THE EUCHARIST AND LAW IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

Ian Christopher Levy

All of the Christian sacraments pertain in one form or another to the Church. Sacraments have no natural place outside of this sacred com- munity. There is never any sense in which a person can really be said to receive or administer a sacrament alone; there is always the larger body of Christ to consider. Hence it is only natural that , which is itself designed to bring rational order to the life of the Church, would devote a good deal of space to the Holy Eucharist, itself the preemi- nent Christian sacrament, and absolutely integral to the very life of the Church. So central was the Eucharist to the sense of Catholic identity and community that refusal to communicate at major feast days was regarded as nothing less than a rejection of the Church herself. Given the centrality of this sacrament, therefore, the principal concern of the canon law collections was to ensure that the Mass was properly cele- brated. As they sifted through the materials at their disposal—patristic quotations, conciliar decisions, papal —the compilers of these collections, and the lawyers who later commented upon them, were concerned above all else with practical matters. In that sense, theology was not their chief concern, although some rather sophisticated theol- ogy could be employed at times in order to resolve difficult practical problems. Actually, we shall see that by the late twelfth century the canon lawyers were taking full advantage of the progress being made in the theological schools. Hence stipulations that stated things rather simply in the early eleventh century—for instance, that a priest who allows the eucharistic host to be eaten by a mouse will do forty days penance—require much more detailed analysis two centuries later. Now the lawyers are asking what precisely that mouse has eaten: just a wafer or the Lord’s very own body? What about heretics and infidels; do they receive Christ’s body? If someone is too sick to receive the chal- ice, but only the host, is he or she thereby deprived the Lord’s salvific blood; if not, why exactly? These are certainly theological questions which were taken up by the masters in Paris, but they also speak to ‘real world’ concerns that needed rational answers. Indeed, the lawyers 400 ian christopher levy had to tackle these questions precisely because canon law—inasmuch as it is a science—must pursue a course of reasoned inquiry. To their credit, the canonists were not content to repeat bare assertions: they had to provide a coherent rationale to support their conclusions.

Regino of Prüm

Although this essay is devoted to the Eucharist in later medieval canon law, a word should be said about an early collection that not only gives us some insight into eucharistic practices at the end of the Carolingian era, but one that also provided material for later collections. In about the year 906, at the request of Archbishop Rathbod of Trier, Regino of Prüm compiled the Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis eccle- siasticis.1 His collection was designed to assist bishops in their visita- tions as they dealt with both the clergy and laity of their . In assembling this work, Regino drew upon canonical collections such as the Dionysio-Hadriana, the Hispania, the Dacheriana, and the Pseudo- Isidorian collection. In addition to these sources he also incorporated material from the councils and penitentials of the Frankish church. It must be noted, however, that Regino felt free to alter, and add to, this material so as to bolster its authority and thereby serve his larger purposes.2 A number of the canons concerning the Eucharist would be incorporated into later collections, most notably the Decretum of which proved to be widely influential in the elev- enth and twelfth centuries. So as not to be overly repetitive we will save our examination of much of this common material for the fol- lowing section. As one might expect from such an early collection, the eucharistic canons found in Regino’s work place much greater emphasis upon practical concerns than upon theological exposition, although one does find brief theological reasons offered on occasion to explain the significance of a particular stipulation. Generally the canons set down

1 Libri duo de synodalibus causis et Disciplinis Ecclesiasticis, ed. F.G.A. Wasserschleben (1840; repr. Graz, 1964). The text may also be found in PL 132:175–400. See the recent edition with German translation by Wilfried Hartmann, Das Sendhandbuch des Reg- ino von Prüm (Darmstadt, 2004). 2 Paul Fournier and Gabriel le Bras, Histoire des Collections Canoniques en Occi- dent, 2 vols. (Paris, 1932), 1:244–68; Roger Reynolds, “Law, Canon: To Gratian,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages [hereafter DMA], ed. Joseph Strayer, 13 vols. (New York, 1982–89) 7:406–407.