Berengar

(c. 1010–88)

   Theologian.

   Berengar was a native of Tours, France. The details of his life are not known, but he was a pupil of fulbert and by 1040 he was Archdeacon of Angers, where he remained until 1060. In 1070 he appears as Master of the Schools of Tours and at the end of his life he retired to a hermitage. Berengar is remembered for his teaching on the Eucharist. In the eleventh century, the official doctrine of the Church was that of paschasius radbertus, namely that the presence of Christ in the Mass was not merely a spiritual presence, but involved the miraculous transformation of the elements into the body and blood of Jesus. By contrast, Berengar believed that the Christian does not literally eat and drink Christ’s body and blood; instead, by sharing in the Eucharist, the faithful can participate in a spiritual communion with Jesus in his full glorified humanity. He endured much harassment for these views; treatises (such as that of lanfranc) were written against him, but he never seems to have been excommunicated. Although his teaching had little influence in his own time, it forced his critics to examine the traditional doctrines and led the way to the rigorous scholastic argument of the next century.

   A.J. Macdonald, Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (1930);

   R.W. Southern, ‘Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours’, in R.W. Hunt, W.A. Pantin and R.W. Southern (eds), Studies in Mediaeval History (1948).