The Berengarians were a Proto-Protestant religious sect who adhered to the views of Berengar of Tours, Archdeacon of

Angers Angers (, , ;) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the Prefectures of France, prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Duchy of Anjou, Anjou until the French Revolution. The i ...

, and opposed several key Roman Catholic doctrines in the mid-eleventh century. They opposed the emerging doctrine of Transubstantiation, the practice of infant baptism, and private sacramental confession. Additionally, they upheld the belief that Scripture, rather than the Church, held supreme authority for

Christians A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words '' Christ'' and ''C ...

. The Berengarian sect, considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, is said to have numbered 800,000 according to the historian Belamine.Alien Baptism and The Baptist
/ref>

Classification as heresy

The

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

held considerable power in Western Europe during the High and

Late Middle Ages The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the Periodization, period of History of Europe, European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period ( ...

. Those clergy and theologians whom it judged guilty of

heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Heresy in Christian ...

could be excommunicated and exiled or sentenced to death unless they formally recanted their errors. A text by Frankish monk Ratramnus of Corbie misattributed to John Scotus Eriugena, a philosopher-theologian and intellectual heir of Maximus the Confessor in the 9th-Century, had maintained that there was no physical transformation of the

Eucharist The Eucharist ( ; from , ), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christianity, Christian Rite (Christianity), rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an Ordinance (Christianity), ordinance in ...

. Later in 1047, Berengar of Tours reignited the debate in the name of Eriugena. During the next 30 years, Berengar was asked to recant his heresy concerning what would be declared the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation no less than five times including a short spell in prison. He later retired into solitude and made no further pronouncements on the matter.

Followers of the sect

It is known that an early supporter of Berengar was Bishop Eusebius of Angers. It is also well documented that Geoffrey II, Count of Anjou, was a follower of Berengarian beliefs and played a key role in securing Berengar's release from imprisonment.The historian Belamine said that the supporters numbered 800,000 by 1160. His followers were divided on the head of the

; though they all agreed that the bread and wine were not essentially changed, some allowed it to be changed in effect, though under an

impanation Impanation (Latin: ''impanatio'', "embodied in bread") is a high medieval theory of the real presence of the body of Jesus Christ in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist that does not imply a change in the substance of either the bread or the ...

, which was the opinion of Berenger himself. Others denied any change at all, and resolved all into figure. Yet others allowed a change in part, and others an entire change, with the restriction that to those who presented themselves unworthily, it was changed back again. The Italian reformer Gundolfo was said to be an early Berengarian.

Influence on the reformers

As Berengar left no written tracts it is not completely certain how much influence the Berengarians had on the Protestant Reformation. While John Calvin rejected the theory of transubstantiation in favor of "pneumatic presence," earlier Martin Luther criticized the making of this teaching into a dogma as well as some of its metaphysical underpinnings and implications.

References

* {{Proto-Protestantism Former Christian denominations