In a recent article on the medieval dogma of transubstantiation, Gary Macy builds upon the works of Hans Jorissen and James F. McCue to question the validity of Jaroslav Pelikan's claim that “at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist achieved its definitive formulation in the dogma of transubstantiation.” Macy demonstrates that through most of the thirteenth century, the majority of theologians did not, in fact, consider Lateran IV's decree the final word on eucharistic theology. The debate over precisely how the real presence of Christ occurred in the eucharist was far from closed.

William Durand's (ca. 1230–1296) Rationale divinorum officiorum (ca. 1292/1296) is unquestionably the longest and most thorough commentary on the liturgy produced by a medieval liturgiologist. From the time of its appearance at the end of the thirteenth century to the Catholic Restorationist liturgical revival in mid-nineteenth-century France, it was hailed by admirers as the quintessential expression of the medieval church's understanding of the divine offices. The bishop of Mende's Rationale treats, among other things, the various parts of the church building, the ministers of the church, liturgical vestments, and the Mass and the canonical hours. It thus stands as the epitome of a four-hundred year tradition of allegorical liturgical exposition which was inaugurated in the West with the extended liturgical commentaries of the Carolingian bishop, Amalarius of Metz (died 852/853).