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Rh prayer then continues thus: “O God of truth, let thy holy Word settle upon this bread, that the bread may become body of the word, and on this cup, that the cup may become blood of the truth. And cause all who communicate to receive a drug of life for healing of every disease and empowering of all moral advance and virtue.” Here the bread and wine become by consecration tenements in which the Word is reincarnated, as he aforetime dwelled in flesh. They cease to be mere likenesses of the body and blood, and are changed into receptacles of divine power and intimacy, by swallowing which we are benefited in soul and body. Cyril of Jerusalem in his catechises 51 enunciates the same idea of  or transformation.

Gregory of Nyssa also about the same date (in Migne, Patrolog. Graeca, vol. 46, col. 581, oration on the Baptism) asserts a “transformation” or “transelementation” ( ) of the elements into centres of mystic force; and assimilates their consecration to that of the water of baptism, of the altar, of oil or chrism, of the priest. He compares it also to the change of Moses’ rod into a snake, of the Nile into blood, to the virtue inherent in Elijah’s mantle or in the wood of the cross or in the clay mixt of dust and the Lord’s spittle, or in Elisha’s relics which raised a corpse to life, or in the burning bush. All these, he says, “were parcels of matter destitute of life and feeling, but through miracles they became vehicles of the power of God absorbed or taken into themselves.” He thus views the consecration of the elements as akin to other consecrations; and, like priestly ordination, as involving “a metamorphosis for the better,” a phrase which later on became classical. John of Damascus (c. 750) believed the bread to be mysteriously changed into the Christ’s body, just as when eaten it is changed into any human body; and he argued that it is wrong to say, as Irenaeus had said, that the elements are mere antitypes after as before consecration. In the West, Augustine, like Eusebius and Theodoret, calls the elements signs or symbols of the body and blood signified in them; yet he argues that Christ “took and lifted up his own body in his hands when he took the bread.” At the same time he admits that “no one eats Christ’s flesh, unless he has first adored” (nisi prius adoraverit). But he qualifies this “Receptionist” position by declaring that Judas received the sacrament, as if the unworthiness of the recipient made no difference.

Out of this mist of contradictions scholastic thought strove to emerge by means of clear-cut definitions. The drawback for the dogmatist of such a view as Serapion broaches in his prayers was this, that although it explained how the Logos comes to be immanent in the elements, as a soul in its body, nevertheless it did not guarantee the presence in or rather substitution for the natural elements of Christ’s real body and blood. It only provided an  or surrogate body. In 830–850, Paschasius Radbert taught that after the priest has uttered the words of institution, nothing remains save the body and blood under the outward form of bread and wine; the substance is changed and the accidents alone remain. The elements are miraculously recreated as body and blood. This view harmonized with the docetic view which lurked in East and West, that the manhood of Jesus was but a likeness or semblance under which the God was concealed. So Marcion argued that Christ’s body was not really flesh and blood, or he could not have called it bread and wine. Paschasius shrank from the logical outcome of his view, namely, that Christ’s body or part of it is turned into human excrement, but Ratramnus, another monk of Corbey, in a book afterwards ascribed to Duns Scotus, drew this inference in order to discredit his antagonists, and not because he believed it himself. The elements, he said, remain physically what they were, but are spiritually raised as symbols to a higher power. Perhaps we may illustrate his position by saying that the elements undergo a change analogous to what takes place in iron, when by being brought into an electric field it becomes magnetic. The substance of the elements remain as well as their accidents, but like baptismal water they gain by consecration a hidden virtue benefiting soul and body. Ratramnus’s view thus resembled Serapion’s, after whom the elements furnish a new vehicle of the Spirit’s influence, a new body through which the Word operates, a fresh sojourning among us of the Word, though consecrated bread is in itself no more Christ’s natural body than are we who assimilate it. Other doctors of the 9th century, e.g. Hincmar of Reims and Haimo of Halberstadt, took the side of Paschasius, and affirmed that the substance of the bread and wine is changed, and that God leaves the colour, taste and other outward properties out of mercy to the worshippers, who would be overcome with dread if the underlying real flesh and blood were nakedly revealed to their gaze!

Berengar in the 11th century assailed this view, which was really that of transubstantiation, alleging that there is no substance in matter apart from the accidents, and that therefore Christ cannot be corporally present in the sacrament; because, if so, he must be spatially present, and there will be two material bodies in one space; moreover his body will be in thousands of places at once. Christ, he said, is present spiritually, so that the elements, while remaining what they were, unremoved and undestroyed, are advanced to be something better: omne cui a Deo benedicatur, non absumi, non auferri, non destrui, sed manere et in melius quam erat necessario provehi. This was the phrase of Gregory of Nyssa.

Berengar in a weak moment in 1059 was forced by the pope to recant and assert that “the true body and blood are not only a sacrament, but in truth touched and broken by the hands of the priests and pressed by the teeth of the faithful,” and this position remains in every Roman catechism. Such dilemmas as whether a mouse can devour the true body, and whether it is not involved in all the obscenities of human digestive processes, were ill met by this ruling. Each party dubbed the other stercoranists (dung-feasters), and the controversy was often marred by indecencies.

As in the 3rd century the Roman church decided in respect of baptism that the sacrament carries the church and not the church the sacrament, so in the dispute over the Eucharist it ended, in spite of more spiritual views essayed by Peter Lombard, by insisting on the more materialistic view at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, whose decree runs thus:—“The body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread and wine respectively being transubstantiated into body and blood by divine power, so that in order to the perfecting of the mystery of unity we may ourselves receive from his (body) what he himself receives from ours.” In 1264 Urban IV. instituted the Corpus Christi Feast by way of giving liturgical expression to this view.

Communion in One Kind.—Up to about 1100 laymen in the West received the communion in both kinds, and except in a few disciplinary cases the wine was not refused. In 1099, by a decree of Pope Paschal II., children might omit the wine and invalids the bread. The communion of the laity in the bread alone was enjoined by the council of Constance in 1415, and by the council of Trent in 1562. The reformed churches of the West went back to the older rule which Eastern churches had never forsaken.

Mass.—The term mass, which survives in Candlemas, Christmas, Michaelmas, is from the Latin missa, which was in the 3rd century a technical term for the dismissal of any lay meeting, e.g. of a law-court, and was adopted in that sense by the church as early as Ambrose (c. 350). The catechumens or unbaptized, together with the penitents, remained in church during the Litany, collect, three lections, two psalms and homily. The deacon then cried out: “Let the catechumens depart. Let all catechumens go out.” This was the missa of the catechumens. The rest of the rite was called missa fidelium, because only the initiated remained. Similarly the collect with which often the rite began is the prayer ad collectam, i.e. for the congregation met together or collected. The corresponding Greek word was synaxis.

After the catechumens were gone the priest said: “The Lord be with you, let us pray,” and the service of the mass followed.

In the West, says Duchesne (Origines, p. 179), not only