HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
CHAPTER XI.
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES.
§ 106. General Survey.
Our period is far behind the preceding patristic and the succeeding scholastic in doctrinal importance, but it mediates between them by carrying the ideas of the fathers over to the acute analysis of the schoolmen, and marks a progress in the development of the Catholic system. It was agitated by seven theological controversies of considerable interest.
1. The controversy about the single or double Procession of the Holy Spirit. This belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity and was not settled, but divides to this day the Greek and Latin churches.
2. The Monotheletic controversy is a continuation of the Eutychian and Monophysitic controversies of the preceding period. It ended with the condemnation of Monotheletism and an addition to the Chalcedonian Christology, namely, the doctrine that Christ has two wills as well as two natures.
3. The Adoptionist controversy is a continuation of the Nestorian. Adoptionism was condemned as inconsistent with the personal union of the two natures in Christ.
4 and 5. Two Eucharistic controversies resulted in the general prevalence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
6. The Predestinarian controversy between Gottschalk and Hincmar tended to weaken the influence of the Augustinian system, and to promote semi-Pelagian views and practices.
7. The Image-controversy belongs to the history of worship rather than theology, and has been discussed in the preceding chapter.569
The first, second, and seventh controversies affected the East and the West; the Adoptionist, the two Eucharistic, and the Predestinarian controversies were exclusively carried on in the West, and ignored in the East.
§ 107. The Controversy on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.
See the Lit. in § 67 p. 304 sq. The arguments for both sides of the question were fully discussed in the Union Synod of Ferrara-Florence, 1438–’39; see Hefele: Conciliengesch. VII. P. II. p. 683 sqq.; 706 sqq.; 712 sqq.
The Filioque-controversy relates to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation of the trinitarian controversies of the Nicene age. It marks the chief and almost the only important dogmatic difference between the Greek and Latin churches. It belongs to metaphysical theology, and has far less practical value than the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men. But it figures very largely in history, and has occasioned, deepened, and perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom. The single word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest, and most nearly related churches divided since the ninth century, and still forbids a reunion. The Eastern church regards the doctrine of the single procession as the corner-stone of orthodoxy, and the doctrine of the double procession as the mother of all heresies. She has held most tenaciously to her view since the fourth century, and is not likely ever to give it up. Nor can the Roman church change her doctrine of the double procession without sacrificing the principle of infallibility.
The Protestant Confessions agree with the Latin dogma, while on the much more vital question of the papacy they agree with the Eastern church, though from a different point of view. The church of England has introduced the double procession of the Spirit even into her litany.570 It should be remembered, however, that this dogma was not a controverted question in the time of the Reformation, and was received from the mediaeval church without investigation. Protestantism is at perfect liberty to go back to the original form of the Nicene Creed if it should be found to be more in accordance with the Scripture. But the main thing for Christians of all creeds is to produce "the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control."
Let us first glance at the external history of the controversy.
1. The New Testament. The exegetical starting-point and foundation of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit is the word of our Lord in the farewell address to his disciples: When the Paraclete (the Advocate) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth (or, goeth forth) from the Father, he shall bear witness of me."571
On this passage the Nicene fathers based their doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit,572 as his personal property or characteristic individuality573 while the unbegotten Fatherhood574 belongs to the person of the Father, and the eternal generation575 to the person of the Son.
Our Lord says neither that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, nor that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. But in several other passages of the same farewell addresses he speaks of the Spirit as being sent by the Father and the Son, and promises this as a future event which was to take place after his departure, and which actually did take place on the day of Pentecost and ever since.576
On these passages is based the doctrine of the mission of the Spirit.577 This is regarded as a temporal or historical act, and must be distinguished from the eternal procession in the Trinity itself. In other words, the procession belongs to the Trinity of essence, and is an intertrinitarian process (like the eternal generation of the Son), but the mission belongs to the Trinity of revelation in the historical execution of the scheme of redemption. In this exegesis the orthodox divines of the Greek and Latin churches are agreed. They differ on the source of the procession, but not on the mission.
Modern exegetes, who adhere closely to the grammatical sense, and are not governed by dogmatic systems, incline mostly to the view that no metaphysical distinction is intended in those passages, and that the procession of the Spirit from the Father, and the mission of the Spirit by the Father and the Son, refer alike to the same historic event and soteriological operation, namely, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and his continued work in the church and in the heart of believers. The Spirit "proceeds" when he "is sent" on his divine mission to glorify the Son and to apply the redemption to men. The Saviour speaks of the office and work of the Spirit rather than of his being and essence. Nevertheless there is a difference which must not be overlooked. In the procession, the Spirit is active: in the mission, he is passive; the procession is spoken of in the present tense (ejkporeuvetai) as a present act, the mission in the future tense (pevmyw) as a future act, so that the former seems to belong to the eternal Trinity of essence, the latter to the historical or economical Trinity of revelation. Now God indeed reveals himself as he actually is, and we may therefore reason back from the divine office of the Spirit to his divine nature, and from his temporal mission to his eternal relation. Yet it may be questioned whether such inference justifies the doctrine of a double procession in the absence of any express Scripture warrant.578
2. The Nicene Creed, in its original form of 325, closes abruptly with the article: "And [we believe] into the Holy Spirit.579 In the enlarged form (which is usually traced to the Council of Constantinople, 381, and incorporated in its acts since 451, but is found earlier in Epiphanius, 373, and Cyril of Jerusalem, 362, we have the addition: "the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father," etc.580 This form was generally adopted in the Eastern churches since the Council of Chalcedon, 451 (at which both forms were recited and confirmed), and prevails there to this day unaltered. It is simply the Scripture phrase without any addition, either of the Greek "alone," or of the Latin "and from the Son." The Greek church understood the clause in an exclusive sense, the Latin church, since Augustin and Leo I., in an incomplete sense.581
The Latin church had no right to alter an oecumenical creed without the knowledge and consent of the Greek church which had made it; for in the oecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople the Western church was scarcely represented, at Nicaea only by one bishop (Hosius of Spain), in the second not at all; and in the Council of Chalcedon the delegates of Pope Leo I. fully agreed to the enlarged Greek form of the Nicene symbol, yet without the Filioque, which was then not thought of, although the doctrine of the double procession was already current in the West. A departure from this common symbolical standard of the most weighty oecumenical councils by a new addition, without consent of the other party, opened the door to endless disputes.
The Enlargement of the Nicene Creed.
The third national Synod of Toledo in Spain, a.d. 589, held after the conversion of King Reccared to the Catholic faith, in its zeal for the deity of Christ against the Arian heresy which lingered longest in that country, and without intending the least disrespect to the Eastern church, first inserted the clause Filioque in the Latin version of the Nicene Creed.582 Other Spanish synods of Toledo did the same.583
From Spain the clause passed into the Frankish church. It was discussed at the Synod of Gentilly near Paris in 767, but we do not know with what result.584 The Latin view was advocated by Paulinus of Aquileja (796),585 by Alcuin (before 804), and by Theodulf of Orleans.586 It was expressed in the so-called Athanasian Creed, which made its appearance in France shortly before or during the age of Charlemagne.587 The clause was sung in his chapel. He brought the matter before the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 809, which decided in favor of the double procession.588 He also sent messengers to Pope Leo III., with the request to sanction the insertion of the clause in the Nicene Creed. The pope decided in favor of the doctrine of the double procession, but protested against the alteration of the creed, and caused the Nicene Creed, in its original Greek text and the Latin version, to be engraved on two tablets and suspended in the Basilica of St. Peter, as a perpetual testimony against the innovation.589 His predecessor, Hadrian I., had a few years before (between 792 and 795) defended the Greek formula of John of Damascus and patriarch Tarasius, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.590 But the violent assault of Photius upon the Latin doctrine, as heretical, drove the Latin church into the defensive. Hence, since the ninth century, the, Filioque was gradually introduced into the Nicene Creed all over the West, and the popes themselves, notwithstanding their infallibility, approved what their predecessors had condemned.591
The coincidence of the triumph of the Filioque in the West with the founding of the new Roman Empire is significant; for this empire emancipated the pope from the Byzantine rule.
The Greek church, however, took little or no notice of this innovation till about one hundred and fifty years later, when Photius, the learned patriarch of Constantinople, brought it out in its full bearing and force in his controversy with Nicolas I., the pope of old Rome.592 He regarded the single procession as the principal part of the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit on which the personality and deity of the Spirit depended, and denounced the denial of it as heresy and blasphemy. After this time no progress was made for the settlement of the difference, although much was written on both sides. The chief defenders of the Greek view, after the controversy with Photius, were Theophylactus, Euthymius Zigabenus, Nicolaus of Methone, Nicetus Choniates, Eustratius, and in modern times, the Russian divines, Prokovitch, Zoernicav, Mouravieff, and Philaret. The chief defenders of the Latin doctrine are Aeneas, bishop of Paris,593 Ratramnus (or Bertram), a monk of Corbie, in the name of the French clergy in the ninth century,594 Anselm of Canterbury (1098),595 Peter Chrysolanus, archbishop of Milan (1112),596 Anselm of Havelberg (1120),597 and Thomas Aquinas (1274),598 and in more recent times, Leo Alacci, Michael Le Quien, and Cardinal Hergenröther.599
§ 108. The Arguments for and against the Filioque.
We proceed to the statement of the controverted doctrines and the chief arguments.
I. The Greek and Latin churches agree in holding-
(1) The personality and deity of the third Person of the holy Trinity.
(2) The eternal procession (ejkpovreusi", processio) of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity.
(3) The temporal mission (pevmyi", missio) of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, beginning with the day of Pentecost, and continued ever since in the church.
II. They differ on the source of the eternal procession of the Spirit, whether it be the Father alone, or the Father and the Son. The Greeks make the Son and the Spirit equally dependent on the Father, as the one and only source of the Godhead; the Latins teach an absolute co-ordination of the three Persons of the Trinity as to essence, but after all admit a certain kind of subordination as to dignity and office, namely, a subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to both. The Greeks approach the Latins by the admission that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son (this was the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus); the Latins approach the Greeks by the admission that the Spirit proceeds chiefly (principaliter) from the Father (Augustin). But little or nothing is gained by this compromise. The real question is, whether the Father is the only source of the Deity, and whether the Son and the Spirit are co-ordinate or subordinate in their dependence on the Father.
1. The Greek doctrine in its present shape. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (ejk movnou tou' patrov"), as the beginning (ajrchv), cause or root (aijtiva, rjizh, causa, radix), and fountain (phghv) of the Godhead, and not from the Son.600
John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about a.d. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator.601 The same formula, Ex Patre per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh oecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius and the later Eastern controversialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.602
The arguments for the Greek doctrine are as follows:
(a) The words of Christ, John 15:26, understood in an exclusive sense. As this is the only passage of the Bible in which the procession of the Spirit is expressly taught, it is regarded by the Greeks as conclusive.
(b) The supremacy or monarchia of the Father. He is the source and root of the Godhead. The Son and the Spirit are subordinated to him, not indeed in essence or substance (oujsiva), which is one and the same, but in dignity and office. This is the Nicene subordinatianism. It is illustrated by the comparison of the Father with the root, the Son with the stem, the Spirit with the fruit, and such analogies as the sun, the ray, and the beam; the fire, the flame, and the light.
(c) The analogy of the eternal generation of the Son, which is likewise from the Father alone, without the agency of the Spirit.
(d) The authority of the Nicene Creed, and the Greek fathers, especially Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and John of Damascus. The Antiochean school is clearly on the Greek side; but the Alexandrian school leaned to the formula through the Son (dia; tou' uiJou', per Filium). The Greeks claim all the Greek fathers, and regard Augustin as the inventor of the Latin dogma of the double procession.
The Latin doctrine is charged with innovation, and with dividing the unity of the Godhead, or establishing two sources of the Deity. But the Latins replied that the procession was from one and the same source common to both the Father and the Son.
2. The Latin theory of the double procession is defended by the following arguments:
(a) The passages where Christ says that he will send the Spirit from the Father (John 15:26; 16:7); and that the Father will send the Spirit in Christ’s name (14:26); and where he breathes the Spirit on his disciples (20:22). The Greeks refer all these passages to the temporal mission of the Spirit, and understand the insufflation to be simply a symbolical act or sacramental sign of the pentecostal effusion which Christ had promised. The Latins reply that the procession and the mission are parallel processes, the one ad intra, the other ad extra.
(b) The equality of essence (oJmoousiva) of the Father and Son to the exclusion of every kind of subordinationism (since Augustin) requires the double procession. The Spirit of the Father is also the Spirit of the Son, and is termed the Spirit of Christ. But, as already remarked, Augustin admitted that the Spirit proceeds chiefly from the Father, and this after all is a kind of subordination of dignity. The Father has his being (oujsiva) from himself, the Son and the Spirit have it from the Father by way of derivation, the one by generation, the other by procession.
(c) The temporal mission of the Spirit is a reflection of his eternal procession. The Trinity of revelation is the basis of all our speculations on the Trinity of essence. We know the latter only from the former.
(d) The Nicene Creed and the Nicene fathers did not understand the procession from the Father in an exclusive sense, but rather in opposition to the Pneumatomachi who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Some Greek fathers, as Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John of Damascus, teach the Latin doctrine. This is not the case exactly. The procession of the Spirit "through the Son," is not equivalent to the procession "from the Son," but implies a subordination.
(e) The Latin fathers are in favor of Filioque, especially Ambrose, Augustin, Jerome, Leo I., Gregory I.603
(f) The insertion of the Filioque is as justifiable as the other and larger additions to the Apostles’ Creed and to the original Nicene Creed of 325, and was silently accepted, or at least not objected to by the Greek church until the rivalry of the Patriarch of Constantinople made it a polemical weapon against the Pope of Rome. To this the Greeks reply that the other additions are consistent and were made by common consent, but the Filioque was added without the knowledge and against the teaching of the East by churches (in Spain and France) which had nothing to do with the original production.
This controversy of the middle ages was raised from the tomb by the Old Catholic Conference held in Bonn, 1875, under the lead of the learned historian, Dr. Döllinger of Munich, and attended by a number of German Old Catholic, Greek and Russian, and high Anglican divines. An attempt was made to settle the dispute on the basis of the teaching of the fathers before the division of the Eastern and Western churches, especially the doctrine of John of Damascus, that is, the single procession of the Spirit from the Father mediated through the Son. The Filioque was surrendered as an unauthorized and unjustifiable interpolation.
But the Bonn Conference has not been sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority, and forms only an interesting modern episode in the, history of this controversy, and in the history of the Old Catholic communion.604
§ 109. The Monotheletic Controversy.
Literature.
(I.) Sources: Documents and acts of the first Lateran Synod (649), and the sixth oecumenical Council or Concilium Trullanum I., held in Constantinople (680), in Mansi, X. 863 sqq. and XI. 187 sqq.
Anastasius (Vatican librarian, about 870): Collectanea de iis quae spectant ad controv. et histor. monothelit. haeret., first ed. by Sirmond, Par. 1620, in his Opera, III., also in Bibl. Max. PP. Lugd. XII. 833; and in Gallandi, XIII.; also scattered through vols. X. and XI. of Mansi. See Migne’s ed. of Anastas. in "Patrol. Lat." vols. 127–129.
Maximus Confessor: Opera, ed. Combefis, Par. 1675, Tom. II. 1–158, and his disputation with Pyrrhus, ib. 159 sqq. Also in Migne’s reprint, "Patrol. Gr." vol. 91.
Theophanes: Chronographia, ed. Bonn. (1839), p. 274 sqq.; ed. Migne, in vol. 108 of his "Patrol. Graeca" (1861).
(II.) Franc. Combefisius (Combefis, a learned French Dominican, d. 1679): Historia haeresis Monothelitarum ac vindiciae actorum Sexti Synodi, in his Novum Auctuarium Patrum, II. 3 sqq. Par. 1648, fol. 1–198.
Petavius: Dogm. Theol. Tom. V. l. IX. c. 6–10.
Jos. Sim. Assemani, in the fourth vol. of his Bibliotheca Juris Orientalis. Romae 1784.
CH. W. F. Walch: Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX. 1–666 (Leipzig 1780). Very dry, but very learned.
Gibbon (Ch. 47, N. Y. ed. IV. 682–686, superficial). Schröckh, vol. XX. 386 sqq. Neander, III. 175–197 (Boston ed.), or III. 353–398 (Germ. ed.). Gieseler, I. 537–544 (Am. ed.).
The respective sections in Baur: Gesch. der Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeii und Menschwerdung (Tüb. 1841–’43, 3 vols.), vol. II. 96–128; Dorner: Entwicklungsgesch. der Lehre v. d. Person Christi (second ed. 1853), II. 193–305; Nitzsch: Dogmengesch. I. 325 sqq.; and Hefele: Conciliengeschichte (revised ed. 1877) III. 121–313. Also W. Möller. in Herzog2 X. 792–805.
The literature on the case of Honorius see in the next section.
§ 110. The Doctrine of Two Wills in Christ.
The Monotheletic or one-will controversy is a continuation of the Christological contests of the post-Nicene age, and closely connected with the Monophysitic controversy.605
This question had not been decided by the ancient fathers and councils, and passages from their writings were quoted by both parties. But in the inevitable logic of theological development it had to be agitated sooner or later, and brought to a conciliar termination.
The controversy had a metaphysical and a practical aspect.
The metaphysical and psychological aspect was the relation of will to nature and to person. Monotheletism regards the will as an attribute of person, Dyotheletism as an attribute of nature. It is possible to conceive of an abstract nature without a will; it is difficult to conceive of a rational human nature without impulse and will; it is impossible to conceive of a human person without a will. Reason and will go together, and constitute the essence of personality. Two wills cannot coexist in an ordinary human being. But as the personality of Christ is complex or divine-human, it may be conceived of as including two consciousnesses and two wills. The Chalcedonian Christology at all events consistently requires two wills as the necessary complement of two rational natures; in other words, Dyotheletism is inseparable from Dyophysitism, while Monotheletism is equally inseparable from Monophysitism, although it acknowledged the Dyophysitism of Chalcedon. The orthodox doctrine saved the integrity and completeness of Christ’s humanity by asserting his human will.606
The practical aspect of the controversy is connected with the nature of the Redeemer and of redemption, and was most prominent with the leaders. The advocates of Monotheletism were chiefly concerned to guard the unity of Christ’s person and work. They reasoned that, as Christ is but one person, he can only have one will; that two wills would necessarily conflict, as in man the will of the flesh rebels against the Spirit; and that the sinlessness of Christ is best secured by denying to him a purely human will, which is the root of sin. They made the pre-existing divine will of the Logos the efficient cause of the incarnation and redemption, and regarded the human nature of Christ merely as the instrument through which he works and suffers, as the rational soul works through the organ of the body. Some of them held also that in the perfect state the human will of the believer will be entirely absorbed in the divine will, which amounts almost to a pantheistic absorption of the human personality in the divine.
The advocates of Dyotheletism on the other hand contended that the incarnation must be complete in order to have a complete redemption; that a complete incarnation implies the assumption of the human will into union with the pre-existing divine will of the Logos; that the human will is the originating cause of sin and guilt, and must therefore be redeemed, purified, and sanctified; that Christ, without a human will, could not have been a full man, could not have been tempted, nor have chosen between good and evil, nor performed any moral and responsible act.
The Scripture passages quoted by Agatho and other advocates of the two-will doctrine, are Matt. 26:39 ("Not as I will, but as Thou wilt"); Luke 22:42 ("Not my will, but thine be done"); John 6:38 ("I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me"). For the human will were quoted Luke 2:51 ("he was subject" to his parents); Phil. 2:8 ("obedient unto death"), also John 1:43; 17:24; 19:28; Matt. 27:34; for the divine will, Luke 13:34; John 5:21.
These Scripture passages, which must in the end decide the controversy, clearly teach the human will of Jesus, but the other will from which it is distinguished, is the will of his heavenly Father, to which he was obedient unto death. The orthodox dogma implies the identity of the divine will of Christ with the will of God the Father, and assumes that there is but one will in the divine tripersonality. It teaches two natures and one person in Christ, but three persons and one nature in God. Here we meet the metaphysical and psychological difficulty of conceiving of a personality without a distinct will. But the term personality is applied to the Deity in a unique and not easily definable sense. The three Divine persons are not conceived as three individuals.
The weight of argument and the logical consistency on the basis of the Chalcedonian Dyophysitism, which was acknowledged by both parties, decided in favor of the two-will doctrine. The Catholic church East and West condemned Monotheletism as a heresy akin to Monophysitism. The sixth oecumenical Council in 680 gave the final decision by adopting the following addition to the Chalcedonian Christology:607
"And we likewise preach two natural wills in him [Jesus Christ], and two natural operations undivided, inconvertible, inseparable, unmixed, according to the doctrine of the holy fathers; and the two natural wills [are] not contrary (as the impious heretics assert), far from it! but his human will follows the divine will, and is not resisting or reluctant, but rather subject to his divine and omnipotent will.608 For it was proper that the will of the flesh should be moved, but be subjected to the divine will, according to the wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of the God Logos, so is also the natural will of his flesh the proper will of the Logos, as he says himself: ’I came from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me’ (John 6:38). … Therefore we confess two natural wills and operations, harmoniously united for the salvation of the human race."609
The theological contest was carried on chiefly in the Eastern church which had the necessary learning and speculative talent; but the final decision was brought about by the weight of Roman authority, and Pope Agatho exerted by his dogmatic epistle the same controlling influence over the sixth oecumenical Council, as Pope Leo I. had exercised over the fourth. In this as well as the older theological controversies the Roman popes—with the significant exception of Honorius—stood firmly on the side of orthodoxy, while the patriarchal sees of the East were alternately occupied by heretics as well as orthodox.
The Dyotheletic decision completes the Christology of the Greek and Roman churches, and passed from them into the Protestant churches; but while the former have made no further progress in this dogma, the latter allows a revision and reconstruction, and opened new avenues of thought in the contemplation of the central fact and truth of the divine-human personality of Christ.
§ 111. History of Monotheletism and Dyotheletism.
The triumph of Dyotheletism was the outcome of a bitter conflict of nearly fifty years (633 to 680). The first act reaches to the issue of the Ekthesis (638), the second to the issue of the Type (648), the third and last to the sixth oecumenical Council (680). The theological leaders of Monophysitism were Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Arabia (known to us only from a few fragments of his writings), Sergius and his successors Pyrrhus and Paul in the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria; the political leaders were the Emperors Heraclius and Constans II.
The champions of the Dyotheletic doctrine were Sophronius of Palestine, Maximus of Constantinople, and the popes Martin and Agatho of Rome; the political supporter, the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668–685).
1. The strife began in a political motive, but soon assumed a theological and religious aspect. The safety of the Byzantine empire was seriously threatened, first by the Persians, and then by the Arabs, and the danger was increased by the division among Christians. The Emperor Heraclius (610–640) after his return from the Persian campaign desired to conciliate the Monophysites, who were more numerous than the orthodox in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt.610 He hoped, by a union of the parties, to protect these countries more effectually against the Mohammedan invaders. The Monophysites took offence at the catholic inference of two energies (ejnevrgeiai) in the person of Christ. The emperor consulted Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople (since 610), who was of Syrian (perhaps Jacobite) descent. They agreed upon the compromise-formula of "one divine-human energy" (miva qeandrikh; ejnevrgeia).611 Sergius secured the consent of Pope Honorius (625–638), who was afterwards condemned for heresy. Cyrus, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, published the formula (633), and converted thousands of Monophysites.612
But Sophronius, a learned and venerable monk in Palestine, who happened to be in Alexandria at that time, protested against the compromise-formula as a cunning device of the Monophysites. When he became patriarch of Jerusalem (in 633 or 634), he openly confessed, in a synodical letter to the patriarchs, the doctrine of Dyotheletism as a necessary part of the Chalcedonian Christology. It is one of the most important documents in this controversy.613
A few years afterwards, the Saracens besieged and conquered Jerusalem (637); Sophronius died and was succeeded by a Monotheletic bishop.
In the year 638 the Emperor issued, as an answer to the manifesto of Sophronius, an edict drawn up by Sergius, under the title Exposition of the Faith (e[kqesi" th'" pivstew"), which commanded silence on the subject in dispute, but pretty clearly decided in favor of Monotheletism. It first professes the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation in the Chalcedonian sense, and then forbids the use of the terms "one" or "two energies" (miva or duvo ejnevrgeiai) since both are heretically interpreted, and asserts one will (qevlhma) in Christ.614
2. Two synods of Constantinople (638 and 639) adopted the Ekthesis. But in the remote provinces it met with powerful resistance. Maximus Confessor became the champion of Dyotheletism in the Orient and North Africa, and Pope Martinus I. in the West. They thoroughly understood the controversy, and had the courage of martyrs for their conviction.
Maximus was born about 580 of a distinguished family in Constantinople, and was for some time private secretary of the Emperor Heraclius, but left this post of honor and influence in 630, and entered a convent in Chrysopolis (now Scutari). He was a profound thinker and able debater. When the Monotheletic heresy spread, he concluded to proceed to Rome, and passing through Africa be held there, in the presence of the imperial governor and many bishops, a remarkable disputation with Pyrrhus, who had succeeded Sergius in the see of Constantinople, but was deposed and expelled for political reasons. This disputation took place in July, 645, but we do not know in what city of Africa. It sounded all the depths of the controversy and ended with the temporary conversion of Pyrrhus to Dyotheletism.615
About the same time, several North-African synods declared in favor of the Dyotheletic doctrine.
In the year 648 the Emperor Constans II. (642–668) tried in vain to restore peace by means of a new edict called Typos or Type, which commanded silence on the subject under dispute without giving the preference to either view.616 It set aside the Ekthesis and declared in favor of neutrality. The aim of both edicts was to arrest the controversy and to prevent a christological development beyond the fourth and fifth oecumenical councils. But the Type was more consistent in forbidding all controversy not only about one energy (miva ejnevrgeia), but also about one will (e{n qevlhma). Transgressors of the Type were threatened with deposition; if clergymen, with excommunication; if monks, with the loss of dignity and place, of military or civil officers.
3. An irrepressible conflict cannot be silenced by imperial decrees. Pope Martin I., formerly Apocrisiarios of the papal see at Constantinople, and distinguished for virtue, knowledge and personal beauty, soon after his election (July 5th, 649), assembled the first Lateran Council (Oct., 649), so called from being held in the Lateran basilica in Rome. It was attended by one hundred and five bishops, anathematized the one-will doctrine and the two imperial edicts, and solemnly sanctioned the two-will doctrine. It anticipated substantially the decision of the sixth oecumenical council, and comes next to it in authority on this article of faith.617
The acts of this Roman council, together with an encyclical of the pope warning against the Ekthesis and the Type, were sent to all parts of the Christian world. At the same time, the pope sent a Greek translation of the acts to the Emperor Constans II., and politely informed him that the Synod had confirmed the true doctrine, and condemned the heresy. Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paulus had violated the full humanity of Christ, and deceived the emperors by the Ekthesis and the Type.
But the emperor, through his representative, Theodore Calliopa, the exarch of Ravenna, deposed the pope as a rebel and heretic, and removed him from Rome (June, 653). He imprisoned him with common criminals in Constantinople, exposed him to cold, hunger, and all sorts of injuries, and at last sent him by ship to a cavern in Cherson on the Black Sea (March, 655). Martin bore this cruel treatment with dignity, and died Sept. 16, 655, in exile, a martyr to his faith in the doctrine of two wills.
Maximus was likewise transported to Constantinople (653), and treated with even greater cruelty. He was (with two of his disciples) confined in prison for several years, scourged, deprived of his tongue and right hand, and thus mutilated sent, in his old age, to Lazica in Colchis on the Pontus Euxinus, where he died of these injuries, Aug. 13, 662. His two companions likewise died in exile.
The persecution of these martyrs prepared the way for the triumph of their doctrine. In the meantime province after province was conquered by the Saracens.
§ 112. The Sixth Oecumenical Council. a.d. 680.
Constans II. was murdered in a bath at Syracuse (668). His son, Constantine IV. Pogonatus (Barbatus, 668–685), changed the policy of his father, and wished to restore harmony between the East and the West. He stood on good or neutral terms with Pope Vitalian (6 57–672), who maintained a prudent silence on the disputed question, and with his successors, Adeodatus (672–676), Donus or Domnus (676–678), and Agatho (678–681).
After sufficient preparations, he called, in concert with Agatho, a General Council. It convened in the imperial palace at Constantinople, and held eighteen sessions from Nov. 7, 680, to Sept. 16, 681. it is called the Sixth Oecumenical, and also the First Trullan Synod, from the name of the hall or chapel in the palace.618 The highest number of members in attendance was one hundred and seventy-four, including three papal legates (two priests and one deacon). The emperor presided in person, surrounded by civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries. The acts are preserved in the Greek original and in two old Latin versions.619
After a full discussion of the subject on both sides, the council, in the eighteenth and last session, defined and sanctioned the two-will doctrine, almost in the very language of the letter of Pope Agatho to the emperor.620 Macarius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who adhered to Monotheletism, was deposed.
The epistle of Agatho is a worthy sequel of Leo’s Epistle to the Chalcedonian Council, and equally clear and precise in stating the orthodox view. It is also remarkable for the confidence with which it claims infallibility for the Roman church, in spite of the monotheletic heresy of Pope Honorius (who is prudently ignored). Agatho quotes the words of Christ to Peter, Luke 22:31, 32, in favor of papal infallibility, anticipating, as it were, the Vatican decision of 1870.621
But while the council fully endorsed the dyotheletic view of Agatho, and clothed it with oecumenical authority, it had no idea of endorsing his claim to papal infallibility; on the contrary, it expressly condemned Pope Honorius I. as a Monotheletic heretic, together with Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus, and Theodore of Pharan.
Immediately after the close of the council, the emperor published the decision, with an edict enforcing it and anathematizing all heretics from Simon Magus down to Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pope Honorius, who in all was their follower and associate, and confirmed the heresy.622 The edict forbids any one hereafter to teach the doctrine of one will and one energy under penalty of deposition, confiscation, and exile.
Pope Agatho died Jan. 10, 682; but his successor, Leo II., who was consecrated Aug. 17 of the same year, confirmed the sixth council, and anathematized all heretics, including his predecessor, Honorius, who, instead of adorning the apostolic see, dared to prostitute its immaculate faith by profane treason, and all who died in the same error.623
§ 113. The Heresy of Honorius.
J. von Döllinger (Old Cath.): Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. München, 1863. The same translated by A. Plummer: Fables respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages; Am ed. enlarged by Henry B. Smith, N. York, 1872. (The case of Honorius is discussed on pp. 223–248 Am. ed.; see German ed. p. 131 sqq.).
Schneemann (Jesuit): Studien über die Honoriusfrage. Freiburg i. B, 1864.
Paul Bottala (S. J.): Pope Honorius before the Tribunal of Reason and History. London, 1868.
P. Le Page Renouf: The Condemnation of Pope Honorius. Lond., 1868. The Case of Honorius reconsidered. Lond. 1870.
Maret (R.C.): Du Concil et de la paix relig. Par. 1869.
A. Gratry (R.C.): Four Letters to the Bishop of Orleans (Dupanloup) and the Archbishop of Malines (Dechamps), 1870. Several editions in French, German, English. He wrote against papal infallibility, but recanted on his death-bed.
A. de Margerie: Lettre au R. P. Gratry sur le Pape Honorius et le Bréviaire Romain. Nancy, 1870.
Jos. von Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg and Member of the Vatican Council): Causa Honorii Papae. Neap., 1870. Honorius und das sechste allgemeine Concil. Tübingen, 1870. (The same translated by Henry B. Smith in the "Presbyt. Quarterly and Princeton Review, "N. York, April, 1872, p. 273 sqq.). Conciliengeschichte, Bd. III. (revised ed., 1877), pp. 145 sqq., 167 sqq., 290 sqq.
Job. Pennachi (Prof. of Church Hist. in the University of Rome): De Honorii I. Romani Pontificis causa in Concilio VI. ad Patres Concilii Vaticani. Romae, 1870. 287 pp. Hefele calls this the most important vindication of Honorius from the infallibilist standpoint. It was distributed among all the members of the Vatican Council; while books in opposition to papal infallibility by Bishop Hefele, Archbishop Kenrick, and others, had to be printed outside of Rome.
A. Ruckgaber: Die Irrlehre des Honorius und das Vatic. Concil. Stuttgart, 1871.
Comp. the literature in Hergenröther; Kirchengesch., III. 137 sqq.
The connection of Pope Honorius I. (Oct. 27, 625, to Oct. 12, 638) with the Monotheletic heresy has a special interest in its bearing upon the dogma of papal infallibility, which stands or falls with a single official error, according to the principle: Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It was fully discussed by Catholic scholars on both sides before and during the Vatican Council of 1870, which proclaimed that dogma, but could not alter the facts of history. The following points are established by the best documentary evidence:
1. Honorius taught and favored in several official letters (to Sergius, Cyrus, and Sophronius), therefore ex cathedra, the one-will heresy. He fully agreed with Sergius, the Monotheletic patriarch of Constantinople. In answer to his first letter (634), he says: "Therefore we confess one will (qevlhma, voluntas) of our Lord Jesus Christ."624 He viewed the will as an attribute of person, not of nature, and reasoned: One willer, therefore only one will. In a second letter to Sergius, he rejects both the orthodox phrase: "two energies," and the heterodox phrase: "one energy" (ejnevrgeia, operatio), and affirms that the Bible clearly teaches two natures, but that it is quite vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies; for Christ by virtue of his one theandric will showed many modes of operation and activity.625 The first letter was decidedly heretical, the second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638) and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic doctrine.626
The only thing which may and must be said in his excuse is that the question was then new and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the orthodox dogma of two natures required the doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years longer.
Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters to be a later Greek forgery.627 Others admit their genuineness, but distort them into an orthodox sense by a nonnatural exegesis.628 Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic, that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions.629 But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably Monotheletic. And this is the verdict not only of Protestants,630 but also of Gallican and other liberal Catholic historians.631
2. Honorius was condemned by the sixth oecumenical Council as "the former pope of Old Rome," who with the help of the old serpent had scattered deadly error.632 This anathema was repeated by the seventh oecumenical Council, 787, and by the eighth, 869. The Greeks, who were used to heretical patriarchs of New Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, felt no surprise, and perhaps some secret satisfaction at the heresy of a pope of Old Rome.
Here again ultramontane historians have resorted to the impossible denial either of the genuineness of the act of condemnation in the sixth oecumenical Council,633 or of the true meaning of that act.634 The only consistent way for papal infallibilists is to deny the infallibility of the oecumenical Council as regards the dogmatic fact.635 In this case it would involve at the same time a charge of gross injustice to Honorius.
3. But this last theory is refuted by the popes themselves, who condemned Honorius as a heretic, and thus bore testimony for papal fallibility. His first success or, Severinus, had a brief pontificate of only three months. His second successor, John IV., apologized for him by putting a forced construction on his language. Agatho prudently ignored him.636 But his successor, Leo II., who translated the acts of the sixth Council from Greek into Latin, saw that he could not save the honor of Honorius without contradicting the verdict of the council in which the papal delegates had taken part; and therefore he expressly condemned him in the strongest language, both in a letter to the Greek emperor and in a letter to the bishops of Spain, as a traitor to the Roman church for trying to subvert her immaculate fate. Not only so, but the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius was inserted in the confession of faith which every newly-elected pope had to sign down to the eleventh century, and which is embodied in the Liber Diurnus, i.e. the official book of formulas of the Roman church for the use of the papal curia.637 In the editions of the Roman Breviary down to the sixteenth century his name appears, yet without title and without explanation, along with the rest who had been condemned by the sixth Council. But the precise facts were gradually forgotten, and the mediaeval chroniclers and lists of popes ignore them. After the middle of the sixteenth century the case of Honorius again attracted attention, and was urged as an irrefutable argument against the ultramontane theory. At first the letter of Leo II. was boldly, rejected as a forgery as well as those of Honorius;638 but this was made impossible when the Liber Diurnus came to light.
The verdict of history, after the most thorough investigation from all sides and by all parties remains unshaken. The whole church, East and West, as represented by the official acts of oecumenical Councils and Popes, for several hundred years believed that a Roman bishop may err ex cathedra in a question of faith, and that one of them at least had so erred in fact. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed papal infallibility in the face of this fact, thus overruling history by dogmatic authority. The Protestant historian can in conscience only follow the opposite principle: If dogma contradicts facts, all the worse for the dogma.
Notes.
Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned and impartial Roman Catholic historians, thus states, after a lengthy discussion, his present view on the case of Honorius (Conciliengesch., vol. III. 175, revised ed. 1877), which differs considerably from the one he had published before the Vatican decree of papal infallibility (in the first ed. of his Conciliengesch., vol. III. 1858, p. 145 sqq., and in big pamphlet on Honorius, 1870). It should be remembered that Bishop Hefele, like all his anti-infallibilist colleagues, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council for the sake of unity and peace.
"Die beiden Briefe des Papstes Honorius, wie wir sie jetzt haben, sind unverfälscht und zeigen, dass Honorius von den beiden monotheletischen Terminis ejn qevlhma und miva ejnevrgeia den erstern (im ersten Brief) selbst gebrauchte, den anderen dagegen, ebenso auch den orthodoxen Ausdruck duvo ejnevrgeiai nicht angewendet wissen wollte. Hat er auch Letzteres (die, Missbilligung des Ausdruckes duvo ejnevrg.) im zweiten Brief wiederholt, so hat er doch in demselben selbst zwei natürliche Energien in Christus anerkannt und in beiden Briefen sich so ausgedrückt, dass man annehmen muss, er habe nicht den menschlichen Willen überhaupt, sondern nur den Verdorbenen menschlichen Willen in Chistus geläugnet, aber obgleich orthodoz denkend, die monotheletische Tendenz des Sergius nicht gehörig durchschaut und sich missverständlich ausgedrückt, so dass seine Briefe, besonders der erste, den Monotheletismus zu bestätigen schienen und damit der Häresie Factisch Vorschub leisteten. In dieser Weise erledigt sich uns die Frage nach der Orthodoxie des Papstes Honorius, und wir halten sonach den Mittelweg zwischen denen, welche ihn auf die gleiche Stufe mit Sergius von Constantinopel und Cyrus von Alexandrien stellen und den Monotheleten beizählen wollten, und denen, welche durchaus keine Makel an ihn duldend in das Schicksal der nimium probantes verfallen sind, so dass sie lieber die Aechtheit der Acten des sechsten allgemeinen Concils und mehrerer anderer Urkunden läugnen, oder auch dem sechsten Concil einen error in facto dogmatico zuschreiben wollten." Comp. his remarks on p. 152; "Diesen Hauptgedanken muss ich auch jetzt noch festhalten, dass Honorius im Herzen richtig dachte, sich aber unglücklich ausdrückte, wenn ich auch in Folge wiederholter neuer Beschäftigung mit diesem Gegenstand und unter Berücksichtigung dessen, was Andere in neuer Zeit zur Vertheidigung des Honorius geschrieben haben, manches Einzelne meiner früheren Aufstellungen nunmehr modificire oder völlig aufgebe, und insbesondere über den ersten Brief des Honorius jetzt milder urtheile als früher."
Cardinal Hergenröther (Kirchengeschichte, vol. I. 358, second ed. Freiburg i. B. 1879) admits the ignorance rather than the heresy of the pope. "Honorius," he says, "zeigt wohl Unbekanntschaft mit dem Kern der Frage, aber keinerlei häretische oder irrige Auffassung. Er unterscheidet die zwei unvermischt qebliebenen Naturen sehr genau und verstösst gegen kein einziges Dogma der Kirche."
§ 114. Concilium Quinisextum. a.d. 692.
Mansi., XI. 930–1006. Hefele, III. 328–348. Gieseler,I. 541 sq.
Wm. Beveridge (Bishop of St. Asaph, 1704–1708): Synodicon, sive Pandectae canonum. Oxon. 1672–82. Tom. I. 152–283. Beveridge gives the comments of Theod. Balsamon, Joh. Zonaras, etc., on the Apostolical Canons.
Assemani (R.C.): Bibliotheca juris orientalis. Rom 1766, Tom. V. 55–348, and Tom. I. 120 and 408 sqq. An extensive discussion of this Synod and its canons.
The pope of Old Rome had achieved a great dogmatic triumph in the sixth oecumenical council, but the Greek church had the satisfaction of branding at least one pope as a heretic, and soon found an opportunity to remind her rival of the limits of her authority.
The fifth and sixth oecumenical councils passed doctrinal decrees, but no disciplinary canons. This defect was supplied by a new council at Constantinople in 692, called the Concilium Quinisextum,639 also the Second Trullan Council, from the banqueting hall with a domed roof in the imperial palace where it was held.640
It was convened by the Emperor Justinian II. surnamed Rinotmetos,641 one of the most heartless tyrants that ever disgraced a Christian throne. He ruled from 685–695, was deposed by a revolution and sent to exile with a mutilated nose, but regained the throne in 705 and was assassinated in 711.642
The supplementary council was purely oriental in its composition and spirit. It adopted 102 canons, most of them old, but not yet legally or oecumenically sanctioned. They cover the whole range of clerical and ecclesiastical life and discipline, and are valid to this day in the Eastern church. They include eighty-five apostolic canons so called (thirty-five more than were acknowledged by the Roman church), the canons of the first four oecumenical councils, and of several minor councils, as Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, etc.; also the canons of Dionysius the Great of Alexandria, Peter of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzum, Amphilochius of Iconium, Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Gennadius of Constantinople, and an anti-Roman canon of Cyprian of Carthage. The decretals of the Roman bishops are ignored.
The canons were signed first, by the emperor; the second place was left blank for the pope, but was never filled; then follow the names of Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch (strangely after that of the patriarch of Jerusalem), and others, in all 211 bishops and episcopal representatives, all Greeks and Orientals, of whom 43 had been present at the sixth oecumenical council.
The emperor sent the acts of the Trullan Council to Sergius of Rome, and requested him to sign them. The pope refused because they contained some chapters contrary to ecclesiastical usage in Rome. The emperor dispatched the chief officer of his body guard with orders to bring the pope to Constantinople. But the armies of the exarch of Ravenna and of the Pentapolis rushed to the protection of the pope, who quieted the soldiers; the imperial officer had to hide himself in the pope’s bed, and then left Rome in disgrace.643 Soon afterwards Justinian II. was dethroned and sent into exile. When he regained the crown with the aid of a barbarian army (705), he sent two metropolitans to Pope John VII. with the request to call a council of the Roman church, which should sanction as many of the canons as were acceptable. The pope, a timid man, simply returned the copy. Subsequent negotiations led to no decisive result.
The seventh oecumenical Council (787) readopted the 102 canons, and erroneously ascribed them to the sixth oecumenical Council.
The Roman church never committed herself to these canons except as far as they agreed with ancient Latin usage. Some of them were inspired by an anti-Roman tendency. The first canon repeats the anathema on Pope Honorius. The thirty-sixth canon, in accordance with the second and fourth oecumenical Councils, puts the patriarch of Constantinople on an equality of rights with the bishop of Rome, and concedes to the latter only a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of jurisdiction. Clerical marriage of the lower orders is sanctioned in canons 3 and 13, and it is clearly hinted that the Roman church, by her law of clerical celibacy, dishonors wedlock, which was instituted by God and sanctioned by the presence of Christ at Cana. But second marriage is forbidden to the clergy, also marriage with a widow (canon 3), and marriage after ordination (canon 6). Bishops are required to discontinue their marriage relation (canon 12). Justinian had previously forbidden the marriage of bishops by a civil law. Fasting on the Sabbath in Lent is forbidden (canon 55) in express opposition to the custom in Rome. The second canon fixes the number of valid apostolical canons at eighty-five against fifty of the Latin church. The decree of the Council of Jerusalem against eating blood and things strangled (Acts 15) is declared to be of perpetual force, while in the West it was considered merely as a temporary provision for the apostolic age, and for congregations composed of Jewish and Gentile converts. The symbolical representation of Christ under the figure of the lamb in allusion to the words of John the Baptist is forbidden as belonging to the Old Testament, and the representation in human form is commanded (canon 82).
These differences laid the foundation for the great schism between the East. and the West. The supplementary council of 692 anticipated the action of Photius, and clothed it with a quasi-oecumenical authority.
§ 115. Reaction of Monotheletism. The Maronites.
The great oecumenical councils, notably that of Chalcedon gave rise to schismatic sects which have perpetuated themselves for a long time, some of them to the present day.
For a brief period Monotheletism was restored by Bardanes or Philippicus, who wrested the throne from Justinian II. and ruled from 711 to 713. He annulled the creed of the sixth oecumenical Council, caused the names of Sergius and Honorius to be reinserted in the diptycha among the orthodox patriarchs, and their images to be again set up in public places. He deposed the patriarch of Constantinople and elected in his place a Monotheletic deacon, John. He convened a council at Constantinople, which set aside the decree of the sixth council and adopted a Monotheletic creed in its place. The clergy who refused to sign it, were deposed. But in Italy he had no force to introduce it, and an attempt to do so provoked an insurrection.
The Emperor Anastasius II. dethroned the usurper, and made an end to this Monotheletic episode. The patriarch John accommodated himself to the new situation, and wrote an abject letter to the Pope Constantine, in which he even addressed him as the head of the church, and begged his pardon for his former advocacy of heresy.
Since that time Dyotheletism was no more disturbed in the orthodox church.
But outside of the orthodox church and the jurisdiction of the Byzantine rulers, Monotheletism propagated itself among the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon under the lead of abbot John Marun (Marwvn), their first patriarch (d. 701). The maronites,644 as they were called after him, maintained their independence of the Greek empire and the Saracens, and adhered to the Monotheletic doctrine till the time of the crusades, when they united themselves with the Roman church (1182), retaining, however, the celebration of the communion under both kinds, the Syrian liturgy, the marriage of the lower clergy, their own fast-days, and their own saints.
§ 116. The Adoptionist Controversy. Literature.
I. Sources.
The sources are printed in Harduin, Vol. IV., Mansi, XIII., and in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius (1777), reprinted by Migne (in his "Patrol. Lat.," vols. 100 and 101), with historical and dogmatical dissertations.
(1.) The writings of the Adoptionists: a letter of Elipandus Ad Fide lem, Abbatem, a.d. 785, and one to Alcuin. Two letters of the spanish bishops—one to Charlemagne, the other to the Gallican bishops. Felicis Libellus contra Alcuinum; the Confessio Fidei Felicis; fragments of a posthumous book of Felix addressed Ad Ludovicum Pium, Imperat.
(2.) The orthodox view is represented in Beatus et Etherius: Adv. Elipandum libri II. Alcuin: Seven Books against Felix, Four Books against Elipandus, and several letters, which are best edited by Jaffé in Biblioth. rer. Germ. VI. Paulinus (Bishop of Aquileja): Contra Felicem Urgellitanum libri tres. In Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 99, col. 343–468. Agobard of Lyons: Adv. Dogma Felicis Episc. Urgellensis, addressed to Louis the Pious, in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 104, col. 29–70. A letter of Charlemagne (792) to Elipandus and the bishops of Spain. The acts of the Synods of Narbonne (788), Ratisbon (792), Francfort (794), and Aix-la-Chapelle (799).
II. Works.
(1.) By Rom. Cath. Madrisi (Congreg. Orat.): Dissertationes de Felicis et Elipandi haeresi, in his ed. of the Opera Paulini Aquil., reprinted in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 99( col. 545–598). Against Basnage. Enhueber (Prior in Regensburg): Dissert. dogm. Hist. contra Christ. Walchium, in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius, reprinted by Migne (vol. 101, col. 337–438). Against Walch’s Hist. Adopt., to prove the Nestorianism of the Adoptionists. Frobenius: Diss. Hist. de haer. Elip. et Felicis, in Migne’s ed., vol. 101, col. 303–336. Werner: Gesch. der Apol. und polem. Lit. II. 433 sqq. Gams: Kirchengesch. Spaniens (Regensb., 1874), Bd. II. 2. (Very prolix.) Hefele: Conciliengesch., Bd. III. 642–693 (revised ed. of 1877). Hergenröther: Kirchengesch., 2nd ed., 1879, Bd. I. 558 sqq. Bach: Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters (Wien, 1873), I. 103–155.
(2.) By Protestants. Jac. Basnage: Observationes historicae circa Felicianam haeresin, in his Thesaurus monum. Tom. II. 284 sqq. Chr. G. F. Walch: Historia Adoptianorum, Göttingen, 1755; and his Ketzergeschichte, vol. IX. 667 sqq. (1780). A minute and accurate account. See also the Lit. quoted by Walch.
Neander, Kirchengeschichte, vol. III., pp. 313–339, Engl. transl. III. 156–168. Gieseler, vol. II., P. I., p. 111 sqq.; Eng. transl. II. 75–78. Baur: Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes, Tübingen, 1842, vol. II., pp. 129–159. Dorner: Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, second ed., Berlin, 1853, vol. II., pp. 306–330. Helfferich: Der Westgothische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzergeschichte, Berlin, 1880. Niedner: Lehrbuch der christl. K. G., Berlin, 1866, pp. 424–427. J. C. Robertson: History of the Christian Church from 590 to 1122 (Lond., 1856), p. 154 sqq. Milman: Lat. Christ. II. 498–500; Baudissin: Eulogius und Alvar, Leipz., 1872. Schaff, in Smith and Wace, I. (1877), pp. 44–47. W. Möller, in Herzog2 I. 151–159.
§ 117. History of Adoptionism.
The Adoptionist controversy is a revival of the Nestorian controversy in a modified form, and turns on the question whether Christ, as to his human nature, was the Son of God in essence, or only by adoption. Those who took the latter view were called Adoptionists.645 They taught that Christ as to his divinity is the true Son646 of God, the Only-Begotten of the Father; but as man he is his adopted Son,647 the First-Born of Mary. They accepted the Chalcedonian Christology of one person and two natures, but by distinguishing a natural Son of God and an adopted Son of God, they seemed to teach two persons or a double Christ, and thus to run into the Nestorian heresy.
The orthodox opponents held that Christ was the one undivided and indivisible Son of God; that the Virgin Mary gave birth to the eternal Son of God, and is for this reason called "the mother of God;" that sonship is founded on the person, not on the nature; and that Adoptionism leads to two Christs and to four persons in the Trinity.
Both parties displayed a degree of patristic learning which one would hardly expect in this period of the middle ages.
The history of this movement is confined to the West (Spain and Gaul); while all the older Christological controversies originated and were mainly carried on and settled in the East. It arose in the Saracen dominion of Spain, where the Catholics had to defend the eternal and essential Sonship of Christ against the objections both of the Arians and the Mohammedans.
The Council of Toledo, held in 675, declared in the preface to the Confession of Faith, that Christ is the Son of God by, nature, not by adoption.648 But about a century afterwards Elipandus, the aged Archbishop of Toledo, and primate of that part of Spain which was under Mohammedan rule, endeavored to modify the orthodox doctrine by drawing a distinction between a natural and an adopted sonship of Christ, and by ascribing the former to his divine, the latter to his human nature. He wished to save the full humanity of Christ, without, however, denying his eternal divinity. Some historians assert that he was influenced by a desire to avoid the Mohammedan objection to the divinity of Christ;649 but the conflict of the two religions was too strong to admit of any compromise. He may have read Nestorian writings.650 At all events, he came to similar conclusions.
Having little confidence in his own opinions, Elipandus consulted Felix, bishop of Urgel651 in Catalonia, in that part of Spain which, since 778, was incorporated with the dominion of Charlemagne. Felix was more learned and clear-headed than Elipandus, and esteemed, even by his antagonist Alcuin, for his ability and piety. Neander regards him as the originator of Adoptionism; at all events, he reduced it to a formulated statement.
Confirmed by his friend, Elipandus taught the new doctrine with all the zeal of a young convert, although he was already eighty years of age; and, taking advantage of his influential position, he attacked the orthodox opponents with overbearing violence. Etherius, Bishop of Osma or Othma (formerly his pupil), and Beatus, a presbyter, and after Alcuin abbot at Libana in Asturia,652 took the lead in the defence of the old and the exposure of the new Christology. Elipandus charged them with confounding the natures of Christ, like wine and water, and with scandalous immorality, and pronounced the anathema on them.
Pope Hadrian, being informed of these troubles, issued a letter in 785 to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as rank Nestorianism.653 But the letter had no effect; the papal authority plays a subordinate role in this whole controversy. The Saracen government, indifferent to the theological disputes of its Christian subjects, did not interfere.
But when the Adoptionist heresy, through the influence of Felix, spread in the French portion of Spain, and even beyond the Pyrenees into Septimania, creating a considerable commotion among the clergy, the Emperor Charlemagne called a synod to Regensburg (Ratisbon) in Bavaria, in 792, and invited the Bishop of Urgel to appear, that his case might be properly investigated. The Synod condemned Adoptionism as a renewal of the Nestorian heresy.
Felix publicly and solemnly recanted before the Synod, and also before Pope Hadrian, to whom he was sent. But on his return to Spain he was so much reproached for his weakness, that, regardless of his solemn oath, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and re-affirmed his former opinions.
Charlemagne, who did not wish to alienate the spanish portion of his kingdom, and to drive it into the protection of the neighboring Saracens, directed Alcuin, who in the mean time had come to France from England, to send a mild warning and refutation of Adoptionism to Felix. When this proved fruitless, and when the Spanish bishops, under the lead of Elipandus, appealed to the justice of the emperor, and demanded the restoration of Felix to his bishopric, he called a new council at Frankfort on the Main in 794, which was attended by about three hundred (?) bishops, and may be called "universal," as far as the West is concerned.654 As neither Felix nor any of the Adoptionist bishops appeared in person, the council, under the lead of Alcuin, confirmed the decree of condemnation passed at Ratisbon.
Subsequently Felix wrote an apology, which was answered and refuted by Alcuin. Elipandus reproached Alcuin for having twenty thousand slaves (probably belonging to the convent of Tours), and for being proud of wealth. Charles sent Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons and other bishops to the Spanish portion of his kingdom, who succeeded, in two visits, in converting the heretics (according to Alcuin, twenty thousand).
About that time a council at Rome, under Leo III., pronounced, on very imperfect information, a fresh anathema, erroneously charging that the Adoptionists denied to the Saviour any other than a nuncupative Godhead.
Felix himself appeared, 799, at a Synod in Aix-la-Chapelle, and after a debate of six days with Alcuin, he recanted his Adoptionism a second time. He confessed to be convinced by some passages, not of the Scriptures, but of the fathers (especially Cyril of Alexandria, Leo I., and Gregory I.), which he had not known before, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith.655 He spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Archbishop of Lyons, and died in 818. He left, however, a paper in which the doctrine of Adoptionism is clearly stated in the form of question and answer; and Agobard, the successor of Leidrad, felt it his duty to refute it.
Elipandus, under the protection of the government of the Moors, continued openly true to his heretical conviction. But Adoptionism lost its vitality with its champions, and passed away during the ninth century. Slight traces of it are found occasionally during the middle ages. Duns Scotus (1300) and Durandus a S. Porciano (1320) admit the term Filius adoptivus in a qualified sense.656 The defeat of Adoptionism was a check upon the dyophysitic and dyotheletic feature in the Chalcedon Christology, and put off indefinitely the development of the human side in Christ’s Person. In more recent times the Jesuit Vasquez, and the Lutheran divines G. Calixtus and Walch, have defended the Adoptionists as essentially orthodox.
§ 118. Doctrine of Adoptionism.
The doctrine of Adoptionism is closely allied in spirit to the Nestorian Christology; but it concerns not so much the constitution of Christ’s person, as simply the relation of his humanity to the Fatherhood of God. The Adoptionists were no doubt sincere in admitting at the outset the unity of Christ’s person, the communication of properties between the two natures, and the term Theotokos (though in a qualified sense) as applied to the Virgin Mary. Yet their view implies an abstract separation of the eternal Son of God and the man Jesus of Nazareth, and results in the assertion of two distinct Sons of God. It emphasized the dyophysitism and dyotheletism of the orthodox Christology, and ran them out into a personal dualism, inasmuch as sonship is an attribute of personality, not of nature. The Adoptionists spoke of an adoptatus homo instead of an adoptata natura humana, and called the adopted manhood an adopted Son. They appealed to Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Augustin, and Isidore of Seville, and the Mozarabic Liturgy, which was used in Spain.657 Sometimes the term adoptio is indeed applied to the Incarnation by earlier writers, and in the Spanish liturgy, but rather in the sense of assumptio or ajnavlhyi", i.e. the elevation of the human nature, through Christ, to union with the Godhead.658 They might, with better reason, have quoted Theodore of Mopsuestia as their predecessor; for his doctrine of the uiJo;" qetov" is pretty much the same as their Filius Dei adoptivus.659
The fundamental point in Adoptionism is the distinction of a double Sonship in Christ—one by nature and one by grace, one by generation and one by adoption, one by essence and one by title, one which is metaphysical and another which is brought about by an act of the divine will and choice. The idea of sonship is made to depend on the nature, not on the person; and as Christ has two natures, there must be in him two corresponding Sonships. According to his divine nature, Christ is really and essentially (secundum naturam or genere) the Son of God, begotten from eternity; but according to his human nature, he is the Son of God only nominally (nuncupative) by adoption, or by divine grace. By nature he is the Only-Begotten Son of God;660 by adoption and grace he is the First-Begotten Son of God.661
The Adoptionists quoted in their favor mainly John 14:28 Luke 1:80; 18:19; Mark 13:32; John 1:14; 10:35; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:3; 1 John 3:2; Deut. 18:15; Ps. 2: 8; 22:23, and other passages from the Old Testament, which they referred to the Filius primogenitus et adoptivus; while Ps. 60:4 (ex utero ante Luciferum genui te); 44:2; Is. 45:23; Prov. 8:25, were understood to apply to the Filius unigenitus. None of these passages, which might as well be quoted in favor of Arianism, bear them out in the point of dispute. Christ is nowhere called the "adopted" Son of God. Felix inferred from the adoption of the children of God, that they must have an adoptive head. He made use of the illustration, that as a son cannot have literally two fathers, but may have one by birth and the other by adoption, so Christ, according to his humanity, cannot be the Son of David and the Son of God in one and the same sense; but he may be the one by nature and the other by adoption.662
It is not clear whether he dated the adopted Sonship of Christ from his exaltation663 or from his baptism,664 or already from his birth.665 He speaks of a double birth of Christ, compares the baptism of Christ with the baptism or regeneration of believers, and connects both with the spiritualis generatio per adoptionem;666 but, on the other hand, he seems to trace the union of the human nature with the divine to the womb of the Virgin.667
The Adoptionists, as already remarked, thought themselves in harmony with the Christology of Chalcedon, and professed faith in one divine person in two full and perfect natures;668 they only wished to bring out their views of a double Sonship, as a legitimate consequence of the doctrine of two natures.
The champions of orthodoxy, among whom Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne, was the most learned and able, next to him Paulinus of Aquileja, and Agobard of Lyons, unanimously viewed Adoptionism as a revival or modification of the Nestorian heresy, which was condemned by the third Oecumenical Council (431).669
Starting from the fact of a real incarnation, the orthodox party insisted that it was the eternal, only begotten Son of God, who assumed human nature from the womb of the Virgin, and united it with his divine person, remaining the proper Son of God, notwithstanding this change.670 They quoted in their favor such passages as John 3:16; Rom. 8:32; Eph. 5:2; Acts 3:13–15.
The radical fault of this heresy is, that it shifts the whole idea of Sonship from the person to the nature. Christ is the Son of God as to his person, not as to nature. The two natures do not form two Sons, since they are inseparably united in the one Christ. The eternal Son of God did not in the act of incarnation assume a human personality, but human nature. There is therefore no room at all for an adoptive Sonship. The Bible nowhere calls Christ the adopted Son of God. Christ is, in his person, from eternity or by nature what Christians become by grace and regeneration.
In condemning Monotheletism, the Church emphasized the duality of natures in Christ; in condemning Adoptionism, she emphasized the unity of person. Thus she guarded the catholic Christology both against Eutychian and Nestorian departures, but left the problem of the full and genuine humanity of Christ unsolved. While he is the eternal Son of God, he is at the same time truly and fully the Son of man. The mediaeval Church dwelt chiefly on the divine majesty of Christ, and removed him at an infinite distance from man, so that he could only be reached through intervening mediators; but, on the other hand, she kept a lively, though grossly realistic, remembrance of his passion in the daily sacrifice of the mass, and found in the worship of the tender Virgin-Mother with the Infant-Saviour on her protecting arm a substitute for the contemplation and comfort of his perfect manhood. The triumph of the theory of transubstantiation soon followed the defeat of Adoptionism, and strengthened the tendency towards an excessive and magical supernaturalism which annihilates the natural, instead of transforming it.
Note.
The learned Walch defends the orthodoxy of the Adoptionists, since they did not say that Christ, in his two-fold Sonship, was alius et alius, a[llo" kai; a[llo" (which is the Nestorian view), but that he was Son aliter et aliter, a[llw" kai; a[llw". Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX., pp. 881, 904. Baur (II., p. 152) likewise justifies Adoptionism, as a legitimate inference from the Chalcedonian dogma, but on the assumption that this dogma itself includes a contradiction. Neander, Dorner, Niedner, Hefele, and Möller concede the affinity of Adoptionism with Nestorianism, but affirm, at the same time, the difference and the new features in Adoptionism (see especially Dorner II., p. 309 sq.).
§ 119. The Predestinarian Controversy.
Comp. vol. III., §§ 158–160, pp. 851 sqq.
Literature.
I. The sources are: (1) The remains of the writings of Gottschalk, viz., three Confessions (one before the Synod of Mainz, two composed in prison), a poetic Epistle to Ratramnus, and fragment of a book against Rabanus Maurus. Collected in the first volume of Mauguin (see below), and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 121, col. 348–372.
(2) The writings of Gottschalk’s friends: Prudentius: Epist. ad Hincmarum, and Contra Jo. Scotum; Ratramnus: De Praedest., 850; Servatus Lupus: De tribus Questionibus (i.e., free will, predestination, and the extent of the atonement), 850; Florus Magister: De Praed. contra J. Scot.; Remigius: Lib. de tribus Epistolis, and Libellus de tenenda immobiliter Scripturae veritate. Collected in the first vol. of Mauguin, and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vols. 115, 119 and 121. A poem of Walafrid Strabo on Gottschalk, in Migne, Tom. 114, col. 1115 sqq.
(3) The writings of Gottschalk’s opponents: Rabanus Maurus (in Migne, Tom. 112); Hincmar of Rheims: De Praedestinatione et Libero Arbitrio, etc. (in Migne, Tom. 125 and 126); Scotus Erigena: De Praedest. Dei contra Gottescalcum, 851 (first ed. by Mauguin, 1650, and in 1853 by Floss in Migne, Tom. 122). See also the Acts of Councils in Mansi, Tom. XIV. and XV.
II. Works of historians: Jac. Ussher (Anglican and Calvinist): Gotteschalci et Praedestinatianae controversiae ab eo motto Historia. Dublin, 1631; Hanover, 1662; and in the Dublin ed. of his works.
Gilb. Mauguin (Jansenist, d. 1674): Vet. Auctorum, qui IX. saec. de Praedest. et Grat. scripserunt, Opera et Fragm. plurima nunc primum in lucem edita, etc. Paris, 1650, 2 Tom. In the second volume he gives the history and defends the orthodoxy of Gottschalk.
L. Cellot (Jesuit): Hist. Gotteschalci praedestinatiani. Paris, 1655, fol. Against Gottschalk and Mauguin.
J. J. Hottinger (Reformed): Fata doctrinae de Praedestinatione et Gratia Dei. Tiguri, 1727. Also his Dissertation on Gottschalk, 1710.
Card. Noris: Historia Gottesc., in his Opera. Venice, 1759, Tom. III.
F. Monnier: De Gotteschalci et Joan. Erigenae Controversia. Paris, 1853.
Jul. Weizsäcker (Luth.): Das Dogma von der göttl. Vorherbestimmung im 9ten Jahrh., in Dorner’s "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theol." Gotha, 1859, p. 527–576.
Hefele (R. Cath.): Conciliengesch. IV. 130–223 (second ed., 1879).
V. Borrasch: Der Mönch Gottschalk v. Orbais, sein Leben u. seine Lehre. Thorn, 1868.
Kunstmann: Hrabanus Maurus (Mainz, 1841); Spingler: Rabanus Maurus (Ratisbon, 1856); and C. v. Noorden: Hinkmar v. Rheims (Bonn, 1863); H. Schrörs: Hincmar Erzbisch v. R. (Freil. B. 1884).
See also Schröckh, vol. XXIV. 1–126; Neander, Gieseler, Baur, in their Kirchengeschichte and their Dogmengeschichte; Bach (Rom. Cath.), in his Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, I. 219–263; Guizot: Civilization in France, Lect. V.; Hardwick: Middle Age, 161–165; Robertson, II. 288–299; Reuter, Rel. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, I. 43–48; and Möller in Herzog2, V. 324–328.
Gottschalk or Godescalcus,671 an involuntary monk and irregularly ordained priest, of noble Saxon parentage, strong convictions, and heroic courage, revived the Augustinian theory, on one of the most difficult problems of speculative theology, but had to suffer bitter persecution for re-asserting what the great African divine had elaborated and vindicated four centuries before with more depth, wisdom and moderation.
The Greek church ignored Augustin, and still more Gottschalk, and adheres to this day to the anthropology of the Nicene and ante-Nicene fathers, who laid as great stress on the freedom of the will as on divine grace. John of Damascus teaches an absolute foreknowledge, but not an absolute foreordination of God, because God cannot foreordain sin, which he wills not, and which, on the contrary, he condemns and punishes; and he does not force virtue upon the reluctant will.
The Latin church retained a traditional reverence for Augustin, as her greatest divine, but never committed herself to his scheme of predestination.672 It always found individual advocates, as Fulgentius of Ruspe, and Isidore of Seville, who taught a two-fold predestination, one of the elect unto life eternal, and one of the reprobate unto death eternal. Beda and Alcuin were Augustinians of a milder type. But the prevailing sentiment cautiously steered midway between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism, giving the chief weight to the preceding and enabling grace of God, yet claiming some merit for man’s consenting and cooperating will.673 This compromise may be called Semi-Augustinianism, as distinct from Semi-Pelagianism. It was adopted by the Synod of Orange (Arausio) in 529, which condemned the Semi-Pelagian error (without naming its adherents) and approved Augustin’s views of sin and grace, but not his view of predestination, which was left open. It was transmitted to the middle ages through Pope Gregory the Great, who, next to Augustin, exerted most influence on the theology of our period; and this moderated and weakened Augustinianism triumphed in the Gottschalk controversy.
The relation of the Roman church to Augustin in regard to predestination is similar to that which the Lutheran church holds to Luther. The Reformer held the most extreme view on divine predestination, and in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will, against Erasmus, he went further than Augustin before him and Calvin after him;674 yet notwithstanding his commanding genius and authority, his view was virtually disowned, and gave way to the compromise of the Formula of Concord, which teaches both an absolute election of believers and a sincere call of all sinners to repentance. The Calvinistic Confessions, with more logical consistency, teach an absolute predestination as a necessary sequence of Divine omnipotence and omniscience, but confine it, like Augustin, to the limits of the infralapsarian scheme, with an express exclusion of God from the authorship of sin. Supralapsarianism, however, also had its advocates as a theological opinion. In the Roman church, the Augustinian system was revived by the Jansenists, but only to be condemned.
§ 120. Gottschalk and Babanus Maurus.
Gottschalk, the son of Count Berno (or Bern), was sent in his childhood by his parents to the famous Hessian convent of Fulda as a pious offering (oblatus). When he had attained mature age, he denied the validity of his involuntary tonsure, wished to leave the convent, and brought his case before a Synod of Mainz in 829. The synod decided in his favor, but the new abbot, Rabanus Maurus, appealed to the emperor, and wrote a book, De Oblatione Puerorum, in defence of the obligatory character of the parental consecration of a child to monastic life. He succeeded, but allowed Gottschalk to exchange Fulda for Orbais in the diocese of Soissons in the province of Rheims. From this time dates his ill feeling towards the reluctant monk, whom he called a vagabond, and it cannot be denied that Rabanus appears unfavorably in the whole controversy.
At Orbais Gottschalk devoted himself to the study of Augustin and Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533), with such ardent enthusiasm that he was called Fulgentius.675 He selected especially the passages in favor of the doctrine of predestination, and recited them to his fellow-monks for hours, gaining many to his views. But his friend, Servatus Lupus, warned him against unprofitable speculations on abstruse topics, instead of searching the Scriptures for more practical things. He corresponded with several scholars’ and made a pilgrimage to Rome. On his return in 847 or 848, he spent some time with the hospitable Count Eberhard of Friuli, a son-in-law of the Emperor Louis the Pious, met there Bishop Noting of Verona, and communicated to him his views on predestination. Noting informed Rabanus Maurus, who had in the mean time become archbishop of Mainz, and urged him to refute this new heresy.
Rabanus Maurus wrote a letter to Noting on predestination, intended against Gottschalk, though without naming him.676 He put the worst construction upon his view of a double predestination, and rejected it for seven reasons, chiefly, because it involves a charge of injustice against God; it contradicts the Scriptures, which promise eternal reward to virtue; it declares that Christ shed his blood in vain for those that are lost; and it leads some to carnal security, others to despair. His own doctrine is moderately Augustinian. He maintains that the whole race, including unbaptized children, lies under just condemnation in consequence of Adam’s sin; that out of this mass of corruption God from pure mercy elects some to eternal life, and leaves others, in view of their moral conduct, to their just punishment. God would have all men to be saved, yet he actually saves only a part; why he makes such a difference, we do not know and must refer to his hidden counsel. Foreknowledge and foreordination are distinct, and the latter is conditioned by the former. Here is the point where Rabanus departs from Augustin and agrees with the Semi-Pelagians. He also distinguishes between praesciti and praedestinati. The impenitent sinners were only foreknown, not foreordained. He admitted that "the punishment is foreordained for the sinner," but denied that "the sinner is foreordained for punishment."677 He supported his view with passages from Jerome, Prosper, Gennadius, and Augustin.678
Gottschalk saw in this tract the doctrine of the Semi-Pelagian Gennadius and Cassianus rather than of "the most catholic doctor" Augustin. He appeared before a Synod at Mainz, which was opened Oct. 1, 848, in the presence of the German king, and boldly professed his belief in a two-fold predestination, to life and to death, God having from eternity predestinated his elect by free grace to eternal life, and quite similarly all reprobates, by a just judgment for their evil deserts, to eternal death.679 The offensive part in this confession lies in the words two-fold (gemina) and quite similarly (similiter omnino), by which he seemed to put the two foreordinations, i.e. election and reprobation, on the same footing; but he qualified it by a reference to the guilt and future judgment of the reprobate. He also maintained against Rabanus that the Son of God became man and died only for the elect. He measured the extent of the purpose by the extent of the effect. God is absolutely unchangeable, and his will must be fulfilled. What does not happen, cannot have been intended by him.
The details of the synodical transaction are unknown, but Rabanus, who presided over the Synod, gives as the result, in a letter to Hincmar, that Gottschalk was condemned, together with his pernicious doctrine (which he misrepresents), and handed over to his metropolitan, Hincmar, for punishment and safe-keeping.
§ 121. Gottschalk and Hincmar.
Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, a most influential, proud and intolerant prelate, was ill-disposed towards Gottschalk, because he had been somewhat irregularly (though not invalidly) ordained to the priesthood by a rural bishop (chorepiscopus), Rigbold of Rheims, without the knowledge of his own bishop of Soissons, and gone on travels without permission of his abbot.680 He treated the poor monk without mercy. Gottschalk was summoned before a synod of Chiersy (in palatio Carisiaco)681 in the spring of 849. He refused to recant, and was condemned as an incorrigible heretic, deposed from the priesthood, publicly scourged for obstinacy, according to the rule of St. Benedict, compelled to burn his books, and shut up in the prison of a convent in the province of Rheims.682 According to the report of eye-witnessses, he was scourged "most atrociously" and "nearly to death," until half dead he threw his book, which contained the proofs of his doctrine from the Scriptures and the fathers, into the fire. It is a relief to learn that St. Remigius, archbishop of Lyons, expressed his horror at the "unheard of impiety and cruelty" of this treatment of the miserabilis monachus, as Gottschalk is often called by his friends.
In his lonely prison at Hautvilliers, the condemned monk composed two confessions, a shorter and a longer one, in which he strongly re-asserted his doctrine of a double predestination. He appealed to Pope Nicolas, who seems to have had some sympathy with him, and demanded a reinvestigation, which, however, never took place. He also offered, in reliance on the grace of God, to undergo the fiery ordeal before the king, the bishops and monks, to step successively into four cauldrons of boiling water, oil, fat and pitch, and then to walk through a blazing pile; but nobody could be found to accept the challenge. Hincmar refused to grant him in his last sickness the communion and Christian burial) except on condition of full recantation.683 Gottschalk scorned the condition, died in his unshaken faith, and was buried in unconsecrated soil after an imprisonment of twenty years (868 or 869).
He had the courage of his convictions. His ruling idea of the unchangeableness of God reflected itself in his inflexible conduct. His enemies charged him with vanity, obstinacy, and strange delusions. Jesuits (Sirmond, Peteau, Cellot) condemn him and his doctrine; while Calvinists and Jansenists (Ussher, Hottinger, Mauguin) vindicate him as a martyr to the truth.
§ 122. The Contending Theories on Predestination, and the Victory of Semi-Augustinianism.
During the imprisonment of Gottschalk a lively controversy, was carried on concerning the point in dispute, which is very creditable to the learning of that age, but after all did not lead to a clear and satisfactory settlement. The main question was whether divine predestination or foreordination which all admitted as a necessary element of the Divine perfection, was absolute or relative; in other words, whether it embraced all men and all acts, good and bad, or only those who are saved, and such acts as God approves and rewards. This question necessarily involved also the problem of the freedom of the human will, and the extent of the plan of redemption. The absolute predestinarians denied, the relative predestinarians affirmed, the freedom of will and the universal import of Christ’s atoning death.
The doctrine of absolute predestination was defended, in substantial agreement with Gottschalk, though with more moderation and caution, by Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, Ratramnus, monk of Corbie, Servatus Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, and Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, and confirmed by the Synod of Valence, 855, and also at Langres in 859.
The doctrine of free will and a conditional predestination was advocated, in opposition to Gottschalk, by Archbishop Rabanus Maurus of Mainz, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, and Bishop Pardulus of Laon, and confirmed at a synod of Chiersy, 853, and in part again at Savonnières, near Toul, in 859.
A third theory was set forth by John Scotus Erigena, intended against Gottschalk, but was in fact still more against the orthodox view, and disowned by both parties.
I. The doctrine of an Absolute and Two-Fold Predestination.
Gottschalk professed to follow simply the great Augustin. This is true; but he gave undue disproportion to the tenet of predestination, and made it a fundamental theological principle, inseparable from the immutability of God; while with Augustin it was only a logical inference from his anthropological premises. He began where Augustin ended. To employ a later (Calvinistic) terminology, he was a supralapsarian rather than an infralapsarian. He held a two-fold predestination of the elect to salvation, and of the reprobate to perdition; not in the sense of two separate predestinations, but one predestination with two sides (gemina, i.e. bipartita), a positive side (election) and a negative side (reprobation). He could not conceive of the one without the other; but he did not teach a predestination of the sinner to sin, which would make God the author of sin. In this respect he was misrepresented by Rabanus Maurus.684 In his shorter Confession from his prison, he says: "I believe and confess that God foreknew and foreordained the holy angels and elect men to unmerited eternal life, but that he equally (pariter) foreordained the devil with his host and with all reprobate men, on account of their foreseen future evil deeds, by a just judgment, to merited eternal death." He appeals to passages of the Scriptures, to Augustin, Fulgentius, and Isidor, who taught the very same thing except the pariter. In the larger Confession, which is in the form of a prayer, he substitutes for equally the milder term almost or nearly (propemodum), and denies that God predestinated the reprobates to sin. "Those, O God," he says, "of whom thou didst foreknow that they would persist by their own misery in their damnable sins, thou didst, as a righteous judge, predestinate to perdition." He spoke of two redemptions, one common to the elect and the reprobate, another proper and special for the elect only. In similar manner the Calvinists, in their controversy, with the Arminians, maintained that Christ died efficiently only for the elect, although sufficiently for all men.
His predestinarian friends brought out the difference in God’s relation to the good and the evil more clearly. Thus Ratramnus says that God was the author (auctor) as well as the ruler (ordinator) of good thoughts and deeds, but only the ruler, not the author, of the bad. He foreordained the punishment of sin, not sin itself (poenam, not peccatum). He directs the course of sin, and overrules it for good. He used the evil counsel of Judas as a means to bring about the crucifixion and through it the redemption. Lupus says that God foreknew and permitted Adam’s fall, and foreordained its consequences, but not the fall itself. Magister Florus also speaks of a praedestinatio gemina, yet with the emphatic distinction, that God predestinated the elect both to good works and to salvation, but the reprobate only to punishment, not to sin. He was at first ill-informed of the teaching of Gottschalk, as if he had denied the meritum damnationis. Remigius censured the "temerity" and "untimely loquacity" of Gottschalk, but defended him against the inhuman treatment, and approved of all his propositions except the unqualified denial of freedom to do good after the fall, unless he meant by it that no one could use his freedom without the grace of God. He subjected the four chapters of Hincmar to a severe criticism. On the question whether God will have all men to be saved without or with restriction, and whether Christ died for all men or only for the elect, he himself held the particularistic view, but was willing to allow freedom of opinion, since the church had not decided that question, and the Bible admitted of different interpretations.685
The Synod of Valence, which met at the request of the Emperor Lothaire in 855, endorsed, in opposition to Hincmar and the four chapters of the Synod of Chiersy, the main positions of the Augustinian system as understood by Remigius, who presided.686 It affirms a two-fold predestination ("praedestinationem electorum ad vitam et praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem"), but with such qualifications and distinctions as seemed to be necessary to save the holiness of God and the moral responsibility of man. The Synod of Langres in the province of Lyons, convened by Charles the Bald in 859, repeated the doctrinal canons of Valence, but omitted the censure of the four chapters of Chiersy, which Charles the Bald had subscribed, and thus prepared the way for a compromise.
We may briefly state the system of the Augustinian school in the following propositions:
(1) All men are sinners, and justly condemned in consequence of Adam’s fall.
(2) Man in the natural state has no freedom of choice, but is a slave of sin. (This, however, was qualified by Remigius and the Synod of Valence in the direction of Semi-Pelagianism.)
(3) God out of free grace elected from eternity and unalterably a part of mankind to holiness and salvation, and is the author of all their good deeds; while he leaves the rest in his inscrutable counsel to their merited damnation.
(4) God has unalterably predestinated the impenitent and persistent sinner to everlasting punishment, but not to sin, which is the guilt of man and condemned by God.
(5) Christ died only for the elect.
Gottschalk is also charged by his opponents with slighting the church and the sacraments, and confining the effect of baptism and the eucharist to the elect. This would be consistent with his theory. He is said to have agreed with his friend Ratramnus in rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation. Augustin certainly did not teach transubstantiation, but he checked the logical tendency of Predestinarianism by the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the visible historical church as the mediatrix of salvation.687
II. The doctrine of a Conditional and Single Predestination.
Rabanus and Hincmar, who agreed in theology as well as in unchristian conduct towards Gottschalk, claimed to be Augustinians, but were at heart Semi-Pelagians, and struck a middle course, retaining the Augustinian premises, but avoiding the logical consequences. Foreknowledge (praescientia) is a necessary attribute of the omniscient mind of God, and differs from foreordination or predestination (praedestinatio), which is an attribute of his omnipotent will. The former may exist without the latter, but not the latter without the former. Foreknowledge is absolute, and embraces all things and all men, good and bad; foreordination is conditioned by foreknowledge, and refers only to what is good. God foreknew sin from eternity, but did not predestinate it; and so he foreknew the sinners, but did not predestinate them to sin or death; they are simply praesciti, not praedestinati. There is therefore no double predestination, but only one predestination which coincides with election to eternal life. The fall of Adam with its consequences falls under the idea of divine permission. God sincerely intends to save all men without distinction, and Christ shed his blood for all; if any are lost, they have to blame themselves.
Hincmar secured the confirmation of his views by the Synod of Chiersy, held in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, 853, It adopted four propositions:688
(1) God Almighty made man free from sin, endowed him with reason and the liberty of choice, and placed him in Paradise. Man, by the abuse of this liberty, sinned, and the whole race became a mass of perdition. Out of this massa perditionis God elected those whom he by grace predestinated unto life eternal; others he left by a just judgment in the mass of perdition, foreknowing that they would perish, but not foreordaining them to perdition, though he foreordained eternal punishment for them.689 This is Augustinian, but weakened in the last clause.
(2) We lost the freedom of will through the fall of the first man, and regained it again through Christ. This chapter, however, is so vaguely worded that it may be understood in a Semi-Pelagian as well as in an Augustinian sense.690
(3) God Almighty would have all men without exception to be saved, although not all are actually saved. Salvation is a free gift of grace; perdition is the desert of those who persist in sin.
(4) Jesus Christ died for all men past, present and future, though not all are redeemed by the mystery of his passion, owing to their unbelief.
The last two propositions are not Augustinian, but catholic, and are the connecting link between the catholic orthodoxy and the Semi-Pelagian heresy.
Hincmar defended these propositions against the objections of Remigius and the Synod of Valence, in two books on Predestination and Free Will (between 856 and 863). The first is lost, the second is preserved. It is very prolix and repetitious, and marks no real progress. He made several historical blunders, and quoted freely from the pseudo-Augustinian Hypomnesticon, which he thought presented Augustin’s later and better views.
The two parties came to a sort of agreement at the National Synod of France held at Toucy, near Toul, in October, 860, in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, King Lothaire II., and Charles of Provence, and the bishops of fourteen ecclesiastical provinces.691 Hincmar was the leading man, and composed the synodical letter. He still maintained his four propositions, but cleared himself of the suspicion of Semi-Pelagianism. The first part of the synodical letter, addressed to all the faithful, gives a summary of Christian doctrine, and asserts that nothing can happen in heaven and earth without the will or permission of God; that he would have all men to be saved and none lost; that he did not deprive man after the fall of free will, but heals and supports it by grace; that Christ died on the cross for all men; that in the end all the predestinated who are now scattered in the massa perditionis, will be gathered into the fulness of the eternal church in heaven.
Here ended the controversy. It was a defeat of predestinarianism in its rigorous form and a substantial victory of Semi-Augustinianism, which is almost identical with Semi-Pelagianism except that it gives greater prominence to divine grace.
Practically, even this difference disappeared. The mediaeval church needed the doctrine of free will and of universal call, as a basis for maintaining the moral responsibility, the guilt and merit of man, and as a support to the sacerdotal and sacramental mediation of salvation; while the strict predestinarian system, which unalterably determines the eternal fate of every soul by a pre-temporal or ante-mundane decree, seemed in its logical consequences to neutralize the appeal to the conscience of the sinner, to cut off the powerful inducement of merit and reward, to limit the efficacy of the sacraments to the elect, and to weaken the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
But while churchly and sacerdotal Semi-Augustinianism or covert Semi-Pelagianism triumphed in France, where Hincmar had the last word in the controversy, it was not oecumenically sanctioned. Pope Nicolas, who was dissatisfied with Hincmar on hierarchical grounds, had some sympathy with Gottschalk, and is reported to have approved the Augustinian canons of the Synods of Valence and Langres in regard to a "two-fold predestination" and the limitation of the atonement.692
Thus the door was left open within the Catholic church itself for a revival of strict Augustinianism, and this took place on a grand scale in the sixteenth century.
Notes.
The Gottschalk controversy was first made the subject of historical investigation and critical discussion in the seventeenth century, but was disturbed by the doctrinal antagonism between Jansenists (Jansen, Mauguin) and Jesuits (Sirmond, Cellot). The Calvinistic historians (Ussher, Hottinger) sided with Gottschalk and the Jansenists. The controversy has been more calmly and impartially considered by the Protestant historians of the nineteenth century, but with a slight difference as to the limits and the result of the controversy; some representing it merely as a conflict between a stricter and a milder type of Augustinianism (Neander, Kurtz), others as a conflict between Augustinianism and a revived and triumphant Semi-Pelagianism (Baur, Weizsäcker). The former view is more correct. Semi-Pelagianism was condemned by the Synod of Orange (Arausio), 529; again by the Synod of Valence in the same year, and by Pope Boniface II., 530, and has ever since figured in the Roman catalogue of heresies. The Catholic Church cannot sanction what she has once condemned.
Both parties in the contest of the ninth century (leaving the isolated Scotus Erigena out of view) appealed to Augustin as the highest patristic authority in the Latin church. Both agreed in the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology, i.e. in the doctrine of a universal fall in Adam, and a partial redemption through Christ; both maintained that some men are saved by free grace, that others are lost by their own guilt; and both confined the possibility of salvation to the present life and to the limits of the visible church (which leads logically to the horrible and incredible conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the human race, including all unbaptized infants, are eternally lost). But the Augustinian party went back to absolute predestination, as the ultima ratio of God’s difference of dealing with the saved and the lost, or the elect and the reprobate; while the Semi-Augustinian party sought the difference rather in the merits or demerits of men, and maintained along-side with a conditional predestination the universal benevolence of God and the universal offer of saving grace (which, however, is merely assumed, and not at all apparent in this present life). The Augustinian scheme is more theological and logical, the Semi-Augustinian more churchly and practical. Absolute predestinarianism starts from the almighty power of God, but is checked by the moral sense and kept within the limits of infralapsarianism, which exempts the holy God from any agency in the fall of the race, and fastens the guilt of sin upon man. Relative predestinarianism emphasizes the responsibility and salvability of all men, but recognizes also their perfect dependence upon divine grace for actual salvation. The solution of the problem must be found in the central idea of the holy love of God, which is the key-note of all his attributes and works.
The practical difference between the catholic Semi-Augustinianism and the heterodox Semi-Pelagianism is, as already remarked, very small. They are twin-sisters; they virtually ignore predestination, and lay the main stress on the efficacy of the sacramental system of the historical church, as the necessary agency for regeneration and salvation.
The Lutheran system, as developed in the Formula of Concord, is the evangelical counterpart of the Catholic Semi-Augustinianism. It retains also its sacramental feature (baptismal regeneration and the eucharistic presence), but cuts the root of human merit by the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Calvinism is a revival of Augustinianism, but without its sacramental and sacerdotal checks.
Arminianism, as developed in the Reformed church of Holland and among the Wesleyan Methodists, and held extensively in the Church of England, is an evangelical counterpart of Semi-Pelagianism, and differs from Lutheranism by teaching a conditional election and freedom of the will sufficient to accept as well as to reject the universal offer of saving grace.
§ 123. The Doctrine of Scotus Erigena.
A complete ed. of the works of Scotus Erigena by H. J. Floss, 1853, in Migne’s "P. L.," Tom. 122. The book De Praedestinatione in col. 355–440. Comp. the monographs on S. E. by Hjort (1823), Staudenmaier (1834), Taillandier (1843), Christlieb (1860, and his art. in Herzog2 XIII. 788 sqq.), Hermens (1861), Huber (1861); the respective sections in Schröckh, Neander, Baur (on the Trinity), Dorner (on Christology); and in the Histories of Philosophy by Ritter, Erdmann, and Ueberweg. Also Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 51–64 (a discussion of Erigena’s views on the relation of authority and reason).
At the request of Hincmar, who was very anxious to secure learned aid, but mistook his man, John Scotus Erigena wrote a book on Predestination (in 850), and dedicated it to Hincmar and his friend Pardulus, Bishop of Laon. This most remarkable of Scotch-Irishmen was a profound scholar and philosopher, but so far ahead of his age as to be a wonder and an enigma. He shone and disappeared like a brilliant meteor. We do not know whether he was murdered by his pupils in Malmsbury (if he ever was called to England), or died a natural death in France (which is more likely). He escaped the usual fate of heretics by the transcendental character of his speculations and by the protection of Charles the Bald, with whom he was on such familiar terms that he could answer his saucy question at the dinner-table: "What is the difference between a Scot and a sot?" with the quick-witted reply: "The table, your Majesty." His system of thought was an anachronism, and too remote from the spirit of his times to be properly understood and appreciated. He was a Christian Neo-Platonist, a forerunner of Scholasticism and Mysticism and in some respects of Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. With him church authority resolves itself into reason, theology into philosophy, and true philosophy is identical with true religion. Philosophy is, so to say, religion unveiled and raised from the cloudy region of popular belief to the clear ether of pure thought.693
From this alpine region of speculation he viewed the problem of predestination and free will. He paid due attention to the Scriptures and the fathers. He often quotes St. Augustin, and calls him, notwithstanding his dissent, "the most acute inquirer and asserter of truth."694 But where church authority contradicts reason, its language must be understood figuratively, and, if necessary, in the opposite sense.695 He charges Gottschalk with the heresy of denying both divine grace and human freedom, since he derived alike the crimes which lead to damnation, and the virtues which lead to eternal life, from a necessary and compulsory predestination. Strictly speaking, there is in God neither before nor after, neither past nor future;696 and hence neither fore-knowledge nor fore-ordination, except in an anthropopathic sense. He rejects a double predestination, because it would carry a contradiction into God. There is only one predestination, the predestination of the righteous, and this is identical with foreknowledge.697 For in God knowledge and will are inseparable, and constitute his very being. The distinction arises from the limitation of the human mind and from ignorance of Greek; for prooravw means both praevideo and praedestino. There is no such thing as predestination to sin and punishment; for sin is nothing real at all, but simply a negation, an abuse of free will;698 and punishment is simply the inner displeasure of the sinner at the failure of his bad aims. If several fathers call sinners praedestinati, they mean the reverse, as Christ called Judas amice instead of inimice, and as lucus is called a non lucendo. Sin lies outside of God, and does not exist for him at all; he does not even foreknow it, much less foreordain it; for knowing and being are identical with him.699 But God has ordered that sin punishes itself; he has established immutable laws, which the sinner cannot escape. Free will is the very essence of man, and was not lost by the fall; only the power and energy of will are impaired. But Erigena vindicates to man freedom in the same sense in which he vindicates it to God, and identifies it with moral necessity. His pantheistic principles lead him logically to universal restoration.700
This appears more clearly from his remarkable work, De Divisione Naturae, where he develops his system. The leading idea is the initial and final harmony of God and the universe, as unfolding itself under four aspects: 1) Natura creatrix non creata, i.e. God as the creative and uncreated beginning of all that exists; 2) Natura creatrix creata, i.e. the ideal world or the divine prototypes of all things; 3) Natura creata non creans, i.e. the created, but uncreative world of time and sense, as the reflex and actualization of the ideal world; 4) Natura nec creata nec creans, i.e. God as the end of all creation, which, after the defeat of all opposition, must return to him in an ajpokatavstasi" tw'n pavntwn. "The first and the last form," he says, "are one, and can be understood only of God, who is the beginning and the end of all things."
The tendency of this speculative and mystical pantheism of Erigena was checked by the practical influence of the Christian theism which entered into his education and personal experience, so that we may say with a historian who is always just and charitable: "We are unwilling to doubt, that he poured out many a devout and earnest prayer to a redeeming God for his inward illumination, and that he diligently sought for it in the sacred Scripture, though his conceptual apprehension of the divine Being seems to exclude such a relation of man to God, as prayer presupposes."701
Hincmar had reason to disown such a dangerous champion, and complained of the Scotch "porridge."702 John Scotus was violently assailed by Archbishop Wenilo of Sens, who denounced nineteen propositions of his book (which consists of nineteen chapters) as heretical, and by Bishop Prudentius, who increased the number to seventy-seven. He was charged with Pelagianism and Origenism, and censured for substituting philosophy for theology, and sophistical subtleties for sound arguments from Scripture and tradition. Remigius thought him insane. Florus Magister likewise wrote against him, and rejected as blasphemous the doctrine that sin and evil were nonentities, and therefore could not be the subjects of divine foreknowledge and foreordination. The Synod of Valence (855) rejected his nineteen syllogisms as absurdities, and his whole book as a "commentum diaboli potius quam argumentum fidei." His most important work, which gives his whole system, was also condemned by a provincial Synod of Sens, and afterwards by Pope Honorius III. in 1225, who characterized it as a book "teeming with the vermin of heretical depravity," and ordered all copies to be burned. But, fortunately, a few copies survived for the study of later ages.
§ 124. The Eucharistic Controversies. Literature.
The general Lit. on the history of the doctrine of the Eucharist, see in vol. I., § 55, p. 472, and II. 241.
Add the following Roman Catholic works on the general Subject: Card. Jo. de Lugo (d. 1660): Tractatus de venerabili Eucharistiae Sacramento, in Migne’s "Cursus Theol. Completus," XXIII. Card. Wiseman: Lectures on the Real Presence. Lond., 1836 and l842. Oswald: Die dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sacramenten der katholischen Kirche. Münster, 3rd ed., 1870, vol. I. 375–427.
On the Protestant side: T. K. Meier: Versuch einer Gesch. der Transsubstantiationslehre. Heilbronn, 1832. Ebrard: Das Dogma v. heil. Abendmahl und seine Gesch. Frankf. a. M., 1845 and ’46, 2 vols. Steitz: Arts. on Radbert, Ratramnus, and Transubstantiation in Herzog. Schaff: Transubstantiation in "Rel. Encycl." III. 2385.
Special Lit. on the eucharistic controversies in the ninth and eleventh centuries.
I. Controversy between Ratramnus and Paschasius Radbertus.
(1) Paschasius Radbertus: Liber de Corpore et Sanguine Domini, dedicated to Marinus, abbot of New Corbie, 831, second ed., 844, presented to Charles the Bald; first genuine ed. by Nic. Mameranus, Colon. 1550; best ed. by Martene and Durand in "Veter. Script. et Monum. amplissima Collectio," IX. 367.—Comm. in Matth. (26:26); Epistola ad Fridegardum, and treatise De Partu Virginis. See S. Pasch. Radb.: Opera omnia in Tom. 120 of Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," Par. 1852.
Haimo: Tract. de Corp. et Sang. Dom. (a fragment of a Com. on 1 Cor.), in D’Achery, "Spicil." I. 42, and in Migne, "P. L.," Tom. 118, col. 815–817. Hincmar: Ep. ad Carol. Calv. de cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, c. 9. In Migne, T. 125, col. 915 sqq.
(2) Ratramnus: De Corpore et Sanguine Domini liber ad Carolum Calvum Reg. Colon., 1532 (under the name of Bertram), often publ. by Reformed divines in the original and in translations (from 1532 to 1717 at Zürich, Geneva, London, Oxford, Amsterdam), and by Jac. Boileau, Par., 1712, with a vindication of the catholic orthodoxy of Ratramnus. See Ratramni Opera in Migne," P. L.," Tom. 121, col. 10–346.
Rabanus Maurus: Poenitentiale, cap. 33. Migne," P. L." Tom. 110, col. 492, 493. Walafrid Strabo: De Rebus Eccls., c. 16, 17. See extracts in Gieseler, II. 80–82.
(3) Discussions of historians: Natalis Alexander, H. Eccl. IX. and X., Dissert. X. and XIII. Neander, IV. 458–475, Germ. ed., or III. 495–501, Engl. transl., Bost. ed. Gieseler, II. 79–84, N. Y. ed. Baur: Vorlesungen über Dogmengesch. II. 161–175.
II. Controversy between Berengar and Lanfranc.
(1) LANFRANCUS: De Eucharistiae Sacramento contra Berengarium lib., Basil,. 1528, often publ., also in "Bibl. PP. Lugd.," XVIII. 763, and in Migne," Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 150 (1854), col. 407–442.
(2) Berengarius: De Sacra Coena adv. Lanfrancum liber posterior, first publ. by A. F. & F. Th. Vischer. Berol., 1834 (from the MS. in Wolfenbüttel, now in Göttingen. Comp. Lessing: Berengarius Turon. oder Ankündigung eines wichtigen Werkes desselben. Braunschweig, 1770). H. Sudendorf: Berengarius Turonensis oder eine Sammlung ihn betreffender Briefe. Hamburg and Gotha, 1850. Contains twenty-two new documents, and a full list of the older sources.
(3) Neander: III. 502–530 (E. Tr. Bost. ed.; or IV. 476–534 Germ. ed.). Gieseler: II. 163–173 (E. Tr. N. York ed.). Baur: II. 175–198. Hardwick: Middle Age, 169–173 (third ed. by Stubbs). Milman: III. 258 sqq. Robertson: II. 609 sqq. (small ed., IV. 351–367). Jacobi: Berengar, in Herzog2 II. 305–311. Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 91 sqq. Hefele: IV. 740 sqq. (ed. 1879).
§ 125. The Two Theories of the Lord’s Supper.
The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper became the subject of two controversies in the Western church, especially in France. The first took place in the middle of the ninth century between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus, the other in the middle of the eleventh century between Berengar and Lanfranc. In the second, Pope Hildebrand was implicated, as mediator between Berengar and the orthodox party.
In both cases the conflict was between a materialistic and a spiritualistic conception of the sacrament and its effect. The one was based on a literal, the other on a figurative interpretation of the words of institution, and of the mysterious discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John. The contending parties agreed in the belief that Christ is present in the eucharist as the bread of life to believers; but they differed widely in their conception of the mode of that presence: the one held that Christ was literally and corporeally present and communicated to all communicants through the mouth; the other, that he was spiritually present and spiritually communicated to believers through faith. The transubstantiationists (if we may coin this term) believed that the eucharistic body of Christ was identical with his historical body, and was miraculously created by the priestly consecration of the elements in every sacrifice of the mass; their opponents denied this identity, and regarded the eucharistic body as a symbolical exhibition of his real body once sacrificed on the cross and now glorified in heaven, yet present to the believer with its life-giving virtue and saving power.
We find both these views among the ancient fathers. The realistic and mystical view fell in more easily with the excessive supernaturalism and superstitious piety of the middle age, and triumphed at last both in the Greek and Latin churches; for there is no material difference between them on this dogma.703 The spiritual theory was backed by the all-powerful authority of St. Augustin in the West, and ably advocated by Ratramnus and Berengar, but had to give way to the prevailing belief in transubstantiation until, in the sixteenth century, the controversy was revived by the Reformers, and resulted in the establishment of three theories: 1) the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, re-asserted by the Council of Trent; 2) the Lutheran theory of the real presence in the elements, retaining their substance;704 and 3) the Reformed (Calvinistic) theory of a spiritual real or dynamic presence for believers. In the Roman church (and herein the Greek church fully agrees with her), the doctrine of transubstantiation is closely connected with the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, which forms the centre of worship.
It is humiliating to reflect that the, commemorative feast of Christ’s dying love, which should be the closest bond of union between believers, innocently gave rise to the most violent controversies. But the same was the case with the still more important doctrine of Christ’s Person. Fortunately, the spiritual benefit of the sacrament does not depend upon any particular human theory of the mode of Christ’s presence, who is ever ready to bless all who love him.
§ 126. The Theory of Paschasius Radbertus.
Paschasius Radbertus (from 800 to about 865), a learned, devout and superstitious monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie or Corvey in France705 is the first who clearly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation as then believed by many, and afterwards adopted by the Roman Catholic church. He wrote a book "on the Body and Blood of the Lord," composed for his disciple Placidus of New Corbie in the year 831, and afterwards reedited it in a more popular form, and dedicated it to the Emperor Charles the Bald, as a Christmas gift (844). He did not employ the term transubstantiation, which came not into use till two centuries later; but he taught the thing, namely, that "the substance of bread and wine is effectually changed (efficaciter interius commutatur) into the flesh and blood of Christ," so that after the priestly consecration there is "nothing else in the eucharist but the flesh and blood of Christ," although "the figure of bread and wine remain" to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. The change is brought about by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, who created the body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin without cohabitation, and who by the same almighty power creates from day to day, wherever the mass is celebrated, the same body and blood out of the substance of bread and wine. He emphasizes the identity of the eucharistic body with the body which was born of the Virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven; yet on the other hand he represents the sacramental eating and drinking as a spiritual process by faith.706 He therefore combines the sensuous and spiritual conceptions.707 He assumes that the soul of the believer communes with Christ, and that his body receives an imperishable principle of life which culminates at last in the resurrection. He thus understood, like several of the ancient fathers, the words of our Saviour: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54).
He supports his doctrine by the words of institution in their literal sense, and by the sixth chapter of John. He appealed also to marvellous stories of the visible appearances of the body and blood of Christ for the removal of doubts or the satisfaction of the pious desire of saints. The bread on the altar, he reports, was often seen in the shape of a lamb or a little child, and when the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel descended from heaven with a knife, slaughtered the lamb or the child, and let his blood run into a cup!708
Such stories were readily believed by the people, and helped to strengthen the doctrine of transubstantiation; as the stories of the appearances of departed souls from purgatory confirmed the belief in purgatory.
The book of Radbert created a great sensation in the West, which was not yet prepared to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation without a vigorous struggle. Radbert himself admits that some of his contemporaries believed only in a spiritual communion of the soul with Christ, and substituted the mere virtue of his body and blood for the real body and blood, i.e., as he thinks, the figure for the verity, the shadow for the substance.709
His opponents appealed chiefly to St. Augustin, who made a distinction between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between a false material and a true spiritual fruition of his body and blood. In a letter to the monk Frudegard, who quoted several passages of Augustin, Radbert tried to explain them in his sense. For no divine of the Latin church dared openly to contradict the authority of the great African teacher.
§ 127. The Theory of Ratramnus.
The chief opponent of transubstantiation was Ratramnus,710 a contemporary monk at Corbie, and a man of considerable literary reputation. He was the first to give the symbolical theory a scientific expression. At the request of King Charles the Bald he wrote a eucharistic tract against Radbert, his superior, but did not name him.711 He answered two questions, whether the consecrated elements are called body and blood of Christ after a sacramental manner (in mysterio), or in the literal sense; and whether the eucharistic body is identical with the historical body which died and rose again. He denied this identity which Radbert had strongly asserted; and herein lies the gist of the difference. He concluded that the elements remain in reality as well as for the sensual perception what they were before the consecration, and that they are the body and blood of Christ only in a spiritual sense to the faith of believers.712 He calls the consecrated bread and wine figures and pledges of the body and blood of Christ. They are visible tokens of the Lord’s death, that, remembering his passion, we may become partakers of its effect. He appealed to the discourse in the sixth chapter of John, as well as Radbert; but, like Augustin, his chief authority, he found the key to the whole chapter in John 6:63, which points from the letter to the spirit and from the carnal to the spiritual understanding.713 The souls of believers are nourished in the communion by the Word of God (the Logos), which dwells in the natural body of Christ, and which dwells after an invisible manner in the sacrament. Unbelievers cannot receive Christ, as they lack the spiritual organ. He refers to the analogy of baptism, which is justly called a fount of life. Viewed by the senses, it is simply a fluid element; but by the consecration of the priest the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit is added to it, so that what properly is corruptible water becomes figuratively or in mystery a healing virtue.714
It is consistent with this view that Ratramnus regarded the sacrifice of the mass not as an actual (though unbloody) repetition, but only as a commemorative celebration of Christ’s sacrifice whereby Christians are assured of their redemption. When we shall behold Christ face to face, we shall no longer need such instruments of remembrance.
John Scotus Erigena is also reported to have written a book against Radbert at the request of Charles the Bald. Hincmar of Rheims mentions among his errors this, that in the sacrament of the altar the true body and blood of Christ were not present, but only a memorial of them.715 The report may have arisen from a confusion, since the tract of Ratramnus was at a later period ascribed to Scotus Erigena.716 But he expresses his view incidentally in other writings from which it appears that he agreed with Ratramnus and regarded the eucharist only as a typical representation of a spiritual communion with Christ.717 In his book De Divisione Naturae, he teaches a mystic ubiquity of Christ’s glorified humanity or its elevation above the limitations of space. Neander infers from this that he held the eucharistic bread and wine to be simply symbols of the deified, omnipresent humanity of Christ which communicates itself, in a real manner, to believing soul.718 At all events the hypothesis of ubiquity excludes a miraculous change of the elements, and gives the real presence a christo-pantheistic aspect. The Lutheran divines used this hypothesis in a modified form (multipresence, or multivolipresence, dependent on the will of Christ) as a dogmatic support for their doctrine of the real presence.
Among the divines of the Carolingian age who held the Augustinian view and rejected that of Radbert, as an error, were Rabanus Maurus, Walafrid Strabo, Christian Druthmar, and Florus Magister. They recognized only a dynamic and spiritual, not a visible and corporeal presence, of the body of Christ, in the sacrament.719
On the other hand, the theory of Radbert was accepted by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, Bishop Haimo of Halberstadt, and other leading ecclesiastics. It became more and more popular during the dark post-Carolingian period. Bishop Ratherius of Verona (about 950), who, however, repelled all curious questions about the mode of the change, and even the learned and liberal-minded Gerbert (afterwards Pope Sylvester II., from 999 to 1003), defended the miraculous transformation of the eucharistic elements by the priestly consecration. It is characteristic of the grossly sensuous character of the theology of the tenth century that the chief point of dispute was the revolting and indecent question whether the consecrated elements pass from the communicant in the ordinary way of nature. The opponents of transubstantiation affirmed this, the advocates indignantly denied it, and fastened upon the former the new heretical name of "Stercorianists." Gerbert called stercorianism a diabolical blasphemy, and invented the theory that the eucharistic body and blood of Christ do not pass in noxios et superfluos humores, but are preserved in the flesh for the final resurrection.720
Radbertus was canonized, and his memory, is celebrated since 1073, on the 26th of April in the diocese of Soissons.721 The book of Ratramnus, under the supposed authorship of Scotus Erigena, was twice condemned in the Berengar controversy (1050 and 1059), and put in the Tridentine Index of prohibited books .722
Notes.
In connection with this subject is the subordinate controversy on the delicate question whether Christ, admitting his supernatural conception, was born in the natural way like other children, or miraculously (clauso utero). This question troubled the pious curiosity of some nuns of Vesona (?), and reached the convent of Corbie. Paschasius Radbertus, following the lead of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, defended the theory that the holy Virgin remained virgo in partu and post partum, and used in proof some poetic passages on the hortus conclusus and fons signatus in Cant. 4:12, and the porta clausa Domini in Ezek. 44:2. The whole incarnation is supernatural, and as the conception so the birth of Christ was miraculous. He was not subject to the laws of nature, and entered the world "sine dolore et sine gemitu et sine ulla corruptione carnis." See Radbert’s tract De Partu Virginis in his Opera, ed. Migne, col. 1365–1386.
Ratramnus, in his book De eo quod Christus ex Virgine natus est (in D’Achery, "Spicilegium," I., and in Migne, Tom. 121, col. 82–102), likewise taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, but assumed that Christ came into the world in the natural way ("naturaliter per aulam virgineam" or "per virginalis januam vulvae"). The conception in utero implies the birth ex utero. But he does not controvert or name Radbert, and uses the same Scripture passages for his view. He refers also to the analogy of Christ’s passing through the closed doors on the day of the resurrection. He quotes from Augustin, Jerome, Pope Gregory, and Bede in support of his view. He opposes only the monstrous opinion that Christ broke from the womb through some unknown channel ("monstruose de secreto ventris incerto tramite luminis in auras exisse, quod non est nasci, sed erumpi." Cap. 1, col. 83). Such an opinion, he thinks, leads to the docetic heresy, and to the conclusion that "nec vere natus Christus, nec vere genuit Maria."
§ 128. The Berengar Controversy.
While the doctrine of a corporeal presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist made steady progress in the public opinion of Western Christendom in close connection with the rising power of the priesthood, the doctrine of a spiritual presence and participation by faith was re-asserted by way of reaction in the middle of the eleventh century for a short period, but condemned by ecclesiastical authority. This condemnation decided the victory of transubstantiation.
Let us first review the external history of the controversy, which runs into the next period (till 1079).
Berengar (c. 1000–1088), a pupil of Fulbert of Chartres (d. 1029), was canon and director of the cathedral school in Tours, his native city, afterwards archdeacon of Angers, and highly esteemed as a man of rare learning and piety before his eucharistic views became known.723 He was an able dialectician and a popular teacher. He may be ranked among the forerunners of a Christian rationalism, who dared to criticize church authority and aimed to reconcile the claims of reason and faith.724 But he had not the courage of a martyr, and twice recanted from fear of death. Nor did he carry out his principle. He seems to have been in full accord with catholic orthodoxy except on the point of the sacrament. He was ascetic in his habits and shared the prevailing respect for monastic life, but saw clearly its danger. "The hermit," he says with as much beauty as truth, in an Exhortatory Discourse to hermits who had asked his advice, "is alone in his cell, but sin loiters about the door with enticing words and seeks admittance. I am thy beloved—says she—whom thou didst court in the world. I was with thee at the table, slept with thee on thy couch; without me, thou didst nothing. How darest thou think of forsaking me? I have followed thy every step; and dost thou expect to hide away from me in thy cell? I was with thee in the world, when thou didst eat flesh and drink wine; and shall be with thee in the wilderness, where thou livest only on bread and water. Purple and silk are not the only colors seen in hell,—the monk’s cowl is also to be found there. Thou hermit hast something of mine. The nature of the flesh, which thou wearest about thee, is my sister, begotten with me, brought up with me. So long as the flesh is flesh, so long shall I be in thy flesh. Dost thou subdue thy flesh by abstinence?—thou becomest proud; and lo! sin is there. Art thou overcome by the flesh, and dost thou yield to lust? sin is there. Perhaps thou hast none of the mere human sins, I mean such as proceed from sense; beware then of devilish sins. Pride is a sin which belongs in common to evil spirits and to hermits."725
By continued biblical and patristic studies Berengar came between the years 1040 and 1045 to the conclusion that the eucharistic doctrine of Paschasius Radbertus was a vulgar superstition contrary to the Scriptures, to the fathers, and to reason. He divulged his view among his many pupils in France and Germany, and created a great sensation. Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, to whose diocese he belonged, and Frollant, bishop of Senlis, took his part, but the majority was against him. Adelmann, his former fellow-student, then arch-deacon at Lüttich (Liège), afterwards bishop of Bresci, remonstrated with him in two letters of warning (1046 and 1048).
The controversy was fairly opened by Berengar himself in a letter to Lanfranc of Bec, his former fellow-student (1049). He respectfully, yet in a tone of intellectual superiority, perhaps with some feeling of jealousy of the rising fame of Bec, expressed his surprise that Lanfranc, as he had been informed by Ingelram of Chartres, should agree with Paschasius Radbertus and condemn John Scotus (confounded with Ratramnus) as heretical; this showed an ignorance of Scripture and involved a condemnation of Ambrose (?), Jerome, and Augustin, not to speak of others. The letter was sent to Rome, where Lanfranc then sojourned, and caused, with his co-operation, the first condemnation of Berengar by a Roman Synod held under Pope Leo IX. in April, 1050, and attended mostly by Italian bishops. At the same time he was summoned before another Synod which was held at Vercelli in September of the same year; and as he did not appear,726 he was condemned a second time without a hearing, and the book of Ratramnus on the eucharist was burned. "If we are still in the figure," asked one member indignantly (probably Peter Damiani), "when shall we have the thing?" A Synod of Paris in October, 1050 or 1051, is said to have confirmed this judgment and threatened Berengar and his friends with the severest punishment, even death; but it is uncertain whether such a Synod was held.727
After a short interval of silence, he was tried before a Synod of Tours in 1054 under Leo IX.,728 but escaped condemnation through the aid of Hildebrand who presided as papal representative, 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.729 At the same time he was invited by Hildebrand to accompany him to Rome 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 recantation which cuts off all spiritual interpretation and teaches a literal mastication of Christ’s body.730 Berengar was weak enough from fear of death to accept this confession on his knees, and to throw his books into the fire.731 "Human wickedness," 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 comfort in the pardon granted to Aaron and to St. Peter.
As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real conviction more boldly than ever. He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later.732 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.)733 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 VlI., summoned Berengar once more to Rome 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 February, 1079, required Berengar to sign a formula which affirmed the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape.734 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.735
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. Côme (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 at Rome which he drew up after his return.736 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.737 But since the discovery of the sources it is admitted also by Roman Catholics that, while he emphatically rejected transubstantiation, he held to a spiritual 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 defined 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 incurring himself the suspicion of heresy.738 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 conviction of his salvation, and excuses his conduct towards himself.
Berengar was a strange compound of moral courage and physical 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.
Notes. Hildebrand and Berengar.
Sudendorf’s Berengarius Turonensis (1850) is, next to the discovery and publication of Berengar’s De Sacra Coena (1834), the most important contribution to the literature on this chapter.739 Dr. Sudendorf does not enter into the eucharistic controversy, and refers to the account of Stäudlin and Neander as sufficient; but he gives 1) a complete chronological list of the Berengar literature, including all the notices by friends and foes (p. 7–68); 2) an account of Gaufried Martell, Count of Anjou, stepfather of the then-ruling Empress Agnes of Germany, and the most zealous and powerful protector of Berengar (p. 69–87); and 3) twenty-two letters bearing on Berengar, with notes (p. 88–233). These letters were here published for the first time from manuscripts of the royal library at Hanover, contained in a folio volume entitled: "Codex epistolaris Imperatorum, Regum, Pontificum, Episcoporum." They throw no new light on the eucharistic doctrine of Berengar; but three of them give us interesting information on his relation to Hildebrand.
1. A letter of Count Gaufried of Anjou (d. 1060) to Cardinal Hildebrand, written in March, 1059, shortly before the Lateran Synod (April, 1059), which condemned Berengar (p. 128 and 215). The Count calls here, with surprising boldness and confidence, on the mighty Cardinal to protect Berengar at the approaching Synod of Rome, under the impression that he thoroughly agreed with him, and had concealed his real opinion at Tours. He begins thus: "To the venerable son of the church of the Romans, H.[ildebrand]. Count Gauf. Bear thyself not unworthy of so great a mother. B.[erengar] has gone to Rome according to thy wishes and letters of invitation. Now is the time for thee to act with Christian magnanimity (nunc magnanimitate christiana tibi agendum est), lest Berengar have the same experience with thee as at Tours [1054], when thou camest to us as delegate of apostolic authority. He expected thy advent as that of an angel. Thou wast there to give life to souls that were dead, and to kill souls that should live .... Thou didst behave thyself like that person of whom it is written [John 19:38]: ’He was himself a disciple of Jesus, but secretly from fear of the Jews.’ Thou resemblest him who said [Luke 23:22]: ’I find no cause of death in him,’ but did not set him free because he feared Caesar. Thou hast even done less than Pilate, who called Jesus to him and was not ashamed to bear witness: I find no guilt in him .. . To thee applies the sentence of the gospel [Luke 9:26]: ’Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall I be ashamed before my heavenly Father.’ To thee applies the word of the Lord [Luke 11:52]: ’Woe unto you, for ye took away the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and hindered those that were entering.’... Now the opportune time has come. Thou hast Berengar present with the pope. If thou again keepest silence on the error of those fools, it is clear that thou formerly didst not from good reasons wait for the proper time, but from weakness and fear didst not dare to defend the cause of the innocent. Should it come to this, which God forbid, we would be wholly disappointed in our great hope placed on thee; but thou wouldst commit a monstrous injustice to thyself, yea even to God. By thee the Orient with all its perverseness would be introduced into the Occident; instead of illuminating our darkness, thou wouldest turn our light into darkness according to the best of thy ability. All those who excel in erudition and judge the case according to the Scriptures, bore testimony that Berengar has the right view according to the Scriptures .... That popular delusion [of transubstantiation] leads to pernicious heresy. The resurrection of the body, of which Paul says that the corruptible must put on the incorruptible, cannot stand, if we contend that the body of Christ is in a sensuous manner broken by the priest and torn with the teeth (sensualiter sacerdotum manibus frangi, dentibus atteri). Thou boastest of thy Rome that she was never conquered in faith and military glory. Thou wilt put to shame that glory, if, at this time when God has elevated thee above all others at the papal see, that false doctrine, that nursery of the most certain heresy, by thy dissimulation and silence should raise its head. Leave not thine honor to others, by retiring to the corner of disgraceful silence."
2. A letter of Berengar to Pope Gregory VII. from the year 1077, in which he addresses him as "pater optime," and assures him of his profound reverence and love (p. 182 and 230). He thanks him for a letter of protection he had written to his legate, Bishop Hugo of Die (afterwards Archbishop of Lyons), but begs him to excuse him for not attending a French council of his enemies, to which he had been summoned. He expresses the hope of a personal conference with the pope (opportunitatem vivendi praesentiam tuam et audiendi), and concludes with the request to continue his patronage. "Vel [i.e. Valeat] Christianitas tua, pater optime, longo parvitati meae tempore dignum sede apostolica patrocinium impensura." The result of this correspondence is unknown. Berengar’s hope of seeing and hearing the pope was fulfilled in 1078, when he was summoned to the Council in Rome; but the result, as we have seen, was his condemnation by the Council with the pope’s consent.
3. A letter of Berengar to Archbishop Joscelin of Bordeaux, written in a charitable Christian spirit after May 25, 1085, when Gregory VII. died (p. 196 and 231). It begins thus: "The unexpected death of our G. [regory] causes me no little disturbance (G. nostri me non parum mors inopinato [a] perturbat)." The nostri sounds rather too familiar in view of Gregory’s conduct in 1079, but must be understood of the personal sympathy shown him before and after in the last commendatory letters. B. then goes on to express confidence in the pope’s salvation, and forgives him his defection, which he strangely compares with the separation of Barnabas from Paul. "Sed, quantum mihi videor novisse hominem, de salute hominis certum constat, quicquid illi prejudicent, qui, secundum dominicam sententiam [Matt. 23:24], culicem culantes, camelum sorbent. In Christo lesu, inquit Apostolus [Gal. 6:15], neque circumcisio est aliquid, neque preputium, sed nova creatura. Quod illum fuisse, quantum illum noveram, de misericordia presumo divina. Discessit a Paulo Barnabas [Acts 15:39, 40], ut non cum illo secundum exteriorem commaneret hominem, nec minus tamen secundum interiorem hominem Barnabas in libro vitae permansit." In remembrance of Gregory’s conduct in forcing him at the Roman Council in 1079 to swear to a formula against his conviction, he asserts that the power of the keys which Christ gave to Peter (Matt. 16:19) is limited. The binding must not be arbitrary and unjust. The Lord speaks through the prophet to the priests (per prophetam ad prelatos): "I will curse your blessings (Mal. 2:2: maledicam benedictionibus vestris)." From this it follows necessarily that He also blesses their curses (Ex quo necessarium constat, quod etiam benedicat maledictionibus talium). Hence the Psalmist says (Ps. 109:28): "Let them curse, but bless thou." The blessed Augustin, in his book on the Words of the Lord, says: "Justice solves the bonds of injustice;" and the blessed Gregory [I.] says [Homil. XXVI.]: "He forfeits the power to bind and to loose, who uses it not for the benefit of his subjects, but according to his arbitrary will (ipsa hac ligandi atque solvendi potestate se privat, qui hanc non pro subditorum moribus, sed pro suae voluntatis motibus exercet)." Berengar thus turns the first Gregory against the seventh Gregory.
Hildebrand’s real opinion on the eucharistic presence can only be inferred from his conduct during the controversy. He sincerely protected Berengar against violence and persecution even after his final condemnation; but the public opinion of the church in 1059 and again in 1079 expressed itself so strongly in favor of a substantial or essential change of the eucharistic elements, that he was forced to yield. Personally, he favored a certain freedom of opinion on the mode of the change, provided only the change itself was admitted, as was expressly done by Berengar. Only a few days before the Council of 1078 the pope sought the opinion of the Virgin Mary through an esteemed monk, and received as an answer that nothing more should be held or required on the reaI presence than what was found in the Holy Scriptures, namely, that the bread after consecration was the true body of Christ. So Berengar reports; see Mansi, XIX. 766; Gieseler, II. 172; Neander, III. 519. (The charge of Ebrard that the pope acted hypocritically and treacherously towards B., is contradicted by facts).
The same view of a change of the elements in a manner inexplicable and therefore indefinable, is expressed in a fragment of a commentary on Matthew by a certain "Magister Hildebrand," published by Peter Allix (in Determinatio Ioannis praedicatoris de, modo existendi Corp. Christi in sacramento altaris. Lond., 1686)." In this fragment," says Neander, III. 511, "after an investigation of the different ways in which the conversio of the bread into the body of Christ may be conceived, the conclusion is arrived at, that nothing can be decided with certainty on this point; that the conversio therefore is the only essential part of the doctrine, namely, that bread and wine become body and blood of Christ, and that with regard to the way in which that conversion takes place, men should not seek to inquire. This coincides with the view which evidently lies at the basis of the cardinal’s proceedings. But whether the author was this Hildebrand, must ever remain a very doubtful question, since it is not probable, that if a man whose life constitutes an epoch in history wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, it should have been so entirely forgotten." Sudendorf, however (p. 186), ascribes the fragment to Pope Hildebrand.
§ 129. Berengar’s Theory of the Lord’s Supper.
The chief source is Berengar’s second book against Lanfranc, already quoted. His first book is lost with the exception of a few fragments in Lanfranc’s reply.
Berengar attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and used against it nearly every argument: it is not only above reason, but against reason and against the testimony of the senses; it involves a contradiction between subject and predicate, and between substance and its qualities, which are inseparable; it is inconsistent with the fact of Christ’s ascension and presence in heaven; it virtually assumes either a multiplication or an omnipresence of his body, which contradicts the necessary limitations of corporeality.740 There can be only one body of Christ, and only one sacrifice of Christ. The stories of the appearances of blood on the altar, be treated with scorn, from which some of his enemies inferred that he denied all miracles. He called the doctrine of transubstantiation an absurdity (ineptio) and an insane folly of the populace (vecordia vulgi).
To this notion of a corporeal or material presence on the altar, he opposed the idea of a spiritual or dynamic presence and participation. His positive view agrees essentially with that of Ratramnus; but he went beyond him, as Calvin went beyond Zwingli. He endeavors to save the spiritual reality without the carnal form. He distinguishes, with St. Augustin and Ratramnus, between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between the visible symbol or sacramentum and the thing symbolized or the res sacramenti. He maintains that we cannot literally eat and drink Christ’s body and blood, but that nevertheless we may have real spiritual Communion by faith with the flesh, that is, with the glorified humanity of Christ in heaven. His theory is substantially the same as that of Calvin.741 The salient points are these:
1) The elements remain in substance as well as in appearance, after the consecration, although they acquire a new significance. Hence the predicate in the words of institution must be taken figuratively, as in many other passages, where Christ is called the lion, the lamb, the door, the vine, the corner-stone, the rock, etc.742 The discourse in the sixth chapter of John is likewise figurative, and does not refer to the sacrament at all, but to the believing reception of Christ’s death.743
2) Nevertheless bread and wine are not empty, symbols, but in some sense the body and blood of Christ which they represent. They are converted by being consecrated; for whatever is consecrated is lifted to a higher sphere and transformed. They do not lose their substance after consecration; but they lose their emptiness, and become efficacious to the believer. So water in baptism remains water, but becomes the vehicle of regeneration. Wherever the sacramentum is, there is also the res sacramenti.
3) Christ is spiritually present and is spiritually received by faith. Without faith we can have no real communion with him, nor share in his benefits. "The true body of Christ," he says in a letter to Adelmann," is placed on the altar, but spiritually to the inner man and to those only who are members of Christ, for spiritual manducation. This the fathers teach openly, and distinguish between the body and blood of Christ and the sacramental signs of the body and blood. The pious receive both, the sacramental sign (sacramentum) visibly, the sacramental substance (rem sacramenti) invisibly; while the ungodly receive only the sacramental sign to their own judgment."
4) The communion in the Lord’s Supper is a communion with the whole undivided person of Christ, and not with flesh and blood as separate elements. As the whole body of Christ was sacrificed in death, so we receive the whole body in a spiritual manner; and as Christ’s body is now glorified in heaven, we must spiritually ascend to heaven."744
Here again is a strong point of contact with Calvin, who likewise taught such an elevation of the soul to heaven as a necessary condition of true communion with the life-giving power of Christ’s humanity. He meant, of course, no locomotion, but the sursum corda, which is necessary in every act of prayer. It is 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 obtained about that time in the Anglo-Saxon Church, if we are to judge from the Homilies of Aelfric, which enjoyed great authority and popularity.745
§ 130. Lanfranc and the Triumph of Transubstantiation.
The chief opponent of Berengar was his former friend, Lanfranc, a native of Pavia (b. 1005), prior of the Convent of Bet in Normandy (1045), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (1070–1089), and in both positions the predecessor of the more distinguished Anselm.746 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.747 He describes the change as a miraculous and incomprehensible change of the substance of bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ.748 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.749
Among the less distinguished writers on the Eucharist must be mentioned Adelmann, Durandus, and Guitmund, who defended 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."750
From this time on, transubstantiation may be regarded as a dogma of the Latin church. It was defended by the orthodox schoolmen, and oecumenically sanctioned under Pope Innocent III. in 1215.
With the triumph of transubstantiation is closely connected the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity, which gradually spread in the twelfth century,751 and the adoration of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, which dates from the eleventh century, was enjoined by Honorius III. in 1217, and gave rise to the Corpus Christi festival appointed by Urban IV., in 1264. The withdrawal of the cup had its origin partly in considerations of expediency, but chiefly in the superstitious solicitude to guard against profanation by spilling the blood of Christ. The schoolmen defended the practice by the doctrine that the whole Christ is present in either kind.752 It strengthened the power of the priesthood at the expense of the rights of the laity and in plain violation of the command of Christ: "Drink ye all of it" (Matt. 26:27).
The doctrine of transubstantiation is the most characteristic tenet of the Catholic Church of the middle age, and its modern successor, the Roman Church. It reflects a magical supernaturalism which puts the severest tax upon the intellect, and requires it to contradict the unanimous testimony of our senses of sight, touch and taste. It furnishes the doctrinal basis for the daily sacrifice of the mass and the power of the priesthood with its awful claim to create and to offer the very body and blood of the Saviour of the world. For if the self-same body of Christ which suffered on the cross, is truly present and eaten in the eucharist, it must also be the self-same sacrifice of Calvary which is repeated in the mass; and a true sacrifice requires a true priest, who offers it on the altar. Priest, sacrifice, and altar form an inseparable trio; a literal conception of one requires a literal conception of the other two, and a spiritual conception of one necessarily leads to a spiritual conception of all.
Notes.
A few additional remarks must conclude this subject, so that we need not return to it in the next volume.
1. The scholastic terms transsubstantiatio, transsubstantiare (in Greek metousivwsi", Engl. transubstantiation, Germ. Wesensverwand-lung), signify a change of one substance into another, and were introduced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The phrase substantialiter converti was used by the Roman Synod of 1079 (see p. 559). Transsubstantiatio occurs first in Peter Damiani (d. 1072) in his Expos. can. Missae (published by Angelo Mai in "Script. Vet. Nova Coll." VI. 215), and then in the sermons of Hildebert, archbishop of Tours (d. 1134); the verb transsubstantiare first in Stephanus, Bishop of Autun (1113–1129), Tract. de Sacr. Altaris, c. 14 ("panem, quem accepi, in corpus meum transsubstantiavi"), and then officially in the fourth Lateran Council, 1215. See Gieseler, II. ii. 434 sq. (fourth Germ. ed.). Similar terms, as mutatio, transmutatio, transformatio, conversio, transitio, had been in use before. The corresponding Greek noun metousivwsi" was formally accepted by the Oriental Church in the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogilas, 1643, and later documents, yet with the remark that the word is not to be taken as a definition of the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. See Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 382, 427, 431, 495, 497 sq. Similar expressions, such as metabolhv, metabavllein, metapoiei'n, had been employed by the Greek fathers, especially by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and John of Damascus. The last is the chief authority quoted in the Russian Catechism (see Schaff, l.c. II. 498).
All these terms attempt to explain the inexplicable and to rationalize the irrational—the contradiction between substance and accidents, between reality and appearance. Transubstantiation is devotion turned into rhetoric, and rhetoric turned into irrational logic.
2. The doctrine of transubstantiation was first strongly expressed in the confessions of two Roman Synods of 1059 and 1079, which Berengar was forced to accept against his conscience; see p. 557 and 559. It was oecumenically sanctioned for the whole Latin church by the fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III., a.d. 1215, in the creed of the Synod, cap. 1: "Corpus et sanguis [Christi] in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, TRANSSUBSTAN-TIATIS PANE IN CORPUS ET VINO IN SANGUINEM, POTESTATE DIVINA, ut ad perficiendum mysterium unitatis accipiamus ipsi de suo, quod accepit ipse de nostro. Et hoc utique sacramentum nemo potest conficere, nisi sacerdos, qui fuerit rite ordinatus secundum claves Ecclesiae, quas ipse concessit Apostolis et eorum successoribus lesus Christus."
The Council of Trent, in the thirteenth session, 1551, reaffirmed the doctrine against the Protestants in these words: "that, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord (conversionem fieri totius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis Christi Domini), and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is by the holy Catholic Church suitably and properly called Transubstantiation." The same synod sanctioned the adoration of the sacrament (i.e. Christ on the altar under the figure of the elements), and anathematizes those who deny this doctrine and practice. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 130–139.
3. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of scholastic divines, has given the clearest poetic expression to the dogma of transubstantiation in the following stanzas of his famous hymn, "Lauda Sion Salvatorem," for the Corpus Christi Festival:
"Dogma datur Christianis,
Quod in carnem transit panis,
Et vinum in sanguinem.
Quod non capis, quod non
Animosa firmat fides
Praeter rerum ordinem.
"Hear what holy Church
maintaineth,
That the bread its substance changeth
Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.
Doth it pass thy comprehending?
Faith, the law of sight transcending,
Leaps to things not understood.
"Sub diversis speciebus,
Signis tantum et non rebus,
Latent res eximiae.
Caro cibus, sanguis potus,
Manet tamen Christus totus,
Sub utraque specie.
Here, in outward signs, are
hidden
Priceless things, to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things, are all we see:
Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine:
Yet is Christ, in either sign,
All entire, confess’d to be.
"A sumente non concisus,
Non confractus, non divisus,
Integer accipitur.
Sumit unus, sumunt mille,
Quantum isti, tantum ille,
Nec sumitus consumitur.
They, too, who of Him partake,
Sever not, nor rend, nor break,
But entire, their Lord receive.
Whether one or thousands eat,
All receive the self-same meat,
Nor the less for others leave.
"Sumunt boni, sumunt mali,
Sorte tamen inaequali
Vitae vel interitus.
Mors est malis, vita bonis:
Vide, paris sumptionis
Quam sit dispar exitus."
Both the wicked and the good
Eat of this celestial Food;
But with ends how opposite!
Here ’tis life, and there tis death;
The same yet issuing to each
In a difference infinite."
See the Thes. Hymnol. of Daniel, II. 97–100, who calls St. Thomas "summus laudator venerabilis sacramenti," and quotes the interesting, but opposite judgments of Möhler and Luther. The translation is by Edward Caswall (Hymns and Poems, 2nd ed., 1873, and previously in Lyra Catholica, Lond., 1849, p. 238). The translation of the last two stanzas is not as felicitous as that of the other two. The following version preserves the double rhyme of the original:
"Eaten, but without incision,"
"Here alike the good and evil,
Broken, but without division,
High and low in social level,
Each the whole of Christ receives:
Take the Feast for woe or weal:
Thousands take what each is taking,
Wonder! from the self-same eating,
Each one breaks what all are breaking,
Good and bad their bliss are meeting
None a lessened body leaves.
Or their doom herein they seal."
4. The doctrine of transubstantiation has always been regarded by Protestants as one of the fundamental errors and grossest superstitions of Romanism. But we must not forget the underlying truth which gives tenacity to error. A doctrine cannot be wholly false, which has been believed for centuries not only by the Greek and Latin churches alike, but as regards the chief point, namely, the real presence of the very body and blood of Christ—also by the Lutheran and a considerable portion of the Anglican communions, and which still nourishes the piety of innumerable guests at the Lord’s table. The mysterious discourse of our Saviour in the synagogue of Capernaum after the miraculous feeding of the multitude, expresses the great truth which is materialized and carnalized in transubstantiation. Christ is in the deepest spiritual sense the bread of life from heaven which gives nourishment to believers, and in the holy communion we receive the actual benefit of his broken body and shed blood, which are truly present in their power; for his sacrifice, though offered but once, is of perpetual force to all who accept it in faith. The literal miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is spiritually carried on in the vital union of Christ and the believer, and culminates in the sacramental feast. Our Lord thus explains the symbolic significance of that miracle in the strongest language; but he expressly excludes the carnal, Capernaitic conception, and furnishes the key for the true understanding, in the sentence: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63).
* Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.
569 See ch. X. §§ 100-104.
570 "O God the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, have mercy upon us miserable sinners." No orthodox Greek or Russian Christian could join an Anglican in this prayer without treason to his church. It is to be understood, however, that some of the leading divines of the church of England condemn the insertion of the Filioque in the Creed. Dr. Neale (Introduction to the History of the Holy Eastern Church, vol. II. p. 1168) concludes that this insertion "in the inviolable Creed was an act utterly unjustifiable, and throws on the Roman church the chief guilt in the horrible schism of 1054. It was done in the teeth of the veto passed in the sixth session of the Council of Ephesus, in the fifth of Chalcedon, in the sixth collation of the second of Constantinople, and in the seventh of the third of Constantinople. It was done against the express command of a most holy Pope, himself a believer in the double Procession, who is now with God. No true union—experience has shown it—can take place—between the churches till the Filioque be omitted from the Creed, even if a truly oecumenical Synod should afterwards proclaim the truth of the doctrine." Bishop Pearson was of the same opinion as to the insertion, but approved of the Latin doctrine. He says (in his Exposition of the Creed, Art. VIII): "Now although the addition of the words to the formal Creed without the consent, and against the protestation of the Oriental Church, be not justifiable; yet that which was added, is nevertheless certainly a truth, and may be so used in that Creed by them who believe the same to be a truth; so long as they pretend it not to be a definition of that Council, but an addition or explication inserted, and condemn not those who, out of a greater respect to such synodical determinations, will admit of no such insertion, nor speak any other language than the Scriptures and their fathers spake."
571 John 15:26: o} Paravklhto" … to; pneu'ma th'" ajlhqeiva", o} para tou' Patro;" ejkporeuvetai(Vulg.: procedit). The verb ejkporeuvomai(med. ), procedo, may in itself describe either proceeding from a source, or proceeding on a mission; but in the former case ejk, out of, would be a more suitable preposition than parav, from the side of. Hence the Nicene Creed and the Greek fathers substitute ejkfor paravin stating their dogma. The parav, however, does not exclude the ejkand the Father is in any case the source of the Spirit. The question is only, whether he is the sole source, or jointly with the Son.
572 ejkpovreusi", a patristic noun, derived from the biblical and classical verb ejkporeuvomai, the Latin processio is from procedere.
573 Called by the Greeks ijdionor ijdiovth" by the Latins proprietas personalis or character hypostaticus. See vol. III. § 130.
574 ajgennhsiva, paternitas.
575 gennhsiva, gevnnhsi", generation filiatio.
576 John 15:26, Christ says of the Spirit: o}nejgw;pevmyw. Comp. 16:7; pevmywaujtovn, and 14:26: o}pevmyeioJPath;rejntw'/ ojnovmativmou.
577 ejkpemyi", missio
578 On the exegetical question, see the commentaries on John 15:26 and the parallel passages by Lange (Am. ed., p. 469), Luthardt, Meyer, Weiss (6th ed. of Meyer), Alford, Westcott, Godet. Lange says: "To the Father doubtless belongs the honor of being the first ajrchvfrom which the Son himself proceeds; but since the Holy Spirit is at the same time the Spirit of the Son, unto whom it is also given to have life in himself, the dia;tou'uiJou'(ejktou'patrov") of the Greek theology is not sufficient." Godet in loc.: " It is difficult (with Luthardt, Meyer, and most modems) to refer the words: who proceedeth from the Father, to the same fact as the former: whom I will send to you from the Father, as this would be mere tautology. Besides, the future pevmyw. I will send, refers to an historical fact to take place at an undefined period, while the present ejkporeuvetai, proceedeth, seems to refer to a permanent, divine, and therefore eternal relation. As the historic fact of the incarnation corresponds to the eternal generation of the Son, so the pentecostal effusion of the Holy Spirit to the eternal procession of the Spirit from God. The divine facts of revelation are based upon the Trinitarian relations, and are, so to speak, their reflections. (Les faits de la révélation reposent sur les relations trinitaires. Ils en sont comme les reflets.) As the incarnation of the Son is related to His eternal generation, so is the mission of the Holy Spirit to His procession with the divine essence.—The Latin Church, starting from the words,I will send, is not wrong in affirming the Filioque, nor the Greek church, starting from the words: from the Father, in maintaining per Filium, and the subordination. To harmonize these two views, we must place ourselves at the christological stand-point of St. John’s Gospel, according to which the homoousia and the subordination are both at the same time true (sont vrais simultanément)." Milligan and Moulton in loc. (in Schaff’s Revision Com. ): " The words ’which goeth forth from the Father,’ are not intended to express any metaphysical relation between the First and Third Persons of the Trinity, but to lead our thoughts back to the fact that, as it is the distinguishing characteristic of Jesus that He comes from the Father, so One of like Divine power and glory is now to take His place. The same words ’from the Father’ are again added to ’I will send,’ because the Father is the ultimate source from which the Spirit as well as the Son ’goes forth,’ and really the Giver of the Spirit through the Son who asks for Him (comp. 14:16). In the power of this Spirit, therefore, the connection of the disciples with the Father will, in the time to come, be not less close, and their strength from the Father not less efficacious, than it had been while Jesus was Himself beside them."
579 Kai; [pisteuvomen] eij" to; a{gion pneu'ma.
580 to; kuvrion [kai;] to; zwopoio;n, to; ejk tou' patro;": ejkporeuovmenon, k.t.l. See my Creeds of Christendom, vol. II, 57, 60.
581 The chief passages of Augustin on the double procession are quoted in vol. III. § 131. See on his whole doctrine of the Trinity, Theod. Gangauf, Des heil. Augustinus’ speculative Lehre von Gott dem dreieinigen (Augsb. 1866), and Langen, Die trinitarische Lehrdifferenz, etc. (Bonn, 1876). On the teaching of Leo. I. comp. Perthel, Leo der Grosse, p. 138 sqq.
582 Mansi, IX. 981: "Credimus et in Spiritum S., dominum et vivificatorem, ex Patre et Filio procedentem," etc. On the third Synodus Toletana see Hefele, III. 48 sqq.
583 The fourth Council of Toledo (633) likewise repeated the Creed with the Filioque, see Hefele III. 79. All the other Councils of Toledo (a.d. 638, 646, 655, 675, 681, 683, 684, 688, 694) begin with a confession of faith, several with the unaltered Nicene creed, others with enlarged forms.
584 Hefele, III. 432.
585 At a synod in Forumjulii (Friaul), at that time the seat of the bishops of AquileJas. Hefele, III. 718 sq.
586 Alcuin wrote a book De Processione S. Spiritus (Opera, ed. Migne, II. 63), and Theodulf another, at the request of Charlemagne (Migne, Tom. 105).
587 Ver. 23: "Spiritus Sanctus a Patre EtFilio: non factus, nec creatus, nec genitus: sed procedens." For this reason the Greek church never adopted the Athanasian Creed. Most Greek copies read only ajpotou'patrov", and omit et Filio."
588 It is uncertain whether the Synod also sanctioned the insertion of the Filioque in the creed. Pagi denies, Burterim, Hefele (III. 751), and Hergenröther (I. 698) affirm it. The Synod of Arles (813) likewise professed the double procession, Hefele, III. 757.
589 Mansi, XIV. 18; Baronius, ad arm. 809; Gieseler, II. 75 (Am. ed.); Hefele, III. 754; Hergenröther, Photius, I. 699 sqq. The fact of the silver tablets weighing nearly one hundred pounds, is related by Anastasius (in Vita Leonis III.), and by Photius (Epist. ad Patriarch. Aquilej.), and often appealed to by the Greek controversialists. The imperial commissioners urged that the belief in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son was necessary for salvation; but the pope replied that other things were necessary for salvation, and yet not mentioned in the creed. He also advised to omit the signing of the clause in the imperial chapel; all other churches in France would follow the example of omission, and thus the offence given would be most easily removed.
590 In his defence of the second council of Nicaea against the Libri Carolini, which had charged Tarasius with error. See Migne’s Opera Caroli M., II. 1249.
591 Pope John VIII., in a letter to Photius, condemned the Filioque; but this letter is disputed, and declared by Roman Catholic historians to be a Greek fabrication. See above, p. 315, and Hefele, IV. 482. It is not quite certain when the Roman church adopted the Filioque in her editions of the Nicene Creed. Some date it from Pope Nicolas, others from Pope Christophorus (903), still others from Sergius III. (904-911), but most writers from Benedict VIII. (1014-1015). See Hergenröther, Photius, I. 706.
592 In his Encyclical letter, 867, and in his Liber de Spiritus Sancti Mystagogia, written after 885, first edited by Hergenröther, Ratisbon, 1857. Also in Photii Opera, ed. Migne (Par., 1861), Tom. II. 722-742 and 279-391. Comp. Hergenröther’s Phoitius, vol. III., p. 154 sqq. The title mustagwgiva(=iJerologiva, qeologiva, sacra doctrina) promises a treatise on the whole doctrine of the third person of the Trinity, but it confines itself to the controverted doctrine of the procession. The book, says Hergenröther (III. 157), shows "great dialectical dexterity, rare acumen, and a multitude of various sophisms, and has been extensively copied by later champions of the schism." On the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, see § 70 this vol.
593 Liber adv. Graecos, in Acheri Spileg., and in Migne, "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 121, fol. 685-762. Insignificant.
594 Ratamni contra Graecorum opposita, Romanam ecclesiam infamantia, libri IV., in Acherii Spicil. , and in Migne, l.c., fol. 225-346. This book is much more important than that of Aeneas of Paris. See an extract in Hergenröther’s Photius, I. 675 sqq.
595 De Processione Spiritus Sancti.
596 He went in the name of Pope Paschalis II. to Constantinople, to defend the Latin doctrine before the court.
597 In his Dialogues with the Greeks when he was ambassador of Emperor Lothaire II. at the court of Constantinople.
598 Contra errores Graecorum, and in his Summa Theologiae.
599 Photius, I. p. 684-711.
600 Confessio Orth., Qu. 71 (Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 349 sq.): Didavskei [hJ ajnatolikh; ejkklhsiva] pw'" to; pneu'ma to; a}gion ejkporeuvetai ejk movnou tou' Patro;" , wJ" phgh'" kai; ajrch'" th'" quovthto". Then follow the proofs from John 15:26, and the Greek fathers. In the same question, the formula kaiJ ;ejkJ tou'J uiJou'J (Filioque) is rejected as a later adulteration. In the heat of the controversy, it was even stigmatized as a sin against the Holy Ghost. The Longer Russian Catechism, on the Eighth Article of the Nicene Creed (in Schaff’s Creeds, etc., II. 481), denies that the doctrine of the single procession admits of any change or supplement, for the following reasons: " First, because the Orthodox Church repeats the ver y words of Christ, and his words are doubtless the exact and perfect expression of the truth. Secondly, because the Second Ecumenical Council, whose chief object was to establish the true doctrine respecting the Holy Spirit, has without doubt sufficiently set forth the same in the Creed; and the Catholic Church has acknowledged this so decidedly that the third Oecumenical Council in its seventh canon forbade the composition of any new creed." Then the Catechism quotes the following passage from John of Damascus: " Of the Holy Ghost, we both say that He is from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father; while we nowise say that He is from the Son, but only call Him the Spirit of the Son." (Theol., lib. l.c. 11, v. 4.)
601 See the doctrine of John of Damascus, with extracts from his writings, stated by Hergenröther, Photius, I. 691 sq.; and in the proceedings of the Döllinger Conference (Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 553 sq. ). Dr. Langen (Old Cath. Prof. in Bonn), in his monograph on John of Damascus (Gotha, 1879, p. 283 sq. ), thus sums up the views of this great divine on the procession: 1) The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son. 2) He does not proceed from the Son, but from the Father through the Son. 3) He is the image of the Son, as the Son is the image of the Father. 4) He forms the mediation between the Father and the Son, and is through the Son connected with the Father.
602 Langen, l.c. p. 286: "So hat demnach die grosse Trennung zwischen Orient und Occident in diesem Lehrstücke die Folge gehabt, dass die, Auffassung des Damasceners, gleichsam in der Mitte stehend, von dem Patriarchen Tarasius amtlich approbirt und vom Papste Hadrian I. vertheidigt, weder im Orient noch im Occident zur Geltung kam. Dort galt sie als zu zweideutig und hier ward sie als unzureichend befunden."
603 Hilary of Poitiers is also quoted, as he uses the formula a Patre et Filio (Trinit. II. 29) as well as the other ex Patre per Filium. Tertullian, however, is rather on the Greek side: "Spiritum S. non aliunde puto quam a Patre per Filium." Adv. Prax. c. 4. So also Novatian, De Trinit.
604 See the theses of the Conference in the Proceedings published by Dr. Reusch, Bonn, 1875, p. 80 sqq., and in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, vol. II. 552 sqq. Formerly Dr. Döllinger, when he was still in communion with Rome, gave the usual one-sided Latin view of the Filioque-controversy, and characterized Photius as a man "of unbounded ambition, not untouched by the corruption of the court, and well versed in all its arts of intrigue." Hist. of the Church, trans. by E. Cox, vol. III. 86. Comp. his remarks on the Council of Photius (879), quoted in § 70, p. 317.
605 The name Monotheletism is derived from movnonand qevlhma, will. The heresy, whether expressive of the teacher or the doctrine, always gives name to the controversy and the sect which adopts it. The champions of the heretical one-will doctrine are called (first by John of Damascus). Monoqelhtaiv, or Monoqelh'tai, Monotheletes, or Monothelites; the orthodox two-will doctrine is called Dyotheletism (from duvoqelhvmata), and its advocates Duoqelh'tai, Dyothelites. The corresponding doctrines as to one nature or two natures of the Redeemer are termed Monophysitism and Dyophysitism.
606 This benefit, however, was lost by the idea of the impersonality (anhypostasia) of the human nature of Christ, taught by John of Damascus in his standard exposition of the orthodox Christology. His object was to exclude the idea of a double personality. But it is impossible to separate reason and will from personality, or to assert the impersonality of Christ’s humanity without running into docetism. The most which can be admitted is the Enhypostasia, i.e. the incorporation or inclusion of the human nature of Jesus in the one divine personality of the Logos. The church has never officially committed itself to the doctrine of the impersonality.
607 Actio XVIII., in Mansi, XI. 637; Gieseler, I. 540 note 15; Hefele, III. 284 sq.
608 duvoJ fusika;"J qelhvsei"J h]toi qelhvmataJ ejnJ aujtw/\ , kaiJ duvoJ fusika;"J ejnergeiva"J ajdiairevtw", ajtrevptw", ajmerivstw", ajsugcuvtw"… khruvttomen(duas naturales voluntates et duas naturales operationes indivise, inconvertibiliter, inseparabiliter, inconfuse … praedicamus).
609 Comp. the following passage from the letter of Pope Agatho to the emperor who called the Council, which evidently suggested the framing of the decision (Mansi, XI. 239; Gieseler, I. 540; Hefele, III. 255): "Cum duas autem naturas duasque, naturales voluntates, et duas naturales operationes confitemur in uno Domino nostro J. Ch., non contrarias eas, nec adversas ad alterutrum dicimus (sicut a via veritatis errantes apostolicam traditionem accusant, absit haec impietas a fidelium cordibus), nec tanquam separatas in duabus personis vel subsistentiis, sed duas dicimus unum eundemque Dominum nostrum J. Ch., sicut naturas, ita et naturales in se voluntates et operationes habere, divinam scilicet a humanam: divinam quidem voluntatem et operationem habere ex aeterno cum coëssentiali Patre, communem; humanam temporaliter ex nobis cum nostra natura susceptam." Agatho quotes Scripture passages and testimonies of the fathers, but does not define the mode in which the two wills cooperate.
610 In Egypt the Monophysitic or national Coptic church numbered between five and six millions, the orthodox and imperial party only three hundred thousand heads. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandr. Jacob. (Par., 1713), p 163 sq., as quoted by Hefele, III. 130.
611 The phrase was borrowed from the mystic writings of Dionysius Areopagita (Epist. IV. ad Cajum). Maximus, who was an admirer of Pseudo-Dionysius, gave this passage and a similar one from Cyril Of Alexandria a different meaning. See Hefele, III. 129.
612 See the nine chapters of Cyrus in Mansi, XI. 563, and Hefele, III. 138.
613 It is preserved in the acts of the sixth oecumenical council. See Mansi, XV. 461-508; and Hefele, III. 159-166.
614 Mansi, X. 991 sq.; Hefele, III. 179 sq.
615 The disputation is printed in the Opera of Maximus, ed. Combefis, II. 159 sqq., and Migne, I. 287 sqq. Compare Walch, IX. 203 sqq., and Hefele, III. 190-204. The report in Mansi, X. 709-760, is full of typographical errors (as Hefele says). Maximus dealt in nice metaphysical distinctions, as qevlhsi", bouvlhsi", ejnevrgeia, bouleutiko;nqevlhma, uJpostatikovn, ejxousiastikovn, proairetikovn, gnwmikovn, oijkonomikovn. Pyrrhus returned afterwards to the see of Constantinople and adopted the absurd theory of three wills in Christ, one personal anti two natural.
616 Also called tuvpo"peri;pivstew". In Mansi, X. 1029; Walch, IX. 167; Hefele, III. 210; also Gieseler, 1. 539, note 9. The Typos was composed by Paul, the second successor of Sergius, who had written the Ekthesis.
617 See the acts in Mansi, X., and Hefele, III. 212-230.
618 Trouvllonor Trouvllion, Trullum, Trulla, Trullus, a technical term for buildings with a cupola. The Acts say that the sessions were held ejntw'/ sekrevtw/ tou'qeivoupalativou, tw'/ ou{twlegomevnw/ Trouvllw/ , and Anastasius: "in basilica, quae Trullus appellatur, intra palatium."
619 Mansi, XI. 195-922. See a full account in Hefele, III. 252-313.
620 See above, § 110.
621 Comp. Creeds of Christendom, I. 163 and 187.
622 to;nJ kata; pavnta touvtoi" sunairevthn kai; suvndromon kai;bebaiwth;n th'" aiJrevsew".
623 "Honorium [anathematizamus] qui hanc apostolicam sedem non apostolicae traditionis doctrina lustraVit. sed profana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus est, et omnes qui in suo errore defuncti sunt." Mansi, XI. 731; Hefele, III. 289. See § 113.
624 o{qen kai; e}n qevlhma oJmologou'men tou' Kurivou jIh". Cr. —-unde et unam voluntatatem fatemur Domini nostri lesu Christi. Mansi, XI. 538 sqq.; Hefele, III. 146 sq.
625 Mansi, p. 579; Hefele, p. 166 sq.
626 The same view is taken by Neander, the fairest among Protestant, and by Döllinger, the most learned of modern Catholic, historians. Neander (III. 179, E. ed.; 1II. 360, Germ. ed.) says: "Honorius, in two letters, declared his entire concurrence (erklärte, sich ganz übereinstimmend) with the views of Sergius, and wrote also in the same terms to Cyrus and Sophronius. He too was afraid of logical determinations on such matters. It seemed to him altogether necessary to suppose but one will in Christ, as it was impossible to conceive, in him, any strife between the human and divine will such as by, reason, of sin exists in men." ["It seemed to him, as well as to Sergius, that a duplicity of will in one and the same subject could not subsist without opposition." From the foot-note.] "He approved, indeed, of the accommodation (oijkonomiva), whereby the patriarch Cyrus had brought about the re-union of the Monophysites with the Catholic Church. But as hitherto no public decision of the church had spoken of ’one mode of working,’ or of ’two modes of working’ of Christ, it seemed to him the safest course, that in future such expressions should be avoided, as the one might lead to Eutychianism, the other to Nestorianism. He reckoned this whole question among the unprofitable subtilties which endanger the interests of piety. Men should be content to hold fast to this, in accordance with the hitherto established doctrine of the church, that the self-same Christ works that which is divine and human in both his natures. Those other questions should be left to the grammarians in the schools. If the Holy Spirit operates in the faithful, as St. Paul says, in manifold ways how much more must this hold good of the Head himself!" Neander adds in a note: "Although the theory, of two modes of working" [which is the orthodox doctrine] "lies at the foundation of the very thing he here asserts, yet he carefully avoided expressing this." In the same sense, Dr. Döllinger, when still in communion with Rome, stated the doctrine of Honorius, and said (Fables of the Popes, p. 226, Am. ed.): "This doctrine of Honorius, so welcome to Sergius and the other favorers and supporters of Monotheletism, led to the two imperial edicts, the Ekthesis and the Typus."
627 Bellarmin, and Bishop Bartholus (Bartoli) of Feltre, who questioned also the integrity of the letters of Sergius to Honorius (in his Apol. pro Honorio I., 1750, as quoted by, Döllinger, p. 253, and Hefele, III. 142). Döllinger declares this to be "a lamentable expedient!’
628 So Perrone, Pennachi, Manning. These divines presume to know better than the infallible Pope Leo II., who ex cathedra denounced Honorius as a heretic.
629 So Pope John IV. (640-642), who apologized for his predecessor that he merely meant to reject the notion of two mutually opposing wills, as if Christ had a will tainted with sin (Mansi, X. 683). But nobody dreamed of ascribing a sinful will to Christ. Bishop Hefele and Cardinal Hergenröther resort substantially to the same apology; see notes at the end of this section.
630 Walch, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Dorner, Kurtz, etc. See note on p. 502.
631 Richer, Dupin, Bossuet, Döllinger.
632 Mansi, XI. 622, 635, 655, 666
633 Baronius (Ad ann. 633 and 681), and Pighius (Diatribe de Actis VI. et VII. concil.).
634 As a condemnation, not of the heresy of Honorius, but of his negligence in suppressing heresy by his counsel of silence (ob imprudentem silentii oeconomiam). So the Jesuit Garnier De Honorii et concilii VI. causa, in an appendix to his edition of the Liber diurnus Romanorum pontificum, quoted by Hefele (III. 175), who takes the trouble of refuting this view by, three arguments.
635 An error not in the dogmatic definition, but in facto dogmatico. It is argued that an oecumenical council as well as a pope may err in matter, de facto, though not de fide and de jure. This view was taken by Anastasius, the papal librarian, Cardinal Turrecremata, Bellarmin, Pallavicino, Melchior Canus, Jos. Sim. Assemani, and recently by Professor Pennachi. See Hefele, III. 174, note 4.
636 Or rather he told an untruth when be declared that all popes had done their duty with regard to false doctrine.
637 In this Confession the popes are required to anathematize "Sergium … una cum Honorio, qui pravis eorum assertionibus fomentum impendit." Lib. Diurn. cap. II. tit. 9, professio 2. The oath was probably prescribed by Gregory II. at the beginning of the eighth century.
638 Baronius rejects the letter of Leo II. as spurious, Bellarmin as corrupted. Bower (History of the Popes) remarks: "Nothing but the utmost despair could have suggested to the annalist (Baronius) so desperate a shift."
639 Suvnodo" penqevkth. The Greeks consider it simply as the continuation of the sixth oecumenical council, and call its canons kanovne" th'" e]kth" sunovdou. For this reason it was held in the same locality. The Latins opposed it from the start as a "Synodus erratica," or "Conciliabulum pseudosextum." But they sometimes erroneously ascribed its canons to the sixth council.
640 Concilium Trullanum in an emphatic sense. The sixth council was held in the same locality.
641 @Rinovtmhto" from rJi", nose, in allusion to his mutilation.
642 Gibbon (ch. 48) gives the following description of his character: "After the decease of his father the inheritance of the Roman world devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant law-giver was dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong; his understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride that his birth had given him the command of millions, of whom the smallest community would not have chosen him for their local magistrate. His favorite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the finances; the former corrected the emperor’s mother with a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their heads downward, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days of Commodus and Caracalla the cruelty of the Roman princes had most commonly been the effect of their fear; but Justinian, who possessed some vigor of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and braved the revenge of his subjects about ten years, till the measure was full of his crimes and of their patience."
643 This is related by Anastasius, Bede, and Paulus Diaconus. See Mansi, XII. 3, Baronius ad a. 692, and Hefele, III. 346.
644 Marwnei'tai.
645 Adoptiani, Adoptivi; in English Adoptianists or Adoptionists (from adoptio)
646 Filius proprius or verus.
647 Filius adoptivus or nuncupativus.
648 "Hic etiam Filius Dei natura est Filius, non adoptione."
649 So Baronius, Gfrörer, Baudissin; but Hefele (III. 649) objects to this for the reason that the Adoptionists very strongly asserted the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, which were so offensive to the Mohammedans.
650 So Neander and Jacobi; see his ed. of Neander’s Dogmengesch. II. 26 sqq. Jacobi tries to show a connection of Adoptionism with the writings of Theodor of Mopsueste. Gams (Kirchengesch. Spaniens, II. 2, p. 261 sqq.) conjectures that some Eastern Nestorians settled in Spain under Moslem rule, and suggested the Adoptionist theory. Hefele (III. 646) and Möller (Herzog2 I. 159) are inclined to the same view. Enhueber, Walch, and Bach hold that Elipandus was led to his view by opposition to Migetius, who made no distinction between the Logos and Christ, as if the second person of the Trinity had not existed before the incarnation.—The reports on Migetius are vague. Elipandus charged him with teaching three corporeal persons in the Trinity who became incarnate in David (the Father), in Jesus (the Son), and in Paul (the Holy Spirit). He probably fell into the error of the Priscillianists, which was confounded with Sabellianism (hence his name magister Salibanorum, which is a corruption for Sabellianorum). See on this mysterious phenomenon Henrique Florez, España sagrada, T. V. 543 sq., and Hefele, l.c. III. 629-635 and 657.
651 Urgelis, Urgela, Orgellis, in the Marca Hispanica. It formerly belonged to the metropolis of Tarracona, but since the middle of the eighth century, to the province of Narbonne.
652 He is still honored in Spain as San Biego, but Elipandus called him a disciple of Antichrist,"heretical, schismatical, ignorant, and devoted to carnal lusts, and the very opposite of what his name Beatus (Blessed) would suggest.
653 Hadrian is also reported to have written to Charlemagne, and called the Synod of Narbonne, 788; but the acts of this Synod (first published by Cattell, 1633) are rejected as spurious by Pagi, Walch, and Hefele (III. 662 sq. ).
654 See a full account in Hefele III. 678 sqq. He calls it the most splendid of all the synods of Charlemagne. It was held apostolica auctoritate, two delegates of Pope Hadrian being present. But Charlemagne himself presided. The number of members is not given in the sources, but Baronius and many others after him say 300.
655 Hard. IV. 929-934; Alcuin, Epp. 92, 176; and the Confessio Fidei Felicis in Mansi, XIII. 1035 sq.
656 See Walch, Hist. Adopt., p. 253; Gieseler, Church History, 4th Germ. ed vol. II., part I., p. 117, note 13 (E. tr. II. 78).
657 A strong passage was quoted in the letter of the Spanish bishops to Charlemagne from Isidore of Seville, who says (Etymolog., lib. II., c. 2; see Mignes ed. of Alcuin II. 1324): "Unigenitus vocatur secundum Divinitatis excellentiam, quia sine fratribus: Primogenitus secundum susceptionem hominis, in qua per adoptionem gratiae fratres habere dignatus est, de quibus esset primogenitus." From the Mozarabic liturgy they quoted seven passages. See Hefele III. 650 sqq.
658 In a passage of Hilary (De Trinit. II. 29), there is a dispute between two readings—"carnis humilitas Adoptatur," and "adoratur" (Alcuin)—although the former alone is consistent with the context, and "adoptatur" is used in a more general sense for assumitur (so Agobard). See Walch, Hist. Adopt. , p. 22 sqq., and Gieseler, II. 76, note 2.
659 See Neander, Kirchengeschichte, III. p. 318 sqq.; E. ed. III. 159 sqq.
660 Unigenitus, monogenhv", John 1: 14, 18.
661 Primogenitus, prwtovtoko" ejn polloi'" ajdelfoi'",, Rom. 8:29; Comp. Col. 1:15.
662 Alcuin, Contra Felicem, I. 12, and III. 1.
663 Dorner, II. 319.
664 Walch.
665 Neander.
666 l.c. II. 15.
667 l.c. V. 1.
668 "In una persona, duabus quoque naturis plenis atque perfectis." Alcuin, Opp. II. 567.
669 Alcuin, contra Felicem, lib. l.c. 11: "Sicut Nestoriana impietas in duas Christum dividit personas propter duas naturas; ita et vestra indocta temeritas in duos eum dividit filios, unum proprium, alterum adoptivum. Si vero Christus est proprius Filius Dei Patris et adoptivus, ergo est alter et alter," etc. Lib. IV. c. 5: "Nonne duo sunt, qui verus est Deus, et qui nuncupativus Deus? Nonne etiam et duo sunt, qui adoptivus est Filius, et ille, qui verus est Filius?"
670 Ibid. II. 12: "Nec in illa assumptione alius est Deus, alius homo, vel alius Filius Dei, et alius Filius Virginis; sed idem est Filius Dei, qui et Filius Virginis; ut sit unus Filius etiam proprius et perfectus in duabus naturis Dei et hominis." In the Confession which Felix had to sign in 799 when he abjured his error, it is said that the Son of God and the Son of man are one and the same true and proper Son of the Father, "non adoptione, non appellatione seu nuncupased in utraque natura unus Dei Patrus verus et proprius Dei Dei Filius."
671 There axe several persons of that name; the three best known are, 1) the subject of this chapter; 2) the writer of sequences mentioned in this volume, p. 433; 3) the prince of the Slavonic and Wendish tribes on the borders of Northern Germany, who died a martyr June 7, 1066. The meaning of Gottschalk is God’s servant. The German word Schalk, Knecht, has undergone the same change as the English word knave. Milman (IV. 184) calls our Gottschalk a "premature Luther" (who was also a Saxon), but gives no account of the controversy on "the dark subject of predestination." Schrörs (l.c. 96) likewise compares Gottschalk with Luther, but the difference is much greater than the resemblance.
672 See vol. III. 866 sqq. Neander says (Church Hist. III. 472): "The Augustinian doctrine of grace had finally gained a complete victory even over Semi-Pelagianism; but on the doctrine of predestination nothing had as yet been publicly determined." Gieseler (II. 84): "Strict Augustinianism had never been generally adopted even in the West. "
673 In the language of Gregory I.: "Bonum, quod agimus, et Dei est, et nostrum: Dei per praevenientem gratiam, nostrum per obsequentem liberam voluntatem. Si enim Dei non est, unde ei gratias in eteruum agimus? Rursum si nostrum non est, unde. nobis retribui praemia speramus?" Moral., Lib. XXXI. in Cap. 41 Job, in Migne’s ed. of Gregory’s Opera, II. 699.
674 Melanchthon, too, at first was so strongly impressed with the divine sovereignty that he traced the adultery of David and the treason of Judas to the eternal decree of God; but be afterwards changed his view in favor of synergism, which Luther never did.
675 By Walafrid Strabo his fellow-student at Fulda, who had a high opinion of his learning and piety, and wrote a poem entitled "Gotescalcho monacho qui et Fulgentius;" in Opera ed. Migne, Tom. II. ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 114, col. 1115-1117). Neander (III. 474, note) supposes that Gottschalk probably borrowed from Fulgentius the term praedestinatio duplex.
676 Epist, V. ad Notingum, De Praedestinatione, first published, together with a letter Ad Eberhardum comitem, by Sirmond, Paris, 1647; also in Rabani Mauri Opera, Tom. VI., ed. Migne ("Patr. Lat.," Tom. 112, col. 1530-1553). Hefele (IV. 134) complains that this edition has many inaccuracies and typographical errors.
677 Hefele (IV. 136) declares this to be inconsistent, because both sentences amount to the same thing and give a good orthodox sense. "In Wahrheit ist ja auch der Sünder praedestinirt ad mortem oder poenam, aber seine Praedestination ist keine absolute, wie die des electus, sondern sie ist bedingt durch die praevisa demerita."
678 Chiefly from the Hypomnesticon (Commonitorium, Memorandum), usually called Augustinian work against the called Hypognosticon (Subnotationes), a pseudo-Pelagians, which was freely quoted at that time as Augustinian by Scotus Erigena and Hincmar; while Remigius proved the spuriousness. It is printed in the tenth vol. of the Benedict. ed. of Augustin, and in Migne’s reprint, X. 1611-1664. See Feuerlein: Disquis. Hist. de libris Hypognosticon, an ab Hincmaro, in Augustana Confessione et alibi recte tribuantur divo Augustino. Altdorf, 1735.
679 The fragment of this confession is preserved by Hincmar, De Praedest., c.5 (Migne, 125, col. 89 sq. ): "Ego Gothescalcus credo et confiteor, profiteor et testificor ex Deo Patre, per Deum Filium, in Deo Spiritu Sancto, et affirmo atque approbo coram Deo et sanctis . ejus, quod gemina est praedestinatio, sive electorum ad requiem, sive reproborum ad mortem [so far quoted verbatim from Isidore of Seville, Sent. II. 6]: quia sicut Deus incommutabilis ante mundi constitutionem omnes electos suos incommutabiliter per gratuitam gratiam suam praedestinavit ad vitam aeternam, similter omnino omnes reprobos, quia in die judicii damnabuntur propter ipsorum mala merita, idem ipse incommutabilis Deus per justum judicium suum incommutabiliter praedestinavit ad mortem merito sempiternam."
680 Mauguin vindicates Gottschalk in both respects.
681 Carisiacum, Cressy or Crécy in Northern France, in the department of Somme, celebrated by the battle of 1346 between the English Edward III. and the French Philip VI.
682 Mansi, XIV. 921; Pertz, Monum. I. 443 sq.; Migne, Tom. 115, col. 1402; Hefele, IV. 142 sqq. Hefele doubts, with plausible reason, the concluding sentence of the synod, in which Gottschalk is condemned to everlasting silence.
683 Gottschalk had provoked him by his disregard of episcopal authority, and by the charge of Sabellianism for altering "trina Deitas," in a church hymn, into "summa Deitas." Hincmar charged him in turn with Arianism, but the word to which he had objected, retained its place in the Gallican service.
684 Rabanus makes Gottschalk teach a "praedestinatio Dei, sicut in bono, sic ita et in malo … quasi Deus eos [reprobos] fecisset ab initio incorrigibiles." But even Hincmar concedes (De Praed., c. 15, in Migne 125, col. 126) that the predestinarians of his day (moderni Praedestinatiani) taught only a predestination of the reprobates ad interitum, not ad peccatum. Cardinal Noris and Hefele (IV. 140) admit the perversion of Gottschalk’s words in malam partem by Rabanus. The same charge of making God the author of sin by predestinating and creating men for sin and damnation, has again and again been raised against supralapsarians and Calvinists generally, in spite of their express denial.
685 The particularists appealed to the passage Matt. 26:26, pro multis (peri;pollw'n, without the article), and understood it in the restricted sense as distinct from pro omnibus; while they arbitrarily restricted the omnes (panvte") in 1 Tim. 2:3 and similar passages.
686 See the canons of this Synod in Mansi, XV. I sqq., and Hefele, IV. 193-195.
687 Dr. Bach, a learned Roman Catholic historian, states this point thus (l.c., I. 230): "Der historische Christus und die Kirche, der sichtbare Leib Christi verflüchtigt sich schon bei Gottschalk zu einem leeren Abstraktum, sobald der concrete Boden der Erwählung nicht mehr die Kirche und ihre Sakramente, sondern ein lediglich fingirtes vorzeitliches Decret Gottes ist. Es taucht dann immer ein Surrogat der Phantasie, die s. g. unsichtbare Kirche auf, und diejenigen, welche die grossartige realistische Lehre des hl. Augustin von der Kirche und den Sakramenten zerstören, nennen sich vorzüglich Augustinianer, indem sie nicht wissen, dass die Lehre Augustins von der Praedestination auf dem concreten Boden der Christologie und Anthropologie steht und ohne diese zur gefährlichsten Häresie wird."
688 Capitula IV. Carisiacensia, in Hincmar, De Praed., c. 2; in Mansi, XIV. 920; Gieseler, II. 88; and Hefele, IV. 187.
689 "perituros praescivit, sed non ut perirent praedestinavit, poenam autem illis, quia justus est, praedestinavit aeternam."
690 "Libertatem arbitrii in primo homine perdidimus, quam per Christum Dominum nostrum recepimus: et habemus liberum arbitrium ad bonum, praeventum et adjutum gratia: et habemus liberum arbitrium ad malum, desertum gratia. Liberum autem habemus arbitrium, quia gratia liberatum, et gratia de corrupto sonatum."
691 Mansi, XV. 563; Hefele, IV. 215 sqq.
692 The decree of the pope is lost; but the fact rests on the authority of the well-informed Prudentius of Troyes in the Annales Bertiniani ad ann. 859 (Pertz, Mon. Germ., I. 453 sq.): "Nicolas, pontifex Romanus, de qratia Dei et libero arbitrio, de veritate Geminae praedestinationis et sanguine Christi, ut pro credentibus omnibus fusus sit, fideliter confirmat et catholice decernit." Hincmar doubted such a decision, and charged Prudentius with partiality (Ep. 24 addressed to Egilo, Bishop of Sens). The Jesuits labored hard to set it aside against the Jansenists and Calvinists, but without good reason. Weizsäcker (p. 574), Hardwick (p. 165), and Möller (in Herzog2 V. 327) accept the statement of Prudentius, and Weizsäcker says: "Hatte in Gallien die Hoftheologie des Königs den Semipeligianimus (?) durchgebracht, so hat doch der Papst für Augustin entschieden … Die Kirchengeschichte darf ganz unbedenklich in ihre Blätter diese Entscheidung des römischen Stuhls gegen den Semipelagianismus des neunten Jahrhunderts aufnehmen, die man seit Mauguin niemals hätte bezweifeln sollen." Neander and Gieseler are silent on this point.
693 So it was with Hegel. His pious widow told me that her husband often politely declined her request to accompany her to church, with the remark: "Mein liebes Kind, dos Denken ist auch Gottesdienst."
694 "De Praed., cap. 15, col. 413: "acutissimus veritatis et inquisitor et assertor."
695 katjajntivfrasin, e contrario.
696 De Praed., cap. 9 (in Migne, col. 392): "In Deo sicut nulla locorum sunt, ita nulla temporum intervalla." A profound thought, not fully considered by either party in the strife.
697 He thus sums up his discussion at the close (Migne, col. 438) "Cum omnibus orthodoxis fidelibus anathematizo eos, qui dicunt, duas praedestinationes esse, aut unum geminam, bipartitam, aut duplam. Si enim duae sunt, non est una divina substantia. Si gemina, non est individua. Si bipartita, non est simplex, sed partibus composita. Si dupla est, complicata est. Quod si prohibemur divinam unitatem dicere triplam, qua dementia audet haereticus eam asserere duplam? Tali igitur monstroso, venenoso, mortifero dogmate a cordibus nostris radicitus exploso, credamus, unam aeternam praedestinationem Dei Domini esse, et non nisi in his, quae sunt, ad ea vero, quae non sunt, nullo modo pertinere."
698 Negatio, privatio, defectus justitiae, absentia boni, corruptio boni. On the other hand, Scotus seems to regard sin as a necessary limitation of the creature. But this idea is inconsistent with the freedom of will, and runs into necessitarianism and pantheism. As sin is the defect of justice, so death is simply the defect of life, and pain the defect of bliss. See cap. 15 (col. 416).
699 God knows only what is, and sin has no real existence. "Sicut Dem mali auctor non est ita nec praescius mali, nec praedestinans est." Cap. 10 (col. 395). "Ratio pronunciare non dubitat, peccata eorumque supplicia nihil esse, ac per hoc nec praesciri nec praedestinari posse; quomodo enim vel praesciuntur, vel praedestinantur, quae non sunt?" Cap. 15. The same thought occurs in his work, De Divis. Nat. He refers to such passages of the Scriptures where it is said of God that he does not know the wicked.
700 The predestination theory of Scotus has some points of resemblance with that of Schleiermacher, who defended the Calvinistic particularism, but only as a preparatory stage to universal election and restoration.
701 Neander, III. 462. The same may be said still more confidently of Schleiermacher, who leaned with his head to pantheism, but lovingly clung with his heart to Christ as his Lord and Saviour. He keenly felt the speculative difficulty of confining the absolute being to the limitations of personality ("omnis definitio est negatio"), and yet sincerely prayed to a personal God. We cannot pray to an abstraction, but only to a personal being that is able to hear and to answer. Nor is personality necessarily a limitation. There may be an absolute personality as well as an absolute intelligence and an absolute will.
702 "Pultes Scotorum."
703 The Greek fathers do not, indeed, define the real presence as transubstantiatio or metousivwsi", but Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and John of Damascus use similar terms which imply a miraculous change of the elements.
704 The Lutheran theory, as formulated by the Formula of Concord, is usually and conveniently styled consubstantiation, in distinction from transubstantiation; but Lutheran divines disown the term, because they confine the real presence to the time and act of the sacramental fruition, and hence reject the adoration of the consecrated elements.
705 Corbie, Corvey, Corbeia (also called Corbeia aurea or vetus), was a famous Benedictine Convent in the diocese of Amiens, founded by King Clotar and his mother Rathilde in 664, in honor of Peter and Paul and the Protomartyr Stephen. It boasted of many distinguished men, as St. Ansgarius (the Apostle of the Danes), Radbert, Ratramnus, Druthmar. New Corbie (Nova Corbeia) was a colony of the former, founded in 822, near Höxter on the Weser in Germany, and became the centre for the christianization of the Saxons. Gallia Christiana, X., Wiegand, Gesch. v. Corvey, Höxter, 1819; Klippel, Corvey, in Herzog2 III. 365-370.
706 He denies the grossly Capernaitic conception ("Christum vorari fas dentibus non est") and the conversion of the body and blood of Christ into our flesh and blood. He confines the spiritual fruition to believers ("iste eucharistiae cibus non nisi filiorum Dei est"). The unworthy communicants, whom he compares to Judas, receive the sacramental "mystery" to their judgment, but not the "virtue of the mystery" to their benefit. He seems not to have clearly seen that his premises lead to the inevitable conclusion that all communicants alike receive the same substance of the body and blood of Christ, though with opposite effects. But Dr. Ebrard is certainly wrong when he claims Radbert rather for the Augustinian view, and denies that he was the author of the theory of transubstantiation. See his Dogma v. heil. Abendmahl I. 406, and his Christl. Kirchen- und Dogmengesch. II. 27 and 33.
707 See Steitz on Radbert, and also Reuter (I. 43), who says: "Die Radbertische Doctrin war das synkretistische Gebilde, in welchem die spiritualistische Lehre Augustin’s mit der uralten Anschauung von der realen Gegenwart des Leibes und dei Blutes Christi, aber in Analogie mit dem religiösen Materialismus der Periode combinirt wurde; die gegnerische Theorie der Protest gegen das Becht dieser Combination."
708 See several such examples in ch. 14 (Opera, ed. Migne, col. 1316 sqq. ).
709 He clearly contrasts the two theories, probably with reference to Ratramnus, in his comments on the words of institution, Matt. 26:26 (Expos. in Matt., ed. Migne, col. 890 sq.): "Neque itaque dixit cum fregit et dedit eis panem, ’hoc est, vel in hoc mysterio est virtus vel figura corporis mei,’ sed ait non ficte, ’Hoc est corpus meum.’ Ubi Lucas addidit, ’Quod pro vobis tradetur,’ vel sicut alii codices habent, ’datur.’ Sed et Joannes ex persona Domini, ’Panis,’ inquit, ’quem ego dabo caro mea est, non alia quam, pro mundi vita’ (Joan. VI. 52). Ac deinde, ’Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit sanguinem meum, in me manet et ego in illo’ (ver. 57). Unde miror quid velint uno quidam dicere, non in re esse veritatem carnis Christi vel sanguinis; sed in sacramento virtutem carnis et non carnem, virtutem sanguinis et non sanquinem; figuram et non veritatem, umbram et non corpus, cum hic species accipit veritatem et figuram, veterum hostiarum corpus. Unde veritas cum porrigeret discipulis panem, ’Hoc est corpus meum,’ et non aliud quam, ’quod pro vobis tradetur;’ et cum calicem, ’Hic est calix Novi Testamenti, qui pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.’ Necdum itaque erat fusus, et tamen ipse porrigetur in calice sanguis, qui fundendus erat. Erat quidem jam in calice, qui adhuc tamen fundendus erat in pretium; et ideo ipse idemque sanguis jam erat in calice. qui et in corpore sicut et corpus vel caro in pane. Erat autem integer Christus et corpus Christi coram oculis omnium positum; necnon et sanguis in corpore, sicut et adhuc hodie integerrimum est et manet, qui vere dabatur eis ad comedendum, et ad bidendum, in remissionem peccatorum, quam in Christo."
710 In the middle ages and during the Reformation he was known by a writing error under the name of Bertram.
711 De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, in Migne 121, col. 103-170, to which is added the Dissertation of Boileau, 171-222. The tract of Ratramnus, together with Bullinger’s tract on the same subject and the personal influence of Ridley, Peter Martyr, and Bucer, produced a change in Archbishop Cranmer, who was successively a believer in transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and a symbolic presence. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 601.
712 Cap. 88 (col. 164): "Quapropter corpus et sanguis, quod in ecclesia geritur, differt ab illo corpore et sanquine, quod in Christi corpore per resurrectionem jam glorificatum cognoscitur. Et hoc corpus pignus est et species, illud vero ipsa veritas."—"Videmus itaque multa differentia separari mysterium sanguinis et corporis Christi, quod nunc a fidelibus sumitur in ecclesia, et illud, quod natum est de Maria Virgine, quod passum, quod sepultum, quod resurrexit, quod ad caelos ascendit, quod ad dexteram Patris sedet." Cap. 89, col. 165.
713 Cap. 78-83 (col. 160-162).
714 Cap. 17 and 18 (col. 135 sq. ): "Consideremus sacri fontem baptismatis, qui fons vitae non immerito nuncupatur. … Si consideretur solummodo, quod corporeus aspicit sensus, elementum fluidum conspicitur … Sed accessit Sancti Spiritus per sacerdotis consecrationem virtus et efficax facta est non solum corpora, verum etiam animas diluere. … Igitur in proprietate humor corruptibilis, in mysterio vero virtus sanabilis.
715 De Praed., c. 31.
716 See Laufs, Ueber die für verloren gehaltene Schrift des Johannes Scotus Erigena von der Eucharistic, in the ’Studien und Kritiken" of Ullmann and Umbreit, 1828, p. 755 sqq. Laufs denies that Erigena wrote on the Eucharist.
717 In his newly discovered Expositions on the Celestial, and on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of St. Dionysius, and the fragments of a Com. on St. John. See Op. ed. Floss in Migne, 122 (col. 126-356); Christlieb, Scotus Er., p. 68-81, and in Herzog2 XIII. 790 sq., and Huber, Sc. Erig., p. 98 sqq.
718 Dr. Baur is of the same opinion (Dogmengesch. II. 173): "Scotus Erigena dachte sich (De Div. Nat. V. 38) eine Ubiquität der vergeistigten und vergöttlichten Natur, die die Annahme einer speciellen Gegenwart in den Elementen des Abendmahls nicht zuliess, sondern dieselben nur als Symbole zu nehmen gestattete. Brod und Wein konnten ihm daher nur als Symbolejener Ubiquität der verherrlichten menschlichen Natur gelten; er hat sich aber hierüber nicht näher erklärt."
719 "Corpus Christi esse non in specie visibili, sed in virtute spirituali," etc. See Baur, II. 166, 172, and the notes in Gieseler, II. 80 and 82.
720 De Corpore et Sanguini Domini, edited by Pez, in "Thes. nov. Anecd." I., Pars II. 133 sqq.
721 See the Acta Sanct Bolland. ad 26 Apr., with the Vita of Pasch. Radb. by Sirmond, and the Martyrol. Bened. with the Vita by Ménard.
722 Notwithstanding this prohibition, Mabillon, Natalis Alexander, and Boileau have defended the catholic orthodoxy of Ratramnus, with the apologetic aim to wrest from the Protestants a weighty authority of the ninth century. See Gieseler II. 82, and J. G. Müller in Wetzer and Welte (first ed. ) VIII. 170 sq.
723 During and after the eucharistic controversy he was charged with vanity, ambition, and using improper means, such as money and patronage, for the spread of his opinions. See Hefele, IV. 742. Card. Hergenröther (I. 707) calls Berengar oberflächlich, eitel, ehrgeizig, verwegen and neuerungsüchtig. Archbishop Trench (Lectures on Medieval Church History, p. 189 sq. ), dissenting from Coleridge’s charitable judgment, finds fault with Berengar’s "insolent tone of superiority" in addressing Lanfranc, and with a "passionate feebleness" and "want of personal dignity" in his whole conduct. He thinks his success would have been a calamity, since it would have involved the loss of the truth which was concealed under the doctrine of transubstantiation. "Superstition sometimes guards the truth which it distorts, caricatures, and in part conceals." Coleridge wrote a touching poem on Berengar’s recantation.
724 As an "Aufklärer," Berengar is one-sidedly represented by Reuter, l.c. Comp. also Baur, in his Kirchengesch. des Mittelalters, p. 66 sqq.
725 Neander III. 504. The Discourse is published in Martène and Durand, Thes. nov. Anecdotorum, Tom. I.
726 He was prevented by a violent act of King Henry I. of France, who committed him to prison and seized his property.
727 Berengar makes no mention of this Synod. Lessing, Gieseler and Baur (II. 178) doubt whether it was held. Neander, Sudendorf, Robertson and Hefele (IV. 753 sqq.) credit the report of Durandus, but correct his dates.
728 This seems to be the correct date, instead of 1055 under Victor II., according to Lanfranc’s account. The difference involves the veracity of Berengar, who assigns the Synod to the pontificate of Leo IX.; but it is safer to assume, with Leasing, Sudendorf (p. 45), and Hefele (IV. 778), that Lanfranc, after a lapse of ten or more years had forgotten the correct date.
729 "Panis atque vinum altaris post consecrationem sunt corpus Christi et sanguis." De S. Coena, p. 52. Berengar meant a real, though uncorporeal presence. He 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.
730 "Ego Berengarius, indignus diaconus ... anathematizo omnem haeresim, praecipue eam de qua hactenus infamatus sum, quae astruere conatur, panem et vinum, quae in altari ponuntur, post consecrationem solummodo sacramentum, et non verum et sanguinem Domini nostri I. Ch. esse nec posse sensualiter in solo sacramento [non solum sacramento, sed, in veritate] manibus sacerdotum tractari, vel frangi, aut fidelium dentibus atteri," etc. So Lanfranc reports the creed in De Corp. et Sang. Dom., c.2 (Migne, vol. 150, p. 410); comp. Berengar, De S. Coena, p. 68. Gieseler calls this creed "truly Capernaitic." Hergenröther (I. 703) admits that it sounds very hard, but may be defended by similar language of Chrysostom. Luther expressed his faith in the real presence almost as strongly when be instructed Melanchthon to insist, in his conference with Bucer, 1534, that Christ’s body was literally eaten and torn with the teeth ("gegessen und mit den Zähnen zerbissen"). See his letters to Jonas and Melanchthon in Briefe, ed. De Wette, Bd. IV. 569 and 572. But I doubt whether any Lutheran divine would endorse such language now.
731 Lanfranc charges him with downright perjury. But according to his own report, Berengar did not sign the formula, nor was he required to do so. De S. Coena, p. 25 sq.; comp. p. 59 sq.
732 Leo is "minime leo de tribu Iuda;" the pope is not a pontifex, but a pompifex and pulpifex, and the see of Rome not a sedes apostolica, but a sedes Satanae. De S. Coena, p. 34, 40, 42, 71. Lanfranc, c. 16. See Neander, III. 513, who refers to other testimony in Bibl. P. Lugd. XVIII. 836.
733 De Sacra Coena adversus Lanfrancum Liber posterior (290 pages). This book, after having been long lost, was discovered by Lessing in the Library of Wolfenbüttel (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 Neander. 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 Augustin, and abounds in passion, vituperation and repetition. The style is obscure and barbarous. The MS. is defective at the beginning and the close. Lessing traced it to the eleventh or twelfth century, Stäudlin to Berengar himself, the editors (p. 23), more correctly to a negligent copyist who had the original before him. Comp. Sudendorf, p. 47.
734 "Corde credo et ore confiteor, panem et vinum, quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium sacrae orationis et verba nostri Remptoris substantialiter converti in veram et propriam et vivifratricem carnem et sanguinem Jesu Christi Domini nostri, et post consecrationem esse verum Christi corpus, quod natum est de Virgine, et quod pro salute mundi oblatum in cruce pependit, et quod sedet ad dexteram Patris, et verum sanguinem Christi, qui de latere ejus effusus est, non tantum per signum et virtutem sacramenti, sed in proprietate naturae et veritate substantiae." Berengar was willing to admit a conversio panis, but salva sua substantia,i.e. non amittens quod erat, sed assumens quod non erat; in other words, conversion without annihilation. A mere sophistry. Substantialiter can mean nothing else but secundum substantiam. See the Acts of the Council in Mansi, XIX. 762.
735 D’Achery, Spicileg. III. 413. Mansi, XX. 621. Neander, III. 520. Sudendorf, 57.
736 See the Acta Concilii Romani sub Gregorio papa VII. in causa Berengarii ab ipso Berengario conscripta cum ipsius recantatione (after Febr., 1079), printed in Mansi, XIX. 761. Comp. Neander, III. 521, and Sudendorf, p. 58 sqq. Berengar 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 Mansi, XX. 527; Hefele, V. 142 sq.; Sudendorf, p. 196.
737 He was treated as a heretic not only by Roman Catholics, but also by Luther and several Lutheran historians, including Guericke.
738 His enemies of the party of Henry IV. charged him with skepticism or infidelity on account of his sympathy with Berengar. See the quotations in Gieseler, II. 172.
739 I obtained a copy by the kindness of Professor Thayer from the library of Harvard College, after hunting for one in vain in the libraries of New York, and the Niedner library in Andover (which has B.’s D. S. Coena, but not Sudendorf’s B. T.).
740 "Quod diversis in locis eodem momento sensualiter adsit corpus, corpus non esse constabit." De S. Coena, p. 199.
741 Baur very clearly puts the case (II. 190): "Die Lehre Berengar’s schliesst sich ganz an die des Ratramnus an, ist aber zugleich eine Fortbildung derselben. Wie Ratramnus sich eigentlich nur in der Sphäre des Verhältnisses von Bild und Sache bewegt, so sucht dagegen Berengar zu zeigen, dass ungeachtet keine andere Ansicht vom Abendmahl möglich sei, als die symbolische, dem Abendmahldoch seine volle Realität bleibe, dass, wenn man auch im Abendmahl den Leib und das Blut Christi nicht wirklich geniesse, doch auch so eine reelle Verbindung mit den Fleisch oder der in den Himmel erhöchten Menschheit Christi stattfinde. Es ist im Allgemeinen zwischen Ratramnus und Berengar ein analoges Verhältniss wie später zwischen Zwingli und Calvin." Comp. also the exposition of Neander, III. 521-526, and of Herzog, in his Kirchengesch. II. 112-114.
742 De S. Coena, p. 83. B. lays down the hermeneutic principle: "Ubicunque praedicatur non praedicabile, quia tropica locutio est, de non susceptibili, alter propositionis terminus tropice, alter proprie accipiatur." Zwingli used the same and other examples of figurative speech in his controversy with Luther. He found the figure in the verb (esti=significat), OEcolampadius in the predicate (corpus=figura corporis).
743 L.c., p. 165 and 236. He quotes Augustin in his favor, and refers to John 4:14 where Christ speaks of drinking the water of life and eating meat (4:32-34), in a spiritual sense.
744 P. 157. The believer receives "totam et integram Domini Dei sui carnem, non autem coelo devocatam, sed in coelo manentem," and he ascends to heaven "cordis ad videndum Deum mundati devotione spatiosissima."
745 Thus he says in the Homily on Easter day: "Great is the difference between the invisible might of the holy housel [sacrament] and the visible appearance 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. Robertson from Thorpe’s edition of Aelfric, II. 271. Thorpe identifies the author of these Anglo-Saxon Homilies with Aelfric, Archbishop of York, who lived till the beginning of the Berengar controversy (d. 1051), but the identity is disputed. See Hardwick, p. 174, and L. Stephen’s "Dict. of Nat. Biogr." I. 164 sqq.
746 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, History of the Norman Conquest, vols. III. and IV.; and R.C. Jenkins, Diocesan History of Canterbury (London, 1880), p. 78 sqq.
747 On the different editions and the date of the book (between 1063 and 1069), see Sudendorf p. 39 sqq.
748 De Corp. et Sang. Dom., c. 18 (in Migne, T. 150, col. 430): "Credimus terrenas substantias, quae in mensa Dominica per sacerdale mysterium divinitus sanctificantur, ineffabiliter, incomprehensibiliter, mirabiliter, operante superna potentia, converti in essentiam Dominici corporis, reservatis ipsarum rerum speciebus, et quibusdam aliis qualitatibus, ne percipientes cruda et cruenta horrerent, et ut credentes fidei praemia ampliora perciperent, ipso tamen Dominico corpore existente in coelestibus ad dexteram Patris, immortali, inviolato, integro, incontaminato, illaeso: ut vere dici posset, et ipsum corpus, quod de Virgine sumptum est, nos sumere, et tamen non ipsum.’’
749 Cap 20 (col. 436): "Est quidem et peccatori bus et indigne sumentibus vera Christi caro, verusque sanguis, sed essentia, non salubri efficentia."
750 Neander, III. 529 sq., from Guitmund’s De Corp. et Sang. Christi veritate in eucharistia. It was written about 1076, according to Sudendorf, p. 52 sqq.
751 In place of the older custom of administering the bread dipped in wine, especially to infants and sick persons. In the Greek church, where infant communion still prevails, both elements are delivered in a golden spoon; but the priest receives each element separately as in the Roman church.
752 Anselm was the first to teach "in utraque, specie totum Christum sumi." See J. J. de Lith, De Adoratione Panis consecrati, et Interdictione sacri Calicis in Eucharistia, 1753; Spittler, Gesch. des Kelchs im Abendmahl, 1780; Gieseler, I. 480 sqq., notes.
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