Berengar of Tours

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Berengar von Tours (* early 11th century in Tours ; † January 6, 1088 on the island of St. Cosmas near Tours) was a French dialectician of early scholasticism and one of the main opponents in the Second Supper Controversy .

Life

He was a student of Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, was canon at the Basilica of Saint-Martin de Tours around 1030 , and later head of the cathedral school there . From 1040 he was also archdeacon of the Saint-Maurice cathedral in Angers .

He applied the dialectical method to traditional theology and came into conflict with the prevailing Eucharistic teaching. According to the doctrine of the doctrine, in the celebration of the Eucharist bread and wine are transformed according to their “substance” into the body and blood of Christ. The expression “substance” was associated with a tangible understanding. At least that is how Berengar judged it and said that it was in contradiction to reason, to the older church doctrine as represented by Paschasius Radbertus , and to the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, he represented (like Scotus Eriugena and Ratramnus von Corbie in the First Supper Controversy) a symbolic-spiritualistic Eucharistic teaching. After that, bread and wine remain in substance what they were, and only a spiritual meaning is added, so that Christ is not physically present.

Several times between 1050 and 1059 Berengar was accused of heresy by synods in Rome, Vercelli, Paris, Tours and the Lateran, and in 1059 he was forced to withdraw his views, which he however revoked. In the course of this second doctrinal dispute he wrote (before 1070 or around 1076?) The treatise Rescriptum contra Lanfrancum (formerly: De sacra coena ), in which he presented his teaching of the Eucharist in detail. The only surviving manuscript is in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, where it was discovered by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1770 .

After subsequent further humiliations, Berengar finally gave up the argument, but without giving up his views. Berengar's opponents later coined formulations that led to the term transubstantiation , as it was recorded as binding at the 4th Lateran Council in 1215.

Lessing shows in his work Berengarius Turonensis, or Announcement of an important work of the same [...] that the thesis spread by Lanfrank von Bec and by the historiography of the French Benedictines , that Berengar remained with the revocation of his conception of the evening meal until his death, was wrong . Lanfrank was the actual initiator of the condemnation of Berengar after he had sent him a friendly offer to discuss the problems of the doctrine of change without already having formulated a clear position on it. Lessing, who wanted to sharpen his own theological position in preparation for the publication of writings critical of Orthodoxy by Hermann Samuel Reimarus and who wanted to position himself in view of the harsh discussions to be expected on the question of transubstantiation, saw Berengar's teaching close to Luther's conception of the Last Supper of the real presence of Christ; in fact, however, it was closer to Zwingli's teaching , which assumed a purely symbolic presence.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Göbel: Notes on Berengarius Turonensis , in: GE Lessing: Werke VII . 1976, p. 746 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Berengar of Tours
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berengarius turonensis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dialecticians of pre-olasticism
DATE OF BIRTH before 1030
PLACE OF BIRTH Tours
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1088
Place of death on St. Cosmas near Tours