g 128. THE BERENGAR CONTROVERSY. 559
the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape.1 He imprudently appealed to his private interviews with Gregory, but the pope could no longer protect him without risking his own reputation for orthodoxy, and ordered him to confess his error. Berengar submitted. " Confounded by the sudden madness of the pope/' he says, "and because God in punishment for my sins did not give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground and confessed with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly pronounce against me the sentence of excommunication, and that, as a necessary consequence, the populace would hurry me to the worst of deaths." The pope, however, remained so far true to him that he gave him two letters of recommendation, one to the bishops of Tours and Angers, and one to all the faithful, in which he threatened all with the anathema who should do him any harm in person or estate, or call him a heretic.2
Berengar returned to France with a desponding heart and gave up the hopeless contest. He was now an old man and spent the rest of his life in strict ascetic seclusion on the island of St. Come (Cosmas) near Tours, where he died in peace 1088. Many believed that he did penance for his heresy, and his friends held an annual celebration of his memory on his grave. But what he really regretted was his cowardly treason to the truth as he held it. This is evident from the report of his trial
" Corde credo et ore confiteor, pancm ct vinum, quo? ponuntur in altari, per tnysteriinn sacra;, oratlonis et verba nostri Redemptoris SUBSTANTIALITER CONVERTI in vcram et propriam et vivifratricem carnem et sanguinem Jesu Christi Domini nostri, et post consecration em csse verum Christi corpus, quod natum est de Virgine, et quod pro salute mundi oblatum in cruce pcpendit, el quod sedet ad dextcram Pairis, d verum sanguinem Christi, qui de latere cjus efiusm est, non tantum per signum ct rirtutan sacramenti, sed in proprietate nnturce et reritate substantial Berengar was willing to admit a conversio panis, but salva sna mbstantia, i. e. non amittens quod era/, sed assunifns quod non erat; in other words, conversion without annihilation. A mere sophistry . Substantialifer can mean nothing else but secundum substantiam. See the Acts of the Council in Mansi, XIX. 762.
2 D'Achery, SpicUeg. III. 413. Mansi, XX. 621. Neander, III. 520. Sudendorf, 57.
560 FOUETH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
at Rome which he drew up after his return.1 It concludes with a prayer to God for forgiveness, and to the Christian reader for the exercise of charity. "Pray for me that these tears may procure me the compassion of the Almighty."
His doctrine was misrepresented by Lanfranc and the older historians, as denying the real presence.2 But since the discovery of the sources it is admitted also by Roman Catholics that, while he emphatically rejected transubstantiation, he held to a spirit ual real presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist.
This explains also the conduct of Gregory VII., which is all the more remarkable, as he was in every other respect the most strenuous champion of the Roman church and the papal power. This great pope was more an ecclesiastic than a theologian. He was willing to allow a certain freedom on the mysterious mode of the eucharistic presence and the precise nature of the change in the elements, which at that time had not yet been authoritatively denned as a change of substance. He therefore protected Berengar, with diplomatic caution, as long and as far as he could without endangering his great reforms and in curring himself the suspicion of heresy.3 The latest known writing of Berengar is a letter on the death of Gregory (1085), in which he speaks of the pope with regard, expresses a convic tion of his salvation, and excuses his conduct towards himself.
Berengar was a strange compound of moral courage and phy sical cowardice. ' Had he died a martyr, his doctrine would have gained strength ; but by his repeated recantations he injured his own cause and promoted the victory of transubstantiation.
1 See the Acta Concilii Romani sub Oregorio papa VII. in causa Serengariiab ipso Berengario conscripta cum ipsius recantatione (after Febr., 1079), printed in Mansi, XIX. 761. Comp. Neander, III. 521, and Sudendorf, p. 58 sqq. Beren gar is reported to have repeated his creed before one of the two Synods which were held at Bordeaux in 1079 and 1080, but of these we have only fragmentary accounts. See Manai, XX. 527; Hefele, V. 142 sq.; Sudendorf, p. 196.
2 He was treated as a heretic not only by Roman Catholics, but also by Luther and several Lutheran historians, including Guericke.
3 His enemies of the party of Henry IV. charged him with skepticism or infidelity on account of his sympathy with Berecgar. See the quotations in Gieseler, II. 172.