3 128. THE BERENGAR CONTROVERSY. 557
through the aid of Hildebrand who presided as papal represen tative, listened calmly to his arguments and was perfectly satisfied with his admission that the consecrated bread and wine are (in a spiritual sense) the body and blood of Christ.1 At the same time he was invited by Ilildebraiid to accompany him to Home for a final settlement.
Confiding in this powerful advocate, Berengar appeared before a Lateran council held in 1059, under Nicolas II., but was bitterly disappointed. The assembled one hundred and thirteen bishops, whom he compares to " wild beasts," would not listen to his notion of a spiritual communion, and insisted on a sensuous participation of the body and blood of Christ. The violent and bigoted Cardinal Humbert, in the name of the Synod, forced on him a formula of recanta tion which cuts off all spiritual interpretation and teaches a literal mastication of Christ's body.2 Berengar was weak enough from fear of death to accept this confession on his knees, and to throw his books into the fire.3 " Human wicked-
1 "Panis afquc vimim altaris post consecrationem sunt corpus Christi et sanguis" De S. Cccna, p. 52. Berengar meant a real, though uncorporeal presence, lie admitted a conversion of the elements in the sense of consecration, but without change of substance. Hildebrand was willing to leave this an open question. See below.
a " Eyo Bcrenyarius, indignus diaconus . . . anathematize* omnem h ceres im, prczcipne cam de qua hactcnns in/amatus sum, quce, astruere conatur, panem et vinum, quoz in altari ponuntur, post consecrationem solummodo sacramentum, et non verum corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri 1. Ch. csse^ nee posse SENSUALITER in solo sacrnmento [non solum sacramento, sed in veritate~\ manikins sacerdotum tractari, vel FRANGI. ant fiddium DENTIBUS ATTERI," etc. So Lanfranc reports the creed in De Corp. et, Sana. Dom., c. 2 (Migne, vol. 150, p. 410); comp. Berengar, De S. Grna, p. 68. Gieseler calls this creed " truly Capernaitic." Hergenrother (I. 703) admits that it sounds very hard, but may be defended by simi lar language of Chrysostom. Luther expressed his faith in the real presence almost as strongly when he instructed Melanchthon to insist, in his conference with Bucer, 1534, that Christ's body was literally eaten and torn with the teeth ("gegessen und mil den Zahnen zerbissen"). See his letters to Jonas and Melanchthon in Sriefe, ed. De Wette, IM. IV. 569 and 572. But I doubt whether any Lutheran divine would endorse such language now.
8 Lanfranc charges him with downright perjury. But according to his own
558 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
ness," he says, "extorted from human weakness a different confession, but a change of conviction can be effected only by the agency of Almighty God." He would rather trust to the mercy of God than the charity of his enemies, and found com fort in the pardon granted to Aaron and to St. Peter.
As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real con viction more boldly than ever. He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later.1 Lanfranc attacked him in his book on the eucharist, and Berengar replied very sharply in his chief work on the Lord's Supper (between 1063 and 1069.)2 His friends gradually withdrew, and the wrath of his enemies grew so intense that he was nearly killed at a synod in Poitiers (1075 or 1076).
Hildebrand who in the mean time had ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII., summoned Berengar once more to Home in 1078, hoping to give him peace, as he had done at Tours in 1054. He made several attempts to protect him against the fanaticism of his enemies. But they demanded absolute recantation or death. A Lateran Council in Febru ary, 1079, required Berengar to sign a formula which affirmed
report, Berengar did not sign the formula, nor was he required to do so. De S. Ccena, p. 25 sq.; comp. p. 59 sq.
1 Leo is "minime leo de tribu luda;" the pope is not a pontifex, but a pompifex and piilpifex, and the see of Rome not a sedes apostolica, but a sedes Balance. De S. Ccena, p. 34, 40, 42, 71. Lanfranc, c. 16. See Neander, III. 513, who refers to other testimony in Bibl P. Lugd. XVIII. 836.
2 De Sacra Ccena adversus Lanfrancum Liber posterior (290 pages). This book, after having been long lost, was discovered by Lessing in the Library of Wolfenbiittel (1770), who gave large extracts from it, and was published in full by A. F. and F. Th. Vischer, Berlin, 1834, with a short preface by Nean der. Berengar gives here a very different version of the previous history, and charges Lanfranc with falsehood. He fortifies his view by quotations from Ambrose and Angustin, and abounds in passion, vituperation and repetition. The style is obscure and barbarous. The MS. is defective at the beginning and the close. Leasing traced it to the eleventh or twelfth century, Slaudlin to Berengar himself, the editors (p. 23), more correctly to a negligent copyist who had the original before him. Comp. Sudendorf, p. 47.