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There were many from the 1300’s onward who rejected the mass.

Even before then there was NOT consensus on what "real presence" meant. From:

THE EUCHARIST Its Historical Development and Roman Catholic Teaching

The Roman Catholic position on the Eucharist was first given dogmatic expression at the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 A.D. when the Church formally set forth the teaching of transubstantiation as the official teaching of the Church. This was further affirmed by the Council of Trent which also dogmatically asserted the nature of the Lord’s Supper as being that of a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. So there are two primary elements of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist that are of supreme importance—transubstantiation, which guarantees the real presence of Christ and the mass, in which Christ, thus present bodily, is re-offered to God as a propitiatory sacrifice. And the eucharist as taught and practiced by Rome is, according to Rome, necessary for salvation. The following are the authoritative statements from the Council of Trent:

Canon II. If anyone saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the wine into the blood – the species only of the bread and wine remaining – which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation: let him be anathema.

Canon III. If any one saith, that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of thanksgiving; or, that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits him only who receives; and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pains, satisfactions, and other necessities: let him be anathema (The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford: Tan, 1941, 1978), p. 149).

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that when the priest utters the words of consecration the elements of the eucharist are changed into the literal body and blood of Christ. He is then offered to God on the altar as a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. And the Church is quite explicit that this is a real sacrifice for the Council of Trent states that ‘in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross…’ This is the Church’s teaching but it is quite evident that just as with the case of the other major doctrines of the Roman Church there is no such thing as a unanimous consent of the Fathers on the nature of the eucharist. Transubstantiation is a particular way of expressing belief in the Real Presence and the mass a particular way of expressing the nature of the eucharist as a sacrifice but these are not the only views that have been expressed in a consistent and dominant way in the history of the Church. It is true that from the very beginning the Fathers generally express their belief in the Real Presence in the eucharist in that they identify the elements with the body and blood of Christ. But this does not mean that they unanimously teach the concept of transubstantiation. They also refer to the eucharist as a sacrifice, but as with transubstantiation, this does not mean that their views are the same as those of the Council of Trent.

The fact is, there is much difference of opinion among the Fathers on the nature of the Real Presence and on the nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The early Fathers were far from unanimous in their teaching on the Lord’s Supper. The dogmatic statements of the 4th Lateran Council and the Council of Trent took many centuries and much conflict before they were finally formulated in an authoritative way by the Roman Catholic Church. The impression given by some Catholic writers that the statements of the Council of Trent have been taught and believed by the Church from the very beginning with very little contradictory opinion cannot be supported by the facts of history. An objective analysis will reveal is that the views of the Fathers are very consistent with the differing views represented by the Roman Catholic Church and those of the Protestant Reformers. Some of the Fathers taught that the elements are symbols of the body and blood of Christ and that his presence is spiritual, while others maintained that the elements are changed into Christ’s body and blood and that his presence is physical. The writings of the Fathers of the first four centuries reveal this diversity of opinion.

The following statements by Church historians demonstrate that the Church’s views of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper did not find unanimous consent among the fathers and was a process of long historical development. Many of the most prestigious of the Fathers and at least one pope deny the teachings of the Council of Trent:

The doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a subject of theological controversy and ecclesiastical action until the time of Paschius Radbert, in the ninth century … Hence the doctrine of the ancient church on this point lacks the clearness and definiteness which the Nicene dogme of the Trinity, the Chalcedonian Christology, and the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology acquired from the controversies preceding them. In the doctrine of baptism also we have a much better right to speak of a consensus patrum, than in the doctrine of the holy Supper (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1910), Volume 3, p. 492).

We now want to trace the development of the eucharistic teaching of the Roman Catholic Church through the writings of the Church Fathers on their views of the nature of the Real Presence and the sacrifice.

The Real Presence

All of the Fathers teach some concept of the Real Presence in that they identify the elements with the body and blood of Christ. But, as we have pointed out, there is conflicting opinion over the exact nature of the Real Presence. Some teach that the elements are symbols of the body and blood of Christ and that his presence is spiritual, while others teach that the elements are changed into Christ’s body and blood and that his presence is physical. These two views were the subject of two major controversies in the 9th and 11th centuries. But before dealing with these we want to trace the development of the doctrine through different writings and Fathers up to the time of Augustine and then look in detail at Augustine’s teaching. One cannot have a proper understanding of the controversies of the 9th and 11th centuries without a clear understanding of Augustine for his teachings had a major influence on those involved in both controversies and ultimately on those involved in the Reformation. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria span the first two centuries of the particular views of the Church during these centuries.

The Didache presents the eucharistic elements as bread and wine but refers to them as spiritual food and drink. There is no indication that the Didache views the elements as being transformed in any way. Ignatius, on the other hand, speaks in very realistic terms of the nature of the eucharist as the body and blood of Jesus and as that which communicates eternal life. Bethune-Baker gives the following statements:

Justin Martyr refers to the Eucharistic elements as being more than common bread and wine in that when they are consecrated they become the body and blood of Jesus. And yet, in Trypho 70, he speaks of the elements as bread and wine which were inaugurated by Christ as a memorial and remembrance of his body and blood:

It is quite evident that this prophecy also alludes to the bread which our Christ gave us to offer in remembrance of the Body which He assumed for the sake of those who believe in Him, for whom He also suffered, and also to the cup which He taught us to offer in the Eucharist, in commemoration of His blood (Thomas B. Falls, The Fathers of the Church, Saint Justin Martyr (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1948), Dialogue with Trypho 70, p. 262).

So while he speaks of a change in the elements, it seems that the elements still remain, in essence, bread and wine. Like Justin, Irenaeus clearly believes the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus at consecration, but he also states that the elements are composed of two realities, one an earthly and one a heavenly or a spiritual. And therefore he infers that the change he envisages is spiritual and that the presence of Christ is therefore spiritual. This thought is further amplified by Bethune-Baker:

Following Irenaeus we find that Tertullian speaks of the eucharist as being identified with the body and blood of Jesus and yet he expresses the concept of a sacramental though real presence. Tertullian, for example, when referring to the eucharistic elements uses terms such as figure, symbol and represent to express his concept of the eucharist. The following are his remarks:

For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by interpretation of the mystery…. and that the taste of the wine was different from that which He consecrated in memory of His blood (Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), Volume II, Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.40, 3.19).

Tertullian over and over again speaks of the bread and wine as being symbols or figures which represent the body and blood of Christ. He very specifically states that these are not the literal body and blood of the Lord. When Christ said ‘This is my body’, Tertullian says Jesus spoke figuratively and that He consecrated the wine in memory of his blood.

There are some historians who suggest that the ancient usage of the words ‘figure’ and ‘represent’ were often used differently from present day usage to describe the relation between the thing symbolized and the symbol. The suggestion is that the symbols in some mysterious way became what they symbolized. And the conclusion we are to draw is that a writer such as Tertullian meant more in his usage of the words ‘figure’ and ‘represent’ than the words would normally convey. They say, for example, says that the verb represent (representare) which Tertullian employs when speaking of the consecrated bread means ‘to make present’. But this argument simply does not hold for Tertullian uses the word in a number of places in which it means a symbolical representation without some mysterious meaning being attached. In the above mentioned quotes, for example, Tertullian says, ‘He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red…’ (Against Marcion 4.40).

When Tertullian speaks of the bread and wine as being figures and symbols which represent Christ’s body and blood, that is exactly what he means. In no way does he teach that there is some mysterious conversion of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. And this fact is placed beyond all doubt by the interpretation Tertullian gives of the Lord’s discourse in John 6 which he says is to be understood spiritually and figuratively rather than physically and literally. The following are his comments:

He says, it is true, that ‘the flesh profiteth nothing;’ but, then, as in the former case, the meaning must be regulated by the subject which is spoken of. Now, because they thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat His flesh, He, with the view to ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth;’ and then added, ‘The flesh profiteth nothing,’ – meaning, of course, to the giving of life. He also goes on to explain what He would have us to understand by spirit: ‘The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.’ In a like sense He had previously said: ‘He that heareth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life.’ Constituting, therefore, His word as the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, He likewise called His flesh by the same appelation; because, too, the Word had become flesh, we ought therefore to desire Him in order that we may have life, and to devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith. Now, just before (the passage in hand), He had declared His flesh to be ‘the bread which cometh down from heaven,’ impressing on (His hearers) constantly under the figure of necessary food the memory of their forefathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of Egypt to their divine calling. Then, turning His subject to their reflections, because He perceived that they were going to be scattered from Him, He says: ‘The flesh profiteth nothing’ (Ibid., On the Resurrection of the Flesh Chap. 37).

As with Justin and Irenaeus, Tertullian expresses the view that the eucharist is not common bread and wine but that there is to be a distinction maintained between the physical reality of bread and wine and the reality of the body and blood of Christ which the bread and wine represent. Clement of Alexandria (150-211/216 A.D.) also called the bread and wine symbols of the body and blood of Christ, and taught that the communicant received not the physical but the spiritual life of Christ.

The flesh figuratively represents to us the Holy Spirit; for the flesh was created by Him. The blood points out to us the Word, for as rich blood the Word has been infused into life; and the union of both is the Lord, the food of the babes – the Lord who is Spirit and Word. The food – that is, the Lord Jesus – that is, the Word of God, the Spirit made flesh, the heavenly flesh sanctified.

Further, the Word declares Himself to be the bread of heaven. ‘For Moses,’ He says, ‘gave you not that bread from heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He that cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world. And the bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’ Here is to be noted the mystery of the bread, inasmuch as He speaks of it as flesh … But since He said, ‘And the bread which I will give is My flesh,’ and since flesh is moistened with blood, and blood is figuratively termed wine…Thus in many ways the Word is figuratively described, as meat, and flesh, and food, and bread, and blood, and milk. The Lord is all these, to give enjoyment to us who have believed on Him. Let no one then think it strange, when we say that the Lord’s blood is fiauratively represented as milk. For is it not figuratively represented as wine? (‘Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1956), Volume II, Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, Book I, Chapter VI, pp. 219-222).

Origen (185-253/254 A.D.), likewise, speaks in distinctively spiritual and allegorical terms when referring to the eucharist.

So also the bread is the word of Christ made of that corn of wheat which falling into the ground yields much fruit. For not that visible bread which He held in His hands did God the Word call His body, but the word in the mystery of which that bread was to be broken. Nor did He call that visible drink His blood, but the word in the mystery of which that drink was to be poured out. For what else can the body of God the Word, or His blood, be but the word which nourishes and the word which gladdens the heart? Why then did He not say, This is the bread of the new covenant, as He said, ‘This is the blood of the new covenant’? Because the bread is the word of righteousness, by eating which souls are nourished, while the drink is the word of the knowledge of Christ according to the mystery of His birth and passion (Origen,Commentary on Matthew, Sermon 85. Taken from Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London: Longman’s, Green, 1909), Volume I, pp. 27-28).

Thus Clement and Origen express views which are consistent with Tertullian. Philip Schaff gives these thoughts regarding the teachings of Clement and Origen:

The writings of Cyprian also identify the elements with the body and blood of Christ but, like Tertullian, he sees the elements as representative of spiritual realities. He specifically states that water alone cannot represent the blood of Christ, implying that water mixed with wine does represent his blood (Ep. 63.7). It is not a literal reality but representative of it. And he argues that when Christ called the bread and wine his body and blood he was using such language to figuratively represent the Church (Ep. 69.4). He says that cup contains both water and wine which are representative of two different realities. He says that just as water represents peoples in Scripture, so the wine represents the blood of Christ (Ep. 63.9-10) and the eucharist therefore represents the union between Christ and his Church. He says that just as in the Mystery of the eucharist the people of God are shown to be united, so in the wine the blood of Christ is also shown. He uses the same word to describe both realities demonstrating that the elements are a figurative representation of spiritual realities (Ep. 63.10). It is clear, therefore, that Cyprian did not view the elements as being literally changed into the body and blood of Christ anymore than he believed that the water was changed into literal people. And yet, he does speak of drinking the blood of Christ. For Cyprian the eucharist is a ‘spiritual’ sacrament in which the elements are not literally changed but one does partake spiritually of the body and blood of Christ.

As time goes on we find two schools of thought about the eucharist developing side by side with one another. On the one hand one finds clearer and clearer descriptions of the eucharist as consisting of a transformation of the elements into the literal body and blood of Christ. The literalist view is clearly represented in the writings of such fathers as Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom and Ambrose. Cyril of Jerusalem is representative:

Since then He Himself has declared and said of the Bread, This is My body, who shall dare doubt any longer? And since He has affirmed and said, This is My blood, who shall ever hesitate, saying, that this is not His blood? He once turned water into wine, in Cana of Galilee, at His own will, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood? … Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual Hymns, we call upon the merciful God to send fo His Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him; that He may make the bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ for whatsoever the Holy Ghost has touched, is sanctified and changed (A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, The Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem, XXIL1-2, XXIII.7 (Oxford: Parker, 1842), pp. 270, 275).

Historians point out that these men use such terms as transformed, transelemented, converted, changed and transmuted when referring to the consecrated elements. And they speak in very literal and realistic terms of the reality of the elements becoming Christ himself. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, teaches that the eucharist is a perpetuation of the incarnation and Bethune-Baker mentions the following views held by Chrysostom:

The bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ, ‘the body pierced with nails’. We bury our teeth in his flesh; by his most awful blood our tongue is reddened … Of the consecration he says, ‘Christ is present, and he who arranged the first table, even arranges this present one. For it is not man who makes the things which are set before us become the body and blood of Christ; but it is Christ himself, who was crucified for us. The priest stands fulfilling his part by uttering the appointed words, but the power and the grace are of God. ‘This is my body’ he says. this expression changes the elements; and as that sentence ‘increase and multiply’, once spoken, extends through all time and gives to our nature the power to reproduce itself; even so that saying ‘this is my body’, once uttered, does at every table in the Churches from that time to the present day, and even till Christ’s coming, make the sacrifice complete (J.F. Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine (London: Methuen, 1903), pp. 415-416).

At the same time there is a continuing representation by many Fathers of the eucharistic elements as figures or symbols of the Lord’s body and blood, though they also believe the Lord is spiritually present in the sacrament. We this, for example in the teaching of Eusebius of Caesarea (263-340 A.D.) He identified the elements with the body and blood of Christ but, like Tertullian, saw the elements as being symbolical or representative of spiritual realities. He specifically states that the bread and wine are symbols of the Lord’s body and blood and that Christ’s words in John 6 are to be understood spiritually and figuratively as opposed to a physical and literal sense:

But do you, receiving the Scriptures of the Gospels, perceive the whole teaching of our Saviour, that He did not speak concerning the flesh which He had taken but concerning His mystic body and blood… To this the Saviour answered, ‘It is not Moses that gave you the true bread out of heaven’. Then He adds, ‘I am the bread of life,’ and again, ‘I am the bread which came down out of heaven,’ and again, ‘The bread which I will give is My body…’, and He adds again, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him.’ When He had discussed these and such things more mystically, some of His disciples said, ‘The saying is hard; who can bear it?’ The Saviour answered them, saying, Doth this cause you to stumble? What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where He was before? The Spirit is the life-giver; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.’ In this way He instructed them to understand spirituallv…the words which He had spoken concerning His flesh and His blood; for, He says, you must not consider Me to speak of the flesh with which I am clothed … as if you were able to eat that, nor suppose that I command you to drink perceptible and corporal … blood; but know well that ‘the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life,’ so that the words themselves and the discourses themselves are the flesh and the blood, of which he who always partakes, as one fed on heavenly bread, will be a partaker of heavenly life. Therefore, He says, let not this cause you to stumble which I have spoken concerning the eating of My flesh and concerning the drinking of My blood; nor let the offhand … hearing of what I have said about flesh and blood disturb you; for these things ‘profit nothing’ if they are understood according to sense …but the Spirit is the life-giver to those who are able to understand spiritually…(Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica VIII. 1.76-80. Taken from Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist(London: Longman’s, Green, 1909), Volume I, pp. 62-63).

In addition to Eusebius, as JND Kelly points out below, these non-literal views were also expressed by a view shared by Theodoret, Serapion, Jerome, Athanasius, Ambrosiaster, Macarius of Egypt, and Eustathius of Antioch. But, as we will see, this view found its strongest representation in Augustine. Seeburg, as quoted above, points out that pope Gelasius I, who reigned from 492 to 496 teaches that the bread and wine in substance at consecration do not cease to exist:

The sacrament which we receive of the body and blood of Christ is a divine thing. Wherefore also by means of it we are made partakers of the divine nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease to be. And certainly the image and likeness of the body and blood of Christ is set out in the celebration of the mysteries… Thus, as the elements pass into this, that is, the divine substance by the Holy Ghost, and none the less remain in their own proper nature, so they show that the principal mystery itself, the efficacy and virtue of which they truly make present (representant) to us, consists in this, that the two natures remain each in its own proper being so that there is one Christ because He is whole and real (Pope Gelasius, On the Two Natures in Christ. Taken from Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London: Longman’s, Green, 1909), Volume I, p. 102).

J.N.D. Kelly points out that the literalist and symbolical views were both prevalent in the early centuries and he gives the following summation of the symbolical or figurative view held in the Church up to the time of Augustine. This is a long quote but very important in that it demonstrates the prevalence of the figurative view: