History of Sacramental wine

[Johnpeter073]

When was the first time Church prescribed wine as the only valid species for consecration apart from the bread?
Eastern Catholic Churches, before coming into communion with the Rome, has (if at all) used substances other than wine for consecration, were those celebration valid then if they had held valid holy orders?

 

[FrDavid96]

The Church has always required bread and wine for the Eucharist.

I don’t know what sources you’re referencing, but I can say that they aren’t reliable ones, or perhaps they’re being misunderstood. There’s really no question, no doubt, no hesitation, no ambiguity about it. Since the days of the Apostles themselves, only wine and bread were used for the Eucharist in both East and West.

Other drinks, such as milk and honey for the newly baptized, were used at times, but for other reasons, never the Eucharist.

The gnostics, a heretical sect, did use fresh-squeezed grape juice, sometimes with and sometimes without wine. This was actually one of the reasons why they were not considered true-believers.

What we now call the Eastern Orthodox Churches have used wine throughout their entire history, again going back to the Apostles.

 

[YADA]

The Church has always required bread and wine for the Eucharist.

I don’t know what sources you’re referencing, but I can say that they aren’t reliable ones, or perhaps they’re being misunderstood. There’s really no question, no doubt, no hesitation, no ambiguity about it. Since the days of the Apostles themselves, only wine and bread were used for the Eucharist in both East and West.

Other drinks, such as milk and honey for the newly baptized, were used at times, but for other reasons, never the Eucharist.

The gnostics, a heretical sect, did use fresh-squeezed grape juice, sometimes with and sometimes without wine. This was actually one of the reasons why they were not considered true-believers.

What we now call the Eastern Orthodox Churches have used wine throughout their entire history, again going back to the Apostles.

THIS ^ never read of anything other than wine for the Eucharist

And the “juice” the Gnostic’s used would have had to be very fresh as the process to stop fermentation that allows us to have 'Grape Juice" is very recent - 1869 by Thomas Welches - to create a non-alcoholic wine for use in their Methodist Service

 

[Gorgias]

And the “juice” the Gnostic’s used would have had to be very fresh

And by “fresh”, of course, you mean “still in the grape”! After all, yeasts that ferment grapes are found naturally on grape skins – in other words, the very act of crushing the grapes causes the juice to come in contact with yeast and begin the process of fermentation!

 

[FrDavid96]

THIS ^ never read of anything other than wine for the Eucharist

And the “juice” the Gnostic’s used would have had to be very fresh as the process to stop fermentation that allows us to have 'Grape Juice" is very recent - 1869 by Thomas Welches - to create a non-alcoholic wine for use in their Methodist Service

And by “fresh”, of course, you mean “still in the grape”! After all, yeasts that ferment grapes are found naturally on grape skins – in other words, the very act of crushing the grapes causes the juice to come in contact with yeast and begin the process of fermentation!

That’s exactly what they did. They would actually hold grapes over the chalice and squeeze them, allowing the juice to fall into the chalice.

A slight caution here: the term gnostics describes a rather varied group. Some of them did what I described, some had other things they did. There wasn’t much uniformity among them.

Also, while that sounds a bit liturgically strange to us today, at the time, it would have seemed rather normal. These were people who were quite accustomed to watching the pagan priests slit the throats of animals—in public displays. Also, I seem to recall some orthodox Christians doing the same with grapes; adding fresh grape juice to the wine. The reason we know this is because we have records that they were told to stop—as is often the case for such things. Sometimes, we don’t have a direct record that a thing was done, but only a prohibition against doing it.