PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS. - Benedictine theologian and abbot, b. in the region of Soissons ca. 790, d. at Corbie ca. 865. A monk and scholastic at Corbie, in 822 he took part with his abbot Adalhard and with Wala in the founding of the abbey of Corvey (New Corbie) in Germany. Elected abbot of Corbie in 844, he was present at the Councils of Paris (847) and of Quierzy (849). Around 851, owing to internal difficulties, he withdrew as a simple monk to St-Riquier, whence he later returned to Corbie.
For his numerous hagiographic, exegetical and theological works (PL 120) he holds an eminent place among the authors of the Carolingian revival. Noteworthy: Vita s. Adhalardi; Epitaphium Arsenii seu vita Vialae; Commentarius in Mt.: the latter is the most extensive work of P., a synthesis of his homilies and his biblical courses in the schola monastica; woven from patristic texts, it is nevertheless the most personal exegesis among those of his contemporaries; Expositio in Ps. 44 (pious elevations on the religious life); Expositio in lamentationes Ieremiae, on the ills of the Church in the decadent Carolingian Empire; De fide, spe et caritate, important for the history of the treatise on the theological virtues; De partu Virginis, combats the thesis of Ratramnus (v.) by vindicating the virginity of Mary in partu; Homilia de Assumptione B. V., known as the letter of St. Jerome to Paula and Eustochium (PL 30, 126-47); Homiliae de Assumptione B. V., published among the works of St. Ildephonsus (PL 96, 239-68): the first 3 are probably by P., the other 4 are disputed; Historia de ortu S. Mariae (among the doubtful works of St. Jerome: PL 30, 308-15): a reworking of the Protoevangelium of James on the infancy of the Madonna.
The celebrated Liber de Corpore et Sanguine Domini was written in 831 at the request of Warin, abbot of Corvey, for the Saxon monks, and some extracts from it circulated at once as texts of St. Augustine; in 844 P. prepared a 2nd ed. of it (dedicated to Charles the Bald), which gave rise to a substantial eucharistic controversy (v. EUCHARIST; MASS), in which the opponents were above all Ratramnus and Rabanus Maurus (v.); P. accentuated his realism in ch. 26 of the Commentarius in Mt. and in the Epistola ad Frudegardum de Corpore et Sanguine Domini (cf. A. Wilmart, Analecta Reginensia, Città a pre-existing term; therefore P., even though he went too far in admitting a kind of "transentation" at the expense of the reality of the sensible species, moves decisively in the theological direction which after 7 centuries was fixed by the Council of Trent, and his work must be regarded, despite its uncertainties and imprecisions, as the first essay in eucharistic theology.
Bibliography8 works
Antonio Poolanti
"PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS": v. MODERNISMO.