BERENGARIUS OF TOURS

Author of Eucharistic heresy; b. Tours, c. 1000; d. Saint-Cosmas Island, near Tours, 1088. His writings initiated the first clear-cut heresy in the history of Eucharistic theology; they gave occasion to the Berengarian controversy, in which a series of opposing monographs clarified and substantially developed the Eucharistic doctrine (see eucharistic controversies).

Life and Work. Berengarius studied under fulbert at Chartres. He became scholasticus at St. Martin's school at Tours in 1031 and was appointed archdeacon of Angers in 1041. His Eucharistic teachings first came under ecclesiastical notice at a council held in Rome in 1050. There his doctrine was condemned, along with that of a 9th-century monk, ratramnus of corbie, though the council wrongly attributed the work of Ratramnus to john scotus erigena. Further condemnations took place at Vercelli (1050), Paris (1051), Rome (1059), and again at Rome (1079), where Berengarius signed a formula in which the words substantialiter converti appear for the first time in an ecclesiastical document (Dictionnaire de la Bible 355). He retired from public life and died at peace with the Church. Berengarius seems to have been a chaste and upright man, charitable to the poor; but the evidence of his writings points to intellectual pride.

Direct knowledge of the teachings of Berengarius is derived from four sources: some early correspondence; extracts surviving from a lost opusculum, written shortly after the Roman Council of 1059 and cited by lanfranc of bec in his own treatise, which is a reply to this lost opusculum; the lengthy De sacra coena, a polemic against Lanfranc; and finally a brief memorial of the events of 1078–79, written by Berengarius shortly after the Roman Council of 1079. Berengarius's major work, the De sacra coena, is an extremely rare work discovered in 1770 in a single extant MS. Considered entirely apart from the doctrine it presents, the De sacra coena is extremely lengthy and prolix, written in bad Latin without any semblance of order or consecutive development, lacking chapter headings and even paragraphs, and worst of all, made entirely tedious by the repetition of its themes.

Controversy. The three great works of anti-Berengarian controversy are the treatises of Lanfranc, guitmund of aversa, and alger of liÈge. Other writers contributed, but these three are traditionally cited. The controversy had its roots in the paschasius radbertus ratramnus controversy of the 9th century. There is no doubt that Berengarius based his Eucharistic theology on that of Ratramnus, although he thought Ratramnus's work to be that of John Scotus, while the adversaries of Berengarius followed Paschasius Radbertus. This is not to say that the views of Berengarius would necessarily have been accepted by Ratramnus. However, it is generally held that Berengarius and Ratramnus can be reconciled in substance, if not on every point.

Berengarius approached the Eucharistic mystery as a rationalist and dialectician, not as a believer. He had only contempt for the common belief, which he called the opinion of the mob. He cited the Fathers where it suited him in support of his views, but he emphatically proclaimed the "incomparable superiority" of reason over traditional authority. He rejected scornfully ("council of vanities, a hub-bub") the authority of the Church when it was brought to bear upon his teachings. Yet the "reason" upon which he built was an immature philosophical system, the dialectics of the prescholastic schools. Berengarius did not know metaphysics; yet his basic Eucharistic error was in the metaphysical order. He believed that the senses grasp not only the appearances of an object but also its essence, in a direct and immediate manner. Thus the distinction between substance and accident was lost on him, and he regarded as absurd a doctrine that held for a change of substance while the accidents remained.

Berengarius's inability to understand the traditional teaching of a Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in specie aliena led him to adopt a crude and materialistic interpretation of the doctrine of substantial conversion. Finally, he criticized the realist formulas with arguments that amounted to mere logic-chopping and playing with words. "If bread is called the Body of Christ," he said, "then bread must remain." But Berengarius had to take account of the realistic language of the Fathers, and thus he built up a positive theory of the Eucharist as mere sign and symbol. He held that through the Consecration a conversion occurs, not of the Eucharistic elements themselves, but of the sentiment of the believer with respect to them. The elements remain what they had been before, but they become the Body and Blood of Christ in the contemplation of the recipient, and are endowed for him with the value of Christ's passion and death. Thus the conversion is purely in the moral order, and the Eucharistic activity begins and ends within the consciousness of the believer himself.

The opponents of Berengarius clarified and organized the revealed teaching and carried it to a point of development considerably in advance of the Fathers and postpatristic writers. Most important, they brought to an end the series of prescholastic discussions of the veritas and the figura, by saying that there is in this Sacrament both the reality and the symbol: the reality, because Christ's Body is actually present; the symbol, because He is present under the sign of bread and wine. Thus the Holy Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ; but as a Sacrament, under the sacramental symbols, it is the sign of many things: of the Lord's Passion, of the union of the faithful with Christ, and of the unity of the Mystical Body, of the bond of love which should unite all who partake of the one spiritual bread.

Bibliography: alger, De sacramentis corporis et sanguinis dominici, Patrologia Latina, ed. j. p. migne, 180:739–854 (Paris 1878–90). Berengarii Turonensis de sacra coena adversus Lanfrancum liber posterior (Berlin 1834), ed. w. h. beekenkamp (The Hague 1941). m. cappuyns, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al., (Paris 1912–) 8:385–407. j. geiselmann, Die Eucharistielehre der Vorscholastik (Paderborn 1926). guitmund, De corporis et sanguinis Christi veritate, Patrologia Latina, ed. j. p. migne, 149: 1427–94. r. heurtevent, Durand de Troarn et les origines de l'hérésie bérengarienne (Paris 1912). lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini, Patrologia Latina, ed. j. p. migne, 150:407–442. a. j. macdonald, Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (New York 1930). e. martÈne and u. durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (Paris 1717) 4:103–109. c. e. sheedy, The Eucharistic Controversy of the Eleventh Century (Washington 1947). f. vernet, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., (Paris 1903–50) 2.1:722–742.

[c. e. sheedy]