Doctrine Of Transubstantiation Research Articles

Transubstantiation Through the Lens of Spacetime Substantivalism

ABSTRACT The doctrine of transubstantiation (as understood by Aquinas and much subsequent Roman Catholic theology) involves the counter-intuitive claim that accidents can come to exist independently of any substance. In particular, the spatial dimensions of bread and wine can come to exist independently. I point out that a key idea that motivated this claim was an aspect of mediaeval philosophy of nature: namely, relationism about space. I argue that if relationism is dropped in favour of substantivalism, then room is made for a model of transubstantiation which needn't involve an implausible commitment to independently existing accidents.

Science, Law, and Transubstantiation

ABSTRACT Regarding the relation between theology and science, it seems to me that Catholic theology provides a remarkable case given its distinctive notion of Catholic magisterial infallibility (under certain conditions) and its doctrine of transubstantiation. Here I argue that, in a very real sense, the current legal and doctrinal state-of-affairs linked to transubstantiation has quite substantial implications. These very implications articulately illustrate how challenging the situation is for Catholic scientists, especially for those who are working and, thereby, are contributing to research at Catholic Universities as defined and established by the magisterium and the competent authorities of the Catholic Church.

The Extra Calvinisticum and the Question of Where God Is

Abstract This paper maintains that at the heart of the post-Reformation debates over the extra Calvinisticum lies the question of what it means to name God’s presence in the world – that is, to say where God is. Because the Lutheran position insists that there can be no proper identification of God’s presence in the world that does not take its bearings from talk about Jesus’ presence, it serves as a means of preventing Christian God-talk from becoming detached from the flesh-and-blood realities of human existence. In this way, the denial of the extra Calvinisticum is a corollary of a theology of the cross – that is, the principle that talk about God is normed by the concrete reality of Jesus. At the same time, the Lutheran genus maiestaticum is rejected as making just the sort of move to which Luther himself objected in the doctrine of transubstantiation: a metaphysical explanation of Jesus’ presence in the world rather than a simple appeal to miracle.

Negotiating unfamiliar Anglo-Catholic eucharistic pieties in the Church of England, using the sacramental theology of Rowan Williams

ABSTRACT This paper reflects upon the potential difficulties for individuals in worshipping contexts who are unable or unwilling to participate in the worshipping body’s normative pieties, owing to their apparent doctrinal basis. In particular, I address the Anglo-Catholic context in the Church of England, and the relationship between the doctrine of transubstantiation and certain eucharistic pieties. I begin by considering the relationship between doctrine and practice, before examining how Rowan Williams’ emphasis of real presence in the eucharistic event might enable a variety of otherwise reluctant worshippers to engage with eucharistic pieties. Throughout, I ground my reflections in practically-oriented pastoral terms, imaginatively profiling three newcomers to an Anglo-Catholic context and practice, each with their own reasons for non-participation in the eucharistic pieties of their congregations.

The Theology of the Holy Eucharist and the Doctrine of Transubstantiation

Holy Communion is one of the seven sacraments in the Catholic Church. With Baptism and Confirmation, they constitute the sacraments of Initiation. Similarly, with the Word of God, they constitute the two indispensable pillars upon which the Church is built. It is the “fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (LG 11). It is named Holy Eucharist because it is an action of thanksgiving to God. It recalls God’s work of creation, redemption, and sanctification. The Eucharistic elements, bread and wine become, by the prayer of consecration and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, Christ's Body and Blood through an act appropriately known as transubstantiation. The term emphasizes the conversion of the total substance of bread and wine into the entire substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. When the bread and wine are consecrated at Mass, they are no longer bread and wine; they have become instead the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the words of Christ. The empirical appearances and attributes remain the same, but the underlying reality changes. Therefore, the doctrine of transubstantiation teaches without ambiguity that in the Holy Communion, the Body and Blood, together with the soul and divinity, of the Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained. How is this understood and what is its implication theologically? In an attempt to elucidate this problem, this work seeks first to highlight the theology of the Holy Eucharist within the context of the ecclesiology of Communion, and second, through some theological themes: sacred memorial and sacrificial banquet; eschatological meal. The third and final part treats the theme of real presence under the rubrics of Transubstantiation. Keywords: Transubstantiation, Eschatological Meal, Memorial, Real Presence, Communion, Eucharistic conversion.

John Wyclif and the Eucharistic Words of Institution: Context and Aftermath

In matters of eucharistic theology, John Wyclif (d. 1384) is best known for his rejection of the scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation. There were many reasons why Wyclif came to regard this doctrine as fundamentally untenable, such as the impossibility of substantial annihilation and the illogicality of accidents existing apart from subjects, but chief among them was his deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing interpretation of Christ's words, “Hoc est corpus meum,” the words of institution required to confect the sacrament in the Mass. Wyclif insisted that getting this proposition right was essential for a correct understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. This article presents Wyclif's position on this matter within the context of later medieval scholastic discussions in an effort to lend clarity to his larger understanding of eucharistic presence. The article will then trace the reception of Wyclif's ideas to Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century, with special attention given to the Prague master Jakoubek of Stříbro. One finds that Wyclif, and then later Jakoubek, developed new and effective means of conceptualizing the conversion of the eucharistic elements, thereby expanding the ways in which one can affirm Christ's presence in the consecrated host and the salvific effects of that presence for faithful communicants.

See Through the Chatter

Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, a formal explication of the sacrament of the Eucharist (by Martyr) and a debate on the Eucharist that took place between Martyr and three Catholic theologians in 1549, are fraught by rhetoric concerning the doctrine of transubstantiation as “entirely alien to the phraseology of holy Scriptures.” One finds a great deal of chatter in the Oxford Treatise and the Disputation about “holding to the scriptures and deferring to all who speak and will speak to them.” And yet it can be shown that Vermigli is quite selective about what it means to proceed from the Scriptures. He relies, for instance, on Chalcedonian Christology to dismiss what he considers to be the condemnatory innovation of transubstantiation. He also relies on categorizations pertaining to anthropology that contradict his hermeneutical principle. Moreover, these categorizations reflect views as St. Thomas Aquinas’s to curtail a common enemy: Docetism (with respect to the Eucharist). Incidentally, and ironically, Aquinas relies on biblical passages Vermigli himself does not consider, which indicate that a new concept of the Messiah was then emerging. Scriptura sola solum Scriptura numquam est. In sum, Vermigli authorizes his own system of words, extraneous to holy Scripture, unnecessarily at cross-purposes with some of his disputants. As an editor of The Peter Martyr Library, Joseph C. McLelland, advises, to see what we are truly looking at, we need to see through to that which is deeper still. This paper is offered with that aim in view: to see through Vermigli’s chatter.

Satana in forma della Madonna: Serafino Razzi and the Dominican Observant Reform in Kotor

The aim of this paper is to analyze the meaning of hagiographic and iconographic subject Madonna finta within Dominican theological learning and religious practice, through a comparative analysis of word and image in the hagiography of Peter Martyr and female living saints from the 16th century: Caterina de’Ricci and Osanna from Kotor, based on the principles of the Reformed Dominican Order present in the hagiographic literary opus of Serafino Razzi. The framework for considering the use of the iconography of the Madonna and Child to present the apparition of Satan is represented in two essential Dominican theological concepts: accentuating the power of the host and the doctrine of transubstantiation as a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and eradication of the heresy. Serafino Razzi’s mission to spread the observant reform in Dubrovnik and Kotor is a key to understanding many layers of the vita di Osanna including the appearance of Falsa Madonna.

‘Dowting of ye Cupp’: Disbelief about the Eucharist and a Catholic Miracle in Reformation England

This essay is inspired by an intriguing late sixteenth-century Catholic liturgical object, the Bosworth Hall burse. It commemorates a vision of the crucified Christ seen by the missionary priest (and later martyr) John Payne in Douai in 1575, which apparently dispelled a moment of doubt about the real presence in the consecrated eucharist. The incident is situated in the context of the heated Catholic and Protestant controversies about the doctrine of transubstantiation in post-Reformation England and against the backdrop of similar medieval miracles designed to counter disbelief, including the Mass of St Gregory and the miracle of Bolsena of 1263. The essay illuminates the persistence and transformation of anxieties about the sacred in the sixteenth century, considers the part they played in private and public crises of faith, and explores the mechanisms by which they were resolved. It also investigates how the memory of Payne's miraculous vision was crystallized in a material object.

DRACULA’S APOLOGETICS OF PROGRESS

Religion in Dracula studies has often looked a little like the Un-Dead Lucy, a ghastly simulacrum of living faith. Indeed, readings of the novel frequently depend on a suspicious approach to the novel's professions of piety, one that regards them as a mask for more fundamental concerns: the heroes profess religious concern, but what they really want is to neutralize the New Woman, or racial degeneration, or sexual perversion. Under these conditions, Christianity provides, at best, a potent discourse through which the characters can manage these coded crises. When religion does enter the conversation, critics tend to read the text for clues to Stoker's personal position on the theological controversies of his day: the Catholic-Protestant divide in Ireland, the place of High Church ritualism in Anglican worship, the merit of the doctrine of transubstantiation. As a result, we are left with a Dracula that functions as an elaborate code book, encrypting what Stoker secretly (or not-so-secretly) believed.

A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif's Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century

The renewed interest in John Wyclif (d. 1384) has brought this late medieval figure back into the spotlight of historians, giving rise to numerous studies evaluating his thought and its implications in the context of late fourteenth century England. However, it is not possible fully to appreciate Wyclif's importance in late medieval European culture without understanding the legacy of his ideas on the continent. According to the accepted narrative, John Wyclif's thought was mediated to the continent through the scholarly contacts between the universities in Oxford and in Prague, and re-emerged in the Latin writings of Jan Hus. This article argues that John Wyclif's thought, especially his critique of the church's doctrine of transubstantiation, found a larger audience among the rural clerics and laity in Bohemia, whom it reached through Peter Payne, who simplified and disseminated the works of the Oxford master. Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation sparked a nationwide debate about the nature of the Eucharist, generating numerous treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular, on the subject of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the mass. This debate anticipated, a full century earlier, the famous debate between Luther and Zwingli and the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century Reformation more generally. The proliferation of vernacular Eucharistic tractates in Bohemia shows that Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation could be answered in a number of different ways that included both real presence (however defined) and figurative theologies—a fact, which, in turn, explains the doctrinal diversity among the Lollards in England.

When is it Appropriate for Children to Participate in the Lord's Supper? A Perspective from Developmental Theory

After the Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), the church, with the exception of the Eastern Orthodox Church, restricted the participation of children in eucharistic celebrations based on the exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:29 regarding “recognizing the body of the Lord” and Roman Catholicism's emphasis on the doctrine of transubstantiation. It has long been common for adults to believe that children lack the degree of cognitive ability necessary to give a confession of faith in order to receive the Lord's Supper. After the publication of Christian L. Keidel's article “Is the Lord's Supper for Children?” in 1975, however, many Reformed churches in North America began to reconsider age-appropriate participation of children in the Lord's Supper. Because there is no mention of the Lord's Supper for children in the Bible or in any historical documents from the first to the third century, scholars have been unable to establish clear guidelines for acceptance or refusal. Therefore, researching children's religious thinking in relation to cognitive development is essential in deciding the matter of their participation in the Lord's Supper.

The Last Temptation of Faustus: Contested Rites and Eucharistic Representation in Doctor Faustus

Situating Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus within the contexts of liturgical history and sacramental theology, this essay argues that the Eucharist provided an influential aesthetic resource for English dramatists in the wake of the Reformation. Drawing on Eucharistic theology, liturgical books, and the ritual of the Mass, Marlowe’s play reveals the early modern theater as a venue for “contested rites” where liturgical and theological debates could be waged. The essay establishes connections between magic and the Mass by analyzing the “affective textuality” and liturgical rubrics in both necromantic books and liturgical books. It then proceeds to scenes in which Faustus draws on the efficacious language of sacraments, the doctrine of transubstantiation, as well as topoi like Eucharistic gazing and blood sacrifice. In this analysis, conventional oppositions such as parody and piety, medieval and early modern, Catholic and Protestant, and word and flesh are shown to be mutually constitutive at each of the drama’s captivating turns.

Transubstantiation: Rethinking by Anglicans?

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which Anglican theologians have reflected on the doctrine of transubstantiation. The article notes that there is substantial agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion on the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist and that this agreement has been forged by the long established and continuing dialogue of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). At the same time the article notes that official responses from the Roman Catholic Church, while acknowledging the worth of the dialogue, have insisted on particular theological and philosophical definitions of the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist concerning a change in the substance of the elements. While Anglicans have not accepted this particular definition of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as defined by the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation, they have nonetheless accepted the notion of the real presence and reflected in modern times on transubstantiation. Examples of this reflection on transubstantiation by Anglicans are discussed in the hope of allowing the dialogue to continue at new levels of understanding.

The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (review)

Reviewed by: The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age Walter S. Melion The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age. By Mia M. Mochizuki. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2008. Pp. xxiv, 399. $124.95. ISBN: 978-0-754-66104-7.) This important book provides an extended analysis—pictorial, functional, contextual, and theological—of the six scriptural tekstborden (text panels) installed in the Great Church of Haarlem between 1580 and 1585, where they served as confessional statements avowing the conversion of this formerly Roman Catholic cathedral into a purified Temple of the Word. Painted onto columns, hung from piers, elevated above the choir screen, and inserted into the stone armature that once supported the high altarpiece, these panels, also known as tekstschilderijen (text paintings), consist of biblical citations and paraphrases that substitute divinely sanctioned litterae for the Catholic figural images recently despoiled by iconoclasts and then systematically (and carefully) removed by civic authorities. The subjects—the Last Supper, Ten Commandments, Passages from Matthew and from John, supplemented by the biblical compendia assembled in the Greengrocers’ and Linen Weavers’ Paintings, as well as by the commemorative Siege of Haarlem on the reverse of the Last Supper—constitute a programmatic statement of Reformed religious identity, as Mochizuki amply demonstrates. The author invokes the reform theology of Erasmus, as set forth by scholars such as Carlos Eire, to explain how these text panels materialize a new kind of image-theory, at once verbal and visual, that substitutes textual simulacra for pictorial eikones, the written for the enfleshed Word, as representational indices of the transcendent and therefore incommensurable presence of God within the communal fabric of the Church. Mochizuki construes the tekstborden as specimens of what she calls Reformed aesthetics: The posticonoclastic image, she argues, swaps verisimilar imitation for indexical portrayal as the key principle of sacred image-making. The text panels respond to John Calvin’s prohibition against the corporeal representation of God, an interdict enshrined in Question 97 of the Heidelberg Catechism, by emphasizing that he has been portrayed in an emphatically mediated and referential fashion. Instead of a lifelike effigy, the worshiper is given an image [End Page 568] composed of words, either gilt or painted in oil on stone or panel, that renders doctrinal truths beyond the scope of any conventional picture. Mochizuki insists on the artifice of these indices of the Word: Composed of depicted words, they enshrine the knowledge of God to be found in Scripture, which is transmitted visually and yet verbally; at the same time, these painted texts implicitly allude to the Catholic imagery they supplant, that falsely purveyed the illusion of unmediated access to embodied divinity. Having displaced mimesis as the principle of sacred image-making, they call attention to their novel status as examples of a “symbolic or metonymic system of representation [that] changed the very idea of what decoration in churches should be” (p. 140). The question arises: Why was it so imperative to retain the vestiges of the image? Mochizuki would seem to provide several answers. First, Calvin and his Dutch adherents, well aware of the human need for outward signs of devotion, provided tangible indicators through which churchgoers could convey, or better, represent their relation to God. These expressions of congregational piety were devised to underscore the differences between Catholic and Reformed modes of worship. Second, the text image provided a “visual locus of meeting” (p. 261), differing in this respect from book texts; through engagement with the tekstborden, the community represents to itself the hermeneutic work of scriptural reading and the institutional project of fashioning the new Church of Christ. Third, text images like the Last Supper refer specifically to the Reformed understanding of the Eucharist as a sacramental commemoration (ghedachtenisse) of the memorial meal instituted by Christ to recall his redemptive sacrifice. Whereas figural altarpieces body forth the doctrine of transubstantiation, whereby the species of bread and wine are sacramentally transformed into the body and blood of Christ, the indexical tekstborden emphatically signify that the sacrament is referential and metaphorical. The calligraphic pointing of doctrinally resonant words such as bread, body, and testament, drives home this point...

Hamlet and the Reformation of the Eucharist

In recent work, critics have found it a fruitful exercise to read Shakespeare as a writer who is interested in the effects and implications of the English Reformation, and who makes very effective use of the theatrical possibilities of Catholic liturgy and ritual. This article attempts to read Hamlet in this historically contextualised manner. Whilst it does not suggest that the multiplicities of meaning in the play can be easily collapsed into a simple defence of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the Eucharist of traditional Catholicism, it does argue that Hamlet, is a play in which the politics and theology of commemoration occupy a central position, a text that mobilises the extraordinary signifying power of the Eucharist in its attempt to dramatise the cultural impact of the reformation.

The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (review)

72ARTHURIANA century, priests were allowed to marry, but as the doctrine of transubstantiation was developed, the clerical wife herself was seen as a polluting presence for the minister ofthe altar. Since the priest handled the very body and blood ofChrist, he had to be absolutely pure, and part ofthis purity was abstention from sexual activity as well as withdrawal from the very temptation to engage in such activity. The clerical wife was seen as an ambigous, mixed hybrid. Peter Damián wrote that 'God recognizes only three kinds of women: virgins, wives, and widows.' One wonders just how Peter knows this. The clerical wife did not fit any of these categories, and so she could not arrive in God's presence. The last chapter deals with demonology, discussing angelic and demonic disembodiment and the idea that since demons have no body, they cannot be sexually defiled. Professor Elliott must be commended for the clarity of her prose in presenting original sources as well as intricate analytical unraveling of much of this material, which seemed arcane to this reader. It is astonishing that the church would use so many resources in proving or disproving the notion ofdemonic bodies and for the control ofnight emissions in the male clergy. This last was largely due to ignorance about the working of the body. The attempt to control women, however, is more serious because, as Professor Elliott shows, the next step was the burning ofwomen as witches, a further attempt to get rid of pollution. By using the analytic tools provided by Mary Douglas and Freud, Professor Elliott anchors her argument in the insights of modern psychoanalysis while she presents the material without polemics. She has given us a very important book that rewards careful reading. JACQUELINE DF. WEEVER Brooklyn College, CUNY JODY enders, The Medieval Theater ofCruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 237. isbn: 0-8014-3334-7. $45. This is an intellectually challenging if not completely successful book that deserves serious consideration by medievalists, although it also aims for a broader audience interested in contemporary theories of violence. The most substantive section explores the role of violence in the memory systems of classical rhetoric. At the center of the book is a study of intentional violence—torture—in the medieval French mystères. Finally, these historical materials provoke 'an extensive meditation about the interplay among theatricality, pleasure, didacticism, morality and real life' (235). The reading of rhetoric and the discussion of drama combine to form a powerful argument about the functions of pain and violence in engendering the aesthetic; however, the speculations about the universality ofcruelty and the moral stance one should take toward it seem less fully achieved. For Enders, what is at stake is our 'well-intentioned deference to the concept of alterity' [of the Middle Ages] which, she argues, 'maywell have masked a very real denial ofthe contemporary spectacle ofviolence and ofcontemporary complicity in the history ofthat violence' (24). REVIEWS 73 Enders's first claim is that rhetoric had established an ideological connection between the subject of torture and the processes of inventio, memoria, and actio. Her second move is to suggest that such conceptual links between creative invention, dramatic catharsis, and human suffering that emerged from the rhetorical treatments oftorture (and circulated in the classical, medieval, and early Renaissance educational systems) subtended the dramatic representation of violence. The well-established rhetorical formulae that emphasized the efficacy of violent proofs for producing 'truth,' she argues, 'encouraged the dramatic representation ofviolence as a means ofcoercing theater audiences into accepting the various "truths" enacted didactically in mysteries, miracles, and even farces' (4). These are daring claims, and Enders must resort to such locutions as 'it is thus probable' or 'he may have done so' when making the link between rhetoric and theater. Despite the fragility of her own rhetoric at times, her analysis ofthe figure oftorture in rhetorical texts is compelling and forces a reexamination of scenes of violence and torture in the drama. Enders's discussion of torture's important place in the rhetorical tradition draws on poststructural theories ofthe violence ofrepresentation, which arc in turn based on the Nietzschean insight that pain produces...

Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, & Demonology in the Middle Ages by Dyan Elliott (review)

REVIEWS71 Backes's The Hundred Years War in France (xi), and an authentic list of 81 primary and secondary sources, the research underpinnings of Timeline. ROBERT J . BLANCH Northeastern University DYAN Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, el·Demonology in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 300. isbn: 0-81223460 -x (cloth), $49.95; 0-8122-1665-2 (paper), $19.95. This is a fascinating and very important book, demanding concentration from the reader simply because the arguments are so rigorously laid out, in very clear and uncompromising prose. Professor Elliott details the attempts ofthe Western Church not only to contain sexuality but to get rid of it altogether, first among the clergy and then, grudgingly, among the laity. The distrust (and misunderstanding) of sexuality led to this absorption with the subject which occupied some of the best minds in the church's hierarchy. The book's six chapters follow the pattern laid out in the title. The first chapter deals mainly with nocturnal pollution in the male clergy and the resulting nightmares and waking visions engendered in the male psyche. These nightmares were caused by evil thoughts inflicted by the devil (as in Gregory the Great's Moralia), including the visitations of incubi and succubi. One such waking dream details the devil in the shape of a Benedictine nun visiting one of the sleeping brothers, who died within three days (31). The second chapter details the idea of 'demonic defloration' when the life of the imagination was allied with the demonic. In all the examples given in these chapters, the bed is the locus of transgression. In the third chapter, 'Sex in Holy Places,' the holy place, the church, a monastery, or the graveyard, is the locus oftransgression. This chapter required a precisely engaged, analytic mind to help the reader understand many hypothetical situations, for example, the situation of the demand by a partner in a marriage to have sex in a church. Because the people are married to each other, the partner who demands sex in a church must be satisfied, since Paul writes that the marital debt must be paid. The partner who must comply, therefore, commits no sin, since compliance is obligatory. Professor Elliott explores this hypothetical situation as an example ofmedieval anxiety about sex. Theodulf of Orleans (d.821) gives the offence the rubric of 'Irrational Fornication,' and William ofWaddington's Manueldes Péchiez describes such actions as a kind of theft from the holy place. Sin is attributed to the partner demanding the activity, as discussed by Alexander of Hales in the thirteenth century. The heart of the book is to be found in chapters four and five, 'The Priest's Wife' and 'Avatars of the Priest's Wife.' Most of the polluting elements in the first chapters take on a female form, like the devil in the form of a Benedictine nun. In chapters four and five, the subtext becomes clear. The fear ofwomen, irrational in itself, looms large in the church's attempts to control sexuality. Until the eleventh 72ARTHURIANA century, priests were allowed to marry, but as the doctrine of transubstantiation was developed, the clerical wife herself was seen as a polluting presence for the minister ofthe altar. Since the priest handled the very body and blood ofChrist, he had to be absolutely pure, and part ofthis purity was abstention from sexual activity as well as withdrawal from the very temptation to engage in such activity. The clerical wife was seen as an ambigous, mixed hybrid. Peter Damián wrote that 'God recognizes only three kinds of women: virgins, wives, and widows.' One wonders just how Peter knows this. The clerical wife did not fit any of these categories, and so she could not arrive in God's presence. The last chapter deals with demonology, discussing angelic and demonic disembodiment and the idea that since demons have no body, they cannot be sexually defiled. Professor Elliott must be commended for the clarity of her prose in presenting original sources as well as intricate analytical unraveling of much of this material, which seemed arcane to this reader. It is astonishing that the church would use so many resources...

The Doctrine of Transubstantiation and the English Protestant Dispossession of Demons

The early English Protestant practice of ‘dispossessing’ (exorcizing) demons ironically depended on the intellectual acceptance of some of the principles underlying the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The Protestant practice of dispossession thus implied an inchoate theology not as far removed from Catholicism as its advocates believed. As Protestantism developed, gradually abandoning the principles common to both tran substantiation and dispossession, it also abandoned the practice of the latter.

In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (review)

Reviewed by: In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany Matthew Goldish R. Po-chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, eds. In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Pp. xx + 330. $74.95. The contents of this volume are based on a UCLA Clark Library conference held in 1991 to discuss Jewish-Christian relations in early modern Germany. Many issues discussed here have become the focus of increased interest and scrutiny since the publication of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996), in which the author claims that there was an “eliminationist” anti-Semitism particular to modern Germany that led to genocidal Nazi policies. Throughout In and Out of the Ghetto the specter of the Holocaust is felt, standing always behind the curtain of academic research: Can something we are seeing in the early modern era help explain why Germany became the destroyer of European Jewry in this century? The book is divided into six parts, each of which focuses on a particular theme: Jewish identity and exclusiveness, social and economic structures of German Jewry, Jewish-Gentile contacts, representations of German Jewry and German Christians, political patterns governing Jewry, and overall perspectives on German-Jewish history. Each of the first five parts consists of two or three essays followed by a comment by an eminent historian in a related but not identical field. The comments do a great deal to help the reader put the studies, some of which are quite technical and specialized, into perspective. Each contains highly insightful comments and criticisms. The quality of the essays is in general very high. It was particularly encouraging for me, a nonspecialist, to see that the traditional Jewish historiography of German Jewry, based almost entirely on Hebrew sources and well-known published works, has given way to a more balanced era of research in which the rich archival material and popular literature are exploited as well. The result is a picture of early modern German Jewry far more detailed and nuanced than what has been previously available in English. Earlier studies like those of Jacob Katz can now be fleshed out and evaluated in the light of detailed research, which often suggests entirely new areas of inquiry as well. Attention is drawn, for example, to such categories as the ordinary Jewish physician who ministers to common Christians; the Jewish bandit and his gang; the poverty-stricken Jewish traveler; and the ordinary village Jew. I found the essays of Otto Ulbricht and Miri Rubin particularly interesting, though there is no lack of fascinating material in the other papers as well. Ulbricht discusses the Jewish criminal class in some detail, commenting particularly on Jewish and Jewish-Christian [End Page 128] gang activity, and how Jewish criminals were tied to the “law-abiding” Jewish community. He suggests that Jewish criminality became a source for new anti-Semitic attacks, but he also deals with the question of what changing policies and economic conditions might have fomented the rise in Jewish crime. Ulbricht’s essay is uncomfortable reading, and some of his ideas may require rethinking, but it is undoubtedly research which scholars must read. Miri Rubin offers a lengthy and extremely solid essay on Eucharistic discourse and Host desecration accusations that serves as an admirable companion to R. Po-chia Hsia’s work on ritual murder. As the commentator, Carlo Ginsburg, points out, the Host desecration and ritual murder are in fact closely related accusations that may have a common functional role for Christians still tentative about the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Paul Wexler has offered a bombshell in the form of an essay claiming that the Yiddish language is in fact of Slavic rather than Germanic origin. While his evidence seems weak to me, it will be the linguists who must evaluate and pass judgment on this study. Ultimately the various essays offer no unified voice concerning the significance of Jewish-Christian relations in early modern Germany. While many of the contributors are quick to point out that these studies prove...