Dipping into Greek East and Latin West. The Church AD 681-1071 as bedtime reading is probably not such a good idea, but does lead to interesting discoveries. I knew of course that one of the differences between East and West is their use in the Eucharist of leavened and unleavened bread respectively. I may even have heard that there have been controversies over it. But I did not know that it was the most explicitly invoked issue in the controversies of 1054. And, quite frankly, I don’t think that I would ever have been inclined to take it seriously as a cause of division. But the background that Father Louth provides is interesting.
It turns out that the Greeks interpreted the Latin use of unleavened bread against the background of their contacts with the Armenians, who also used unleavened bread. And given that the Armenians were so-called monophysites, their use of unleavened bread was interpreted against the background of their defective Christology
… in contrast to “the substance of our [human] dough,” which is “ensouled” and is what “the Word of God assumed and of which he became its hypostasis.” With this play on words, the argument is moving from being about the nature of the eucharistic bread to the nature of the Incarnation; the one mirrors the other, the leavened bread of the Eucharist mirroring the “ensouled nature” that, according to orthodox Christology, the Word assumed. Advocates of unleavened bread are both caught in the Old Testament, prior to the Incarnation, and betray a Christology in which the human nature that Christ assumes is defective… (312-313)
The Latins, by contrast, based their use of unleavened bread (which they probably introduced for practical reasons) on the supposed practice of Jesus in celebrating the Passover meal. They interpreted this against the background of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, which in Latin read “Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole dough?”
Father Louth comments:
Two systems of symbolism, focused on the same liturgical act, developed, but they took their inspiration from the stark contradiction of leavened or unleavened bread. The refusal, on either side, to enter the symbolic world of the other could be presented as a fundamental apostasy. The Latins, with their unleavened bread, were Judaizing, or shrinking from acknowledging the full humanity of Christ (an objection that worked better against the Armenians); the Greeks, with their leavened bread, were virtual Marcionites, discarding the Old Covenant in celebrating the Passover with his disciples. (314)
This serves to underline the fundamental role that symbolic worlds play the challenge of entering into the symbolic world of the other.
September 24, 2008 at 2:05 pm
[...] An ecumenical noting of differences between churches, leavened or unleavened bread at Eucharist? [...]
September 24, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Your thought on the book in general is positive then? I have yet to buy it and would appreciate your opinion.
September 24, 2008 at 3:21 pm
A pox on all their houses! Let God be true and everyone else a liar. O enter then his (symbolic) courts with praise.
September 24, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Joseph, yes. As I mentioned in my last post I haven’t read it and have only be dipping into it, but it looks most worthwhile.
Bob, well, perhaps. But I think that I’ve become increasingly aware that the late modern western (or however one defines them) tendencies in which I have been formed and which represent a disconnection from such symbolic worlds – and with them the material rootedness of language – are no more neutral or reflective of reality, and can in fact be incredibly arrogant.
September 24, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Dear Sister Macrina,
I have been reading your blog with enjoyment for a little while, now. Thank you for your interesting thoughts!
I wonder if I could insert a thought of my own here:
You said early on in this piece that you weren’t sure if you ever could have taken the leavened/unleavened bread controversy seriously. Later, however, you note that the problem is one of “symbolic worlds”. Personally, I feel, probably as you do, that leavened/unleavened bread as such would not be much of a basis for controversy. Does it not seem, however, that the issue of symbolism is?
Some symbols, after all, are better suited to their purposes than others. For instance, the holy icons are better suited to their purpose than photographs. (I, certainly, would not dream of venerating a photograph as I do an icon.) This is because of a distinct theological difference in the quality of the symbol, though a photograph and an icon could conceivably depict the same subject. Could the different kinds of bread be construed in a similar way?
September 25, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Dionysius, thanks for your contribution.
Yes, I agree that it has all got to do with symbolism, that symbolism is important and also that some symbols work better than others. (For what it’s worth, current Catholic norms state that “The meaning of the sign demands that the material for the Eucharistic celebration truly have the appearance of food” [GIRM, VI, 321]. How easily that combines with using unleavened bread is perhaps a matter for debate!)
But the reference to symbolic worlds also suggests, I think, that the meaning that symbols convey is not necessarily a universal given (although in some cases one could argue that it is) but is shaped by the context in which they developed and are interpreted. Thus the symbolism conveyed by the use of leavened or unleavened bread carried different meanings for the Greeks and the Latins in the eleventh century due to their different historical and theological contexts. The challenge of dialogue, Father Louth seems to suggest, is to try to understand and enter into the symbolic world of the other.
September 25, 2008 at 8:49 pm
We should also note that in following the timing presented in the Gospel of John, which is that followed by the Eastern Church in its liturgical cycle of Holy Week and Pascha, the Last Supper was not a Passover meal. Rather, our Lord died at the time the Passover lambs were being sacrificed. He was the antitype of the Passover lamb. The bread at the Last Supper may have been unleavened, though it would have been early for that. Unleavened bread was only required for the seven days beginning with the sunset after the sacrifice of the Paschal lambs. The Last Supper occurred before this, according to John.
September 26, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Thanks, Kevin. I hadn’t mentioned that, but Father Louth notes the divergent traditions in which the Greeks appealed to the Johannine account and the Latins to the Synoptic ones. He suggests that these divergent traditions may even lie behind the Quartodeciman controversy in the second century. (Although this did not relate to the question of leavened or unleavened bread as the latter was introduced later).
September 26, 2008 at 9:00 pm
You’re very welcome! There was a Johannine historical connection to the Quartodeciman churches in Anatolia, so there’s certainly some kind of connection there. It’s not surprising that our well-appreciated Fr Louth would mention it. He’s one of the sharper knives in the drawer!
July 5, 2010 at 7:34 pm
If communing with unleavened bread would’ve been “the Semitic thing to do”, then we should’ve expected this tradition to appear early on in the ancient Semitic churches (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, etc). Instead, it appears in the Western-most parts of the Western Empire about the middle of the first millennium.
November 22, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Thank you for flagging this post from the past, Macrina. And while it’s not historical or exegetical, I think my little meditation about baking bread (an initial post on one of my new blogs) may pertain to this discussion. For “leavened bread” allows for SO many more metaphors in terms of its meaning – particularly as Jesus told us: This is my body. And it’s hard to believe that when he said that he was holding “dead bread”! Yes, it had been baked. But the baking caused the yeast, which had led the bread to rise, to die. There’s no way you get to those metaphors for what Jesus told us using unleavened bread.
Here’s the link to that post:
http://castingwordstothewind.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/baking-bread/