After they have cooled, they are quite delicate. They are stacked and placed in a humidifier for several hours so they become less brittle. They can then be cut into individual hosts without shattering.
This is usually done with a machine that somewhat resembles a paper hole puncher. The resulting hosts are then dried and packaged for shipping. Parish bakers usually make flat loaves with a more bread-like consistency. This is particularly difficult given that they can only use flour and water, but many have mastered the technique, often after a bit of trial and error.
The church requires unleavened bread in remembrance of the Last Supper, where the first Eucharist was celebrated at a Passover, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The bread for Passover is always unleavened, in memory of the hurriedly baked bread the Israelites baked before they left Egypt.
This article also appears in the June issue of U. Catholic Vol. Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash. At the center of our celebration are the simple elements of bread and wine. They took some of the best wheat, selected grain by grain, washed it, and turned it into a sack to be taken to the mill, the millstones being washed for the occasion.
A religious then donned an alb and ground the wheat himself while two priests and two deacons , vested in albs and amices , kneaded the dough in cold water and baked the hosts.
At Saint-Etienne de Caen the religious employed in this work dined together on that day, their table being served as was that of the abbot. Some monasteries cultivated the Eucharistic wheat in a special field which they called the field of the "Corpus Domini".
Du Cange mentions a charter dated by which it would seem that women , even nuns , were forbidden to make hosts; but it is doubtful whether this measure was ever generally enforced. Radegunde certainly had many imitators, despite the prejudice against the making of hosts by laymen or women , a prejudice so rooted that in the Middle Ages there were in the Diocese of Narbonne people who believed that hosts made by women were not qualified for transubstantiation.
An echo of this is found in official acts. The Council of Milan , , prescribes the making of hosts in monasteries and forbids it to laymen. A council of Cambrai in ordains that "in each city there shall be a person charged with making the altar-breads from the best and purest wheat and after the manner indicated to him. He must previously take an oath to discharge faithfully the duties of his office.
He shall not be permitted to buy from others the bread to be used in the Holy Sacrifice. The confraternity of the oblayers host-makers had a special ecclesiastical authorization to carry on that work. At present many parishes apply to religious communities which make a specialty of altar-breads. This offers a guarantee against the falsifications always to be feared when recourse is had to the trade: unscrupulous makers have been guilty of adulterating the wheaten flour with alum, sulphates of zinc and copper, carbonates of ammonia, potassium, or magnesia, or else of substituting bean flour or the flour of rice or potatoes for wheaten flour.
In the Middle Ages , as stated, the baking of hosts took place at three or four principal feasts of the year. This practice was abandoned later on account of the possible chemical change in the substance of the bread when kept for so long a time. Charles Borromeo ordered all the priests of his diocese to use for the Holy Sacrifice only hosts made less than twenty days previously. The Congregation of Rites condemned the abuse of consecrating hosts which, in winter, had been made three months and in summer six months ahead of time.
Some prescriptions of the Oriental Churches are worthy of notice; moreover, some of them are still in use. The Constitutions ascribed to St. Cyril of Alexandria prescribe that the Eucharistic bread be baked in the church oven Renaudot , "Liturg. In the "Canonical Collection" of Bar-Salibi there are prescriptions concerning the choice of wheat which differ but slightly from those of the West. In Ethiopia each church must have a special oven for the making of hosts.
In Greece and Russia the altar-breads are prepared by priests , widows , the wives or daughters of priests , or the so-called calogerae , i. The Nestorians of Malabar, after kneading the flour with leaven, are accustomed to work in some of the leaven left from the preceding baking. They believe that this practice dates from the earliest Christian times and that it preserves the leaven brought to Syria by Saints Thomas and Thaddeus, for, according to another Nestorian tradition, the Apostles, prior to their separation celebrated the Liturgy in common and each carried away a portion of the bread then consecrated.
Moulds for hosts The moulds used for hosts are iron instruments similar to waffle-irons, composed of two palettes which come together with the aid of two bent handles acting as a lever. The discovery some time ago, however, of one of these moulds at Carthage carries us back probably to the sixth or seventh century, before the destruction of that city by the Arabs.
Unfortunately this precious relic of Christian antiquity is incomplete. The lower plate of a mould for hosts is engraved with two, four, or six figures of hosts which, by means of pressure, are reproduced on the paste and fixed there by baking.
From the ninth to the eleventh century the irons moulded very thick hosts about as large as the palm of the hand. Towards the end of the eleventh century the dimensions were considerably reduced so that, with the same instrument, four hosts, two large and two small, could be moulded. With a thirteenth-century iron preserved at Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, two large hosts and three small ones can be made simultaneously, and an iron at Naintre Vienne moulds five hosts at once, all varying in size.
A certain number of host-irons bear the date of making, the initial of the engraver's name, and the donor's coat-of-arms. The larger ones measure two and one-eighth inches in diameter and the smaller ones one and one-seventh inches; at the same period some large hosts had a diameter of two and three- fourths inches. A fifteenth-century iron at Bethine Vienne makes hosts bearing the figure of the triumphant Lamb, of the Holy Face surrounded with fleurs-de-lis, also of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
In the sixteenth century at Lamenay Nievre hosts were made representing Jesus Christ seated on His throne and imparting His blessing, the background being studded with stars; at Montjean Maine-et-Loire they were stamped with the image of Christ Crucified and Christ Risen, delicately framed in lilies and roses and heraldic in aspect.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century host-irons have been preserved in large numbers, and are quite similar to those now in use, being stamped with the Lamb lying on the book, Christ upon the Cross, or the letters I H S emitting rays and encircled with grapes and thorns.
Among the remarkable host-irons that have escaped destruction we may mention those of Beddes, Azy, Chassy, and Vailly Cher , all four belonging to the thirteenth century; those of Palluau Indre and of Crouzilles and Savigny Indre-et-Loire , etc. Notable among the collections of the imprints of host-irons are those of M. Dumontet at Bourges , of M. The Eastern Churches generally use a wooden mould. To make the hosts baked in the mould quite round they are cut with scissors, a punch, or a compass, one of the legs of which terminates in a knife.
Form and dimensions The first mention of the form of hosts is found in St. Epiphanius in the fourth century when he says: "hoc est enim rotundae formae", but the fact had already been placed on record by catacomb paintings and by very ancient bas-reliefs. Unity of form and size was only slowly established, and different customs prevailed in different provinces. At an early date the councils attempted to introduce uniformity on this point; one held at Arles in ordered all the bishops of that province to use hosts of the same form as those used in the church of Arles.
According to Mabillon , as early as the sixth century hosts were as small and thin as now, and it is stated that from the eighth century it was customary to bless small hosts intended for the faithful , an advantageous measure which dispensed with breaking the host and consequently prevented the crumbling that ensued. As late as the eleventh century we find some opposition to the custom, then growing general, of reserving a large host for the priest and a small one for each communicant.
However, by the twelfth century the new custom prevailed in France , Switzerland , and Germany ; Honorius of Autun states in a general way that the hosts were in the form of "denarii". The monasteries held out for a longer time, and as late as the twelfth century the ancient system was still in force at Cluny. In the Missal of Rouen prescribed that the celebrant break the host into three parts, the first to be put into the chalice , the second to be received in Holy Communion by the celebrant and ministers and the third to be kept as Viaticum for the dying.
The Carthusians reserved a very large host, a particle of which they broke off for each Viaticum. Eventually all hosts were made round and their dimensions varied but little.
However, some very large ones were at times consecrated for monstrances , on occasion of the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Today in Rome the large hosts are nine centimetres in diameter and the small ones four centimetres.
In other countries they are usually not so large. In Pius IX authorized the priests exiled to Siberia to consecrate the Eucharist with wheaten bread that had not the form of a round host. Figures From ancient monuments in painting , sculpture , and epigraphy we have seen the general usage of tracing a cross on the Eucharistic loaves which were thence called decussati Latin decussis , a coin marked X.
For the early Greek-speaking Christians the cross X , being the initial of the name of Christ Xpistos [i. Christos] , was constantly in evidence; soon the idea was conceived of replacing the plain cross by the monogram, and finally there were added on either side the letters Alpha and Omega i. In certain countries the plain cross continued to exist for a long time; in the Diocese of Arles no other sign was tolerated until the Revolution.
In fact it was consumed to recall the ancient Feast of the Primizie, during which the old yeast was thrown out, which would be used for the bread produced with the flours of the new harvest.
After the Escape from Egypt, unleavened bread became a way of preserving the memory of that terrible journey, during which the Jews did not have time to make bread rise, and were forced to consume it unleavened.
The Christians gathered the tradition of unleavened bread, attributing to it a meaning and a value that laid the foundations of religion itself. In fact it was Jesus Christ who, on the occasion of the Last Supper, blessed a piece of unleavened bread and offered it to his disciples, presenting it as his own body.
Luke This is what Christians call Transubstantiation, that is, Consecration that actually transforms bread into the Body of Christ and wine into His Blood. This miracle is renewed at every Mass, when the Priest presents the Eucharist, raising the host Elevation before the faithful, and consecrating the bread and wine. This dogma ensures that, at every mass, every time we receive communion, the miracle of the Last Supper is repeated, the promise of salvation made by Jesus to all men with the offering of himself.
On the same occasion, Jesus conferred on his disciples the power to do the same, or to consecrate bread and the wine so that they would become His Flesh and His Blood, so that all men could feed on it, and in this way redeem themselves from sin.
Thus began the diffusion of this practice, which has become, in some ways, the very core of the Christian celebration. Consecrated bread and wine stop being simple bread, simple wine. They assume the name of the Most Holy Eucharist, and they are sacred, so much so that any improper use, or blasphemous, is considered a mortal sin. Even simply the fact of breaking them or letting them fall requires special precautions that we will examine later.
Over time, the custom of offering the faithful only bread, in the form of a host, has spread, while wine is drunk only by the priest. For this reason also, bread, in particular, has over time taken on an ever deeper and more solemn value, so much so as to be the object of adoration even beyond the Eucharistic celebration.
The host stops being a host, ceases to be simply bread, and becomes the Miracle of all miracles, the tangible symbol of the greatest sacrifice of love of all time. But how is a host manufactured? Are all hosts all the same, or are there different types?
Are there hosts for people with celiac disease? There is a slight difference between the Priestly Host , or the host consecrated by the Priest and raised before the assembled assembly, and the smaller ones offered to the faithful during the Eucharistic celebration.
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