VII

It is no easy task to summarise so complicated a history as that of Western Eucharistic theology from the sixth century to the fifteenth. Yet an attempt must be made to gather up the threads of the preceding account.

The evidence afforded by the sixth and seventh and eighth centuries shows little more than the preservation of the tradition that the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ, that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, and that those only benefit by Communion who partake of the Sacrament worthily. The sacrifice is connected with both the passion and the heavenly life of our Lord. The power of obtaining specific results as the direct outcome of the offering of the sacrifice is more clearly taught by St. Gregory the Great than by any earlier writer except St. Augustine. Isidore of Seville lays stress on the presence of Christ in the Sacrament being the presence of His glorified body, and on the corollary that Christ is wholly present with both body and blood in each species.

The ninth and tenth centuries were marked by the controversies which arose from the teaching of Amalarius of Metz and Paschasius Radbert. Amalarius appears to have been the first Western writer to put in clear and detailed form the idea of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass as parts of a great drama of mystic representation of the life and death and resurrection of Christ. Some of his explanations were thought to suggest a gross and carnal view of the presence of Christ and of the offering of the sacrifice, and consequently led to his being attacked; but, though some of his statements are confused, the probability is strong that he, like his opponents, was keenly desirous of maintaining the spiritual aspects of both presence and sacrifice. Both parties in the controversy lay stress on the commemoration of the passion of Christ and the union with the heavenly worship as elements in the sacrifice. The controversy raised by Paschasius centred round the nature of the change effected by the consecration of the Sacrament. In the mind of Paschasius the elements were wholly made the body and blood of Christ, and this body and blood were those with which Christ was born of the Virgin. Others denied this identification of the Eucharistic body with that of our Lord’s earthly life; and to a greater or less extent questioned the actual character of any change in the elements. Both Paschasius and his opponents emphasise the spiritual nature of the presence of Christ’s body; both attach importance to the records of miracles which on the surface may suggest carnal ideas of a body in the natural state of the pre-resurrection life. All alike regard the Eucharist as a commemoration of the passion; Paschasius in particular expounds with great beauty and power the union of the earthly sacrifice with the heavenly actions of our Lord. By all alike the benefits of Communion are restricted to those who receive worthily. At the end of the tenth century the explicit teaching of Paschasius appears to have been widely accepted.

The marked feature of the eleventh century was the Berengarian controversy. The course of it shows two tendencies at work in regard to the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, both probably derived from the theology of Paschasius. The first of these tendencies is in the direction of naturalistic language and thought. This was a not unnatural result of emphasis on the actual character of the change effected by consecration coupled with but little attention to the spiritual nature of the risen body of Christ. The second tendency was of an opposite kind, to insist on the spiritual nature of the presence to the extent of imparing conviction that it was of the real body of our Lord. In the working out of these two tendencies, some of the language used by leading theologians and some of that imposed on Berengar are likely to suggest the idea of a carnal and naturalistic presence, and some of Berengar’s own statements incline towards a denial that our Lord is really present under the consecrated species. Among his followers there appear to have been those who went further than he did himself in this direction. If both parties are viewed at their best, the anxiety of those who were influenced by the second tendency seems to have been lest the chief Sacrament of the Christian religion should be degraded into a mechanical and carnal rite, and the dread of their opponents was evidently lest the value of the Sacrament as a means of real union with Christ Himself should be destroyed. In this dread, parts of the legislative acts of the authorities of the Church were marked by panic with the unsatisfactory results which usually accompany such legislation. But it would be very unfair to suppose that those who were active against Berengar were always affected by panic or that they were unmindful of the higher considerations which supplied the best elements in his thought. The later councils avoided the naturalistic language which had been used in earlier stages of the controversy; and Lanfranc and others who acted with him were explicit in affirming the spiritual character of the Eucharistic realities. As so often in controversies there were dangers in two directions; and it is not surprising that at times individuals failed to hold in their right relation two co-ordinate truths.

In the latter part of the eleventh century and in the twelfth, consequences of the Berengarian controversy may be observed in the care taken to maintain that the Eucharistic presence is actually of the real body and blood of Christ, and at the same time to emphasise the spiritual nature of the body and the presence. One feature of the time was the use made of the realistic philosophy, with its theory of an impalpable substance, to protect Eucharistic doctrine from carnal notions. Instances of ways of regarding the problems of the subject different from those usually accepted are found in the teaching of Rupert of Deutz and Abelard. The same period is marked by the emphasis laid by the liturgical writers on the aspects of the Eucharistic sacrifice in which it is viewed in union with the heavenly offering of Christ.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the great development of the subtleties of the scholastic theology. Dominican and Franciscan theologians, in spite of the great differences of their thoughts and aims, strove almost equally to present the doctrine of the Eucharist so as to be in harmony with reason. Their habit of raising every question and dealing with every objection that acute and subtle minds knew of or could imagine makes much in their voluminous writings wearisome and even repulsive to a modern reader; their use of reason, the problems they devised, their lines of argument, are all apt to suggest that they look on the phenomena of the Eucharist in a naturalistic fashion; their way of finding a solution of every difficulty may often be repellent to those who have a keen sense of the mysteries of God’s working. These features of their works have led many superficial readers to fail in appreciating what they really meant. The patient student may find at the back of all their strange arguments, all the limitations of their age, all their bondage to philosophic theories, all their delight in gathering arguments from every sphere, two great convictions about the Eucharistic presence, which in the circumstances of their own time they successfully maintained,—first, that the real body and blood of the crucified and risen Lord, once slain and now living and glorious, are present under the species of bread and wine to be the spiritual food of those who worthily partake of the Sacrament; and, secondly, that this presence is of a spiritual kind, not effected by any natural law, not of a body in any natural condition, uniquely wonderful, without true parallels elsewhere, though in harmony with the principles set up by the incarnate life of the divine Redeemer. In the pains taken in developing their doctrine of Transubstantiation, they failed to take equal care about the doctrine of the sacrifice; and, while some aspects were discussed, there appears to have been little remembrance of the association with our Lord’s heavenly life, which had been prominent at some earlier times, and which might have helped to a better understanding of the actually sacrificial character of the commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross.

Side by side with the theological teaching of these centuries came some development of ceremonial and devotional practice. It was marked by the maintaining of the aspect of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass as being from one point of view a dramatic representation of the highest and most mystic kind of the life and death and resurrection of Christ, and the sense that Christ, “the Creator,” “the King of glory,” being in His Sacrament, was to be adored.

It is impossible to estimate the effect on the ignorant multitude of the teaching and actions of the theologians and authorities of the Church. In the absence of evidence it is easy to conjecture that many of the ignorant may have utilised the power they often posses of realising spiritual truths, and have had ideas which, however imperfect, were not false; and that many others, on hearing of the presence of the body of Christ, would be unable to rise to any higher conception than that of an earthly and carnal body, just as to the ignorant to hear of the love and care and actions of God often suggests anthropomorphic conceptions of deity. In like manner, it is easy to interpret, according as the mind of the interpreter is disposed, the legends of devout persons sustained by the reception of the Eucharist without other food as examples of a grossly superstitious view of a carnal presence of the body of Christ or as signs of an intensely spiritual belief transcending the things of sense. But it is well to remember that, whether in one direction or in the other, these are conjectures and not ascertained facts.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were questionings of the more philosophic aspects of the received doctrine. To some extent these led to questioning of parts of the doctrine itself. Wyclif used the subtleties of a schoolman to attack the subtleties of the schoolmen. The Lollards uniformly asserted that the bread and wine remain after consecration; and some of them are said to have denied that the consecrated Sacrament is anything besides bread and wine. Wessel pushed the truth of the abiding spiritual communion of the Christian with Christ to the denial of the specific gift of the Eucharist. In dealing with all such movements the attitude of the authorities of the Church was to maintain the traditional doctrine in the form in which they had inherited it from the theologians of the thirteenth century.

Thomist and Scotist theologians had their different ways of looking at the Eucharistic sacrifice. There may have been elements in the teaching of both which paved the way for a separation between the sacrifice of the altar and the sacrifice of Calvary, and to mechanical notions of satisfaction for sin; and the Thomist idea of a sacrifice as that “in which something is done” may have helped to cramp and limit the conception of what sacrifice means. Yet it was fundamental to both Thomists and Scotists that the personal work of Christ in His own redemptive acts is of unique value, and that nothing must be said to impair the conception of man as a moral being. Many questions closely connected with these points will need consideration in connection with the controversies of the sixteenth century.

As a student surveys the long course of writings—many of them of large extent and full of elaborate detail—on the subject of the Eucharist from the sixth century to the fifteenth in the Western Church, the most impressive fact of all is a fact which touches intimately the morality of the Christian religion and the sacramental system. It is the constant emphasis on the doctrine that, if Communion is to benefit the soul, the body of Christ must be spiritually as well as sacramentally received; and that a reception which is spiritual as well as sacramental is possible only for those who communicate worthily. Of scarcely less importance from the moral point of view is the insistence on the possibility of Spiritual Communion for those who desire to receive the body of Christ sacramentally and are unable to do so. How far in practice these conceptions of the Eucharist were cut across by lax administration of the Sacrament of Penance, or by the theory of Biel and others that the sacrifice of the Mass might benefit those in mortal sin by helping to lead them to repentance, or by popular teaching that to behold the elevated Sacrament was a means to spiritual and temporal benefit, is a question difficult, if not impossible, to answer. However that may be, they serve, like much else, to illustrate the truth that a close study of the literature does not support the theory that the Eucharistic doctrine of the mediæval Western Church was wholly or mainly mechanical and carnal. Rather, the facts show that it was part of the work of the greatest and most representative and most influential teachers, while taking care that the central points of their sacramental beliefs were not refined away, to maintain the spiritual character of the Eucharistic presence and gift.