Leavened Bread

Overview

• The Orthodox Church uses leavened bread — bread raised with yeast — for the Eucharist, while the Latin Church uses unleavened bread (azymes), the flat white wafer. This difference became one of the sore points between East and West in the era of the Great Schism.

Summary

In the Orthodox Church the Eucharistic bread is leavened, "a leavened bread personally baked by us," not the unleavened host of the Roman rite. When the Western Church adopted unleavened bread for the Eucharist, this became a genuine liturgical and theological point of division — one of the issues that helped drive East and West apart at the Great Schism of 1054.[^1] The Orthodox do not treat the question as one of reproducing the exact bread of the Last Supper — the Gospel accounts do not even agree on whether that meal fell before or during Passover, so we cannot be certain which He used — but as a matter of symbolism: leavened bread, tied to the image of the Kingdom of Heaven, is held to carry a more fitting sense for the living Body of Christ.[^1] So strongly was this felt that the Sigillion of 1583 anathematized the claim that Christ used unleavened bread "like that of the Jews."[^2]

Sources

[^1]: OrthodoxWiki, Leavened bread / Azymes, and Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church — leavened vs. unleavened bread as an East–West difference and one of the issues leading to the 1054 schism; the symbolism of leaven and the Kingdom. [^2]: The Sigillion of 1583 (Council of Constantinople) — anathematizing the use of unleavened Eucharistic bread "like that of the Jews.".