Bellarmine · De Controversiis · On the Sacrament of the Eucharist · Book I: On the Real Presence of Christ the Lord, from the Word of God
Chapter 8: The Various Expositions of the Words This Is My Body Are Recounted
Our translation, from the Latin of the Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1870–74), vol. IV, De Sacramento Eucharistiae, Book I: On the Real Presence of Christ the Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, from the Word of God. The Latin source text is public domain; this English rendering is released with the site. Scripture quotations follow Bellarmine's Vulgate citations, rendered in Douay-Rheims wording where he quotes exactly. Click “Show the Latin” for the original (raw OCR of the scan; scanning errors remain — the scan itself is the authority).
There follows the third argument, from the institution itself of the Sacrament, which is found in Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11. Concerning which institution—which is indeed the chief foundation of the whole controversy, and so of this whole most lofty mystery—we shall say three things. First, we shall recount the chief expositions of these words: This is my body. Secondly, we shall confirm that which is true, and refute the false. Thirdly, we shall answer the arguments of the adversaries.
As to the first, the expositions of the adversaries are very many, so that they can scarcely be numbered. Luther, in the book That the words of the supper still stand firm, writes that in his time there were nearly ten opinions and sects of the Sacramentarians. Recently too, in the year 1577, a little book appeared in which two hundred expositions or depravations of the heretics on these few words, This is my body, are counted; yet the chief are only ten, of which four are founded on the pronoun This, two on the verb is, three on the noun body, one on the pronoun my.
The first, then, is that of Andreas Karlstadt, who would have an adverb understood from the pronoun, that is, Here, from this, so that this is the meaning of the words This is my body: that is, Here sits my body; and that we might not doubt of this exposition, he asserted, in a book published at Basel in the year 1524, that he had learned this exposition by revelation of the heavenly Father. Wherefore Luther entitled his book against Karlstadt, Against the Heavenly Prophets.
The second is that of Bucer in his retractations, and is attributed also to John a Lasco, who will have the pronoun This signify the whole action of the supper, so that the sense is: This action represents the body of Christ; or, In this action the body of Christ is exhibited.
The third is that of John Lang, in his annotations on the second Apology of Justin, who by This understands the bread, but expounds the bread metaphorically in this manner: This is my body, that is, my body is this, namely the bread, because it nourishes souls and refreshes after the manner of bread.
The fourth is the more common among the heretics, that by This is understood this bread.
The fifth is that of Zwingli, who in the book On True and False Religion, in the chapter on the Eucharist, writes that these words are to be taken tropically, but that the trope is not in the pronoun This, but in the verb is, which ought to be taken for signifies. And just as Karlstadt, to gain credence, brought forward a revelation of the heavenly Father, so this man brought forward an apparition of a certain spirit during his rest. For in the book which he published in the year 1525, and entitled A Help concerning the Eucharist, he relates that for two days he disputed in the senate of Zurich against the Mass and the Eucharist, and yet could not gain credence (a certain scribe resisting him) that is should be taken for signifies; but at length the following night, as he slept, there stood by him I know not whom (whether he was black or white, he says, I remember nothing) who admonished him to seize upon that passage of Exodus 12: For it is the phase, that is, the passage of the Lord, where is is taken for signifies. And so on the following day he made words to the people about that passage, and obtained what he wished. Zwingli’s exposition is followed by Bernardino Ochino in his Defense of the true doctrine of the supper of the Lord against Westphal, and others.
The sixth is that of Peter Boquin, who in his Examination of the book of Heshusius, not far from the beginning, contends that the bread is rightly said to be the body of Christ, on account of the communication of idioms, just as on account of the same we rightly say in Christ, This man is God; in which exposition the word is must be taken for is called, in this manner: This is my body, that is, this bread is called my body, on account of the communication of idioms. Where Boquin notes three unions from which the communication of idioms results. One natural, such as is that of soul and body. Another hypostatic, such as is that of God and man in Christ. A third sacramental, such as is that between the bread and the body of Christ in the Sacrament. Something similar Luther has in the book On the Babylonian Captivity, chapter 1, where he says that it is as true that this bread is the body of Christ as it is true that this man is God. Yet this is the difference between Luther and Boquin, that Luther posits a true and real conjunction of the bread with the body of Christ, from which he will have that communication of idioms arise; but Boquin, who is a Sacramentarian, posits no union except a sacramental one, by which the most distant things are united, that is, the bread which is on earth, and the body of Christ which is in heaven.
The seventh exposition is that of John Oecolampadius, who acknowledges a trope neither in the pronoun This, nor in the verb is, but in the noun body. For he will have the bread called body by the figure of metonymy, by which the name of the thing signified is attributed to the sign, so that the sense is: This is my body, that is, this bread is a figure of my body. So he has it in his book On the genuine exposition of these words.
The eighth is that of John Calvin, who in Book 4 of the Institutes, chapter 17, section 21, admits with Oecolampadius that there is a trope of metonymy in the noun body; but adds that the bread of the Eucharist is not a bare figure of the body of Christ, but is a figure which exhibits the thing itself; and therefore that Christ did not say, This bread is a figure of the body, but the body itself. To the same comes what Peter Martyr has in his book On the twofold nature of Christ, where by body he understands the Sacrament of the body. For he himself, in his defense against Gardiner at the end of the third part, says that Christ was unwilling to say, This bread is a figure, or a sign, or a Sacrament of the body, but the body, to express that the sign is efficacious, and one with which the thing itself is exhibited, and so forth.
The ninth is that of certain Calvinists, whose opinion Cornelius Jansen cites without a name, in his commentary, chapter 59 of the Concord, on those words Except you eat. These teach that the word body is taken for the mystical body, that is, for the Church, so that the sense is: Take ye and eat, for this is my body, that is, because you, the disciples, are my body.
The tenth is in the pronoun my, which Luther devised in jest in the year 1527, in the book That the words of the Lord stand firm. For, to mock the Sacramentarians, he says that he can bring forward a more beautiful exposition for their sake, so that this is the sense: This is my body, that is, This bread is a body made and created by me. But what Luther brought forward in jest, John Campanus took seriously and defended, as Luther testifies in his Brief Confession published in the year 1544.
With all these fights the opinion of the Catholic Church, which teaches that these words are to be taken simply and properly, so that the sense is: This, that is, what is contained under these species, is truly and properly my very own true and natural body.
Show the Latin (Vives edition, OCR)
CAPUT VIII. Referuntur varix expositiones verborum Do¬ mini : Hoc est corpus meum. Sequitur argumentum tertium ex ipsa in¬ stitutione Sacramenti, quie habetur Matth. xxvi. Marci xiv. Luc. xxii. et i. Cor. xi. de qua institutione, qua; sane prtecipuum funda¬ mentum est totius controversia;, atque adeo totius hujus altissimi mysterii, tria dicemus. Primo, referemus expositiones praecipuas horum verborum : Hoc est corpus meum. Secundo, confirmabimus eam, qua; est vera, et refellemus falsas. Tertio solvemus argu¬ menta adversariorum. Quantum ad primum expositiones adver¬ sariorum plurimae sunt, ita ut fere numerari non possint. Lutherus in libro, quod verba coenae adhuc firmiter stent, scribit decem ferme suo tempore fuisse Sacramentariorum opiniones, ac sectas. Nuper etiam anno 1577, prodiit libellus, in quo ducenta; nume¬ rantur haereticorum vel expositiones, vel de¬ pravationes horum paucorum verborum : Hoc est corpus meum , tamen praecipuae sunt solum decem ; quarum quatuor fundan¬ tur in pronomine Hoc ; duae in verbo Est ; tres in nomine Corpus ; una in pronomine Meum. Prima igitur est Andreae Carolstadii, qui intelligi voluit adverbium, ex pronomine, id est, Hic, ex hoc, ut sit haec sententia verbo¬ rum : Hoc est corpus meum ; id est, Hic sedet corpus meum, ac ne dubitaremus de hac expositione, asseruit in libro edito Basileae anno 1524. se ex revelatione Patris coelestis didicisse hanc expositionem. Quare Luthe¬ rus librum contra Carolstadium inscripsit, contra coelestes Prophetas. Secunda est Buceri in retractationibus suis, et tribuitur etiam Joanni a Lasko, qui volunt pronomen Hoc , significare totam actionem coenae, ut sensus sit ; Haec actio corpus Christi repraesentat; sive in hac actione exhi¬ betur corpus Christi. Tertia est JoannisLangi, in annotat, ad n Apologiam Justini, qui per Hoc , intelligit panem, sed panem exponit metaphorice hoc modo : Hoc est corpus meum , id est, corpus meum est hoc, nimirum panis, quia nutrit animas, et reficit instar panis. Quarta est communior apud haereticos, quod per Hoc intelligatur hic panis. Quinta est Zwinglii, qui in libro de vera et falsa religione, cap. de Eucharistia, scribit, verba ista accipienda esse tropice, sed tro¬ pum non esse in pronomine Hoc , sed in verbo Est , quod accipi debet pro Significat. Et sicut Carolstadius, ut fidem faceret, coelestis Patris revelationem, ita hic spiritus cujus- dam per quietem apparitionem protulit. Nam in libro, quem edidit anno 25. et Subsi¬ dium de Eucharistia inscripsit ; refert se biduo disputasse in senatu Tigurino contra Missam et Eucharistiam, nec tamen fidem facere potuisse (resistente sibi scriba quodam) est accipi pro significat : sed tandem nocte sequenti dormienti sibi adstitisse nescio quem (ater autem , inquit, an albus fuerit nihil memini) qui moneret, ut eum locum Exod. xii. arriperet : Est enim phase , id est , tran¬ situs Domini , ubi est , accipitur pro significat. Itaque die sequenti de eo loco verba fecisse ad populum, et quod volebat, obtinuisse. Sequuntur Zwinglii expositionem Bernardi- nus Ochinus in defensione vera; doctrinae de ccena Domini cont. Westphalum, et alii. Sexta est Petri Boquini, qui in examine libri Heshusii non procul ab initio, contendit recte dici panem esse corpus Christi, propter idiomatum communicationem, sicut propter eamdem recte dicimus in Christo, Hic homo est Deus : in qua expositione verborum, est, accipiendum est, pro dicitur, hoc modo : Hoc est QOipus meum , id est, hic panis dici¬ tur corpus meum, propter idiomatum com¬ municationem . Ubi notat Boquinus tres uniones, ex quibus resultat idiomatum com¬ municatio. Unam naturalem, qualis est ani¬ mae, et corporis. Alteram hypostaticam, qualis est Dei, et hominis in Christo. Ter¬ tiam sacramentalem, qualis est inter panem et corpus Christi in Sacramento. Simile quid habet Lutherus in lib. de Babylon, captivit. cap. i. ubi dicit, ita verum esse, hic panis est corpus Christi, sicut est verum, hic homo est Deus. Hoc tamen interest inter Lutherum et Boquinum, quod Lutherus ponit veram, et realem conjunctionem panis cum corpore Christi, ex qua vult oriri illam idiomatum communicationem : at Boquinus, qui Sacramentarius est, non ponit unionem, nisi sacramentalem, qua uniuntur res dis- CAPUT IX. 2o tantissimae, id est, panis qui est in terra, et eorpus Christi, quod est in coelo. Septima expositio est Joannis QEcolampa- dii, qui tropum non agnoscit in pronomine Hoc , neque in verbo est , sed in nomine corpus. Vult enim panem dici corpus per figuram metonymiae, qua nomen rei signi¬ ficatae tribuitur signo, ut sensus sit : Hoc est corpus meum, id est, hic panis est figura cor¬ poris mei. Ita habet in libro de genuina ex¬ positione horum verborum. Octava est Joannis Calvini, qui lib. iv. Institut. cap 17. §. 21. admittit, cum QEco- lampadio, tropum metonymiae esse in no¬ mine corpus ; sed addit non esse panem Eucharistiae nudam figuram corporis Christi, sed esse figuram, quae rem ipsam exhibeat : ac propterea Christum non dixisse, Hic panis est figura corporis, sed corpus ipsum. In idem recidit, quod habet Petrus Martyr in lib. de utraque natura Christi, ubi per corpus , intelligit Sacramentum corporis. Nam ipse idem in defensione contra Gardinerum in fine tertiae partis dicit, Christum noluisse dicere : Hic panis est figura, vel signum, vel Sacramentum corporis, sed corpus, ut exprimeret signum esse efficax, et cum quo res ipsa exhiberetur, etc. Nona est quorumdam Calvinistarum, quo¬ rum sententia sine nomine citat Cornelius Jansenius, in comment. cap. 59. concord. in illa verba : Nisi manducaveritis. Hi docent* vocabulum corpus , accipi pro corpore my¬ stico, id est, pro Ecclesia, ut sit sensus : Accipite et manducate , Hoc est enim corpus meum , id est, quia vos discipuli estis corpus meum. Decima est in pronomine meum , quam per jocum excogitavit Lutherus anno 27. in lib. Quod verba Domini firmiter stent. Ut enim irrideat Sacramentarios, dicit se posse af¬ ferre pulchriorem expositionem in eorum gratiam, ut hic sit sensus : Hoc est corpus meum , id est, Hic panis est corpus a me fac¬ tum, et creatum. Quod autem joco Lutherus protulit, serio accepit, ac defendit Joannes Campanus, ut testatur Lutherus in sua brevi confess. edita anno 44. Cum his omnibus pugnat Ecclesia} Catho¬ licae sententia, quae haec verba simpliciter, et proprie docet esse accipienda, ut sensus sit : Hoc, id est, quod his speciebus conti¬ netur, est vere, et proprie corpus ipsum meum verum, et naturale.