Note 118 — Chapter VIII

Among these homilies is that for the festival of Easter, commonly quoted in support of the audacious theory that the Anglo-Saxon divines knew nothing of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The whole question is satisfactorily examined by Dr. Lingard, in his “History of the Anglo-Saxon Church,” to which the reader is referred. But it may be observed, that whatever obscurity is to be found in Ælfric’s language, that of other writers of his nation is singularly emphatic. The very term, Transubstantiation, is all but anticipated by Alcuin, who, in a letter to Paulinus, bids him remember his friend “at that time when thou shalt consecrate the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.” And of two saints contemporary with Ælfric, viz. St. Odo and St. Oswald, their biographers record the fact, that while celebrating mass, the appearance of a bleeding Host in their hands removed the doubts of certain beholders. Yet, what doubts had to be removed if the doctrine were not then held?