2 174. RATRAMNUS. 749
6. The Body and Blood of the Lord.1 This is the most valu able writing of Ratramnus. It is a reply to Paschasius Radbert's book with the same title.2 It is dedicated to Charles the Bald who had requested (in 944) his opinion in the eucharistic controversy. Without naming Radbert, who was his own abbot, he proceeds to investigate the latter's doctrines. The whole controvery has been fully stated in another section.3
The book has had a strange fate. It failed to turn the tide setting so strongly in favor of the views of Radbertus, and was in the Middle Age almost forgotten. Later it was believed to be the product of Scotus Erigena and as such condemned to be burnt by the council of Yercelli (1050). The first person to use it in print was John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, who in writing against Oecolampadius quotes from it as good Catholic authority.4 This called the attention of the Zwinglian party to it and they quickly turned the weapon thus furnished against the Catholics. In the same year in which it was published at Co logne (1532), Leo Judre made a German translation of it (Zurich, 1532) which was used by the Zurich ministers in proof that the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord's Supper was no novelty.5 But the fact that it had such a cordial reception by the Reformed theologians made it suspicious in Catholic eyes. The Council of Trent pronounced it a Protestant forgery, and in 1559 it was put upon the Index. The foremost Catholic theologians such as Bellarmin and Allan agreed with the Council. A little later (1571) the theologians of Louvain (or Douay) came to the de fense of the book. In 1655 Sainte Beuve formally defended its orthodoxy. Finally Jacques Boileau (Paris, 1712) set all doubt at rest, and the book is now accepted as a genuine production of Ratramnus.
printed in the same vol. of Migne, col. 685-762), which is a mere cento of patristic passages.
1 De corpore et sanguine Domini liber. Ibid. col. 125-170.
1 See p. 743. 8 P. 543 sqq.
* De Verit. corp. et sang. Christi contra (Ecolampad., Cologne, 1527.
6 Ruchat, Reform, de la Suisse, vol. iv. p. 207 ; ed. Vulliemin, vol. iii. p. 122.
750 FOUETH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
It remains but to add that in addition to learning, perspicuity and judgment Ratramnus had remarkable critical power. The latter was most conspicuously displayed in his exposure of the fraudulent character of the Apocryphal tale, De nativitate Virginis, and of the homily of Pseudo-Jerome, De assumptione Virginia, both of which Hincmar of Rheims had copied and sumptuously bound.
§ 175. Hincmar of Rheims.
I. HINCMARUS, Rhemensis archiepiscopus : Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom.
CXXV.-CXXVI., col. 648. First collected edition by Sirmond. Paris, 1645.
II. Prolegomena in Migne, CXXV. WOLFGANG FRIEDRICH GESS:
Merkwiirdigkeiten aus dem Leben und Schriften Hincmars, Gottingen, 1806. PKICHARD: The life and times of Hincmar, Littlemore, 1849. CARL VON NOORDEN : Hinkmar, Erzbischof von Rheims, Bonn, 1863. LOUPOT : Hincmar, eveque de Reims, sa vie, ses ceuvres, son influence, Reims, 1869. AUGUSTE VIDIEU: Hincmar de Reims, Paris, 1875. HEINRICH SCHRORS: Hincmar, Erzbischof von Reims, Freiburg im Br., 1884 (588 pages).
III. Cf. also FLODOARD: Historia ecclesice Remensis, in Migne, CXXXV., col. 25-328 (Book III., col. 137-262, relates to Hincmar) ; French trans, by Lejeune, Reims, 1854, 2 vols. G. MARLOT: Histoire de Reims, Reims, 1843-45, 3 vols. F. MONNIER: Luttes politiques et religieuses sous les Carlovingiens, Paris, 1852. MAX SDRALEK : Hinkmar von Rheims kanonistisches Gutachten uber die Ehescheidung des Kdnigs Lothar II. Freiburg im Br., 1881. Du PIN, VII. 10-54. CEILLIER, XII. 654-689, Hist. lit. de la France, V., 544-594 (reprinted in Migne, CXXV. col. 11-44). BAHR, 507-523. EBERT, II. 247- 257. HEFELE : Conciliengeschichte, 2d ed. IV. passim.
HINCMAR, archbishop of Rheims, was born of noble and distinguished ancestry, probably in the province of that name,1 in the year 806. His name is also spelled Ingumar, Ingmer and Igmar. He was educated in the Benedictine monastery of St. Denis, near Paris, under abbot Hilduin. When the lat ter was appointed (822) chancellor to Louis the Pious he took young Hincmar to court with him. There his talents soon brought him into prominence, while his asceticism obtained for i Schrors, I c. p. 9.