ll of debate. If learned men
ignored the disputes the unlearned would not. Fanatical monks on the one
side and fanatical Albigenses on the other, decried or over-cried the
greatest mysteries of the faith, and brawled over the hidden manna.
Hugh's old Witham monk Ainard had once preached a crusade against the
blasphemers of the Sacraments, and is mentioned with honour for this
very thing by Hugh's intimate and biographer. The saint's conspicuous
devotion at the Mass, the care with which he celebrated and received, of
themselves would point to a peculiarly strong belief in the Invisible
Presence. Christians are, and have always been, lineally bound to
believe in the supreme necessity of the Lord's Marriage Supper to the
soul's health and obedience. They are bound to use the old language,
"This is My Body." In earlier days, when Church thinkers were all
Platonists, or at least Realists, the verity of the Sacrament was the
Idea behind it. The concrete veils of that Idea were hallowed only by
their use, association, and impact. But when after the crusades
Aristotle was no longer the Bishop of Arians, but now the supreme
philosopher, the language hitherto natural to piety had either to be
changed or infused by violence with new senses, or both. The latter half
of the twelfth century saw this unhappy deadlock between history and
reason, and made strenuous efforts to compose the strife. So far as we
may judge, upon a difficult question, where little must be written and
much would be required to express an exact opinion, Hugh seems to have
held that by mystic sanctification the host is turned into Christ's
Body; that this conversion is not a sudden but a gradual one, until the
Son offers Himself anew, and hence the Sacrifice may be said to be
repeated. The story which illustrates this position best is that of the
young clerk who came to him at Buckden. The bishop had just been
dedicating a large and beautiful chalice and upbraiding the
heavily-endowed dignitaries for doing nothing at all for the poorly
served churches from which they drew their stipends. Then he said Mass,
and the clerk saw Christ in his hands, first as a little child at the
Oblation, when "the custom is to raise the host aloft and bless it"; and
again when it is "raised to be broken and consumed in three pieces," "as
the Son of the Highest offering Himself to the Father for man's
salvation." The clerk tells him of the double vision--the voucher of a
message sent