AZTMITES
172
AZYMITES
xxiii, 18; xxxiv, 25; Lev., ii, 11). Their use was also
prescribed for the Feast of the Passover (Ex., xii,
8, 15; xiii, 3, 6, 7; Num.,ix, 11; Deut.,xvi, 3, 4, 8).
On account of the facility with which they could be
prepared, they were also made in ordinarj' life for
unexpected guests (Gen., xviii, 6; Judges, vi, 19-21,
etc.) and in times of necessity, e. g., at the time of
the Exodas (Ex., xii, 34, 39), whence the name,
"bread of affliction" (Deut., xvi, 3). In I Cor., v, S,
unleavened bread is tlie type of sincerity and truth.
Unleavened cakes were especially used for the Feast
of Azymes, also called the "solemn feast" (Num.,
xxviii, 17). This festival was instituted to com-
memorate Israel's deliverance from Egj-ptian bond-
age (Ex., xii, 17; xiii, 3-10). Its observance began
on the fifteenth of Abib, or Nisan, "the month of new
corn ", and continued seven days, the first and last
of which were specially solemn (Ex., xii, 15-18;
xiii, 7; Lev., xxiii, 6-8, etc.). No other but un-
leavened bread was allowed during the whole feast.
Although originally distinct, the Feast of Azymes
and the Feast of the Passover are often treated as
one and the same (Deut., x\-i, 16; Matt., xxvi, 17;
Mark, xiv, 12; Luke, xxii, 1,7).
Edersheim, The Temple and its Services (London, 1874); Green, The Hebrew Feasts (New York, 1S85); Schultz, Old Testament Theology, tr. (Edinburgh, 1892). I.
F. X. E. Albert.
Azymites (a privative and fiJ/ii;, leaven), a term of reproach used by the schismatic Greeks since the eleventh ccnturj' against the Latins, who, together with the Armenians and the Maronites, celebrate the Holy Eucharist with imleavened laread. Since re- ^'iling is apt to beget reviling, some few Latin con- troversialists have retorted by assailing the Greeks as " Fermentarians" and " Prozymites". There was, however, but little cause for bitterness on the Latin side, as the Western Church has always maintained the validity of consecration with either leavened or unleavened bread. Whether the bread which Our Lord took and blessed at the Last Supper was leavened or unleavened, is another question. Re- garding the usage of the primitive Church, our knowl- edge is so scant, and the testimonies so apparently contradictory, that many theologians have pro- nounced the problem incapable of solution.
Certain it is that in the ninth century the use of unleavened bread hatl become universal and obliga- tory in the West, while the Greeks, desirous of em- phasizing the distinction between the Jewish and the Christiaii Pasch, offered up leavened bread. Sorne surprise has been expressed that Photius, so alert in picking flaws in the Latin Liturgy, made no use of a point of attack which occupies so prominent a place in the polemics of the later scliismatics. The obvious explanation is that Photius was shrewd and learned •enough to see that the position of the Latins could not successfully be assailed. Two centuries later, the quarrel with Rome was resumed by a patriarch who was troubled with no learned scruples. As a visible symbol of Catholic unity, it had been the custom to maintain Greek churches and monasteries in Rome and some of Latin Rite in Constantinople. In 1053, Michael Csrularius ordered all the Latin churches in the Byzantine capital to be closed, and the Latin monks to be expelled. As a dogmatic justification of this violent rupture with the past, he advanced the novel tenet that the unleavened oblation of the "Franks" was not a valid Mass; and one of liis chaplains, Constantine by name, with a fanaticism worthy of a Calvinist, trod the consecrated Host un- der his feet. The proclamation of war with the pope and the West was drawn up by his chief lieu- tenant, Leo of Achrida, Metropolitan of the Bulga- rians. It was in the form of a letter addressed to John, Bishop of Trani, in Apulia, at the time sub- ject to the Byzantine emperor, and by decree of
Leo the Isaurian attached to the Eastern Patriarch-
ate. John was commanded to have the letter trans-
lated into Latin and communicated to the pope anil
the Western bishops. This was done by the leametl
Benedictine. Cardinal Humbert, who happened to be
present in Trani when the letter arrived. Baronius
has preserved the Latin version; Cardinal Hergen-
rother was so fortimate as to discover the original
Greek text (Cornelius Will, Acta etScripta, 51 sqq.).
It is a curious sample of Greek logic. "The love of
God and a feeling of friendliness impelled the writers
to admonish the Bishops, clergj', monks and laymen
of the Franks, and the Most Reverend Pope himself,
concerning their azyms and Sabbaths, which were un-
becoming, as being Jewish obser\ances and instituted
by Moses. But our Pasch is Christ. The Lord, in-
deed, obeyed the law by first celebrating the legal
pasch; but, as we learn from the Gospel, he subse-
quently instituted the new pasch. . . . He took
bread, etc., that is, a thing full of life and spirit and
heat. You call bread panis: we call it artos (dpros).
Tliis from airoel{atp<ji) . to raise, signifies a something
elevated, hfted up, being raised and warmed by the
ferment and salt; the azym, on the other hand, is
as lifeless as a stone or baked clay, fit only to sym-
bolize affliction and suffering. But our Pasch is re-
plete with joy; it elevates us from the earth to heaven
even as tiie leaven raises and warms the bread", etc.
This etymological manipulation of artos from airo
was about as valuable in deciding a theological con-
troversy as Melanchthon's discovery that the Greek
for "penance" is metay^oia. The Latin divines
found an abundance of passages in Scripture where
tmlea\-ened bread is designated as artos. Cardinal
Humbert remembered immediately the places where
the unleavened loaves of proposition are called artni.
If the writers of the letter had been familiar with the
Septuagint, they would have recalled the artous
azymous of Ex., xxix, 2.
To Cserularius the exegetieal merit of the con- troversy was of minor importance. He had found an effective battle-cry, well calculated to infuse into the breasts of his unreasoning partisans that hatred and defiance of the Latins which filled his own breast. The flour and water wafers of the " Franks" were not bread; their sacrifices were invalid; they were Jews, not Cliristians. Their lifeless bread could only sym- bolize a soulless Christ; therefore, they had clearly fallen into the heresy of ApoUinaris. By arts like these, the unfortunate Greeks were seduced from their allegiance to the centre of Catholic unity; and a schism was precipitated which centuries have not yet healed. It is interesting to notice that this question of azyms, which brought forth a cloud of virulent pamphlets and made a deeper impression on the popular imagi- nation than the abstruse controversy of the Filioque, caused little or no discussion among the theologians at the Councils of Lyons and Florence. At the latter Council the Greeks admitted the Latin con- tention that the consecration of the elements was equally valid with leavened and imleavened bread; it was decreed that the priests of either rite should conform to the custom of their respective Church. Modern Russians have claimed for their nation the dubious honour of ha\Tng opened this crusade against azyms; but the treatises ascribed to Leontius, Bishop of Kiew, who lived a century earlier than Cserularius, and in which all the well-known arguments of the Greeks are rehearsed, are judged to have proceeded from a later pen.
Hergenrother, Photius, III, passim; and in K. L., I, 1778-80; Hefele, Conciliengesehichte, 2d ed., IV, 766, 772- 774; PiTzipios, L' Egtise Orientale: Natalis, Alex. Deazt/morum usu. Hist. Eccl. (1778), HI, 380-389: Mabillon, De pane Eucharistico. in Vet. Ann. (1723), 522-547; Bona, Rev. Lith. I, c. 23 (a classic text); La question des azymes, in Messager des ndiles (1889), 485-490.
James F. Loijghlin.
