Berengar of Tours

Berengar of Tours was distinguished from mainline Catholic theology by two views: his assertion of the supremacy of Scripture and his denial of transubstantiation.

His education began in the school of Bishop Fulbert of Chartres, who represented the traditional theology of the early Middle Ages, but did not succeed in imparting it to his pupil.

Later he paid more attention to the Bible and early Christian writers, especially Gregory of Tours and Augustine of Hippo; and thus he came to formal theology.

His reputation was such that a number of monks requested him to write a book to kindle their zeal; and his letter to Joscelin, later archbishop of Bordeaux, who had asked him to decide a dispute between Bishop Isembert of Poitiers and his chapter, is evidence of the authority attributed to his judgment.

Amid this chorus of praise, a discordant voice began to be heard; it was asserted that Berengar held heretical views on the Eucharist.

[5] His doctrine was sharply attacked by Ratramnus and Rabanus Maurus, who opposed his emphatic realism, which was sometimes marred by unfortunate comparisons and illustrations, and proposed a more spiritual conception of the Divine Presence.

[8] On his release from prison, probably affected by the influence of Geoffrey of Anjou, the king still pursued him, and called a synod to meet in Paris in October 1051.

[3] Berengar returned to France full of remorse for this desertion of his faith and of bitterness against the pope and his opponents; his friends were growing fewer—Geoffrey was dead and his successor hostile.

[3] He was still firm in his convictions, and in about 1069 he published a treatise in which he gave vent to his resentment against Pope Nicholas II and his antagonists in the Roman council.

Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII, tried yet to save him; he summoned him once more to Rome (1078), and undertook to silence his enemies by getting him to assent to a vague formula, something like the one which he had signed at Tours.

But the controversy that he aroused forced people to reconsider the ninth-century discussion of the Eucharist, as Paschasius Radbertus had left it, and to clarify the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Further, when both Berengar and his critics used the secular disciplines of logic and grammar to express a matter of Christian doctrine, the way was open to the scholasticism of the twelfth century.