Berengar of Tours - Reassertion in France

Reassertion in France

Berengar returned to France full of remorse for this desertion of his faith and of bitterness against the pope and his opponents; his friends were growing fewer—Geoffrey was dead and his successor hostile. Eusebius Bruno was gradually withdrawing from him. Rome, however, was disposed to give him a chance; Pope Alexander II wrote him an encouraging letter, at the same time warning him to give no further offence.

He was still firm is his convictions, and about 1069 he published a treatise in which he gave vent to his resentment against Pope Nicholas II and his antagonists in the Roman council. Lanfranc answered it, and Berengar rejoined. Bishop Hugo of Langres also wrote a treatise De corpore et sanguine Christi against Berengar. Even the eponymous Berengar, Bishop of Venosa, was drawn into the quarrel and wrote against him at Rome in the years of his second summons there.

But the feeling against him in France was growing so hostile that it almost came to open violence at the Synod of Poitiers in 1076. Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII, tried yet to save him; he summoned him once more to Rome (1078), and undertook to silence his enemies by getting him to assent to a vague formula, something like the one which he had signed at Tours. But Berengar's enemies were not satisfied, and three months later at another synod they forced on him a formula which could mean nothing but what was later called transubstantiation, except by utterly indefensible sophistry. He was indiscreet enough to claim the sympathy of Gregory VII, who commanded him to acknowledge his errors and to pursue them no further. Berengar's courage failed him; he confessed that he had erred, and was sent home with a protecting letter from the pope, but with rage in his heart.

Once back in France, he recovered his boldness and published his own account of the proceedings in Rome, retracting his recantation. The consequence was another trial before a synod at Bordeaux (1080), and another forced submission.

After this he kept silence, retiring to the island of Saint-Cosme near Tours to live in ascetic solitude. It was there that he died, his convictions unchanged; he trusted in the mercy of God under what he considered the unjust persecutions to which he had been subjected.