Berengar of Tours

Life and Historical Context

Berengar of Tours (c. 1000–1088) was a prominent 11th‑century theologian and churchman whose name is closely associated with the earliest systematic controversy over the Eucharist in the Latin Middle Ages. Born in or near Tours in western France, he studied at the cathedral school of Tours and later at Chartres, centers known for their cultivation of grammar, logic, and biblical exegesis. Among his influential teachers was Fulbert of Chartres, a key figure in the revival of learning in the early 11th century.

Berengar eventually became head of the cathedral school at Tours and an archdeacon of Angers. In these roles he gained a reputation for learning and for a strong confidence in dialectic—the use of logical argument—in theological matters. This intellectual orientation helped shape the way he approached traditional doctrines, especially the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

The broader historical setting of Berengar’s life includes the Gregorian Reform movement and the gradual centralization of doctrinal authority under the papacy. During this period, tensions emerged between traditional, often more mystical or monastic forms of piety and an increasingly scholastic, rational mode of theology cultivated in cathedral schools. Berengar’s career unfolded precisely at this intersection, making his case a test of how far reasoned analysis could go in interpreting dogma.

He spent his final years in relative retirement at the monastery of Saint-Cosme, near Tours, where he died in 1088, reportedly living a life of penitence and quiet after decades of controversy.

The Eucharistic Controversy

Berengar’s lasting fame rests on his role in the Eucharistic controversy of the mid‑11th century, often seen as a prelude to later medieval debates on transubstantiation.

The immediate backdrop was the influence of Ratramnus of Corbie, a 9th‑century monk whose treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini argued, in a nuanced way, that Christ’s Eucharistic presence was real but spiritual rather than crudely material. In contrast, Ratramnus’s contemporary Paschasius Radbertus had emphasized a more straightforward identification of the consecrated elements with Christ’s historical, physical body.

Berengar encountered Ratramnus’s work and found in it a framework for questioning what he regarded as overly literalist, almost physicalist, accounts of Christ’s Eucharistic presence. He is reported to have argued that:

• After consecration, the bread and wine remain in their sensible reality (their observable properties and, in some sense, their underlying reality).
• Christ is present sacramentally and spiritually, not by a change of substance that eliminates the bread and wine, but in a way that faith recognizes and that is mediated by the sign.
• To say that the consecrated host is numerically identical with Christ’s historical flesh—subject to decay, digestion, and the like—was, in his view, philosophically and theologically problematic.

Berengar’s critics, most notably Lanfranc of Bec (later Archbishop of Canterbury), interpreted his position as a denial of the real presence. Lanfranc’s treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini defended a robust Eucharistic realism and portrayed Berengar’s stance as a rationalist innovation at odds with patristic consensus and Christian piety.

From the 1050s onward Berengar was summoned repeatedly to church councils:

• Synod of Vercelli (1050) and Council of Paris (1051) condemned his teachings in his absence and ordered the burning of Ratramnus’s book.
• At Tours (1054) and particularly Rome (1059), under Pope Nicholas II, Berengar was pressured to sign professions of faith affirming that the bread and wine, after consecration, are “changed substantially” (substantialiter converti) into Christ’s body and blood.
• Later synods, including those at Poitiers and Rome in the 1070s, revisited the issue and required further clarifications.

On several occasions Berengar publicly recanted, signing formulae that used strong language about the conversion of the elements. According to some sources, he subsequently retracted these recantations or interpreted them in a way consistent with his original views. The historical record leaves some ambiguity about the precise evolution of his doctrine, since we possess only fragments and reports rather than a full systematic treatise in his own hand.

The controversy did not produce an immediate, fully articulated doctrine of transubstantiation, but it contributed significantly to the consolidation of a dogmatic boundary: rejection of the idea that the bread and wine are merely symbolic or only spiritually linked to Christ without a real, objective change.

Thought, Method, and Legacy

Berengar’s theological position is often summarized as a denial of transubstantiation, but this description can be misleading if anachronistically read in light of later, more precise scholastic definitions. The term “transubstantiation” itself gained authoritative status only later, culminating in its formal dogmatic use at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and clearer elaboration in 13th‑century scholasticism.

What distinguished Berengar was less a fully developed alternative doctrine and more a methodological stance:

• He applied dialectical reasoning to sacramental doctrine, asking how the affirmation of Christ’s real presence could be made coherent with sensory experience and Aristotelian‑influenced notions of substance and accidents.
• He emphasized the sacramental sign: the bread and wine, as visible, tangible realities, function as signs that truly communicate what they signify—Christ’s body and blood—but without collapsing sign and res (the thing signified) into a single, physically identical entity.
• He appealed to Scripture and early authorities, especially Ratramnus and certain patristic texts, to support a more “spiritual” reading of Christ’s words at the Last Supper, “This is my body.”

Proponents of Berengar’s approach, both in his time and in later historical assessments, have seen in him an early example of critical theology: someone who attempts to reconcile dogma with philosophical clarity and who resists formulations he believes risk misunderstanding or superstition. They argue that his insistence on a spiritual and sacramental, rather than crudely material, presence anticipated aspects of later reform movements, though such links are indirect and debated.

Critics, both medieval and modern, have contended that Berengar’s views endangered the traditional faith in the Eucharist by undermining belief in Christ’s true, objective presence in the sacrament. From their perspective, his reliance on dialectic risked subjecting revelation to the constraints of human reason and undermining the pastoral and devotional life centered on Eucharistic worship.

In terms of intellectual legacy, Berengar’s immediate influence was limited by the condemnations of his ideas and the scarcity of surviving works. Yet his case shaped the Church’s subsequent insistence on precise doctrinal language regarding the Eucharist. The debates he provoked contributed to:

• The growing acceptance of the conceptual distinction between substance and accidents as a tool for explaining sacramental change.
• The idea that, while the appearances (accidents) of bread and wine remain, their underlying substance becomes that of Christ’s body and blood—a position his opponents were already moving toward as they responded to his critiques.
• The recognition that logical analysis had a role in theology, but also that it must operate within boundaries set by ecclesial authority and tradition.

In later centuries, Berengar came to be viewed variously as a heretic, a forerunner of reform, or an early school theologian whose questions helped sharpen medieval sacramental doctrine. Modern scholarship tends to situate him within the complex dynamics of the 11th‑century reform and the emergence of scholastic theology, emphasizing both his originality and the constraints under which he worked.

Berengar of Tours thus occupies a distinctive place in medieval intellectual history as a figure whose contested reflection on the Eucharist forced the Latin Church to articulate more clearly what it meant by Christ’s real presence and how reason and authority should interact in the interpretation of dogma.