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The medieval English theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384) exhibited a deep dissatisfaction with prevailing interpretations of Christ's words: “Hoc est corpus meum”—the words of institution required to confect the sacrament in the Mass. Convinced that the misconstrual of this sacred proposition had facilitated a catastrophic distortion of the sacrament, principally manifested in the scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation, Wyclif searched for an alternative interpretation that permitted the consecrated bread to retain its own proper substance while still in some manner being converted into the body of Christ. The means by which the eucharistic formula functioned would thus be cemented to Wyclif's insistence upon the consecrated bread's substantial remanence. His reasons for rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation were manifold—and central points will be addressed below—but further attention is owed to the principles that governed his interpretation of the sacramental formula and the context in which he articulated his response. All the metaphysics will fall into place, Wyclif believed, if one properly grasps how this proposition functions. As it was, Wyclif's reading of the proposition and the resulting implications for his understanding of Christ's eucharistic presence resonated beyond his native England. The reception of Wyclif's position in Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century and the debates unfolding there over the words of institution merit special consideration. For one finds that the interpretations developed both by Wyclif and by the Prague master Jakoubek of Stříbro resulted in new and effective means of conceptualizing eucharistic conversion, thereby expanding the ways in which one can affirm Christ's presence in the consecrated host and the salvific effects of that presence for faithful communicants.
I. Wyclif's Objections to Transubstantiation
The late medieval schools, armed with highly sophisticated methodologies, attempted to render comprehensible how it is that Christ's crucified and risen body comes to be present on the altar during every Catholic Mass. The consensus position, presented within the framework of Aristotelian categories, posited a wholesale change on the level of substance that left the accidents in place. In its various iterations, therefore, the doctrine of transubstantiation held that upon consecration the substance of bread is converted into the substance of Christ's body. All that remains of the bread are its outward appearances, or accidents, beneath which exists the body of Christ;...