Transubstantiation

TRANSUBSTANTIATION. - Etymologically (Lat. trans = beyond, substantia = substance) it indicates the passage of one substance into another. The Church's official expression dates from the 13th century, used to indicate the manner by which the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is brought about, that is, the wondrous and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Jesus Christ, only the appearances of the bread and wine remaining unchanged (Council of Trent, sess. XIII, can. 2; Denz-U, 884).

This doctrine, implicit in the words of Jesus "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood," was slowly formulated, in equivalent terms, by the Fathers (transmutation, transformation, transelementation, etc.; v. EUCARISTIA, III, col. 764), by ecclesiastical authors of the Carolingian age (cf. C. Gliozzo, La dottrina della conversione eucaristica in Pascasio Radberto e Ratrammo monaci di Corbia, Palermo 1945), by the Lateran Synod of 1079 against Berengar of Tours (substantialiter converti: Denz-U, 355; cf. A. Lentini, Alberico di Montecassino nel quadro della Riforma gregoriana, in Studi Gregoriani, IV, Rome 1952, pp. 55-109, esp. p. 66), until in the 12th century the happy expression transubstantiatio was introduced, which was received into the official documents of the Church from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to Trent (Denz-U. 430, 465, 581, 698, 884).

It was held that the first to use the word transubstantiare was the bishop of Autun, Stephen of Beaugé (d. 1139 or 1140) in the Tractatus de Sacramento Altaris, ch. 13: "Oramus ut cibus hominum fiat cibus Angelorum, scilicet ut oblatio panis et vini transubstantietur in Corpus et Sanguinem Jesu Christi" (PL. 172, 1291); but Fr. D. Van den Eynde demonstrated (Le tractatus de Sacramento Altaris faussement attribué à Etienne de Beaugé, in Recherches de théologie anc. et méd., 19 [1952], pp. 225-43) that this work is not by Stephen of Beaugé but by an author of the second half of the 12th century (perhaps the other Stephen, who was bishop of Autun from 1170 to about 1189); there remains therefore as the first established testimony of this term the passage written ca. 1150 by Roland Bandinelli (later Pope Alexander III): "Verumtamen, si necessitate imminente, sub alterius panis specie consecraretur, profecto fieret transubstantiatio, Sanguinis autem numquam fit nisi de vino transubstantiatio" (Sententiae, ed. U. Gietl, Freiburg im Br. 1891, p. 231). The subsequent testimonies are numerous (cf. J. De Ghellinck, L'Eucharistie au XIIe siècle en Occident, in DThC, V. coll. 1287-1302). About this term, rejected by Luther and by all the Protestants, but declared by the Council of Trent to be the "most apt" expression of the Catholic dogma, much was disputed within the ambit of orthodox doctrine (v. EUCARISTIA, III, coll. 764-66), yet its value and precise meaning were never called into doubt until these last years, in which attempts have been made to empty it of its real content by having recourse to the concept of a total transformation not in a substantial sense but in the pure ambit of significations (symbolic t.). The error was identified and rejected by Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis, 12 Aug. 1950 (cf. A. Piolanti, De symbolismo et ubiquismo eucharistico a Pio XII proscripto, in Euntes docete, 4 [1951], pp. 56-71).

Antonio Piolanti