The New International Encyclopædia/Berengarius of Tours

BER′ENGA′RIUS OF TOURS, to͞or (c.1000–1088). A French scholastic theologian. He was born at Tours, in France. His master, Fulbert de Chartres, is reported to have prophesied on his death-bed that Berengarius would prove a dangerous man. He became a canon of Tours, and about 1040 preceptor of the school of St. Martin, in Tours, and archdeacon of Angers. Here he continued to deliver his metaphysico-theological prelections, and drew upon himself the charge of heresy, in reference to the doctrine of transubstantiation. He held the doctrine of Scotus Erigena, that the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist remained bread and wine, and that the faith of the believer who recognized their symbolic meaning transformed them only subjectively into the body and blood of Christ. This interpretation was condemned by Pope Leo IX. (1049–50), and also by King Henry I. of France. In 1054 he retracted his opinion before the Council of Tours; but what Berengarius meant by ‘retraction’ it is not easy to see; for he immediately returned to his conviction, and recommenced the advocacy of it. For this he was cited to appear at Rome, where he repeatedly abjured his ‘error,’ but never seems to have really abandoned it. Hildebrand, who was then Pope, treated him with great moderation; and at last, when he discovered how hopeless it was to bind down Berengarius by abjurations or declarations, he conceived it best to let him alone. Harassed and weakened by the attacks of the orthodox party, headed by Lanfrane of Canterbury, Berengarius finally retired to the Isle of St. Cosmos, near Tours, in 1080, where he spent the last years of his life in devotional exercises. He died January 6, 1088. The greater number of his works are lost. Such as are extant have been collected and published by A. F. and F. T. Vischer (Berlin, 1834). Chief is his De Sacra Cana. Also in Migne, Pat. Lat. CLXXVIII. Cf. H. Sudendorf, Berengarius Turonensis oder eine Sammlung ihn betreffender Briefe (Berlin, 1850).