Who were Ratramnus and Radbertus?

N*. I do not say that exactly. That he believed the Eucharist was the true body and blood of Christ is quite clear. But the scholastic view, brought in later by Lombard, was not yet established. He was the first that spoke as plainly as he did, but he does not bring it out as it was brought out afterwards, and has no thought of it being a dogma of the church, but twice over in his second letter says many doubted it. And he puts baptism, the chrism, and the Eucharist on the same ground, but he holds that it was the same body that hung upon the cross. He calls it a figure, but says it was the truth of the thing too as Christ was as to God. What I insist on with Sirmondi and Bellarmine is that he was the first that propounded the doctrine; and this tells the whole story: it is a doctrine which came in quite late and was opposed, as we shall now see, by the greatest men of the age.

Bertram or Ratramnus I need hardly quote. The Emperor Carolus Calvus had asked him the question whether it was literally or figuratively Christ's body, and the book is to shew it was the latter. His doctrine is the usual doctrine of the Fathers, that by faith they partook of Christ's body and blood in spiritual efficacy, but that literally it was bread and wine as before, and as we have seen others do, he refers to baptism and anointing as a similar case, nobody pretending the water or oil was changed, only it became spiritually efficacious. In the preface, London, 1688, a list of those who taught the same doctrine at the same time, beginning with Charles the Great to Alcuin, is given. Alfric, whom I have named, is a proof how Ratramn was received, as his statements are taken from Ratramn. The whole history of the writers of this age shews it was now first introduced, and at once called in question. Rabanus Maurus, the greatest man of his day, opposed it He says (De Institutione Clericorum, 1, 31), "Because the sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another; for the sacrament is received by the mouth; by the virtue of the sacrament the inward man is satiated; for the sacrament is reduced into an aliment of the body, but by the virtue of the sacrament the dignity of eternal life is obtained." And just before, "and as the invisible God appeared in visible flesh, so also He demonstrated an invisible thing by visible matter," and again as Melchisedec offered bread and wine, the great high priest should do the same. He says (Penitential, 6, 33), "For some of late, not thinking rightly of the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, have said that the very body and blood of our Lord which was born and in which the Lord Himself suffered on the cross and rose out of the sepulchre … [in opposition] to which error as far as we could in writing to the Abbot Egilus, we have opened up what is really to be believed about His body"; where, for what specifically was spoken, a blank was left in the copy, but plenty is left. In my copy of Rab. Maur. (lib. 6 on Matt.) he tells us He (Christ) "substituted the sacrament of His body and blood for the flesh and blood of the Lamb and breaks the bread which He handed to the disciples, to shew that the fraction of His body was not without His own voluntary act." "Because therefore the bread strengthens the body, and wine produces blood in the flesh, that refers mystically to the body of Christ, this to His blood." There is no doubt that Rab. Maurus was wholly opposed to the doctrine, though held to be the greatest light in his day. There is a curious circumstance, shewing how we have to be on our guard in these inquiries. The works of Fulbert of Chartres were published in Paris. Referring to eating Christ's flesh, it is said, "It seems to command a crime or atrocity. It is therefore a figure, saith the heretic, commanding only communion with the passion of the Lord." But some one reminded the publisher that the words were Augustine's own. Unless the fraud was still more wilful, in the hope nobody would look to the errata, he puts in the errata that the words: "the heretic saith," were not in the MS.

N*. It was, but that did not hinder multitudes of eminent men from holding and defending it. It was in the ninth century especially discussed, and both doctrines were held and taught. There were partial condemnations of this denial of transubstantiation, Paschasius Radbert leading the way for the doctrine. Rabanus Maurus, the most famous man of his day in the middle of the ninth century, was wholly opposed to it, as was John Scot Erigena, Ratramnus, or Bertram who wrote a little later. So we have Alfric in a homily ordered to be read in the Anglo-Saxon churches; the last in the tenth century, Berengarius in the eleventh, and he was called up about it! All these wrote against transubstantiation; as we have seen, Bernard did too in the twelfth. Paschasius Radbert first wrote insisting on it in the ninth, Lanfranc afterwards against Berengarius. In 1215 it was established as a dogma, in the time of Innocent III, who established the Inquisition and set on foot the crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses.

N*. Surely it is, but they changed Ambrose in the same way. He writes, speaking of the elements, that "they should be what they were, and be changed into another thing," they published it as "what they were should be changed into another thing." They changed passages in the imperfect work on Matthew, ascribed to Chrysostom, from a direct testimony against transubstantiation to the contrary; leaving the part out or boldly changing it. The Benedictine edition has restored in Ambrose what flatly, in terms, contradicts transubstantiation. John Scot Erigena at this time also wrote clearly against this new doctrine. His book was not condemned for two hundred years. But the Emperor Charles asked Ratramn, a man much looked up to, to write his well-known book against the new notion. No Roman Catholic denies this, though they at one time attempted to father it on others. It only proves, says a Jesuit, "that the heresy of Calvin was not new."

67 Thus what history clearly shews is that the introduction of this doctrine in the West was in the ninth century. But it was then and afterwards strenuously resisted by doctors, prelates, and emperors; it was then in no sense a doctrine of the church. But it gradually prevailed; and controversy broke out afresh when Berengarius maintained the ancient doctrine, and appealed to Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, etc. He was brought before several Councils under Leo IX, Victor II, and Nicholas II. In one he was made to sign a confession prepared by Cardinal Humbert, which says at the end, that the body and blood of Christ are handled and broken by the hands of the priests and ground with the teeth of the faithful and sensible (sensualiter), not sacramentally only but in truth. The marginal gloss warns us to apply d is only to the visible form, or we should be worse heretics than Berengarius. (Corp. Jur. Can. Decr. tertia pars, Dis. 2, cap. 42; Lyons, 1671, pp. 19, 31.) He speaks in the beginning of having held it was only sacramentally. (Bar. 1059, 13, 14, 17, 152-3.) John Erigena was also condemned: this was at Rome by the Pope and a hundred and thirteen prelates. Berengarius yielded to fear, but went on afterwards with his doctrine, and wrote against his recantation and denounced the Council. He was again cited by Pope Hildebrand, the most violent of popes who forced celibacy on the clergy. In this Council, Rom. 6 (Hard. 6, 1583), it is declared that the major part held the literal body and blood were there, but that many thought thus, and others thus, and a fast appointed and three months given to Berengarius, having had three days discussion in the synod. Berengarius signed a confession that the bread was substantially changed. As some state, he sold all he had and worked for his livelihood. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote against him and brought the doctrine to England. But at the time, as the English historians of the middle ages declare, almost all the English, French, and Italian bishops agreed with Berengarius; he had been acquitted at Tours, signing a confession which is not extant that I know. Lanfranc was his great opponent, and we have to learn all relating to him chiefly in Lanfranc's abusive statements. In the Council of Vercelli (1050), where Lanfranc was and Berengarius sent two, John Erigena was condemned, and Berengarius. I should have noticed that Erigena was murdered by the students where he taught, it is said at the instigation of the monks.

64 The second of Nice (787) brought in images again under the influence of Irene; put down under Leo, they were set up again under Theodora his widow, and a festival established in commemoration. In England (792) and at Frankfort under Charlemagne (794), where some eight hundred prelates were assembled, the second Council of Nice was condemned. So was the doctrine in the Council of Illiberis in Spain at the same epoch, noticed here to shew the dates of these questions. Up to 824 purity as to this was maintained. In the middle of the ninth century Paschasius Radbert introduced transubstantiation in the West, as John of Damascus some few years before the Council of Constantinople (654) in the East, just a century before Radbert. Sirmondi, in a short life prefixed to Radbert's works in the Bib. Max. Pat. says (14, 353), "He first so explained the genuine sense of the Catholic church, that he opened the way to others who in numbers wrote afterwards on the same subject." And Bellarmine says he was the first author who wrote seriously and copiously concerning the verity of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist.

Paschasius Radbert does not speak of transubstantiation, but he does speak of the Eucharist being really the body and blood of Christ; and that body and blood which was born of the virgin and which suffered, as there could not be any other. That as Christ as man was created in the virgin's womb by the power of the Holy Ghost, so by the operation of the Holy Ghost it is Christ in the Eucharist — faith knows Him to be there as it would the divinity in Christ hanging on the cross. There is nothing of the school doctrine of substance and accidents, and so far from its being a church dogma, he says in his second treatise, to Frudegarde who doubted through reading Augustine, that many doubted. The whole work is the reasoning of an individual to prove his point. He fully holds it is the flesh of Christ, but speaks of eating it spiritually interiorly; and that he who is not dwelling in Christ, though he seems to receive it with his mouth, does not really.

Transubstantiation was decreed in the same Lateran Council, and never before, that is, in 1215. The word betrays itself. It is the expression of the adoption by the schoolmen of the heathen Aristotle's doctrine of substance and accidents, a kind of substratum of each being with qualities of colour, form, etc., attached. It was denied however by most famous doctors in the church, also of those days, as John Scotus Erigena, the great doctor of Charles the Bald's Court, by Ratramn or Bertram, and others, but established as an article of faith in the Third Council of Lateran. This is quite true, that the most magniloquent terms were used as to the Eucharist, and as to baptism too, when the idea of sacramental grace supplanted spiritual life in the church, as the apostles had predicted. A change was spoken of in the water, as well as in the elements of the Eucharist, the visible water was changed (metastoicheiountai) into a certain divine and ineffable power.

232 But transubstantiation was not the earliest doctrine even after these high views came in, but expressly that after invocation two things were there, Christ and the bread, so much so that the fact of this double state was triumphantly used by the early fathers against the Eutychians, who denied two natures in Christ. The opposite to the Romish doctrine is positively taught on this point by the earlier fathers, and I might even say Augustine, though the strongest rhetorical expressions are used as to it. And it is difficult to think Dr. Manning could be ignorant of all this.

109 Pope Gelasius writing also against Nestorians and Eutychians on the two natures in Christ, says, "Doubtless, the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which we receive are a divine thing, on account of which, by them, we become partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance or nature of bread and wine does not cease to exist." (Facund. lib. 9, c. 5.) "As the sacrament of His body and of His blood, which is in the bread and consecrated cup, we call His body and blood, not that the bread is properly His body, and the cup His blood, but because they contain in them the mystery of His body and blood. Hence the Lord also Himself called the bread He had blessed, and the cup which He delivered to His disciples, His body and blood."

This may suffice. The real historical truth is that, when they departed from the simplicity of scripture, they got into the doctrine of a union of grace and bread in the sacrament, and then into a kind of consubstantiation, such as Luther held. When Paschasius Radbert had taught something more than this, he was violently opposed by many church authorities. Berengarius, who taught the contrary, was at last, and indeed more than once (though supported by church authorities), being persecuted by Hincmar, forced to retract; and at last, as I have said, in 1215 transubstantiation was made a dogma of the faith, but never before.

Another of the inventions of the period was the doctrine of transubstantiation. It originated with a monk, named Paschasius Radbert; but it was not placed among the settled doctrines of Rome till nearly three centuries later. Paschasius asserted that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are actually converted into the body and blood of Christ, and built his novel doctrine on a strictly literal interpretation of the Lord's words, "Take eat, this is my body," and similar scriptures. Yet to take the words in that sense is a manifest absurdity, and involves one in a labyrinth of absurdities. A recent writer has forcibly remarked: Christ could say, "'This is my body which is broken,' when it was not broken at all, and while He held the bread in His own hand alive; 'This is the Lord's passover,' when God was no longer passing over at all; 'I am the true vine,' and so of a thousand others. It enters into all language. I say of a picture: 'That is my mother.' Nobody is misled by it, but those who choose to be misled 'We are buried with Christ by baptism unto death,' yet we are not buried and we do not die; that is certain. Hence we find in scripture, in a general way, the use of language as to the Lord's Supper." In Rome, however, there are, and ever were, many who choose to be misled, and it is therefore simple to understand that the dogma of transubstantiation was presently received as a leading and essential doctrine.

To attempt an enumeration of all the additions made to the outward observances of religion would be hopeless. Many new rites, ceremonies, usages, holidays, and festivals were added from time to time, both by the pontiffs publicly and by the priests privately. But no priestly invention ever made such way, or produced such an impression on the popular mind, as transubstantiation. The dogma nowhere occurs in the writings of either the Greek or Latin Fathers. The first trace of it is to be found in the eighth century. In the ninth, a period of great darkness, the monk Pascasius seems to have given form and definiteness to the monster superstition. In the eleventh, it was strongly opposed by Berengar of Tours, and ably defended by Anselm of Canterbury. It continued to be a subject of contention among the doctors till the fourth Lateran council, which was held in the year 1215. It was then placed among the settled doctrines of the church of Rome. By a canon of that council it was affirmed, that when the officiating priest utters the words of consecration, the sacramental elements of bread and wine are converted into the substance of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. "The body and blood of Christ," they say, "are contained really in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread being transubstantiated into the body of Jesus Christ, and the wine into His blood, by the power of God, through the officiating priest. The change thus effected is declared to be so perfect and complete, that the elements contain Christ whole and entire — divinity, humanity, soul, body, and blood, with all their component parts."*

N*. We can read the Fathers for ourselves and see if that is true, without blasphemously discussing, as Innocent and Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura and others do, what becomes of the Lord if a mouse eats Him or any other accident happens to the helpless elements, though His Godhead (they say) is there. And we have cited them; and though superstition grew apace, it is not true that there was any consent of Fathers. Many taught exactly the contrary, as we have seen in their controversy with the Docetae and Eutychians; in fact, Cyril of Jerusalem is the only one who at all draws near it; and a vast array of the doctors of the previous centuries opposed the doctrine. The first who really held it was a Greek Father, John Damascene, and there it was identified with the re-establishment of image worship. This was in the seventh century, but a few years after him the Council of Constantinople declared the bread to be the only image of Christ. Damascene says that if Basil calls it a figure (antitupon) he must mean before consecration, he adds it was not by the body in heaven coming down, but by a conversion of the elements. That it was called so before as well, we have already seen; so that the only effect of this testimony is to recognise the force of the word, and to prove that he was conscious that the word was used and meant to be as a figure. Though thus taught practically by Damascene in the eighth century in the East, it was never made a dogma there till Peter the Great in 1725, though prevailing gradually. In the West, we have seen that it was introduced by Radbert a century after Damascene, and made a dogma of Rome in the thirteenth century; the earlier Fathers being clearly against it, and in the ninth century it was discussed and combated, and not only privately but in a Roman Council.

49 I turn to Gelasius. Baronius and Bellarmine have tried to deny that he was Pope Gelasius, as it was awkward to have a pope denying transubstantiation, and there were two other Gelasiuses. But there is no real ground to question it, nor does it change the fact that a Father of the church, so-called, taught it, if he were not pope. They have ascribed it to Gelasius Cyzicenus, but those versed in such studies have no doubt that the treatise "De Duabus Naturis in Christo" is the work of the pope. Gelasius was pope in 492. Gelasius Cyzicenus was archbishop in 476. There was another of the name a century before, but he is not in question. We must ascribe it to the pope. He says, writing against the Eutychians and using the argument common to the Fathers, "Certain sacraments which we take of the body and blood of Christ are a divine thing, on account of which and by the same we are made participators [consortes] of the divine nature; and yet it does not cease to be the substance or nature of bread and wine. And certainly the image and similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the action of the mysteries. It is therefore shewn to us evidently enough that that is to be felt by us in the Lord Christ Himself which we profess, celebrate, and are, that as they pass, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, into this that is divine substance, remaining however in the propriety (that which was proper to them) of their own nature, so that principal mystery itself whose efficacy and virtue they truly represent" (Gel. de D. N. Ch.). Such indeed was the constant argument of the day against the Eutychians. If one only read the Dialogues of Theodoret, which I have quoted, it will be found to run through them, as we have seen in the much earlier Irenaeus arguing against other heretics.

R. This reasoning of Irenaeus and Theodoret and Gelasius seems to me, I confess, to be of great force. There is no mistaking its import; because the comparison of the two natures in Christ and the denial of them by the heretics, and in Theodoret where his Eutychian opponent sought to make good his argument of Christ being made flesh or transubstantiated, and being met by Theodoret by the contradiction of its being so in the Eucharist, as an acknowledged truth too, leaves no question what their faith was, and it is confirmed by the other statements you have quoted. I do not understand how they can say the Fathers taught it.

50 N*. I am glad you see the force of the statements of these Fathers. Indeed the argument against Eutychianism in Theodoret and Gelasius, and of Irenaeus against the Gnostics or Docetae, leaves no doubt as to the common faith of the church; while they held, some in a very strong way, the participation in a spiritual sense in Christ's body, making it as Irenaeus did effectual for the resurrection; so that Chrysostom also has to guard against its being a physical effect, or the wicked would arise with Christ's glorious body (a strange conclusion); yet that transubstantiation evidently, in the proper sense of the word, was unknown.