UBIQUISMO EUCARISTICO. — Lutheran error that seeks to explain the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist by the communication of divine omnipresence to the human nature of the Redeemer.
This antimetaphysical conception already found several precursors in the Middle Ages. In the ninth century, Scoto Eriugena gives a hint of it (De divisione naturae, V, 38: PL 122, 994); in the twelfth century, the heretic Almanic of Bène maintained that the Body of Christ is present everywhere, even in ordinary bread, and that consequently the words of consecration establish the real presence but do not produce it («subesse ostenditur»: cf. Garniero di Rochefort, Contra Amaurianos, in Jahrbuch für Phil. und spekul. Theol., 7 [1893], pp. 56–57). In the same century, Folmaro of Triefenstein, according to his adversary Arno of Reinchensberg (v.), affirmed that «corpus Christi, quod sumimus, non aliter in tam multis locis simul esse posse, nisi Christus corporaliter sit ubique» (Apologet. contra Folmarum, ed. Weichert, Leipzig 1888, p. 162). In the fourteenth century, Occam admitted that the Eucharistic Body of Christ could be condensed ad instar puncti and be found «ubique per potentiam divinam, non virtute propria» (In IV Sent., q. 4; cf. Quodlibet, 1, 4 de Sacramento Altaris, 6). In the sixteenth century, Lefèvre d’Étaples (Faber Stapulensis) formulated the ubiquist thesis, though without Eucharistic concerns.
Luther certainly knew this formulation of the error, which he proposed, applying it to the Eucharist, on 29 March 1526 in the discourse Vom Sakrament des Leibes und Blutes Christi (Weimar ed., XIX, p. 482 ff.), in March 1527 in the polemical writings against Zwingli and Oecolampadius: Dass diese Worte: das ist mein Leib noch feststehen (ed. cit., XXIII, p. 28 ff.), and in 1528 in the work Vom Abendmahl Christi, Beheuntum (ed. cit., XXIV, p. 261 ff.). In these writings, following the Occamist theory, he first attributes to the Body of Christ the prerogative of spirituality and therefore of definitive presence (modo Angelorum); then he goes on to say that the humanity of Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the Father (that is, made participant in God’s omnipotence), is present everywhere divine omnipotence extends (omnia implet): consequently, the Body of Christ is present everywhere, but in the Eucharist it is present for us, according to the divine will, which, although able to communicate to us the flesh of Jesus through all things, chose bread and wine in order to make it suited to our needs as human beings.
Rejected by the other «reformers» (Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon), this theory became a dogma among the Lutherans after the Schwabach Article (1529). The interpretation, however, of this «article of faith» gave rise to a heated controversy after Luther’s death. Tenaciously supported by Flacius Illyricus and Martin Brenz (who worked out its definitive formula: the humanity of Christ has obtained divine omnipotence, and thus in the Eucharist acquires the esse definitive of spirits and the esse repletive of God), but attacked by Melanchthon, Frederick III, Elector of the Palatinate, Philip of Hesse, and the Synod of Dresden (1571), ubiquism was defended to the utmost by the celebrated theologian Andrea, who went so far as to declare anyone who denied the omnipotence of Christ’s humanity in stones, plants, animals, etc., to be a hardened heretic deserving the severest penalties. Although opposed by Luca Maior, Andrea’s idea triumphed almost everywhere. Chemnitz, a conciliatory spirit, proposed a middle way (1578), which served to moderate primitive ubiquism in the Formula Concordiae (1580). Despite the moderation of this Lutheran confession of faith, integral ubiquism re-emerged among the two Swabian theologians Leander Hutter and Aegidius Hunnius, who, during the first half of the seventeenth century, exerted influence in the three schools of Tübingen (more radical tendency), Giessen (more moderate tendency), and Helmstedt (minimalist form).
After the middle of the eighteenth century, ubiquism disappeared, absorbed kenosis (v.). It has recently reappeared in certain theological tendencies condemned by Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis (1951).