CONSUBSTANTIATION: A technical term denoting the Lutheran view of the elements of the Lord's Supper, in contradistinction from the Roman Catholic view-- transubstantiation. According to the Roman doctrine, the bread and the wine are by the consecration transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ: while, according to the Lutheran doctrine, the bread and wine remain bread and wine; though, after the consecration, the real flesh and blood of Christ coexist in and with the natural elements, just as a heated iron bar still remains an iron bar, though a new element, heat, has come to coexist in and with it-- an illustration which Luther himself used in his letter to Henry VIII. Lutheran theologians repudiate the popular term "consubstantiation," in the sense of a permanent connection of the elements with the body and blood of Christ, confining this connection to the act of the communion. See TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
CONTARINI, can"ta-ri'ni, GASPARO: Italian
cardinal; b. at Venice Oct. 16, 1483, d. at Bologne
Aug. 24, 1542. After a thorough scientific and
philosophical training, he began his career in the
service of his native city. In 1521 he was the
Republic's ambassador to Charles V. He
accompanied Charles to Spain, later, after the sack of
Rome, he assisted in reconciling the emperor and
Clement VII., also the emperor and the Republic of
Bologna. His accomplishments, but still more his
mild resoluteness and blameless character, made
him everywhere respected. One of the fruits of his
diplomatic activity is his De magistratibus et
republica Venetorum. In 1535 Paul III. unexpectedly
made the secular diplomat a cardinal in order to
bind an able man of evangelical disposition to the
Roman interests. Contarini accepted, but in his
new position did not exhibit his former
independence. The disposition which Ranke (Popes, i.
118) calls "the collected product of all his higher
faculties" governed his action also in the new field.
At first everything seemed to work well. In 1536
Paul III. appointed a commission to devise ways
for a reformation. The evangelical movement had
made such progress in Italy that something had to
be done, and it seemed best that the most
influential be the agents. The decision was a bold one;
Paul III., however, received favorably Contarini's
Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, but it remained
a dead letter, and his successor Paul IV., once a
member on the commission, in 1539 put it on the
Index, a deed which still embarrasses Catholic
historians. What Contarini had to do with it is
shown by his letters to the pope in which he
complained of the schism in the church, of simony and
flattery in the papal court, but above all of papal
tyranny. But he came a century too late.
Contarini in a letter to his friend Cardinal Pole [dated
Nov. 11, 1538] says that his hopes had been wakened
anew by the pope's attitude. He and his friends
thought that all would have been done when the
abuses in churchly life had been put away. This
was the judgment of a diplomat of noble and
virtuous nature, reared on the best fruits of antiquity
and refined through the Gospel, urged on by a
desire for, peace and unfettered by dogmatic
formulas. But he was soon to see the other side. In
the year 1541 he was papal delegate at the diet and
religious debate at Ratisbon. There everything
was unfavorable; the Catholic states were bitter,
the Evangelicals were distant. Contarini's
instructions though apparently free were full of papal
reservations. But the papal party had gladly sent
him, thinking that through him a union in doctrine
could be brought about, while the interest of Rome
could be attended to later. Though the princes
stood aloof, the theologians and the emperor were
for peace, so the main articles were put forth in a
formula, Evangelical in thought and Catholic in
expression. The papal legate had revised the
Catholic proposal and assented to the formula
agreed upon. All gave their approval, even Eck,
though he later regretted it. This did little good,
for the Protestants could see in it only Roman
cunning; at home the cardinal fared still worse. His
own position is shown in a treatise on justification,
composed at Ratisbon, which in essential points is
Evangelical, differing only in the omission of the
negative side and in being interwoven with the
teaching of Aquinas. Meanwhile the papal policy