Transubstantiation: Medieval Invention?

Many fundamentalists claim that the celebration of the Lord's Supper was always meant to be symbolic until that Catholic guy Thomas Aquinas (d.1274 AD) "invented" transubstantiation.  Not only did he not invent transubstantiation, but a full 200 years before Saint Thomas was born the Church was clearly re-iterating the concept of the bread and wine truly substantially being changed into the body and blood of Christ.  This of course is not to mention that for a thousand years before this when multiple saints, popes and Church fathers stated the doctrine of transubstantiation, using different terminology. The Eucharist has never been understood as a symbolic meal. It has always been understood by all of Christendom to be the actual body and blood of Christ, except for one heretic priest, Berengarius of Tours, who was promptly corrected by Pope Gregory the VII.

In 1078, Pope Gregory the VII wrote the Eucharistic Credo to help the faithful understand what the Church has believed since the Lord gave His body to his disciples at the Last Supper, the first Eucharist. Fr. Berengarius was asked to affirm this credo, which he did do and recanted his heretical statements regarding the Eucharist.

"I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration, there is present the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin and offered up for the salvation of the world, hung on the cross and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and that there is present the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side. They are present not only by means of a sign and of the efficacy of the Sacrament, but also in the very reality and truth of their nature and substance."

Could you imagine if we could have this credo placed in every bulletin in every parish across the country? It would perhaps stir up a Eucharistic revival!