According to the modern Catholic narrative, transubstantiation has been a permanent feature of Christianity since Christ Himself instituted the practice. Supposedly, there was no dispute for 1500 years, not only over Transubstantiation, but even over Catholicism in general. Many people find it quite surprising to learn, then, that not only was there a lot of dispute over the Legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church long before the Reformation, but that prior to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 A.D., Transubstantiation itself was not an official Catholic dogma.
Of course, Catholics will dispute this claim, and they use a number of early quotes to support them. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, wrote "They abstain from Eucharist and prayer because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ". The first problem with this particular quote is that it's from before Luther. Therefore, Catholics must either admit that a non-literal view of the Eucharist existed a good 1400 years before they claim it did, or admit that their interpretation of Ignatius is wrong.
If they take the former view, they're right, both logically and historically. Logically, you cannot respond to a view that doesn't exist yet. One could scarcely imagine a Church "Father" responding to the claim that Jesus is an extra-terrestrial who eventually returned to the mothership. Why would they think to do so? Historically, Luther did not invent a new view. Many Church "Fathers" did, indeed, hold to a symbolic view of the Eucharist, and it's rather easy to show that this is the Biblical view. So already, quoting Ignatius in this way runs counter to the Catholic narrative.
If they take the later view, it turns out, they're still right. Ignatius was not responding to the view that the bread is not Jesus' flesh, but that Jesus' flesh wasn't Jesus' flesh. The context of the epistle bears this out: "For he suffered all these things for our sakes, in order that we might be saved; and he truly suffered just as he truly raised himself— not, as certain unbelievers say, that he suffered in appearance only". There can be no symbol unless there is a corresponding reality, and thus these heretics, who say He only appeared to suffer, abstain from the symbol. What "Protestant" is like this? I can tell you this much, if any "Protestant" does abstain from the Eucharist because they think Jesus didn't have a real body, I'm not in their camp. I eat and drink with my Christian brethren, and lament when I miss the service, because unlike the people of whom Ignatius writes, I confess Christ, and Him crucified.
The second problem with citing Ignatius in this manner is his lack of authority. No Church "Father", even the early ones, had the authority ascribed to them by the Catholic Church. To appeal to them is fallacious. As Jude tells us, the faith was delivered "once for all to the saints", and thus anything following the close of the Biblical canon is descriptive at best. I find it both amusing and tragic when Catholics claim it's arrogant to assume we know more than the students of the Apostles when they, themselves, claim to know more than the Apostles, citing (usually out of context) their students as proof.
But the third and most relevant problem with quoting the Church "Fathers" is that even if every extant writing we have from them strongly supported the literal view of the Eucharist, that does not rule out the possibility of other views existing too. You can find far more references to a literal Eucharist after Luther than before, yet clearly, alternative views existed, and continue to do so.
In the modern day, the idea of two Catholics debating the literal nature of the Eucharist is absurd. Today, it is a well established, official Church dogma, and so any Catholic who knows his religion will claim the Eucharist is literally the flesh and blood of Christ, denying his very senses on a weekly basis. But in the 800s A.D., this was not so.
In 831 A.D.,a Catholic monk by the name of Paschasius Radbertus published his book "De corpore et sanguine Christi" (Concerning Christ's Body and Blood), in which he argued that the bread and the wine, upon consecration by a priest, are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. Although he did not use the term "Transubstantiation" in his work, this is the name his view would eventually come to be known by.
But Radbertus had many opponents, most notably a fellow monk by the name of Ratramnus. King Charles II wrote to Ratramnus, asking two questions: is Christ’s presence in the Eucharist only visible with the eyes of faith, or do our eyes actually see the body and blood of Christ? And is the body of Christ in the Eucharist the same as the one born of Mary, killed on a cross, raised to life, and sitting at the right hand of the Father? In response, Ratramnus published his own book, De corpore et sanguine Domini (Concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord), in which he argued for a view more in line with Luther's view of Consubstantiation. Much like basically any Church not related to Catholicism in some way or another, Ratramnus wrote "The bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ in a figurative sense", though he argued (and I would say correctly) that Christ is spiritually present whenever it is consumed by the faithful.
And so you see that the position of the Catholic Church, at that particular point in history, had not been firmly established. No modern monk of the Catholic faith could profess what Ratramnus did, especially since 200 years later, in 1059 A.D., the Lateran Synod posthumously condemned him as a heretic. His works were later added to the index of forbidden books (because, as we all know, the Catholic Church has a very nasty history of suppressing information contrary to their narratives), and finally, in 1215 A.D., the Fourth Lateran Council declared Transubstantiation an official dogma of the Catholic Church. Then, and only then, did there become one official Catholic dogma.
Of the two views espoused during the so-called "First Eucharistic Controversy", Ratramnus' view was more accurate. Radbertus believed, as modern Catholics do, that the bread is literally the same body of Christ, born of Mary 2,000 years ago. But literally everyone knows this is false, for the bread was made in a bakery, or a mill, or somewhere very recently, so close to our time that mould has not yet had time to set in. This is so obvious that Catholics, in order to agree with Radbertus and his ilk, must call it a "sacred mystery".
But in line with Ratramnus and his ilk, Christians are free to take a more Biblical position. The Bible clearly says it is bread, and from the Lord's own mouth on the day He instituted the practice, "fruit of the vine" ((Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25; Luke 22:18). Thus, it can only be Christ's body and blood in a figurative sense, as surely as when a man says "this is my wife", showing not his wife, but a photo of her. Is the man married to a paper, or a woman? So also are we eating bread, and drinking wine, in remembrance of Christ, proclaiming His death until He comes. Thus, as they often do, when met with controversy, the Catholic Church took the wrong path, forever defining human error as infallible doctrine. Is this really the Church you trust to lead you to Heaven?