2 130. LANFRANC.— TRIUMPH OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 567
the Holy Spirit who lifts us up to Christ on the wings of faith, and brings him down to us, and thus unites heaven and earth.
A view quite similar to that of Berengar seems to have ob tained about that time in the Anglo-Saxon Church, if we are to judge from the Homilies of JElfric, which enjoyed great authority and popularity.1
§ 130. Lanfranc and the Triumph of Transubstantiation.
The chief opponent of Berengar was his former friend, LAN- FRANC, a native of Pavia (b. 1005), prior of the Convent of Bee in Normandy (1045), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089), and in both positions the predecessor of the more distinguished Anselm.2 He was, next to Berengar, the greatest dialectician of his age, but used dialectics only in support of church authority and tradition, and thus prepared the way for orthodox scholasticism. He assailed Berengar in a treatise of twenty-three chapters on the eucharist, written after 1063, in epistolary form, and advocated the doctrine of transubstantiation (without using the term) with its consequences.3 He describes the change as a miraculous and incomprehensible change of the
1 Thus he says in the Homily on Easter day; "Great is the difference be tween the invisible might of the holy housel [sacrament] and the visible ap pearance of its own nature. By nature it is corruptible bread and corruptible wine, and is, by the power of the Divine word, truly Christ's body and blood: not, however, bodily, but spiritually. Great is the difference between the body in which Christ suffered and the body which is hallowed for housel. ... In his ghostly body, which we call housel, there is nothing to be understood bodily, but all is to be understood spiritually." The passage is quoted by J. C. Ro bertson from Thorpe's edition of ^Elfric, II. 271. Thorpe identifies the author of these Anglo-Saxon Homilies with ^Elfric, Archbishop of York, who lived till the beginning of the Berengar controversy (d. 1051), but the identity is dis puted. See Hardwick, p. 174, and L. Stephen's " Diet, of Nat. Biogr." I. 164 sqq.
2 He was the first of the Norman line of English archbishops, and the chief adviser of William the Conqueror in the conquest of England. See Freeman, ffixtory of (he Norman Conquest, vols. III. and IV.; and R. C. Jenkins, Diocesan History of Canterbury (London, 1880), p. 78 sqq.
3 On the different editions and the date of the book (between 1063 and 1069), see Sudendorf, p. 39 sqq.
568 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
substance of bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ.1 He also teaches (what Radbert had not done expressly) that even unworthy communicants (indigne sumentes) receive the same sacramental substance as believers, though with opposite effect.2
Among the less distinguished writers on the Eucharist must be mentioned Adelmann, Durandus, and Guitmund, who de fended the catholic doctrine against Berengar. Guitmund (a pupil of Lanfranc, and archbishop of Aversa in Apulia) reports that the Berengarians differed, some holding only a symbolical presence, others (with Berengar) a real, but latent presence, or a sort of impanation, but all denied a change of substance. This change he regards as the main thing which nourishes piety. " What can be more salutary/' he asks, " than such a faith ? Purely receiving into itself the pure and simple Christ alone, in the consciousness of possessing so glorious a gift, it guards with the greater vigilance against sin ; it glows with a more earnest longing after all righteousness ; it strives every day to escape from the world . . . and to embrace in unclouded vision the fountain of life itself."3
From this time on, transubstantiation may be regarded as a dogma of the Latin church. It was defended by the orthodox schoolmen, and cecumenically sanctioned under Pope Innocent III. in 1215.
i De Corp. et Sang. Dom., c. 18 (in Migne, T. 150, col. 430) : " Credimus terrenas substantial, quce in mensa Dominica per sacerdotale mysterium divinitus sanctijicantur, ineffabiliter, incomprehensibiliter, mirabiliter, operante superna potentia, eonverti in essentiam Dominici corporis, reservatis ipsarum rerum speciebus, et quibusdam aliis qualitatibus, ne percipientes cruda et cruenta horrerent, et ut credentes fidei prcemia ampliora perciperent, ipso tamen Dominico corpore existente in ccelestibus ad dexteram Patris, immortali, inviolato, integro, incontaminato, illceso : ut vere dici posset, et ipsum corpus, quod de Virgine sumptum est, nos sumere, el tamen non ipsum.'
3 Cap 20 (col. 436): "Est quidem et peccatoribus et indigne sumentibus vera Christi caro, verusque sanguis, sed essentia, non salubri effitientia." \ 8 Neander, III. 529 sq., from Guitmund's De Corp. et Sang. Christi veritate in cucharistia. It was written about 1076, according to Sudendorf, p. 52 sqq.