B. Opinion of Giles of Rome and its Rejection

306. It is said in another way [Giles of Rome] that the bread is not annihilated because, after its conversion into the body, it remains in the body in potency; for the body of Christ and the bread have a common subject (as the matter), and therefore the substance of the bread can return through conversion of the body into it, and this conversion would not be creation. Therefore, not even this conversion is annihilation, and this because of the common subject in whose potency are both terms.

307. On the contrary: the bread could not, on the basis of this statement, be annihilated while any other body remains; because if any other body remains (at least a corruptible one), matter of the same idea would remain, in whose potency the bread consequently remains, just as now it is said [by Giles] to remain in the matter of Christ’s body. Therefore, the bread could not be annihilated unless the whole of bodily substance were annihilated.The point of this argument seems to be that Giles has given a sense to the idea of annihilation such that nothing can ever be annihilated unless everything, or everything bodily, is annihilated. But this view is absurd, for something can surely be annihilated without everything else being annihilated as well. So, annihilation cannot be what Giles says it is, and consequently he has not given an adequate reason for saying that the bread is not annihilated in its conversion into Christ’s body. The same should be said, mutatis mutandis, about the point of the next two arguments [nn.308-309]. ³⁰

308. Again, if the bread were annihilated and the body of Christ were present here, the bread would remain in altogether the same way in the potency of the matter of Christ’s body according as it now is; therefore, it should not, because of what it now is in the potency of the matter of Christ’s body, be said to be not annihilated.

309. Again, something that is common to both terms is not necessary save for transmutation properly speaking; because, if one excludes the subject and takes precisely the terms of a transmutation, opposition rather is required in them than something the same that is common. Indeed, something the same that is common to certain things prevents these things from being the per se terms of a transmutation. Therefore, since in this transition there is not properly a change, nor a subject that remains, but only the two terms of the transition, nothing common will per se give or take away from this transition any of its idea; therefore, if this transition (with everything common removed) were annihilation, it will also be annihilation now [sc. on Giles’ theory].