TRANSUBSTANTIATION. In instituting the Lord's Supper, Jesus said of the bread, " Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you," and of the wine, " Drink ye all of this, for this is my Blood of the New Testa ment." The Council of Trent decreed that in the Lord's Supper or Eucharist there is a " change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, of the whole sub stance of the wine into the blood [of Christ], only the appearances of bread and wine remaining; which change the Catholic Church most fitly calls transubstantiation." The term " trans-substautiatio " was first used by Hilde bert, Archbishop of Tours (d. 1134). But some such doctrine was at least as early as Paschasius Radbertus (ft. 844-865). In the eleventh century, Berengarius (c. 1000-108S), after attacking those who maintained a carnal presence of the Body and Blood, was forced by Pope Hildebrand to recant (1079), and the terms of his recanta tion reveal the kind of doctrine that had become current. " The bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of holy prayer and the words of the Redeemer, converted into the true, actual, and life-giving flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are, after consecra tion, the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin, and which hung on the cross an offering for the salvation of the world, not only In the way of a sign and in virtue of a sacrament, but also in propriety of nature and truth of substance." After this the
schoolmen, members of the Realist school, set to work to improve the doctrine. Emphasis was laid on the Aristotelian distinction between substance and accident. Essence or substance is that which makes a thing what it is, its inner reality. An accident or quality is that which inheres in substance as its substratum. A sub stance may remain the same, while its accidents or qualities change. Applying this teaching, it is main tained that In the Lord's Supper the change in the elements is substantial. The bread and wine are changed substantially Into the body and blood of Christ. " In one respect, however, this substantial change differs from all other substantial changes. In other cases, when one substance changes into another, the accidents also change. Here the accidents of bread and wine remain unaltered; and so long as they remain, the body and blood of Christ also remain concealed beneath them " (Catholic Dict ionary). The doctrine, as thus improved, was in 1215 proclaimed by the Fourth Lateran Council, and in 1551 re-affirmed by the Council of Trent. See Prot. Diet.; Cath. Dict., 1905; B. J. Kidd, The Thirty-ninc Articles, 1906; cp. K. R. Hagenbach.