EUCHARIST, one of the ancient titles of the central sacra mental rite of the Christian Church (Gr. eiAapcarai, "Thanks giving") . The term is probably to be regarded as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Berakhah, the Jewish "blessing" ad dressed to God at meals for and over the food and drink. It is in this sense that the term was originally used in connection with the common meal of the early Christian community, at which the "blessing" or "thanksgiving" had special reference to Jesus Christ. As early as the 2nd century it was applied also to the food and drink, the bread and wine, over which the blessing had been pronounced. Finally, it was used of the whole meal, and of the rite into which the meal developed.
Other names of the eucharist are : the Lord's Supper, so called from its particular reference to, and connection with, Jesus; Com munion, Gr. Kocvwvia and Holy Communion, from the fellowship with Jesus Christ and Christian believers, of which the observance was taken to be both the expression and the means ; Mass Lat. missy or missio, a work of no doctrinal significance, derived from the "dismissal" with which Christian services of worship con cluded (see LITURGY) and eventually used of any complete service, eucharistic or otherwise, its restriction to the eucharist dating from the close of the 4th century. In the Greek and Russian Churches the rite is known as The Divine Liturgy, Gr. s1 OEia Xetrovpyia as being pre-eminently the public service rendered to God by the Christian society. In the Syriac-speaking, Coptic and Armenian Churches it is designated by words meaning "oblation" or "present" (Syr. Qurbana; Copt. Prosfora; Arm. Patarag; mod. Badarak). The Abyssinian Church terms it "the consecration" (Eth. Qeddase).
The Lord's Supper is of a different order. Paul proceeds to recall the tradition of it which he had committed to the Corinthi ans and which he had received from (6.7r6) the Lord :—"The Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and having given thanks, broke it and said: This is My body which is for your sake. This do in memory of Me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying : This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in memory of Me." Then, in explanation of this command, Paul adds "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim (KarayyEXXere) the death of the Lord until He come." It follows that the believer may not partake of the bread and the cup in disregard of the sacred character of the action in which they have figured. Paul continues : "Wherefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man prove himself, and thus let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he do not rightly judge the body." The passage presents difficulties, and it is too allusive to allow a detailed picture of the eucharist as observed by Paul to be drawn from it. Certain points, however, are beyond doubt. Though the Lord's Supper was not a liturgy, it was nevertheless a formal observance. Paul regards it as a presentation of Christ's death, which according to Christ's quoted words was of the nature of a covenant-sacrifice. Paul further taught that the Supper rested on the authority of Christ, in virtue of His institution of it and express command to continue it. The eucharist, therefore, for Paul was in some way a re-presentation of the crucifixion, ordained by Christ Himself to assure to His followers the enjoyment, until His proximate return, of the blessings which the crucifixion, as a covenant-sacrifice, had secured. This interpretation, however, cannot be taken as current outside the sphere of Pauline influ ence; Paul himself fails to cite the general assent of Christians in confirmation of the tradition which he asserts.
According to Paul, the eucharist was instituted at the Last Supper of Jesus with His disciples. Fuller accounts of this meal are found in the Synoptic Gospels. The passages in question are Mark xiv. 22-25, Matt. xxVi. 26-29, Luke xxii. 14-20; of these the oldest tradition, and next in order of time after Paul, is that of Mark. In substance the Synoptist and Pauline accounts are in agreement, with, however, two main exceptions. The Synoptists date the supper on the night of the Passover, and they omit the command to continue it. The textus receptus of Luke indeed in cludes the command, but the passage in which it occurs is an interpolation from the Pauline account ; and whatever view be taken of the problem of the Lucan text, the command is no part of the original. The evidence, therefore, does not warrant the attribution to Jesus of the words "This do in memory of Me." Two other sayings of Jesus at the supper appear in the Synop tist record. One is common to the three, though they report it in slightly differing forms : "I will not again drink of the product of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God"; the other occurs in Luke alone: "I greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you that I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God." The precise significance of the Synoptic record is difficult to ascertain. Jesus's words after the blessing of the cup may be held to give His sanction to a sacrificial view of His death : but the Synoptist record is not an account of the institution of a sacrificial-sacramental action such as that described by Paul. Cer tain scholars have supposed that the Synoptist story implies a repetition of what Jesus did and said at the Supper. As a pre lude to the narrative of Jesus's passion and death, however, the story need imply no more than that his death is to be inter preted, on His own authority, as a covenant-sacrifice. The two non-Pauline sayings suggest that the Supper was "an anticipation of the heavenly banquet in the kingdom" (the phrase is A. D. Nock's, Early Gentile Christianity in Essays on the Trinity and Incarnation), which Jesus's death was to inaugurate.
Both the date and the character of the meal raise a difficulty. According to the Synoptists, it was a Passover Supper, and was celebrated on the first evening of the Passover Feast. According to the Fourth Gospel, which gives no account corresponding with the accounts of Paul and the Synoptists, Jesus's Last Supper with His disciples occurred a day earlier, and was not Paschal in char acter. The objections to the Synoptist chronology are insuperable; the details of the meal, also, do not suggest a Passover Supper. The form of the tradition found in the Fourth Gospel is indu bitably correct. The interpretation of Jesus's death in terms of Passover significance is perhaps a partial explanation of the form which the tradition takes in thq Synoptist account.
The details of the Supper in the latter, however, throw some light on its character. They belong, apparently, to the ordinance known as the Qiddush. This was a domestic ceremony observed at home by a family or by a group of friends on the eve of a Sab bath or Feast-day, in "sanctification" of the day, hence its name. It was preceded by a social meal. Towards the close of the meal, the president of the group took a cup of wine and "sanctified" the day by reciting over the cup a blessing, which was, in effect, a thanksgiving for the Sabbath or Feast, or if they coincided, for both together. The cup was then given to the members of the group to partake of it. There was a similar blessing and break ing of bread. In the event of the coincidence of Passover and Sabbath, it was necessary to transfer the Qiddush from Friday, the Sabbath-eve, to Thursday, as Friday was reserved for the killing of the lambs and other Passover preparations. This Thurs day Qiddush, nevertheless, was celebrated in the accustomed man ner, and its blessing was a thanksgiving for the combined com memoration. It is hardly improbable that we have here the true explanation of the events reported of the Last Supper in the New Testament. Jesus, after the usual meal with His disciples, cele brated the Qiddush, and speaking and acting as is recorded, gave to it an eschatological import. Whether he called the bread his body during the meal or after the blessing of the Qiddush cup is of no consequence; the records are not clear on this point, and either would have been possible. It has been suggested that in the combined Passover-Sabbath commemoration we have also the explanation of the Synoptists' Passover tradition of the Sup per. This may well have been a contributory factor.
But though the Qiddush accounts for the Last Supper, it affords no explanation of the origin of the eucharist. This perhaps is not now far to seek. Jesus and his disciples formed one of the Chaburoth, or "groups of friends," which were a feature of the religious-social life of contemporary Judaism. These groups met to discuss religious questions of mutual interest, to administer charity from their common fund, and for a common meal. The latter was of a formal religious kind, the president solemnly break ing and distributing bread over which he had first addressed a thanksgiving to God. "To break bread" was the general expres sion for eating the meal. The cup of wine was not essential, except at such a ceremony as the Qiddush; water was ordinarily sufficient, should drink be required. When, however, wine was drunk, the customary thanksgiving was first recited over it. Such a meal was a regular institution in the common life of Jesus and His disciples ; it is of the background of the Gospels. The Last Supper and the Sabbath-Passover Qiddush was, therefore, no unusual occurrence. It represented consistent practice since Jesus had first formed the group. It is from this practice, rather than from any direct institution by Jesus, that the eucharist derives its origin. The practice was too firmly established for the group to abandon it, when its Master had been taken away; the primitive apostolic eucharist is no other than the continuation of Jesus's chaburah meal. This is the "breaking of the bread," Gr. 7) KX6.01s rov aprov of Acts ii. 42 (cf. id. ii. 46 and xx. 7) . It was to become a distinctive feature of the life of Christian groups in every place.
For the original company of disciples the thought of the meal was inseparable from that of the presence of Jesus. How far they regarded the eucharist as the occasion of the presence of the risen Jesus with them cannot certainly be stated; the story of the Emmaus Supper and the accounts of the appearances in John xxi. 14, and Acts i. 4 (cf. Mark xvi. 14; Matt. xviii. 2o) point to some such belief. How far a belief of this kind penetrated into the wider Christian circle is equally beyond ascertainment, but it is beyond question that the meal was now marked by particular reference to Jesus.
On this foundation there was variety both in the interpretation and in the manner of conducting the meal. For the earlier con servative Jewish element of the community, it was still primarily a chaburah meal of fellowship. In other and newer circles, as the death of Jesus came to be regarded as of central importance, the meal was inevitably related directly with what Jesus had done and said the day before He suffered, and became a constituent part of a wider doctrinal whole. The latter type of interpreta tion is illustrated in the Fourth Gospel and in the thought of Paul. In this treatment of the eucharist, the cup of wine is indispensable. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, though he omits mention of the blessing of the bread and the cup, nevertheless knows the story.
It is difficult to interpret John vi. except in reference to the Last Supper and to the eucharistic practice of the circle from which the Gospel proceeds. The sayings concerning "eating (rpctyEtv) the flesh" and "drinking the blood" are to be understood of the bread and wine of the eucharist. This "realist" interpretation did not readily win wide acceptance in the writer's time :—"Many of His disciples when they had heard this said : `This is a hard saying. Who can accept it?' . . . From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with him" (Jn. vi. 6o, 66). But it was to attain increasing prominence as attention came to be concentrated on the Last Supper and as the former common meal assumed the features of a cultual act. As has been already noted, it was in process of becoming a cultual act within the sphere of Pauline influence at least half a century before the Fourth Gospel was written. This difference between the Pauline and Johannine lines of interpretation should, however, be ob served ; for the former, the emphasis and interest centre in the eucharistic action, for the latter, they centre in the eucharistic objects, the bread and the wine. Much of the history of the eucharist during the period under review consists in the combina tion and interplay of these two emphases and interests.
The eucharist of the Didache is still associated with a common meal, as the words "after being filled" indicate. The uppermost thought of its prayers is that of the community, blessed by God through Jesus, and of its unity. The one eucharistic loaf is taken as symbolical of that unity (cf. i Cor. x. 17), and participation is restricted to authentic members of the community, the bap tized. The "Lord's Day" is to be the occasion of the eucharistic celebration, which is held to be the fulfilment of Malachi i. i i : "In every place and time offer we a pure sacrifice." In spite of its divergences from what was to be the eucharistic norm, the Didache does not completely lack affinity with the norm, and traces its descent from New Testament practice. Divergences of other kinds are to be noted in The Acts of John, The Vercelli Acts of Peter and The Acts of Thomas. Though these proceed from unorthodox circles, they are nevertheless survivals of the diversity of tradition.
In the central Graeco-Roman Church, the eucharist had become an established "rite" by the middle of the end century. It was not yet a "liturgy," but it had a fixed order, the matter of its prayers was settled, and its celebrant was duly authorized. The Epistle to the Corinthians of Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 96) had stated that Christ had fixed the worship to be performed, and the persons who should perform it Ignatius of Antioch (c. A.D. io8) insists that the eucharist, to be genuine (j3e 3aia) must "be celebrated by the bishop or by one whom he appoints" (Smyrn viii. I). This is in the interest of unity, which is stressed no less by Ignatius than by the Didache. The normal celebrant of the eucharistic service, the bishop, is the local focus of Christian unit, as the eucharist itself is at once the symbol, the safeguard, and the means of that unity, as being "one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for union with His blood" (Philad. iv. I). The Ignatian conception of the local church is the chaburah, extended and adapted to its extension; and it is noteworthy that the term "agape" which Ignatius uses for eucharist (Smyrn viii. 2) is the Greek equivalent of chaburah. Ignatian references to the eucharist are, however, incidental; fuller information is to be found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, at the middle and end of the same century. Both these authors derive the eucharist from the Last Supper, and appear to know no other tradition. Both regard the bread and wine as in some sense the body and blood of Christ. How they are so, neither states; Jesus's words at the Supper are adduced as sufficient ground for the belief. According to Irenaeus, the bread "receiving the invocation of God . . . is eucharist, consisting of two parts, an earthly and a heavenly" (Adv. Haer. iv. 18). In virtue of the "heavenly," the eucharist can be as Ignatius had taught (Eph. xx. 2) following the Johannine thought (Jn. vi. 54 sqq.) , "a medi cine of immortality." In their view of the eucharistic objects, both Justin and Irenaeus are "realists," but their realism is a matter of imagination rather than of thought. Both writers fur ther treat of the eucharist in sacrificial terms, seeing in it the fulfilment of Malachi i. II. The sacrifice is one of praise and thanksgiving for creation and redemption, and the offering of it is commanded by Jesus Christ. Irenaeus considers the sacrifice to be an oblation of first fruits, which should be offered to God "not as though he is in need," but as tokens of thankfulness (Adv. Haer. iv. r 7). Justin interprets the words "Do this in memory of Me" as "Offer this," and thinks of the eucharist as also a com memoration of Jesus Christ's passion. Justin and Irenaeus mark a definite stage in the development of the eucharist. No inter pretation of it after their time differs fundamentally from theirs. Henceforward, in the main stream of Christian tradition, the eucharist is not regarded except as a continuation of the Last Supper, and its significance is believed to lie in the words: This is My body, This is My blood, and Do this in memory of Me.
The development of sacrificial theories of the eucharist is in some measure a Christian attempt to meet the pagan objection that Christians had no sacrifices and were, therefore, atheists; and in some measure also an attempt to solve the problem of post baptismal sin and lapse, by so identifying the eucharistic action with the sacrifice of the cross as to make the former a means of securing the effects of the latter. Cyprian (A.D. 258) speaks of the eucharist as an offering of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and a century later the eucharistic prayer of Sarapion conceives the liturgical action as "making the likeness of the death," so being a reconciliatory sacrifice.
Notice should here be taken of an important eucharistic con ception and terminology, the symbolical, particularly connected with the names of Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine, though it is not restricted to Africa and the West. The bread and wine are said to be figures, symbols, likenesses, or antitypes (figurae, imagines, o i j43oXa, Opou.4,ara, avririnra) of the body and blood. They "re-present" (repraesentant) them, i.e., make them present. The symbol is not the sign of an absent reality, but is in such a way associated with its reality that it is in some sense what it symbolizes and possesses the effect of the reality. A similar idea is applied to the liturgical action. This is a copy or analogue both of the Supper and of the passion in such a way "that as often as the memorial of the victim pleasing to Thee is celebrated, so often is the work of our redemption set in operation" (Leonian Secret in Muratori, Liturgia roman vetus i. The central section of the Canon of the Roman Mass (4th-5th century), is an example of the analogue. It is an imitation of L.he Supper in word and act, solemnly performed before God. As such it strictly has no moment of consecration, but the repetition of Jesus's words is necessary as completing the association of the analogue, both objects and acts, with the realities of the Supper. Hence the later transformation of these words into "the form of consecration." The central moment of the action is the offering of "the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of eternal salvation," the making of the memorial of Christ in accordance with the command: Do this. Here the analogue has passed from the Supper to the cross. The eucharist on this presentation of it is a sacrificial-sacramental action of saving efficacy, and the wor shippers partake of the bread and the wine, not as a personal act of piety, but as participants in the saving transaction. This view, it will be observed, has points of contact with the Pauline in its stress upon the eucharistic action.
The symbolic theory was destined, however, to be superseded by a theory of the realist type. The simpler realism of Justin and Irenaeus in time proved unsatisfactory. If the bread and wine are to be regarded as the body and blood, the questions : How are they so? and What makes them so? must at some point arise; and the answers given to them must in their turn re-act upon eucharistic belief and practice.
Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem in A.D. 350, is the first to go beyond the earlier realism. His thought was, doubtless, moulded by the pneumatological controversies of his time, and by their effect upon the doctrines of incarnation and sacraments. Cyril teaches that the Holy Spirit, who is a living person within the Godhead, descends upon the bread and wine at the prayer of the celebrant, and changes them into the body and blood (Cat. Myst. v.) . This is the first appearance of the Epiklesis, the normal Eastern form of consecration.' It is a departure which is to become a rule. A theologian contemporary with Cyril set himself to work out the implications of Cyril's idea. According to Gregory of Nyssa, the objects are "transmade" or "transelemented" (j. raarot.xet i v) into Christ's body and blood, just as, in His days on earth, bread and wine taken by Him as food were metabolized into His flesh and blood at digestion, the whole being dignified by its union with the Logos. Such is the effect of eucharistic conse cration; it is real and objective, but for Gregory it is a change of relation, not of nature. Subsequent Greek speculation was con tent to re-echo the ideas and terms of Cyril and Gregory without further pursuing their lines of thought. When Greek orthodox eucharistic theology attains its final formulation in the De Fide Orthodoxa of John of Damascus (c. A.D. 759), these ideas and terms re-appear, though John advances beyond Gregory in his complete identification of the eucharistic objects with Christ's body and blood, and in his notion of the eucharistic body as iden tical with that born of Mary (De Fid. Orth. xiii.).
In its effect upon popular devotion and cultus, Cyril's conver sion teaching was revolutionary and has proved permanent. Hith erto the intercessory prayer of the eucharistic service had not been connected with the central action. Cyril introduces them after the consecration and before communion, as being more efficacious at that point because presented with the "holy and 'See note at end of article.
most awful sacrifice," which is "Christ propitiating God" for men (see Cat. Myst. v.). John Chrysostom (A.D. 407) in whose service the intercessions occur in a similar position, holds the time after the consecration as specially propitious for prayer, particularly on behalf of the dead, as then "we supplicate the Lamb that taketh the sin of the world and that now lies (on the altar)" (Hom. in I Cor. xli. 4). Both here and elsewhere he uses language which suggests that prayer at the eucharist is to be offered to Christ, believed to be present in virtue of the consecration; and at all times he stresses the awfulness and solemnity of the eucharistic service. There is here a change in emphasis, which is, in fact, the forming of a new tradition, as it was a change made easily intel ligible to the mass of worshippers by a corresponding development of ritual and ceremony, and therefore easily shaping cultual out look and practice. The eucharist was now, and in the Greek Ortho dox and kindred Churches continues to be, a propitiatory sacrifice, in which an awful Divine victim is offered with certain efficacy.
In the West the conversion theology was introduced by Am brose of Milan (A.D. 397), who associates the consecration with the repetition of the words : This is My body, and This is My blood (De Myst. ix.). It succeeded in no more than partially establish ing itself, since the thought of the West was dominated by Au gustine (A.D. 43o). More fully than had been done before, Augustine dealt with the notion and nature of sacraments; but he made little advance on the earlier theory. He continued, and in a measure explicated, the symbolic tradition; and his thought was destined to influence eucharistic thinking and discussion in the middle ages. He takes a sacrament to be the sign of a Divine thing; in it "one thing is seen, but another is understood" (Serm. cclxxii.). The bread and wine, therefore, sanctified to become sacraments of Christ's body and blood, are as such the means of communicating a supernatural gift, but are always to be dis tinguished from the gift. This view was not congenial to the forms of eucharistic devotion which were developing under the influence of the conversion theology. The latter, however, was never excluded from the West. Caesarius of Arles (A.D. 543) and Gregory the Great (A.D. 604) maintain it; and it appears in some of the prayers of the Latin sacramentaries. The petition in the present Roman Canon : "Which oblation do Thou bless ... in order that it may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dear son, Jesus Christ" (Quam oblationern) probably represents a middle position between the complete conversion theory on one hand, and on the other the symbolic teaching of the older form of the petition : "Bless unto us this oblation, because it is the figure of the body and the blood." The propitiatory theory of the sacrifice inevitably accompanied the conversion view, and like wise finds expression in the sacramentaries. The language of cer tain writers, among them Gregory the Great, suggests that the eucharist is a renewal of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
From the middle of the and century, some kind of reservation of the eucharist has been commonly practised. Justin attests that the consecrated objects were taken by deacons to those who could not be present at the gathering. At a later period, it was per mitted to take away portions of the consecrated bread and to con sume them at home. From the 4th century, the consecrated bread was reserved in a box on the altar or in a chamber attached to the church.
He was answered by Ratramnus, also of Corbie, in a treatise under the same title. Charles the Bald had asked Ratramnus two questions : Is the eucharist Christ's body and blood in mystery or in sensible reality (in veritate?) and: Is it the body that was born of Mary and is exalted in heaven? Ratramnus's treatise is an answer to these questions. He proceeds to answer the first by defining the terms mystery, figure and sensible reality. Mystery denotes that which contains something hidden and is open only to the eye of faith. Figure (figura) is that which conveys its mean ing under a veil. Sensible reality (veritas) is that which is set forth clearly and openly in its natural character. In the eucharist, bread and wine are received, but Christ's body and blood are understood. The latter, therefore, are received in mystery and figure, not in sensible reality. The second question Ratramnus answered negatively. Following Ambrose he distinguishes between the sacrament of the flesh and the sensible reality of the flesh. Christ suffered in the latter; the eucharist and the former are the same thing, the eucharistic body cannot, in consequence, be identi fied with the latter. The eucharist is Christ's body and blood, because in it the power of Christ is communicated. Ratramnus's treatise left unsolved the problem which Paschasius's doctrine raised, mainly because it suffered from the vagueness which char acterized the Western symbolic tradition. Ratramnus's dissent from the conversion doctrine is unambiguous, but it is not clear whether he believed that the body and blood were truly, though not in sensible reality, present in the eucharist, or whether he held the eucharist to be no more than a means of conveying power to unite the recipient with Christ. Other writers of the period took part in the controversy. Hincmar and Remigius of Rheims, and Ratherius of Verona, siding with Paschasius, and Amalarius of Metz, Florus of Lyons, and Rabanus Maurus, taking the opposition ; but these no more than the protagonists contrib uted towards the solution of the problem.
Two centuries elapsed before the question was again discussed. In the meantime the conversion teaching of Paschasius had gained wide acceptance, and was being interpreted in a materialistic sense. The mass was popularly believed to be the occasion of a physical miracle. The use of symbolic language was treated as a mark of unorthodoxy. The immediate cause of the second contro versy was a letter written in A.D. I050 by Berengar of Tours to Laufranc of Bec, condemning the doctrine of Paschasius and de fending that put forward by Ratramnus. He was condemned by two councils, and required to sign a confession of faith to the effect that the consecrated bread and wine are not only a sacra ment, but the real body and blood of Christ, and that these, "not only sacramentally, but in sensible reality (in veritate), are taken in the priests' hands." Berengar submitted, but later published his views at length, in his treatise, On the Holy Supper. He re vives the symbolic teaching, appealing to Augustine and the pray ers of the Roman mass. He allows a change of the bread and wine into the body and blood in the sense that they become signs of the latter by consecration; but he denied "subjective change" on the ground that such is impossible without a corresponding change in appearance and perceptible property. Berengar was as vague as Ratramnus. His contemporaries interpreted his language in more ways than one. Guitmund of Aversa understood him to teach a theory of impanation and invination, i.e., that in the eucharist Christ assumes bread and wine, as at the incarnation he had assumed flesh. Berengar was required to sign a second decla ration in z079, affirming that the bread and wine are "substantially converted" (substantialiter converti) and that after consecration they are the real body and blood born of Mary "not only by way of sign and power of sacrament, but in property of nature and reality of substance." Berengar subscribed, and the conversion theology was victorious. Conversion, for the most part in its crudest form, was now the orthodoxy of the West.
In the i ath and t3th centuries the balance was to some extent redressed. Scholasticism set it itself to re-examine, and within the limits of orthodoxy, to re-state the whole of sacramental doc trine. Orthodoxy consequently tied down the scholastics' eucha ristic theory to conversion. Setting out from Augustine's distinc tion between the sacrament and that which it signifies, and from his definition of a sacrament as a visible sign of an invisible grace, they formulated their theory in terms of substance and accidents. Both terms had been used in the discussions of the previous cen tury; and Berengar had already made the distinction between "subject" in the sense of substance and accidents. Substance de notes the underlying reality or being which constitutes a thing what it is and is not perceptible by the senses. Accidents are the properties and attributes which inhere in the substance, and which are perceptible by the senses. The substance in a thing can be perceived only by thought ; likewise in the eucharist, the body and blood which are the substances of the sacrament can be appre hended only by faith. At the consecration the substances of the bread and wine change "by transition" (per transitionem) into the body and blood. The accidents remain as and what they were. They do not inhere in, and are not affected by, the body and blood; they exist per se. It is then the accident only, not the body, that is taken into the priest's hands. There is here a marked refine ment of the view current in authoritative circles in the nth century.
The term used to describe the change is "transubstantiation" (transubstantiatio) : it occurs, seemingly for the first time, in the Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, attributed to Peter Damiani (A.D. 1072). The verb appears in the Definition of Faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215) : Christ's "body and blood are verily contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood, by Divine power." The context does not make it clear that the word "transubstantiated" is to be inter preted precisely in the sense outlined above, but the belief usually denoted by the term was general in the Western Church at the time of the Council.
It remained for Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1227-1274) to cast the doctrine in its final form. Aquinas represents alike the farthest reach of the scholastic re-action from earlier mediaeval material ism, and the extreme of refinement in conversion doctrine. Treat ing of the presence of Christ in the eucharist, he states that it is not local, but is "after the manner of a substance" (per modem substantiae, Sum. Theol. iii. lxxvi. 1), so that where the sacra ment is moved, Christ can be said to move only per accidens, not per se (S. T. iii. lxxvi. 6). Similarly, he affirms that the whole Christ, body and blood, is present in each particle of the sacra ment and under each species by concomitance (iii. lxxvi. I) . The spiritual reception of the body and blood is dependent upon the disposition of the communicant ; the wicked receive only sacra mentally. Aquinas also addressed himself to the problem of the existence in the sacrament of the accidents of bread and wine when the substance was the body and the blood. He thinks that they exist in dimensive quantity, as though in a subject (sicut in subjecto in quantitate dimensiva, iii. lxxvii. 2) ; this is admittedly miraculous, though of course not thereby unreasonable.
The doctrine of transubstantiation was all but universally ac cepted. Some scholastics, however, challenged it, particularly those dissatisfied with the treatment of the problem of the con tinued existence of the accidents, conspicuous among whom was Wyclif. The doctrine had the twofold merit for its own time of harmonizing with current philosophy, and of satisfying the de mand of popular religion for a miraculous conversion in the mass; but such was its dependence upon the scholastic philosophy that it was unintelligible apart from that philosophy and incapable of surviving its supersedence.
Throughout the middle age the doctrine of the eucharistic sacri fice was secondary to that of the eucharist itself. The earlier mediaeval theologians were content to accept the later patristic views ; but, together with a new interest in the effects of the sacrifice, expiatory ideas early appeared and developed in con junction with conversion teaching. Paschasius maintained that Christ, as priest and victim, offered himself in the mass for daily sins, though this offering is one with, and not a renewal of, that of the Cross. The expiatory idea quickly found favour, and passed to the scholastics as orthodox.
It was not until the 13th century that there was any scholastic attempt at an exact treatment of the subject, and that an exami nation of the nature and essentials of sacrifice was undertaken. Thomas Aquinas holds that the offering of sacrifice is a law of nature (S. T., ii. ii. lxxxv. 1) and that it is necessary that "some thing is done" to the object offered, i.e., bread is broken, is eaten, and is blessed (ii. ii. lxxxv. 3) . In the eucharist the consummation of the sacrifice consists in the consecration of the matter, not in the communion of the faithful; participation, however, is neces sary to a sacrifice, and the priest communicates both for himself and as representative of the faithful (iii. lxxx. 12). The priest consecrates in the person and by the power of Christ (iii. lxxxiii. I). The eucharist, therefore, is offered by Christ himself, and possesses the efficacy of the sacrifice of the Cross, of which it is representative and commemorative. As such it blots out the mortal sins of those for whom it is offered, according to their moral disposition, "as if the sacrament of penance had been ad ministered to them" (Vasquez). There were protests against expi atory teaching from time to time during the middle age, but they made no mark. At the close of the period it was generally held that the mass was a sacrifice for actual sin, as the Cross was a sacrifice for original sin.
The effects of mediaeval eucharistic controversy on popular religion were manifold. Interest was inevitably concentrated on the mass and the sacrament. But the popular mind could not ap preciate the subtleties of scholastic doctrine. Popular interpreta tion of transubstantiation was no less crude than in the case of earlier conversion doctrine. Legend told how the miniature figure of a man had been seen in the priest's hands at the elevation of the host, and it was believed that on certain occasions the host had bled on being broken by the priest.
In the 13th century, the moment of consecration, emphasized by the new ceremony of the elevation of the host—Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris, was apparently the first to decree it in A.D. I208 had become the climax of the eucharistic service; the elevation of the chalice was to follow a century later, and the significance of the ceremony was further increased by the accompaniment of censings, the lifting-up of lighted candles, and the ringing of bells. At the same time communion became increasingly infrequent. The introduction of the Festival of Corpus Christi in A.D. 1264 con siderably encouraged eucharistic devotion.
A cultus of the reserved sacrament developed, and before the close of the period under review the ceremonies of exposition and benediction had made their first appearance in northern Germany (see E. Bishop, "Pastor Dreygerwolt's Diary," in Liturgica His torica, Oxford, 1922). The popular mind was also quick to seize on the bearing of the expiatory view of the sacrifice. Masses were multiplied with special intention, particularly for the repose of the souls of the dead. The exaggerations both of belief and prac tice which gathered around the eucharist in the middle age and the attendant growth of the power of the priests led irresistibly to the Protestant reaction of the 16th century. It should, however, never be forgotten that the eucharist, both the service and the sacrament, was at all times for not a few an occasion and stimulus of spirituality. The presentation of the service as a moving picture, whether of the passion and death, or of the whole life, of Christ gave nourishment to the artistic imagination, and its effect is to be seen in the poetry, painting and sculpture of the middle age. For the majority also, the mass was the one means of contact with culture, and the sole avenue of escape from the hardship of environment. In spite of the abuses connected with it and with the system of which it was part, the mass has exercised an in calculable influence on the cultural and spiritual development of Western Europe.
(E. C. RA.) The Eucharist from 1500.—The offering of the sacrifice of the mass by the priesthood was the centre of the life of the mediaeval Church. When the Reformation reaffirmed the primi tive idea of the priesthood of all believers, and transferred the centre of religious interest to the faith of the believing man, it was inevitable that the practice and theory of the mass, as it had come to be, should be challenged.
But it was in the sacrificial conception of the mass that Luther saw the gravest and most iniquitous corruption of the sacrament, for by the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass it was implied that man could do a work which God would accept as a satisfaction for sin. The mass, according to Luther, was not a sacrifice, but a promise. It was a summary of the Gospel, whereby Christ prom ises to us, antecedent to our own merit, the forgiveness of our sins. This promise can be accepted by faith and faith alone. In the Latin mass of 1523 and the German mass of 1526 Luther translated his doctrine into practice. The main order of the mediaeval mass was allowed to stand when it had been purged of the sacrificial idea. This meant that the solemn offertory of the elements, and the canon of the mass were expunged. In place of the latter was substituted a simple recital of the words of institution.
Thus the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation of the 16th century left the Church of Rome and the Churches of the Reformation sharply opposed in their doctrine of the eucharist. Important attempts, to be noted later, were made from both sides during the 17th century to find a basis for agreement, but the gulf has never since been bridged. Among Protestants, too, the dif ference in eucharistic doctrine between Lutherans and Reformed, inherited from the i8th century, remained a dominant factor in the history of the Churches during the 17th century.
Alongside the two dominant types of Protestant eucharistic doc trine, the Lutheran and the Reformed, must be recognized a leaven of Socinianism which, in spite of the opposition of orthodox theologians, penetrated throughout the Churches of the Reforma tion. The Racovian Catechism (first published 16o5, a year after the death of Faustus Socinus), rejects the Roman, the Lutheran and the Calvinistic forms of eucharistic teaching, and regards the Lord's Supper, not as a means of grace, but solely as a remem brance of the death of Christ. This type of interpretation grew in creasingly influential with the spread of rationalism in the i8th century.
A different spirit inspired the Quakers who, alone of Christian sects, rejected on principle the outward sacramental rite : "The communion of the Body and Blood of Christ" wrote Robert Bar clay "is inward and spiritual, which is the participation of his flesh and blood, by which the inward man is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ dwells, of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with his disciples was a figure, which they even used in the Church for a time, who had received the substance, for the cause of the weak; even as abstaining from things strangled and from blood, the washing of one another's feet and the anointing of the sick with oil, all which are commanded with no less authority and solemnity than the former; yet seeing they are but the shadows of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance." (Apology, Thesis Theol. xiii.) The Reformation had appealed from the authority of the Church to the authority of Scripture, and it allowed no doctrine to be taught as necessary to salvation except such as could be proved from Scripture. The interest was dogmatic, and the dog matic standpoint continued in the ascendant until about the mid dle of the i 7th century.
On the other hand the Port Royalists, Nicole and Arnauld, in their monumental reply to the Protestant Claude, La perpetuite de la foi de l'Eglise Catholique touchant l'Eucharistie (1669) argue that if the substantial change in the elements was not a part of the original faith of the Church, it must have been a most notable innovation, that no such innovation can be proved to have taken place, and that, though the fathers do not use the term transubstantiation, they assume the truth of the idea. The doc trine has therefore remained the same through all the ages of the Church. This appeal to history lies behind the various attempts to heal the breach of the Reformation; which, from George Cas sander in the i6th century to Leibnitz and Bossuet at the end of the i 7th, engaged the thoughts of some of the best minds of Chris tendom. The hope was shared by some Protestants and some Catholics (without much encouragement from authority on either side) that Christian antiquity might form a common meeting ground for the sundered Churches.
Such teaching, it should be added, never passed unchallenged in the Church of England. Thus Cudworth, the Cambridge Pla tonist, in reply to Mede, denied that the eucharist could be prop erly spoken of as a sacrifice. The proper idea, Cudworth main tained, was that it was a symbolical feast upon a sacrifice. But Mede's doctrine was taken up by influential divines, such as Bishop Bull and Dr. Grabe. In their doctrine of the presence of Christ in the eucharist the Anglo-Catholic divines of the i7th century remained essentially true to the Calvinian type. Even Thorndyke, who, perhaps, represents the most advanced Anglican teaching of the century on the eucharist, carefully stops short of affirming a substantial presence of the body and blood and em phatically denies a substantial change in the elements. "Calvin's words (about the presence of Christ)" said Cosin "agree so well with the style and mind of the primitive fathers that no Reformed Catholic could desire to use any other." Daniel Waterland (1683-174o) continued on into the i8th cen tury the tradition of the old learned Anglican theology. In his treatise on the eucharist he has two extremes in view : (I) the developments of eucharistic doctrine among the non-jurius divines, supported by their friend, Johnson, in the Established Church, and (a) the reduced interpretation of the Supper as a purely com memorative rite advanced by Bishop Hoadley. Waterland him self follows in the line of Cranmer and Hooker. He will not allow the idea of a material sacrifice of bread and wine, nor will he allow that Christ is offered in the eucharist. "We do not offer Christ to God in the eucharist, but God offers Christ to us in return for our offering ourselves." He also finds the idea of the union of the Spirit with the elements (akin to the doctrine of the Greek Church, favoured by Johnson and the non-jurius) to be "a gross notion and groundless." "If it were admitted," he adds, "Yet could it not make the elements, in any just sense, our Lord's body, but the notion would resolve into a kind of 'impanation' of the Spirit, for the time." Doctrine of Eucharist ch. vii. fin.
This line of teaching criticized by Waterland, which repre sents the consecration in the eucharist as effected through the invocation of the Spirit upon the elements, as in the Greek liturgies, had left its mark upon the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., and though it disappeared from the Prayer Book of it was revived in the Scottish book of 1637. It has been main tained—though not exclusively—in the Scottish Episcopal Church, and through that Church was transmitted to the Episcopal Church of America. When Bishop Seabury was consecrated first bishop of the American Episcopal Church he recommended to his congregations in Connecticut an office for the communion which conformed closely to the Scottish type. In 1789 the Convention of the American Church drew up an office in which an invocation of the Spirit was retained, but they brought the language ex pressing the intention of the prayer into close conformity with the invocation which opens the consecration prayer in the English Prayer Book. The "Deposited Book" of 1927 proposed to au thorize a consecration prayer for the Church of England which included an invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the elements.
Waterland holds a peculiarly representative position in the tradition of Anglican theology. His works remained a standard authority with the High Churchmen of pre-Tractarian days, and so late as i 88o his treatise on the eucharist was reprinted by special request of the archbishops of Canterbury and York as "a safe and perspicuous guide to these tenets on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which, as a matter of fact, have been held by the great majority of the ablest and most learned theologians of the Reformed Church of England." (Preface by Bishop Jack son of London.) The Tractarian divines went behind Waterland and revived the more advanced teaching of some of his predecessors of the i 7th century, while in their doctrine of the Real Presence, they and their successors have often been insensitive to limits which the i 7th century divines had instinctively respected. It has been characteristic of much of the modern teaching of the High Church school in the Church of England to relate the sacraments more closely to the Incarnation than to the Atonement. It has been a congenial thought that the Divine life which appeared incarnate in Jesus Christ is perpetuated through the sacramental principle in the Church. Eucharistic sacrifice is frequently interpreted by this school as answering to the idea that Christ continually pre sents in heaven the sacrifice of Himself.
Various movements, religious and intellectual, have long since weakened the attachment of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of the Continent to the classical forms of eucharistic doctrine which they inherited from the age of the Reformation. Pietism was impatient of theology, and Rationalism was disposed to regard the old language of mystical communion as mere metaphor for moral obligation. The revival of religious thought and feeling in the last century encouraged a more sympathetic attitude to the confessional statements of doctrine, and the traditions of con fessional orthodoxy have never died out. But it is worthy of notice that the two most influential Protestant theologians of the last century, Schleiermacher and Ritschl, wished to propound a conception of the eucharist suited to the faith of a Protestant Church, which should transcend the differences inherited from the i6th century. True to Reformation principles Schleiermacher would exclude any idea that the body of Christ is offered in sacri fice. He would not allow that the body and blood of Christ should be supposed to stand related to the bread and wine inde pendently of the act of communion. On the other hand the Church must affirm connection between the reception of the bread and wine and the spiritual reception of the flesh and blood of Christ. He points out that the difference between Luther and Calvin in their answer to the question: What do the wicked receive? would disappear with the disappearance of unworthy partaking.
Ritschl starts out from the communal character of the sacra ment. In the sacrament the Church thankfully acknowledges that sacrificial death of Christ on which its own existence depends. The value of the sacrament to the individual is the assurance of f or giveness guaranteed to him primarily by the Church, but ulti mately by Christ Himself. The confessional differences as to the manner of the presence of Christ's body and blood cannot be re solved by an appeal to the words of institution, and it is to be noted that the confessional doctrines of the presence of the body and blood all fail to recognize that the bread broken and the wine outpoured present the body and blood as emblems of Christ's death. Moreover, it is manifest that Christ intended that all be lievers should unite in the action, not that they should separate in their celebration, according to the interpretation which they put upon the action. The confessional dispute makes it impossi ble for the sacrament to be, in practice, the uniting action of the Church (Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 3rd ed., Bonn, 1886, sec. 9o) .
There is affinity between this teaching of Ritschl and Harnack's provocative judgment on Luther's eucharistic doctrine. Luther declares once and again that word and sacrament alike contain the forgiveness of sins, and that in this alone their whole value consists. That is the essential saving truth of the Gospel. Un fortunately, Luther allowed himself to become entangled in the idea that the body in the sacrament is not the natural and histori cal body of Jesus, but the body glorified. This opened the way to the thought of a union with Christ through the eucharist, more intimate and more mystical than through the Word. Here, accord ing to Harnack, lies the worst of heresies, for vague feeling is thus exalted over faith. And for this reason the "mystical" Calvinian teaching on the Supper is of all the Reformed doctrines the least satisfactory, for it unites the defects of Zwingli with the defects of Luther. Luther provides the corrective to himself. The truth is, that while the various sensible signs under which the Word is presented are of importance, since they bring the word of Jesus Christ close to the heart, yet they are unable to add any thing to the power of the Word (Hist. of Dogma, E.T. vol. vii. p. 258 seq.).
With reference to the Epiklesis mentioned on p. 795 it should be noted that a petition for the descent of the Spirit upon the bread and wine was not entirely a novelty. An example of an earlier form occurs in the eucharistic prayer of the Verona Fragments, which contain parts of a Latin translation of a lost Greek work, probably the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (A.D. 235) . This prayer asks, not that the bread and wine may be changed by the Spirit's descent, but that the recipients may partake of them "for the fulfilling of the Holy Spirit (in repletionem spiritus sancti) to the strengthening of faith in truth"; and it should be noticed that the conception of the Spirit implied in the Fragments is undeveloped. In these respects the Verona type of invocation is essentially different from Cyril's Epiklesis.