The biblical origin and Late-Antique invention of the Eucharistic term and definition 'Transubstantiation' PDF

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©Christiaan Kappes 2020 for Богословские труды The biblical origin for and Late-Antique application of the term and definition ‘Transubstantiation’ to the Eucharist: justifying Dositheus of Jerusalem by Leontius of Jerusalem and George(-Gennadius) Scholarius This study is designed to resolve the cen...

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©Christiaan Kappes 2020 for Богословские труды

The biblical origin for and Late-Antique application of the term and definition ‘Transubstantiation’ to the Eucharist: justifying Dositheus of Jerusalem by Leontius of Jerusalem and George(-Gennadius) Scholarius This study is designed to resolve the centuries-long debate about the permissibility within Orthodoxy of employing the alleged calque “transubstantiation” in properly Orthodox theological discourse by appealing to the historicity of the term within patristic discourse. Specialist studies on the theme of transubstantiation in Byzantine theology are reducible to four major considerations: (1.) The term transubstantiation and its descriptive definition in Byzantine theology, (2.) The modality or theory explaining said transubstantiation, (3.) The liturgical moment/s for the accomplishment of said transubstantiation, and (4.) The valid and/or licit material capable of being transubstantiated according to Byzantine theology.1 This disquisition seeks only to resolve the historical and theological question related to consideration no. 1. Objections among some Orthodox to transubstantiation have typically supposed latinophron, if not Thomistic, origins of both the term and its basic definition, as mentioned and defined by Aquinas and as purportedly regurgitated in toto by George(-Gennadius II) Kouresios Scholarius († c. 1472).2 My disquisition will show that Dositheus of Jerusalem’s († c. 1707) famous defense of its terminology and definition or meaning is verifiable, as he claimed, by patristic vocabulary, Christology, and Eucharistic theology, even if Dositheus himself left his readers with little literary evidence for his assertions about transubstantiation’s Byzantine pedigree. Dositheus was an avid reader and promoter of the works of George(-Gennadius) Scholarius, who at times was (wrongly) accredited with being the first to translate transubstantiatio into the alleged hapax legomenon μετουσίωσις. Despite his erudition and corrections of such myths, Martin Jugie († 1954) sometimes himself distorted Scholarius’s thought. In the most relevant example, Jugie commended Scholarius as a Thomist on the question of the modality (cf., supra, no. 2) of transubstantiation, even while admitting that Scholarius proffered a theory of the four causes (ad instar Aristotelous Physicarum) of the sacrament of the

The separability of studies on these doctrinal issues has long been assumed in Eastern Orthodoxy. See Νικόλαος Τζιράκης, “Ἡ λεοντινὴ προέλευση τοῦ ὅρου ‘μετουσίωσις’ ὑπὸ τὸ φῶς τοῦ χριστολογικοῦ δόγματος καὶ τῆς Ὀρθόδοξης εὐχαριστιακῆς θεολογίας τοῦ ΙΖ´ αἰώνα,” Ἐπιστημονικὴ Ἐπετηρὶς τῆς Θεολογικῆς Σχολῆς τοῦ Ἐθνικοῦ και Καποδιστριακοῦ Πανεπιστημίου Ἀθηνῶν 36 (1973): 464. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, 75, a. 4 Editio Leonina (Rome: Polyglotta, 1906), qu. LXXV, art. 12: God […] is alone able to perfect […] the conversion of the hold being (conversionem totius entis), namely, its whole substance (tota substantia) of this is converted into the whole substance (in totam substantiam) of the other. And this happens by divine power in this sacrament. Indeed the whole substance of bread is converted into the whole substance of the body Christ [etc.]. (translation mine) NB, “tota substantia (panis/vini)” is already attested in Albertus Magnus (c. 1249), Commentarii in quartum librum Sententiarum, distinctio 11 B, articulus 1, ed. ed. S.C.A. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1894), 29:266, col. 2, ll. 42–46. Cf. Trent 1545–1563, capitulum 4, sessio XIII, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Council, ed. Norman Tanner. (Washington DC: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:695, ll. 19–23: This synod declares that, by means of the consecration of bread and wine, a conversion happen of the whole substance (totius substantiae) of bread into the substance (in substantiam) of the body of our Lord Christ [etc.] […] The said conversion has duly and properly been called transubstantiation (transsubstantiatio) by the Catholic Church. (translation mine) 1

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Eucharist, wherein Scholarius categorizes the epiclesis as the final or intentional cause. 3 Scholarius’s epiclesis acting as causa finalis is something quite impossible to reconcile with any scholarly account of Aquinas’s Eucharistic transubstantiation. 4 Recently, deeper knowledge of Scholarius’s sources for his Eucharistic doctrine has been brought to light by Mikhail Bernatsky, who has exposed Scholarius’s incorporation of excerpts from Ps.-Thomas Aquinas’s De sacramento Eucharistiae ad modum praedicamentorum into his sermon: Περὶ τοῦ μυστηριώδους σώματος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.5 Even so, reserve should be exercised not to assume that philological discoveries of Scholarius’s sources necessitate that his Eucharistic theology reflects wholesale Thomism. This was just the mistake made by Jugie and, consequently, Scholarius has often presented as a mere scimmia Thomae in twentieth-century studies. The unintended consequence, intra muros, of such inferences has led to an unmerited devaluation of Scholarius’s contributions to Orthodox theology in modern and contemporary times.6 1. The Problem of Transubstantiation: Dositheus of Jerusalem About three centuries ago, the celebrated Orthodox divine, Dositheus of Jerusalem, attempted to convince modern readers about the Orthodoxy of the term and basic meaning of transubstantiation as follows: “The new heretics say that the word transubstantiation is an invention of the Latins. However, it should first be declared that the term is not of the Latins, but of the Catholic Church, and if it were an innovation of the Latins, the Orientals would not accept it, just as they also reject many other modernisms (νεωτερίσματα) from them” (translation mine).7 Dositheus denied that the term was an innovation among Orthodox, even if it had been innovative for Latin theology since the Scholastic period (c. 1140).8 What is more, in his rather brief exposition, Dositheus reminded his readers that the formerly Sabellian term “ὁμοούσιος” had undergone a more radical quasi-baptism into Orthodoxy by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea I

See Christiaan Kappes, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2019), 185–206. 4 Ibid., 207–222. 5 Mikhail Bernatsky, “Prisutstvie Hrista v Evharistii po sushhnosti (κατ᾽οὐσίαν): K voprosu ob interpretacii i istochnikah odnogo mesta iz gomilii o Evharistii Georgija (Gennadija) Sholarija,” Bogoslovskie Trudy 42 (2009): 169–182. 6 For Jugie’s willful bypass of the fact that the epiclesis is considered the causa finalis of transubstantiation in the Scholarian schema (making it diametrically opposed to Aquinas’s theory of transmutation of the gifts), see Martin Jugie, “La forme de l’Eucharistie d’après Georges Scholarius,” Échos d’Orient 37 (1934): 289–297, 294. 7 Dositheus of Jerusalem, Δοσιθέου Πατριάρχου Ἱεροσολύμων Ἱστορία περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἰεροσολύμοις Πατριαρχευσάντων, ἄλλως καλουμένη Δωδεκάβιβλος Δοσιθέου, bk. 8, paragraph 3, ed. E. Deledemos (Thessaloniki: Εκδοτικός Οίκος Βασ. Ρηγοπούλου, 1983), 4:396. 8 Dositheus’s thesis was directly argued against by Martin Jugie, “Le mot transubstantiation chez les Grecs avant 1629,” Échos d’Orient 10 (1907): 5–12. The leading study on origin of the Latin terms transubstantio [sic] and tran(s)substantiatio has verified the date for invention of the older lemma of the two (viz., transubstatio, as both substantive and verb) to c. 1140. This Eucharistic term, along with its theory, was probably invented in the environs of Paris. The best candidate for inventing the term is in in fact Robert Pullen († 1146) who was hailed its putative inventor under the lemma transubstantiatur (3rd person singular). See Joseph Goering, “The Invention of Transubstantiation,” Traditio 45 (1991): 147–157. 3

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(325).9 Finally, Dositheus concluded that, if the Latins had (subsequent to Orthodox) discovered the term transubstantiation, then they nowadays happily harmonize with Orthodox with respect to what is signified in that apical mystery of the Church (viz., Eucharist). 10 Without making explicit his source, Dositheus implied that the allegedly Latin term was a patristic variant among lists of patristic synonyms: μεταβολή, μεταῤῥύθμισις, μετασκευή, and μεταστοιχείωσις.11 Dositheus’s other terms for transmutation of the holy gifts were obviously common in patristic literature and familiar to any patrologist. Importantly, Dositheus’s argument underlined that transubstantiation had been useful in Christology.12 This will bring us to suppose that he may have stumbled upon works of Leontius of Jerusalem, who proves to be the reinventor of this popular word as a terminus technicus. I plan to show that the Greek invention of the term was coined about six hundred years prior to its equivalent transubstantiation as coined in the Latin West. Against Dositheus’s opinion, his contemporaries, not to mention more recent Orthodox scholars and believers, were tempted to reject the term transubstantiatio/μετουσίωσις as a mere import from the Latin West. For example, Dositheus’s contemporary opponent Ioannes Karyophilles (1600–1692) aggressively wrote: You are introducing novelties, you reopen issues decided many years ago, wishing to do useless work, writing confessions and expositions of faith, as if the Eastern Church had remained in your days needy and helpless. You have abandoned the terms which the Holy Teachers used for a dim understanding concerning the mystery of Holy Communion, from which religion was established up to the present day, you teach transubstantiation (μετουσίωσιν) and are asking questions about how it happens and how it is made. Disregarding whatever the holy theologians have said about not to make inquiry into the hidden mysteries you are inquiring and writing. Perhaps you are not reading, as indeed you have not read the words of the holy Damascene about this sacrament: “But if you inquire in what way it happens, it is enough for you to hear that through the Holy Spirit and we know nothing more.”13 Regarding the debate of the term’s origins, Jugie’s study still reflects the status quaestionis. As such, his findings support various intra-Orthodox objectors to the term who still (wrongheadedly) impugn fellow Orthodox for the use of the term under the supposition that Fathers of the Church

This has been approvingly noted and discussed by Τζιράκης, “Ἡ λεοντινὴ προέλευση τοῦ ὅρου ‘μετουσίωσις,’” 513–514. 10 Dositheus, Δοσιθέου Πατριάρχου Ἱεροσολύμων Ἱστορία, 4:396. 11 Ibid., 4:397. 12 For a detailed assessment and description of the documentation issuing from Dositheus and his council, see Vass Kontouma, “La Confession de foi de Dosithée de Jérusalem: les versions de 1672 et de 1690,” in L’union à l’épreuve du formulaire: professions de foi entre église d’orient et d’occident (XIIIe–XVIIIe siècle), eds. Marie-Hélène Blanchet and Frédéric Gabriel, Collège de France – CNRS: Monographies 51 (Leuven/Paris/Bristol CT: Peeters, 2016), 341– 368. 13 Ioannes Karyophilles, Excerpta from Private Correspondence of Karyophilles, in Polemic Editions in the Romanian Principalities, trans. and eds. Nadia Miladinova (and Ioan Durâ), The Panoplia Dogmatike by Euthymios Zygadenos: A Study on the First Edition Published in Greek in 1710, Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 40. 9

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had assertedly never coined or used the term.14 Similarly, Jugie summarized his doubts about Dositheus’s claim thusly: “Par ailleurs, pourquoi avoir recours à l’expression emphatique: πρὸ χρόνων πολυαριθμήτων, alors que le plus ancien auteur nommé est Gennade, le premier patriarche qui occupa le siège de Constantinople après 1453?”15 For his part, Jugie confirmed recent research that the earliest translation of “transubstantiation” from Latin into Greek was provided by Latins to the imperial court from a document originally drafted in 1267. Thereafter, Emperor Michael VIII had the Roman profession of faith translated for him thusly: “This Church of Rome perfects the sacred rite (τὸ ἱερούργημα) of Eucharist from azyme bread, all the while holding and teaching that in this holy ritual (τῇ ἱεροτελεστίᾳ), the bread is truly transubstantiated (μετουσιοῦναι [sic]) into body and the wine into the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ” (translation mine).16 First, it is important to remark that this Greek translation is dated to 1274 by Mansi (following Wadding).17 Thomas Aquinas had just died prior to the Second Council of Lyon, on the road thereto. A copy of the Latin exemplar drafted (without Aquinas’s presence or influence) was read out before the Council Fathers. Michael VIII’s translation is equally based on this Latin edition known at Lyon. More recently, however, the Latin (and Greek) copy signed by Michael VIII has been posteriorly dated to after the council, as it is addressed to Pope John XXI (regn. 1276–1277).18 From here, the first uncontested Orthodox Christian known to adopt the verb “transubstantiate” from Lyon was Emperor Andronicus II (regn. 1282–1328), but –although anti-Latin and considered fully Orthodox– he had initially employed the term under compulsion of his Father Michael VIII’s unionism to sign a similar confessio fidei: “In this holy ritual (τῇ ἱεροτελεστίᾳ), the bread is truly transubstantiated (μετουσιοῦται) into body and the wine into the blood of Christ” (translation mine).19 Considering all documentation, heretofore, the status of the question has not changed on most known facets with the result that the following conclusions are supportable: (1.) This profession of faith (according to its ordo of sacraments) was generically Scholastic but has nothing in common with Thomas Aquinas’s sacramental lists or his specific contributions to the discussion Jugie, “Le mot transubstantiation chez les Grecs avant 1629,” 5–12; Τζιράκης, “Ἡ λεοντινὴ προέλευση τοῦ ὅρου ‘μετουσίωσις,’” 465. 15 Ibid., 7. 16 Mansi, XXIV, col. 72. For the nineteenth–century discovery of this source, see Jugie, “Le mot transubstantiation chez les Grecs avant 1629,” 8. Nota bene, Jugie correxit μετουσιοῦναι] μετουσιούται, ad instar exemplaris latini. 17 For a clarification of the fact that Michael VIII first sent a quasi-private profession of faith to II Lyons (1274), but was forced to proffer a public confessio fidei (1276), along with other key members of the government and church, see Efi Ragia, “Confessions of an Ingenious Man: The Confessions of Faith of John XI Bekkos in their Social, Political and Theological Background,” in L’union à l’épreuve du formulaire: professions de foi entre église d’orient et d’occident (XIIIe-XVIIIe siècle), eds. Marie-Hélène Blanchet and Frédéric Gabriel, Collège de France – CNRS: Monographies 51 (Leuven/Paris/Bristol CT: Peeters, 2016), 42–47. 18 Michael VIII, [monumentum] IV. 6785 (1277) aprili ind. V. Imperator Michaël Paleologus litteris datis ad papam Ioannem XXI: fidem orthodoxum profitetur ad normam ecclesiae romanae, in Monumenta spectantia ad unionem ecclesiarum graecae et romanae, eds. Augustinus Theiner and Franciscus Miklosich (Vienna, Guilelmus Braumueller, 1872), 8. 19 Andronicus II, [monumentum] VI. 6785 (1277) aprili ind. V. Imperator Anronicus Paleologus litteris datis ad papam Ioannem XXI: fidem orthodoxum profitetur ad normam ecclesiae romanae, in Monumenta spectantia ad unionem ecclesiarum graecae et romanae, eds. Augustinus Theiner and Franciscus Miklosich (Vienna: Guilelmus Braumueller, 1872), 18. 14

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of transubstantiation,20 (2.) The verbal form (μετουσιοῦται) of Lyon was plausibly preceded by the same verb being first used in a no longer extant epistle of Theorianus Philosophus (fl. 1170),21 and (3.) The Greek translator (Andreas Dotus) of the Latin confessio fidei possibly cited Theorianus’s term “μετουσιοῦται” for Michael VIII’s confessio fidei.22 The current history of the verbal term (which may nonetheless have its origins in proto-Scholastic literature, even if dated to Theorianus) was hypothesized by Jugie to form the basis upon which Scholarius invented the substantive μετουσίωσις out of Lyon’s earlier verbal form; the Scholarian substantive was later alleged to be taken up by Dositheus in his works and, thereafter, to become normative in Orthodoxy.23 1. Biblical Transmutation of Elements and Eucharistic Change in Cyril of Jerusalem If Theorianus’s or the Council of Lyon’s “μετουσιοῦται” does not act as the direct lemmatic source for the term μετουσίωσις (as a mere calque of Latin tran(s)substantiatio), then the true history of the term has thus far remained unchronicled and its meaning requires a detailed account whereby biblical and patristic sources inspired the Byzantine invention of the term. The central passage of interest in the history of reception of the Bible for changing one substance into another substance is straightforward. The LXX reads thus: “These things saith the Lord: Hereby shalt thou know that I am the Lord: behold I strike with the rod that is my hand on the water which is in the river, and it shall change (μεταβαλεῗ) it into blood” (Exodus 7:17).24 However, a less central passage also provides an alternative vocabulary for a similar type of event: “And the fish in the river died, and the river stank thereupon: and the Egyptians could not drink water from the river, and the blood was in all the land of Egypt. And the charmers also of the Egyptians did so (ἐποίησαν) with their sorceries […]” (Exodus 7:21–22).25 In effect, both μεταβάλλω and the entirely generic ποιέω are used to signify a divine and human transmutation, respectively, from one kind of entity unto another. Jewish reception of the theory of divine transmutation developed what was to become the principal vocabulary of Post-Nicene Christianity for Eucharistic change. First, Philo the Jew (putatively a Christian convert according to fourth-century Christian sources) 26 interpreted the passages in this way: “They trans-elementate (μεταστοιχειοῦσι) the rods into real snakes, and turn For the order of Aquinas’s sacramental lists, see Christiaan Kappes, “A New Narrative for the Reception of Seven Sacraments into Orthodoxy: Peter Lombard's Sentences in Nicholas Cabasilas and Symeon of Thessalonica and the Utilization of John Duns Scotus by the Holy Synaxis.” Nova et Vetera 15 (2017): 465–501, at 478–481. 21 Martin Jugie, Theologia dogmatica Christianorum orientalium ab ecclesia catholica dissidentium, 5 vols. (Paris: Letouzy et Ané, 1930), 3:196, note 1. 22 Ibid., 3:196, note 1. 23 Ibid., 3:208. 24 The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament with an English Translation and with Various Readings and Critical Notes (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1879), 78. 25 Ibid., 79. 26 For the tradition of the pseudo-conversion of Philo to Christianity, see David Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum: Sec. 3, Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature 3 (Minneapolis/Assen: Fortress Press/Van Gorcum, 1993), 212–230. 20

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(μετατρέπουσι) the water into the color of blood […]”.27 Already, we see that two of Dositheus’s Eucharistic terms (that he attributed to the Bible and Fathers) appear in Exodus and in Philo. I consider it obvious for the reader that Philo’s term “φύσεις” can be convertible with “οὐσίαι” prior to the Christological controversies of the sixth century.28 Philo sees the divine intervention by the rod as effecting the trans-elementation of one nature or substance instantaneously into another nature; where one example is of a rod into a serpent (from non-living to a living-hypostasis) and the second of water into blood (from a non-living into a presumably living substance). This is in fact the core definition of transubstantiation; namely, a substance-to-substance instantaneous change or an immediate succession of two substances whereby the first substances matter and form are not incorporated into the second substances mat...