As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real conviction more boldly than ever.He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later.^731
Lanfranc attacked him in his book on the eucharist, and Berengar replied very sharply in his chief
work on the Lord’s Supper (between 1063 and 1069.)^732 His friends gradually withdrew, and the
wrath of his enemies grew so intense that he was nearly killed at a synod in Poitiers (1075 or 1076).
Hildebrand who in the mean time had ascended the papal throne as Gregory VlI., summoned
Berengar once more to Rome in 1078, hoping to give him peace, as he had done at Tours in 1054.
He made several attempts to protect him against the fanaticism of his enemies. But they demanded
absolute recantation or death. A Lateran Council in February, 1079, required Berengar to sign a
formula which affirmed the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape.^733
He imprudently appealed to his private interviews with Gregory, but the pope could no longer
protect him without risking his own reputation for orthodoxy, and ordered him to confess his error.
Berengar submitted. "Confounded by the sudden madness of the pope," he says, "and because God
in punishment for my sins did not give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground and
confessed with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly pronounce against
me the sentence of excommunication, and that, as a necessary consequence, the populace would
hurry me to the worst of deaths." The pope, however, remained so far true to him that he gave him
two letters of recommendation, one to the bishops of Tours and Angers, and one to all the faithful,
in which he threatened all with the anathema who should do him any harm in person or estate, or
call him a heretic.^734
Berengar returned to France with a desponding heart and gave up the hopeless contest. He
was now an old man and spent the rest of his life in strict ascetic seclusion on the island of St. Côme
(Cosmas) near Tours, where he died in peace 1088. Many believed that he did penance for his
heresy, and his friends held an annual celebration of his memory on his grave. But what he really
regretted was his cowardly treason to the truth as he held it. This is evident from the report of his
trial at Rome which he drew up after his return.^735 It concludes with a prayer to God for forgiveness,
(^731) Leo is "minime leo de tribu Iuda;" the pope is not a pontifex, but a pompifex and pulpifex, and the see of Rome not a
sedes apostolica, but a sedes Satanae. De S. Coena, p. 34, 40, 42, 71. Lanfranc, c. 16. See Neander, III. 513, who refers to other
testimony in Bibl. P. Lugd. XVIII. 836.
(^732) De Sacra Coena adversus Lanfrancum Liber posterior (290 pages). This book, after having been long lost, was
discovered by Lessing in the Library of Wolfenbüttel (1770), who gave large extracts from it, and was published in full by A.
F. and F. Th. Vischer, Berlin, 1834, with a short preface by Neander. Berengar gives here a very different version of the previous
history, and charges Lanfranc with falsehood. He fortifies his view by quotations from Ambrose and Augustin, and abounds in
passion, vituperation and repetition. The style is obscure and barbarous. The MS. is defective at the beginning and the close.
Lessing traced it to the eleventh or twelfth century, Stäudlin to Berengar himself, the editors (p. 23), more correctly to a negligent
copyist who had the original before him. Comp. Sudendorf, p. 47.
(^733) "Corde credo et ore confiteor, panem et vinum, quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium sacrae orationis et verba
nostri Remptorissubstantialiterconvertiin veram et propriam et vivifratricem carnem et sanguinem Jesu Christi Domini nostri,
et post consecrationem esse verum Christi corpus, quod natum est de Virgine, et quod pro salute mundi oblatum in cruce
pependit, et quod sedet ad dexteram Patris, et verum sanguinem Christi, qui de latere ejus effusus est, non tantum per signum
et virtutem sacramenti, sed in proprietate naturae et veritate substantiae." Berengar was willing to admit a conversio panis, but
salva sua substantia,i.e. non amittens quod erat, sed assumens quod non erat; in other words, conversion without annihilation.
A mere sophistry. Substantialiter can mean nothing else but secundum substantiam. See the Acts of the Council in Mansi, XIX.
762.
(^734) D’Achery, Spicileg. III. 413. Mansi, XX. 621. Neander, III. 520. Sudendorf, 57.
(^735) See the Acta Concilii Romani sub Gregorio papa VII. in causa Berengarii ab ipso Berengario conscripta cum ipsius
recantatione (after Febr., 1079), printed in Mansi, XIX. 761. Comp. Neander, III. 521, and Sudendorf, p. 58 sqq. Berengar is