Question Two. Whether Change Corruptive of the Accidents is Possible in the Eucharist

421. As for corruptive [or destructive] change I ask whether it is possible for some change to occur corruptive of the accidents in the Eucharist.

422. It seems not:

Because “form is simple and consists of an invariable essence” Book of Six Principles [ch.1 n.1];     therefore etc     .

423. Again, Boethius On the Trinity [ch.2] “A simple form cannot be a subject.”

424. Again, “Matter is that by which a thing can be and not be,” Metaphysics [7.7.1032a20-22].

425. And from all these one gets that at least a simple form cannot be corrupted; but a separate accident in the Eucharist is a simple form in this way;     therefore etc     .

426. Again, if [a separate accident] were corrupted, it would be corrupted either into a substance or into an accident or into nothing. Not into nothing because then a creature would be annihilated; nor into an accident because then a creature would cause an accident without a subject; nor into substance, because a substance cannot come to be from an accident;     therefore etc     .

427. On the contrary:

The accidents can be broken, crushed, and digested (it is plain to sense, and is proved from a Gloss on I Corinthians 12Gloss on I Corinthians 11.24, from Nicholas of Lyra, “Each receives his own part, the body of Christ is eaten in parts, and it remains whole. From which is plain that the whole and uncorrupted body of Christ is eaten; and if there is breaking or dividing into parts there, it seems to be not in the body but in the sacrament.” ⁵⁵); but nutriment is converted into the substance of the thing to be nourished;     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

A. Opinion of Thomas Aquinas and Rejection of it

428. It is said here [Aquinas, Sentences IV d.12 q.1 a.2] that, “subsistent being, which belongs to the dimensions that remain, is in conformity with the form that the substance of the bread had before;” and therefore “the being in which the dimensions subsist is taken away by the same events by which it would be taken away when the substance of bread exists there, and for this reason the accidents that remain are corrupted in the same way as they were capable of being corrupted before. But they were able to be corrupted in two ways before. In one way while the substance of the bread remains. In another way through corruption of the substance that comes about from change of the accidents, for just as generation is the term of alteration, so also is corruption; on the part of quantity too, because since each thing has a determinate quantity, division can be done to such an extent that the species will not remain. Sometimes, therefore, when a change happens in this sacrament, the dimensive being, conform to the preceding substance, still remains; sometimes the aforesaid being is taken away, and then the sacrament ceases to be. Likewise on the part of quantity, because if division is made into parts of as much quantity as suffices for the species of bread and wine, then, although the dimensions are different (because the parts of the continuum are brought into act that were before in potency), yet the being conform to the pre-existing substance remains. But if the quantity of the parts is not sufficient for this, both beings (namely both dimension and the aforesaid being [sc. the being conform to the pre-existing substance]) cease to be; and therefore the body of Christ at that point ceases to be there under the sacrament.”

429. Now as to what thing this corruption, when it is possible, will be made into, it will be touched on in the following question [nn.495-502].

430. Against the principal conclusion, which states that the dimension can be removed in the same way as it would be if a substance existed, because the dimension has being in conformity with the substance of bread - I argue as follows:

This conformity cannot be understood to be in any new positive thing, because no such new positive thing comes to the accident by the fact that it is without a subject; rather, what comes to it conform to the substance is only in the negation ‘does not inhere [in a substance]’; but conformity in this negation does not suffice for the accident’s being taken away with that one form; for the being of substance is taken away for this reason, that it is a passive subject proportioned to a natural agent, namely a subject possessed of a potential part and an actual part, of which the potential part can exist without the actual part - and as the accident possesses conformity only in negation, it does not have any such parts;     therefore etc     .

431. Again, a composite substance necessarily determines for itself some quality of its own, and especially according to him, who posits that the substance is corrupted upon corruption of the quality (which would not be the case if substance did not necessarily determine some quality for itself). But quantity does not necessarily determine any quality for itself; for it as indifferent to the contrary of this quality as it is to the quality, and as indifferent to one degree of it as to another degree; because no quality, and no degree of quality, emerges from the principles of quantity.

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

432. I say, then, to the question that accidents proper to the Eucharist can be corrupted.

433. And this, according to the common opinion [n.150], is sufficiently manifest about the qualities whose change does not require another quantity, because those qualities can be posited as having an abiding common subject, namely quantity.

434. But according to the other opinion [n.151], which posits that the quantity of substance does not differ from substance, nor the quantity of whiteness from whiteness, and consequently that here no quantity is more separate from a subject than the substance of which it is the quantity - according to this opinion it is not equally easy to save the corruption of the quality. For it would then be necessary to posit that any quality is, by equal reason, without a subject, just as also that each of them might change without a subject. And then this position returns to the second difficulty touched on in the preceding question [nn.391-395], how the Eucharist is corrupted by corruption of quantity, and how quantity could be new.

435. However, to the conclusion in general, one could argue as follows: the virtue of an agent is not determined by the fact an accident is without a subject; but if an accident were in a subject, it could be corrupted by a created agent;     therefore etc     .

436. This conclusion does not follow from the reasoning, because the virtue by itself of an equal agent does not suffice, but there is need for it to have a passive object proportioned to it so that it may act as it did before.

437. I reply: as long as the quantity remains, it is easy (according to the common opinion) to preserve a passive object in relation to a natural agent; and this is very possible in regard to contrary qualities, because not every alteration, even between contraries, requires the quantity to change and yet, in such alteration toward quality (with which the species of bread cannot stand), the Eucharist ceases to be; for God has only made institution to conserve the Eucharist (that is, the existence without a subject of the accidents in which is the body of Christ) as long as the qualities remain there that are of a nature to perfect already converted substances. Therefore, the point is simply saved that the Eucharist can cease to be by action of a natural agent. Nor is there any new miracle there, since by the same previous will by which God willed the Eucharist to be in the Church he has also willed that it only remain as long as the qualities would remain that are of a nature to perfect already converted substances.

438. Now as to corruption of the Eucharist by corruption of quantity, statement of what agent it could be done by was made in the preceding question [nn.394-409].

439. And as to whether a new substance must return in conversion of the Eucharist by conversion or change in quantity, statement will be made in the following question [n.490].

II. To the Initial Arguments

440. As to the first of the initial arguments [n.424]: the author is speaking of the six principles he is making determination about; now these principles are relational forms coming from without. Hence the author is not speaking of absolute forms.

441. To the second [n.423] it can be said that Boethius is speaking of a form that is pure form, that is, pure act, as in the example he gives there about God. And this is true of a form that is not of a nature to perfect something potential, because it is not of a nature to receive an accident. And so it is about the divine essence. Unless perhaps an objection is made about angelic essence and about intellection - but this point is discussed in the question about the simplicity of an angel, whether it has matter [as in Bonaventure, Richard of Middleton, Godfrey of Fontaines, Giles of Rome, and others; Scotus Ord.II d.3 p.1 q.4].

442. As to the Philosopher in Metaphysics 7 [n.424], it is plain that he would not concede that anything can be corrupted unless it were to have potency distinct from act as part distinct from part; but he would posit this because he posits an order of simply necessary causes, or because he would posit simply that nothing can be corrupted save that of which a part remains after corruption, just as he posits that nothing can properly be generated save that of which a part existed before in advance of generation. But we do not agree with him in the order of causes nor in this separation of part from whole.

443. To the fourth argument [n.426] I say that quantity is not corrupted into nothing, but into another contrary quality or a quality of a different degree in the same species; for a new quality has the same subject that the prior quality also had, or at least (as far as concerns itself) could have. But if you speak of the corruption of a quantity to which no other prior subject can be assigned - that quantity is not corrupted by the action of a natural agent without a subject either pre-existent (which was spoken of in the preceding question [nn.394-395]) or newly created (which will be spoken of in the following question [nn.469-471]).