Note 51 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The range and vigour of his practical rationalism may be gathered from his attitude in the controversy begun by the abbot Paschasius Radbert (831) on the nature of the Eucharist. Paschasius taught that there was a real transformation of the bread and wine into the divine body and blood; and the doctrine, thus nakedly put, startled the freer scholars of the time, who were not yet habituated to Latin orthodoxy. Another learned monk, Ratramnus, who had written a treatise on predestination at the request of the rationalizing emperor, Charles the Bald (discussing the problem in Gottschalk’s sense51 without naming him), produced on the same monarch’s invitation a treatise in which transubstantiation was denied, and the “real presence” was declared to be spiritual52—a view already known to Paschasius as being held by some.53 John Scotus, also asked by the emperor to write on the subject, went so far as to argue that the bread and wine were merely symbols and memorials.54 As usual, the irrational doctrine became that of the Church;55 but the other must have wrought for reason in secret. For the rest, he set forth the old “modal” view of the Trinity, resolving it into the different conceptual aspects of the universe, and thus propounding one more vital heresy.56