- Four books upon the Greeks’ indictment of the Roman Church.^1373 Like the former work,
it was written by request. In 967 Photius addressed a circular letter to the Eastern bishops in which
he charged the Roman Church with certain errors in faith and practice: e.g., the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit, the celibacy of the clergy, the Sabbath and Lent fasts. Nicholas I. called upon his bishops
to refute this charge. Hincmar of Rheims commissioned Odo of Beauvais to write an apologetic
treatise, but his work not proving satisfactory he next asked Ratramnus. The work thus produced
is very famous. The first three books are taken up with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; but in the
fourth he branches out upon a general defense of the ecclesiastical practices of the Latin Church.
He does this in an admirable, liberal and Christian spirit. In the first chapter of the fourth book he
mildly rebukes the Greeks for prescribing their peculiar customs to others, because the difference
in such things is no hindrance to the unity of the faith which Paul enjoins in 1 Cor. i. 10. This unity
he finds in the faith in the Trinity, the birth of Christ from a Virgin, his sufferings, resurrection,
ascension, session at God’s right hand, return to judgment, and in the baptism into Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.^1374 In the first three chapters of the book he proves this proposition by a review of the
condition of the Early Church. He then passes on to defend the Roman customs.^1375
- The Body and Blood of the Lord.^1376 This is the most valuable writing of Ratramnus. It
is a reply to Paschasius Radbert’s book with the same title.^1377 It is dedicated to Charles the Bald
who had requested (in 944) his opinion in the eucharistic controversy. Without naming Radbert,
who was his own abbot, he proceeds to investigate the latter’s doctrines. The whole controversy
has been fully stated in another section.^1378
The book has had a strange fate. It failed to turn the tide setting so strongly in favor of the
views of Radbertus, and was in the Middle Age almost forgotten. Later it was believed to be the
product of Scotus Erigena and as such condemned to be burnt by the council of Vercelli (1050).
The first person to use it in print was John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, who in writing against
Oecolampadius quotes from it as good Catholic authority.^1379 This called the attention of the
Zwinglian party to it and they quickly turned the weapon thus furnished against the Catholics. In
the same year in which it was published at Cologne (1532), Leo Judae made a German translation
of it (Zürich, 1532) which was used by the Zürich ministers in proof that the Zwinglian doctrine
of the Lord’s Supper was no novelty.^1380 But the fact that it had such a cordial reception by the
Reformed theologians made it suspicious in Catholic eyes. The Council of Trent pronounced it a
Protestant forgery, and in 1559 it was put upon the Index. The foremost Catholic theologians such
as Bellarmin and Allan agreed with the Council. A little later (1571) the theologians of Louvain
(or Douay) came to the defense of the book. In 1655 Sainte Beuve formally defended its orthodoxy.
(^1373) Contra Graecorum opposita Romanam ecclesiam infamantium libri quatuor, ibid. col. 225-346.
(^1374) IV. 1. Ibid. col. 303.
(^1375) It is instructive to compare the apology of Aeneas, bishop of Paris (reprinted in the same vol. of Migne, col. 685-762),
which is a mere cento of patristic passages.
(^1376) De corpore et sanguine Domini liber. Ibid. col. 125-170.
(^1377) See p. 743.
(^1378) P. 543 sqq.
(^1379) De Verit. Corp. et sang. Christi contra OEcolampad., Cologne, 1527.
(^1380) Ruchat, Reform. de la Suisse, vol. iv. p. 207; ed. Vulliemin, vol. iii. p. 122.