A eucharist of sourdough or wafer? What a thousand-year-old religious quarrel tells us about fermentation

  • Written by: Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne
A eucharist of sourdough or wafer? What a thousand-year-old religious quarrel tells us about fermentationA Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy communion.

The view in Constantinople was the bread for the eucharist must be sourdough. But in Rome, an unleavened wafer had been used for longer than...

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