CHAPTER XII. THE RELIGIOUS USE OF BREAD.

Of the many breads that are not in common use, that used in the celebration of the Communion should be placed first. There seems no room for doubt that, at the Last Supper, our Lord broke unleavened bread—St Luke xxii. is, apparently, conclusive on this point; and, to this day, the whole Latin, Armenian, and Maronite Churches use unleavened bread, and it is also used in many churches of the Anglican communion. Dr. Lee16 says: ‘The Ethiopic Christians also use unleavened bread at their Mass on Maundy Thursday, but leavened bread on other occasions. The Greek and other Oriental Churches use leavened bread, which is especially made for the purpose, with scrupulous care and attention. The Christians of St. Thomas likewise make use of leavened bread, composed of fine flour, which, by an ancient rule of theirs, ought to be prepared on the same day upon which it is to be consecrated. It is circular in shape, stamped with a large cross, the border being edged with smaller crosses, so that, when it is broken up, each fragment may contain the holy symbol. In the Roman Catholic Church the bread is made thin and circular, and bears upon it either the impressed figure

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of the crucifix, or the letters I.H.S. Pope St. Zephyrinus, who lived in the third century, terms the Sacramental bread, Corona sive oblata, spheric?, figur?, “a crown, or oblation, of a spherical figure,” the circle being indicative of the Divine presence after consecration. The Orientals, occasionally, make their altar breads square, on which is stamped a cross, with an inscription. The square form of the bread is a mystical indication that, by the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, salvation is purchased for the four comers of the earth.’ And Dr. Lee gives illustrations of the altar bread, or wafers, in use in the Latin, Armenian, Coptic, and Greek Churches.

It seems certain that, in the Primitive Church, neither unleavened bread nor wafers were used. Ancient writers say that the bread used was common bread, such as was made for their own use. It was also a charge against the Ebionites that they celebrated in unleavened bread and water only. The bread generally used was called fermentum, and though this is explained by the schoolmen, who claimed primitive custom for unleavened bread, as the eulogia, or panis benedictus, which was blessed for such as did not communicate, Pope Innocent I. plainly says that it refers to the Sacrament itself. Moreover, no Greek writer before Michael Cerularius, who lived A.D. 1051, objected to the use of unleavened bread in the Roman Church, which would seem to show that it was not extensively used before that time. Even some Roman writers speak of the custom as erroneous.

How the change in this matter was made, and the144 exact time when, is not easily determined. Cardinal Bona’s conjecture seems probable enough: that it crept in when the people began to leave off making their oblations in common bread. This occasioned the clergy to provide it themselves, and they, under pretence of decency and respect, brought it from leaven to unleaven, and from a loaf of common bread, that might be broken, to a nice and delicate wafer, formed in the figure of a denarius, or penny, to represent the pence for which our Saviour was betrayed; and then, also, the people, instead of offering a loaf of bread, as formerly, were ordered to offer a penny, which was either to be given to the poor, or to be expended upon something pertaining to the sacrifice of the altar.

The alteration in the Communion bread occasioned great disputes between the Eastern and Western Churches.

The first Common Prayer Book of Edward VI. enjoins unleavened bread to be used throughout the whole kingdom for the celebration of the Eucharist. It was ordered to be round, in imitation of the wafers used in the Greek and Roman Churches; but it was to be without all manner of print, the wafers usually having the impression either of a crucifix or the Holy Lamb; and something more large and thicker than the wafers, which were the size of a penny. This rubric, affording matter for scruple, was set aside at the review of the Liturgy, in the fifth year of King Edward; and another inserted in its room, which still exists, by which it is declared sufficient that the bread be such as is usually eaten.

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It was the custom in Westminster Abbey, and in the Royal chapels, and the practice of such men as Bishop Andrewes, to use wafers, but ‘for peace sake,’ where wafers were objected to, plain and pure wheaten bread was allowed. It has been decided by the Privy Council that it not only may, but must, be common bread; the Injunctions, according to them, being of no validity against the rubric; while the Advertisements, having been made under Act of Parliament, and not contrary to the rubric, are an indication of its meaning—i.e., of the word ‘retained in the Ornaments rubric.’

The bread now used is common wheaten bread in most Protestant Churches. In some Presbyterian Churches a special kind of wafer is prepared for the purpose. In the Roman Church thin wafers are used. In the Eastern Churches they are of different sizes and thicknesses.

They are thus classified by the Rev. F. E. Brightman in Liturgies Eastern:

1. Byzantine; a round leavened cake 5 × 2 in., stamped with a square (2 in.); itself divided by a cross into four squares in which are severally inscribed IC, XC, NI, KA.

2. The Syrian Jacobite and Syrian Uniat; a round cake, leavened with the holy leaven, 3 × 3/4, stamped like a wheel with four diameters (the alternate radii being cut off half way from the circumference by a concentric circle).

3. The Marionite; the Latin unleavened wafer.

4. The Coptic; a round leavened cake, 3-1/2 × 3/4, stamped round the edge with the legend, Αγιο? ο θεο?, αγιο? ισχυρο?, αγιο? αθανατο?,146 and within with a cross consisting of twelve little squares, each of which and the remaining spandrels are marked with a little cross placed diagonally.

5. The Abyssinian; a flat round leavened cake, 4 × 3/4, stamped with a cross of nine squares with four squares added in the angles of the cross.

6. The Nestorian; a round leavened cake, 2 × 1/2, stamped with a cross-crosslet and four small crosses.

7. The Armenian; a round unleavened wafer, 3 × 1/8, stamped with an ornamental border, the crucifix and the sacred name and sometimes with two diameters at right angles to the back.

In regard to the Protestant Non-Episcopal Churches, it is stated in Herzog’s Religious Encyclop?dia that the administration follows one of two types. These are the Lutheran and the Calvinistic. In the Lutheran, the elements are consecrated with the sign of the cross, a wafer of unleavened bread is given whole to the communicant, and white wine, instead of red, is used. The communicants kneel and receive the elements into their mouths instead of their hands. The Calvinistic type simplifies the service as much as possible, and assimilates it to a common meal. ‘In the French Reformed Church the elements are placed—the bread in two silver dishes, and the wine in two silver cups—on a table spread with a white linen cloth. From twenty-five to thirty communicants approach the table at a time. The officiating minister makes a free prayer, and then, while repeating the words of institution, presents the elements to his neighbours on the left and on the right, after which the dish and the cup147 pass from hand to hand. With various modifications this type has been adopted by all the Reformed (Non-Episcopal) Churches.’

This is practically the method adopted in most of the British Non-Episcopal Churches; instead, however, of the communicants coming forward to the table, they remain in their pews, the bread and wine being handed round by elders or deacons. In the American Non-Episcopal Churches the same plan is usually adopted.

These divergencies of method illustrate the strange fact in the Christian life, that around the simple and beautiful institution of the Lord’s Supper there have raged the fiercest controversies in religious history. So divergent are the views held about it, that the Roman Catholic Church asserts that in every celebration of the Mass our Saviour is again actually offered as a sacrifice, and the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of the Lord, this miracle of transformation being wrought through the consecrating prayer of the priest. The Quakers, at the other extreme, do not observe the service at all, and do not consider it to be a binding ordinance. Here, as so often in life, the truth lies between the extremes. The bread and the wine are the symbols of our Lord’s body and blood. We do not feed on Him by the mere physical eating of the consecrated elements, but we partake of Him through faith as we remember that His body was broken for us, and His blood shed for the remission of our sins. His own loving command as He sat at the table with His disciples was, ‘This do in remembrance of Me,’ and it is148 through fellowship with Him in spirit—in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary—that ‘we feed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.’

There is a semi-sacred bread eaten by the English race, and by no one else—the hot-cross bun—millions of which are devoured in England on Good Friday. Its origin is obscure, as is also that of the word ‘bun.’ Most dictionaries derive it from the old French bigne, or bugne—a swelling; but it certainly occurs in an early Promptorium Parvulorum, as ‘bunne-brede.’ Anent ‘Eating Buns on Good Friday,’ a correspondent in the Athen?um of April 4, 1857, p. 144, wrote:

‘In the Museo Lapidario of the Vatican, on the Christian side of it, and not far off from the door leading into the library, there is a tablet representing in a rude manner the miracle of the five barley loaves. Every visitor must have seen it, for it has been there for years. The loaves are round, like cakes, and have a cross upon them, such as our cakes bear, which are broken and eaten on Good Friday morning, symbolical of the sacrifice of the body of our Lord. Five of these cakes, explanatory of the scene, are ranged beneath an arch-shaped table, at which recline five people, while another, with a basket full, is occupied in serving them. The cakes are so significant of the Bread of Life that one might almost regard the repast as intended to prefigure the sacrifice that was to follow, and the institution connected with it. Having, from the earliest period of memory, cherished a particular regard for hot-cross buns and149 all their pleasing associations, it was a source of gratifying reflection to see my old favourites thus brought into intimate association with the pious thoughts of the primitive Christians, and to know that at home we cherished an ancient usage on Good Friday which the more Catholic nations of Europe no longer observed. But, alas! there is always some drawback to our full satisfaction in this world, and knowledge is often a cruel dissipation of favourite convictions; my faith in the Christian biography of these buns has recently received a very rude shock.

‘It would appear that they have descended to us, not from any Popish practice, as some pious souls affirm, but from one which was actually, and, like the word which we use to signify the great festival of the Church, Easter, to a paganism as ancient as the worship of Astarte, in honour of whom, about the time of the Passover, our pagan ancestors, the Saxons, baked and offered up a particular kind of cake. We read in Jeremiah (vii. 17, 18): “Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven.” [See also Jeremiah xliv. 18, 19.] Dr. Stukeley, in his Medallic History of Valerius Carausius, remarks that they were “assiduous to knead the Easter cakes for her service.” The worship of a Queen of Heaven, under some significant name or other, was an almost universal practice, and exists still in various parts of the globe. She is usually represented, like the Madonna, bearing her son in her lap, or like Isis, with150 the infant Horus. We may see such images in the Louvre, and in the great Ethnographical Museum at Copenhagen, where the Queen of Heaven of the Chinese, Tien-how, figures in white porcelain, side by side with Schling-mu, the Holy Mother. Certain metaphysical ideas are apt to flow in a common channel, and get clothed in the same symbolical dress. Hence we find a Queen of Heaven, no less in Mexico than in China, in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and England; and, under the pagan title of a Christian festival, preserve, along with our buns, the memorial of her ancient reign.’