Both Augustine and Ambrose wrote about the Real Presence, in *De Doctrina *and *De Mysteriis *respectively. After that period it was largely forgotten. Several centuries passed without anyone raising any questions about it, until Charlemagne (768-814) initiated wide-ranging ecclesiastical reforms, including the standardization of the liturgy throughout the Empire. This in turn triggered a new spirit of inquiry in the Church, particularly in Benedictine monasteries.
Liturgical reform called for reflection on the sacraments, some of which presented greater difficulty than others. Baptism, for instance, was relatively straightforward, but the Eucharist was more complex. This is the background to the celebrated “Eucharistic controversy” at Corbie, a Benedictine monastery in France, in the 830s and 840s. Two monks, Radbertus and Ratramnus, both wrote books on the subject, both of them drawing on Ambrose and Augustine. Unhelpfully, they both gave their books the same title, *De Corpore et Sanguine Domini *(On the Body and Blood of the Lord), and both used essentially the same terminology, in which the three key words were veritas (truth), *figura *(appearance or symbol), and mysterium (mystery). But they attached different meanings to the terms. Radbertus used veritas to mean that which faith teaches and figura to mean the outward appearance of the elements of the Eucharist: they are outwardly bread and wine but “truly,” in Radbertus’ sense, the body and blood of the Lord. But Ratramnus, whose book appeared about ten years later, used veritas to denote the natural world of the five senses and figura to denote all that is symbolic.
Charlemagne’s grandson, who is known to history by the unflattering name Charles the Bald, was responsible, in a way, for triggering the controversy. He was the ruler of the Empire at the time Radbertus wrote his book, and one day in 843 he turned up at Corbie saying he wanted to stay there a few days on a retreat. Charles was interested in theology, not least because he was aware that a mastery of the subject would help him settle conflicts at the various councils that were held in the course of his reign.
After a day or two at Corbie, Charles found that he didn’t get on very well with Radbertus, who was the head of the monastic school and therefore, nominally, the monastery’s top theologian. He got on better with one of the other monks, Ratramnus. Among other questions, Charles asked Ratramnus “whether the body and the blood of Christ, which the faithful at church receive in their mouth, are present there in mystery or in truth.” That was when Ratramnus sat down to write his book. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the reformers seized upon Ratramnus’ book to justify their reinterpretation of the Eucharist, while the Catholic Church stood by Radbertus. The controversy continues.
