Dist. 12, Part 1, Art. 2, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/12/q/bon-sent-IV-d12-p1-a2-q1
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### Article II. *On the action and transmutation of the accidents.*
### Question I. *Whether those species can be converted into nourishment.*

As to the second article, namely concerning the action and change of those accidents, three matters are likewise asked. First, it is asked whether those accidents can be converted into nourishment. Second, whether they can convert other species or natures into the Sacrament. Third, whether they have any operations by nature, or whether they have any by miracle.

First, then, it is asked whether those species or accidents can be converted into nourishment. And that they can, it seems:

1. By the text and the Gloss, on First Corinthians the eleventh, where it is said: *Each one takes beforehand his own supper to eat; and one indeed is hungry, but another is drunk*; and the Gloss expounds this of the rich, who offered bread for consecrating in great abundance and did not give to others: therefore, if bread and wine could not only refresh but even inebriate after consecration: therefore they also pass into nourishment.

2. Likewise, just as the heat of fire is ordered to converting into ash that which is offered as fuel, so natural heat is ordered to converting into flesh and blood; but a species cast into the fire is burned and converted into ash by an exterior heat acting: therefore by parity of reasoning it can be converted into blood by an interior heat acting.

3. Likewise, just as putrefaction is ordered to the generation of a worm, so digestion to the generation of humor and flesh; but those species are converted into worms, if they putrefy, as would be plainly evident by experiment, if anyone wished to test it — and I believe that through negligence it sometimes happens — therefore by parity of reasoning [they are converted] into flesh.

4. Likewise, this is proven by leading to a twofold inconvenience: first, that that Sacrament is to the prejudice of nature, because, as often as transubstantiation occurs, the natural food perishes irrevocably, from which it is in no way converted into anything that is apt to feed. The second inconvenience is that that Sacrament, if it is so, is to the prejudice of faith: for if the accidents do not have the operation of substance, that Sacrament can be detected by sensible experiment, and so the merit of faith [can] be emptied out. But both of these are a very great inconvenience and against that Sacrament, since it was instituted for the merit of faith.

**On the contrary:** 1. "From the same things we are nourished, from which we are," as the Philosopher says; but we are not from accidents, but from substances: therefore since those species are accidents, it is clear that they do not nourish. If you say that they are miraculously converted into substance; on the contrary: if they are converted into substance; since they are many accidents, therefore they ought to be converted into many substances: therefore as many accidents as are there, so many substances ought to be generated. If you say that quantity is converted into substance, which is the foundation of the others; therefore if it is converted into substance, it ceases to be quantity: therefore it ceases to be quantified. But every nourishment increases by nature what is quantified: therefore that nourishment will not be able to increase; that generated nourishment will also lack quantity; which is impossible.

> **Conclusion.** Those species can be converted into nourishment.

**I respond:** It must be said that concerning this there were two opinions.

Some have said that those accidents do not refresh nor are converted into nourishment, because neither can accidents [do so] nor does it befit this Sacrament; yet the species have odor and savor, and odor, although it is an accident, nevertheless by altering the air and the brain inebriates, as is plain that many are inebriated from the odor of wine. And thus they say the word of the Apostle and of the Gloss is to be understood.

But since it manifestly appears in the burning of the species that they are resolved into ashes; and if they did not feed, it would not appear how this Sacrament could lie hidden, rather it would be necessary [for it] to be detected: therefore the more common opinion is that the one receiving the Sacrament is fed and nourished; and that can be sufficiently proven to sense. For it is manifest to the one receiving that by the taking of wine or of that species thirst is extinguished.

1. But to that which is objected to the contrary, that nourishment is substance, it is answered in diverse ways by diverse [authors]. — For some say that by a power above nature the accidents are converted into substance. For he who by an uncreated power is able above nature to sustain those accidents without matter, he gives the power that, the properties ceasing, they be converted not into nothing, but into the substance into which the very substance of bread would be converted, if it were present. And they say that the Sacrament itself requires this, lest

it be detected, and faith lose its merit; lest also the Sacrament do any prejudice to nature. — And if you object that incineration is not from a power above nature, but from a natural [power], and likewise neither inebriation nor combustion, rather they are from natural powers, especially since they come about from an exterior power, and come about nonetheless successively, and terminate also at a less perfect thing; they say that there is there an active potency and a passive potency; the agent potency is natural, but the passive potency in the accidents is above nature as to this, namely that they be converted into substance. For the residue, which comes about before the conversion, and which comes about after the conversion, can wholly be from a natural potency, both agent and patient. And these say that the first of the accidents is converted into substance, not because from quantity there comes to be substance only, but because there comes to be a quantified substance. — And this opinion is sufficiently probable.

The opinion of others is that the one receiving the species is fed, not because the accidents are converted into substance, but because the substance returns, which was there before; so that, as is said in other miracles and apparitions, that they are resolved into the underlying matter and return, as is said of the dove and of the star and the like: so also they say that, just as bread is converted into the body, so that it be the Sacrament; so, the office of the Sacrament being completed, from which it ceases to be the Sacrament, the body of Christ ceases to be there; and therefore, just as the substance of bread is wondrously converted beforehand, so also it miraculously returns.

And this was the position of Innocent in the book which he made *On Ecclesiastical Offices*, where he says in the third book, in the chapter on the breaking: "If therefore it is asked what is eaten by a mouse, when the Sacrament is gnawed, or what is incinerated, when the Sacrament is burned; it must be answered that, just as the substance of bread is miraculously converted into the Lord's body and begins to be under the Sacrament; so it itself in a certain way miraculously returns, when it ceases to be there." — But this manner of speaking I believe probable and secure, especially since it has the authority of so great a man. Let each one nevertheless beware how he understands it, because in this a secret of faith lies hidden. — But according to this position the response to the question is clear.

For it must be conceded that the one receiving this Sacrament is fed and nourished, not because an accident is converted into substance, but [because] something is converted into the substance of the one eating, not, I say, an accident, but a substance. And thus it is not against that [saying] of the Philosopher, that we are nourished from the same things from which we are.

2. To that which is objected, that it is spiritual food; it must be said that this is true, as long as the account of the Sacrament is preserved; for it does not feed carnally insofar as [it is] the Sacrament, but is ordered to spiritual feeding; and when it begins to feed corporally, it ceases to be the Sacrament. — And so it is clear that that ground is good. For since there is there, as long as it is the Sacrament, the true body of Christ; and this does not feed corporally, and the accidents likewise do not feed: therefore the Sacrament is rightly called spiritual food, although, the account and office of the Sacrament receding, it begins to be corporal food, as it had been before.

3. To that which is objected, that it breaks the fast; it must be said that it does not break [it]: both because the Sacrament, while it is taken, is not corporal food, and also by reason of the body of Christ inwardly contained, which is only the food of the mind. And therefore it is not the same with wine, which is received for purification. And therefore that is clear.

4. The following is also clear. For Ambrose speaks of the body of Christ; and this is only the food of the mind, not of the belly.

Each of the aforesaid manners of speaking seems sufficiently probable, nor is it easy to disprove, because the Saints do not speak much about this. Nor is one to rely much on reason here, because each opinion is founded here upon a miracle and a power operating above nature. But who knows whether God does [it] thus or thus, since each manner of speaking is sufficiently reasonable? Nor does it seem altogether improbable that some accident be converted into substance in this Sacrament, since an accident here subsists without a subject; nor does it seem improbable that, just as the substance of bread is converted, so it returns. For since in the conversion of the substance of bread the body of Christ is not generated nor made, but only begins to be under those species, as right faith holds; who would dare to repudiate this as irrational, that, the body of Christ not being corrupted, but ceasing to be under the species, that substance which sustained the accidents return, since those accidents are not without a subject for any other [reason] than for the dignity and presence of the thing contained? — But if you ask whether it is creation, or

generation or another change; it can well be said that, just as conversion is a singular change, so also [is] the reversion. But whatever of these be said, provided it not be asserted obstinately, there is no danger in it; let only this be guarded against, that the understanding of our capacity be wholly taken captive into the obedience of Christ.