TRANSUBSTANTIATION. The mean ing of the theological term transubstan tiation is made apparent in the follow ing canon Of the Council of Trent: "If any one shall say that, in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, there re mains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny that wonderful and singular con version of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the species of bread and wine alone re maining—which conversion the Catholic church most fittingly calls transubstan tiation—let him be anathema." The canon quoted was intended as a condem nation of the theories of impanation and consubstantiation. According to the theory of impanation, which was advo cated chiefly by Osiander, in the sacra ment of the Eucharist, the bread and wine were hypostatically or personally assumed by the Divine Word. According to the theory of consubstantiation, which was favored by the large majority of the Lutherans, the substance of the bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but without being hypostatically assumed.
The doctrine of transubstantiation is then an article of Roman Catholic faith.
Furthermore, the Council of Trent in the same Session xiii. declares that this doc
trine "has always been the conviction in the Church of God." Protestant divines call in question the truth of this declara tion, and assert that the doctrine was unknown before the Middle Ages. Roman Catholic theologians, on the other hand, while admitting that the term transub stantiation is comparatively new, profess their ability to prove by a catena of witnesses, commencing with the earliest ages of the church, that the doctrine conveyed by the term has been believed from the first. That the term is com paratively new is unquestionable. Car dinal Franzelin, indeed ("De Eucharis tia," p. 177), gives instances of its use by Catholic writers in the 11th and 12th centuries. Nevertheless it was not form ally adopted into the doctrinal phraseol ogy of the Church before 1215, when it was employed in a profession of faith drawn up by the fourth Lateran Council. After this period we find the term again employed in a "confession of faith," which was presented for subscription to Michael Palwologus, the Greek emperor, by Pope Clement IV. (1267), and was professed by the emperor in the second Ecumenical Council of Lyons held in 1274 under Pope Gregory X.