The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Religion
The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304
Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
nothing of the sacrifice, nothing except the visible form of the bread
and wine.
[Sidenote: Transubstantiation.]
But apart from these writers the trend of opinion and inclination told
entirely in favour of the materialistic school of thought. To the
ordinary folk the miraculous aspect of the doctrine was a positive
recommendation to acceptance. And the word Transubstantiation, even
though it did not necessarily imply a materialistic change,
undoubtedly became associated in men's minds with that idea. As early
as the middle of the ninth century Haimo of Halberstadt had said that
the substance of the bread and wine (that is, the nature of bread and
wine) is changed substantially into another substance (that is, into
flesh and blood). But the word "transubstantiate" is used first by
Stephen, Bishop of Autun (1113-29), who explains "This is My Body" as
"The bread which I have received I have transubstantiated into My
Body." Sanction was first given for the use of the word in the Lateran
Council of 1215. In the confession of faith drawn up by that Council
it is asserted that "there is one Universal Church of the Faithful,
outside of which no one at all has salvation: in which Jesus Himself
is at once priest and sacrifice, whose Body and Blood are truly
received in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and
wine, the bread being transubstantiated by the divine power into the
Body and the wine into the Blood, in order that for the accomplishment
of the mystery of the unity we may receive of His what He has received
of ours. And this as being a sacrament no one can perform except a
priest who shall have been duly ordained according to the Keys of the
Church, which Jesus Christ Himself granted to the Apostles and their
successors."
[Sidenote: Resulting Changes.]
This "mystery of the unity" became, on the one side, the subject of a
long and intricate controversy on the method by which the change in
the elements was effected, while on the other side it lent itself to
much mystical meditation. Of neither of these is there space to give
illustration; but the hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is familiar to
English readers under the form of "Now, my tongue, the mystery
telling," blends the two sides with astonishing success. It is a
mistake to describe the view of the sacrament thus sanctioned by the
Church as either more "advanced" or "higher" than the older view. It
was merely more elaborate, and as being such it led on to certain
definite results or changes in custom.
Thus, in the first place, hitherto children had partaken of the
sacrament. This had come partly from the teaching of the need of the
sacrament for salvation, partly from the early custom of administering
communion directly after baptism. The fear of profanation now caused
the gradual discontinuance of children's communions, and in the middle
of the thirteenth century they were definitely forbidden.
[Sidenote: Refusal of cup to laity.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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