the foundation of interpretation.^1339 To such a man the views of Paschasius Radbertus upon the
Lord’s Supper could have no attraction. Yet an attempt has been persistently made to show that in
his comments upon Matt. 26:26–28, he teaches transubstantiation. Curiously enough, his exact
language upon this interesting point cannot be now determined beyond peradventure, because every
copy of the first printed edition prepared by Wimphelin de Schelestadt, Strassburg 1514, has
perished, and in the MS. in possession of the Cordelier Fathers at Lyons the critical passage reads
differently from that in the second edition, by the Lutheran, Johannes Secerius, Hagenau 1530. In
the Secerius text, now printed in the Lyons edition of the Fathers, and in Migne, the words are,
26:26, "Hoc est corpus meum. Id est, in sacramento" ("This is my body. That is, in the sacrament,"
or the sacramental sign as distinct from the res sacramenti, or the substance represented). Matt.
26:28, Transferens spiritaliter corpus in panem, vinum in sanguinem ("Transferring spiritually body
into bread, wine into blood").^1340 In the MS. the first passage reads: "Id est, vere in sacramento
subsistens" ("That is, truly subsisting in the sacrament"); and in the second the word "spiritaliter
"is omitted. The Roman Catholics now generally admit the correctness of the printed text, and that
the MS. has been tampered with, but insist that Druthmar is not opposed to the Catholic doctrine
on the Eucharist.
The brief expositions of Luke and John^1341 are probably mere notes of Druthmar’s expositorylectures on those books, and not the works he promises in his preface to Matthew.^1342
§ 173. St. Paschasius Radbertus.
I. Sanctus Paschasius Radbertus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXX.
II. Besides the Prolegomena in Migne, see Melchior Hausher: Der heilige Paschasius Radbertus.
Mainz 1862. Carl Rodenberg: Die Vita Walae als historische Quelle (Inaugural Dissertation).
Göttingen 1877. Du Pin, VII. 69–73, 81. Ceillier, XII. 528–549. Hist. Lit. de la France, V.
287–314. Bähr, 233, 234, 462–471. Ebert, II. 230–244.
Radbertus, surnamed Paschasius,^1343 the famous promulgator of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, was born of poor and unknown parents, about 790, in or near the city of Soissons
in France. His mother died while he was a very little child, and as he was himself very sick he was
"exposed" in the church of Soissons. The nuns of the Benedictine abbey of Our Lady in that place
had compassion upon him and nursed him back to health.^1344 His education was conducted by the
adjoining Benedictine monks of St. Peter, and he received the tonsure, yet for a time he led a secular
life. His thirst for knowledge and his pious nature, however, induced him to take up again with the
restraints of monasticism, and he entered (c. 812) the Benedictine monastery at Corbie, in Picardy,
then under abbot Adalhard. There he applied himself diligently to study and to the cultivation of
(^1339) "Studui autem plus historicum sensum sequi quam spiritalem, quia irrationabile mihi videtur spiritalem intelligentiam
in libro aliquo quaerere, et historicam penitus ignorare: cum historia fundamentum omnis intelligentize sit," etc. Ibid. col.
1262, l. 6, Fr. bel.
(^1340) Ibid. col. 1476, l. 16 and 3 Fr. bel.
(^1341) Ibid. col. 1503-1514, 1515-1520.
(^1342) Ibid. col. 1263.
(^1343) From Pascha, probably in allusion to big position in the Eucharistic controversy.
(^1344) Their abbess was Theodrada. Mabillon, Annales, lib. 27 (vol. 2, p. 371).