CONTROVERSY of C. — This is the customary name for a sacramental controversy that took place in the eighteenth century and originated in the following event. A canon, Giuseppe Guerrieri, in 1737 celebrated Mass daily at an altar of the cathedral of C., giving Communion to his penitents infra Missam. This caused a delay that made it impossible for the other priests to celebrate all the Masses assigned to that altar; consequently, the administrators of the endowments forbade Guerrieri to continue his practice.
Guerrieri, presumptuous and readily inclined to innovations, wrote a pamphlet which seemed to reveal a subtle infiltration of Lutheran thought, in order to demonstrate that the faithful possessed a true right to receive Communion with particles consecrated at the Mass they had attended, and not at an earlier Mass (already before this, precisely in C., another pamphlet had appeared by Cesare Benvenuti [1669–1746], Sacerdos ad altare celebrans in Missa privata [1726], concerning the right to communicate at every Mass with particles consecrated therein, deriving this right from the unrestricted desire expressed by the Council of Trent in sess. XXII, c. 6). The will of God, therefore, was to be placed before that of the testators. After being refuted, he replied. Still resistant to episcopal admonitions, he left C. in search of support in Bergamo and Milan. Thus the dispute was kindled and intensified: sub gravi, the priest is obliged to give Communion to those present at the Mass who wish to participate in the Sacrifice. A Cassinese monk, Fr Oronzio Stabili, defended the thesis with patristic references. The discussion was referred by the bishop of C. to the Holy Office. Benedict XIV took the matter into his own hands and decided it in the opposite sense to that advocated by Guerrieri, with the encyclical Certiores to the bishops of Italy, on 13 November 1742. Cardinal Querini commented on the encyclical in two Pastorali, and this helped to mitigate the controversy, to which the contemporary theologians G. L. Berti, G. B. Gattico, R. Sala, and F. Berlendi refer in their works. In 1766, in Rome, Pasquale Copeto, prompted by a series of publications and disputes on the subject, returned to the question, which was subsequently taken up again and carried to its ultimate consequences in 1770 by Nannaroni (v.). He became the systematic theologian of the controversy, whether anonymously or under the pseudonym Anastasio Teofilo. His works, first proscribed by the bishop of C., were, at his denunciation, placed on the Index together with other pamphlets (decree: 18 August 1775). They maintained that liturgical Communion, infra Missam, is an intrinsic, connatural, inseparable, and substantial part of the sacrifice of the Mass, without which it cannot be perfect, and that priests are obliged by divine-ecclesiastical precept to administer it during the current celebration, except in cases of grave necessity or as viaticum. The faithful therefore have an equal right to receive II. Communion extra Missam is “private refreshment at the reservoir of pre-consecrated particles”; introduced by the Jesuits, it is not in conformity with ecclesiastical tradition and must therefore be abolished. He was refuted by Fr Giuseppe Maria Elefante, also a Dominican. An anonymous defender arose on his behalf in Padua, but the person who embodied and defended his doctrine was, in 1779, TRAVERSARI, AMBROGIO (v.), whose work was condemned (decree: 3 December 1781). P. TAMBURINI, PIETRO (v.) professed the same ideas at Pavia and skillfully insinuated them into the publications encouraged by Scipione de’ Ricci, bishop of Pistoia, and even into the decrees of the Pistoian synod itself, sess. IV, on the Eucharist. In 1794, in the 28th proposition of the bull Auctorem Fidei, this theory was condemned (Denz-U., no. 1528), and it was no longer discussed in Italy. There remained only among the people and clergy a preference for Communion infra Missam, moreover consistent with the liturgical spirit, without excluding Communion outside Mass. — Vedi tav. L.