Berengar of Tours, in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a scholar whose leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry through the revived tools of dialectic that was soon followed at cathedral schools of Laon and Paris. Berengar of Tours was distinguished from mainline Catholic theology by two views: his assertion of the supremacy of Scripture and his denial of transubstantiation.
Berengar of Tours, engraving by Henrik Hondius from Jacob Verheiden, Praestantium aliquot theologorum (1602).
Transubstantiation is, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, "the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ". This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, "the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the 'eucharistic species', remain unaltered". In this teaching, the notions of "substance" and "transubstantiation" are not linked with any particular theory of metaphysics.
Transubstantiation – the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic Adoration at Saint Thomas Aquinas Cathedral in Reno, Nevada
A 3rd-century fresco in the Catacomb of Callixtus, interpreted by the archaeologist Joseph Wilpert as showing on the left Jesus multiplying bread and fish, a symbol of the Eucharistic consecration, and on the right a representation of the deceased, who through participation in the Eucharist has obtained eternal happiness
The Last Supper (upper image) and preparatory washing of feet (lower image) in a 1220 manuscript in the Baden State Library, Karlsruhe, Germany
Title page of Martin Luther's De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae
