When Did Transubstatiation become the Only Correct View in Roman Catholicism?

McCue, James F. “The Doctrine of Transubstantiation from Berengar through Trent: The Point at Issue.” Harvard Theological Review 61 (July 1960): 395-430.

This article demonstrates that for more than two centuries leading up to the Reformation, a large number of medieval theologians “thought that transubstantiation was not a necessary consequence of the doctrine of the physical presence.” Indeed, it was nearly a century after the Fourth Lateran Council that its proceedings were commonly understood as having made transubstantiation “a sine qua non of orthodoxy” (385). Before then, transubstantiation was simply the common favorite of three distinct possibilities, including the view that would come to be known as consubstantiation. Once we reach Thomas Aquinas, however, we encounter for the first time a vast difference. Not only does Thomas deem consubstantiation inappropriate and impossible, he also labels the view heretical. In this clear, well-written article, the author quotes the original Latin in the text of his paper and provides English translations in the footnotes. A superb and convincing piece of work.

MacCulloch, Chapter 12

Theology, Heresy, Universities (1100-1300)

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the advent of universities in Christianized Europe. Few people would guess, however, something that MacCulloch mentions about these schools: they were modeled after institutions of higher learning in the world of Islam (398). The scholastic approach to understanding God, the Bible, the way of Christ, etc. led to the development of a much more formal theology. Thus the scholastic theologians drew the precise lines by which some believers were deemed out of bounds, i.e., heretics. MacCulloch emphasizes that the universities, though they grew up in a thoroughly Christian society, had a good bit of independence from the Church, and dealt with ecclesiastical leadership in an advisory role.

A Pastoral Revolution, Friars and the Fourth Lateran Council (1200-1260)

Dominic began an order of friars (related to the term fraternity, brothers) that was dedicated to radical poverty and intellectual rigor. Dominicans were also called Blackfriars.

Francis of Assissi grew up in a wealthy family but rejected his upbringing, emphasizing that Christ was, to borrow the words of the song, "despised and afflicted, homeless, rejected, and poor." Francis was the first person we know of to have suffered stigmata, the physical marks of the crucified Christ (403). The Franciscan friars grew from his legacy. Franciscans were also called Greyfriars.

Pope Innocent III's push for greater definition of the beliefs and practices of the Church, for order and standardization, in effect generated the Inquisition. The activities of this episode, which are often misunderstood and exaggerated, were carried out by the Dominicans. The interests of Innocent were behind the calling of Lateran IV. "This fourth Lateran Council embodied the Gregorian aim of imposing regulated holiness on the laity and ensuring uniformity in both belief and devotional practice" (405). One idea was that every Christian should know what he's doing and why, what's going on in the Eucharist, etc. Such interest led to the closer definition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Along this line, MacCulloch wisely notes: "It is easy to confuse the doctrine of the 'Real Presence," the general devotional belief that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are to be identified with the body and blood of Christ, with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is just one explanation of the miracle" (406).

Carmelites=Whitefriars

Thomas Aquinas: Philosophy and Faith

Thomistic theology, highly influential, was a blend of Aristotelian philosophy and Church doctrine. Thomas's great work was his Summa Theologica (which MacCulloch translates "Sum total of Theology") and which runs to 61 volumes in its standard English translation.

Love in a Cold Climate: Personal Devotion After 1200

The climate of Europe began to turn much colder, beginning around 1200. MacCulloch suspects that this unfortunate change may have led to the "personalization" of God and Christ in the years that followed. The period exhibits a deep thirst for God. St. Francis's popular book Meditations on the Life of Christ (most likely written by John de Caulibus, a.k.a. pseudo-Bonaventure) expands on the life of Jesus as we know it from the gospel accounts. These embellishments strike MacCulloch as part of the evidence that people of the time wanted to know Jesus better, to have a closer view of him.

John Wyclif and the Origins of Lollardy

A little something on Wyclif and the Lollards that might become a section of a simple book on church history someday:

Lollardy (sometimes spelled Lollardie) was the name given to an English heretical movement that began near the end of the fourteenth century. Its origins can be traced back to the teaching, preaching, the personal network and, above all, the writings of John Wyclif. [1]

We don't know when Wyclif was born, but it was likely sometime in the mid-1320s, near Richmond in the northern county of Yorkshire. Ordained a priest in September 1351, he spent most of his adult life at Oxford. He was a steward at Merton College in 1356, and a master at Balliol College by December 1360. He received the doctorate in theology in either 1372 or 1373. By all accounts, he possessed a tremendous mind and capacity for work. He was, in the words of Knighton, “second to no one, unequalled in the disciplines of the schools.” [2]

In his early writings, Wyclif made an argument for the disendowment of clerics who were in mortal sin. In that state, he said, they had no divine right to position and power. This, of course, made him popular with the devout clergy who agreed with him. Most of all, it made him popular with the Crown.

Early on, he had a benefactor in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It was primarily the Duke's influence that led to Wyclif’s entry into royal service as a sort of schooled advocate who could help to undermine church privilege and the authority of the Pope. During those years, Wyclif stayed busy writing and preaching.

On May 22, 1377, Gregory XI issued five papal bulls condemning the views of Wyclif. Detained for a time at Oxford, he was soon released due to popular support there. In later skirmishes with Archbishop Sudbury and his successor, William Courtenay, Wyclif was protected by the likes of Gaunt and, on at least one occasion, Joan of Kent, mother of King Richard II.

By the late 1370s, however, Wyclif was doing more than simply attacking the abuses and the wealth of the church. Most significantly, he dismissed the orthodox, traditional understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In short, he denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. As a result, in May of 1381, William Barton, chancellor of Oxford, presided over a committee that condemned such heresy, though without specifically naming Wyclif. Then, on June 13, 1381—Corpus Christi day—peasant rebels, angry over an attempt to freeze wages, came to the outskirts of London and entered the city. [3]  During three days of mayhem, they killed Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his De blasphemia, Wyclif wrote about the revolt. Although he never accepted even an indirect contribution to the catastrophe, chroniclers of the day did not agree; they saw a connection between public sentiment and Wyclif's influence. By then, Wyclif was no longer looked on as an interesting and useful radical, but more as a dangerous and loathsome heretic. He could no longer count on the critical support of some of the clergy and aristocracy, and by October 1381 he had retreated to his out-of-the-way parish in Lutterworth where he died at Mass on the last day of 1384.

The period in which Wyclif wrote his more-popular works and led a public life had lasted hardly more than a decade. But he left behind a large number of books and treatises, in English as well as in Latin, and not a few personal associates who were still at Oxford or who had since gone out from there, providing leadership for the group now known as the Lollards.
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[1] Here I depend heavily upon Anne Hudson and Anthony Kenny, “Wyclif [Wycliffe], John," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 60: 616-30.

[2] According to Steven Justice, “Lollardy,” in Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: University Press, 1999), 663, n. 3, where the author cites Knighton, Chronicon, edited by Lumby, vol. II, 151.

[3] Norman F. Cantor, The English: A History of Politics and Society to 1760 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 253-54.