Communion Under One Kind. 87
Communion Under One Kind 1. The Church of Rome for above 1000 years after Christ, used both the kinds in communion. This Cassander teaches in his defense of his book entitled de officio pij viri. "The use," says he, "of the blood of our Lord, together with His body in the ministering of the sacrament, is both of the institution of Christ, and observed by the custom of the whole church, for above a thousand years, and unto this day of the eastern churches." And although the use of one kind came up about the year 1200, yet the most learned of those times never taught that it was necessary so to be observed. But this communion under one kind (against all institution of Christ) was decreed, defined, and determined as a public law in the Council of Constance, about the year 1414. Cusanus (epistol. 3, ad Bohemos) seems to impute this change unto the Council of Laterane, anno 1215. But Biel (lect. 84, in Canonem) says plainly that it was a question held in controversy until the decree of the Council of Constance. Micrologus writes thus of the custom of the Church of Rome about the year 1080. "It is not authentical," says he, "that some do dip the Lord's body (into the chalice) and minister it unto the people thus moistened, as the perfect communion; for the Roman Order contradicts this custom, because upon Good Friday it commands us to consecrate wine that is not consecrated with the Lord's Prayer, and putting in of the body of the Lord, that the people may have a full communion. And Pope Julius, writing unto the bishops of Egypt, absolutely prohibits this dipping of the sacrament, and teaches that the bread and the cup are both severally to be received as Christ ordained. Whereupon Saint Gelasius commands them to be excommunicated that, having received the body of the
Lord, do abstain from partaking of the cup also. For he, in the said decree, affirms that such separation of these sacraments cannot be done but with mighty sacrilege (De eccles. obser., c. 19, and de consecrate., d. 2, c. coperimus). In Peter Lombard's time, anno 1150, the sacrament was received under both kinds, "That it might appear," quotes he (l. Sent. 4, d. 11), "that Christ took upon Him our whole nature that He might redeem our whole nature. For the bread had reference unto the body, and the wine unto the soul. Therefore, it is celebrated in both the kinds, to signify unto us Christ's receiving of body and soul, and our freedom of body and soul." Leo (Ser. 4, de
Quadrag.) says that it is a sacrilegious hypocrisy of the Manichees "to receive the body and reject the blood." Rhemigius, bishop of Rheims, that lived about the year 470, made these verses to be engraven upon the chalice, as Hincmar testifies in his life: Hauriat hinc, etc., in English thus:
Hence let the people in that sacred blood, Which Christ did bleed, drink out their souls' best good.
These vows, Rhemigius, priest, pays his Lord.
And the said Hincmar records that the same chalice was in his time afterward given unto the Normans for the redeeming of the Christian captives. "The cup," says Haimo (in 1 Cor. 10), "is called communion, as it were a participation, because all do communicate thereof." "The Lord," says Rabanus Maurus (de Instit. Cler., lib. 1, ca. 32), "first consecrated the sacrament of His body and blood, with benediction and thanksgiving, and delivered it unto His apostles, which they in imitation of Him so did, and taught their followers to do the like, which now the whole Church over all the world generally observes."
"Only the benediction of the bishop, or priest," says Amalarius (lib. 1, de Offic. in prafat.), "is sufficient to consecrate the bread and wine wherewith the people's souls are to be fed unto salvation, as the
apostles did in the primitive church." And cap. 24: "Christ took the bread into His holy and reverend hands,, and in like manner the cup, as Cyprian says to Caecilius, we find not ourselves keepers of the precept, unless we do that same that the Lord did, and mingling the cup in like manner, we depart not from the divine commandment."
Now though Cyprian do conclude his saying about the mixing of wine and water, yet we may understand that this is to be fulfilled of the whole institution of the Lord, wherein there is His command and the apostles' observation. And of like effect unto this is that of Walfrid, in his book de utriusque specie communione, the 22nd chapter.
"Whatsoever he be," says Anselm, super 1 Cor. 11, "rich, mean, or poor, clergyman or layman, that shall receive this body, and drink this blood of Christ unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. He eats and drinks it unworthily, that celebrate this mystery in any other order than Christ observed it Himself." "The prescription of the form," says the author de caena in Bern., "is in bread and wine, and the kinds of bread and wine are both set forth to show that there is full and perfect refreshing in receiving the body and blood of Christ." "By all these proofs," says Albertus Magnus, de offic. Missae, ca. 5, "it is gathered, that Christ delivered His body under the one form of bread, and His blood under the other form of wine, and taught it to be thus celebrated. And seeing Christ's actions are our instructions, He delivered these two most certainly for us to observe, and therefore we give the body under one kind, and the blood under another." "This sacrament," says Thomas, in 1 Cor. 11, lect. 5, "is given under a double kind for three respects. First, for the perfection thereof, because it being a spiritual refreshing, must have a spiritual meat, and a spiritual drink. For the corporeal feeding is not made without meat and drink. Second, for the signification thereof. For it is a memorial of that passion wherein Christ's blood was separate and drawn from His body, and therefore herein the