5. The term “Sacrament” in Latin is translated out of the Greek word Mysterion
In the latin, the term means a promise (of Christ), it is a legal Roman term, helping solidify the idea that the Sacraments were a form of promise, just as Augustine defined Sacraments. However, mysterion, which the East retains, creates a less legal form and an ineffable trait. As such, as Sacraments develop, the move from mystery to Latin explanation becomes more abundant in the medieval West, eventually resulting in 7 sacraments, while the East never formally defines a number.
4. Body and Blood, bread and wine
While the “Real Presence” was an understood reality in the early church, as it develops in the Middle Ages before the scholastics affirm transubstantiation, it was seen to retain the appearance of bread and wine because of the horror of blood found in most people. Rather than a formal philosophical underpinning for the accidents and substance in Aristotelian terms, Radbertus explained that people would not partake of communion if it physically appeared blood and flesh. The fact that the Body and Blood of Christ appear to us as bread and wine is then a great mercy.
3. People took communion rarely
In fact, this became such an issue, that at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Church formalized the requirement to partake and receive communion by consumption at least once per year. This refusal or abstaining stemmed from two different approaches of the laity. The first reason people abstained was the emphasis upon the sinfulness and unworthiness of the individual to partake of the Eucharist, developing out of the Augustinian view of original sin and the liturgical changes of the priest facing away, speaking in Latin, whispering, and sometimes even screens separating the laity in addition to altar rails. The second reason people abstained from consuming the Eucharist was that individuals saw ocular communion as just as valid as physical consumption.
2. Seeing with our eyes was vital to worship
The late ancient / early medieval understanding of the sense of sight allowed sight to be a higher sense than the lower sense of touch, or taste, or smell. As such, the medieval laity wanted to adore Christ at the elevation of the Mass in order to better come into communion with the Divine Presence of God. This stems largely from the Augustinian (neo-platonic) understanding of the sense of sight as ability of the eye to send out rays of light, which then form an image and then receive those back. To see, was literally to be in communion with an object and to partake in its existence.
1. The elevation of the Blessed Sacrament
When this happened during the Mass, it was so important that many people left Mass immediately following the elevation and forfeited taking communion by consumption. This elevation was seen as a privilege and the ultimate form of communion with God. This is somewhat analogous to a beatific vision for those of us who are still mortal. Ocular Communion and the Elevation were so important that monstrances were designed ornately, bells were rung to draw the attention of the laity, and the Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted to celebrate this presence and visual communion.
If you would like to know more, here’s some books I suggest:
Ann Astell’s book Eating Beauty
Margaret Miles’ book Image as Insight
Daniel Bovarin’s article “The Eye in the Torah…”
Aden Kumler’s article “The Multiplication of the Species…”
Short and sweet … great post full of things I didn’t know 🙂 Thanks!
Thx, great info.
”… As Sacraments develop …” Just a polite, respectful correction, if I may: Neither the sacraments nor any other doctrine or dogma develop; only our understanding of them develops. The Faith in its completeness was handed down to us by Jesus and the Apostles.
“3. People took communion rarely”
Good idea.
Why so, Nostromo?
I sense an entitlement without confession is widespread, imho.
The medieval person likely thought of themselves as unworthy more so than we do today.
The sense of entitlement without confession is a great danger, I agree. Still, I’d much rather offer both sacraments and encourage people to take advantage of them than limit the offering of the sacraments.
wow, doesn’t matter what so many popes and saints (and pope-saints, e.g. St. Pius X) have promoted, the great Nostromo is against it. Let’s listen to him.
Many Popes have promoted confession too.
“Liturgical changes of the priest facing away, speaking in Latin, whispering, and sometimes even screens separating the laity in addition to altar rails.” These were not “changes” but are actually original. You might not grasp the Mass was always offered facing East with the clergy and people facing East (towards Jerusalem) . Hierarchic Latin was not a foreign language but the unifying language of the Roman Empire along with Greek used by the Church from the beginning. Screens and altar rails are also very early in the Church. They were in use well before the time of St Augustine of Hippo in the 360’s. What are you infereing. What we have had since the 1970’s is the abuse and is not genuine.
Yes, that part of the article was very surprising and odd.
The Romans admired and copied Greek culture and Latin absorbed many Greek words and some grammatical forms. Lovers of Greek culture such as Lucullus were admired. Greek and Latin are linked. The Church preserved unifying Greco Roman culture and languages. Given the diversity of spoken dialects that existed even within Roman Europe Latin was a unifying language. While even before the 16th century the Holy Scriptures were written and translated into diverse languages the unity of the Liturgy was preserved by the use of Greek/Latin. It wasn’t a nasty thing. It was a principle of culture that sought to integrate peoples. Repetition of a language gives it life. I can tell you Latin entered the various European languages and popular culture through use. The balkanization of the Church was prevented this way and peoples integrated. Even in the 19th century The Austrian parliament and Church used spoken Latin in debates and to communicate. Even during Vatican II this was done. The Renaissance was about a revival of Greco Roman culture. We have squandered all this rather that graft old and new. Roman culture was Christianized. Look at the fruits of divisions and schism that ferments in Germany even now. So don’t buy or repeat Protestant propaganda.
But by the high Middle Ages, Latin had ceased to be an intelligible language to the laity. (In fact, the Council Fathers at Trent thought that vernacular liturgy would be a good idea; the only reason they vetoed it was because it had become a weapon in the Protestant arsenal, and the Fathers thought it prudent not to appear to give in to the Protestants on that one.)
The disparaging of these traditional elements isn’t what is so shocking, since it’s a pretty widespread position, but to call them “changes” is a flat out historical error.
You mean that the Protestants actually wanted the people to understand what was being said? Shame on those vile heretics!!
1) The priest did not originally face “away” from the people; even when liturgy developed, he faced the East. Sometimes, that was the same way the people faced, which was later misinterpreted as away from the people; sometimes, it was in a direction towards the people, which was later misinterpreted as at the people.
2) Latin was not the original liturgical language, even in Rome; Greek was.
3) Screens and altar rails were certainly developed after apostolic times — which in no way renders them inferior from my point of view, but they were certainly not original.
Judging from the “Augustinian view of original sin” line and the recommended reading, this sounds like a load of modernist “just-so” stories.
I’m going off to put some calamine lotion on my hermeneutical midrash…
Although this short article is written with a lack of precision (to be expected from an undergraduate), the “stories” are nevertheless generally accurate (if a little too broadly generalized) to the history of late-medieval piety. If anything, the “modernist just-so” story is the one that dismisses the history of Christian practice as implausible just because it’s different from our assumptions about it.
“When this happened during the Mass, it was so important …………………. draw the attention of the laity, and the Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted to celebrate this presence and visual communion.” I dont know where you are getting this idea of occular communion from? This concept would have been a mystery to the Apostles and Fathers of the Church as well as the Christian community. The Christian understanding of liturgical sacrifice was a continuation from the Jewish understanding of sacrifice where that which is offered to God is received by God, accepted and blessed and given back to us so as both parties (God and the person who offers) share in a communion with eachother through jointly consuming the offered gift. This reaches its sublime fulfillment in Christ who is our sacrifice, who is given to us and in whom we commune with God. Whilst the word “transubstantiation” was coined later, the reality of Christ’s miracle in the Eucharist was foundational to the understanding of being a Christian. The goal was always communion with God in the flesh of Christ. The other kind of communion in the Catholic Church is to receive spiritual communion, which requires all the same dispositions for the recipient to present himself/herself for spiritual communion where again we invite the Holy Spirit, Spirit of God the Father and the Son, to enter our own human spirit.
“Ocular” or visual communion was one version of spiritual communion in (especially late) medieval piety. It may strike you as a terrible deviance from tradition; but its practice is well-attested historically.
Nathaniel, you wrote “ a common feature of the visionary mysticism
practiced by many 13th- and 14th-century holy women (such as the nuns at
Helfta, or the beguines like Hadewijch) was the experience of mystical union
with Christ simply in contemplation of the Eucharist, often unconnected with
physical consumption of it “. You are using the word contemplation in its ordinary sense of “looking at”. Contemplation in the Catholic sense, is an elevated stage of personal prayer which does not need to occur in front of the Eucharist exposed on the altar. (for good treatment of the stages of prayer refer works of Fr. Thomas Dubay). Also, the “mystical marriage” or “mystical union” is something again quite specific in the stages of prayer of some well known saints : Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila. I agree with what you say about the power of the Eucharist, being God’s real presence, naturally has great power and again, some recent conversions speak of wandering into a Mass, at the back of the Church, and at the elevation of the Host, great insights being given – suddenly and received without any particular effort or meditation preceding it and these were recognised as communications from God which are always accompanied by the call to respond in some way. But a communication from God does not qualify as being “in communion with God” in the Catholic understanding. Yes, statues and stain glass windows were tools for transmission of the Faith’s teachings. You speak poetically and obviously have a feel for it and this seems to be your source documents of preference.
On later medieval visionary practices, I would highly recommend Barbara Newman’s acute study, “What Did It Mean to Say, ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture” (accessible online: https://www.academia.edu/619032/What_Did_It_Mean_to_Say_I_Saw_The_Clash_between_Theory_and_Practice_in_Medieval_Visionary_Culture_2005_ )
clarification – God the Father in receiving our sacrifice @ Mass representing our ourselves, does not of course “consume” in the sense that we consume the Eucharist. But in receiving His own Son’s own sacrificial obedience, God ‘accepts’ in a way which is broader than we understand the word ‘accept’ .
In addition to Ann Astell’s excellent book, Eating Beauty, I would recommend several others for those interested in medieval eucharistic piety:
Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
And two by Caroline Walker Bynum:
Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (University of California Press, 1987)
Re: #4 — No, and again no: The reason the sacrament is in the form of bread and wine is because the person who instituted the sacrament, Jesus Christ, made it that way, and explained it that way, too. It didn’t take an 8th century theologian named Radbertus to develop the idea that people would have a horror of eating and drinking real flesh and blood — God was way ahead of him.
I think you’re misreading what was meant (perhaps because the author of this piece was a little unclear): Radbertus was, in fact, an important Carolingian commentator, and his work became standard for at least two centuries, until the Berengarian controversy of the late 11th-century demanded a rethinking of ideas. Anyway, Radbertus (or Berengar of Tours, or Lanfranc of Bec, or others) wasn’t doing anything different from the Church Fathers, or indeed from theologians stretching from the first to the twenty-first centuries: they were all engaged in the project of fides quaerens intellectum (as Anselm put it)–of faith seeking to understand and explain itself in terms comprehensible to the people of each time and place.
I’ve noticed that this is something that a lot of the commenters here seem to miss–the historical nature of Christianity. Catholic piety has changed a lot over the last two millennia–indeed, it looks different in each generation and in each place where Christians live, precisely because it is an incarnational faith, a faith that is lived and responds to the experience of living. The practices of the 2nd- and 3rd-century martyrs were different from those at the time of Gregory the Great; and different still from the Carolinigian Church, the time of Thomas Aquinas, the eve of the Reformation, after the Council of Trent, and in the early 21st-century (to say nothing of the differences between Western practices and those of the Greek East). Dismissing the actual history of Christian piety because it’s different from what you think it should be is just historical revisionism!
“Dismissing
the actual history of Christian piety because it’s different from what you
think it should be is just historical revisionism!” You hit the nail on
the head. The narrative in this article in meant to infer something. That
modern is better. What if the Christian “Middle Ages”… a
disparaging term nobody used then was a period we need to learn from. We are
the generation that takes Communion like free vending machine. We have no sense
of the sacred. We twist sacrality and give more veneration to Hollywood, the
French Revolution and Declaration of Independence that Jesus Christ and his
“ecclesia”.
We live in a bubble that fails to grasp reality…. I am becoming more and more
saddened by a world that has set about drawing inspiration from science
fiction and rupture of rather than a Christian world whose teachings and action
is Christ’s. Rupturing the past from the present is a ploy to excuse our own lack
of conviction, banality and vices. We won’t allow ourselves to be challenged
and shown up by anything.
Interesting stuff…thanks for the post!
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The three fundamental sacraments of initiation were received, conferred in their original triadic unity, culminating in the Eucharist after being baptized and confirmed. WHat is noteworthy about the Middle Ages is the disintegration of this fundamental model in the Latin Church, beginning with confirmation as it was reserved solely to the local bishop. I have seen and studied Latin liturgical manuscripts thru the 12th, 13 and 14th centuries which contain rubrics for infant communion. Lateran IV’s greatest innovation was the erection of the cognitive “toll gate” for children’s admission to the sacraments once they have reached the “age of reason” (“anni discretionis”). As the initiatic formula (retained by the Greek Orthodox today) fell apart in the West, the sacrament of penance re-emerged as a type of “baptisma secunda” once again allowing access to the Eucharist under both species orally, not just visually. Luckily for us, Saint Pius X, the patron saint of frequent communion at the turn of the 20th century re-interpreted the “age of reason” to be around the age of seven or even earlier: “sive etiam infra” in his 1910 Quam SIngulari.