Un Erasmo medievale e cattolico. L’edizione di Algero di Liegi nel 1530 e l’interpretazione mistica della transustanziazione eucaristica

On March 15, 1530, Erasmus published from his exile in Freiburg im Breisgau De sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Domini, his edition of the treatise by the Benedictine Alger of Liège (d. 1131/2). Erasmus’ preface is his philological and patristic attempt to reposition himself on the crucial matter of the Eucharistic doctrine, in the context of his progressive and increasingly harsh distancing from his erstwhile humanistic associates and friends from Basel, who had turned to the Swiss Reformation. The edition of De sacramento corporis et sanguinis Domini (ca. 1110-5) allows Erasmus to appropriate a moderate, orthodox, and Patristic intervention in the context of the medieval eucharistic controversy, which was particularly violent since the condemnation of Berengarius (d. 1088). Therefore, behind the mask of Alger, Erasmus was fighting the Swiss Reformers, who were styling themselves as modern followers of Berengarius and his symbolic Eucharistic theology. Moreover, through the edition of Alger, Erasmus can show himself as a fervent advocate of the Eucharistic real presence, in an alternative to the more recent and subtle scholastic speculation on the subject, which Erasmus had always opposed as too materialistic. The essay analyzes the theological-political problem posed by the Eucharist, illuminating Erasmus’ late position as a synthesis between ecclesial concord and symbolic-mystical rationalism.