(ca. 790–865). Born near Soissons, Paschasius Radbertus was raised in a women’s monastery.there by Theodrada, sister of Adalard and Wala of Corbie and cousin of Charlemagne. He entered the monastery of Corbie ca. 820, assisted in the founding of Corvey in Saxony in 822, and was ordained deacon. He was elected abbot of Corbie in 844. An active church leader, Radbertus attended the councils of Paris (847) and Quierzy (849), where he signed the condemnation of Gottschalk. Following a dispute in the abbey of Corbie, he resigned the abbacy and moved to Saint-Riquier (Centula) in 851 but returned to Corbie before his death. Paschasius Radbertus wrote the vitae of Adalard and Wala and local saints; commentaries on Psalm 44, Lamentations, and the Gospel of Matthew; and important treatises on theology and the Virgin Mary. He is most famous today for De corpore et sanguine Domini, the first Latin treatise on eucharistic theology. The work was written (831) for the Saxon novices of Corvey and revised (844) for Charles the Bald. The second edition is in direct response to his fellow monk, Ratramnus, as is the defense of Mary’s perpetual virginity in De partu Virginis.
Radbertus’s eucharistic theology, which strictly identifies the historical body of Christ with the sacrament of the altar, was influential in the later definition of Transubstantiation at the Council of Trent. However, the most popular work of Paschasius Radbertus in medieval France was Cogitis me, a letter on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary written under the name of Jerome. In other sermons on the Assumption and in his life of the Virgin Mary, Radbertus shows the importance of the influence of apocryphal literature, such as the Protevangelium of James, on the development of medieval Christian thought.
Bonano, S. “The Divine Maternity and Eucharistic Body in the Doctrine of Paschasius Radbertus.” Ephemerides mariologicae 1(1951):379–94.
Maus, Cyrin. A Phenomenology of Revelation: Paschasius Radbert’s Way of Interpreting Scripture. Dayton: St. Leonard College, 1970.
Peltier, Henri. Paschase Radbert, abbé de Corbie: contribution a l’étude de la vie monastique et de la pensée chrétienne aux temps carolingiens. Amiens: Duthoit, 1938.
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