The medium of the Eucharist

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nfinke

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Is there a reason that the standard for the bread used for consecration are those small, round, wafers? I’m guessing it’s more financially feasible to just order thousands of wafers than actually bake bread and break it as Jesus and probably the early church did.

But is there any significance to it being round? Any unleavened bread can be consecrated right? You don’t really see matzo served in little discs outside of a church, so I assume at some point a deliberate decision was made for that to be the shape.
 
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nfinke said:
Is there a reason that the standard for the bread used for consecration are those small, round, wafers? I’m guessing it’s more financially feasible to just order thousands of wafers than actually bake bread and break it as Jesus and probably the early church did.

But is there any significance to it being round? Any unleavened bread can be consecrated right? You don’t really see matzo served in little discs outside of a church, so I assume at some point a deliberate decision was made for that to be the shape.
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Worth noting that that’s not the standard in all Catholic Churches. It’s a disciplinary matter in the Latin Rite.
 
Fair enough, it’s been the same in all the churches I’ve been to in my travels, and all the hosts set up for adoration have been in that form, so I assumed it was the same everywhere.
 
nfinke said:
Fair enough, it’s been the same in all the churches I’ve been to in my travels, and all the hosts set up for adoration have been in that form, so I assumed it was the same everywhere.
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The Eastern Churches use a different form; I think it is the same everywhere in the Latin Rite, so unless you’ve been visiting Eastern rites you’d have seen the same everywhere.
 
I’m in Scotland and I’ve seen round and sometimes even triangle shaped bread.

God Bless.
 
Really not sure @HopkinsReb. I joined the faith in 2016 and I’ve maybe come across it on 4 occasions. It was always a lot bigger than the round host.
 
I’ve been to Masses where a huge host (and quite thick) was used, the priest broke that into several jagged shaped pieces for the rest of us.
 
OneGod79 said:
Really not sure @HopkinsReb. I joined the faith in 2016 and I’ve maybe come across it on 4 occasions. It was always a lot bigger than the round host.
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That’s probably what it was; the priest uses a large host during the consecration and breaks it into fourths, so you end up with four triangles in there. Occasionally one of those gets buried in the mix and laity receive them.
 
My parish used to use large (priest’s) hosts which were scored to fraction into some central triangles and a bunch of trapezoid shapes, but no longer (probably a change of preference with a change of pastor).

I would guess: Fractioning one or more large unleavened hosts is prone to crumbs and other particles, and that individual hosts are round to avoid corners, which might (i) poke people in the lips, cheek, or tongue and/or (ii) be prone to flipping and tangling with neighboring hosts when distributing from the paten/ciborium?
🤷‍♂️
 
Of course, if you believed the Jack Chick crowd, you’d say the round shape was because we worship the pagan Sun God of Ancient Egypt.

That nonsense aside, in our parish we use round ones for the majority, but the low-gluten ones are square to distinguish them .

And yes, any jagged triangles will be from the priest’s Host.
 
The Last Supper was a Paschal meal and the bread used would have been similar to what we now call matzos. The idea of having individual hosts rather than breaking one large one is born of practicality and fears about particles of host falling to the floor. Hosts, large and small, used in the Catholic and many Eastern Churches have been circular since at least the 4th century. However, the Coptic Church and others use a lightly leavened soft bread made into flat loaves. Low gluten hosts are allowed for those communicants who are wheat intolerant and these are usually square.

In the 1960s, I went to Liturgy in the Belarussian Rite of the Catholic Church. There the hosts were like crutons. The bishop used a long silver spoon to intinct the host in the chalice and then transfer it to the communicant’s mouth with a flick of the wrist. The action must have required many weeks of practice.
 
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Note that wafers have been used for a long time, even pre-industrial, and of course they were baked.
 
nfinke said:
But is there any significance to it being round?
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I wish I could remember the year–father brought it up in a conversation I was half listening to after liturgy. I think it was 980 or 982 that the western church standardized on that top. It was ultimately about making the most perfect host possible, much like we use precious metal for the vessels.
jimXroberts said:
Hosts, large and small, used in the Catholic and many Eastern Churches have been circular since at least the 4th century.
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I believe that the Maronites and the one I always get wrong when I say “Romanian” are the only churches to use stamped hosts with any regularity.

However, the loaf used by Byzantines is generally round, with the square “Lamb” on top.
jimXroberts said:
There the hosts were like crutons.
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Those would be either “particles” cut from the lamb (most byzantines) or possibly cut from the rest of the loaf (afaik, Ruthenian only). Basically all byzantines since the late third or early fourth century (my head is fuzzy at the moment, as I lay sick in bead wishing for sleep!).
jimXroberts said:
The action must have required many weeks of practice.
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And then there’s the preparation, with the sharp lance.

Our parish now uses “pre-cut”, as Father had a trip to the ER to re-attach a finger tip 😱😲😱

For that matter, I got a pretty good slice when a Melkite priest asked me to help cut strips from the main loaf for Antidoran . . .:roll_eyes:😱🤔 (to the surprise of exactly no-one who knows me :roll_eyes:)
 
Where I am , if there are triangle pieces, they are from the big host
 
@HopkinsReb
It’s not a discipline of the Latin Church; it’s just convenience. There’s no rule that hosts must be purchased or that they must be round, but try fitting anything else in the monstrance or pyx! I’ve been to Latin parishes that used square (legitimate) bread options, but they also didn’t have adoration very often or much of a home bound/hospital ministry.
 
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The largest size of hosts usually have these markings to make it easier to break the host into smaller pieces. We prefer not to use bread that crumbs in the Latin rite so the little round ones are most commonly used as well as a size that is about 10 cm in diameter. Some parishes use this larger one for major celebrations or if the church building is really large. The host needs to fit on the paten though and they are not dinner sized plates.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Here is a video of how they are made.

 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
@HopkinsReb
It’s not a discipline of the Latin Church; it’s just convenience. There’s no rule that hosts must be purchased or that they must be round, but try fitting anything else in the monstrance or pyx! I’ve been to Latin parishes that used square (legitimate) bread options, but they also didn’t have adoration very often or much of a home bound/hospital ministry.
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Well, there we have it.
 
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