns Scotus. The last quotation, like a passage previously quoted from a treatise ascribed to Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, has some special importance in regard to the controversies about the Eucharistic sacrifice which it will be necessary to discuss in considering the theology of the sixteenth century.