The medieval English theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384) exhibited a deep dissatisfaction with prevailing interpretations of Christ's words: “Hoc est corpus meum”—the words of institution required to confect the sacrament in the Mass. Convinced that the misconstrual of this sacred proposition had facilitated a catastrophic distortion of the sacrament, principally manifested in the scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation, Wyclif searched for an alternative interpretation that permitted the consecrated bread to retain its own proper substance while still in some manner being converted into the body of Christ. The means by which the eucharistic formula functioned would thus be cemented to Wyclif's insistence upon the consecrated bread's substantial remanence. His reasons for rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation were manifold—and central points will be addressed below—but further attention is owed to the principles that governed his interpretation of the sacramental formula and the context in which he articulated his response. All the metaphysics will fall into place, Wyclif believed, if one properly grasps how this proposition functions. As it was, Wyclif's reading of the proposition and the resulting implications for his understanding of Christ's eucharistic presence resonated beyond his native England. The reception of Wyclif's position in Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century and the debates unfolding there over the words of institution merit special consideration. For one finds that the interpretations developed both by Wyclif and by the Prague master Jakoubek of Stříbro resulted in new and effective means of conceptualizing eucharistic conversion, thereby expanding the ways in which one can affirm Christ's presence in the consecrated host and the salvific effects of that presence for faithful communicants.
I. Wyclif's Objections to Transubstantiation
The late medieval schools, armed with highly sophisticated methodologies, attempted to render comprehensible how it is that Christ's crucified and risen body comes to be present on the altar during every Catholic Mass. The consensus position, presented within the framework of Aristotelian categories, posited a wholesale change on the level of substance that left the accidents in place. In its various iterations, therefore, the doctrine of transubstantiation held that upon consecration the substance of bread is converted into the substance of Christ's body. All that remains of the bread are its outward appearances, or accidents, beneath which exists the body of Christ; a reality that remains imperceptible to the senses is now grasped by the intellect through faith.Footnote 1 Increasingly ill at ease with such academic explanations, and ever more vociferous in his objections, John Wyclif was finally censured by an Oxford council in 1381 and soon forced to leave the university. Then, in May 1382, a synod convened by Archbishop William Courtenay at London Blackfriars formally condemned a set of twenty-four heretical and erroneous propositions implicitly identified with Wyclif. Of the ten heretical propositions, the first affirms the substantial remanence of the material bread; the second that accidents cannot continue to exist without a subject following consecration; and the third that Christ is not really present in a genuine corporeal manner.Footnote 2 Each condemned article would thus appear to undo some principal component of transubstantiation, since the bread is said to remain fully intact following consecration, having not been substantially converted into Christ's body.
How does one account for Wyclif's deep aversion to a doctrine that his fellow schoolmen, even if not all active promotors,Footnote 3 had learned to accommodate? Some modern scholars trace Wyclif's opposition to his own brand of realist metaphysics that would not permit the possibility of substantial annihilation nor accidents existing apart from their proper subjects.Footnote 4 Others have focused on Wyclif's growing discomfort with many of the devotional practices built up around the doctrine of transubstantiation. Wyclif wished, therefore, to remove the Eucharist from what he took to be the abuses of popular religion with its festal processions, veneration of relics, and host adoration.Footnote 5 There is certainly ample support in Wyclif's writings for both sets of theories, which are, in fact, complementary. Both may be even better understood in light of Wyclif's treatment of the words of institution, since it is the recitation of those words that effects the decisive change in the eucharistic elements—however that change is explained.
In matters of metaphysics, Wyclif was a staunch realist committed to the principle that individual things participate in real universal categories, and so he was unalterably opposed to the nominalists for whom universals are merely intra-mental organizational concepts. Wyclif's particular form of realism contributed to his sense that transubstantiation amounted to annihilationism, since the substance of the bread and wine would cease to exist upon consecration. Wyclif was convinced, however, that God cannot annihilate any substance without reducing the entire created universe to nothing, for the very fact that universals are instantiated in particulars. Envisioning a sort of ontological chain reaction, Wyclif believed that the annihilation of a particular thing would result in the destruction of its entire genus. Were the bread of the host to be annihilated, therefore, “breadness” itself would cease to exist.Footnote 6
With regard to eucharistic accidents existing without their proper subject, Wyclif stuck closely to Aristotle's position that substances are naturally prior to the accidents which depend upon them for their existence.Footnote 7 To Wyclif's mind, the doctrine of transubstantiation fails to grasp both the nature and the function of accidents, which exist in order to modify substances.Footnote 8 Hence accidental forms such as quantity and quality, while real, are no more than the quantification and qualification of the substance in which they inhere. Transubstantiation posits the bread's substantial conversion even as all of its accidents remain in place—but take away the bread's substance and there is nothing left for its accidents to quantify and qualify.Footnote 9 Wyclif pointedly rejected, moreover, the argument that, while self-subsistent accidents might be impossible in the natural order, it is still possible for God to bring this about supernaturally. Disrupting the normal order of causation would actually run contrary to the Divine Nature itself, according to Wyclif, since it would posit superfluous actions on God's part, as God would thus be circumventing the processes that he himself put in place.Footnote 10
More to the point, perhaps, positing such subject-less accidents opens the door to wholesale deception, since our sense experience of accidents will no longer offer our intellect any certain proof for the existence of an underlying substance. This suspension of the natural order would, Wyclif believed, render God a deceiver and his cosmos unintelligible.Footnote 11 So it was that Wyclif's metaphysical misgivings only fueled his fear that the Eucharist was becoming an occasion for idolatry. But this is what happens, he lamented, when people fail to realize that Christ's presence is spiritually hidden in the sacrament rather than substantially present beneath the bread's remaining accidents. As a result, many laypeople are worshipping the host, adoring what is by nature bread, thereby lapsing into idolatry and reduced to bestial servitude by clerically perpetrated delusions. A cynical clergy, Wyclif surmises, would prefer that the laity wallow in these dangerous errors rather than put at risk popular devotion to the consecrated host.Footnote 12
II. The Words of the Priest Demonstrate Nothing
In his influential work De missarum mysteriis, Lotario di Segni (the future Pope Innocent III) addressed the question as to what Christ was demonstrating when he spoke the words, “Hoc est corpus meum.” Specifically, Lotario asked what the demonstrative pronoun hoc was referring to here. He noted that it could not be referring to the bread, since bread cannot be Christ's body. Nor can it refer to the body at that moment, since Christ had not yet completed the statement that effects the conversion. Lotario's solution to this seemingly obscure scholastic question would be frequently cited in later centuries as a principled theory, among others, that sought to explain how the consecratory formula functions. According to Lotario, at the Last Supper, Christ actually consecrated the bread when he blessed it, such that it had been converted into his body before he said to his disciples, “This is my body.” Although Christ accomplished this by his own divine power through the blessing, he then presented the formula under which later priests would be able to bless the host. What, then, does the pronoun hoc demonstrate when the priest utters the words of consecration? The answer is nothing (nihil), for he is not employing these words in an assertive manner (enuntitative) but rather in a recitative way (recitative). The priest, therefore, is merely reciting, repeating out loud, the words that confer the power of Christ's blessing.Footnote 13
Lotario's solution made its way into the 1215 Glossa Ordinaria on Gratian's Decretum, where the Eucharist is treated at length in the De consecratione section. It is within the commentary on the canon Timorem that the glossator Johannes Teutonicus noted that it is customarily asked what is demonstrated by the pronoun hoc. Johannes follows along the path outlined by Lotario just a few decades earlier, pointing out that the hoc cannot refer to the bread, since the bread is not the body of Christ. Nor can it refer to the body, for it does not seem fitting that the transubstantiation would occur prior to the completion of the whole formula. It is at this point that the glossator offers his own opinion, basically adopting Lotario's solution, even if couched in different terminology. Nothing is demonstrated by this statement uttered by the priest for the very fact that it is a case of material supposition (materialiter ponitur). Yet how, asks Johannes, could transubstantiation take place if nothing is signified by this statement? It is because when Christ uttered this phrase he employed it in a signifying manner (utebatur significative voce) whereas priests today employ it materially (nos utimur materialiter).Footnote 14
Johannes substituted “materialiter” for Lotario's “recitative” when describing the utterance of the priest. Although the adverb recitative was most commonly employed in this case, Peter the Chanter had already in the twelfth century employed the adverb materialiter with the same sense.Footnote 15 That the latter adverb specifically denotes an instance of material supposition (whereby words stand in for words, not things) is clarified by the Dominican Richard Fishacre in his circa 1245 Sentences commentary (bk. 4, d. 8). Richard observed that some say that when the priest utters the words of consecration, he does not assert but rather recites the words of Christ. Hence the whole proposition is taken materialiter, which means that the pronoun hoc functions there materially. It is just as if one were to say that “this pronoun hoc is a monosyllable.” The point being that the hoc is not functioning demonstratively here, as though demonstrating some actual thing, but only materially as a stand-in for the word itself.Footnote 16
Reading the eucharistic formula as an instance of material supposition was by no means confined to the thirteenth century, which is evinced by the fact that two of Wyclif's contemporary opponents could still present it as a plausible, even if not definitive, explanation. In direct response to Wyclif, the Augustinian friar Thomas Winterton thus recounted:
Christ transubstantiated the bread into his body through the blessing, not formally through the pronouncement of the words, “hoc est corpus meum.” . . . Since the blessing at that time preceded the pronouncement of those words, it does not seem unfitting that the transubstantiation also preceded that pronouncement. But now, in the mystery enacted by the priests, transubstantiation occurs by virtue of Christ's words, the pronouncement of which we believe confers the divine blessing.Footnote 17
Accordingly, therefore, the words demonstrate nothing since they are pronounced only recitatively in Christ's name. In this same vein, Wyclif's implacable foe, the Franciscan William Woodford, had specifically cited Lotario di Segni's tract to the effect that Christ had taken the bread in his hands and consecrated it by means of his blessing before he spoke the words “hoc est corpus meum.” This, in turn, means that the bread was fully converted into Christ's body even before the Lord had begun to utter this proposition. The pronoun hoc did not demonstrate the bread but rather the body of Christ, which is now contained underneath the species of the bread that has been transubstantiated into his body. Thus, when the priest consecrates at the altar today, says Woodford, he is speaking the words “hoc est corpus meum” materially and recitatively rather than indicatively or assertively.Footnote 18 Woodford proposed this as one viable theory among others, although not necessarily his own position, as we will see below.
Wyclif thoroughly understood the principles of material supposition, of course, and provided a concise definition whereby a term stands in for itself (pro se ipso).Footnote 19 That does not mean, however, that Wyclif wished to see this principle applied to the eucharistic formula. In fact, he specifically took issue with “certain decretists, such as the common glossator on De consecratione distinction 2, who maintain that nothing at all is demonstrated by the pronoun, since the whole prayer must be taken materially as though [the priest] is reciting what Christ has said.”Footnote 20 Yet, as Wyclif sees it, if the words of institution really are an instance of material supposition, they will be stripped of their effective sacramental power of conversion. The hoc must demonstrate some actual thing beyond itself: this thing here in the world to which one can point. Wyclif will therefore insist that the pronoun hoc signifies the bread throughout the proposition, even as that bread undergoes a miraculous sacramental (not substantial) conversion into Christ's body. It is at once the same and not the same bread because it has taken on a new way of existing in the world. To better understand why Wyclif was so adamant about this point, it will be instructive to survey his general theory of propositions.
III. Real Propositions Speak the Truth
Very early in his career Wyclif had defined a proposition along traditional lines in keeping with Boethius and the thirteenth-century logician William of Sherwood: “It is an indicative statement, grammatically correct, signifying something either true or false, and producing a complete thought in the mind of the hearer.”Footnote 21 Yet Wyclif was not content to treat propositions simply at the level of grammatical coherence; they had to address, even mirror, a greater cosmic coherence that undergirded them and made them true. To that end, Wyclif set out to refute the English Franciscan William of Ockham, who maintained that an affirmative proposition, such as “Bucephalus is a horse,” will be true just so long as the subject and predicate supposit for the same thing. The truth of the proposition, therefore, is sufficiently accounted for by this grammatical agreement apart from any conditions in the outside world beyond the proposition.Footnote 22 What this means, moreover, is that the proposition itself is the immediate object of our knowledge.Footnote 23 Ockham's reductionism did not sit well with his fellow Franciscan Adam Wodeham, however, who argued instead that we assent to propositions because they affirm what is actually the case in the external world. Hence, we are making judgments first and foremost about real things, not propositions. And yet we are not merely assenting to the existence of those things but rather to the manner in which those things exist. Consequently, Wodeham maintained that some arrangement of things in the world, or state of affairs, is the object signified by the proposition and, furthermore, is what makes that proposition true.Footnote 24
While following along similar lines as Wodeham, Wyclif took matters even further so as to affirm that “everything that exists can be called a proposition.” By this, Wyclif meant that real things are themselves a conjoining of subject and predicate, such that our propositions mirror an external structure that is already in place.Footnote 25 As it was, therefore, Wyclif believed that no sentence could be true or necessary except for the truth or necessity it bears in the real world.Footnote 26 It is not the imposition of terms that accounts for the level of agreement between real things (res extra) but the fact that these agreements are grounded essentially in the things themselves, not simply in signs.Footnote 27 That Wyclif exhibited such confidence in the ability of language to reflect the truth of things owes to the fact that the Divine Intellect secures the intelligibility of the created world, which in turn allows human beings to attain some understanding of eternal truths. Not only every necessary truth but all contingent truths find their cause in God's Eternal Reason.Footnote 28 Hence, when Wyclif defended real propositions (ex parte rei), it was because they are formed by God himself.Footnote 29 We do not assent merely to an arrangement of terms, as Ockham would have it, but to divinely uttered propositions embedded in the structure of the cosmos.Footnote 30
This theory of propositions that maps so closely to the arrangement of things in the world led Wyclif to reject any interpretation of the eucharistic formula that rests upon material supposition, which is the case with Lotario di Segni's popular rendition. The terms of a proposition must be ordered in such a way that they correctly present some state of affairs that presently exists or, in the case of a Divine Speaker, is brought into existence as a consequence of being spoken. Always, though, there must be a direct correlation between the proposition and the real order. The proposition “hoc est corpus meum,” therefore, cannot possibly be left to demonstrate nothing. This is because “the bread being Christ's body” is an actual state of affairs eternally willed and known by God; the proposition “hoc est corpus meum” demonstrates this truth that could not be otherwise. We can further explore this principle in the following section, which looks at the treatment of the eucharistic formula precisely as a spoken proposition.
IV. The Dynamics of the Spoken Word
Because the words of institution were, and must be, said out loud by somebody—first by Christ at the Last Supper and subsequently by priests at the altar—medieval theologians had to account for the successive nature of spoken propositions that unfold one word after another. And since it was generally agreed that the body of Christ is not present under the species of the bread until the end of the formula's enunciation, one needed to explain how the pronoun (hoc) could demonstrate a thing (corpus) that only becomes present at a future time. It was to this end that Richard Fishacre had drawn a distinction between the time in which the words are being uttered (tempus in quo) and the time in view of which they are uttered (tempus pro quo). Even if all the elements of the proposition are not enunciated at the same instant, they are nevertheless spoken with reference to that last instant (pro ultimo instanti), and it is at this last instant that the proposition will be declared true.Footnote 31
The younger Wyclif seemed to be at home with this sort of analysis, adopting the traditional position that “a spoken proposition is composed from words successively uttered. And it exists only as long as any one of its parts is in existence; for it is a successive reality [res succesiva], just like time.” Unlike permanent things which possess all of their parts simultaneously, therefore, the vocal proposition's parts exist one after another.Footnote 32 Wyclif was content to read the eucharistic formula successively at a time when he was still accepting of transubstantiation:
It is nevertheless certain that a proposition is sufficiently true, even if its primary significate is not present for the duration [of the proposition], but is present either after or before [the proposition is complete], as with the proposition which the priest in the person of Christ utters when he says, “hoc est corpus meum.” For surely this proposition is the sign of the confection of Christ's body. It is certain that the body of Christ, as it is underneath the accidents of the host, is demonstrated by the pronoun [hoc]. And it is also certain that the conversion or transference occurs for the first time only at the end [of the proposition] when the consecratory prayer has been pronounced. For if one omits any part of this prayer there can be no conversion, as the doctors generally say.Footnote 33
In the event, though, Wyclif came to be troubled by what he reckoned the fundamental indeterminacy of spoken propositions, especially when coupled with the question of substantial conversion: “This (becomes) my body.”
Although Wyclif does not mention Ockham's (typically subtle) treatment of this question, we catch a glimpse here of the sort of indeterminacy, or uncertainty, that Wyclif had in mind in his later years. Ockham reckoned the eucharistic proposition spoken by the priest to be true, because the priest uttering these words should intend to demonstrate Christ's body when uttering the pronoun hoc. The key, for Ockham, is that the priest will form one mental proposition at that instant in which he utters the hoc and another when he reaches the meum. The first mental proposition addresses the future: “This body that will immediately exist underneath these species, if the proposition is correctly spoken, is my body.” Formed for that instant when the pronoun hoc is uttered, it is unqualifiedly true. At the end of the utterance, however, the priest forms another mental proposition which pertains to the present: “This body existing underneath those species, is my body.”Footnote 34 Ockham insists that the same thing is consistently demonstrated at the beginning and at the end of the proposition, although the mental propositions differ insofar as the first is formed with respect to the future, while the second is formed with respect to the present. This makes sense, says Ockham, because at the beginning of the utterance Christ's body is not present beneath the species, whereas it is present there at the end.Footnote 35
That the mental proposition is true both at the beginning and at the end, even if not in the same way, owes to the fact that the mental proposition is simultaneously whole (tota simul), since it is formed in an instant. The vocalized proposition is formed successively, however, which means that it is only true at the end but not at the beginning. Vocal propositions introduce a level of uncertainty, according to Ockham, because at the beginning the listener is not sure what the complete proposition will turn out to be. Even after the priest has spoken the words “hoc est corpus,” the listener still does not know whether the one uttering these words intends to speak about the body of a donkey or a man. So it is that the spoken proposition remains indeterminate up until the very end, neither true nor false, so long as it remains incomplete.Footnote 36
By the late stages of his career, this sort of explanation left Wyclif cold, such that he came to summarily reject successive propositions. The most pointed discussion—and one that is relevant to his treatment of the Eucharist—is found in his 1382/1383 Trialogus, wherein Wyclif argued that the proper formula for contracting marriage should not be spoken in the present tense, “I take you to be my wife” (ego te accipio in uxorem), but in the future, “I will take you” (ego te accipiam). Wyclif was well aware that canon law explicitly stated that the present tense alone was acceptable to contract a valid marriage. Yet he found various problems with this formula, one of which is rooted in the successive nature of human speech. To say that the marriage is contracted at that present moment when the speaker enunciates the words “ego te accipio in uxorem” overlooks the fact that when the spoken word (vox) ceases to be, it no longer exists, which means that the marriage formula—itself a successive rather than a permanent thing—cannot have all its requisite parts assembled at the same time. And so, lacking such cohesion, the formula is unable to effect what it signifies. By rejecting the validity of the present tense proposition on these grounds, Wyclif had therefore bypassed that established distinction (noted above) between the tempus in quo and tempus pro quo, which had been designed to obviate just this sort of dilemma. As it was, Wyclif determined that only the future tense, “I will take you” (ego te accipiam), would render a valid sacramental marriage.Footnote 37
At some point, Wyclif seems to have come to the conclusion that propositions which posit a sort of evolving reality cannot be true. The clearest indication of this principle can be found among some brief remarks his 1380 De eucharistia, where Wyclif insisted that in the proposition “hoc est corpus meum” the demonstrative pronoun hoc must consistently refer to the bread. This is the case, he says, because if the hoc designates bread at the beginning, and it is subsequently converted into something different at the end, the proposition would be false in its succession, since its meaning would change as it progresses.Footnote 38 Both the marriage formula and the eucharistic words of institution are present tense propositions that are supposed to make something happen, to effect a change in the situation: to make unmarried persons into married persons and bread into Christ's body. Yet such efficacy, according to Wyclif, would seem to require that all the parts of the proposition exist simultaneously, which is not the case with spoken propositions since they are successive, as opposed to permanent, things. Wyclif knew that people do actually get married and that the bread does (in some way) become Christ's body; the question is what role the utterance of propositions plays in making these things happen.
Wyclif's posthumous opponent, the Carmelite Thomas Netter, was puzzled by his position that the pronoun hoc must consistently demonstrate the same thing (bread) lest the proposition be false in its succession. Interestingly, even as Netter would procced against Wyclif, he readily admitted—here as late as 1430—that there is a range of theories regarding the manner by which the words of institution might achieve the conversion of the elements, such that a person could hold one or another view without necessarily being wrong (hic sine culpa erroris diversi diversa sentiunt).Footnote 39 This is important to remember, for even as Wyclif had been formally condemned at the Council of Constance, along with the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus (who was burned at the stake there on July 6, 1415), there still remained in late medieval Christendom a good deal of latitude when treating the more complex components of sacramental theology.Footnote 40
Now, according to Netter, God has affixed to the sacramental words a certain power so that by one simple process they effect what they signify and thereby express a truthful meaning.Footnote 41 He recounts that when he was younger he thought that the word est was the effective word, just as when Jesus cleansed lepers with his word mundare (be clean) and when God created the elements of the world with his fiat (let there be). Netter subsequently refined his position, noting that one should not isolate the word est as if it could stand alone and thereby render the remainder of the proposition superfluous. With the pronunciation of the word est, the conversion has been immediately consummated, according to Netter, but only insofar as it is understood with reference to those words which follow and bring the proposition to its completion.Footnote 42
V. The Operative Power of Language
Netter's commentary on the conversion process is in keeping with the generally held principle that language can possess an operative value whereby the eucharistic formula implies that one thing is going to be converted into another thing by the power of the words that are pronounced. Hence the pronouncement of the words “this is my body” will produce the thing that the proposition signifies, in this case the body of Christ, which did not exist there prior to this pronouncement.Footnote 43 It was along these lines that the Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol determined that the eucharistic proposition is not merely indicative but specifically conversive. Auriol noted that an indicative proposition indicates the truth of the composition of the subject with the predicate but not the effective conversion of the subject into the predicate. “Hoc est corpus meum” cannot, therefore, be judged by the standards of an indicative proposition whereby the pronoun would have to supposit consistently for the existence of the subject throughout the whole proposition. Whereas in a conversive proposition, which effects what it signifies, the pronoun hoc does supposit for the existence of one subject (bread) at the beginning of the proposition and another subject (body) that is verified at the end. This is possible precisely because the original subject has undergone a conversion over the course of the utterance.Footnote 44 Some decades later, in direct response to Wyclif, the aforementioned William Woodford argued that even had Christ demonstrated the bread that he held in his hands through the pronoun hoc, one need not conclude that the bread remains following the consecration. Just the opposite is the case, according to Woodford, for here the est should be taken in an active, operational sense (practice) such that it is transformative rather than merely descriptive. Read in this way, “This is my body” means, “This is becoming [fit] my body,” or “This is being converted/transubstantiated into my body.”Footnote 45
The changing referent of the pronoun hoc is exactly what troubled Wyclif, since it would seem to introduce an intolerable level of uncertainty into Christ's words, bordering even upon the deceptive. Wyclif pointedly rejected, therefore, the sort of argument seen above whereby the eucharistic proposition is reckoned productive and transformative (factiva et conversiva) and so anticipates its own verification: when one reaches the end of the proposition, what was at first not true will then be true. Wyclif, moreover, reckoned such an explanation fundamentally incoherent: if the first part of the proposition forms the foundation for saying that Christ's body is present, and this first part is actually false, then the foundation for the subsequent statement is clearly lacking.Footnote 46 For Wyclif, it is the changing truth value that invalidates the proposition. Hence his complaint above about the “hoc est corpus meum” proposition being false in its succession. The larger problem with a proposition that substantially changes what it purports to indicate is that it misses the purpose of language itself, which is to mirror the immutable propositions eternally spoken by God that constitute the real order of things.
Convinced that the subject of a proposition cannot undergo a substantial conversion in the course of its utterance, Wyclif instead maintained that the bread which Christ took in his hands is demonstrated by the first demonstrative pronoun (hoc), and the very same thing is indicated by the following possessive pronoun (meum). No faithful person can be expected to believe, says Wyclif, that Christ took the bread and gave it to the disciples, unless he was thinking of that bread when he uttered the initial pronoun (hoc). Were this not the case, Christ would be deceiving his church, having one thing in mind while indicating another by his gestures and words.Footnote 47 Although this appears commonsensical to Wyclif, it should be noted that the Franciscan William Melitona had proposed that the bread designated to the senses is actually not designated for its own sake but only insofar as it will be converted and thus to the extent that it signifies the body of Christ. By indicating bread to sensible perception, therefore, the celebrant actually intends to represent the body of Christ to the intellect.Footnote 48 Wyclif does not mention William, but this is the sort of bait and switch that so unnerves him, since it attaches a further layer of ambiguity to what should otherwise be a straightforward demonstration.
And yet, for all of Wyclif's objections to prevailing explanations of the eucharistic formula, he, too, believed that Christ had by his words transformed ordinary bread into his body. Wyclif, the Catholic priest, did not doubt that some sort of conversion does occur at the altar when celebrating the Mass. Nevertheless, he held that in order for the eucharistic formula to be a genuinely transformative (conversiva) proposition, the hoc must supposit for the bread that remains after the consecration, even though that bread is now—albeit in some indefinable spiritual manner—Christ's body. Christ had blessed the bread before giving it to his disciples, which is an act of amelioration; the bread is elevated to a glorious state that it had not enjoyed only moments before the blessing. None of this would be possible, however, if the words of institution were to initiate a process of destruction such that the bread's substance ceased to exist, for that would amount to a curse (maledictio) rather than a blessing (benedictio). Indeed, says Wyclif, it would have been a curse even more severe than had withered the fig tree (Mark 11:21), for then at least the substance of the tree remained.Footnote 49
Only a remanentist conversion is possible, as Wyclif sees it, since it permits the subject—in this case the bread—to retain its substantial identity throughout the transformation. In his own way, and to his own purposes, Wyclif adheres to Aristotle's understanding of change (Physics 1.7) whereby there must be some underlying subject that persists over the course of the change.Footnote 50 To be clear, Wyclif was not proposing the sort of substantial or accidental change that Aristotle had addressed. But he does apply this basic principle of continuity to the effect that the bread is a persistent subject that, over the course of the benediction, experiences a spiritual change, an ameliorative transformation. The bread, while substantially remaining bread, has nevertheless lost its ordinary profane status and has acquired a new sacred way of existing in the world.
VI. Intentions and Words
If it is agreed that a genuine conversion does occur at the altar as the priest utters the consecratory prayer, does that mean that the words themselves actually make this happen? When addressing the words of institution specifically as the sacramental form of the Eucharist, Wyclif determined that successive words do not possess of themselves (ex se) the efficacy to convert the elements. Instead, such power belongs to the word of God assisting the celebrating priest standing in for Christ who originally spoke those words; that is what effects the conversion. God nevertheless finds it fitting to operate through spoken words, according to Wyclif, and in that way performs this action. We only attribute such power to the spoken words of consecration improperly or equivocally in as much as they are functioning here instrumentally. God remains the Supreme Artisan who is able to accomplish his work through weak and abject instruments. As for when the sacramental proposition begins to be true, Wyclif determines that it cannot be while the proposition is still being spoken but only at the final instant of its utterance.Footnote 51
Wyclif was not saying here that the truth value of the proposition is changing, as though moving from false to true, only that it must have assembled all of its parts if it is to correctly demonstrate the real order of things. Bear in mind, moreover, that even this “waiting” for truth is only something that takes place on the human temporal plane where we experience reality as a series of instants one after the other. Because God concedes to human speech a secondary causal role in effecting the eucharistic conversion, the pronouncement of these words make something happen in time that God himself has eternally known to be the case—namely, that bread would become Christ's body on this altar today.
The words of the consecratory prayer are not inconsequential, therefore, but neither are they essential in themselves to effect the eucharistic conversion. This might seem strange in light of what has been said about propositions reflecting the composition of the external world. To trace Wyclif's further thoughts on this matter, one needs to step back to the 1202 decretal Cum Marthae, wherein Pope Innocent III had addressed concerns of the archbishop of Lyons that the canon of the Mass does not precisely replicate the wording of the Eucharist as recorded in the Gospels. Here Innocent responded that the church rightly accepts many things regarding the words and deeds of Christ that are not found in the four Gospels but that have been supplied by the apostles, whether in Acts or the Epistles. Whatever may be added in the canon of the Mass, therefore, can be supported from other places in the New Testament.Footnote 52 Along these same lines, the fourteenth-century theologian Richard FitzRalph had concluded that variation among the New Testament texts themselves, and any differences with the Roman form, amount to nothing more than small discrepancies in words (verba) rather than meaning (sensus).Footnote 53 Specifically citing Cum Marthae as well as FitzRalph's treatment of this question, Wyclif would himself contend that no single form is required for consecration, given the fact that ecclesiastical usage does not precisely match the New Testament accounts. We ought to attend to the sense of the words, therefore, recognizing that such verbal variation does not bear upon the substance of the sacrament.Footnote 54
In response to those who claim that by omitting even one word in the consecratory prayer the priest does not confect, Wyclif actually allowed for a fair amount of leeway. Even were one to stick solely to Latin, he notes, one must still allow for various forms of pronunciation, notably in the case of the letter “c.” In fact, Wyclif believes such diversity concurs with the polyphonic resonance of the heavens. Forcing every priest and congregation to follow some exact iteration of words and standard pronunciation might even amount to an unholy favoritism (see Acts 10:34). It is sufficient that the faithful agree in the underlying sacred meaning that, according to Wyclif, remains prior to the language by which that meaning is expressed—in this case, that the bread figuratively is the body of Christ.Footnote 55
This attempt to get at what lies behind human language is in keeping with Wyclif's likening of language—whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or English—to a garment (habitus) in which God's Law is clothed.Footnote 56 This in turn may be an allusion to Augustine's famous discussion in his De trinitate of the inner word that shines within and precedes the outer word by which it is signified, hence the verbum cordis preceding the language that expresses it. The saint went on to say what Wyclif also affirms here: that while God's word is scattered in the sounds of many different languages through the hearts and mouths of men, it remains the word of God in as much as divine, rather than human, doctrine is handed down.Footnote 57 For Wyclif, it seems, real propositions can be constructed under a variety of outward forms so long as they correctly represent the divinely intended meaning and thus the truth in the world as constructed by God.
VII. Predication and Presence
Tapping into divine meaning, especially in matters of eucharistic conversion, largely depends upon getting questions of predication right. That Wyclif can call the bread Christ's body without the bread undergoing a substantial conversion hinges largely upon what he refers to as habitudinal, or relational, predication. Unlike formal predication, whereby the predicate inheres in the subject, habitudinal predication allows for something to be predicated of a subject without that subject experiencing a change in itself. That Mary is loved by John expresses a real relation between them without, however, causing a formal change in Mary.Footnote 58 Thus, for Wyclif, when the Apostle Paul identifies Christ with the bread that is broken (1 Corinthians 10:16), he is employing habitudinal, rather than formal, predication as the bread acquires a new relation to Christ without itself being substantially changed into Christ. In fact, says Wyclif, if partaking of the Lord's body is understood formally, then the bread is not his body.Footnote 59 Wyclif then expands this principle to Christ's own words, which have a uniquely effective and transformative power that determines the reality they address. If Christ can change the Baptist into Elijah by conferring upon him a new identity in relation to the prophet (Matthew 17:11–13), so God working through his priest can consecrate the host such that, by means of a real relational change, it becomes Christ's body.Footnote 60
Wyclif was not content to settle upon some single explanation of eucharistic presence, therefore, but looked for different ways to express how it was that the bread could be at once bread and Christ's body. Basic Christological models offered one avenue: just as Christ is simultaneously divine and human, so the sacrament can at once be bread and Christ's body—the former naturally and the latter sacramentally.Footnote 61 In this vein, Wyclif drew upon John Damascene's remark that “just as the burning coal is not simple wood, but is united to fire, so then the communion bread is not simple bread, but is united to divinity.”Footnote 62 This is not a union of two substances, however, but rather a union of the bread's natural substance with Christ's sacramental existence. Another incarnational analogy would have the bread in the role of the Word, remaining substantially unchanged even as it assumes unto itself a new reality. These are only analogies, of course, and thus cannot be pressed too far, but the point is made: the bread may truly and properly be called the body of Christ by virtue of an underlying sacramental union, rather than a substantial conversion, which nevertheless establishes the truth of the eucharistic proposition.Footnote 63
To say that the bread is the body, which is precisely how Wyclif understands the proposition “hoc est corpus meum,” is therefore to posit that sacramental union that necessarily entails Christ's uniquely salvific presence. As Wyclif attempted to clarify Christ's sacramental, or spiritual, presence in the host, he enlisted the assistance of the adjective/adverb “virtual” or “virtually.” Virtual presence, as the root word virtus would indicate, denotes the presence of a thing by way of its power.
In as much as every material substance is diffused throughout a place, so it is impossible for the numerically same body to be extended throughout distant locations simultaneously. It is possible, however, for it to be spatially extended in one place while yet possessing a spiritual existence in another, as in a sign or through its power, just as it is said of a king. And so it is clear with respect to the body of Christ that it is present dimensionally in heaven while also virtually present in the host as in a sign.Footnote 64
Wyclif's invocation of royal power as a suitable analogy for Christ's eucharistic presence might be further clarified by remarks in his De officio regis as he directly addressed the means by which a king can be said to be present. Here Wyclif observed that a king, not unlike God himself, enjoys a threefold existence within his kingdom: as an individual body occupying a defined space; a still further presence extending as far as his appearance is perceived; and finally, the aforementioned virtual presence, which is to say presence by way of the power that he exercises over his whole kingdom.Footnote 65 Christ, like an earthly monarch, can be effectively present to his people by means of signs and instruments specifically designed to manifest his personal power.
That power can be made present by way of symbols is central to Wyclif's position. He observes that there are multiple grades of signification, the highest of which being when the reality that is symbolized is present by way of its power to every point of the symbol. It is in this manner, according to Wyclif, that the bread consecrated by Christ's own words can be called his body; this is a miraculous way of being present proper to Christ.Footnote 66 Wyclif concedes that the manner in which the bread now exists as Christ's body nevertheless remains largely inexplicable to wayfarers, even if we do manage to catch an oblique glimpse.Footnote 67 Through it all, though, Wyclif will insist that to speak of the Eucharist in terms of signs and figures is by no means to reduce the sacramental words to a commonplace trope. Nor is what occurs at the altar merely a priestly benediction; the words of consecration are sufficiently efficacious to render Christ's human nature really, although sacramentally, present to every point of the consecrated host.Footnote 68
Perhaps Wyclif's clearest and most concise presentations of his understanding of real presence runs as follows:
We believe that the mode of existence of Christ's body in the consecrated host is threefold: virtual, spiritual and sacramental. It is virtual as in the mode by which he [Christ] duly operates through his entire dominion according to the properties of his nature or grace. The [second] mode of existence is spiritual, as in the manner by which the body of Christ is present in the Eucharist and his saints through grace. And the third mode of existence is sacramental; this is the manner by which the body of Christ is present uniquely in the consecrated host. And just as the second mode presupposes the first, so the third mode presupposes the second.Footnote 69
Wyclif was keen, however, to distinguish these three ways of being present, all of which are real, from three further levels, which are even more real. “Beyond those three modes of existence which belong to the body of Christ [in the host] there are three other modes which are more real and more true possessed by Christ's body in heaven, namely the mode of existing substantially, corporeally, and dimensionally.”Footnote 70 It seems that, for Wyclif, the three lesser modes of existence enjoyed by Christ's body in the host actually serve as signs for the three higher modes that the body possesses in heaven.
If we respect Wyclif's gradations of presence, or existence, we can see how he remained confident that the words of institution do effect a genuine transformation of the elements wrought by the power of the sacramental words (virtute verborum sacramentalium). Following the consecration, says Wyclif, the bread that is demonstrated by the pronoun hoc becomes Christ's body in a manner that transcends the ordinary course of nature (supernaturaliter), even as the substance of the bread remains and naturally supports its own accidents.Footnote 71 And although Wyclif will not go so far as to say that the priest celebrating Mass creates the body of Christ, he does concede that the priest renders the substance that he consecrates Christ's body and blood in some manner (quodammodo), an event which occurs miraculously by virtue of the Lord's own words.Footnote 72 While Wyclif's means of interpreting the eucharistic formula and the remanentist theology to which it was coupled may not have convinced his English opponents, it proved to have a significant Nachleben in Bohemia, as the next section of this article explores.
VIII. Remanentism and the Words of Institution in Bohemia
Following the marriage of the English king Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1382, there was an upsurge in cultural exchange between the two nations. Soon thereafter, Wyclif's works were being read and copied in Prague.Footnote 73 Jan Hus and other Bohemian academics sympathetic to Wyclif were, moreover, actively promoting the popular reception of Wyclif's teachings outside of the university.Footnote 74 In fact, it seems that Wyclif's doctrines may have been known in Bohemia during his own lifetime, perhaps as early as 1380/1381. For by this date the Dominican Mikulas Biceps, in his Sentences commentary, had specifically cited Wyclif's doctrine of remanence as heretical.Footnote 75 What is certain is that Wyclif's eucharistic theology was generating a substantial amount of debate throughout Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century.Footnote 76
The attention that Wyclif received from theologians and ecclesiastical authorities should not obscure the variety of positions on the Eucharist that were circulating in Bohemia. Thus, even as the question of remanentism was central to many debates, it found its place within a complex and evolving sacramental arena. The Utraquists in Prague for the most part maintained a traditional position on Christ's real presence even while insisting that the laity also receive the chalice, whereas Taborites endorsed a less rigorous doctrine of presence, and the more radical Pikarts opted for a spare symbolism. Here, though, Marcela Perett has made the important point that even as the Utraquists remained in many respects quite conservative, to the point of participating in Corpus Christi processions, this does not mean that they all agreed upon how Christ's “real presence” should be explained. Recent studies have revealed a range and depth of thought among the Bohemian theologians, some of which was indebted to Wyclif while nevertheless addressing a different religious landscape than Wyclif had known just a few decades earlier in England.Footnote 77 It is not my purpose to retrace the steps of scholars such as Perett, Graham, Kolár, and Holeton. In this section of the article I confine myself to addressing debates over the words of institution in Bohemia, how they came to bear upon the question of remanentism, and the further development of Wyclif's primary themes.
A good to place to begin is with an opponent of Wycliffism, Andrew of Brod, who, writing in his capacity as a formed bachelor of sacred theology, complained of a pestilence that has been unleashed by the “Englishman Wyclif” now spreading throughout the archdiocese of Prague. And it was remanentism that Andrew singled out as Wyclif's principal error.Footnote 78 In the course of his discussion of the words of institution, Andrew laid out his case for the impossibility of remanentism based upon the requirements of the eucharistic proposition itself. Here Andrew concluded that if the bread really did remain, then that same bread would therefore have to be, or not be, Christ's body. If the bread remains and is not Christ's body, then Christ the Truth spoke falsely when he said, “Hoc est corpus meum”—a possibility that pious ears cannot allow. Maybe, Andrew opines, it would have been better if Christ had said, “Hic [panis] est corpus meum”—but who would dare to correct the Supreme Truth? As it is, though, were material bread to remain after the consecration, there is really no way that it could be Christ's body, according to Andrew, precisely because no inanimate object can be identified with the body of Christ. For Andrew, therefore, the doctrine of remanentism perforce renders the words of institution unintelligible as they stand. It should be noted, however, that Andrew made no concession to habitudinal predication, as he pointedly chose to test a remanentist reading by the rules of identical predication. In the end, therefore, he was left simply to affirm that Christ's words spoken by the priest with proper intention will effect the conversion of the bread into the true substance of Christ's body.Footnote 79
Andrew was nevertheless on to something when he located the crux of the remanentism debate in the realm of syntax. The Utraquist theologian Jan Příbram had also appealed to Christ as the infallible Truth who would never deceive his church as he defended the doctrine of transubstantiation. For Jan, the key to understanding the words “this is my body” rests in the following phrase “which (quod) is handed over for you,” by which Christ clearly denotes his body, the true substance of which was handed over to the cross. The relative pronoun quod thereby refers to the same substance as the antecedent corpus. The faithful place more trust in the words of Christ, says Jan, than in distorting glosses that reduce the sacrament to a figure rather than the truth of Christ's flesh. What is received under the sacrament, although invisible to human eyes, is substantially the same body that would then be crucified.Footnote 80
This line of reasoning did not sway the English Wycliffite Peter Payne, now decamped to Bohemia, who found that Christ could still have employed the pronoun hoc to signify the bread that in turn demonstrates his body. As Peter reads it, there is no real difference between saying, “This is my body which is handed over for you,” and “This [bread] efficaciously and sacramentally symbolizes my body which is handed over for you.” Since in either case it is understood that Christ's true body is indeed being sacrificed for the salvation of the world, the fact that the bread symbolizes that body does not alter the reality of the sacrifice.Footnote 81 Peter's concise rejoinder points up a central impasse in these debates—namely, the willingness, or lack thereof, to set aside identical predication for the purposes of establishing a relationship between the bread and the body that obviates the need to substantially transform the former into the latter. To make what might be an obvious point: if one will permit the bread to function as a symbol of the very body that will be handed over and crucified, the sentence can proceed without further adjustment.
Among the Bohemian Utraquists, there was no more ardent and articulate exponent of remanentism than Jan Hus's junior colleague,Footnote 82 Jakoubek of Stříbro. Jakoubek could sound much like Wyclif in places, as when he determined that following the utterance of the sacramental words, and so through divine power, the bread that remains upon the altar is now really Christ's body—albeit by way of figurative, rather than identical, predication. Appealing to the seemingly commonsense mechanics of the Last Supper, Jakoubek observed that if the material bread did not remain, then Christ could not have broken it, since he did not have it; and not having it, he could not have given it to his disciples.Footnote 83
The bread that is broken is very much real bread, not a set of subjectless accidents as the transubstantiationists would have it; the bread's substance therefore remains. Like Wyclif in his opposition to annihilationism, Jakoubek argued that, rather than being reduced to nothing in its substantial being following the divine blessing, as the “moderns” claim, the bread has actually acquired some new manner of existence (esse novum) within the body of Christ. The bread does not cease to exist unqualifiedly (simpliciter et absolute), therefore, but only relatively speaking (in respectu et secundum quid).Footnote 84 What Jakoubek means by this “new manner of existence” should become clearer in his discussions of the eucharistic formula and what sort of conversion it entails. This much is clear: Jakoubek believed that a significant conversion does take place. Even as the bread substantially remains, it is not the bread as we had known it prior to its consecration.
Jakoubek was still left to face the grammatical refutations of remanentism, here recounting an argument similar to what we saw from Jan Příbram, whereby the relative pronoun in a sentence refers not only to the subject, nor only to the predicate, but to the composition of subject and predicate taken together. Hence, when Christ said, “This (hoc) is my body, which (quod) is handed over for you,” he meant, “This is my body which—this body of mine (hoc corpus meum)—is handed over for you.” The relative pronoun quod in the second clause refers to the composite formed by the subject hoc and its predicate corpus meum. This means in turn that the demonstrative pronoun hoc must be demonstrating the proper substance of Christ's body, that very body which (quod) will be handed over and crucified. One may not split “this is my body” from “[the body] which is handed over for you,” as if the “this” (hoc) in the first clause is referring to something other than what the relative pronoun “which” (quod) refers to in the second clause. The remanentist position would appear to be defeated, therefore, since the hoc cannot be demonstrating the visible, material bread; instead, it demonstrates the substance of Christ's crucified body from start to finish.Footnote 85
Jakoubek, for his part, simply rejects the premise that the relative pronoun must always reference the composition of subject and predicate in precisely this way. It is enough, he says, that this sacrament of bread is truly the body of Christ sacramentally—namely, the very body of Christ that is handed over. The bread that Christ the high priest began by consecrating in his hands is the Savior's body. Christ could not have lied when he said, “This is my body,” the proof of which would not be effective unless Christ were demonstrating the visible bread that he was holding at the time. Salvaging the veracity of the bread's substantial existence need not, however, come at the expense of Christ's presence in the host, for Jakoubek went on to affirm that the invisible and immortal body of Christ may indeed exist beneath the appearance of visible bread, even as the bread's substance remains following consecration—none of which detracts from Christ's presence.Footnote 86
Again like Wyclif, Jakoubek had ruled out the possibility that the hoc might alter its signification as the proposition progresses and so insists that even after the hoc was spoken it continued to demonstrate the bread. Only if Christ had been demonstrating visible bread, held in his hands, could his words be true. Hence, when Christ uttered the sacramental proposition “hoc est corpus meum,” he intended that it be taken as an instance of figurative locution rather than identical predication. Christ demonstrated visible things in the sight of his disciples that were distinct from his body and blood—namely, the bread and chalice that he held in his hands and blessed. What Christ demonstrated to their senses, the disciples firmly believed to be restricted to those visible objects that he held in his hands.Footnote 87 No less than Wyclif, Jakoubek was anxious to protect the fundamental veracity of Christ's interaction with his disciples; the Lord's words and gestures must be readily comprehensible and free from any taint of deception.
Jakoubek was still left to tackle a question that Wyclif never sufficiently addressed: why was it that Christ employed a demonstrative pronoun that does not align with the gender of the noun it is meant to indicate? On the face of it, the neuter hoc and the masculine panis do not seem to fit together. Jakoubek's response is ingenious, perhaps unique, and gets us closer to his conception of eucharistic presence. When Christ spoke the words, “Hoc est corpus meum,” he opted for the neuter hoc to demonstrate the bread (panis) that he held in his hands rather than the masculine hic because this is an instance of figurative, rather than identical, predication.Footnote 88 This means that the pronoun is intended to conform to the gender of the sacramental reality that is signified rather than the subject of the material sacramental sign. The hoc is therefore aligned with the gender of corpus rather than panis, since it is the body that is the ultimate significate. This is the case, says Jakoubek, in order that faithful communicants who hear Christ say, “Hoc est corpus meum,” will find their minds devoutly lifted up into Christ rather than training their thoughts upon the substance of sensible bread. By using the neuter hoc to demonstrate the sensible bread, Christ the Eternal Word subtly intimates to the believer's intellect that this bread really is his body, albeit without deceiving one's senses in the process. These are just some of the reasons why Christ employed the gendered demonstrative pronouns in this way, says Jakoubek, even as he admits that other reasons still remain hidden to him.Footnote 89
Nothing in the preceding discussion should lead us to discount Jakoubek's adamant commitment to the real presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist. Once more like Wyclif, Jakoubek drew upon the writings of John Damascene, employing the Christological analogy of the burning coal to the effect that, following consecration, the bread—while remaining true bread—is inseparably united with the Divine Person. The bread undergoes a mystical transformation such that it is now principally identified with Christ's body. The result is that the surpassing excellence of Christ's presence leads the believer to lose sight of the material bread.Footnote 90 This is what Jakoubek seems to mean when he speaks of the bread acquiring a “new way of being” in Christ. For although the bread remains naturally what it was prior to consecration, it is nothing now in comparison to the “ineffable presence” of Christ's body.Footnote 91 The divine power at work in Christ's words has realigned the bread's sacramental identity, even if not its metaphysical constitution, such that it becomes Christ's salvific body for the communicant.
So far, we have seen Jakoubek employing arguments that tack fairly close to Wyclif, while other arguments expand the range of remanentist theology along lines Wyclif would likely approve. There is, however, another dimension to Jakoubek's remanentism that is not to be found in Wyclif to any appreciable degree and is pertinent specifically to the Bohemian situation. Unlike Wyclif, who was fighting a one-front war against an established ecclesiastical order that encouraged various devotional practices undergirded by complex scholastic arguments, Jakoubek was fighting simultaneously on two fronts. On the first, like Wyclif before him, he defended remanence against the transubstantiation traditionalists, while on the second, he defended Christ's real presence against more radical elements from among the Taborites and Pikarts. And it is in this second fight that Jakoubek exhibits a remanentist theology that runs deeper than Wyclif's own. In fact, Jakoubek's remanentism would ultimately be placed in the service of the very sort of cultic practices that had made Wyclif so uneasy about transubstantiation.
An anonymous Bohemian tract opposing the adoration of the host directed its fire precisely at remanentists such as Jakoubek, rather than transubstantiationists, when it derided the claims of so-called “moderns” who were asserting that, although the consecrated host is not identically Christ's body, Christ nevertheless remains substantially whole and hidden within that bread, such that he may be adored at the altar as in heaven. Sounding not unlike Wyclif himself, the anonymous author could only lament that the laity now adore the bread as though it were identical to Christ himself.Footnote 92 In response to such criticism, Jakoubek continued to affirm that Christ is contained under the sensible species “really and truly, and not merely by way of signification, as some would have it,” and so insisted upon restoring full reverence due to the consecrated host.Footnote 93 Christians with a true and living faith must not be hesitant in bestowing upon the consecrated host genuine adoration (cultu latrie adorari), since it is Christ himself who is present in that very host. “For if faith were authentic among Christians, and alive, it would compel them to adore the Lord Jesus in the sacrament, which would be displayed in such outward signs as genuflection [before the consecrated host].”Footnote 94 Thus, when it came to preserving late medieval practices of eucharistic veneration, Jakoubek's remanentism exhibited as robust a doctrine of real presence as transubstantiation was able to provide. There was nothing about Utraquism in itself that should preclude such devotion to the sacrament. In fact, at the 1441 Kutná Hora Synod, which presented the Utraquist position, it was declared that the whole Christ in his proper nature and substance that he assumed from the Virgin Mary is present in the Eucharist, which is therefore worthy of genuflection, adoration, and exhibition.Footnote 95
IX. Conclusion
John Wyclif and Jakoubek of Stříbro were not merely dissenters from the prevailing eucharistic orthodoxy but learned and creative schoolmen, subtle thinkers who searched for ways in which the theology of the Eucharist might be reimagined apart from transubstantiation without sacrificing Christ's salvific presence in the consecrated host. We have seen both men attempt to read the words of institution in a manner that preserved the bread in its substance while at the same time positing its spiritual, sacramental conversion into Christ's true body. Their efforts required that they wade into a sea of medieval scholastic commentary on the eucharistic proposition and the mechanics of propositions generally. This was especially true of Wyclif, for whom the dominant readings of the eucharistic formula could not be reconciled with his larger vision of language's isomorphic relationship to the real world. Jakoubek, for his part, tackled the construction of the eucharistic proposition under more precise grammatical considerations. In fact, the careful attention that Jakoubek paid to the use of demonstrative and relative pronouns yielded an expression of mystical union between communicant and Savior perhaps more profound than one finds with Wyclif. Certainly, the host adoration that Jakoubek so insistently defended did set him apart from Wyclif. Finally, though, it was the habitudinal predication pioneered by Wyclif, and subsequently adopted by Jakoubek, that resulted in the determination that when Christ called the bread his body, he had reconstituted the bread's principal meaning in the world. No longer “mere” bread, it acquires a real relation to Christ that it did not possess prior to its consecration. Even if the bread's basic metaphysical structure has not been altered, it does exist as a new thing insofar as it functions in an entirely new way within the liturgical context of the Mass. Thus, for Wyclif and Jakoubek, if the celebration of the Eucharist could not be a cause for substantial transformation, the divine prayer nevertheless enables the bread to point beyond itself to something greater, to uniquely signify—and in that way become—the new reality of Christ present upon the altar.
