On the Chocolate Trail

Leavened bread or not? While some of us may think of Passover, the question applied to Eucharistic bread and created significant division in the early Christian Church. The leavened bread for Sunday use was often baked at home by women. Over time, preferences shifted to clergy, church-produced, breads… and, the Eastern Orthodox Church preferred a sourdough type of bread for worship and the Roman Catholic Church preferred an unleavened flatbread. This became known as the East–West Schism or Great Schism of 1054, with each side threatening excommunication for the other Church’s custom.

What were they thinking? The Orthodox Church, saw the leavened rise of the the communion bread as a manifestation of the vivified or enlivened Church, its followers, and the risen, resurrected Jesus. The Western or Roman Church, on the other hand, preferred unleavened wafers to emulate the matzah of the Last Supper, as understood by the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In addition views such as those of Paul (c. 5–c. 64 or 67) saw leaven as tainted, referring to Christianity as the new, purer, unleavened religion, contrasted with the old dough of Judaism. “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened . . . Let us celebrate the festival, not the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Cor. 5:7–8).

On the other hand, the different approach of the Eastern Orthodox Church was found in the “Parable of the Leaven” (Matt. 13:33 and Luke 13:20–21). It reflected not only the contemporaneous technique of using starter dough to raise a bread, but also a more positive view of leaven. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was leavened.” In this view, the holy kingdom started small and then expanded, promising the growth of Christianity. One of Augustine’s (354–430 CE) sermons compared baptism favorably with leavening: “When you were baptized, you were leavened. When you received the first of the Holy Spirit, you were baked.” Here, leavening describes a more authentic, nobler Christian. But as the controversy grew, Armenian Christians who started using unleavened bread for the Eucharist in the sixth century were accused of Judaizing and were cautioned about eating “at the table of the Jews.”

Ultimately, this question of leavening in the Eucharist was debated at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1439), where representatives of the divided Church met to discuss reunification. During the debate, John of Torquemada (1388–1468), a Dominican, expounded on the position of the Latin Church that “unleavened bread . . . was what our Savior used at the Last Supper when the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist was instituted.” In the end, the Council decreed the two forms of bread theologically equal. To this day, leaven still demarcates differences between the Eastern and Western Churches.*

*Originally published in a larger article “The Polemics of Leaven at Passover and Shavuot” in the CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2021.