For how long has unleavened bread been used?

[A_Really_Big_Cat]

When did the Western and Eastern churches begin using different types of bread?

 

[Jbrady]

When did the Catholic and Eastern churches begin using different types of bread?

The use of unleavened bread started some time in the middle or late sixth century, and seems to have spread throughout the west by Carolingian times (around the year 800),

Two factors played a role:

The first was that leavened bread as an everyday foodstuff became a far less common way to consume grain in the West, to be replaced by porridges, pottages, gruels, mushes and unleavened grain cakes/flatbreads.

The second factor was a reinterpretation of the Mass as in some way a commemoration of the Passover meal, which used unleavened bread.

 

[BartholomewB]

Thank you, @Jbrady. That’s very interesting. I knew about the second reason but not the first one. Is it known what happened, to cause the temporary loss of leavened bread as a foodstuff? What could it have been? Did something go wrong with their yeast, for instance?

 

[Jbrady]

Is it known what happened, to cause the temporary loss of leavened bread as a foodstuff?

A steep decline in the quality of life. Ovens for baking bread were expensive to build and expensive to use. They required a lot of fuel, and were generally community property. As communities disintegrated, communal ovens became rarer. Also, bread baking required grains to be finely milled, whereas the other methods didn’t. Milling on a small scale is laborious, and the disintegration of communities made communal milling difficult.

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, the population of Rome declined from well over a million at its peak, to few thousand individuals who would have sold their mom for a half-decayed rat during the sieges and countersieges of the Gothic Wars, and Milan was totally depopulated. At the same time, the Plague of Justinian decimated the population and pretty much destroyed any large scale agriculture remaining in the West. Most of Italy was a wasteland. And then came the Lombard invasion soon after that war was over. This was the low point of Western civilization.

 

[BartholomewB]

Thanks again! I’m embarrassed to admit that this is a period of history about which I know nothing, or next to nothing. Looking for the Gothic wars in H. A. L. Fisher’s History of Europe, I found this:

• Whereas the Franks and Saxons have left a permanent memorial of their passage through time in two powerful and ordered modern states, the name Gothic, save where it is used in relation to a form of architecture originating in a region which the Goths never controlled, is synonymous with all that is dark, barbaric, and destructive.

 

[DeniseNY]

When did the Catholic and Eastern churches begin using different types of bread?

Just one point, Eastern Catholics use leavened bread.

 

[A_Really_Big_Cat]

Yeah I know, I said Eastern instead of Orthodox to include them.

 

[Jbrady]

Whereas the Franks and Saxons have left a permanent memorial of their passage through time in two powerful and ordered modern states, the name Gothic, save where it is used in relation to a form of architecture originating in a region which the Goths never controlled, is synonymous with all that is dark, barbaric, and destructive.

That’s a bit unfair. Gothic culture under Theodoric was actually quite advanced, and he was generally an able and benign ruler in Italy until a few years before his death. The ensuing battles over the succession ripped the Goths apart, though, and the Byzantine emperor Justinian decided to invade and “liberate” Italy. They were the ones who caused the most actual damage during the wars.

The sixth century was quite eventful, both in the West and in the East.

 

[dochawk]

The use of unleavened bread started some time in the middle or late sixth century, and seems to have spread throughout the west by Carolingian times (around the year 800),

when this came up recently, I posted the year in which the western church mandated unleavened bread (having the advantage of my priest having mentioned it just before my post). Early 900s, iirc, but use was certainly widespread by then.